WIP

This week in Islam, the U.S. Government still provides billions of dollars worth of armaments and weapons training to the Saudis, and gives Saudi Arabia preferential treatment, such as vetoing any attempts to impose sanctions or other measures against Saudi Arabia for human rights abuses. Saudi sovereign wealth funds are also allowed unencumbered access to buy shares in American corporations, even corporations that make the largest campaign donations through PAC's and Super PAC's. And the Saudis spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year, sending teachers and building madrassahs throughout the Muslim World to promote their version of Islam. But, let's not take note of those uncomfortable facts and join in shaking our fists at barbaric Muslims in our moment of hate, and congratulate ourselves for our superior qualities and civilization!

The problem to me, is that he is ignoring the fact that American Jews started shifting to the political right and the Republican Party once they were accepted into the club! How many Jews are active in the civil rights movements in America today? Not likely that they have any more of a presence in campaigns like "Black Lives Matter" than the non-Jewish whites in attendance. The other part missing in the story...that you have to go to alternative media for, is that many blacks find it at least a little offensive for white law students and organizers to come in to their communities and try to take charge of events. Especially on issues like the aggressive use of policing in black communities or the prison-industrial complex that has developed in recent decades, most of the black leaders I've noticed, say they appreciate having support from the larger white communities, but these are issues that they have to live with on a daily basis, and are not going to relegate to whites or even the usual upper class black leadership, whom the younger ones see as equally out of touch.

Yeah, we all know what the American term is...but I don't think we're allowed to use it here! Fact is that in America, there was no such thing as a white race prior to the end of slavery! And, it took many decades before religious affiliation divisions began to ease. Back when the Klan first started up from the remnants of the old slave patrols, they were also against white Catholics moving into the South. At first, the only immigration that was accepted into the so called Melting Pot was from northern Europe...especially the British Isles. When they started letting in large numbers of Italians, they were not quite regarded as white either. Interesting to note that, if we go back to the era of the Irish Immigration, anti-immigration cartoonists drew the Irish as relatively dark skinned, compared to 'real' Americans. But, over time, the Irish and the Italians were accepted into the white man's club, and joined in with the proclamations that America was a color-blind society where everyone was capable of achieving their goals if they had enough initiative.....and other fantasies!

They have to fit a certain criteria before their disappearance is important enough for Nancy Grace etc. to give it wall to wall coverage on CNN or other fake news sites: be white, beautiful - or at least photogenic, and come from an upper middle to wealthy family, so that important people may become concerned about what happens to their daughters at university. For example: during the Natalie Holloway circus some years back, hundreds of girls and young women went missing and their families couldn't even get the attention of local news....let alone CNN. But, many of them weren't white, and the parents didn't live in a mansion to provide nice background shots for the media. And let's not forget that in this country, it could take hundreds of native girls going missing before a lightbulb goes off in the heads of RCMP...."I wonder if a serial killer might be on the loose!" What counts as a crime story tells us a lot about the class divisions in a society - who counts vs. who's not important. I'm glad I missed that one! Me too! But that story has taken off and gathered worldwide interest, because it is so unusual and unexpected. People who hate cats predetermine that they are selfish and antisocial, and stories like that one prove otherwise. At least it's a story that can provide new information or understanding, unlike 99.9% of what makes the news cycle. My biggest beef is what doesn't get covered in the news, but is important to all of us. Like the TPP for instance. This proposed expansion of the corporate capture of government, has been going on publicly for a few years...and secretly for years prior, yet only world leaders and top corporate executives are at the negotiating table. Then there is all the stuff...too numerous to mention, that we would be completely in the dark about, except for the leakes and revelations of Snowden, Manning, Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou to name a few. What we have presented to us as "news" is mostly irrelevant, counter-factual, and stories promoted by large corporate interests...such as weapons contractors. So, my expectations from the news are already pretty low.

She apparently has "sex appeal" to her 18 year old boyfriend/or abductor..whatever the case! And you can bet for damn sure, that media covering the story will play up the sexual aspects of the story - pictures, witness accounts, rumours etc., whether they admit it or not. Does Kentucky still allow 13 year old girls to get married? That was the norm at one time....maybe that's where we're headed!

