Extreme PC in Australia. What kills me is that someone didn't have sense to fire the idiot who came up with the idea. A couple of years old. Turn down the volume if you're at work before you click the link because the site plays music.
Please allow me a few seconds to get out of the way before blasting this vegetable-eating maroon.
The first official recommendations for a diet that is both healthy and good for the environment are published today, and they are likely to be seen as an assault on the UK's current food system.
To fight climate change and tackle the growing crisis of diet-related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer, British consumers must cut down on meat and dairy produce, reduce their intake of processed foods and curb waste.
These are the three priorities identified in a report by the government's independent advisory body on sustainability, the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), which calls for radical changes in patterns of consumption.
The report -- which will dismay many in the livestock and processed food industries -- will feed into all government departments and procurement agencies. Well-placed sources say it has created tension between Whitehall departments and advisers over its potential impact.
The study acknowledges that cutting processed food and reducing consumption of intensively-produced meat and dairy foods could lead to a shrinking of the UK food and drink industry.
The UK's retail supply system would also be affected -- the SDC report recommends that people reduce energy consumption by shopping more on foot or over the internet and that they replace bottled water with tap water.
While about 18% of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions are related to food and drink consumption and production, the industry is the single biggest manufacturing sector in the UK, accounting for 7% of GDP and employing 3.7m people. The recommended shift away from meat and dairy to more seasonal and field-grown (as opposed to glasshouse-grown) vegetables and fruit would also hit the UK's already hard pressed livestock farmers.
Of course, there'd be no fresh fruits and vegetables in the winter without greenhouses, but never mind that little quibble.
It would be better for us to eat canned, stewed beets all winter long. Builds character. That's what Ma told me when I was eight ...
The way that farmland is used would have to change. Grass-fed rather than grain-fed animals are a more sustainable use of resources, the report says. There should be "an increase in consumption of foods produced with respect for wildlife and the environment, eg organic," it adds.
"Organic" D'you know what they fertilize with to get that label? Ick. Not to mention unhealthy, in a double-ick kind of way.
The SDC also highlights soya and palm oil as "hotspots" of the sort of consumption that damages the environment while providing calories of low nutritional value. It estimates that 70,000 premature deaths in the UK could be avoided if diets matched healthy guidelines. Lots of premature deaths in government could be avoided by leaving people's burgers alone.
Figures released yesterday by the NHS information survey showing that almost one in four boys and more than one in five girls in England are overweight or obese at the start of their school lives added urgency to the debate. SDC commissioner Professor Tim Lang said the recommendations represented the first coherent advice on a sustainable diet. "So far we've had fragmented and contradictory thinking on what dietary intakes should be. Advice to consumers ought to change and stop compartmentalising issues.
"Cutting down on meat and dairy, eating only sustainably sourced fish, fruit and vegetables, would all help reduce the impact of our food system as well as improving health," he said. Mmm. Mercury-rich fish for dessert!
The government's approach to addressing the priorities in the report has been "mixed", according to the SDC. Food waste and consumers' shopping have received high-profile attention but cutting meat and dairy and junk food has not, it argues.
Recommended diet for a warming planet
1 Cut consumption of meat and dairy products Gak! If we don't eat them, they'll just live to fart more!
Health benefits: Reduces incidence of cardiovascular disease, of some forms of cancer, and of animal-borne infections. Environmental benefits: Large reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, slowing of deforestation, freeing of farm land for other use, freeing of water resources, slowing loss of biodiversity, lower food prices and cheaper diets, higher employment. Negative impacts: Decline in UK and global livestock industry, potential increase in deficiencies of iron, calcium and zinc.
Oh goody: long-term, partially genetic risks reduced, wholly avoidable short-term, major health risks significantly increased. Clever, reintroducing mass anemia and rickets like that. It'll be ever so easy to differentiate the bright, energetic, straight-legged aristos from the mentally and physically slower, whey-faced, bow-legged peasantry. Just like the good old days!
