LA Times: In the face of Republican attacks Tuesday, leading Democrats defended a controversial endgame maneuver that would allow them to pass the Senate version of a healthcare overhaul without taking a direct vote on the legislation’s most divisive provisions.
The stratagem, known in the arcane language of Congress as a “self-executing” rule or “deem and pass,” would allow House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) to skirt a roll-call vote, speeding passage of the bill and helping limit attacks on Democrats facing tough competition in an election year.
Republicans used the same parliamentary shortcut to avoid difficult votes when they controlled Congress, but on Tuesday they accused Democrats of being high-handed and unseemly. [ READ MORE ]
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the healthcare “dogs that cannot be potty trained,” led by their Congressmen, went crapping on the steps of the Capitol, in Washington. The tea-partiers came holding pictures of HATE — one depicting president Obama climbing into a coffin.
The same BREED of RACIST-IDIOTS Marched in the 60s
FATDick Morris sent out a mailing titled: “Obamacare Armageddon Has Arrived” — “Congress and the president are very close to subverting the will of the American people who strongly oppose Obamacare.” “The good news is that this nightmare can be stopped,” the mailing implored ….
…..More Wackadoodle YELPS
Anti-Immigrant Bigot Tom Tancredo Responds To Fellow Wackadoodle Dick Armey — Former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., reacts to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey’s comments that he is a “destructive force” for the GOP.
Senator Inhofe attacks Al Gore on global warming — While speaking on the Senate floor, Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., claimed that former Vice President Al Gore “seems to be drowning in a sea of his own global warming illusions.”
Republicans have been making lots of nonsensical remarks in an attempt to refute global warming — based on this week’s northeast snow storm. Opportunist TV douche-bags like Sean Hannity have seized the rough snowstorms to make their STUPID case against climate change, and to bash former president Al Gore for his advocacy on climate change. [ GLOBAL WARMING FALSEHOODS ] [ MORE FALSEHOODS ]
By: Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis [ Enlarge ] The unrepresentative tyrants of Africa who attended the Copenhagen summit must have been an excellent token at the hands of the colonial powers, England and France, that control the US establishment and utilize it in a way to perpetuate their grip on the world’s nations, oppressed peoples, and natural resources.
Although initially siding with China, Brazil and South Africa, the diplomats of many African countries that are mere colonial fabrications became at the end the puppets of Africa’s worst enemies.
An example is offered here:
“After overcoming the African objections in Copenhagen, negotiators appointed pairs of ministers from poor and rich nations to seek solutions to the most contentious issues ahead of the summit.
In fact, China failed to offer the African peoples a comprehensive interpretation of the climate change and the Chinese stance to environmental matters. Then, the African diplomats turned to their opium, the colonial capitals and diplomats. The reason is simple; China has penetrated the African continent economically but this has little impact on the African policy making because the latter hinges mostly on the complex educational, cultural and political developments that took place in the Black Continent when China was absent.
The African tyrants share the same fate with the African peoples whom they mostly oppress, tyrannize and endanger through a perplex system that China has not even studied. However, the African elites, formed in their outright majority at the colonial capitals, cannot dissociate their interests and their fates from those of their masters who through interference and involvement ensured their socioeconomic and political rise back home. By so doing, the African elites, ignorant of the colonial strategy with respect to Africa (which happens to be most detrimental to all the African nations), actively dissociate themselves from the destiny of the populations they rule, control and oppress.
China’s relationship with the West has been most troublesome as well, for at least the past 170 years, ever since the Opium Wars started. The present leadership of China is aware of the plans of the Western leaderships against Beijing, Moscow, and the rise of an Asiatic landmass alliance; Beijing has also correctly assessed the importance of Africa for the colonial powers.
More recently and more importantly, China actively opposed in Copenhagen the CO2 fallacy that has become the focus of the evil diplomacies of England, France and America. This is greatly significant for the African peoples who have not been taken into account by the schemers who are hidden behind the CO2 fallacy.
