Peace Doesn’t Work, Obama Informs Nobel Committee
By Jason Ditz, December 10, 2009
President Barack Obama accepted his Nobel Peace Prize today, and as expected he acknowledged that even he isn’t clear why he got the prize, noting that there were millions of people more deserving.
But President Obama’s “acceptance speech” was far from an expression of contrition, spending most of the speech defending his War in Afghanistan as an inherently just war, and rambling on about all the other recent American wars and his ostensible justifications of them.
Then, in what must’ve been one of the least humble and least appropriate speeches ever given before the Nobel Committee, Obama declared non-violence to be impractical and insisted that the “limits of reason” meant that the American military would continue to have to be used for “moral” reasons.
In extolling the virtues of war while accepting what was supposed to be a prize for radical advocates of peace, President Obama had what could only be called one of the quintessential jerkass moments of American history, an embarrassing exhortation to the advocates of peace to accept violence as the one true way of solving the world’s problems.
Hockey stick observed in NOAA ice core data
December 9, 2009
At the Foresight Institute, J. Storrs Hall had some interesting graphs made from NOAA ice core data (Alley, R.B. 2000. The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed from central Greenland. Quaternary Science Reviews 19:213-226.) It sure seems to mirror other hockey sticks this past century. Dr. Mann will be thrilled to see this I’m sure.
J. Storrs Hall writes:
One thing that Climategate does is give us an opportunity to step back from the details of the AGW argument and say, maybe this is heat-of-the-moment stuff, and in the long run will look as silly as the Durants’ allergy to Eisenhower. And perhaps, if we can put climate arguments in perspective, it will allow us to put the much smaller nano arguments (pun intended) into perspective too.
So let’s look at some ice.
I’m looking at the temperature record as read from this central Greenland ice core. It gives us about as close as we can come to a direct, experimental measurement of temperature at that one spot for the past 50,000 years. As far as I know, the data are not adjusted according to any fancy computer climate model or anything else like that.
So what does it tell us about, say, the past 500 years? (the youngest datum is age=0.0951409 (thousand years before present) — perhaps younger snow doesn’t work so well?):
Well, whaddaya know — a hockey stick. In fact, the “blade” continues up in the 20th century at least another half a degree. But how long is the handle? How unprecedented is the current warming trend?
Some Historical Perspective
Yes, Virginia, there was a Medieval Warm Period, in central Greenland at any rate. But we knew that — that’s when the Vikings were naming it Greenland, after all. And the following Little Ice Age is what killed them off, and caused widespread crop failures (and the consequent burning of witches) across Europe. But was the MWP itself unusual?
Well, no — over the period of recorded history, the average temperature was about equal to the height of the MWP. Rises not only as high, but as rapid, as the current hockey stick blade have been the rule, not the exception.
In fact for the entire Holocene — the period over which, by some odd coincidence, humanity developed agriculture and civilization — the temperature has been higher than now, and the trend over the past 4000 years is a marked decline. From this perspective, it’s the LIA that was unusual, and the current warming trend simply represents a return to the mean. If it lasts.
From the perspective of the Holocene as a whole, our current hockeystick is beginning to look pretty dinky. By far the possibility I would worry about, if I were the worrying sort, would be the return to an ice age — since interglacials, over the past half million years or so, have tended to last only 10,000 years or so. And Ice ages are not conducive to agriculture.
… and ice ages have a better claim on being the natural state of Earth’s climate than interglacials. This next graph, for the longest period, we have to go to an Antarctic core (Vostok):
In other words, we’re pretty lucky to be here during this rare, warm period in climate history. But the broader lesson is, climate doesn’t stand still. It doesn’t even stay on the relatively constrained range of the last 10,000 years for more than about 10,000 years at a time.
Does this mean that CO2 isn’t a greenhouse gas? No.
Does it mean that it isn’t warming? No.
Does it mean that we shouldn’t develop clean, efficient technology that gets its energy elsewhere than burning fossil fuels? Of course not. We should do all those things for many reasons — but there’s plenty of time to do them the right way, by developing nanotech. (There’s plenty of money, too, but it’s all going to climate science at the moment. 
