Foom...Foom...Foom...It's huge! It's colossal!! It's an omnibus post!!!
From "Democracy Now!"
Top Climate Expert: Crisis is Worse Than We Think & Scientists Are Self-Censoring to Downplay Risk
December 08, 2015
"Loss and Damage": U.S. Stymies Push for Compensation for Climate Devastation at U.N. Climate Summit
Guests
Kevin Anderson, deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester in Britain.
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This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
Ahead of the talks, more than 180 nations pledged to voluntarily reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but many climate justice groups say far more needs to be done to keep global warming in check.
We’re joined now by one of the world’s leading climate scientists who has come to the Paris talks with a shocking message: The climate crisis is more severe than even many scientists have acknowledged. Kevin Anderson is deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester in Britain. He said many scientists are self-censoring their own work to downplay the severity of the climate crisis.
Dr. Anderson recently wrote, quote, "Yet so far we simply have not been prepared to accept the revolutionary implications of our own findings, and even when we do we are reluctant to voice such thoughts openly, many are ultimately choosing to censor their own research."
Kevin Anderson, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us.
KEVIN ANDERSON: It’s nice to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: You came in from Britain?
KEVIN ANDERSON: Yes, I did. Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: How did you get here?
KEVIN ANDERSON: By train. I always travel by train or ship.
AMY GOODMAN: I remember when we were in Copenhagen, you refused to fly.
KEVIN ANDERSON: Yeah, I haven’t flown for 11 years. Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Why?
KEVIN ANDERSON: Because I think it’s really important that those of us who think climate change is an essential, pivotal issue for modern society demonstrate that we can lead good lives, we can carry out our jobs, without having very high carbon footprints. So whilst the emissions from my particular activities aren’t quite so important—I’m just one person—the sort of symbolic message that it sends is actually very important. And it’s already sort of engendered a different attitude amongst some of the academic colleagues, who now also take a similar approach. They try to avoid flying wherever they reasonably can. And sometimes that can make things quite difficult, but we have to—we have to make that sort of effort.
AMY GOODMAN: So why are you here?
KEVIN ANDERSON: I’m here because there’s a, I think, very important scientific message still to be made and to be related to not just the policymakers and the people here, but also to wider society, to the civil society groups, to the NGOs, but, I mean, even, of course, for us to discuss amongst the scientists that are here, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: And what is that message?
KEVIN ANDERSON: The message is that the voluntary submissions that have been put forward by all of the countries, when you add all of these up, they are far, far above the level of what we call dangerous climate change, that all of our leaders have committed to, to avoid going above this 2 degrees C rise, I think about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. But actually, when you add up all of the commitments that the countries are making in terms of their reductions in emissions, then actually it’s far, far above that, nearer 3 or 4 degrees C temperature rise, which is a huge increase. That’s a global average. Remember, that is a global average. And most of the globe is covered in water, so on land that’s an average of, if we carry on like we’re going now, 4, 5, possibly even as high as 6 degrees C temperature rise.
AMY GOODMAN: So what does that look like on the ground?
KEVIN ANDERSON: If we saw those sorts of changes, we’d see dramatic reductions in the staple food crops. So that’s a really big issue, if we have big 40 percent or so reductions in rice, maize, wheat, sorghum, those sorts of crops. Huge changes in sea level rise by the end of the century, but also locking in very large sea level rise changes going forward beyond that. And we’d see increase in droughts and in flooding, increase in severity of typhoons in the Southern Hemisphere. So, really, a lot of the—you know, we have all learned to live with the weather that we’ve had. And actually, what we’d be seeing are significant increases in the extremes around the planet, so we’d all suffer very significantly from a 4 degrees C temperature rise.
AMY GOODMAN: You have said that scientists, climate scientists, are self-censoring. What are they saying?
KEVIN ANDERSON: Well, those of us who look at the—running between the science and then translating that into what that means for policymakers, what we are afraid of doing is putting forward analysis that questions the sort of economic paradigm, the economic way that we run society today. So, we think—actually, we don’t question that. So what we do is we fine-tune our analysis so it fits within a sort of a—the political and economic framing of society, the current political and economic framing. So we don’t really say that—actually, our science now asks fundamental questions about this idea of economic growth in the short term, and we’re very reluctant to say that. In fact, the funding bodies often are reluctant to fund research that raises those questions. So the whole setup, not just the scientists, the research community around it that funds the research, the journalists, events like this, we’re all being—we’re all deliberately being slightly sort of self-delusional. We all know the situation is much more severe than we’re prepared to voice openly. And we all know this. So it is a—this is a collective sort of façade, a mask that we have.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s just talk about the headlines today.
KEVIN ANDERSON: OK.
AMY GOODMAN: On Democracy Now!, we talked about Beijing issuing its first-ever red alert for air pollution, as China’s capital city is engulfed in thick smog rife with poisonous chemicals that can make residents sick from simply stepping outside. This isn’t because there’s some catastrophic meltdown at a coal plant or some factory.
KEVIN ANDERSON: No.
AMY GOODMAN: This is just daily life in Beijing.
KEVIN ANDERSON: Yes, and that’s because the sorts of power that they’re using in Beijing, and lots of it is being generated in Beijing, and the cars, as well, are there running in Beijing, they’re not running cleanly. So they’re putting lots of very nasty pollutants in the atmosphere. They’re also obviously putting a lot of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, as well. So it’s both then a local air pollution issue and a real issue for climate change. And to the Chinese’ credit, they are significantly trying to reduce the amount of local air pollution in their cities, because they know it has a big health impact, they know it has a big economic impact. So the Chinese are moving in the right direction, but nowhere near fast enough for us to avoid this 2 degrees C temperature rise.
AMY GOODMAN: And then you have what’s happening in England right now, in Cumbria. You have in Norway, for example—
KEVIN ANDERSON: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —an absolute crisis—
KEVIN ANDERSON: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —that they’re saying they’re seeing problems like they haven’t seen in a hundred years.
