12.11.2018
Showing posts with label WORLD NEWS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WORLD NEWS. Show all posts
12/11/18
12/2/18
1/22/17
NEW WORLD ORDER
We must understand this if we are to have any hope of fighting back against them
Yes, Donald Trump’s politics are incoherent. But those who surround him know just what they want, and his lack of clarity enhances their power. To understand what is coming, we need to understand who they are. I know all too well, because I have spent the past 15 years fighting them.
Over this time, I have watched as tobacco, coal, oil, chemicals and biotech companies have poured billions of dollars into an international misinformation machine composed of thinktanks, bloggers and fake citizens’ groups. Its purpose is to portray the interests of billionaires as the interests of the common people, to wage war against trade unions and beat down attempts to regulate business and tax the very rich. Now the people who helped run this machine are shaping the government. Trump’s climate denial is just one of the forces that point towards war.
at climate scientists and campaigners seemed incomprehensible until I realised they were fake:
the hatred had been paid for. The bloggers and institutes whipping up this anger were funded by oil and coal companies. Among those I clashed with was Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). The CEI calls itself a thinktank, but looks to me like a corporate lobbying group.
It is not transparent about its funding, but we now know it has received $2m from ExxonMobil,
more than $4m from a group called the Donors Trust (which represents various corporations and billionaires), $800,000 from groups set up by the tycoons Charles and David Koch, and substantial sums from coal, tobacco and pharmaceutical companies. For years, Ebell and the CEI have attacked efforts to limit climate change, through lobbying, lawsuits and campaigns. An advertisement released by the institute had the punchline “Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution. We call it life.”
It has sought to eliminate funding for environmental education, lobbied against the Endangered Species Act, harried climate scientists and campaigned in favour of mountaintop removal by coal companies. In 2004, Ebell sent a memo to one of George W Bush’s staffers calling for the head of the Environmental Protection Agency to be sacked. Where is Ebell now?
Oh – leading Trump’s transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency.
Until June, Trump’s campaign manager was Corey Lewandowski, who like other members of Trump’s team came from a group called Americans for Prosperity (AFP).
This purports to be a grassroots campaign, but it was founded and funded by the Koch brothers.
It set up the first Tea Party Facebook page and organised the first Tea Party events. With a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, AFP has campaigned ferociously on issues that coincide with the Koch brothers’ commercial interests in oil, gas, minerals, timber and chemicals. In Michigan, it helped force through the “right to work bill”, in pursuit of what AFP’s local director called “taking the unions out at the knees”. It has campaigned nationwide against action on climate change. It has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into unseating the politicians who won’t do its bidding and replacing them with those who will. I could fill this newspaper with the names of Trump staffers who have emerged from such groups: people such as Doug Domenech, from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, funded among others by the Koch brothers, Exxon and the Donors Trust; Barry Bennett, whose Alliance for America’s Future (now called One Nation) refused to disclose its donors when challenged; and Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, funded by Exxon and others. This is to say nothing of Trump’s own crashing conflicts of interest.
Trump promised to “drain the swamp” of the lobbyists and corporate stooges working in Washington. But it looks as if the only swamps he’ll drain will be real ones, as his team launches its war on the natural world. Understandably, there has been plenty of coverage of the racists and white supremacists empowered by Trump’s victory. But, gruesome as they are, they’re peripheral to the policies his team will develop. It’s almost comforting, though, to focus on them, for at least we know who they are and what they stand for. By contrast, to penetrate the corporate misinformation machine is to enter a world of mirrors. Spend too long trying to understand it, and the hyporeality vortex will inflict serious damage on your state of mind.
Don’t imagine that other parts of the world are immune. Corporate-funded thinktanks and fake grassroots groups are now everywhere. The fake news we should be worried about is not stories invented by Macedonian teenagers about Hillary Clinton selling arms to Islamic State, but the constant feed of confected scares about unions, tax and regulation drummed up by groups that won’t reveal their interests. The less transparent they are, the more airtime they receive. The organisation Transparify runs an annual survey of thinktanks. This year’s survey reveals that in the UK only four thinktanks – the Adam Smith Institute, Centre for Policy Studies, Institute of Economic Affairs and Policy Exchange – “still consider it acceptable to take money from hidden hands behind closed doors”. And these are the ones that are all over the media.