2 Cut consumption of processed foods and drinks, especially fatty, sugary ones and stimulant drinks
Health benefits: Reduced obesity, reduced tooth decay, How are we supposed to tell the British girls from the Americans if this goes into effect?
likely to particularly improve health of low income groups. Environmental benefits: Cut in GHG emissions from energy-intense production of highly processed foods and bottled water. Reduced land use. Negative impacts: Cut in size of UK food manufacturing industry.
3 Reduce waste
Get rid of 75% of the politicians, Consume no more calories than needed, accept different standards of food quality and that some foods may not always be available in UK. Health benefits: Cut in obesity problems, cheaper diet would benefit poor particularly; less air pollution from food freight, less food poisoning. Environmental benefits: Reduced GHG emissions, reduced waste in agriculture, reduced imported food and associated emissions. Negative impacts: Cut in size of food and drink and supply industry, could increase consumption of processed fruit and vegetables of lower nutritonal quality, reduction in trade with developing countries.
Other recommended changes:
Eat more politicians fruit and vegetables
Eat only fish from sustainable stocks
Eat more foods produced with respect for wildlife and environment Hey, I respect venison . . . .
Shop on foot or on internet and cook and store food in energy-saving ways
I did that when we lived in Germany. We had a standard German-style refrigerator, ie the size of a single-door lower kitchen cabinet, which had a freezer just large enough to hold an ice cube tray and a gallon of ice cream. I went to the grocery store no less than every other day, coming home with two grocery bags of food, which was all I could carry. Shopping had to be done in the morning under this system, as by afternoon very little fresh food was left. Once a week I took the car, and stocked up on dry goods. This is a fine system when all is well, but let there be a bad storm and there would be food riots by the end of the week were the transport system not fully restored. Bottom line: if they want the people to eat lots of fruits and vegetables, fish and chicken, and to reduce the number of gasoline/benzine powered trips to the grocery store, the people need to have large refrigerators and even larger freezers, and make food runs once weekly. Daily runs on foot will be counterproductive to the stated goals, although much more picturesque.
Drink tap water, not bottled water
That should be a boon for the water filter companies. I mean, given government efficiency in general, and demonstrated British government efficiency in particular, how trustworthy d'you suppose the tap water really is over there?
#1
I think the Earth can be helped more by gathering up such fruitcakes and herding them into an active, erupting volcano.
Their demise will create soot that will help block out some solar radiation, and by the MMGW theories, should complete reverse millions of years of MMGW. After all, like CO2, it will be a fraction of a percent of a trace gas.
#3
Send the dude to Somalia for a year's fast diet program. Maybe then you'll appreciate the very very short time in human history in which food is readily available and bountiful. The 4000+ years of human history says this is the exception, not the case.
Drink tap water, not bottled water
As long as you deliver it to my desk or while I'm driving. The point about bottled water is portability. Just like that cell phone versus the old device tied to the wall by a long black wire. I don't need to find a faucet, or worry about its quality, when I'm out and about.
#4
As for portable water - she-who-must-be-obeyed had us switch from bottled water in plastic bottles to filtered water in those stainless steel bottles. They have ones out now which don't leak, you can snap it open with one hand and contains a little spout so its easier to drink from when you are driving, walking, talking on the phone, etc... (note the those liberals out there - do not attempt to talk and drink at the same time...)
Back-in-the-day when I was a kid we used to do a lot of home-canning. By choice - and not for 'environmental' reasons - my stepfather was an oldtime logger (in other words - a real environmentalist). And we would buy a whole front-shoulder of beef, bring it home and can-it up - it'll last all year and taste great. And nothing beats home-canned corn.
#7
Every liberal group will find a way to get their pet projects under the banner of Global Warming, etc. Vegetarians are the most logical. I look forward to the more awkward fits.
#10
Well, haven't seen even a piece of steak here after clothing my kid, paying Council Tax, Carbon Tax,(+VAT), mortgage. energy, and travel to work.
BP. Enjoy.