KEVIN ANDERSON: Yeah, and, again, in India. There’s some big floods in India, as well. So we are seeing—we are seeing lots of extreme weather events. Now, it is always—we have to be very careful as scientists. Scientists are always slightly annoyingly conservative here. We cannot say that any one of these events is a climate change event. But we can say that our climate change science and analysis makes it very clear that the sorts of things that we’re doing in terms of emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere means we will see more of these sorts of events and increased severity of these events, as well. So these are indicative of exactly what we would expect to see.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what we consume in the United States, what you consume in Britain, compared with what is consumed in other parts of the world?
KEVIN ANDERSON: Well, when we think about carbon dioxide emissions, which is basically how much fossil fuel we’re burning, 50 percent of the global carbon dioxide emissions from our burning of fossil fuels comes from just 10 percent of the population. So it’s quite a small percent of the population are responsible for the lion’s share of the emissions. And if you sort of dig down a little bit deeper than that, you find some even more disturbing figures—that the top 1 percent in the U.S., they emit two-and-a-half thousand times more—two-and-a-half thousand times more—than the bottom 1 percent globally. So there’s a huge difference between who is responsible for the CO2 emissions, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and therefore the climate change that we are beginning to witness now. And I think when we think about this in terms of what we need to do in terms of policy, this is not about everyone in the world making big reductions in their energy consumption. It’s about those of us who are responsible for the lion’s share of the emissions making those big changes.
AMY GOODMAN: Compare what Americans consume and what Europeans consume.
KEVIN ANDERSON: Well, the Americans are roughly twice as much as a typical European. So, you know—and really, your quality of life is—when we look at all the indices for a pure quality of life, the quality of life of a typical American is no better than the quality of life for a typical European. But your cars are much heavier and bigger. Your refrigerators are bigger. I mean, I think sort of bigness probably captures the difference between the U.S. and the EU. So, you know, I think—so, the Americans could live just as good a quality of life as they do today, and they could probably do almost all the things that they do today and significantly reduce their emissions down to sort of the EU level. Now, that would not be enough for us to avoid dangerous climate change, but it would be a huge step in the right direction.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you say to, oh, presidential candidates, like Donald Trump says he doesn’t believe in human-made global warming, says sometimes there’s global warming and sometimes there’s global cooling?
KEVIN ANDERSON: There’s certainly a small but very vociferous contingent in the U.S. who basically do not believe in science, if we’re really blunt about it. They don’t believe in climate change, which is—there’s nothing new about climate change. We’ve been doing scientific analysis on this for at least 200 years. It’s not a new science. They don’t often believe in Darwin and evolution. And I think, really, the particular group that don’t really like the idea of what science has to say about many subjects, that group, we’re not going to change their minds. I think we have to talk to the other people who actually are open to the fact that what we are looking at is a scientifically well-understood area. We are very clear—the science is categorical—that the emissions we put in the atmosphere from burning of our fossil fuels are changing the climate. Even the skeptics are saying that. Maybe not the denialists, but the climate skeptics do not deny the fact that the human emissions of carbon dioxide emissions are changing the temperature.
AMY GOODMAN: You are very critical of models that rely on negative emissions through technologies that remove carbon dioxide. Explain.
KEVIN ANDERSON: Yes. This comes back to this idea we all want to sit within our current political and economic framework. We don’t want to question it. But when we are looking at a temperature—a 2 degrees C temperature rise, which I say, you know, is a huge shift in the average temperature for the planet, then we have a certain carbon budget, a certain amount of carbon dioxide that we can emit into the atmosphere over the century. And we know that very well from the science. The problem is, we have emitted so much of that, we’ve used up so much of that budget—like money in your bank account, we’ve spent that money already—that what’s left is so small, so that if we are going to stay within that budget, we now have to either make dramatic changes to how we live our lives—people like me and you, we have to, you know, fly much less, if fly at all, live in smaller houses, drive much less, consume less goods. So, those of us that—the wealthy parts of the society will have to make those sorts of changes. But because we’re—the scientists are reluctant to make that point politically, what they’re saying is, we can increase the size of the carbon budget by this dial here, which means that we will—can suck the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in 2050 to 2070 with a technology that just does not exist at the moment. So we are putting already almost all of our eggs in a basket that—a technology that does not exist. At some point a long way in the future, we’ll suck the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Kevin Anderson, deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester in Britain. If you could address what is happening here? I think especially for Americans, there’s hardly any coverage of what’s going on here. The world leaders came the first two days, and that got maybe a little bit of coverage, because it was the largest gathering of world leaders in the history of the world. But now, what’s being worked out?
KEVIN ANDERSON: OK. All the leaders arrived very early here in this event in Paris. They also all arrived with their voluntary contributions, what each country would do. So Obama came with what the U.S. would do. The EU has its versions. Tanzania has—says, "This is what we can do." So every country—almost every country in the world has said, "We can make this level of change."
AMY GOODMAN: Voluntary. Voluntary.
KEVIN ANDERSON: Voluntary, yes, voluntary. There’s no legal basis to this. This is a real concern.
AMY GOODMAN: And that’s because?
KEVIN ANDERSON: Well, I mean, politically, it’s hard to get a legal basis, but very significantly, because we know that it will not be passed in the States, that what comes out of this agreement—
AMY GOODMAN: In the United States.
KEVIN ANDERSON: In the United States. So the United States really is—it’s almost, I say, blackmailing the rest of the world, because they’re saying, "You cannot have a legal framework because we will not sign it." So—and everyone has recognized that. And because they say it’s very important for us to have an inclusive political agenda coming out of Paris, we are prepared to accept this voluntary arrangement system, which, I mean, personally, I think, is a real problem, in terms of what it means about people having to make those adjustments in their own countries. I mean, I think a legally binding commitment would be something that would drive us a little bit further than a voluntary agreement, which we, of course, like most voluntary goals and targets, will no doubt breach.