The main reason why there was a split in that African-American/Jewish alliance in the U.S. is because Jews started being welcomed in as part of the club as America's emphasis on church affiliation started dying off in the 60's. Once it didn't matter if you were Protestant or Catholic or Evangelical Christian, race started becoming the defining issue of who was/ and who was not a realllll American. Jews can pass for white....blacks obviously cannot! According to one prominent Jewish Republican conservative (I forget the name) I heard on the radio one night back in the 80's, the greatest anomaly of voting patterns was that the Jews were tied at the time with Episcopalians for highest average income, while sharing voting patterns with the lowest income demographic - blacks. The reasons for this pattern was that..no matter how much money Jews earned or how much wealth they accrued, they were never welcomed into the private clubs of the privileged elites, nor had much influence in the political process outside of their local concentrations in New York. But, the black/jewish alliance mostly fell along generational lines. The white marchers to Selma, and the white youths who joined the protests at the segregated lunchcounters in the South were mostly Jewish youths from New York....something that wasn't lost on the Ku Klux Klan! But, the Klan was already losing influence in the South (not that racism was disappearing) because a revision in fast-growing Evangelical Christianity was that these end-times fans of the book of Revelation did not follow the traditional "Replacement" teaching of covenant theology.....God had a covenant with the Jews, but it ended at Pentacost and everyone has to follow the new covenant of Jesus etc.. The new theology teaches that God can have separate covenants at the same time...so the Jews can still be under the covenant with Moses, while new Christians follow that new covenant. Add to this, that the emphasis on end times and 2nd Coming really took off with the founding of the modern state of Israel, and those two elements created the modern Christian Zionist movement in the U.S.; which is more powerful and broadly based than the American Jewish support. That's why Bibi goes out of his way to entertain the televangelist numbnuts that come over to visit the Holy Land. So, all of these elements put together, meant that there was no more real discrimination or hostility from most white Americans anymore, and most Jews, except for the orthodox, were free to mix right in to the majority white population, including intermarriage etc.. And with their growing acceptance by white America, Jews have started seeing themselves as part of the white majority, and unless they are in a low income demographic, they don't feel much in come with black Americans anymore! There certainly is a black middle class in America, that moved out of the suburbs, but as we see with Ferguson Missouri, in the eyes of law enforcement and the authority establishment, they take the ghetto with them if they are still visible minorities in a nation that is still sharply divided by race and still won't admit it! So, in the end, I don't see much to bring blacks and jews together again in America! Most Jewish Americans are not all that enamored with Israel anymore....as some others here have already pointed out. Israel has more fanatical, unquestioning support for their actions from white America, who have almost no ability to apply critical analysis of any issue, let alone their expectations of prophecy fulfillment! But, most black churches are less likely to fall in with the belief that modern Israel fulfills prophecy. Black Christianity takes their inspiration ever since slavery era, from stories like the Exodus from Egypt. There is still a strong emphasis on combating forces of oppression. So, when Israel turns into an oppressive force in the Middle East...able to turn Gaza into an oversized prison camp and divide up the West Bank with settlements, walls and roads, that make it impossible for any Palestinian to travel outside of their immediate area, Israel becomes seen as the oppressor, regardless of the excuses they want to make for how and why they got into this situation of being an armed encampment that's equivalent to the ancient Greek city of Sparta.