Certainly, Africa is the continent par excellence where the climate change can be more evidently attested. But there is no scholarly proof that the CO2 emissions are the principal reason for the devastating environmental collapse. In this regard, recent studies and reports made it clear that the reasons for which the colonial diplomacies support this fallacy are all due to new plans for another bubble in the world’s stock exchanges.
There is no doubt that the Western economies are at the brink of total disintegration and collapse. This is inevitable because of the paranoia that pushed the West’s economic elites to the formation a fake economic circle, namely the derivatives that have been launched in the 80s. For several centuries of capitalist economy, the stock exchanges used to reflect the real economy which evolved around production. The financial products launched in the 80s produced a bubble that exists antagonistically with the real economy, driving it to total dismantlement.
Following the economic contraction, the world’s economic elites put all their hopes for a new lucrative (for them) bubble on a trillion dollar carbon trading system that will use the ecological concerns and the misguided efforts for supposed environmental improvement in order to draw investors to carbon-related derivatives.
Carbon ? related derivatives: Ominous for all Africans
As a matter of fact, carbon-related derivatives is the main enemy of all the African nations. The fake financial products will be traded in Derivatives Exchanges allover the world to empower the world’s financers to further persecute the oppressed peoples allover the world and to effectively strengthen local dictators in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It will be the fresh cash that the gangsters of England, France and the pro-colonial, Freemasonic establishment of America simply do not have now!
The Copenhagen-related disappointment of the Canadian media is in this regard great: http://www.inews880.com/News/National/Article.aspx?id=169994. This constitutes a mere example. In fact, the need of the world’s financial elite for fresh cash (in trillions of fake money) is dramatic.
A few days ago, Prof. Michel Chossudovsky underscored the dangers ensuing from the institutionalization of such a trading system that will make the world’s poor poorer and the world’s rich richer. In his ‘Climate Change: What is the Hidden Agenda?’ (www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16514, December 12, 2009), he wrote:
“We bring to the attention of our readers, an archive of opinion, news, and analysis on the issue of Global Warming, which is currently being debated in Copenhagen under the auspices of the UN Framework Agreement on Climate Change.
The corporate media, in chorus, is calling upon public opinion to endorse the Global Warming consensus, which supports a multibillion dollar carbon trading system.
CO2 emissions are heralded in the editorial as the single and most important threat to the future of humanity.
The evidence that CO2 is the sole cause of Global Warming is questionable, as revealed by numerous scientific studies.
This archive on Climate Change published by Global Research brings together a vast body of critique, analysis and opinion regarding the Climate Change.
What is the hidden agenda behind the Copenhagen CO15 Summit?
The governments of NATO countries act on behalf of the interests of the financial establishment, the oil companies and the defense contractors. The Global Warming consensus is being used to justify a lucrative multibillion carbon trading scheme which seeks to enrich corporations and financial institutions to the detriment of the developing countries.
This carbon trading scheme does not serve the interests of social justice. Quite the opposite.
While we share the concerns of the environmentalists, there is no reason to uphold something which is untrue or questionable to reach stated environmental goals.
Reducing toxic manmade emissions, preserving biodiversity, protecting wildlife and preventing deforestation are objectives in their own right. The implementation of an environmental program geared explicitly towards reducing environmental contamination and pollution at the national and international levels requires neither the Global Warming Consensus, nor a profit driven carbon trading system”.
China
For China it is vital to put as many obstacles as possible to the new financial scheme. Carbon related derivatives will lead to a new wave of American consumerism, which will burden China with an even greater surplus in foreign currency. This does not necessarily mean that China will have the upper hand; on the contrary, the development would make China more dependent on the US. Full dependence of China on America is the Wall Street elite foremost dream.
Averting the trillion dollar carbon scheme is certainly not enough for China! Particularly in view of the ongoing travel of the U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration (http://www.africom.mil/getArticle.asp?art=3797&lang=0) to Khartoum and Juba, the increasing US interest in the Horn of Africa, and the anticipated US ? EU use of the political trickery “Islamic Extremism” in the years ahead, China should greatly reassess and adequately readjust its approach to Africa before Beijing finds itself confronted with the US tactics of faits accomplis.
