... reading some of the comments on that page really bring it home
that there is no hope for humanity as long as there are red-necks
on the planet.

Suddenly, I understand why American foreign policy has been basically
"finding the next easy target to pillage", why so much of the US budget
is given to the arms industry and why Republicans keep getting elected.

It is all down to the vast numbers of sub-humans (definitely not homo sapiens)
that have been allowed to take over and thus globally & forever tarnish the
name & image of the birthplace of those intelligent liberals unfortunate enough
to have to share the same patch of land as those yeast-like creatures.

You have my sympathy with your valiant fight against inbred stupidity.

There comes a point where it really isn't worth arguing with the nutcases any more.

Just cut off any federal funding to states who have failed to prepare themselves - they are
making their beds, they can lay in them.

> Young voters tend to support ideals, and not parties or people.
> A focus on party politics tends to come with age and experience.
> If there are no politicians running who are promoting their ideals, they're not going to vote.

A focus on party politics tends to come as a defence mechanism in response
to repeated failures of trust.

When the ideals that you had are betrayed, time after time, by people who
claimed that they supported the same thing, you can defend your pointless
support of "the less bad option" by falling back to blind party politics.

That's the kind where you can defend "your guy" doing the same thing as you
were shouting down "the other guy" for doing just a few years earlier.

The kind where you don't have to admit that your faith in "your guy" has been
betrayed by their actions after the election because you can always pull out
some excuse or other for "why it didn't work out quite right".

The kind where you can ignore the insanity of doing the same thing as before
yet hoping for a different outcome this time.

The kind where you can gloss over the real differences, the real problems,
the real issues in society and the world at large by concentrating myopically
on an artificial distinction between two sub-groups of the majority in order
to preserve the profits & well-being of the rich, powerful, self-selecting minority.

The most active supporters of any extremist political party tends to be
the young & inexperienced as they have not gained the wisdom to see through
the lies, the inconsistencies and the hypocrisy of the leadership.

"Age and experience" can provide that wisdom but it can also provide the
incentive to ignore the wisdom so gained and fall back to the same mindless
partisan cheerleading that can so mislead the young & inexperienced.

> hydrocarbon development project on the Arctic shelf.

This is something that affects the entire world rather than a petty squabble over
the latest re-drawing of lines on a map.

The absence of unified resistance & opposition to such stupidity as drilling oil & gas
in the Arctic is the biggest sign yet of just how corrupt & bought-out all of the
governments really are.

Corporations own all presidents, prime ministers and administrations.

"We the people" are shit outta luck - as are all of the non-human life that is
being wasted for the sake of petty greed.

... purely to benefit the powerful bodies involved in the suppression.


Especially true when it is done explicitly to reduce the pressure to agree to
*anything* at the next international climate farce, sorry, "negotiations".


>> In other parts of the summary, objections from rich nations resulted in the
>> removal of a line saying: “In 2010, ten countries accounted for about 70 per
>> cent of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes.”

>> They also demanded, and won, removal of a line reporting that ethical mitigation
>> of climate change would require the developed world to transfer “hundreds of
>> billions of dollars per year” to non-OECD countries to invest in green technologies.

>> Objections from "upper middle income" countries resulted in the deletion of
>> a graph that showed the stunning rise in emissions from those countries in
>> the decade to 2010, compared with other parts of the world.


Physics, chemistry and the biological response to changes really aren't interested
in "consensus" and the longer that the chief polluters deny the problem, the worse
will be the result.

Politicians make laws.
Greed buys politicians (from council members to presidents).

"Police" agencies enforce laws.
Greed buys police agencies (from sheriffs to heads of national departments).

Environmentalists try to do the right thing.
Greed is immune from legal action and protected from illegal action.

Citizens with consciences are stunned into silence & ineffectiveness.
Greed laughs at citizens with consciences.

... are the poxy politicians (and their entourage of various categories of hangers-on) who
a) want the photo-ops; b) want the break away from their other duties; and c) want to get
all of the backroom, off the record, bribe-trading action kept away from any public sight.

If they were all debating on videoconference then it would be (even more) blatantly obvious
which politicians and which nations were deliberately blocking & de-railing any progress.

I loved it when Eyjafjallajökull erupted and we had no major aircraft flying over us for about a week!

The majority of air travel miles are unnecessary - personal indulgences, business meetings
that can (and should) be conducted by phone or video, shipping of luxury exotic foodstuffs from
distant lands to be wasted on supermarket shelves - and so the loss of them (temporarily or, as will
eventually be the case, permanently) is simply at the "inconvenience" level rather than anything
vaguely life-threatening.

On the other hand, continuing the incredible volume of unnecessary flights is life-threatening on a
global scale so when it comes to stopping it, I say "Do it and now please".

Bring it on!





(*) "We" = "UK & other NW Europeans" along with anyone else who was intending to visit/return from
those places in early April 2010. By way of comparison, the clear skies following 09-SEP-11 would
have given those on the NE USA a taste of it as well.

> One might even take a speech of President Obama's two years ago in the oil town
> of Cushing, Okla., to be an eloquent death-knell for the species.
> He proclaimed with pride, to ample applause, that "Now, under my administration,
> America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years.
> That's important to know.
> Over the last three years, I've directed my administration to open up millions of acres
> for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states.
> We're opening up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources offshore.
> We've quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high.
> We've added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth and then some."

"Hope & Change"?

For all that the cheerleaders claim, there really isn't a shit of difference when you strip off the
paint job is there?

> People are flooded with pro-consumption propaganda every day of our lives.

That has been the case (as you note) for decades so it's not that surprising that the
multitudes of unthinking proles (cliche but accurate) are totally bought into the new
religion of "Consume!" even more than any of the older ones of "Repent!", "Hate!"
or "Conquer!".


> Modesty and caution have been viewed as qualities that needed to be curtailed
> in the population. There are so many "live for today" messages in corporate ads
> and media over the last 40 years that the single-mindedness beggars belief.

That is apparent in the simple case of the perversion of the term "Conservative".
If you "conserve" things these days you are regarded as a "hippy", a "liberal",
a "tree-hugger" (as if such things were bad anyway) while if you actively support
the destruction of everything that surrounds you, you somehow gain the title/epithet
of "Conservative".

Efficiency, reduction, recycling, re-use, ... all these things have been slandered
across all media as if the act of doing these things in public is somehow treasonous.



I try not to comment on people's personal beliefs but "Prosperity Gospel"?
How is that any less oxymoronic than "Military Intelligence" or "Republican Think-tank"?