But anyway, every leader arrived here, was saying, "This is what our country can do." And then the leaders go away, but they leave their negotiators here. And then there are the scientists here and others who are saying, "What you’ve put together is not enough for 2 degrees C temperature rise, and we need to do lots more." So then the discussions that go on for the following two weeks are on the detail of how can we tighten up those agreements, can we have a review procedure so every few years we go back and review those agreements on the basis of what’s happened in terms of emissions and the latest science.
So, you know, by the end of this two weeks, what we hope to have is a strong agreement, even though it won’t be legally binding, a strong agreement that says that countries will do particular levels of—deliver particular levels of emission reductions and that we will review those every few years. But it’s very unlikely what we will get by the end of this event is a document that is in line with the 2 degrees C temperature rise—in other words, with avoiding dangerous climate change. So Paris is not the endgame. What happens after Paris is very important, indeed.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the climate fund. What is it? What has—I remember in Copenhagen when it was Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, who announced how much money would go into the climate fund.
KEVIN ANDERSON: Yeah. Well, this is this discussion about what we call "loss and damage." And basically, it’s money from the wealthy parts of the world that they see as giving to the poorer parts of the world to help the poorer parts of the world deal with adaptation and the impacts of climate change and adaptation. And when we think about that, the amount of money that is on the—well, it’s not on the table. The amount of money that was proposed was $100 billion per year, $100 billion every year. Now, we haven’t got that. The countries haven’t come together to agree on that. But when we really think about $100 billion, that’s 1/15th of the size of the U.K. economy, a relatively small country on the globe. And that’s all we are prepared to give as a collective—the collective, all the wealthy countries—to the poorer countries to deal with the impacts of climate change. So—and we are all arguing about this. Should it be 110? Should it be 90? Who’s it going to come from? This is a small crumb that has fallen off the table, and we are all fighting over what size that crumb should be.
But actually, the real argument is, we should be—on the table, we should be talking about trillions of dollars that are necessary to help the poorer parts of the world not build high-carbon infrastructure, to deal with the impacts of climate change, to make their societies resilient to the climate change that is locked into the system because we have carried on emitting when we knew what the science has been telling us for at least 25 to 30 years. So this fund is there to help the poor parts of the world, but it’s such a small amount of money. And then, very cleverly, they make us argue about this small amount of money. So, it’s all part of, I think, this sort of sad indictment of modern society, that we were not prepared to make the sorts of changes that are necessary, either in terms of reducing our carbon dioxide emissions or even helping the more impoverished poor people who have not made any contribution to the problem that we’re trying to solve now.
AMY GOODMAN: As we wrap up, Kevin Anderson, what do you think is the most important takeaway from this conference right now, from your work, from what you see is happening in the world?
KEVIN ANDERSON: The most important thing is that we can all trigger change. This is not just about world leaders. It’s not just about the big charities, the NGOs. It’s not just about the scientific community. This is a problem for all 7 billion people on the planet. And we all need to be driving—in our own lives, with our colleagues and friends at work, with our local politicians, we ought to be pushing really hard for an agreement or for a change in the way we run our society to become very, very low-carbon, and very quickly indeed. So, it is up to all of us. There are 7 [billion] stakeholders involved with climate change, and we all have a role to play.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you hopeful?
KEVIN ANDERSON: No, I’m not hopeful. But if we don’t try, we are guaranteed to fail.
AMY GOODMAN: Kevin Anderson, deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester in Britain. This is Democracy Now!
From NY Times
To Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Is No Longer a Laughing Matter
But
Mrs. Clinton also strove to recognize something stirring in the
electorate that Mr. Trump had clearly tapped into. “It’s O.K., it’s O.K.
to be afraid,” she said. “When bad things happen, it does cause anxiety
and fear,” she added. “But then you pull yourself together and,
especially, if you want to be a leader of our country, and you say:
‘O.K., what are we going to do about it? How are we going to be
prepared?’”
Clinton Calls Trump’s Plan ‘Shameful’
The Democratic presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday in Waterloo, Iowa, that Donald J.
Trump’s plan to block Muslims from entering the United States was "not
only shameful; it's dangerous.
The remarks bore little resemblance to Mrs. Clinton’s previous dismissals of Mr. Trump. She had portrayed him as a reality television sideshow who voiced more extreme beliefs that, she contended, his more serious Republican rivals shared.
But
since Mr. Trump’s response to the Dec. 2 terrorist attack in San
Bernardino, Calif., Mrs. Clinton and her campaign, confounded by his
continued strength in the polls, have had to rethink how they handle Mr.
Trump and what his candidacy, and the anger in the electorate that has
fueled it, means for her chances in 2016.
Some of her own voters are giving her reason to.
Bennie
Stickley, a 75-year-old in Gilbertville, Iowa, who retired from a John
Deere factory, said he was supporting Mrs. Clinton but agrees with Mr.
Trump’s proposal to bar Muslims. “I’m for him on that,” he said. “We
shouldn’t be letting those people into the country,” he added.
“She’s
as amazed as everyone else is” by his staying power, said Edward G.
Rendell, a former governor of Pennsylvania, who recently spoke to Mrs.
Clinton about Mr. Trump.
That
befuddlement played out in the 24 hours after Mr. Trump released his
proposal on Monday. The Clinton campaign, caught off guard, seemed to
grapple publicly with how to respond.
Mrs.
Clinton alternated between tugging at the heartstrings with messages of
inclusiveness and capitalizing on Mr. Trump’s comments in ways that
some Democrats considered unseemly. After she quickly rejected Mr.
Trump’s remarks on Twitter, a fund-raising email went out that night
from a top aide, Huma Abedin, under the subject line “I’m a proud
Muslim.”
The
campaign released a “Love Trumps Hate” bumper sticker, and on Tuesday,
Mrs. Clinton published an open letter on Medium titled “No, Donald Trump, We’re Not Barring Muslims From Entering the Country” that pleaded for tolerance.
But
privately, campaign aides said a day later that the dust had not
settled, and they were searching for how best to hit back at Mr. Trump
without dismissing the heightened feelings of insecurity that he was
playing upon.
