Paris, by Nicolas Haeringer

Peaceful relations among humans on earth, and peaceful relations between humans and the other life forms on the planet, are imperative for the survival of planet earth as a habitat for life as we know it. Making the achievement of peace an affirmative goal for all humanity is noble and essential.

Re: Paris, by Nicolas Haeringer

Postby admin » Thu Nov 19, 2015 5:40 am

Paris Bombing/Peace-Global Warming Conference Excerpt from "Team America"
directed by Trey Parker
[Without Regard to the "Hate Everything Exception to Criticism", i.e., if we could only hate everything, we would be above criticism, and be in total control of the "virtuous" mirror that reflects our hate back on you.]

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KIM JONG IL: And now, radies and gentlemen, Mr. Arec Barrwin.

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ALEC BALDWIN: We are here to usher in a new era without violence.

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By following the rules of the Film Actors Guild,
the world can become a better place

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that handles dangerous people with talk and reasoning.

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That is the F.A.G. way.
One day you'll all look at the world us actors created and say,
"Wow. Good going, F.A.G.
You really made the world a better place, didn't you, F.A.G.?"

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KIM JONG IL: Yes, Arec Barrwin. Too bad there won't be a world reft.

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LISA: Oh, God, no.

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KIM JONG IL: You see? No Prince Charming rode on a white stallion to save the day.
This is the real world.
I'm afraid your world is over.

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In five minutes.

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Yes, the ticking crock.

***
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Re: Paris, by Nicolas Haeringer

Postby admin » Thu Nov 19, 2015 5:44 am

Paris Bombing/Peace-Global Warming Conference Excerpt from "Team America"
directed by Trey Parker
[Without Regard to the "Hate Everything Exception to Criticism", i.e., if we could only hate everything, we would be above criticism, and be in total control of the "virtuous" mirror that reflects our hate back on you.]

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


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GARY: Stop that man.

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LISA: Gary!

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KIM JONG IL: Team America?

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ALEC BALDWIN: Goddamn it.

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JOE: Sorry to interrupt the show everyone, but Kim Jong Il
is an international criminal. We're here to arrest him.

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ALEC BALDWIN: Oh, no, you're not.
This is a peace conference.

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And if you even try to touch Kim Jong Il,

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this audience and I will rise up against you.

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MAN: Fuck off, Team America!

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SPOTTSWOODE/NIHILIST PENIS: Team, there's no time. You have to convince that audience
to let you do your job.

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AUDIENCE: [Booing]

JOE: Gary, you've got to take the stage.

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GARY: No. I can't upstage Alec Baldwin.
He's the best actor in the world.

JOE: You have to try.

GARY: I'm not that good.

CHRIS: Actually ...

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you're the finest actor I've ever met.

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AUDIENCE: [Booing]

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LISA: Come on, Gary, hurry. You've got to act fast.

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GARY: I know you all don't like Team America a whole lot right now,
but Kim Jong Il is a lot worse.

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AUDIENCE: [Booing]

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ENGLISH WOMAN: [throws a tomato]

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ALEC BALDWIN: You can't outact me, boy. Don't even try.

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For the truth is that Team America fights for the billion-dollar corporations.
They are just as bad as the enemies they fight.

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AUDIENCE: [Clapping]

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GARY: Oh, no, we aren't. We're dicks!

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We're reckless, arrogant, stupid dicks.

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And the Film Actors Guild are pussies.

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And Kim Jong Il is an asshole.
Pussies don't like dicks, because pussies get fucked by dicks.

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But dicks also fuck assholes,

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assholes who just wanna shit on everything.

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Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way.

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But the only thing that can fuck an asshole
is a dick with some balls.
 The problem with dicks is that sometimes they fuck too much.
Or fuck when it isn't appropriate.

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SPOTTSWOODE/NIHILIST PENIS: Yes, Gary, yes.

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GARY: And it takes a pussy to show them that.

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But sometimes pussies get so full of shit

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that they become assholes themselves.

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Because pussies are only an inch and a half away from assholes.

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I don't know much in this crazy, crazy world ...
but I do know that if you don't let us fuck this asshole ...

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we are gonna have our dicks and our pussies ...
all covered in shit.

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AUDIENCE: [Clapping]

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UGANDA MAN: Show us what you're doing, Kim Jong Il.

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KIM JONG IL: Do something, Arec Barrwin!