A kid, about 5 with his shirt slogan "I Love Fast Food" and the back had a picture of a deer clearing a fallen tree, about 8 feet off the ground, and just running flat out.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
12/13/2009 22:09 Comments ||
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ION TOPIX > ABIYEV: [Azerbaijan-Armenian]WAR WILL UNAVOIDABLE UNLESS NAGORNORO-KARABAKH ISSUE CAN BE RESOLVED WITHIN AZERIBAIJAN'S TERRITORIAL SECURITY.
SAME > RUSSIAN POLITICIAN ZHIRINOVSKY SAYS:RUSSIA MUST RECOGNIZE NK INDEPENDENCE [IMO read, WILL PROTECT RUSSO-SLAVIC ARMENIA]; + ZHIRINOVSKY: RUSSIA DOES NOT DESIRE INCREASED TURKISH INFLUENCE IN SOUTH CAUCASUS [Russ needs "Peace + Stability" - read, Fluffy Bunnies - in the South Caucasus].
The troubling rhetoric of the men behind America's first Muslim university.
by Emily Esfahani Smith
Zaytuna College, which plans to be the first accredited Muslim college in the United States, is set to open next fall in Berkeley, California. The college has been hailed as a victory for moderate Islam, a place to promote religious understanding by "blending traditional Islam and American culture and establishing a permanent place for the religion in American society," according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. But Zaytuna College may not be as moderate as it seems--or moderate at all.
The college's founders, Hamza Yusuf Hanson and Zaid Shakir, are similarly lauded as even-keeled Muslims who, according to the Chronicle, "have built a following with their inspirational lectures and willingness to take a critical look at Islam." NPR has promoted Hanson as a moderate Muslim; the New York Times featured both men as "middle ground" Muslims--and Hanson even met with George W. Bush following the attacks of 9/11.
Strange, then, that two days before September 11, 2001, Hanson said that America has "a great tribulation coming to it." Stranger still that Hanson called Judaism a "most racist religion" in 1995. Or that in 2006 Shakir told the New York Times that "Every Muslim who is honest would say, I would like to see America become a Muslim country." Or that Hanson disparagingly called democracy and the Bill of Rights "false gods" in 1996. Given this, to say that Zaytuna College may not be what it seems may be an understatement. Rest at link
Posted by: ed ||
12/13/2009 11:25 ||
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The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a longtime partner of the FBI in its efforts to reach out to American Muslims, now appears to be under criminal investigation by that same FBI.
I am truly shocked, especially under the current administration. What brought that on, I wonder?
It's a refreshing breakthrough of sanity in the FBI's dealing with the domestic terror threat -- and it came to light just as CAIR was poised to win yet another victory in its ongoing campaign of harassment and intimidation against anyone who dares draw attention to jihadist activity in the United States.
CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case -- so named by the Justice Department. CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR's cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim "Honest Ibe" Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements. Yet despite the many indications that CAIR was not exactly a paragon of patriotism and loyalty to Constitutional values, the FBI worked closely with CAIR for years -- until the organization's unindicted co-conspirator status was too much even for the politically correct Feds, and the FBI ended work with CAIR in fall 2008.
Yet even then, there was no public indication that CAIR was under investigation. That came to light through a series of improbable events. A young man named Chris Gaubatz, posing as a new convert to Islam named David "Dawud" Marshall, secured an internship with CAIR in 2008 -- and began to carry out of CAIR headquarters 12,000 pages of documents and even audiotapes of CAIR officials.
That's a lot. Kind of hard to ignore a pile of papers as high as that must be, no doubt organized neatly into binders and files. Mr. Gaubatz sounds like he'd be a good investment for an enterprising company.
As a result of the revelations in Muslim Mafia, Representatives Sue Myrick (R-NC) Trent Franks (R-AZ) Paul Broun (R-GA) and John Shadegg (R-AZ) wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, requesting that he "provide each Member of Congress a summary of the evidence and findings by the DOJ and FBI which led them to name CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism trial." Holder has not publicly complied, but CAIR is by no means out of the woods yet. CAIR will change their name to Black Panthers and get off scot free. Rest at link
Posted by: ed ||
12/13/2009 10:23 ||
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ACLU and HRW will protest tomorrow
Posted by: chris ||
12/13/2009 20:08 Comments ||
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I am truly shocked, especially under the current administration. What brought that on, I wonder?