By
Wednesday in Waterloo, Mrs. Clinton struck a more somber tone. She had
intended to discuss her corporate tax proposals at the town hall, but
ended up devoting much of her time to Mr. Trump.
“I’m afraid,” a voter who rushed to the rope line after the meeting told Mrs. Clinton. “People are being so vitriolic.”
Mrs.
Clinton nodded sympathetically. “That’s why I called Trump out at the
beginning of what I said today,” she said. “I think it’s shameful for
our country to have people running around to be president of the United
States, saying these things, demonizing people.”
Moments
later, when a college student asked Mrs. Clinton to make a Snapchat
video saying, “You’re fired, Donald Trump,” she demurred.
“I’m
not going to say that,” she said, as if to do so would cross a line.
Instead, she agreed to make a lighthearted, quick video for the young
man that did not mention Mr. Trump.
On
Thursday night, when asked about Mr. Trump in an appearance on NBC’s
“Late Night with Seth Meyers,” Mrs. Clinton said, “You know, I have to
say, Seth. I no longer think he’s funny," adding that Mr. Trump’s latest
comments had “gone way over the line.”
Mrs.
Clinton is not the only Democrat struggling to settle on a strategy for
responding to Mr. Trump’s campaign, the unpredictable Republican race
and what Mr. Trump’s appeal says about the mood of the electorate.
Even
when the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, sternly said Mr.
Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims “disqualifies him from serving as
president,” Mr. Earnest also called Mr. Trump a “carnival barker” and
poked fun at his “fake hair.”
“The
elite political community has been struggling to figure out how to deal
with him because they don’t fundamentally understand the phenomenon,”
said David Axelrod, former senior adviser to President Obama. “He’s
speaking to something that they’re just getting their arms around.
If Mrs. Clinton and other Democrats are certain that Mr. Trump’s candidacy is harming the Republican Party, they appear less sure how to respond to it.
Mr.
Rendell condemned Mr. Trump’s more incendiary ideas, but added that
there were parts of his message, like the need to hem in China and put a
stop to currency manipulation that hurts America in trade deals, that
could appeal to white working-class Democrats who are concerned about
the shrinking middle class.
“A
lot of what he says resonates with what you and I would call
‘reasonable, thinking people,’” Mr. Rendell said. “That’s the part that I
think is important for Hillary or any Republican running, or Bernie
Sanders, or anybody. That’s the part that I think is important for them
to realize.”
Many
of Mrs. Clinton’s advisers say they still doubt Mr. Trump will be the
Republican nominee, but they have contemplated what it would mean for
Mrs. Clinton, a policy wonk known for her 12-point plans to approach
problems, to run against the visceral Mr. Trump, said several of those
advisers who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.
In Washington on Thursday, Mrs. Clinton’s pollster, Joel Benenson, told a campaign briefing that he believed Mr. Trump would linger and be a "dominant" force, but that he could not predict whom the nominee would be, according to an attendee.
In Washington on Thursday, Mrs. Clinton’s pollster, Joel Benenson, told a campaign briefing that he believed Mr. Trump would linger and be a "dominant" force, but that he could not predict whom the nominee would be, according to an attendee.
Former President Bill Clinton has been particularly intrigued by Mr. Trump’s appeal, referring to his campaign as ideal for what he dismissively calls an “Instagram
election” of quick sound bites and easy responses (“Build a wall!”
“Close the borders!”) to extremely complex problems, said one of these
advisers with direct knowledge of Mr. Clinton’s conversations.
Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has tried to portray Mr. Trump as the id of the Republican Party,
saying what his more measured rivals think. This week, the campaign
released a “Who said it: Donald Trump or not Donald Trump?” online quiz.
“When it comes to hateful rhetoric, it’s difficult to tell the
difference between the Republicans running for president,” the quiz
read.
That
connection may not be durable with voters after Mr. Trump’s proposed
ban on Muslims, which some of his Republican rivals forcefully rejected.
At
the same time, the threat of a homegrown terrorist attack has elevated
anxieties and made Mr. Trump’s proposal appealing even to some voters
who support Mrs. Clinton.
In
Waterloo, Mike Russell, 60, called Mr. Trump “an idiot.” But when he
was asked if he thought Mrs. Clinton had been aggressive enough in
outlining her plan to defeat ISIS, Mr. Russell paused.
“I don’t know,” he said. “That last deal in California, that changes the game.”
From Daily Kos: Suspected Planned Parenthood shooter: 'I am a warrior for the babies'
“I am guilty there will be no trial. I am a warrior for the babies,” he said in an outburst in El Paso County Court overheard by CBS4 reporter Rick Sallinger.
Soon afterwards he stated “You’ll never know the amount of blood I saw in that place.”A warrior, eh? Not an advocate. Not a supporter. A bloodthirsty warrior.
Isn't it about time we start calling this sustained effort by the anti-abortion movement what it is: domestic terrorism?
And shouldn't the anti-abortion movement be called upon to rein in its
And no, that’s not just a peril of passionate activism.
When's the last time you heard about a choice advocate picking up a gun and mowing down a bunch of people screaming, "I am a warrior for abortion"?
Chris Herbert
Chris Herbert is a British war veteran. He lost his leg as
the result of a bomb attack in Basra back in 2007. In recent days, Chris
has been approached by people wanting and expecting him to rail against
Islam and Muslims—you know, the way people who dodge drafts like to do.
Instead, Chris Herbert went to Facebook and wrote a piece that began like this:
Getting frustrated by some people expecting racism from me, because I got blown up. Here it is:
Yes. A Muslim man blew me up, and I lost my leg.