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ALEC BALDWIN: The -- Global warming and -- Corporate America --

AUDIENCE: [Booing]

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KIM JONG IL: You are worthress, Arec Barrwin.

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 [Alec Baldwin blown to smithereens]

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AUDIENCE: [Screaming]

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KIM JONG IL: Don't fucking move! You were all going to be treated

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to a faburous show. But now party's over.

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For I am the great Kim Jong Il.

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GARY: Lisa.

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KIM JONG IL: And I am the greatest terrorist ever to have rived.

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LISA: Terrorize this.

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GARY: Lisa, are you okay?

LISA: No, Gary, the countdown.
You have to stop it.

GARY: What do I do?

LISA: Hit the big "cancel" button!

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Gary, how did you manage this?

GARY: Spottswoode helped me.

LISA: Spottswoode? He's alive?

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GARY: Lisa, I'm crazy about you. Will you please forgive me if I --?

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LISA: Shhh. You had me at "dicks fuck assholes."

SPOTTSWOODE/NIHILIST PENIS: Attention, Attention, everyone.

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All you in the audience should go to your homes now.

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Your countries need you. But the world will be safe,

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thanks to a brilliant actor named Gary Johnston.

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AUDIENCE: [Clapping]

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SPOTTSWOODE/NIHILIST PENIS: Let me explain to you the kind of man Gary is.
He's a man who knows
that when you put another man's cock in your mouth, you make a pact.
A bond that cannot be broken.
He's a man so dedicated that he will get down on his knees
and put that cock right in his mouth.

AUDIENCE: [Clapping]

LISA: Wait a minute. Look!

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KIM JONG IL: You have not heard the rast of Kim Jong Il.

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I will return!

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You shall see. I will be back!

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So rong, earthrings!

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GARY: We'll be here waiting for you, Kim Jong Il.

CHRIS: All right, you guys, I hate to break up this little party,

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but there's still a lot of bad guys out there.

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GARY: Well, then let's go show the bad guys the police are back in force.

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LISA: Fuck, yeah.

GARY: Fuck, yeah.

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SONG: America
America

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America, Fuck, yeah

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Coming again to save the motherfucking day, yeah
America, Fuck, yeah

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DIRECTED BY TREY PARKER
Freedom is the only way, Yeah
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Re: Paris, by Nicolas Haeringer

Postby admin » Sun Nov 22, 2015 12:02 am

This Just Means That We Need to Get Louder Everywhere
by Payal Parek, 350.org
November 20, 2015

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Friends,

This week, we got some disappointing news. Citing security concerns, the French government has prohibited many of the Paris mobilizations and events connected to the upcoming climate summit from going forward -- including the massive march being planned for November 29th.

This is a heavy blow, especially for the many organizers who have been working around the clock for months to bring hundreds of thousands of people out into the streets of Paris. It’s a heavy blow, too, because it makes our job -- of making sure this summit actually yields real, ambitious results -- that much harder.

While activists in Paris are revising their plans, it’s up to the rest of us to kick it up a notch.

The Global Climate March -- which already consists of thousands of events, small and large, all around the world -- will continue. From London to Los Angeles, and from Quito to Quezon City, people are still taking to the streets.

There couldn’t be a more important time to step up to the plate.

Organizers in Paris are still reeling from Friday’s terrible attacks, and now they’re scrambling to figure out what they can still do to have an impact in the face of a potentially repressive security situation.

We need to speak up for activists in Paris, who are struggling to be heard. Those of us who can mobilize, must. The Paris Climate Summit is still a crucial opportunity for world governments to send a signal that the world is moving away from fossil fuels. In fact, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the world needs this sort of global cooperation urgently.

Even as climate change contributes to conflict around the world, this summit is an opportunity for us to come together and finally grapple with the scale of the problem we’re facing. Unfortunately, that’s not the sort of ambition that governments and politicians muster on their own. That’s the sort of thing only mass social movements have the power to make happen.

You can help make it happen. Now is the time to find an action near you, or get one going with your friends and family.

Going to actions and protests -- even leading actions and protests! -- isn’t just the domain of seasoned organizers. Most of the events already on the map as part of the Global Climate March are hosted by regular people -- people with families, jobs, hobbies, and dreams. The only thing that makes them particularly different is how much they’re willing to take action for what they love.

So take action with us on November 28th-29th. Extraordinary times call for doing extraordinary things, and these are extraordinary times we live in.