Beijing must come to terms with the African realities and with the fact that never Chinese influence and penetration will be permanent in a country that has been a colonial fabrication. Meles Zenawi’s willingness to offer his capital city as the location of the AFRICOM headquarters is in this case indicative; for a moment he flirted with China, but then the racist Amhara – Tigray establishment of Abyssinia (fallaciously re-baptized ‘Ethiopia’) turned to Washington again.
It is urgent therefore for China to turn to the real forces of Africa, the tyrannized African nations who struggle for national independence, political freedom and cultural integrity, and not Africa’s colonially enslaved elites. Supporting liberation fronts and helping various African peoples shape independent countries is the only way for Beijing to outmaneuver the catastrophic work carried out by the colonial powers on African soil.
Ogaden
Ogaden is a first example. A sizeable territory (280000 km2) where 6 millions of Somalis have been engulfed, imprisoned and persecuted in all possible manners because of the ominous English colonialism that ended up in ulcerous anti-Somali racism and vicious political practices. In fact, the entire territory of Ogaden became a gift offered to the bloodthirsty and barbaric Amhara Abyssinian despot, Haile Selassie, because of his siding with England in the East Africa colonial game.
With rich soil, great natural resources, and a well educated Ogadeni Diaspora, an independent Ogaden Republic will be China’s key economic and political partner, and more importantly, it will be a partner deprived of tergiversations and hesitations. The brave people of Ogaden, the active Ogadeni Diaspora, and the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) are the key for China’s need for peace and national unity in Somalia.
China’s accurate understanding of the Asiatic landmass geopolitical games of England and America must help in shaping China’s new African policy. Afghanistan is a matter of concern for China’s national security. The US-led foreign armies in Afghanistan created a havoc after eight (8) years of inexplicably unending and truly speaking fake war against phantasms of extremism. What brought these armies there? This is known: September 11th. An event that more and more people allover the world refuse to take at face value and consider merely as a scheme of the US militaristic establishment.
Another September 11th may happen at any time. Those who expect it grow more numerous day by day. It can be possibly attributed to the Shabaab of Somalia who control the southern parts of Somalia, having got great help in terms of logistics from the US and their puppet, the tyrannical Kikuyu regime of Nairobi.
Another September 11th would be an excellent pretext for the US forces to occupy on permanent basis part of the geo-strategically very important territory of Somalia. Such a development would not only herald the beginning of the end of China’s penetration in Africa. It would also herald doubts about the possibility of China to effectively defend its national territory from nuclear attacks.
I will expand on this subject in several forthcoming articles but here I merely add two reports on recent demonstrations organized by the Ogadeni Diaspora in Copenhagen.
Copenhagen, Denmark ? December 17. Protestors from Denmark’s Ogaden Community demonstrate outside the UN climate change conference on December 17, 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The group were demonstrating against Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi participating in the COP15 United Nations Climate Change Conference, claiming that he has one of the worst environmental records in the history of Ethiopia and that he has no respect for fundamental human rights.
Dozens of Ogaden and Oromo communities in Europe demonstrated outside the UN climate change conference on December 17-18, 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The group were demonstrating against Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi participating in the COP15 United Nations Climate Change Conference. Meles Zenawi is one of the worst environmental records in the history of Ethiopia and that he has no respect for fundamental human rights.
Waving the Ogaden National flag, the protestors chanted Meles belongs at the Hague for trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) instead of being honored as a spokesman for all African nations at the global conference this week. Members of the Ogaden community accused Meles Zenawi of committing genocide in the Ogaden.
Many African countries seek financial compensation for the continent in order to combat climate change. Recently, some African groups opposed a deal between Meles and European leaders.
The Ogaden people are fighting for self-determination. Extra-judicial killings, rape, disappearances, destruction of livelihood and the displacement of thousands of Ogaden people are the daily norm in Ogaden.