If virtually everyone in France who is of Algerian ancestry is a Muslim, then you have no justifiable claim that you can condemn religion without condemning its adherents! That is the greatest failing of Charlie Hebdo....that's exactly what they were trying to pretend they were doing....upholding French secular values and attacking all religion equally. But they were not, according to those who have taken the time to go through their publications in recent years. Also, attacking the religion of privileged majorities....and privileged minorities in some cases, is different than attacking the religion of despised minorities. The biggest fraud perpetrated by so called secularists...specifically today's atheist humanists, is that the problems begin and end with religious beliefs and religious affiliations. In actual fact, if every North African in France became an atheist or joined a different religion, they will still not be regarded as really French by the majority or the Government. They would still be dark foreigners and reminders of France's colonial past, especially their 7 year war to cling to power in Algeria, where they killed an estimated 1.5 million Algerians! Changing their religion would not get most of them out of the ghettos surrounding Paris and Marseilles! But, this is all besides the point anyway, because the only pathway out of organized religions of any type, is when a person or group of people start losing interest in them...see them as increasingly irrelevant to their lives....as most French Catholics have done, who see their religion as not serving a useful purpose. But, if you keep people segregated by whatever means, and maintain varying levels of hostility towards them, the last thing they are going to do is abandon their faiths! A case in point might be Jews in America, whom many Jewish leaders panic about over the last three decades are becoming less involved with Judaism and more atheistic. This did not happen over the course of Jewish history in Europe for a 2000 year period, when being Jewish meant living under threat of death at any moment. Any honest-intentioned secularists...whatever their metaphysical beliefs, who want either a drawing away from Islam or a less militant Islam, have to begin by lowering the level of hostility towards Muslims/ not increasing it, as is done every time there is some Muslim somewhere involved in a shooting, or joins some rebel group in the Middle East that claims to be waging jihad against foreign invaders. Which has become the new religion for those who embrace American exceptionalism and its European clones! The core tenet of atheist-humanism today is worship of technology and faith in a star trek-like future provided by the right inventions being created and manufactured just in time to lead the way to a better and brighter future! To me, modern techno-optimism...especially transhumanism is more irrational and unsupported with any evidence than any religious doctrines I've ever heard of! The situation for Jews in Europe is only slightly better than that of Muslim immigrants! They may be a wealthier, better connected community politically, but France still has a wide-ranging anti-Semitic streak wrapped up with its sense of nationalism and French identity that exists beyond the far right of French politics. Nevertheless, holocaust denial is not protected as free speech in France, along with bans on wearing niqaabs....so, women it seems don't have complete freedom to dress the way they prefer. I mentioned previously that so called freedom-luvin France violated international law by trying to board the Bolivian president's plane because the CIA told them they had Edward Snowden on board. What good is free speech when it's only for freedom to be obscene or vulgar, but not freedom to learn what your government is doing and planning to do which they want to keep secret from the public? Modern Israel-worshipping Jewish and Christian Zionists believe that Israel has the right to slowly exterminate the population of Gaza and ethnically cleanse the West Bank, and any time any objections are raised, out comes that holocaust card to be played! As if it provides everlasting immunity for Israel's own war crimes!

Not only that, but our simplistic media presentation as this being just an issue about religion....their religion specifically is at the heart of the problem! What I can find of Charlie Hebdo and its lead editor, tells me that they were deliberately focusing on France's immigrant population and shifting from a supposedly left liberal publication to something that was onside with the right...even the nationalist right that proclaims their secularism as a club to use against immigrants they see as never to be considered truly French in the first place. I came across an interview of former NY Times foreign correspondent Chris Hedges yesterday, who in this short piece fills in a lot of necessary details about present day French culture, what is and what isn't allowed as free speech and France's genocide in Algeria which is not taught in the schools and not allowed for public discussion today! All this under the backdrop of still trying to be a neocolonial power in West Africa: Real News Network, includes transcript The message of the war criminals marching in the lead of the Charlie Hebdo march in Paris is that they want the right to commit atrocities in the Middle East and other far off lands without facing the risk of blowback, like the occasional terrorist attack!