Barry's year of talk is almost over. As the Olympics will not be in a Communist country he's going to have to do something other than boycott the games to shwo what a tough guy he is. This is the start. It's how really big wars start.
Speaking at a conference in Delhi this past week, Home Secretary GK Pillai warned of the threat from terrorism to Indias flagship Information Technology companies. We are world leaders in software, Mr Pillai said, but the software industry is high on the threat list. Actually, there is a history to this targeting of IT companies that goes beyond conventional threats to locations of economic value. The story of Islamist Terror versus Information Technology their IT versus our IT begins, really, a year ago.
In the winter of 2008, a group of retired Generals, civil servants and strategic affairs wonks from India and Pakistan travelled to Washington, DC, for a war-gaming exercise hosted by an American think-tank. A conflict was simulated to determine how far and how long a conventional war could go before the Generals in Islamabad turned to the nuclear trigger.
The days events began with the Indian team precipitating air raids on terrorist camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. It was expected that Pakistan would hit back in another theatre outside the Kashmir zone to enlarge the battle and invite international pressure on India. However, the nature of the Pakistani retaliation surprised the Indians in that room in the District of Columbia.
There was no move to send troops or planes into Indian Punjab or Rajasthan as Pakistan had done in 1965, for instance. There was no attempt to bomb Delhi or Mumbai or even hurt Indias prized offshore oilfield, Bombay High. Rather, Pakistani fighter-bombers flew halfway across India and destroyed the Infosys campus in Bangalore.
Later in the day, the two sets of armchair warriors got chatting and the Indians asked the Pakistanis about their strange choice. Given the nature of the IT industry, destroying the Infosys campus would do little lasting damage. The data was probably already backed up in computers at more than one location elsewhere in the world. Company operations would resume seamlessly. The buildings would soon be rebuilt.
Besides, the Pakistani planes would be travelling on a suicide mission. They were certain to be shot down on their way back home from deep in the Deccan, if they got there in the first place. It made no sense.
A Pakistani participant explained the decision. The Infosys campus visited by corporate leaders and heads of Government alike was an iconic symbol of Indias IT prowess and of its economic surge. The Pakistanis were convinced that if it were destroyed, Indias growth and its great power aspirations would be crippled. The gap between Indian and Pakistani projections that was beginning to show would again be bridged.
In purely military terms, the logic of the Pakistani contingent in Washington, DC, that day did not quite convince the Indian interlocutors. Perhaps, they concluded, this was a one-off.
A few weeks later, in the aftermath of the November 26, 2008, terror attack in Mumbai, discordant voices were heard again. As has now been accepted, the Pakistani establishment went out of its way to pretend an Indian attack was imminent, sought to scare the world with the spectre of a potentially nuclear war and played out an elaborate diversionary charade to shift attention from the complicity of elements within Pakistani territory in the planning and execution of the 26/11 terror strike.
It was left to Lt-Gen Hamid Gul, former chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence and a veteran of the jihad continuum that once spanned Afghanistan and Jammu & Kashmir, to put things acerbically but, grant him this, with a raw, tooth-and-claw honesty. Indias economy is moving ahead, he said, and while I dont know what the targets of the Pakistani Air Force would be, Indias Silicon Valley, in Bangalore would be blown up in clouds of smoke.
Obviously the symmetry between war gamers in Washington, DC, and Let-Gen Gul wasnt coincidental. At a basic level, the Pakistani military-strategic establishment was distraught that India was pulling away as an economy, as a society, as a nation. The assault on Mumbai on Indias business capital and its leading hotels, symbols of its intensifying relationship with the rest of the planet was similarly explicable.