) And that will be a very good thing to have done if we do fall back into an ice age, believe me.
For climate science it means that the Hockey Team climatologists’ insistence that human-emitted CO2 is the only thing that could account for the recent warming trend is probably poppycock.
What is to blame for the stalled peace talks?
by Adam Horowitz on December 10, 2009
Israeli officials blame a Palestinian Authority diplomatic campaign orchestrated “to coerce Israel into accepting statehood.”
The US State Department blames the Goldstone report.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will seek cabinet approval on Sunday for a new map of national priority zones that will grant 110,000 settlers – most of whom live outside the major settlement blocs – the economic benefits conferred on residents of these zones. . .
Designation as a national priority zone entitles a town to additional state funding, which can be spent on programs ranging from professional retraining courses to extra classroom hours and cultural activities. Netanyahu’s proposal allots a budget of about NIS 1,000 per person for these benefits, meaning his government will be earmarking an additional NIS 110 million for the settlements.
The proposal the cabinet will be asked to approve on Sunday states that its main purpose is “to encourage population dispersal in the State of Israel and increase the population of the periphery and of areas near the border.” Another goal is to “preserve and bolster Israel’s national security stamina.”
Some settlement freeze. The best comment on the proposed new “priority zones” comes from Israeli Knesset member and National Union Party member Michael Ben-Ari:
“The message from here is very clear. . .The Jews have been exiled enough. If there is a people that has to be evacuated and should not be here, it is not the Jewish people.”
Britain angers poor nations with plan to switch cash from health to climate
Ben Webster, Environment Editor
The Times
December 10, 2009
National aid budgets dedicated to reducing global poverty would be raided to establish a “climate fund” to help developing countries to adapt to climate change, under a British plan tabled yesterday in Copenhagen.
Money earmarked for education or health would be diverted into projects such as solar panels and wind farms.
The proposal has angered developing countries, which are demanding that all the money in the climate fund be additional to the 0.7 per cent of income that industrialised countries have pledged to give as overseas aid.
Poor nations had hoped that the British plan, devised with Norway, Australia and Mexico, would establish the principle that the climate fund be entirely new money.
The plan suggests there will be a significant overlap between aid and climate budgets. It says: “Some have stressed that climate finance should be clearly new and additional to finance already committed for Millennium Development Goals [on reducing global poverty]. Others have pointed to the clear overlap between climate and development objectives.”
A British official refused to say what proportion of the climate fund would be new money. He said the Government had pledged last summer that only 10 per cent of Britain’s aid budget would be diverted to the climate fund.
Britain has refused to give any indication of the size of its contribution to the climate fund. The 10 per cent of aid money could represent most of Britain’s contribution, meaning there would be very little additional money.
The European Union has proposed that global contributions to the climate fund should reach €100 billion (£90 billion) a year by 2020. But it wants an undisclosed proportion of that to be from developing countries.
Oxfam estimates that diverting aid to the climate fund will mean at least 75 million fewer children attending school in developing countries and 8.6 million fewer people having access to HIV/Aids treatment.
Himalayan Glaciers Not Disappearing
By Doug L. Hoffman – The Resilient Earth – 11/13/2009
A new report by a senior Indian glaciologist states that Himalayan glaciers remain frozen and quite intact.
The report by Vijay Kumar Raina, formerly of the Geological Survey of India, seeks to correct widely spread reports that India’s 10,000 or so Himalayan glaciers are shrinking rapidly in response to climate change. It’s not true, Raina says. The rumors may have originated in the Asia chapter of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) 2007 Working Group II report, which claims that Himalayan glaciers “are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.” Evidently, the bogus reporting was based on measurements from only a handful of glaciers.