This week's news was a setback, but we’re not packing up and going home. Not by a long shot. This just means that we need to get louder everywhere.

I hope you’ll help us do that.

Onward,

Payal
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Re: Paris, by Nicolas Haeringer

Postby admin » Thu Nov 26, 2015 1:43 am

This Weekend
by May Boeve - 350.org
11/25/15

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Dear friends,

I attended one of the first Global Climate March actions on Saturday in California, and it was so full of vitality that I came away with a huge boost of hope. After a dark and challenging couple of weeks, I wish I could bottle that hope up and send it to you in an email.

War, racism, fear and hatred of the world’s most vulnerable -- these things are seemingly on the rise around the world, and they are compounded by our changing climate. And yet: Here is also a movement of people -- spanning borders and cultures -- that’s born out of love.

If that’s the kind of hope you want to be part of building, this weekend’s Global Climate March is your chance.

The Global Climate March is shaping up to be a huge mobilization, coordinated by countless organizations large and small, and already comprising over 2,000 events around the world.

The Paris Climate Summit, which starts on Monday, can be thought of as a kind of peace summit. If we push hard enough, we have a shot at getting the sort of ambitious climate deal that all previous summits have failed to deliver.

This summit could be the one that sets the world on a path away from fossil fuels and toward a just transition to 100% renewable energy. That energy transition has the power to fundamentally transform the way we relate to one another. That’s why we’re marching this weekend.

Here’s where you can get all the info you need to find or start an action and be part of this weekend’s Global Climate March.

After the tragic attacks on November 13th, the huge Paris march that had been planned was prohibited by the French authorities. Although they’re still working hard to figure out an alternative, activists on the ground in Paris are also calling on all of us to take action wherever we are.

We can’t march in Paris, but we can march -- and rally, and gather, and make noise, and hang banners, and chant, and sing -- everywhere else.

We have never needed each other more. We have never needed you more. As my colleague Nico put it in his email last Monday after the Paris attacks: "I can think of few better responses to violence and terror than this movement’s push for peace and hope."

With gratitude -- so much gratitude! -- and lots of resolve,

May

P.S. If you want a taste of the kind of hope I’m talking about, Al Jazeera just released this short documentary about the climate movement. For a boost of inspiration, I can’t recommend it highly enough: Click here to watch.


Earthrise -- Take the Power Back
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Re: Paris, by Nicolas Haeringer

Postby admin » Mon Nov 30, 2015 10:28 pm

I Can't Deny Something Big is Happening
by May Boeve
350.org
November 30, 2015

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Friends,

I just arrived in Paris for the global climate talks that start here today, and one of the first things I saw when I turned on my computer was the stream of photos coming from thousands of Global Climate March events across the globe.

What I saw was the beauty and power of a growing movement.

Melbourne hosted Australia's biggest climate action ever (60,000 people!), tens of thousands of Filipinos danced through Quezon City for climate justice, Egyptians ran and then marched through the streets of Cairo -- and so much more.

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In total over 785,000 people marched this weekend, making it one of the biggest climate mobilizations ever in history.

There is obviously still a long fight ahead of us. But particularly after this weekend, it's becoming harder and harder to avoid the conclusion that we're close to something very big: a moment when the world can break free of fossil fuels, keep carbon in the ground, and build a just transition to 100% renewable energy for all.

I also want to mention the dedication of our team in Paris, who have worked through both heartbreak and a constantly shifting landscape about what activities the climate movement can take on there. Despite tight restrictions on activism placed by the French government, yesterday thousands of people formed a human chain stretching through the heart of the city to show their resolve to continue the fight for climate justice:

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Then, this morning I helped hand millions of petitions calling for 100% clean energy for all to the President of the Marshall Islands, Christopher Loeak, who then carried them to heads of state as talks began.

Those messages are the beginning of an important two-week debate about the planet's future. There will be much to do afterwards, but what happens here in Paris is a crucial piece of the puzzle. If you want to stay up to date with breaking news from the talks, and weigh in on crucial issues as they develop, click here to be part of the Paris Rapid Response team.

You can also keep plugged in via 350.org’s Twitter, Facebook Page, or our Live Blog from Paris. We’ll have some updates this week, but the biggest issues will be decided as the clock ticks down in week two.