A Muslim man also lost his arm that day wearing a British Uniform. A Muslim medic was in the helicopter that took me from the field A Muslim surgeon performed the surgery that saved my life A Muslim Nurse was part of the team that helped me when I returned to the UK A Muslim Healthcare Assistant was part of the team that sorted out my day to day needs in rehabilitation when I was learning to walk A Muslim taxi driver gave me a free ride the first time I went for a beer with my Dad after I came home. A Muslim doctor offered my Dad comfort and advice in a pub, when he didnt know how to deal with my medicines and side effects.He pointed out that his biggest problems have actually been with white British men. He knows who he likes and dislikes and blaming an entire group of people for the actions of a few is just a dumb as it sounds when you read it.
Blaming all Muslims for the actions of groups like Daeshe and the Taliban, is like blaming all Christians for the actions of the KKK or Westboro Baptist Church.The post has since gone viral, leading to this morning’s post from Herbert.
Get a grip of your lives, hug your family and get back to work.
Woke up, walked the dogs, and put on game film, I have a game on Sunday and they don’t care if I went viral!You can read the whole post below the fold.
Getting frustrated by some people expecting racism from me, because I got blown up. Here it is:
Yes. A Muslim man blew me up, and I lost my leg.
A Muslim man also lost his arm that day wearing a British Uniform. A Muslim medic was in the helicopter that took me from the field A Muslim surgeon performed the surgery that saved my life A Muslim Nurse was part of the team that helped me when I returned to the UK A Muslim Healthcare Assistant was part of the team that sorted out my day to day needs in rehabilitation when I was learning to walk A Muslim taxi driver gave me a free ride the first time I went for a beer with my Dad after I came home. A Muslim doctor offered my Dad comfort and advice in a pub, when he didnt know how to deal with my medicines and side effects.
Contrary to that, A white brit spat in my girlfriends face for 'fucking a cripple when you could have me [him]' A White brit pushed my wheelchair away from a lift so he could use it first. A White brit screamed at my Dad for parking in a disabled bay when I was in the services coming home (Although, alot of people helped in my recovery! I dont hate white brits either! hahaha)
Point is, fuck off. I know who I dislike, and I know who I dont. I know who I appreciate, and I know who I dont. If you want to hate an entire race of men and women for the actions of a few dickheads feel free, but don't push your views on me, thinking I am an easy target because one douchebag decided it was my day to die.
Blaming all Muslims for the actions of groups like Daeshe and the Taliban, is like blaming all Christians for the actions of the KKK or Westboro Baptist Church. Get a grip of your lives, hug your family and get back to work.
From Daily Kos: Mother of well-known conservative blogger and pundit shoots holes in his story
Editor's note: see the original article for the tweets. The screen captures aren't coming across today.
Erick Erickson isn't the only one shooting holes in stories
Ruh-roh. Erick Erickson, editor of RedState.com,
has some explaining to do. It all started when he sent out the
following tweet on the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor:
Just when Erick thought the drama was likely dying down, J.K. Trotter at Gawker reached out to his mother to confirm the story:
“I’ve never heard that before,” Erickson’s mother, Kathleen Erickson, told Gawker when we asked about Erickson’s statement in a telephone conversation this morning. After we read aloud her son’s tweet to her, she insisted, “Whatever you heard, I think that is completely your idea, I have never heard of that before. Somebody is making that up about my son.”Well, that sounds a little different than Erick’s story. Reached again by Gawker, Erick’s mother went further:
Ms. Erickson added, “As far as Asian food, we love Asian food. As far as the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor, I’m very grateful that many of the Japanese people became Christian. We know many people who are Japanese, they are a very nice people.”So, what say Erick Erickson now?
Ah. Now he seems to be insinuating it was a one-time event. But that isn’t what he’s been saying on Twitter for years.
And one final note and a little food for thought—his defense seems to be that his mother, at age 73, is too elderly to possibly remember anything—yet nearly all the candidates he supports want to raise the retirement age in this country to age 70 years old. And the candidate he was eagerly defending just two days ago, Donald Trump, is 69 years old. He’d be 74 at the end of his (never going to happen) first term. Does Erick consider him to be too elderly for the office?
From Daily Kos: Great Scott! Trump stripped of ambassador role and honorary degree
While citizens are petitioning to keep Trump out of the UK, the Scottish first minister is making their own move—stripping The Donald of his position as ambassador. From Buzzfeed UK:
Trump has been an ambassador since 2006 as part of the GlobalScot network, which promotes the country’s businesses abroad and helps Scottish businesspeople to open trade routes in different countries.
However, following his statement on Monday that Muslims should be prevented from entering the US, first minister Sturgeon said Trump has been stripped of his ambassadorial role with immediate effect.
A spokesperson for the Scottish government said: “Mr Trump’s recent remarks have shown that he is no longer fit to be a business ambassador for Scotland and the first minister has decided his membership of the respected GlobalScot business network should be withdrawn with immediate effect.”They weren’t the only ways distancing themselves from Donald Trump:
Meanwhile, Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen has revoked an honorary degree from Trump due to “statements that are wholly incompatible” with the university’s values.Great job, Trump. Making America embarrassed again.
From AlterNet News & Politics
Here’s What a Man Who Studied Every Suicide Attack in the World Says About ISIS’ Motives
December 8, 2015
Close up of the flag of
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or the Islamic State of Iraq
and Syria (ISIS) on silky fabric.
Photo Credit: Ronnie Chua
Photo Credit: Ronnie Chua
Terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda are widely seen as being motivated by their radical theology. But according to Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago and founder of the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, this view is too simplistic. Pape knows his subject; he and his colleagues have studied every suicide attack in the world since 1980, evaluating over 4,600 in all.
He says that religious fervor is not a motive unto itself. Rather, it serves as a tool for recruitment and a potent means of getting people to overcome their fear of death and natural aversion to killing innocents. “Very often, suicide attackers realize they have instincts for self-preservation that they have to overcome,” and religious beliefs are often part of that process, said Pape in an appearance on my radio show, Politics and Reality Radio, last week. But, Pape adds, there have been “many hundreds of secular suicide attackers,” which suggests that radical theology alone doesn’t explain terrorist attacks. From 1980 until about 2003, the “world leader” in suicide attacks was the Tamil Tigers, a secular Marxist group of Hindu nationalists in Sri Lanka.