Yet, the selection of Infosys and of Indias IT industry as enemy installations and the willingness to use the Pakistani Air Force, not some freelance terror militia, to bomb what were patently civilian facilities indicated something far more ominous: This was a new war. The conflict was no longer an anachronistic throwback to the mid-20th century or even earlier; it was a 21st century hostility, with a 21st century cause. It is crucial India recognises that.
For most of the past 60 years, the India-Pakistan dispute has been limited to what has been termed the unfinished business of Partition. Jammu & Kashmir is, of course, the ultimate casus belli; and to be fair, in 1947, it was intellectually consistent for both nations, with their individual ideas of nationhood, to claim Hari Singhs kingdom.
There were other elements of the Partition storm that lingered cartographic disagreements in the Rann of Kutch, sharing the waters of the Indus. There was revanchism derived from memories of the Indian annexation of Junagadh or, as writer Ramachandra Guha put it in an article after a visit to Lahore, of the fall of Hyderabad. Finally, there were the crazed religious warriors, such as the ideologues of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and their benefactors in the Pakistani state, who saw a renewal of the Mughal Empire as their goal and spoke of raising the Green Flag on the Red Fort.
All of these contested images and territories were redolent with meaning from the past, perhaps from an imagined past and from a desire to somehow turn back the clock, undo the perceived wrongs of history.
Hate for the Infosys campus is far removed from this. It has nothing to do with religious war or any self-propelled extension of the two-nation theory. It is a secular form of hate, in every sense of that s word. An animosity towards India has been hardwired into the Pakistani military-strategic complex. It has become an open-ended cause, a raison dêtre, an industry. It has long outgrown Jammu & Kashmir. It will not go away in our lifetimes.
Posted by: john frum ||
12/13/2009 00:00 ||
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Thank you John, this is most enlightening, and does make a lot of the 'nonsensical' things somewhat more understandable. plenty here to chew on and, i hope, to fully grok.
Posted by: abu do you love ||
12/13/2009 2:00 Comments ||
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#2
The conflict was no longer an anachronistic throwback to the mid-20th century or even earlier;
Actually, it is. Whether its ball bearings or oil facilities, strategic targets are means to cripple the economy of the opponent. It was practiced in WWII. Now its silicon wafers and their associated capabilities that make strategic targets in economically and functionally crippling or hamstringing one's opponent.
#3
Have to agree with Procopius.
This is actually very similar to what the Muslims did in spain during the Reconquista. Both sides would target civilian targets in preference to military ones.
The concept continues in Al Qaeda's textbook "The Management of Barbarism".
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
12/13/2009 13:43 Comments ||
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#4
ION CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > NATION.PK > A POTENTIAL SOURCE FOR TERRORISTS. SOUTH ASIAN REGION facing realitic prospect of NUCLEAR TERRORISM OR CATATSTROPHIC TERROR EVENT due to serious problems in INDIA'S NUCLEAR SECURITY
[includ MILWEAPS = TOE from India lost to REGIONAL MILTERRS via criminal or covert arms laundering, etc. activities].
Earlier today, Arif Rafiq posted a link to the above picture on his Twitter feed and asked, "Uh, is there something wrong with this photo?" There is something seriously amiss with the photo, which was published by The Nation. The photograph shows the US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates posing in front of both the US and Israel flags. Both look closely and you will notice a couple of odd things about the photo. For one, the Israel flag is fluttering while the US flag is stationery, indicating that the former flag was photographed outdoors and the latter indoors. Then, the dimensions and sizes of the two flags are completely out of proportion. This photograph has been Photoshopped, and very crudely at that.
Newsline's Creative Consultant Danish Khan confirmed that the photograph had been Photoshopped. He was also able to find the two original photographs that had been used to create this new one. Do a Google Images search for "Robert Gates" and the first result is the photographed used by The Nation. The flag that has been shoehorned into the Robert Gates picture can be viewed here.