Here's the line in Saturday's New York Times that sums up what's at stake: "If successful, the Paris meeting could spur a fundamental shift away from the use of oil, coal and gas to the use of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power."

I'll be in the talks here for most of the next week. Everyone inside in Paris will be thinking of you outside, and the work you're doing to make that shift possible. If -- or when -- this transition happens, you will be a critical part of it.

With gratitude,

May
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Re: Paris, by Nicolas Haeringer

Postby admin » Sun Dec 06, 2015 9:47 am

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[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] Every time we see the world beginning to act on the science ...

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we see some kind of attack designed to undermine it.

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1995, the IPCC comes out with its second assessment report that says ...
yes, there's climate change. What do we get?

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Massive attack on Ben Santer, who's the lead author of the key chapter.

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In the second case, before the run-up to the Kyoto negotiations ...

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when it looked like the world was going to agree,

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we had the Oregon Petition. It's a completely discredited document,
nevertheless, it did a lot of damage.

New light on the putative value of intelligence dossiers issued by Tony Blair’s office in Number 10 Downing Street was not long in coming. In September 2002, Blair published amid great fanfare his dossier purporting to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq currently possessed weapons of mass destruction. This was entitled “Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception, and Intimidation,” and it was clearly crafted to provide a pretext for waging unprovoked and aggressive war against Iraq. This dossier was exposed as a fraud in two distinct waves of demystification. The first exposure took place in February 2003, when it emerged that entire sections of this report, which had been billed as the most up-to-date evaluation that could be offered by the very formidable capabilities of MI-6 and the rest of the British intelligence machine, had simply been lifted, plagiarized without attribution, from older documents in the public domain. The Iraq dossier had been concocted by Blair and his media guru Alistair Campbell, a figure who combined the worst of image-mongers like Michael Deaver and Karl Rove, using materials provided by British intelligence. Parts of Blair’s dossier had been stolen from articles written by Sean Boyne of Jane’s Intelligence Review, who was horrified by the nefarious use to which his work had been put. “I don’t like to think that anything I wrote has been used as an argument for war. I am concerned because I am against the war,” complained Boyne. Another source from which Blair had lifted material verbatim was a thesis entitled “Iraq’s Security and Intelligence Network,” published in September 2002 by a graduate student, Ibrahim al-Marashi, a California resident. Al-Marashi was equally indignant, commenting that “this is wholesale deception. How can the British public trust the government if it is up to this sort of tricks? People will treat any other information they publish now with a lot of skepticism from now on.” And not just from now on; it is our contention here that this disbelief in regard to Tony Blair’s work product should also be applied retrospectively.

The British Parliament was appalled by Blair’s mendacity, which was so crude that the coded titles of the Microsoft Word documents that made up the dossier had been allowed to remain visible on the Number 10 Downing Street web site. Many pointed to Alistair Hamilton as the dervish of spin behind the entire sordid operation. Former Labour Party Defense Minister and current Member of Parliament Peter Kilfoyle observed that Blair’s deception merely “adds to the general impression that what we have been treated to is a farrago of half-truths. I am shocked that on such thin evidence that we should be trying to convince the British people that this war is worth fighting. Labour MP Glenda Jackson added “It is another example of how the Government is attempting to mislead the country and Parliament. And of course to mislead is a Parliamentary euphemism for lying.” (Daily Mirror, February 8, 2003)

Blair’s nonchalance in cribbing together dossiers on subjects of vast importance also attracted the barbs of British wits. AheadOfNews.com spoofed Blair’s plagiarized Iraq dossier by writing that “a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged recently that the report, ‘Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception, and Intimidation,’ had been cobbled together from a variety of sources, including old term papers, Readers Digest, and several tabloids. John Miller, Undersecretary for Cutting- and-Pasting, explained that ‘plagiarized’ sections of the report included spelling errors, such as ‘weapons of mass distraction,’ and ‘Untied States’ found in the originals. “Our deceptions might have succeeded,’ he said, ‘except for our bloody incompetent proofreaders.” (February 12, 2003) Blair’s Iraq dossier was an international laughingstock, but that had not prevented Colin Powell from praising it in his infamous speech to the United Nations Security Council.

But Blair’s dossier was in the end no laughing matter: it contributed to the deaths of perhaps 15,000 people in Iraq within a year. It also brought tragedy to one of the British intelligence officials who had collaborated in its creation.