According to Pape’s research, underlying the outward expressions of religious fervor, ISIS’s goals, like those of most terrorist groups, are distinctly earthly:
What 95 percent of all suicide attacks have in common, since 1980, is not religion, but a specific strategic motivation to respond to a military intervention, often specifically a military occupation, of territory that the terrorists view as their homeland or prize greatly. From Lebanon and the West Bank in the 80s and 90s, to Iraq and Afghanistan, and up through the Paris suicide attacks we’ve just experienced in the last days, military intervention—and specifically when the military intervention is occupying territory—that’s what prompts suicide terrorism more than anything else.ISIS emerged from the insurgency against the US occupation of Iraq just as the Al Qaeda network traces its origins to the Afghan resistance to the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.
This view differs from that of Hillary Clinton and others who believe that ISIS “has nothing whatsoever to do” with Islam, as well as the more common belief, articulated by Graeme Wood in The Atlantic, that ISIS can be reduced to “a religious group with carefully considered beliefs.” It’s a group whose outward expressions of religious fervor serve its secular objectives of controlling resources and territory. Virtually all of the group’s leaders were once high-ranking officers in Iraq’s secular military.
Pape’s analysis is consistent with what Lydia Wilson found when she interviewed captured ISIS fighters in Iraq. “They are woefully ignorant about Islam and have difficulty answering questions about Sharia law, militant jihad, and the caliphate,” she recently wrote in The Nation. “But a detailed, or even superficial, knowledge of Islam isn’t necessarily relevant to the ideal of fighting for an Islamic State, as we have seen from the Amazon order of Islam for Dummies by one British fighter bound for ISIS.”
But how does the notion that terrorists are intent on getting powers to withdraw from their territory square with the view that the group’s shift to terrorist attacks in the West is designed to draw France and its allies into a ground war in Syria? Writing at theHarvard Business Review, Northeastern University political scientist Max Abrahms argues that these analyses are contradictory. But Pape says that it’s important to distinguish between ISIS’s long-term goals and its shorter-term strategies to achieve them:
It’s about the timing. How are you going to get the United States, France and other major powers to truly abandon and withdraw from the Persian Gulf when they have such a large interest in oil? A single attack isn’t going to do it. Bin Laden did 9/11 hoping that it would suck a large American ground army into Afghanistan, which would help recruit a large number of suicide attackers to punish America for intervening. We didn’t do that – we used very limited military force in Afghanistan. But what Bin Laden didn’t count on was that we would send a large ground army into Iraq to knock Saddam out. And that turned out to be the most potent recruiting ground for anti-American terrorists that ever was, more so than Bin Laden had ever hoped for in his wildest dreams.
So if your goal is to create military costs on these states and get them to withdraw, you’ve got to figure out a way to really up the ante. And the way that you really up the ante is to get them to overreact. You try to get them to send a large ground army in so that you can truly drive up the costs. That’s what ISIS is trying to sucker us into doing.Another theory holds that ISIS—and Al Qaeda—set their sights on France in order to polarize mainstream French society against its Muslim community. As University of Michigan historian Juan Cole put it after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, “The problem for a terrorist group like Al Qaeda is that its recruitment pool is Muslims, but most Muslims are not interested in terrorism. Most Muslims are not even interested in politics, much less political Islam.” In Cole’s formulation, if violent Islamic fundamentalists “can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination.”
Pape says this analysis is also consistent with his research:
If
ISIS is going to end the military intervention by France, one attack is
not likely to do it. In the statement that ISIS released, they say that
they want a storm of similar attacks against Paris and other French
targets because their goal is to knock France out of the military
coalition. To do that, to achieve that goal, they’re going to need to
recruit many more attackers to do suicide attacks like the ones that
occurred in Paris. In the short-term it makes perfect sense to want an
environment that stirs up hostility towards Muslims in France, because
that will make them much easier to recruit for their longer-term object
of kicking France of the coalition.
The U.S. strategy against ISIS is working and it’s putting enormous pressure on ISIS. It’s a strategy of air and ground power, with the ground power coming from local allies—the Kurds and the Shia in the region, and even some Sunnis who are opposed to ISIS. They’re increasingly working with us on the ground while we’re fighting from the air. The problem here is not that we don’t have enough ground forces.
It’s because the strategy is working that ISIS is now desperate, and is shifting its pattern of behavior. In October, ISIS launched only eight suicide attacks in Iraq and Syria, when they normally do 30 to 35 per month, and that’s the same month that they shifted to suicide attacks in Ankara, Turkey, on October 10. Then they downed the Russian plane on October 31st, and now the Paris attacks on November 13th. As ISIS’ territory has shrunk in Iraq and Syria, it is now clearly shifting its suicide attack resources out of Iraq and Syria, and into Turkey, into killing Russian civilians, and now also into Paris.In Pape’s view, most of the conventional wisdom about what terrorists want to achieve is wrong, and that disconnect has limited the effectiveness of the West’s response to terrorism.
Robert Pape’s responses have been condensed and edited for clarity. You can listen to the entire 18-minute interview or download the whole show at iTunes. It also featured Rebecca Hamlin, an assistant professor of legal studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the author ofLet Me Be a Refugee: Administrative Justice and the Politics of Asylum in the United States, Canada and Australia, discussing Syrian refugees, and Salon columnist Heather “Digby” Parton talking about the ugly politics of terrorism.
From AlterNet
Cops Shoots Unarmed Man for No Reason, Cover It Up and Won’t Be Charged
December 11, 2015
Photo Credit: bikeriderlondon/Shutterstock.com
Andrew Thomas, 26, made a deadly decision to get behind the wheel after he’d been drinking on Thanksgiving night. With his 23-year-old wife, Darien Ehorn in the passenger’s seat, Thomas left the Canteena Bar and was immediately pursued by Paradise, California, police officer Patrick Feaster.