The Nation's motivations for this trickery are obvious. According to the editorial agenda the newspaper has been pursuing since Shireen Mazari replaced Arif Nizami as the editor, there is a US-Israel-India plot against Pakistan. These three countries, The Nation believes, are also responsible for the spate of terrorist attacks in the country. Showing Robert Gates posing in front of both flags is meant to represent his dual loyalties. The Nation has gone so far as to claim, without any evidence whatsoever, that The Wall Street Journal's Matthew Rosenberg was a spy, forcing him to flee the country. The Nation was condemned by 21 international newspapers for that story. The paper has also been publishing story after story over the past few months on the alleged presence of Blackwater operatives in Pakistan.
I have been trying to contact The Nation's editor Shireen Mazari for a comment on the Photoshopped photograph and will post an update here if I hear back from her.
Posted by: john frum ||
12/13/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
whatever, everything is photoshoped these days, it just requires neandertal intelligence to spot the simple ones.
Most of us forget nearly everything we learned in university within months of graduating. I doubt if I am an exception. But there's one particular Politics tutorial that comes back to haunt me again and again each time Pakistan is discussed.
I was at university during the Cold War so all dons were slightly obsessed with the way in which the rivalry between Nato and the Soviet bloc would play out. One of them told us that he was an admirer of Henry Kissinger's strategic thinking.
In those days, we were taught the doctrine of MAD or Mutually Assured Destruction. The US and the Soviets both had so many nuclear weapons that each could easily destroy the other. Any Russian leader or American president who ordered a nuclear strike knew that he was, in effect, ordering the destruction of his own country. The other side would retaliate with so much force that the original attacker's country would be destroyed.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: john frum ||
12/13/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
ION CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > GOOD JOB, INDIA!| INDIA'S 29th STATE COULD LEAD TO MANY MORE [newly created TELAQUANA only the beginning]???
I have read the media in the past week with splashes like Uganda puts case at climate change summit and columnists saying What do scientists mean when they talk about global warming? Specifically, one article with such a message as its grassroots activists and not politicians who will influence change got me thinking about what politicians are doing in Copenhagen.
Developing countries, especially the African ones, are seeking inter alia, reparations by developed nations to poor nations, but I cant help thinking that this entire environmental arena is a grand political theatre.
Sound science has been thoroughly corrupted with petty agendas and self-centred policies, making me wonder if the real aim here is not one of environmental protection, but of geo-political reshaping of our planets economy and power structures.
In theory the African argument has some validity and when Uganda, for example, makes its case for adequate funding and sustainable specific public funding for adaptation, complemented with private sector funding, I am sure thats fair and genuine enough. The problem arises with ensuring that the money is transferred to where it is intended.
Thats where we, Africans, fail.
There is a reason why third world African countries are developing and have been developing for generations; they have been receiving development aid for eons and they spend the money on weapons in most cases, to repress the masses, most choosing to keep their populace ignorant and in extreme poverty.
Africa wants more than $267 billion from the developed world to adapt and mitigate climate change in the continent, and for reparations accrued due to climate change.
But my question is, does it deserve this money if its not going to be put to its intended use? Can we expect that after receiving these funds, they shall roll out climate change adaptation technology with enthusiasm and offer quantifiable and time specific cut in green house emissions through compliance mechanisms?
You see, implementation is a foreign word for many an African country.
Nigeria still exports crude oil 52 years after it discovered oil and imports expensive refined products while Ghana and Mali still export crude gold and import refined jewellery from Europe.
They still have no capacity to refine and add value to their gold, the key word here is implementing key strategies to add value.
Guinea, despite enormous oil wealth, is ranked 115 on the Human Development Index. Is this the type of nation that can implement climate change adaptation technology with enthusiasm after being funded by developed countries?
What meaningful and progressive ideas can Guineas representative, for example, have to contribute apart from pocketing the per diems in Copenhagen?
Back home, Hoima Regional Referral Hospital is given approximately $350 (about Shs640,000) for fuel and due to recurrent and prolonged load shedding bouts, this fuel does not last a week. Without power, people die, in droves everyday.