In June, 2003, when the Iraq war had already begun to go badly for the aggressors, BBC News broadcast a story by correspondent Barnaby Mason reporting that Blair and Campbell had personally supervised the concoction of the Iraq WMD dossier, sending proposed drafts back to the Joint Intelligence Committee “six to eight times” to be “sexed up” through the addition of more lurid and sensational details. One of these details was thought to be Blair’s fantastic claim that Iraq had WMD which could be launched within 45 minutes. Blair delivered this warning in such a way as to suggest that Iraq would be capable of striking the UK within 45 minutes, despite the fact that Iraq possessed no delivery systems capable of doling this.

The response of the Blair regime to this report was to promote a witch-hunt to ferret out the source inside the government who had leaked such embarrassing material to Barnaby Mason. Officials of the British Defense Ministry allowed journalists to read them lists of persons suspected of being the leaker, and were willing to confirm the identity of their prime suspect as soon as the journalists mentioned his name. In this way, the Defense Ministry in effect betrayed one of its own employees, Dr. David Kelly. A few days later Kelly was found dead in a forest near his home, with his wrists slashed. His death was quickly ruled a suicide. After Kelly’s death, a UN diplomat recalled that he had asked Kelly back in February 2003 what would happen if Tony Blair went through with his plan to join Bush in attacking Iraq. “I will probably be found dead in the woods,” was Kelly’s prophetic reply.

-- 9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA, by Webster Griffin Tarpley


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Third time, Copenhagen. Finally, we're gonna get an agreement.

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The U.S. is on board. Obama has gone to Copenhagen.

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[Brian Williams, MSNBC] A new scandal that's burning up the Net these days that began with emails that were stolen --

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[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] Suddenly, we see this release of stolen emails.

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Lines taken out of context to make it seem as if ...

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scientists were involved in nefarious activities.

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People started saying, "What's going on in Copenhagen?"

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[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] This is the upper echelon of the U.N. It's been exposed as the best science that politics and activists can manufacture.

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[Michael Shermer, Director, Skeptic Society] My initial reaction with the Climategate, I thought, "Okay, mm, gosh, I hope I didn't flip at the wrong point there. Maybe this is all baloney."

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When you actually read the emails in context, you go, "Oh. Okay, he's not actually saying what Rush Limbaugh said he was saying."

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There's been three investigations into Climategate, where they had ...
independent committees go through every email. There was nothing.

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[John Passacantando, Former Director, Greenpeace USA] They were trying to find yet new ways to weaken ...
this growing international accord.

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All they have to do is slow down action.

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[Marc Morano, Environmental Journalist] Gridlock is the greatest friend a global warming skeptic has. That's all you really want. There's no legislation we're championing.

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We're the negative force, just trying to stop stuff.

This raises the question of the violent revolt against the universal homogeneous state, which is what Strauss regards as inevitable and desirable: "Yet there is no reason for despair as long as human nature has not been conquered completely, i.e., as long as sun and man still generate man. There will always be men (andres) who will revolt against a state which is destructive of humanity or in which there is no longer a possibility of noble action or of great deeds." (Strauss 209)

When the real men revolt against too much peace, progress, and prosperity, what will be their program? Strauss: "They may be forced into a mere negation of the universal and homogeneous state, into a negation not enlightened by any positive goal, into a nihilistic negation. While perhaps doomed to failure, that nihilist revolution may be the only great and noble deed that is possible once the universal and homogeneous state has become inevitable. But no one can know whether it will fail or succeed. (Strauss 209, emphasis added)

What can be understood by nihilistic negation and nihilist revolution? In the nineteenth century, nihilism was an ideology of terrorism; the crazed bomb-throwers who assassinated statesmen and rulers across Europe and America (including President McKinley) were atheists, anarchists and nihilists. In the twentieth century, the nihilist revolution was synonymous with some of the most extreme factions of fascism and Nazis. "Long live death!" was a slogan of some of them. With these lines, Strauss has opened the door to fascism, murder, mayhem, war, genocide, and most emphatically to terrorism. And he is not shy about spelling this out.

-- 9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA, by Webster Griffin Tarpley


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[Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian] It's all about distraction, it's all about confusion.

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It's about preventing you from looking where the action really is, which is in the science.