In a pursuit that barely lasted a minute, Thomas loses control of his Toyota Four-Runner, hit the median and flipped over. Tragically, Ehorn was ejected from the vehicle and died on the scene.
Officer Feaster then gets out of his vehicle, gun drawn, and as Thomas attempts to get out of the vehicle, in a likely attempt to check on his wife, the cop shoots him in the neck.
Thomas posed absolutely no threat to the officer who was 10-20 feet away from Thomas when he fired. There was no possible way the department could spin the shooting into Feaster somehow fearing for his life. So, they did something entirely different.
They claimed it was an accident.
Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey announced on Tuesday that Feaster would not face any charges, claiming that Feaster’s gun merely “went off” when it struck Thomas in the neck, hitting him in the C7 and T1 vertebrae, which will likely mean he will never walk again.
If this truly were an accidental shooting, Feaster would have probably reported firing his gun.
However, that didn’ happen.
When backup arrived on the scene, Feaster said nothing of discharging his firearm. For 11 minutes, Thomas lay bleeding out in the vehicle before anyone even found the shot.
Only when the commanding officer on the scene suggested an investigator return to the Canteena to find out if Thomas had been shot at the bar did Feaster reveal he’d pulled the trigger.
According to Ramsey, there were multiple factors investigators used to determine the shooting to be accidental, conveniently ignoring the fact that Feaster tried to cover it up.
Ramsey, in some weird play on words, said the evidence shows the shooting to be accidental, and possibly negligent, but not criminally so. “This shooting is not justified, but also not criminal.”
He then went on to describe things that are not at all present in the video, such as Feaster being “surprised by the gun’s firing.”
The dash cam video shows Officer Feaster was not prepared for and was surprised by the guns firing. The pistol discharges in mid-stride and the officer both flinches his head to the right and does a stutter step indicative of an officer not prepared for nor intentionally firing his pistol. Additionally, officers normally train to fire a minimum of two shots. There was no second shot and the officer immediately holstered his weapon after the discharge.The flinch and the step were not present, and, there was no need to fire a second shot as Thomas collapsed back into the vehicle immediately after the first one.
Since the shooting, Feaster has been on paid administrative leave pending an ‘internal’ investigation. But, rest assured, since the DA decided not to file charges, there is no possible way that the department will.
Thomas, who had a blood alcohol concentration of .15, and who may never walk again, is expected to face driving under the influence and vehicular manslaughter charges.
From AlterNet Culture
Gun Linked to Paris Attacks Traced Back to Florida Arms Dealer Implicated in Iran-Contra Scandal
December 12, 2015
Photo Credit: Reagan Library/Wikipedia
A gun linked to last month’s Paris mass shootings has been traced back to a Florida arms dealer.
The serial number for a M92 semi-automatic pistol linked to the deadly Nov. 13 terrorist attacks matched one for a weapon delivered by the Zastava arms factory in May 2013 to Century International Arms in Delray Beach, reported the Palm Beach Post.
Michael Sucher, the owner of Century Arms, did not answer calls seeking comment Thursday and the doors to his shop were closed as TV news crews gathered outside.
Employees leaving the arms dealer’s building did not comment on the case, and a woman who works next door said she had no idea the business dealt guns.
Century Arms buys and sells military-grade surplus guns — with a specialty in buying weapons from overseas and reselling them to dealers — and is one of the largest arms dealers in the U.S.
The company also holds a federal firearms license in Georgia, Vermont, to import and build guns and to import destructive devices such as large-caliber guns and armor-piercing ammunition.
Documents shared by WikiLeaks in 2011 showed Century Arms had illegally traded firearms with the help of “unauthorized brokers.”
The Center for Public Integrity reported that same year that WASR-10 rifles manufactured for Century Arms in Romania had become a favorite of Mexican drug cartels.
John Rugg, a former police officer and longtime Century Arms employee, testified before a U.S. Senate committee in 1987 that the company had supplied rockets, grenades and other weapons to Nicaraguan rebels as part of the Iran-Contra scandal.
The export of firearms is heavily regulated, and weapons experts suggested the weapon may have been illegally transferred.
Century Arms sells to individuals or other businesses with a federal firearms license, and its website directs most retail traffic to a network of dealers.
But there are no restrictions on who can obtain those licenses.
The owner of the Zastava arms factory in Serbia that delivered the rifle to Century Arms said his company did not sell weapons to terrorists.
Watch this Century Arms customer demonstrate his M92 pistol:
Don't Worry, Ted Cruz Isn’t Going to Win the Republican Nomination
December 15, 2015
US Senator Ted Cruz speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill October 16, 2013 in Washington, DC
A few points:
1) Iowa isn’t a GOP bellwether. Recent history has proved that winning the Iowa caucus is no indication of a broader victory, at least for the Republicans who’ve handed meaningless Iowa victories to both Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum in 2008 and 2012 respectively. Sure, digging deeper into the record books shows candidates like George W. Bush and Bob Dole winning in Iowa then moving on to the nomination. This trend could change again, but the last two caucuses show that even if Cruz holds onto his lead and wins Iowa, it could be a one-hit-wonder victory. This leads us to the next point…
2) The Republicans love their flavors of the month. I’m old enough remember when Dr. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina were showing signs of becoming a threat to Trump’s presumptive nomination. However, both candidates famously peaked and then faded. If you recall the 2012 process, nearly every candidate, including Santorum and Newt Gingrich, had their fleeting windows of success — nipping at Mitt Romney and forcing establishment columnists to ballyhoo the upstart challengers, only to disintegrate under scrutiny as both Carson and Fiorina have. While many onlookers have suggested that Donald Trump represents the same kind of phenomenon, he has already demonstrated far more staying power than someone like Michele Bachmann ever did in 2012. Like it or not, he’s here to stay. (More on this later.)