There is constant fighting between Ethiopian troops and ONLF forces in the Ogaden region. Human rights organizations accuse the Ethiopian soldiers of violating the human rights by harassing the people in the Ogaden region.
The failure of the Copenhagen Climate Summit 2009 to reach a meaningful and legally binding agreement to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate the impacts of the current climate change on developing countries seriously disappointed not only the most concerned president of the Maldives but the entire global citizenry. It has become abundantly clear now that during such summits short term economic interests always take precedence over long term global sustainability. As a result, the optimal compromise solution between these seemingly conflicting interests continues to be elusive.
The lack of global political will to save our planet amid overwhelming evidence of repeated climate change-related natural disasters across the globe is shocking and difficult to explain. Unless environmental scientists prove to us that the recent surge in natural disasters such as repeated drought and famine in Africa, repeated flooding in Asia and Europe, severe storms and hurricanes in the Americas and Asia are all due to the influence of rapidly retreating moon from the earth, what we know up to now is that these disasters are directly linked to the increased global warming resulting from massive emissions of greenhouse gases since the industrial revolution in general and during the past six decades in particular.
If the global leaders are bent to let ‘nature take its own course’ they are mistaken because human activities are clearly diverting nature from its courses. If humans do not agree to make an optimal and sustainable use of the natural environment, nature is ready to unleash its mightiest forces to take its own “corrective” actions as we all have witnessed since recently.
Although, the continued lack of carbon emission consensus by the global community is extremely worrying, some country specific actions on environment are causes for some hope. The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) produced by the environment research sections of Yale and Columbia universities in the United States, provides extremely useful information regarding country specific actions on environmental sustainability. The following sections of this brief article present an overview of the 2008 Yale-Columbia Environmental Performance Index study results.
2. The Environmental Performance Index
The 2008 Environmental Performance Index ranks 149 countries on 25 indicators tracked across six established policy categories:
a) Environmental health,
b) Air pollution,
c) Water resources,
d) Biodiversity and habitat,
e) Productive natural resources, and
f) Climate Change
The EPI is quantitative tool of measuring pollution and the performance of natural resource management based on broadly accepted performance targets. The index uses 25 performance indicators tracked in the six policy categories stated above, which are then combined to create a final score for a country in question.
“The 2008 EPI deploys a proximity-to-target methodology, which quantitatively tracks national performance on a core set of environmental policy goals for which every government can be ? and should be ? held accountable. By identifying specific targets and measuring the distance between the target and current national achievement, the EPI provides both an empirical foundation for policy analysis and a context for evaluating performance. Issue-by-issue analysis and aggregate rankings facilitate cross-country comparisons both globally and within relevant peer groups such as geography or economy.”[1]
The aggregated scores results of the 2008 EPI indicate that the top five countries, in order of best performance, are Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Costa Rica. With the exception of Costa Rica, which is a middle income country, developed countries with significant financial resources for environmental management make up a large portion of top performers.
The bottom five countries in the 2008 EPI from bottom up in term of performance are Niger, Angola, Sierra Leone, Mauritania, and Mali. These sub-Saharan African countries are among the poorest countries in the world and lack resources for even basic environmental investments. Angola has recently emreged as Africa’s largest producer of oil and accordingly its income levels are expected to improve.
On the other hand, the United States is ranked 39 out of 149 countries while the major emerging market economies are ranked as follows: Russia (28), Brazil (35), Mexico (47), South Africa (97), India (120), and China (105) out of the 149 countries compared. Due to their current rapid industrialization programmes, the emerging market economies are clearly poor performers in terms of environmental sustainability measures. The dilemma for these countries is reducing massive poverty while at the same time ensuring safer and sustainable environment, which is costly in the short run.
However, the aggregate scores may mask the policy specific differentials among the various countries analyzed and may be of limited practical use in influencing the environmental policy directions. For this reason, the Index also publishes the results for each of the six major policy categories classified into two broad objectives – environmental health and ecosystem vitality. The core Policy categories for ecosystem vitality are those listed from (b) to (f) above.
