A detailed and disturbing strategy document has revealed an extraordinary American plan to destroy Europe’s support for the Kyoto treaty on climate change.

The document details how ExxonMobil-funded groups and the neocons plotted to destroy Kyoto.

The ambitious, behind-the-scenes plan was passed to The Independent this week, just as 189 countries are painfully trying to agree the second stage of Kyoto at the UN climate conference in Montreal. It was pitched to companies such as Ford Europe, Lufthansa and the German utility giant RWE.

Put together by a lobbyist who is a senior official at a group partly funded by ExxonMobil, the world’s biggest oil company and a fierce opponent of anti-global warming measures, the plan seeks to draw together major international companies, academics, think-tanks, commentators, journalists and lobbyists from across Europe into a powerful grouping to destroy further EU support for the treaty.

ExxonSecrets.org details ExxonMobil’s massive fundng of the anti-global warming propagandists. Hey, the earth can be destroyed but as long as they make a buck, then screw everyone else. Which, in a nutshell, is the precise problem with capitalism - the lust for short-term profit supercedes everything.

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From 1971

Tariq Ali: Your latest record and your recent public statements, especially the interviews in Rolling Stone magazine, suggest that your views are becoming increasingly radical and political. When did this start to happen?

John Lennon: I’ve always been politically minded, you know, and against the status quo. It’s pretty basic when you’re brought up, like I was, to hate and fear the police as a natural enemy and to despise the army as something that takes everybody away and leaves them dead somewhere. 

I was very conscious of class, they would say with a chip on my shoulder, because I knew what happened to me and I knew about the class repression coming down on us–it was a fucking fact but in the hurricane Beatle world it got left out, I got farther away from reality for a time.

Read the whole interview.

Thanks to Lisa for the link!

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Picket, rally and youth & student speak-out!

Sat., Dec. 10, 12 noon
5051 Rodeo Road, Los Angeles
At the Los Angeles Recruiting Battalion
(Just east of La Brea, near MLK Blvd)

On Saturday, December 10, students, young people, and anti-war and community activists of all ages will gather for a protest, picket line and youth and student speak-out against war and military recruiters in front of the Los Angeles Recruiting Battalion. The Battalion, located in the heart of South Los Angeles, is the Southern California headquarters for U.S. Army recruitment.

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Although Bush administration officials have denied that they transfer terrorism suspects to countries where they are likely to be abused, a classified memorandum described in a court case indicates that the Pentagon has considered sending a captured militant abroad to be interrogated under threat of torture.

One sure sign of a crumbling defense is when the liars can’t keep their stories in sync. Another sign is damaging leaks. We’re seeing both now.

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Abramoff associate may plead guilty in Florida wire-fraud case

Adam Kidan, a businessman who was indicted in Florida along with Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy, may plead guilty next week, according to a court filing.

Should Kidan cooperate with investigators, that may increase pressure on Abramoff to also plead guilty and aid federal prosecutors in a probe of his lobbying business, which has ensnared members of Congress and a White House official, said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University.

"The Justice Department is closing in on Abramoff with a tactic that could be called ‘no legal exit’." Gillers said. "The government’s strategy is clear: sign up enough cooperators so that Abramoff will have no place to hide and will help with cases against others." 

Those ‘others’ will almost certainly include members of Congress, prominent neocons, and members of the Bush Administration. It’ll make Watergate look like a tea party.

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Britain trying to stall 740 million theft inquiry that could hurt Allawi’s election chances’

The government wants to postpone the investigation to help its favoured candidate Iyad Allawi, the former prime minister, in the election on 15 December. The money disappeared during his administration.

"Disappeared"?

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Republicans aim to link Democrats to Abramoff

The National Republican Senatorial Committee "is planning a public-relations offensive tying leading Democrats to lobbyist Jack Abramoff in an effort to neutralize accusations that Republicans have been embroiled in a ‘culture of corruption,’" The Hill reports.

A brain-dead idea to be sure, trying to convince that everyone in DC is on the take.

"The campaign will zero in on Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV); Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin, both Michigan Democrats; and the Democratic Senatorial Committee (DSCC), among others, for taking money from Abramoff’s former clients."

I’m sure some Dems did too. Watching the bi-partisan slime turn on each other will be jolly good Xmas fun.

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Ford ally AFA promotes known "hate group" that "echoes Nazi Germany," per lead civil rights group

Ford Motor Company’s new friend, the extremist American Family Association (AFA), is promoting the research of a known "hate group" whose work "echoes Nazi German," according to one of America’s premiere civil rights groups (see samples below).

The hate group, the Family Research Institute (based in Colorado) is run by a discredited anti-gay researcher named Paul Cameron. What is most troubling about the AFA helping to disseminate Cameron’s "research" is that Cameron’s "institute" has been declared a "hate group" by the highly-regarded civil rights leader Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization best known for successfully taking on the Klan.
…
With Ford’s Nazi past, you’d think the company would be a bit more sensitive about aligning itself with those who promote Nazi-esque "science" in the year 2005. You’d think wrong.

Has Ford, the company or the family, ever apologized for or renounced the stomach-turning anti-Semitism of their patriarch, Henry Ford, Sr.? Just wondering…

Tag: Ford homophobia

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Fury at Iranian president’s Holocaust denial

Iran’s president questioned whether the Holocaust took place and said that Israel should be moved to Europe, leading to a barrage of international criticism.

Update: While this and other comments he’s made show him to be anti-Semitic, his full comments were a bit more nuanced than Henry Ford foaming-at-the-mouth bigotry.

He told journalists at an international Islamic conference in Mecca: "Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces and they insist on it to the extent that if anyone proves something contrary to that they condemn that person and throw them in jail. Although we don’t accept this claim, if we suppose it is true, our question for the Europeans is: ‘Is the killing of innocent Jewish people by Hitler the reason for their support to the occupiers of Jerusalem?’

One can criticize the state of Israel without being anti-Semitic. Denying the Holocaust just plays into the hands of Zionists who say if you criticize Israel, you hate Jews. Which is as absurd as saying, if you oppose the policies of the neocons that you hate Christians. The peace movement in Israel, which often opposes Zionism, has lots of Jews in it and they quite obviously don’t hate Jews. One can (and must) oppose Zionism while also opposing anti-Semitism.

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U.S. angered by Canadian PM climate comments

With one day of talks to go at the UN climate conference, desperate efforts to draw the United States into the global effort to curb greenhouse emissions appear to have hit a brick wall, and Prime Minister Paul Martin is being blamed.

Blamed? He spoke the truth, and he’s not responsible for the intransigence and willful ignorance of the neocons in DC. 

An official with close contacts in the U.S. delegation said any hopes of drawing Washington into the process were killed when Martin pointed a finger of blame at the United States in a news briefing at the conference.

"That was a big mistake," said the delegate, speaking on condition of anonymity Thursday. He said the U.S. delegation, which is directed from Washington by Vice-President Dick Cheney, was deeply angered by Martin’s comments.

Having Cheney directing US participation in global warming talks is an insult to the planet. And the slant of this story, blaming the messenger, is just neocon spin.

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