This needless death, notwithstanding, coincides with cars being bought at $120,000 for top government honchos.
Im sure there are a few researchers calculating the mortality rate attributed to power cuts in Hoima Hospital, but there is no doubt those figures and results are not designed for the African politician to consume, for with the level of indifference he has towards his kin, these efforts will come to naught.
The figures are designed to target a more sophisticated human being, a being that can empathise with the wretched African native, a being who looks at the plight of an African child dying due to lack of fuel to power a generator and feels emotion stir within him/her.
They are definitely for someone from the developed world, because to the African politician, they shall just remain figures, he cant implement face saving measures.
These are the same African Politicians asking for $267 billion for Climate Change.
May God Bless Africa.
#1
Sound science has been thoroughly corrupted with petty agendas and self-centred policies, making me wonder if the real aim here is not one of environmental protection, but of geo-political reshaping of our planet's economy and power structures.
#2
Sound science has been thoroughly corrupted with petty agendas and self-centred policies, making me wonder if the real aim here is not one of environmental protection, but of geo-political reshaping of our planet's economy and power structures.
Well it took you bloody long enough!!! We've been saying that for years!!!
#4
" Third world African countries are developing have been receiving development aid for eons and they spend the money on weapons in most cases, to repress the masses, most choosing to keep their populace ignorant and in extreme poverty."
Wouldnt you? And its only fair that American taxpayers should buy a Limousine and some private guns for M'bekebeke, right? And how about N'gawa over there( the one with the goat dressed up in an evening gown )how about giving him a little too?
Congress can spare a measly $267 million. And Denmark will feel ever so much better about themselves for arranging it all. More Caviar?
You look FABulous.
#6
what, Africa is the key! we should redirect ALL the EU's money to it and let them go hog wild and double their population again, in 5 years this time.
#7
Marxism proved to be the worst ecological disaster ever. Rivers in Eastern Europe could burn while Capitalist societies slowly cleaned and cleaned and at the same time became wealthier. We should all take the planetary disaster to let people know how vile socialism and marxism is for the planet and how positive capitalism is.
#8
In my humble opinion, if your nation wants a hand out you should be willing to submit yourself to foreign rule under the UN Trusteeship council. Nobody wants them, nobody wants to give up their independence so it's a bluff of course.
#9
how many billions in "reparations" does Africa get every year that somehow turn into weapons?
Posted by: chris ||
12/13/2009 13:01 Comments ||
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A Glabl Welfare state will be as "succesful" as the national welfare states are i.e. Negative for the both the extorted and beneficiary populations.
#11
That would be the Bankers and Pols being extorted then to limit their avarice for 'bonuses' and 'expenses', then, BP. I have another idea, let these places have 'Aid' at Credit Card APR's, default... get repo'ed. And Tax the Shee-ite outa their beef and bottled water to the 1st World, Lol, these places have dragged the World down so far there is no 1st World apart from the aforementioned w@nkers.
After all, it's 'Global', and that's what they gonna do to me. Fair is what it's all about.
CHARGE THEM FOR IT.
#12
Heck, we paid Goldman Sachs $700 billion for...what exactly? $265 billion for Africa seems like nothing. I say, let's do it, if nothing else we'll drown their problems in a sea of dollars so much that they'll simply have different problems.
#13
Does the black continent deserve reparations at Copenhagen?
'Reparatios do not go far enough' and obviously the creation of Liberia has not worked either. A system of Worldwide welfare, abortion on demand Healthcare, and housing, solar stoves, teevee, Wifi, etc, for the disadvanted of Africa is needed. One or two trillion US Dollars should be all that is needed in the initial years.
#17
The world will soon face a triumphant China, the 21st centruy pwoerhouse, or at least they might be. I cannot wait until they see how an Empire with a certain sense of ethnic and cultural superiority treats the world. The beneficent behavior of the US over the second half of the last century will be replaced with a reptilian coldness and grasping plutocracy from China. You are going to miss us.....
