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Wall St. sets the stage for the next Big Heist
Andrew Hughes
One could not help but notice the constant emphasis, during and since the Obama campaign, on Climate Change and Green energy programs. The world has a real need to develop more oil independent energy sources and halt the wholesale rape of Mother Earth. However, hearing these pleas from Washington to London from the highest offices in the land only demand more thorough investigation. When one remembers that these same high offices have been responsible for the Iraq War, The Afghanistan War and the destruction of the economy, taking anything at face value is a precarious enterprise.
As in all schemes brought to life by Government office, the first question that begs to be asked is Qui Bono? When a Carbon Tax or a Carbon Cap and Share program is announced the one thing that can be assumed is that it will be designed to make money for those who usually make the money all along. To believe that Washington or London have developed a more altruistic nature and suddenly want to save the world, is to deny decades of Political and economic history. The road to discovering the real truth behind the plan is to follow the money, the players and the science.
On the Change.gov website there was a news release about the Bi-partisan Governors Global Climate Summit in Los Angeles, California. Among the attendees were Governors Rod Blagojevich (IL) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (CA). (The Terminator and The Auctioneer were playing their part in the birthing of the new "impending disaster" just as much as Condi Rice, Bush and Rumsfeld played their part in creating the "Mushroom Cloud" scenario with Iraq). Mr. Obama had prepared a speech to address the conference via video. From the speech:
The Times they will a'change in 2009
eileen fleming
The Times They Are a'Changin'- FREE Vanunu Mordechai! Now! Began on Face book on November 15, 2008 by an Italian with a vision for a Global V Day with his message to VMJC: Vanunu Mordechai John Crossman:
"For the little I can, [I will] try to move the conscience of the largest number of people possible, to try and break the chain of hatred that choke you and all the people of the area. Keep struggling. One day soon you will come to Rome to wipe away the ghosts of the past…" [1]
Excerpted from the Groups Description introduction by VANUNU MORDECHAI JC:
"…a man of peace, a symbol. KIDNAPPED IN ROME SEP' 30 th.1986…AFTER 18 YEARS IN ISRAEL PRISON… still a prisoner of fear and revenge. VANUNU…is waiting in East Jerusalem to leave;…be really free-to live…group objective is to help VANUNU… to enjoy in full his human right and to promote confrontation and a new mental approach toward the Palestine tragedy. Open your minds, stop hate.
Once You've Been Homeless, You Can Never Go Back
Kirsten Anderberg
I was riding the bus today, lost in thought, when the bus pulled up to a stop and I looked out the window I was leaning against to see several women, with their baggage and small children, sitting on the pavement in a parking lot, looking weary and forlorn. I was immediately overcome with a familiarity; it reminded me horribly of my mom and me, when I was a child. I immediately realized this was a pick up spot for homeless shelters. As my bus rolled on, I saw the next block was lined with women, young and old, carrying their bags, hovering around, looking agitated, anxious, hot, worn out, and desperate, waiting outside the YWCA in downtown Seattle, to see if they will have shelter tonight (as local shelters cannot accommodate all of the women who need shelter nightly). By the time we had rolled past that block, I was in tears. I looked around me on the bus. It seemed no one even noticed what was outside our windows for the full length of the previous block.
"Once you have been homeless, you can never go back," I scribbled on a piece of scrap paper in my backpack. It occurred to me that perhaps many of the people on the bus around me did not understand what was going on out there on the street around the YWCA. It occurred to me that many, if not most, of those on the bus around me, had never been homeless and thus would not recognize that snippet of street reality that just was in our windows, for the painful scene of suffering it was. The way that scene got my attention was something outside the window triggered a very strong feeling in me, a bad feeling, a feeling of discomfort and anxiety, yet a familiar feeling, and I looked out. What I saw was me as a child, and my mom, fretting in worry, as we waited to figure out where we would sleep that night. I remember that feeling so much that I am still shaken hours later after feeling it again.
The Rick Warren controversy and Barack's bad timing
Mary Shaw
One of the many big political stories of the past few days is Barack Obama's newest pastor problem.
Obama has chosen Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation.
This is the same Rick Warren, of the ironically named Saddleback megachurch, who actively pushed for passage of Proposition 8, and has compared homosexuality to incest, polygamy, and child abuse.
Warren's respect for women equals his respect for gays. For instance, he recently compared reproductive choice to the Holocaust.
This guy is the king of zealous exaggeration and deceptive spin. But people follow him and absorb his every word. That makes him dangerous. And that danger led to disaster on November 4th, when his Prop 8 efforts succeeded in stripping gay couples in California of their right to marry.
This is the kind of religious political interference that we voted against when we elected Barack Obama as our next president. But now Warren will play a starring role at the inauguration of the president who promised change we can believe in. -So, naturally, Obama has come under fire in the past few days for this selection. And rightly so, in my opinion.