3) Cruz is slimy. While he’s the most ideologically and demagogic conservative candidate to rise to this level, short of Trump himself, Cruz tends to come off as a slippery door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman. Authenticity and genuine sincerity aren’t traits often associated with Cruz, and his slick political acumen is transparently fake. His conservatism might overcome his shortcomings with the notoriously fringe-like GOP Iowa caucus-goers (see aforementioned Santorum and Huckabee victories), but it seems unlikely that he’d pass the authenticity sniff test among less radical GOP voters post-Iowa.
4) The Trump cult of personality is unstoppable. Most importantly, it’s difficult to overestimate the withering crazy-strength of Trump’s disciples and fanboys. A recent article in the conservative Townhall.com was quite revealing in terms of the perception of Trump among Republicans who dislike the bewigged frontrunner — but it also illustrated the magnetic power of Trump’s brand. Among some of these Republicans, Trump is inexplicably perceived as a closeted Democrat. Yes, really. It’s this kind of through-the-looking-glass, opposite-day projection that’s growing increasingly frustrating for not only those of us who cover politics every day, but casual observers as well, because it’s almost entirely divorced from objective reality. Nevertheless, the Trump cult exists and therefore needs to be addressed as part of the national debate.
While Democrats and Republicans alike see Trump as an undisciplined comment troll and, more recently, a far-right fascist, there are more than a few Republicans who agree with the Townhall analysis that “Trump’s Democrat-style campaign is driven by feelings and identity, not issues.” The second part is true, of course, but describing Trump as a Democrat is objectively ludicrous. The truth is, Trump’s running as a de facto Tea Party loyalist and any Democratic leanings are features of his past rather than his present. There’s nothing leftist about Trump. Nothing.
Along those lines, the Townhall item referenced a poll from September that quietly flew under the radar. It shows that Republicans are willing to support President Obama’s key positions if they’re told that Trump proposed them.
It demonstrated how Republican voters — driven, it would seem, by Trump backers — became astonishingly supportive of (a) maintaining the Iran nuclear deal, (b) government-run and -funded healthcare, and (c) race-based affirmative action when the pollster informed respondents that those positions were held by Donald Trump, as opposed to Barack Obama.This has far less to do with Trump’s politics and much more to do with the ignorance and the rah-rah, cult-like support for Trump by uninformed automatons. It reminds me of Obamacare polls that show how a majority of Americans dislike the legislation, but when asked about individual line items in the law, love nearly everything about the healthcare law. Likewise, more Americans tend to identify as conservative, yet when asked about specific issues, they tend to be more liberal issue-by-issue. Why? The labels. It’s Trump, and he’s on television, so he’s always right. The words “Obamacare” and “liberal,” meanwhile, have been routinely stigmatized for years, so naturally very few people want to be identified with each.
Ted Cruz simply doesn’t possess Trump’s populist heft. He never will. He’ll always be a stereotypically greasy politician who looks like Grandpa Munster and who totally misinterpreted a children’s book, “Green Eggs & Ham,” while filibustering Obamacare.
In other words, Republicans will accept and support President Obama’s policies when they’re associated with Trump’s brand. This not only indicates who the nominee will most likely be (not Ted Cruz), but in a larger sense, it’s evidence that opposition to Obama is all about the name “Obama” than the actual substance of what he did or didn’t do. There’s a mindless, brainwashed aspect to Trump’s support than no one, including the Democratic candidates, enjoy. It’s probably not enough to propel Trump to the White House, but it’s surely enough to win him the required delegates for the nomination. What the party itself decides to do with Trump from there is a different story.
It’s difficult to see any other Republican gaining enough momentum this close to the primaries to usurp Trump. And one poll in Iowa isn’t nearly enough for Ted Cruz.
A note from Alan Grayson on what "Fiscal Responsibility" means to Democrats vs Republicans
“Fiscal responsibility.” We hear those words thrown around a lot during every election season. But what do they mean?
To
Republicans, being fiscally responsible means that you fight to make
sure that government money doesn’t get “wasted” feeding hungry children,
treating and curing the sick, or providing peace of mind for the
elderly. Because “God forbid” that we spend our money on anything that
helps people who need it, they think.
But
to me, “fiscal responsibility” means that I don’t let greed-heads take
advantage of the government and the taxpayers. I like being that kind of
fiscally responsible, and so I introduced (and passed!) a contractor
“death penalty” that kills cheating contractors dead. And I passed
another amendment that says “no more money for you” to contractors who
are behind schedule or over-budget.
In
one case that I pursued for the taxpayers, the Army issued a contract
for twenty trucks, and paid in advance. The contractor went to the
nearest dump, and towed to the base twenty used-to-be-trucks; erstwhile
trucks; truck carcasses, corpses and cadavers. Trucks that were as dead
as that dead parrot in the Monty Python sketch. A general demanded a
meeting with the contractor. The contractor told the general, “there’s
nothing in this contract that says that these trucks have to work.”
The
same contractor was issued a contract to install lavatories at the
base. The contractor installed the toilets and urinals, all right – but
not the plumbing.
I
know that we can beat these government contractors trying to defraud
our government -- because I’ve done it before. When I saw that the Bush
administration was doing nothing about fraud in Iraq, I revived a law
going back to the Civil War that allowed whistleblowers to bring
lawsuits in the name of the U.S. government. I filed case after case,
which were promptly greeted by the Bush administration with gag orders
-- gag orders that they kept in place for years. They didn't want any
more bad news coming out of Iraq.
So
I went on CNN, spoke to the New York Times and the Washington Post, and
told America whatever I could say without violating those gag orders.
And when the Bush administration finally let one case out from under
those gag orders -- and declined to prosecute it -- I took that case to
trial, and won a $14 million judgment. It was the third-largest judgment
for whistleblowers in the 143-year history of that law.
Courage,
Rep. Alan Grayson
Mr. Praline:
'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased
to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of
life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch, 'e'd be
pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's
off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil,
run down the curtain, and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS
AN EX-PARROT!!
- “Dead Parrot,” Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1970)
Need more? Here are some summaries for you!
AlterNet summaries
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posted by Dot Calm @ 8:42 PM
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