Okay, I'm basing the 15 or 16 million number on the Aradhna Tripati analysis that was first published a little over five years ago. Chemical analysis of rock layers is calibrated by the more recent ice core analysis to try to determine their accuracy. I'm not a scientist, but the published data...which every other researcher has access to, found an uncertainty rate of only 14 parts per million. So, it's possible that, at some points in the last 15 million years, Co2 levels got close to 400 and may have actually exceeded the 400 mark. But, the overall trend of the last 15 million years is unmistakable! The general trend throughout planetary history has seen brief periods of rapid increase in carbon dioxide, followed by longer, slower periods of gradual reduction through sequestration of carbon out of the atmosphere. The disingenuous presentation that climate disinformers present to the public of .....carbon levels go up and down...the Earth gets warmer....it gets colder...it's just part of natural cycles, is complete BS! The real story of Planet Earth is that extinctions...especially large or mass extinctions occur when the carbon levels spike higher through volcanic activity usually associated with plate tectonics. After a long drawdown, when carbon levels are reduced, life flourishes again, and the abundance of life is actually greatest during the ice age periods, like those experienced through the bulk of the Pleistocene. Maybe humans didn't appreciate the last ice age much, but all of the ocean life, and the coastal plant and animal species during times of lower sea levels may have outvoted the human race....at least until our ancestors discovered how to make fire, and raise the thermostat a little. But in our time, it should be plainly obvious that the temperature is too high already, and one of the major factors that has already started a sixth major extinction of life on Earth. And what do you base your promise on? I consider the evidence of an estimated 200 animal species (plants still unaccounted for) becoming extinct every day, as well as the rapid retreat of natural habitats, rapid declines in topsoil and fresh water to maintain our food production levels, the total aggregated contamination of land and oceans etc. etc., all of this should tell even the clueless that we are heading down the wrong road, and worth noting that in the previous five major extinctions, the dominant life forms that flourished, were all wiped out early in those extinctions! What makes us so special that we believe our descendents will somehow live through the mess we have created for them?

One of the greatest dangers of our time, is that there doesn't seem to be any grounding principles, so we can quickly devolve to a standard of the ends justify the means. This seems to be standard operating procedure on a whole range of issues, and on this one, obviously Planet Earth is more greatly taxed by having 7 billion people rapidly using up resources, than it was 40 years ago when half that - 3.5 billion people were on the planet. By that use of cost benefit analysis, any despot can be justified in killing half or more of Earth's surplus population. And the only judgment that will be made is on who qualifies as surplus, and who deserves to continue living. Now that everyone from Dick Cheney on down, is a utilitarian all of a sudden, we could easily end up in an era where the privileged decide to deliberately cull the human population to save themselves....so, it's no laughing matter! The people in power and in control of the economic and political levers that run the world, have no core ethics...as they've demonstrated numerous times already. Maybe this is why they ignore and deny climate change....they already have their own solution planned and ready to go in effect when this system starts breaking down and collapsing!

I heard about it....I don't see it as a positive development.

Is it better when the Christian Right grows big enough to take over a major party in a two-party duopoly....like on our southern border? *I would say - let them have their voice and be heard too. Same with the Greens, and any other minority parties that are shut out from the system and can't get the issues they consider important, presented on the media, let alone be put up for vote.

We are in a period of rapid Americanization because of Harper. Previous Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments tried to keep some distance, especially regarding U.S. foreign policies, because they were smart enough to realize we become stained by the same brush if we agree with every Neocon strategy the U.S. creates. A lot of our Americanization is out of our control because of these trade agreements we're signing on to. But, as long as we have Harper as Prime Minister, we're going to end up a de facto 51st state!

Because virtually all issues intersect and tie in together. During the last provincial election here in Ontario, the Liberals, Tories and NDP, all had their campaign promises....most of the big ones being completely impossible, because under today's new globalization regime, local governments...and in most cases, even national governments don't have the authority anymore to carry out their promises! Once you lock into free trade schemes that punish nations for enforcing environmental, labour and health laws, everything they promise is BS! The main difference is that Tory policies hurt cities and benefit suburbs and more suburban sprawl. Should it be a surprise that so many citydwellers feel stuck with the Liberals or the NDP because we know the Tories are working directly and deliberately against our interests?

The "safe facilities" campaign is just another ruse to appear to be doing something, while doing nothing of substance! As long as there is a global trading regime that facilitates moving production to the cheapest location...with NO penalties to governments that brutally suppress all attempts by workers to organize, and no health and safety and environment guidelines to follow...all we end up with is bland, empty promises from giant corporations as a PR strategy for western consumers! The real story of Walmart was told in this Frontline documentary that was on PBS, which showed that...even back when I first discovered Walmart while living on the border and buying stuff at the Walmart store in Niagara Falls NY, they had all of these flags everywhere and signs proclaiming "Buy American," and "Made in the USA" and it was all a fraud! Because Sam Walton's company was already setting up the regime that would facilitate outsourcing for clothing and cheap consumer product suppliers, to do more manufacturing in Asia....at first, to catch up with other major U.S. retailers/while waving the flag about buying American, but then to surge past the rest of the pack and threaten U.S. manufacturers with continuous demands for price cuts/ and then facilitating their moves overseas. That's the history that Walmart, most every other retailer and the entire rightwing bs blogosphere doesn't want to be out there for public consumption: Lowering Wal-Mart's Profile in Asia Even as Wal-Mart was pushing its U.S. suppliers to be more efficient and promoting its "Buy American" program through the '80s, the company bought more and more from Asia, according to Jay Moates, a former accountant with Wal-Mart's overseas buying operation. But to please American consumers concerned about the Asian threat, the retailer played down its buying operations in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, and the rest of Asia. Following the brutal suppression of Chinese students in Tiananmen Square in 1989 by the Chinese Communist leadership, Walton feared a consumer backlash if Wal-Mart were seen as operating in China. He was also disturbed by charges of human rights abuses in his Asian suppliers' factories. To continue growing in Asia, Wal-Mart needed a buffer -- a middleman or a buying agency that would purchase Asian products without showing Wal-Mart's hand. According to the retired Hong Kong senior executive, Walton told Bill Fields, Wal-Mart's head buyer, that he wanted to "get out" of direct involvement in Asia. "The decision was to go to an exclusive buying agency," the buyer said. "The main reason for going into [the deal] was not to be exposed as going into Communist China." Walton needed a trusted friend to act as his Asian middleman. He turned to a close friend and tennis partner, George Billingsley, to serve as the titular head of the operation. No matter that Billingsley, a former real estate salesman, knew next to nothing about retail or procurement. To actually run the operation, Walton found Charles Wong, a seasoned Wal-Mart vendor who knew the U.S. retail business well and was at ease operating in Asia. Billingsley would be a figurehead. Wong would run the day-to-day business of procurement out of Hong Kong. Within two years, Billingsley and Wong had set up Pacific Resources Export Limited (PREL) as an exclusive buying agent for Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart sold its own Asian buying offices to PREL. The links were so close between PREL and Wal-Mart that "most of the people at Wal-Mart, referred to them as us," said Jay Moates, the PREL accountant. "We hired all the old people from [Wal-Mart's Asian buying] operation." As PREL provided Wal-Mart cover for its Asian buying, Walton could both continue promoting his "Buy American" campaign at home and expand his overseas procurement out of PREL in Hong Kong. But several months after Walton's death in April 1992, the "Buy American" campaign backfired when Wal-Mart became the target of a Dateline NBC expose that revealed "Buy American" signs adorning piles of imported goods from Asia. Overnight, an embarrassed Wal-Mart de-emphasized the "Buy American" campaign. Catching the China Bug China loomed large for Sam Walton's successors in the years following his death. Deng Xiaoping had opened the country to investment, easing restrictions on foreign businesses, and encouraging Chinese entrepreneurs to enter joint ventures with Westerners. Deng declared the fishing village of Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong Kong, a "special economic zone," with no taxes on foreign businesses for the first few years of operation. Across South China, the government began building roads, ports, and other infrastructure. In 1994, it devalued China's currency, from roughly 5 to 8 yuan to the dollar, further fueling the country's explosive development. China, suddenly the cheapest workshop in Asia, attracted vast capital investment. Millions of migrant workers flooded industrial centers. World-savvy entrepreneurs migrated from Hong Kong and Taiwan, eager for a piece of the action. Many shut down their plants at home in the rush to set up new factories and hire mainland Chinese workers. Shenzhen boomed. Growing at 20 percent a year, it became known as China's "Miracle City." In two decades, a fishing village mushroomed into a city of 7 million people, with high rises, miles of factories, and modern electronics headquarters. Here too, Wal-Mart sited its global sourcing headquarters. Wal-Mart had caught the China bug. In a speech to business schools in the early '90s, David Glass, who succeeded Sam Walton as CEO, advised students to learn Mandarin Chinese. In regional meetings, Glass told Wal-Mart execs that if they didn't think internationally, they were working for the wrong company. "The only reason [manufacturing] moved from Taiwan was China's low level of wages," said one early Wal-Mart Hong Kong buyer. "We didn't have any trouble in China, because the Taiwanese went into China and built up the factories. We were dealing with the same people." Working through PREL's Asian suppliers, Wal-Mart buyers became actively involved in developing products, and educating the mainland Chinese on how to make goods that would sell in America. "You'd go into a factory in Taiwan that's making men's shirts. You see what works," the Wal-Mart buyer recalled. "And then you go into China and tell a factory in China, 'This is why we're not buying from you.' Chinese people are not dumb. They're tenacious. They know they need to learn very quickly." In 1992, with Wal-Mart clocking in at a 40 percent annual growth rate, Goldman Sachs analyst George Strachan released a study concluding that Wal-Mart was in the midst of "a major strategic merchandising revolution … breaking from a history of almost exclusive commitment to [u.S.] national-brand products, expanding and improving its private-label offerings … and marketing them more aggressively than ever before." http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/secrets/wmchina.html

I'm not all that impressed by most of the product that came out of the studio later on. What's really important is that, in the early days of television, everyone was working without a map....trying to figure out what to put on the new medium. Most shows were either talkingheads, televised plays (some were very high quality) and radio&vaudeville routines performed by experienced comedians who made the jump from network radio to television in the 50's. It was Lucy who was the first to present something that was really new and different from radio and stage performance, and show others how to present comedy on the small screen. Every sitcom since I Love Lucy has followed their template. Some of those other hit shows leave a little to be desired. When I was 10 to 13 years old and a Mad Magazine fanatic, Mad had the best parody of Mission Impossible, where Jim Phelps gives his colleagues their mission: "we have to turn 10 minutes worth of plot into a suspenseful, hour-long action drama!" Then again, that could describe the Mission Impossible movies also! Desilu/Paramount, didn't know what to do with Star Trek! From the Star Trek documentary, it seemed pretty clear that the vision for Star Trek, began an ended with its creator Gene Rodenberry, who had to fight...risking cancellation right from the pilot episode by including a multiracial cast along with a humanoid alien (Spock), no mention of God or religion...the studio tried to force a chapel into the Enterprize, which Rodenberry refused. He cast his real life wife as "No. 1" - 2nd in command of the Enterprize...and was forced to change and recast her as a nurse when the series got the go-ahead for the first season. And Paramount executives also were troubled that there was no mention of money and commerce as the series progressed. Rodenberry did not envision either in the distant future of Star Trek. But, in a way, Paramount was truer to Rodenberry's vision than the shlock that appears in later Star Trek series...where a lot of the crap about religion, capitalism, and necessity of warfare got added back. In the original series, Paramount allowed Rodenberry a lot of leeway for social commentary that would not have been allowed on Earthbound TV shows of the 60's, regarding race and gender relations, and it's allegories for commenting on the Cold War and leaving a distinctive antiwar message any time they happened upon a savage planet where the natives were destroying themselves through constant warfare.

But, you're fine with executives and inheritors of wealth sitting on their asses and being the only economic class to see their incomes rising today? Most of us are treading water...even the 70k a year skilled workers. But, that's too much money to spend, when there's someone in China or Bangladesh who will do it for 50c an hour! I did a lot of background reading a few years back when all of the factory fires and collapse disasters in Bangladesh were in the news. One of the factoids that really jumped out at me and was never hardly mentioned in western media was that the company set up there to manufacture clothing that ended up at Walmart, Tommy Hilfiger and most other major U.S. retail outlets, was threatening to close up their operations in Bangladesh and move to Sri Lanka. You see, when it's a race to the bottom....like it is for average workers, there is always someone else who will do it cheaper! That's why this whole charade of globalization should have been stuffed right from the beginning! All of the promises that were made were fraudulent...except for the cheap clothing imports! But what good does that do for so many younger people entering the workforce today and having prospects of never rising much above the minimum wage? * I want to add that the scams of the Neoliberal right would have been impossible in a democracy, because they only benefit a small segment of the population. But, the masters of the universe have been able to count on the fact that as the system becomes more stratified along income and wealth hierarchies, most people never look to the top of the chain. Instead, their attention is focused on those who are immediately ahead of them...because they have contact with those they see having better cars and more expensive houses than they do, and have a desire to knock them down if they can't raise themselves up. Likewise, there is a strong desire to prevent any group under them on the economic ladder from rising to their level. So, with adequate propaganda and brainwashing, the system can be easily maintained by a mere handful of puppetmasters unless it becomes unworkable and starts to collapse.

I would rather have perpetual minority government, than what we have now! There would be greater public input into the system, since the FPP leads to the two or three leading parties ignoring some issues entirely, if they decide it's to their advantage. They are interested in governing/nor representing their constituents. And if Harper is able to get through the kind of American-style campaign reform he has in mind, then it will be even worse! Then we end up with a small, wealthy ruling elite deciding what issues are/and are not on the table for both parties. And that in a nutshell is why less than 50% of the American public is even bothering to participate in the system anymore.

Yep, they were scamming us right from the start; but so was the NDP! They were also only pretending to go along with proportional representation. The Conservatives....well, they never claim to be friends of democracy in the first place! They know which side of the bread it's buttered on!

Then why doesn't the same thing apply with this Muslim terrorists phenomena? We've got Harper already licking his chops planning to "protect us" with new security legislation that he thought would sail through after the Ottawa Attack earlier. But, it never really took off and led to mass panic among the Canadian public...as it seems to do regularly in the U.S., where both governing parties write a blank cheque for whatever surveillance intrusions and exhorbitant costs the new security regime requires! I've heard Juan Cole for one...who doesn't get access to MSM in the U.S., but on the fringe public/alternative media sources I turn to, I've heard him say a few times in the last few years that Americans are more endangered by their homegrown terrorists - i.e. the yahoos at the Bundy Ranch, than they are of foreign terrorists coming over to attack them. I know most of the Bundy Ranch clowns are morons who don't even know how to handle a gun, but there are lots of returning veterans, and many of them have a lot of grievances about the way they are being treated by V.A. hospitals and the Veterans Administration regarding disability claims. The cost-cutting starts with them/ not military brass or the contractors who enrich themselves by selling weapons to the government. As we have seen with the Paris Shootings, two guys who are well trained and battle-hardened, can do a lot of damage in a surprise attack. It doesn't take a lot of disgruntled vets to be a problem! A sensible government would be doing everything they could to return vets to regular life again, rather than tossing them out with the trash, like thousands of homeless vets that are becoming an increasing issue in Florida and some other southern states.

You see where that line on the chart is heading? The rate of carbon increase has almost doubled since they first started taking readings at Mauna Loa over 50 years ago. The trends in our time are towards ever-increasing rates of carbon dioxide, because of Globalization: the amount of fuel consumed to transport products has greatly increased as so much industry has been outsourced. Globalization also ramps up pollution and carbon in the newly industrializing nations, because they have much more lax environmental laws than the home country. This is one reason why claims that our carbon production is declining are a total fraud: if our manufacturers move outside our borders, that carbon is still going up into one atmosphere! Each country doesn't have it's own separate air to breath...should be obvious, but the arguments about who's responsible for carbon emissions miss the point totally Decline in non-renewable resources: The reason why tar sands are being distilled for petroleum products today is the same reason that deep sea drillers are trying to go further and further into the Earth's crust: like all mining and resource extraction, it's a matter of picking the cheapest resources to exploit first. The low-hanging fruit get's picked, and then it's on to the more costly sources...which are not only more costly in dollar terms and putting a dampening effect on dreams of economic expansion, but they are also more costly in environmental terms: more earth has to be dug through or extracted to get at ores, minerals, coal and oil deposits, so carbon output for extraction keeps increasing...as does carbon burned for refining Positive feedbacks already in play: This one is still being hotly debated, but there is growing evidence that we are already tripping positive feedbacks that cause the oceans, permafrost, soils, clathrates (methane trapped in shallow colder waters) to release more methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That last one could make the whole issue moot, since there would be such a rapid increase in carbon levels that everything predicted in IPCC reports would be old news. And surviving...let alone trying to run an economy, could become almost impossible.