In the 1970s and early '80s, having seized control of the U.N. apparatus (by power of numbers), Third World countries decided to cash in. OPEC was pulling off the greatest wealth transfer from rich to poor in history. Why not them? So in grand U.N. declarations and conferences, they began calling for a "New International Economic Order." The NIEO's essential demand was simple: to transfer fantastic chunks of wealth from the industrialized West to the Third World.
On what grounds? In the name of equality -- wealth redistribution via global socialism -- with a dose of post-colonial reparations thrown in.
The idea of essentially taxing hardworking citizens of the democracies to fill the treasuries of Third World kleptocracies went nowhere, thanks mainly to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (and the debt crisis of the early '80s). They put a stake through the enterprise.
But such dreams never die. The raid on the Western treasuries is on again, but today with a new rationale to fit current ideological fashion. With socialism dead, the gigantic heist is now proposed as a sacred service of the newest religion: environmentalism.
One of the major goals of the Copenhagen climate summit is another NIEO shakedown: the transfer of hundreds of billions from the industrial West to the Third World to save the planet by, for example, planting green industries in the tristes tropiques.
Politically it's an idea of genius, engaging at once every left-wing erogenous zone: rich man's guilt, post-colonial guilt, environmental guilt. But the idea of shaking down the industrial democracies in the name of the environment thrives not just in the refined internationalist precincts of Copenhagen. It thrives on the national scale, too.
On the day Copenhagen opened, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency claimed jurisdiction over the regulation of carbon emissions by declaring them an "endangerment" to human health.
Since we operate an overwhelmingly carbon-based economy, the EPA will be regulating practically everything. No institution that emits more than 250 tons of CO2 a year will fall outside EPA control. This means more than a million building complexes, hospitals, plants, schools, businesses and similar enterprises. (The EPA proposes regulating emissions only above 25,000 tons, but it has no such authority.) Not since the creation of the Internal Revenue Service has a federal agency been given more intrusive power over every aspect of economic life.
This naked assertion of vast executive power in the name of the environment is the perfect fulfillment of the prediction of Czech President (and economist) Vaclav Klaus that environmentalism is becoming the new socialism, i.e., the totemic ideal in the name of which government seizes the commanding heights of the economy and society.
Socialism having failed so spectacularly, the left was adrift until it struck upon a brilliant gambit: metamorphosis from red to green. The cultural elites went straight from the memorial service for socialism to the altar of the environment. The objective is the same: highly centralized power given to the best and the brightest, the new class of experts, managers and technocrats. This time, however, the alleged justification is not abolishing oppression and inequality but saving the planet.
Not everyone is pleased with the coming New Carbon-Free International Order. When the Obama administration signaled (in a gesture to Copenhagen) a U.S. commitment to major cuts in carbon emissions, Democratic Sen. Jim Webb wrote the president protesting that he lacks the authority to do so unilaterally. That requires congressional concurrence by legislation or treaty.
With the Senate blocking President Obama's cap-and-trade carbon legislation, the EPA coup d'etat served as the administration's loud response to Webb: The hell we can't. With this EPA "endangerment" finding, we can do as we wish with carbon. Either the Senate passes cap-and-trade, or the EPA will impose even more draconian measures: all cap, no trade.
Forget for a moment the economic effects of severe carbon chastity. There's the matter of constitutional decency. If you want to revolutionize society -- as will drastic carbon regulation and taxation in an energy economy that is 85 percent carbon-based -- you do it through Congress reflecting popular will. Not by administrative fiat of EPA bureaucrats.
Congress should not just resist this executive overreaching, but trump it: Amend clean-air laws and restore their original intent by excluding CO2 from EPA control and reserving that power for Congress and future legislation.
Do it now. Do it soon. Because Big Brother isn't lurking in CIA cloak. He's knocking on your door, smiling under an EPA cap.
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It bears repeating: Congress should not just resist this executive overreaching, but trump it: Amend clean-air laws and restore their original intent by excluding CO2 [and H2O vapors] from EPA control and reserving that power for Congress and future legislation.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Other recommended changes:
