Why are virtually all climate "sceptics" men?Erm, they're not as Black himself points out it a little later in his article:
Opinion poll evidence provides some clues. A recent survey across the EU found roughly equal levels of scepticism between the genders.
What Black is really asking is why most prominent sceptics are male. He goes on to present some pseudo-psychological guff about motivation such as this bollocks from an "ex-scientist and now climate action advocate": "I've been debating the science with them for years, but recently Irealised we shouldn't be talking about the science but about something unpleasant that happened in their childhood". This is embarrassing, desparate, scraping-the-barrel stuff from Black. Over the last 30 years hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, was a quadrillion times worse than it was in Weimar Germany.
This year has been a good one for chubby armchair activists. They’ve found new outlets for their impotent do-goodery in social media. The use of Twitter during the Iranian post-election protests, for example, recently won a Webby Award (yes, really) for being “one of the top ten internet moments of the decade”...Did Twitter and other online networks threaten the brutal Islamist regime? Not this time. The Ahmadinejad-led dictatorship continues to thrive, backed by volunteer militias. And an Iranian democracy is no closer to reality than it was in January. So if the “Twitter revolution” was all the internet could muster in the last decade – and if it’s something we’re supposed to be proud of – then we may as well all log off in the New Year.I did already. Well, from Twitter at least.
India and China will build up their carbon burning rapidly as their economies grow. As 2.5 billion people get closer to the living standards of the 0.6 billion richer Americans and Europeans, so there will be a massive increase in CO2 output. No Western political leader is going to tell poor Indians or Chinese they are not allowed a fridge, car and running hot water as their economies improve because the planet’s carbon budget will not allow it.
No conceivable amount of state aid to the poorer countries at Copenhagen will change that situation. Failure to address and resolve this moral conundrum lies at the core of why Copenhagen will not in its own terms succeed.
The United States Supreme Court refused to review a lower court's dismissal of a case brought by four British former detainees against Donald Rumsfeld and senior military officers for ordering torture and religious abuse at Guantánamo. The British detainees spent more than two years in Guantanamo and were repatriated to the U.K. in 2004.
The Obama administration had asked the court not to hear the case. By refusing to hear the case, the Court let stand an earlier opinion by the D.C. Circuit Court which found that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a statute that applies by its terms to all "persons" did not apply to detainees at Guantanamo, effectively ruling that the detainees are not persons at all for purposes of U.S. law. The lower court also dismissed the detainees' claims under the Alien Tort Statute and the Geneva Conventions, finding defendants immune on the basis that "torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants." Finally, the circuit court found that, even if torture and religious abuse were illegal, defendants were immune under the Constitution because they could not have reasonably known that detainees at Guantanamo had any Constitutional rights.
Via KottkeThe Northeast Passage Opens for Business; The Beijing-Brazil Naval Axis; Dead Man Gets Passport; Chechen Murders Go Global;
Iraq's New Flashpoint; America Joins Uganda's Civil War; A ROTC for Spies; A New Housing Bubble?; The ‘Civilian Surge' Fizzles;
A Hotline for China and India.
The following piece is an excerpt from a talk Salaita gave at the School of Oriental and African Studies on December 7, 2009.
I’m starting on the assumption that we’re all aware of Israel’s brutality in the Gaza Strip and that we all find it unconscionable, as does the vast majority of the world. I assume as well that we’re aware of the brutality preceding and following Israel’s military assault nearly a year ago. I’d like to examine how corporate media in the United States presented coverage of Israel’s invasion, and how discourses of justification for Israel are built into the foundation of that coverage.
I know it's not politically fashionable to say so, but I still think it was the right thing to do for the UK's security and the safety of the public here. The problem with the preemptive removal of a future threat is that you can never prove what would have happened if you had not done it. But I am very glad we have not had to find out the hard way, and nor have nearer neighbouring countries, what Saddam could have done to us if left in power.The only people who DID find out the hard way were the Iraqis, you horrible little carrot-topped cunt!
If aid saves the lives of millions of poor infants, or mothers in childbirth, at roughly the same rate a country can industrialize, then we’ll see an increase in the number of poor people at about the same rate that we increase GDP per person. Unless aid is also spurring faster industrial growth, the growth figures essentially won’t change. The things that aid does well–increasing primary education, saving lives, and leading to a demographic transition (essentially lower population growth–may reasonably take a generation or two to impact industry.Interesting, if rather simplistic, analysis. It leaves out some rather important factors though,such as- war, despotism, corruption and general political ineptitude. Factors which have been well documented eg: here, here, here and here. Although not everyone agrees.
David Miliband accused the two senior judges of irresponsibly ''charging in'' to a diplomatically sensitive area over what happened to former terror detainee Binyam Mohamed while held by the Americans in Pakistan.This litle twerp (seriously touted by many on the left as a credible replacement to Gordon Brown as PM) should be hauled before the court and sent down for three months. Once again we see that the Blair/Brown policy of having our head shoved right up the arse of the USA is more important than discovering the truth about this country's complicity in torture. The concern of ths government is that the US might not share it's 'intelligence' with us. A good thing, if you ask me. Fuck the USA. Look where cooperation with America has got us now.
The Northeast Passage Opens for Business; The Beijing-Brazil Naval Axis; Dead Man Gets Passport; Chechen Murders Go Global;