3. Environmental Health Policy Index
This index measures the human health burden of the environmental degradation. The indicators used to measure this index are grouped into three major health risks. These are:
a) Environmental burden of disease,
b) Water (access to adequate drinking water and sanitation), and
c) Air pollution( indoor, urban particulate and local ozone).
The top 5 countries with a very high performance on environmental health in order of their performance are UK, Ireland, Sweden, Germany and France. United States and Japan, the two biggest industrialized economies, are ranked 18th and 21st on this index respectively.
The emerging market economies performed not so well for the environmental health index. Russia (36), Brazil (67), South Africa (78), China (97) and India (104). Only Russia was among the 56 countries that scored above 90 for the environmental health.
The bottom 5 countries are all in Africa and in order of poor performance are Niger, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Burkina Faso. Niger, Angola and Mali are among the bottom 5 for both Environmental Health and overall environmental performance indices.
The number of high performers in Environmental Health reflects government attention to basic human needs, such as drinking water and sanitation. Environmental Health is highly correlated with wealth, indicating that many of the low-performing countries have not made the investments necessary to curtail environmental pollutants or to provide adequate water and sanitation to their citizens.
4. Ecosystem Vitality
4.1Air pollution index (effects on nature)
This index measures air quality using two pollutants: ground-level ozon and sulfur dioxide. As expected, the top five least polluting or top performing countries in the world are small and poor countries. These are, in order of least pollution, Solomon Islands, Eritrea, Papua New Guinea, Djibouti and Fiji. These are all small countries with limited levels of industrialization, fossil fuel and resource consumption, trade and the like. Data for Maldives is not available for comparison.
On the other hand, the top five world’s air polluting countries, in the order of their pollution size are, The United States of America, China, South Korea, Brazil and Angola. Japan is 24th most air polluting, South Africa is 33rd while Germany is 50th most air polluting country in the world according to the Yale-Columbia Environmental Performance Index.
4.2Water Use Index (effects on nature)
The water quality index was based on five parameters: Dissolved oxygen, pH, Conductivity, Total nitrogen and, Total phosphorous. In addition to this water stress was also measured using the degree of oversubscription which is considered to be high when water use is above 40% of the available water supply.
The top five performers in terms of water quality and lower water stress, in the order of best performance, are Finland, New Zealand, Latvia, Slovenia and Sweden. The United kingdom and Japan are 17th and 22nd best performers respectively while United States and China are ranked 56th and 66th respectively on the effects on nature of their water use.
The top five worst performers in terms of the effects on nature of their use of water resources are all middle east countries with limited water resources. In the order of their worst performance, these countries are Kuwait, Jordan, Yemen, Syria and Saudi Arabia.
4.3Biodiversity index
The biodiversity index measures the degree at which human activities have affected biome of the ecosystem. This in turn is based on four factors, (a) the conservation risk index, (b) effective protected area conservation, (c) critical habitat protection and (d) marine protected areas.
Most of the top five countries in terms of the best biodiversity performance are found in sub Saharan Africa. The top five performers in the order of their performance are Central African Republic, Botswana, Zambia, Laos and Saudi Arabia. United States, China and Japan are 40th, 58th and 89th respectively in terms of biodiversity performance. Except Saudi Arabia, all of the high performers in maintaining biodiversity are poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
The bottom five performers in terms of biodiversity are Djibouti, Uruguay, Yemen, Lebanon and Bosnia & Herzegovina, indicating again that poor countries are both top and worst performers biodiversity performers.
4.4Productive Natural Resources Index
This policy category is divided in to three sub categories. Agriculture, fisheries and forestry. Each of these sectors face a unique management challenge emanating often from excessive demand, waste and inappropriate method of resource exploitation. For the EPI analysis, the focus in forestry is for growing stock, while for fisheries the index used Marine Atrophic Index, and Trawling intensity. For agriculture, the index used irrigation stress, agricultural subsidy, crop intensity, burned land area, and pesticide regulation.