Raina’s report draws on published studies and unpublished findings from half a dozen Indian groups who have analyzed remote-sensing satellite data or conducted on-site surveys at remote locations often higher than 5000 meters. While the report surveyed a number of glaciers, two particularly iconic ones stand out. The first is the 30-kilometer-long Gangotri glacier, source of the Ganges River. Between 1934 and 2003, the glacier retreated an average of 70 feet (22 meters) a year and shed a total of 5% of its length. But in 2004 and 2005, the retreat slowed to about 12 meters a year, and since September 2007 Gangotri has been “practically at a standstill,” according to Raina’s report.
Gangotri glacier, source of the Ganges River, retreated a few dozen meters from 2004 to 2008. – Photos provided by V. K. Raina.
The second glacier, the Siachin glacier in Kashmir, is even more stable. Claims reported in the popular press that Siachin has shrunk as much as 50% are simply wrong, says Raina, whose report notes that the glacier has “not shown any remarkable retreat in the last 50 years.” These conclusions were based in part on field measurements by ecologist Kireet Kumar of the G. B. Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development in Almora. Much like the hysteria about Greenland’s ice cap, it seems reports of the glaciers’ demise are a bit premature.
According to a report in the journal Science, “several Western experts who have conducted studies in the region agree with Raina’s nuanced analysis—even if it clashes with IPCC’s take on the Himalayas.” The “extremely provocative” findings “are consistent with what I have learned independently,” says Jeffrey S. Kargel, a glaciologist at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Many glaciers in the Karakoram Mountains, on the border of India and Pakistan, have “stabilized or undergone an aggressive advance,” he says, citing new evidence gathered by a team led by Michael Bishop, a mountain geomorphologist at the University of Nebraska.
Having recently returned from an expedition to K2, one of the highest peaks in the world, Canadian glaciologist Kenneth Hewitt says he observed five advancing glaciers and only a single one in retreat. Such evidence “challenges the view that the upper Indus glaciers are ‘disappearing’ quickly and will be gone in 30 years,” said Hewitt. “There is no evidence to support this view and, indeed, rates of retreat have been less in the past 30 years than the previous 60 years.”
Other researchers and noted experts have raised their voices in support of Raina’s conclusions. According to Himalayan glacier specialist John “Jack” Shroder, the only possible conclusion is that IPCC’s Himalaya assessment got it “horribly wrong.” The University of Nebraska researcher adds, “They were too quick to jump to conclusions on too little data.”
Looks like the Himalayas stay frozen. Photo UNEP.
The IPCC also erred in its forecast of the impact of glacier melting on water supply, claims Donald Alford, a Montana-based hydrologist who recently completed a water study for the World Bank. One of the dire predictions that the IPCC report made was for water shortages in the region. “Our data indicate the Ganges results primarily from monsoon rainfall, and until the monsoon fails completely, there will be a Ganges river, very similar to the present river.” Glacier melt contributes only 3% to 4% of the Ganges’s annual flow, says Kireet Kumar. Another piece of climate catastrophist propaganda debunked.
Even when faced with data showing the errors in their work, the IPCC seems incapable of admitting they were wrong. Typically, Murari Lal, chair of the Climate, Energy and Sustainable Development Analysis Centre in New Delhi and coordinating lead author of the 2007 IPCC report’s Asia chapter, rejects the notion that IPCC was off the mark on Himalayan glaciers. Even more petulantly, IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri accused the Indian environment ministry of “arrogance” for its report claiming there is no evidence that climate change has shrunk the Himalayan glaciers. Unfortunately for the climate change alarmists the truth is out, the glaciers of the Himalayas remain safely frozen and won’t be disappearing anytime soon.
Another EU policy statement will not stop Israel’s colonization
Hasan Abu Nimah, The Electronic Intifada, 9 December 2009
 |
| As EU diplomats waste time arguing over words, Israeli occupation forces continue to demolish Palestinian homes. (Meged Gozani/Activestills) |
Israel started a preemptive campaign against a EU statement on the Middle East session even before it was formally presented for discussion by EU ministers this week on whether to adopt it. Israeli spokesmen expressed outrage at what they saw as an EU effort to “divide” Jerusalem, and claimed that the European position would “harm the peace process,” as if it is only Israel that has been carefully protecting it from the harmful moves of others.
Despite the usual hype, the document, a version of which was published by the Israeli daily Haaretz on 2 December, does not contain much that should cause Israel any undue worry. It is no more than a fine tuning of long-stated, and ineffectual EU positions. The statement is of course “balanced” — meaning it goes out of its way not to offend the Israeli occupier and lawbreaker — and it is strewn with cliches and contradictions.
“The European Union calls for the urgent resumption of negotiations that will lead, within an agreed time frame, to a two-state solution, with an independent democratic, contiguous and viable state of Palestine, comprising the West Bank and Gaza and with East Jerusalem as its capital, living side by side in peace and security with the State of Israel,” the statement reads.
This sounds straightforward enough, but that’s only the case if there are agreed upon definitions for the “West Bank” and “East Jerusalem,” but this is not the case. Does the EU mean the West Bank and East Jerusalem as they existed the day before they were conquered and occupied by Israel on 4 June 1967? Reading through the rest of the statement does indeed indicate the opposite.
If the EU were really committed to an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, then all the Israeli settlements built illegally on occupied Palestinian land must go, as was the case in Sinai and Gaza. But that is not what the EU stipulates at all.
In more than one location the document says one thing for the Palestinians, but then effectively negates it by deferring to Israeli demands. For example, it commits to “Palestinian statehood” but with recognition deferred until “the appropriate time.” Hence there is no real commitment here, just a vague, easily deferred promise that costs nothing.
On settlements, the document quite rightly “urges the government of Israel to immediately end all settlement activities, including in East Jerusalem and including natural growth, and to dismantle all outposts erected since March 2001.” “Outposts” is a term Israel uses for small settlements erected in violation of Israeli regulations, as if settlements Israel has authorized are somehow legal. So by asking only for the dismantling of “outposts,” the EU is in effect recognizing Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank by deferring to Israel’s definition of what is and is not a “legal” settlement. This EU recognition is a major diplomatic victory for Israel. All the settlements are equally illegal under international law, and Israel is equally obligated to remove all of them.
The EU document does recognize that “settlements, the [West Bank] separation barrier, on occupied land are illegal under international law,” but does not call for their complete removal.
The EU, the statement says, “will not recognize any changes to the pre-1967 borders” — that sounds like a commitment to applying international law, until it adds, “other than those agreed by the parties.” But it is utterly meaningless to talk about “agreement” between a military occupier colonizing land by force and its victims. This is just another way of saying that Palestinians will be forced to acquiesce to an Israeli-imposed, EU-blessed fait accompli where they give up their claim to their stolen land, and possibly receive some sand dunes elsewhere in compensation.
It seems that democratic Europe is ready to forgive Israel’s systematic theft of Palestinian lands for more than 42 years (counting only from the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip), just as long as there is an illusory “land swap” to legitimize and cover up this theft. But did any of these Europeans bother to ask what land could compensate Palestinians for the hills of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron, Nablus, Tulkarm and Jenin? Is there any place on earth that could “compensate” Europeans for London, Paris, Berlin and Stockholm?
In any case, any lands that Israel might “give” to the Palestinians were most likely lands Israel seized illegally from Palestine in 1948. So it is as if a robber offers to “compensate” you for something he stole, using something else he stole from you! Does the EU ever bother to question the legality, if not the morality, of donating other people’s rights and lands to merely appease a rogue state like Israel?
And why should the EU Council promise to “further develop its bilateral relations with Israel within the framework of the [European Neighborhood Policy]” if the latter is blocking Middle East peace, laying siege to Gaza, demolishing civilian homes in Jerusalem after throwing their inhabitants out in the open and building an apartheid wall on occupied land, as clearly spelled out in the European document? Why should Israel be expected to pay any attention to the European position if so much groveling and appeasement follow every mild criticism?
Let us not forget that this follows after many European countries lacked the moral courage to support the Goldstone report and help Palestinians pursue real justice for Israel’s atrocities in Gaza last winter.
So why should Israel heed any statement of EU policy when the Europeans make it clear that Israel will receive its rewards regardless of what it does, and never be punished regardless of its repeated violations of international law? For decades, such European duplicity, vagueness and weakness has encouraged Israel’s crimes and violations. The EU tried to wash its hands of its legal and moral obligations of the Palestinians by showering the Palestinian Authority with cash — which has done nothing to bring Palestinians any closer to liberation. It only financed the continued occupation, freeing Israeli hands and cash to build more illegal settlements.
Israel probably knows that it has little to fear from the EU, but it made a huge fuss because from experience, such behavior will intimidate the EU into watering the statement down even further before it is adopted in the futile search for “balance” and appeasement.
The EU statement is empty and meaningless. At this stage only real action, in the form of firm diplomatic, trade and economic sanctions against Israel could be taken as evidence of a real European commitment to peace. The EU must also crack down on all European firms — such as French conglomerate Veolia which is building a light railway linking Israeli settlements — that war profiteer from Israel’s occupation.
But that’s not likely, unfortunately. As EU diplomats waste time arguing over words, Israeli occupation forces will continue to demolish Palestinian homes, ethnically cleanse Jerusalem and colonize more Arab lands.
Hasan Abu Nimah is the former permanent representative of Jordan at the United Nations. This essay first appeared in The Jordan Times.
Climategate: Gore falsifies the record
Andrew Bolt – December 09, 2009 at 06:54pm
Al Gore has studied the Climategate emails with his typically rigorous eye and dismissed them as mere piffle:
Q: How damaging to your argument was the disclosure of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University?
A: To paraphrase Shakespeare, it’s sound and fury signifying nothing. I haven’t read all the e-mails, but the most recent one is more than 10 years old. These private exchanges between these scientists do not in any way cause any question about the scientific consensus.
And in case you think that was a mere slip of the tongue:
Q: There is a sense in these e-mails, though, that data was hidden and hoarded, which is the opposite of the case you make [in your book] about having an open and fair debate.
A: I think it’s been taken wildly out of context. The discussion you’re referring to was about two papers that two of these scientists felt shouldn’t be accepted as part of the IPCC report. Both of them, in fact, were included, referenced, and discussed. So an e-mail exchange more than 10 years ago including somebody’s opinion that a particular study isn’t any good is one thing, but the fact that the study ended up being included and discussed anyway is a more powerful comment on what the result of the scientific process really is.
In fact, thrice denied:
These people are examining what they can or should do to deal with the P.R. dimensions of this, but where the scientific consensus is concerned, it’s completely unchanged. What we’re seeing is a set of changes worldwide that just make this discussion over 10-year-old e-mails kind of silly.
In fact, as Watts Up With That shows, one Climategate email was from just two months ago. The most recent was sent on November 12 – just a month ago. The emails which have Tom Wigley seeming (to me) to choke on the deceit are all from this year. Phil Jones’ infamous email urging other Climategate scientists to delete emails is from last year.
How closely did Gore read these emails? Did he actually read any at all? Was he lying or just terribly mistaken? What else has he got wrong?
Why are the oligarchic elites trying so hard to push their climate change policies through right now?
December 9, 2009 by Notsilvia Night
Why are the political and financial elites and their obedient servants in the their faith – sorry scientific community – pushing so madly for a final decision on a global Carbon Tax legislation at this very moment?
Why don´t they just wait until the scandal of “climate gate” has blown over?
Because those elites know they are wrong on the issue of human caused climate change.
They know that their lies are being revealed to the public piece by piece, faster and faster.
Most of all, they know that the planet is at the moment once again in a cooling phase as occurs every thirty or forty odd years.
Looking at the current lack of solar activity, this cooling phase might even be a more severe one than the one that ended 40 years ago, possibly as severe as during what is called the Maunder Minimum, a cooling phase lasting several decades during the 17. and 18. century.
In a couple of years their claims would no longer be tenable at all. The cooling trend would be obvious to even the most ideologically blinded environmentalist on earth.
The scheme of taxing global population, creating new revenue streams for the world´s financial markets establishing a central control over the world economy and preventing the rise of developing countries out of poverty, would lose out.
The political leaders of all less powerful countries are being bullied at the moment into signing a treaty which gives away their country’s national sovereignty to the leadership of the powerful ones, namely Britain and United States – and more to the point to the shadow leadership behind them, the world´s financial elites of Goldman Sachs and Co.
So why are so many decent people on the left fighting hand and foot for the profits in carbon trading of Goldman Sachs and Al Gore´s Generation Investment Management (GIM) company?
It´s a psychological problem; most people, especially on the left, want to be on the side of the good and caring people.
For over 40 years now we have been told that being environmentally minded means being a good person. It means we care about nature, wild animal life, about future generations of human beings.
Being environmentally minded means we are opposed to polluting the air and the water;
we are opposed to deforestation (especially in the rain-forest regions);
we are opposed to dumping our own poisonous waste unto the developing world;
we are opposed to rampant consumerism, in which driven by the advertisement industry we keep on buying and buying. Buying things we actually don´t need, things which do not make us either happier or more comfortable, just more indebted.
All those nice middle class people who want to feel good about themselves, they all support these ideas as part of the program for the left. And yes, there are plenty of real environmental issues we should be concerned about. But while marginalizing these real issues for the environment, the financial and right-wing ideological elites have – with the help of the media they control – succeeded to infiltrate their own agenda into the “green” movement with the bogus Anthropogenic Global Warming ideology.
The propaganda has been very successful indeed. People who want with all their heart to be “good” and decent are now supporting the agenda of the most selfish and anti-humanist forces on the planet.
The propaganda has created a belief-system which is hard to break. In Europe this belief-system is even more entrenched, since it has been developed for a over a few more years, hence it may be harder to break among Europeans than in the United States.
But after the “climate-gate” revelations chances aren’t so bad any more. A global storm is brewing against the liars (which include most of the mainline media) and their masters. No matter how bad it looks when we listen to the sound-bites of the top-level political hacks, down on the bottom, in the population, minds are changing en masse.
In just a little while, those who honestly strive to be the “good” guys (and girls) will realize that being good and caring about future generations means not caring for the Goldman Sachs carbon credits scheme.
The truth will indeed set us free from global tyranny:
Watch also:
Lord Monckton on Climategate at the 2nd International Climate Conference
on Vimeo.
Will the Last “Progressive for Obama” Please Turn Out the Lights?
12/09/2009
by BAR executive editor Glen FordThe U.S. peace “movement,” much of which “comes and goes” as often as Boy George’s “Karma Chameleon,” has finally discovered that its presumed perch in Barack Obama’s tree was untenable, if not wholly imaginary. To be sure, “Progressives for Obama” and other assorted delusional groupings were always squatters in the Obama camp – but they were the only ones who didn’t know it. How embarrassing it would have been, back during the campaign, had the lost little lefties realized that Obama’s imperial soul mates were laughing at them from a disdainful distance, knowing full well the path their bought-and-paid-for president would soon be traveling. How would the Obama peacenik groupies have preserved their sense of self-worth – much less their arrogant smugness – had they realized the absolute contempt in which they were held by their hero’s funders and packagers – and no doubt by the Object of Adulation, himself?With the president’s hearty embrace on December 1 of not only current U.S. aggressions in South Asia but the entirety of the glorious rise of U.S. global hegemony since the end of World War Two, it should now be clear to even the most dense among self-styled “progressives” that Obama was never worth a damn. To Obama, the world-terrorizing nuclear arms race against the Soviets, the savage assaults on countries emerging from colonialism, the death of millions in the quest to make the world safe for corporations, the spread of the global drug trade under management of U.S. intelligence services – all this can be summed up as: “The United States of America has underwritten global security for over six decades, a time that, for all its problems, has seen walls come down, markets open, billions lifted from poverty, unparalleled scientific progress, and advancing frontiers of human liberty.”
Obama lives and breathes American Manifest Destiny – which means, as a non-white person, he is profoundly mentally unbalanced. But any lefty worth her/his salt should have known that. Obama’s yearly talks to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the regional equivalent of the Council on Foreign Affairs, were models of imperial-speak, totally consistent with his West Point performance. Beginning years ago, he repeatedly declared that, as president, he would draw a line in the sands (or mountains) of Afghanistan – which is something only militarist, imperialist pigs draw in other people’s countries. He warned everyone that, under the Bin-Ladin-Might-Be-There Doctrine, he would refuse to respect the sovereignty of Pakistan. And he has ceaselessly lied about his actions and intentions in Iraq – a key qualification for the job of imperial U.S. president.
Still, there seems to be a soggy cloud hanging over some self-styled anti-war circles, as if Obama’s most recent display of rabid war mongering, American Manifest Destiny-ism was a tragedy for and betrayal of the “movement.” And I suppose that those confused souls who believed that they were doing “movement” work while engaged in Obama groupy-ism for the last several years, might feel that some kind of tragedy had occurred. And they might be right, in that the absence of an anti-war movement during the campaign years undoubtedly encouraged Obama in his warlike proclivities. As a result, hundreds of thousands will undoubtedly die, because American “progressives” forsook their duty to humanity for reasons no more defensible than those a teenage girl would give for following a shallow but “hot” celebrity around from city to city.
Let’s make it plain: Obama didn’t do anything to the “movement.” Most especially, he did not fool anyone in the “movement.” Rather, people who claimed to be in the “movement” fooled themselves and then proceeded to fool lots of other people into thinking that Obama-work was “movement”-work – when events have shown it was the opposite.
A huge number of “movement” notables should be deeply humbled and, to varying degrees, ashamed at their lemming-like susceptibility to Obama’s…what? The two-year near-silence in the anti-war “movement” is proof, not of Obama’s Svengali-like powers (his imperialism is actually quite transparent), but of profound weaknesses in the “movement,” itself (which is why I’ve been putting the term in quotes).
I have a hunch that the worst of the paralyzing Obama-effect on “movement” politics is finally over – due mainly to Obama’s insistence on remaining true to the logic of imperialism and refusal to toss his groupies on the Left a straw to cling to, any further. [I hope you’re right Gary but what I’ve been seeing suggests we have a ways to go]
There is no need to name-the-names of the politically prodigal ones, many of whom are returning to some kind of oppositional activism [promoting Western supremacy and mass starvation of those that can’t afford the “costs” of the contrived AGW agenda in Copenhagen perhaps] now that their erstwhile idol is in full-spectrum war mode. Far better to quote Cynthia McKinney, the former Georgia congresswoman and Green Party presidential candidate, whose engagement with struggle is a constant:
“We have now reached the point where those who make and interpret current events think they can make us believe that war is for peace, ignorance is strength, slavery is freedom, and lies are the truth. Well, we know the truth, and we will not rest until every drone is stopped and no more bombs are dropped. We will not rest until peace is won. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said there comes a time when we do what we must because our ultimate measure is not where we stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where we stand at times of challenge and controversy. At this time of challenge, we are clear: we will not give up and we will not stop.”
There are many “movement” notables who, in fact, did try in the recent past to peddle a banker’s best friend as a man of the people, a proponent of “race-neutrality” as an ally of oppressed minorities, and an imperial invader and occupier as something resembling a man of peace. Hopefully, they will make up for past misconduct and bad judgment through prodigious feats of activist productivity, including plenty of shouting at the White House on Saturday.
Experts voice doubt about efficacy of Tamiflu
Press TV – December 9, 2009 13:43:15 GMT
While Tamiflu has been used to ward off swine flu and its complications in the current pandemic, an expert panel has voiced doubts about its efficacy.
The use of the antiviral drug, also known as oseltamivir, has increased by a huge number since the onset of the A/H1N1 flu in April, as the drug is considered as the most effective treatment against the flu.
According to a study published in the British Medical Journal, there is no clear evidence regarding the efficacy of Tamiflu in preventing swine flu complications such as pneumonia in healthy individuals.
A review of published studies revealed that Tamiflu reduces flu symptoms in less than a day; it, however, has no dramatic influence on reducing the complications of the flu.
“We now conclude there is insufficient evidence to describe the effects of Tamiflu on complications of influenza or the drug’s toxicity,” said lead researcher Tom Jefferson.
“Governments around the world have spent billions of pounds on a drug that the scientific community now finds itself unable to judge,” said BMJ’s editor-in-chief Fiona Godlee.
Roche, the manufacturer of the drug, stressed that there are sufficient studies reporting the benefits of Tamiflu in protecting individuals against the fatal swine flu.
“We fully stand behind the robustness of the data and the integrity of that data, particularly the efficacy and safety of Tamiflu, the conduct of our clinical studies and the publication process,” said David Reddy, Roche’s pandemic taskforce leader.
Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after ‘Danish text’ leak
- John Vidal in Copenhagen
- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 December 2009 14.09 GMT
Photograph: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images
The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN’s role in all future climate change negotiations.
The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.
The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as “the circle of commitment” – but understood to include the UK, US and Denmark – has only been shown to a handful of countries since it was finalised this week.
The agreement, leaked to the Guardian, is a departure from the Kyoto protocol‘s principle that rich nations, which have emitted the bulk of the CO2, should take on firm and binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, while poorer nations were not compelled to act. The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions.
The document was described last night by one senior diplomat as “a very dangerous document for developing countries. It is a fundamental reworking of the UN balance of obligations. It is to be superimposed without discussion on the talks”.
A confidential analysis of the text by developing countries also seen by the Guardian shows deep unease over details of the text. In particular, it is understood to:
• Force developing countries to agree to specific emission cuts and measures that were not part of the original UN agreement;
• Divide poor countries further by creating a new category of developing countries called “the most vulnerable”;
• Weaken the UN’s role in handling climate finance;
• Not allow poor countries to emit more than 1.44 tonnes of carbon per person by 2050, while allowing rich countries to emit 2.67 tonnes.
Developing countries that have seen the text are understood to be furious that it is being promoted by rich countries without their knowledge and without discussion in the negotiations.
“It is being done in secret. Clearly the intention is to get [Barack] Obama and the leaders of other rich countries to muscle it through when they arrive next week. It effectively is the end of the UN process,” said one diplomat, who asked to remain nameless.
Antonio Hill, climate policy adviser for Oxfam International, said: “This is only a draft but it highlights the risk that when the big countries come together, the small ones get hurting. On every count the emission cuts need to be scaled up. It allows too many loopholes and does not suggest anything like the 40% cuts that science is saying is needed.”
Hill continued: “It proposes a green fund to be run by a board but the big risk is that it will run by the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility [a partnership of 10 agencies including the World Bank and the UN Environment Programme] and not the UN. That would be a step backwards, and it tries to put constraints on developing countries when none were negotiated in earlier UN climate talks.”
The text was intended by Denmark and rich countries to be a working framework, which would be adapted by countries over the next week. It is particularly inflammatory because it sidelines the UN negotiating process and suggests that rich countries are desperate for world leaders to have a text to work from when they arrive next week.
Few numbers or figures are included in the text because these would be filled in later by world leaders. However, it seeks to hold temperature rises to 2C and mentions the sum of $10bn a year to help poor countries adapt to climate change from 2012-15.
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Sam Husseini: The entire US establishment helped lie their way into the Iraq war
By Slava Zilber | American Herald Tribune | October 14, 2019
Sam Husseini is a senior analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy, independent journalist and contributor to The Nation and FAIR.
Slava Zilber: Sam, three years ago, you appeared on Talk Nation Radio with David Swanson and spoke about the case of the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun. You pointed out that the people involved in the spying on the UN and the people authorizing the Iraq War were not held accountable:
“Virtually everybody who went along with the war, whether it is Kerry or Clinton, of course, the Bush administration themselves has falsified their own records in terms of why, what they did, when they did, why they did it, to the extent that they’ve been scrutinised at all.”
You also address it in a recent article. And recently, Joe Biden has been lying about his position on the Iraq War. How can such an important issue escape meaningful scrutiny? … continue
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