-- Merchants of Doubt, directed by Robert Kenner
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Re: Paris, by Nicolas Haeringer

Postby admin » Wed Dec 09, 2015 11:14 pm

The Critical Fight in Paris Is Happening Now
by Jamie Henn - 350.org <350@350.org>
December 9, 2015

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

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Friends,

The critical fight of the Paris climate talks will be in the next 24 to 48 hours.

Things here got off to a remarkable start, as many world governments aligned around a very ambitious target of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, thanks to the bold demands of leaders on the front lines of the crisis.

But now that optimism is starting to fade as ministers back off from making the hard commitments it will take to get there.

Keeping these new promises requires setting a date by which we will stop digging up and burning coal, oil and gas which cause climate change -- but after over two decades of procrastination, world governments are considering waiting another lifetime for action.

The draft text circulating now in Paris proposes a global energy transition 'over the course of the century', which is too far-off, and too vague to send a strong signal. We need to transition off fossil fuels by 2050 -- at the very latest. That will only happen if countries sign an ambitious deal now, and commit to reviewing their currently-inadequate national pledges for action on a regular basis.

Talks are moving rapidly towards a final deal here in the next 24 to 48 hours. Can you tweet your negotiators in Paris to tell them to set a long term goal for a just transition by 2050 at the latest, and pledge to keep upping their ambition every 5 years?

This is about survival for millions and millions of people facing rising seas, deepening drought and superstorms. Delaying the transition to renewable energy until the end of the century would make it impossible to keep warming below 1.5 C.

Youth here in Paris often make the point that world governments have been talking about action longer than they've been alive. The draft text could mean that today's youth are born into a world waiting for climate action, and go their entire lives without seeing the age of fossil fuels come to an end.

The global climate movement has struggled to move world governments from words to action here in Paris. In the next 24 to 48 hours, we'll find out if world governments have heard the demand for action echoing in the streets: Keep fossil fuels in the ground. Transition to 100% renewable energy. No more empty promises.

We don't have another lifetime to wait. Tell your negotiators to commit to a goal of a global energy transition by 2050.

Much more to discuss soon,

Jamie
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Re: Paris, by Nicolas Haeringer

Postby admin » Sat Dec 12, 2015 8:09 pm

Breaking: Paris
by May Boeve - 350.org <350@350.org>
12/12/15

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Friends,

Today is a historic day: as tens of thousands of people filled the streets of Paris, politicians finalized a major new global climate agreement.

The deal in Paris includes an agreement to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius, with an aim of 1.5 degrees, and achieve climate 'neutrality' that will require phasing out fossil fuels soon after mid-century. That’s not what we hoped for, but it’s still a deal that sends a signal that it’s time to keep fossil fuels in the ground, and for investors to cut their ties with coal, oil and gas by divesting.

This deal represents important progress -- but progress alone is not our goal. Our goal is a just and livable planet.

If followed to the letter, the agreement leaves far too many people exposed to the violence of rising seas, stronger storms and deeper drought. It leaves too many loopholes to avoid serious action -- despite the heroic efforts from leaders of vulnerable nations and communities who fought for a deal in line with science.

But the coal, oil and gas corporations of the world should take little comfort. That 2 degree pledge would require keeping 80% of the world’s remaining fossil fuels underground, a 1.5 degree target even more -- and countries are required to come back to the table every 5 years to increase their ambition in reaching those goals.

Paris isn’t the end of the story, but a conclusion of a particular chapter. Now, it’s up to us to strengthen these promises, make sure they are kept, and then accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels and towards 100% renewable energy.

As world leaders in Paris were finalizing the text of the deal, thousands of people returned to the streets of Paris to demonstrate their commitment to continue the fight:

Image

They were joined by hundreds of solidarity actions around the world, all echoing the same message: it’s up to us to keep fossil fuels in the ground.

Standing together, flowers in hand, we formed red lines in the street -- because lines have to be drawn in this fight for justice, and it’s up to all of us to stand on the side of those on the front lines of this crisis.

More lines are being drawn everywhere against the true villain of the last two weeks: the fossil fuel industry, which has done everything possible to weaken even this late, late deal.

Without pressure from ordinary people, world leaders would have gladly ignored this problem entirely. It’s pressure from people that will close the gap between what was signed today and the action we need.

This begins the next chapter. Please watch this space for the announcement of something big in the coming days!

If you are reading this, you’ve been part of the work that got us all to this point, and for that, we say thank you. 2015 was a historic year for us -- because we worked together to build a more powerful and hopeful climate movement.