The top five performers in productive natural resources are Fiji, Cyprus, Cost Rica, Jamaica and Kyrgyzstan. Japan, United States and China are 46th, 64th and 112th respectively. Again poor developing countries manage their productive natural resources much better than advanced countries and some emerging market economies. Although the rate of deforestation in many poor countries particularly those in Africa is alarming, their use of land for agriculture and waters for fishing is limited. Very high irrigation stress, agricultural subsidy and high use of pesticides coupled with overfishing in big waters undermines the performance of developed economies such as the united States and Japan and emerging economies such as India and China. On the other hand, the recent commitment of Brazil to curtail massive deforestation of the Amazon rain forest is an exemplary measure.
At the same time some developing countries are unable to meet the basic minimum requirements of the sustainable use of productive natural resources. The bottom five performers in this regard are Cambodia, Bangladesh, Burundi, Indonesia and Uganda.
4.5Climate change index
In order to assess the various aspects of environmental management on climate change the EPI index researchers assessed three different indicators:
a) Carbon dioxide emission per capita,
b) Carbon dioxide emission intensity of the industrial sector, and
c) The carbon dioxide emission intensity of the energy sector.
The top five performers in term of the least per capita carbon emission, and low intensity of carbon emission in both the industrial and the energy sectors are Mozambique, Costa Rica, Tajikistan, Nepal and Ethiopia. Germany, Japan, United States, and China are 60th, 84th, 128th and 134th in terms of per capita carbon emission, and emission intensities in both the industrial and the energy sectors. The United States and China perform worst among the developed and emerging economies in terms of climate change. As the world’s two most air polluting countries these economic giants have bigger responsibilities to save our planet.
The bottom five countries in terms of per capita carbon emissions and emission intensities in industrial and energy sectors are Kazakhstan, United Arab Emirates, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Kuwait. Although their economic size is smaller, these developing countries need to revisit their industrial and energy development policies for the sake of us all.
5. The Future of Our Planet
According to the World Bank, World Development Report 2010 [2] ” Climate-Smart” world is within reach if the countries of the world are ready to change their behaviour in that (a) they act now, (b) act together, and (c) act differently.
According to this report, developing counties can shift to lower-carbon paths while promoting development and reducing poverty, but this depends on financial and technical assistance from high income countries. High income countries themselves need to act quickly to reduce their carbon emission rates and boost development of alternative energy sources to help tackle climate change. If they act now, ‘Climate- Smart’ world is feasible, and the costs for getting there will be high but still manageable. Acting now is essential. Later, options will disappear and costs will increase as the world embarks on high-carbon pathways and irreversible warming trajectories. Staying close to 2 degree celcius above the pre industrial levels, which is likely the best that can be done, requires a veritable energy revolution.
The report also emphasizes that countries need to act together and act differently. Acting together is a key in keeping the costs down and effectively tackling both adaptation and mitigation. It has to start with high income countries taking aggressive action to reduce their own emissions. That would free some “pollution space” for developing countries including Africa which has not yet used the pollution space with the exception of South Africa. This would also stimulate innovation and the demand for new technologies.
Moreover, to enable a sustainable world, countries need to act differently. In the next few decades the world’s energy system must be transformed so that global emission drops 50 to 80 per cent. Infrastructure must be built to withstand new extremes. To feed 3 billion more people without further threatening already stressed ecosystems, agricultural productivity, and efficiency of water use must improve.
In sum, the climate change challenge is not a zero-sum game. The game is either positive-sum or negative-sum. By adopting an appropriate and legally binding carbon emission reduction global approach, everyone will gain; if not everyone will lose.
MediaMatters: Right-wing media seize on snow at Copenhagen conference to deem climate change a “fraud” — Right-wing media have highlighted recent snowfall during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, often suggesting that the winter storm is evidence that climate change is, in Rush Limbaugh’s words, “a fraud.” But climate scientists reject the notion that short-term changes in weather, let alone individual storms, bear any relevance to the global warming debate, and several major climate data centers have said that, thus far, 2009 is one of the warmest years on record. [ READ MORE ]