Try that One on for Size: Al-Zaidi Puts Iraq Back on the Map
Remi Kanazi
I can't lie. I've watched Iraqi journalist Montather Al-Zaidi whip those two shoes past George Bush's head more times than I can count. I loved it; I even got into the corny jokes about the Red Sox drafting Al-Zaidi in the spring (cementing my belief that Iraqis have the second strongest arms in the Middle East—behind Palestinians of course). I also read endless blog coverage and joined the Facebook group, "Release Montather Al-Zaidi and Give Him New Shoes."
New Arctic Meltdown Rates Cut Little Ice With Governments
Andrew Glikson
It is a good question whether the Australian government, having effectively abandoned any meaningful attempt at the arrest of accelerating climate change, would have changed its White Paper in view of rising melt rates of Arctic Sea ice, which acts as the Earth's thermostat, and which has already decreased from 8 to 4 million km2 and is projected to vanish within the next 5 years or so news.bbc
Mean temperatures over the Arctic Sea, increased by about 3C and locally by 5C over the last 4 years, compared to the earlier long-term mean, heralds a new climate pattern in the northern hemisphere, including advanced melt of Greenland ice sheet over the next few decades, raising sea levels by several metres.
Who are the fools that reward Israel's criminal behaviour?
Stuart Littlewood
Members of the European Parliament recently took a critical view of proposals to upgrade the EU-Israel Association Agreement and put down amendments designed to toughen up the conditions. "It's time for the Israeli Government to stop considering itself above the law and start respecting it,” warned Luisa Morgantini, the Parliament’s vice-president.
As a result the vote was postponed – “a political stunt”, said the frustrated Israel lobby. In the meantime all 27 EU ministers voted unanimously to approve the upgrade. However it is not a done deal just yet. The EU Parliament still has to vote on this.
Light REDD: The Looming Tragedy of Carbon Markets Paying to Destroy Ancient Forests
Dr. Glen Barry
Using carbon funds, the world's governments are poised to subsidize ancient forest logging, claiming it benefits the Earth's climate. REDD's potential support of "low impact" logging of ancient forests, and conversion of natural forests to tree farms, fails the climate, biodiversity and biosphere.
Plans to pay for rainforest protection using funds from carbon markets progressed during this week's UN climate talks. I have long promoted the deceptively simple idea of paying to keep rainforests standing, yet am far from jubilant with the results. It appears first time, industrial logging of ancient forests -- through so-called low-impact and certified logging, and the conversion of these and other natural forests to plantations -- is falsely considered as having carbon benefits, and will be paid for with our tax dollars and carbon offsets.
Zeitgeist: The Withering Away of Europe's Anti-War Spirit
Gaither Stewart
Sarkozy, War and the Grandeur of La Douce France
“Non, rien de rien, je ne regrette rien!” (As sung by Edith Piaf from the Eiffel Tower to celebrate the end of World War II)
(Paris) After the slaughter of World War II, the cry of “Never Again War” echoed across Europe. That war had cost over 70,000,000 lives, half of whom civilians, and—lest one forget—nearly half of them were Russians. So intense was the anti-war spirit then that the new Republic of Italy born from the ashes of Fascism, a nation which lost nearly 500,000 lives, wrote into its new Constitution: “Italy repudiates war.” That article is more than a political consideration. Modern Italy’s Constitution put the anti-war position in an ethical-moral framework. One reason for the anti-war spirit on the Continent was that the chain of wars and colonial adventures had injected into the veins of Europe a poison that led also inevitably to Auschwitz.
In later times that path led also from Hiroshima to Baghdad, a degradation and an atmosphere that civilized man must reject and abhor. Yet the President Elect of the failing US empire is already hemming and hawing. Preventive war is apparently still OK, certainly not repudiated. Someday—not within the promised sixteen months of “change and hope”—someday US troops just might leave Iraq. Moreover, the unending war in Afghanistan must be won, and that, Washington insists, with Europe’s help.
Robert Kagan’s Mythology of U.S. Exceptionalism
Jim Miles
Overview
Robert Kagan is a difficult subject to analyze. At times his writing seems to be very honest and directly critical of U.S. intentions as well as being clearly honest about the sometimes “dangerous nation” aspect of its history and foreign policy. Underlying it all however is his own patriotic blindness that ends up always supporting U.S. exceptionalism and uniqueness, always expressing the egocentric viewpoint that the U.S. is the indispensable nation. The U.S. is not indispensable.
Nor is it a bastion of “democratic capitalism” that is the only way forward from here, here being a point in renewed history – according to Kagan – in which there are either “democrats” or “autocrats.” Kagan does not see in shades of gray, countries and politicians are either one or the other. His arguments, while seemingly coherent at certain points tend to dissolve into self-contradiction, the main contradiction being the solid criticism that “what you do speaks so loud I can’t hear what you say.” For all that Kagan tries to present as the positives of the U.S., of the underlying good intentions of the U.S. - at the same time recognizing its sometimes hard handed methods of interfering in other countries - he really does not understand that perceptions built on those hard handed actions over-ride all the rhetoric and jingoism about the greatness and indispensability of the U.S. as the world’s guide to a better world.
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