First, if nobody caught it, I made a mistake that CO2 levels have stayed below 300 for the last 18 million years. Actually, according the the Tripati rock analysis, that should have been 400ppm. The 300 number...as you can see from the *ice core chart that goes back 800,000 years, and is considered more accurate than chemical analysis of rocks, shows CO2 never exceeding 300 during the brief interglacial periods. And plunging as low as 180 at the peak of some of the ice ages. *that chart was in the linked article...maybe I better post that one also: Re: edit 2, the primary reason I am an anti-capitalist today...or certainly anti-growth-based capitalism is because I don't see any way to resolve our current economic model with a future for life on Earth! I have changed my thinking over the last 10 years, and have come to believe that capitalism inevitably is a self-destructive economic system that by its very nature, alternates between boom and bust cycles. And, without those liberal constraints on capitalism that John Maynard Keynes advised Roosevelt to follow in the 1930's - tax the rich, create large scale public works projects etc., capitalism would have gotten us to the sad state were in now much sooner! But, it took a little time for the Neoliberals and libertarian business interests to change government laws, tax and trade policies to get the almost unfettered capitalism (for the rich) we have today! And that's why we're in the crapper now! But this doesn't have a whole lot to do with environment! If the system was immoral but sustainable in the long term, I would be all for it, or at least for a liberal form of capitalism. But, now I'm inclined to say tear the whole thing down before there's nothing left of this planet!

A few years back, when you used to run that butchered Phil Jones quote as your signature line, weren't you claiming that there was no proof of global warming? You....or I should say, the handful of cranks that you go to for information on global warming, were trumpeting the slowdown in atmospheric temperature increases as proof that there was no global warming, and it was just part of that regular temperature cycle etc. What say you now, that 2014 has gone down in history as the warmest ever? It's official: 2014 was the hottest year on record - and 10 of the warmest have been since 1998

Y'know, there are a lot of places you would be banned for life for making a comment like that! But, I'll just focus on how stupid and asinine it is: FWIW, I'm in the process of giving my car to my eldest son....and taking the sales tax hit...., but mostly because the car is a luxury I can live without, since I can get to work, go places and go shopping without it. I've been practicing for the last year. If I really need a car, I will go get a rental. I don't need to keep a car in the driveway and have all of the associated costs of fueling, servicing and worst of all - insuring a vehicle. And, I'm doing most of the other common energy conservation strategies at home......but, this isn't really about me! Whether I live like Mahatma Gandhi or Kanye West, is not going have great impact on the human trajectory on Planet Earth! This has been one of my irritations with the big environmental organizations as a whole: on global warming and related ecological issues, they have their corporate partners, and focus the bulk of their attention on personal lifestyle choices of average consumers. They don't question anymore, whether the modern day model of consumer capitalism is the root problem. The consumer advocates of the 70's, were the last to publicly call for controls on advertising and question the safety and environmental impacts of commercial and industrial practices, at a time when there was a rapid transfer to using plastics. For a brief time, I recall laws being put in place to reduce the excessive plastic packaging of products and ending nonreturnable pop bottles. But, then it all vanished, and we have more of both and many other needless artifacts to fill up the landfills! My general understanding of environment crises over the last year or two, is that almost nobody with access to a wide public audience is trying to assess what is/or what would be needed to deal with the problems in a realistic manner. Thanks for the insight into your own personal ethics and values! Does your contempt for future generations include your children...if you have any?

It doesn't matter! Even if they switched right now....which I don't believe is going to happen, there is a legacy of carbon to be added to the atmosphere and what's worse, future generations will have to live with it for several thousand years to come....if there's anyone alive of course. It would make sense to err on the side of caution when it comes to the planetary systems which are still poorly understood. Instead, it's full steam ahead, and let's see what happens! From a philosophical pov, I believe we have moral obligations to people we might effect but are separated by distance. And the same thing should apply regarding separation by time! If we use up too much of today's non-renewable resources for immediate comforts and carbonize the atmosphere further....leaving a hot, depleted world for anyone coming after us, that is a crime worse than genocide being committed by present generations.