With gratitude, and as always, hope,

May and the whole 350.org team
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Re: Paris, by Nicolas Haeringer

Postby admin » Wed Dec 16, 2015 7:20 am

The hard truth about the Paris climate deal
by 350.org
12/16/15

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Re: Paris, by Nicolas Haeringer

Postby admin » Thu Jan 21, 2016 4:28 am

Night of the Living Dead, Climate Change-Style
By Bill McKibben
January 20, 2016

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Image
This business of driving stakes through the heart of one project after another is exhausting. But at least for now, there’s really no other way to kill a zombie.

When I was a kid, I was creepily fascinated by the wrongheaded idea, current in my grade school, that your hair and your fingernails kept growing after you died. The lesson seemed to be that it was hard to kill something off — if it wanted to keep going.

Something similar is happening right now with the fossil fuel industry. Even as the global warming crisis makes it clear that coal, natural gas, and oil are yesterday’s energy, the momentum of two centuries of fossil fuel development means new projects keep emerging in a zombie-like fashion.

In fact, the climactic fight at the end of the fossil fuel era is already underway, even if it’s happening almost in secret. That’s because so much of the action isn’t taking place in big, headline-grabbing climate change settings like the recent conference of 195 nations in Paris; it’s taking place in hearing rooms and farmers’ fields across this continent (and other continents, too). Local activists are making desperate stands to stop new fossil fuel projects, while the giant energy companies are making equally desperate attempts to build while they still can. Though such conflicts and protests are mostly too small and local to attract national media attention, the outcome of these thousands of fights will do much to determine whether we emerge from this century with a habitable planet. In fact, far more than any set of paper promises by politicians, they really are the battle for the future.

Here’s how Diane Leopold, president of the giant fracking company Dominion Energy, put it at a conference earlier this year: “It may be the most challenging” period in fossil fuel history, she said, because of “an increase in high-intensity opposition” to infrastructure projects that is becoming steadily “louder, better-funded, and more sophisticated.” Or, in the words of the head of the American Natural Gas Association, referring to the bitter struggle between activists and the Canadian tar sands industry over the building of the Keystone XL pipeline, “Call it the Keystone-ization of every project that’s out there.”

Pipelines, Pipelines, Everywhere

I hesitate to even start listing them all, because I’m going to miss dozens, but here are some of the prospective pipelines people are currently fighting across North America: the Alberta Clipper and the Sandpiper pipelines in the upper Midwest, Enbridge Line 3, the Dakota Access, the Line 9 and Energy East pipelines in Ontario and environs, the Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan pipelines in British Columbia, the Piñon pipeline in Navajo Country, the Sabal Trail pipeline in Alabama and Georgia, the Appalachian Connector, the Vermont Gas pipeline down the western side of my own state, the Algonquin pipeline, the Constitution pipeline, the Spectra pipeline, and on and on.

And it’s not just pipelines, not by a long shot. I couldn’t begin to start tallying up the number of proposed liquid natural gas terminals, prospective coal export facilities and new oil ports, fracking wells, and mountaintop removal coal sites where people are already waging serious trench warfare. As I write these words, brave activists are on trial for trying to block oil trains in the Pacific Northwest. In the Finger Lakes not a week goes by without mass arrests of local activists attempting to stop the building of a giant underground gas storage cavern. In California, its frack wells in Kern County. As I said: endless.

And endlessly resourceful, too. Everywhere the opposition is forced by statute to make its stand not on climate change arguments, but on old grounds. This pipeline will hurt water quality. That coal port will increase local pollution. The dust that flies off those coal trains will cause asthma. All the arguments are perfectly correct and accurate and by themselves enough to justify stopping many of these plans, but a far more important argument always lurks in the background: each of these new infrastructure projects is a way to extend the life of the fossil fuel era a few more disastrous decades.

Here’s the basic math: if you build a pipeline in 2016, the investment will be amortized for 40 years or more. It is designed to last — to carry coal slurry or gas or oil — well into the second half of the twenty-first century. It is, in other words, designed to do the very thing scientists insist we simply can’t keep doing, and do it long past the point when physics swears we must stop.

These projects are the result of several kinds of momentum. Because fossil fuel companies have made huge sums of money for so long, they have the political clout to keep politicians saying yes. Just a week after the Paris accords were signed, for instance, the well-paid American employees of those companies, otherwise known as senators and representatives, overturned a 40-year-old ban on U.S. oil exports, a gift that an ExxonMobil spokesman had asked for in the most explicit terms only a few weeks earlier. “The sooner this happens, the better for us,” he’d told the New York Times, at the very moment when other journalists were breaking the story of that company’s epic three-decade legacy of deceit, its attempt to suppress public knowledge of a globally warming planet that Exxon officials knew they were helping to create. That scandal didn’t matter. The habit of giving in to Big Oil was just too strong.

Driving a Stake Through a Fossil-Fueled World

The money, however, is only part of it. There’s also a sense in which the whole process is simply on autopilot. For many decades, the economic health of the nation and access to fossil fuels were more or less synonymous. So it’s no wonder that the laws, statutes, and regulations favor business-as-usual. The advent of the environmental movement in the 1970s and 1980s introduced a few new rules, but they were only designed to keep that business-as-usual from going disastrously, visibly wrong. You could drill and mine and pump, but you were supposed to prevent the really obvious pollution. No Deepwater Horizons. And so fossil fuel projects still get approved almost automatically, because there’s no legal reason not to do so.

In Australia, for instance, a new prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, replaced the climate-change-denying Tony Abbott. His minister for the environment, Greg Hunt, was a particular standout at the recent Paris talks, gassing on at great length about his “deeply personal” commitment to stopping climate change, calling the new pact the “most important environmental agreement ever.” A month earlier, though, he’d approved plans for the largest coal mine on Earth, demanding slight revisions to make sure that the habitat of the southern black-throated finch would not be destroyed. Campaigners had hung much of their argument against the mine on the bird’s possible extinction, since given the way Australia’s laws are written this was one of the few hooks they had. The fact that scientists have stated quite plainly that such coal must remain in the ground if the globe is to meet its temperature targets and prevent catastrophic environmental changes has no standing. It’s the most important argument in the world, but no one in authority can officially hear it.

It’s not just Australia, of course. As 2016 began in my own Vermont — as enlightened a patch of territory as you’re likely to find — the state’s Public Service Board approved a big new gas pipeline. Under long-standing regulations, they said, it would be “in the public interest,” even though science has recently made it clear that the methane leaking from the fracked gas the pipeline will carry is worse than the burning of coal. Their decision came two weeks after the temperature in the city of Burlington hit 68 on Christmas eve, breaking the old record by, oh, 17 degrees. But it didn’t matter.

This zombie-like process is guaranteed to go on for years, even decades, as at every turn the fossil fuel industry fights the new laws and regulations that would be necessary, were agreements like the Paris accord to have any real teeth. The only way to short-circuit this process is to fight like hell, raising the political and economic price of new infrastructure to the point where politicians begin to balk. That’s what happened with Keystone — when enough voices were raised, the powers-that-be finally decided it wasn’t worth it. And it’s happening elsewhere, too. Other Canadian tar sands pipelines have also been blocked. Coal ports planned for the West Coast haven’t been built. That Australian coal mine may have official approval, but almost every big bank in the world has balked at providing it the billions it would require.

There’s much more of this fight coming — led, as usual, by indigenous groups, by farmers and ranchers, by people living on the front lines of both climate change and extractive industry. Increasingly they’re being joined by climate scientists, faith communities, and students in last-ditch efforts to lock in fossil fuels. This will undoubtedly be a key battleground for the climate justice movement. In May, for instance, a vast coalition across six continents will engage in mass civil disobedience to “keep it in the ground.”

And in a few places you can see more than just the opposition; you can see the next steps unfolding. Last fall, for instance, Portland, Oregon — the scene of a memorable “kayaktivist” blockade to keep Shell’s Arctic drilling rigs bottled up in port — passed a remarkable resolution. No new fossil fuel infrastructure would be built in the city, its council and mayor declared. The law will almost certainly block a huge proposed propane export terminal, but far more important, it opens much wider the door to the future. If you can’t do fossil fuel, after all, you have to do something else — sun, wind, conservation. This has to be our response to the living-dead future that the fossil fuel industry and its allied politicians imagine for our beleaguered world: no new fossil fuel infrastructure. None. The climate math is just too obvious.

This business of driving stakes through the heart of one project after another is exhausting. So many petitions, so many demonstrations, so many meetings. But at least for now, there’s really no other way to kill a zombie.
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