When the Institute of Economic Affairs, as it so often does, appears on the BBC to argue against regulating tobacco, shouldn’t we be told that it has been funded by tobacco companies since 1963? There’s a similar pattern in the US: the most vocal groups tend to be the most opaque. As usual, the left and centre (myself included) are beating ourselves up about where we went wrong. There are plenty of answers, but one of them is that we have simply been outspent. Not by a little, but by orders of magnitude. A few billion dollars spent on persuasion buys you all the politics you want. Genuine campaigners, working in their free time, simply cannot match a professional network staffed by thousands of well-paid, unscrupulous people. You cannot confront a power until you know what it is. Our first task in this struggle is to understand what we face. Only then can we work out what to do. •
Twitter: @GeorgeMonbiot. A fully linked version of this column will be published at monbiot.com
Contact author @GeorgeMonbiot
READ MORE-
11/15/16
OBAMA WARNS OF GLOBAL POPULIST UPRISING
President Obama Joint Press Conference w/ Greek PM Alexis Tsipras (11/15/16)
fast foward to-
obama starts @51.56
makes statements about global populisim @ 127.43
11/10/16
ANGELA MERKEL LAYS IT ON THE LINE
german chancellor- angela merkel was very clear with her speech to donald trump.
HERE ARE THE BEST QUOTES-
‘Germany’s ties with the United States of America are deeper than with any country outside of the European Union.
‘Germany and America are bound by common values — democracy, freedom, as well as respect for the rule of law and the dignity of each and every person, regardless of their origin, skin color, creed, gender, sexual orientation, or political views.
‘It is based on these values that I wish to offer close cooperation, both with me personally and between our countries’ governments.’
‘The U.S. is an old and honorable democracy. The election campaign this year was a particular one with some confrontations what were difficult to stomach.
‘I, as many of you, watched the election results with trepidation.
‘The person the American people chose to be their president in free and fair elections has an effect far beyond the U.S.’
Merkle's deputy chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, didn’t hold back at all, stating-
‘Trump is the trailblazer of a new authoritarian and chauvinist international movement. … They want a rollback to the bad old times in which women belonged by the stove or in bed, gays in jail and unions at best at the side table. And he who doesn’t keep his mouth shut gets publicly bashed.’
you can read the entirety of her statement- here
READ MORE-11/9/16
6/26/15
10/2/14
POLICE STATE~ 2014
HONG KONG PROTEST- 2014
While some have dubbed the movement the “umbrella revolution”, participants have been at pains to stress they do not seek independence from China nor the overthrow of the Communist party – simply the right to a real choice of the next chief executive.
While Hong Kong residents knew that limits would be imposed on their choice, many were angered by the toughness of the restrictions announced – which effectively rule out any prospect of a democrat standing.
7/25/14
2/7/14
ZOOPHILES VS NEO~NAZIS!?
here is an account of one of the more bizarre conflicts happening in the 21st century~.....
A screening and debate was also planned for that evening in one of Berlin's leading art-house cinemas, and the Neo-Nazis also tried to shut that down with extensive intimidation, but 4 police trucks were there to ensure the safety of the participants and apparently everything went as planned.
The Berlin chief of the Neo-Nazi party was at the demonstration and, based on his Facebook page, seems to have taken up this cause as a top priority.
One leading local animal-rights activist who promised to take part in the post-screening debate to explain his opposition to zoophile-rights, backed out at the very last minute, apparently due to Neo-Nazi intimidation.
Journalists seem conflicted as to which side to take and have, thus far, refrained from reporting on the Neo-Nazi attempt to intimidate one of the local cinemas and suppress free speech.
WTF??! who would you side with?
apparently this movement was all inspired by the art film- COMING SOON.
I was given a screener of this film awhile ago and found it not so interesting.
hardly revolutionary!
'COMING SOON' director- Sir Tijn Po- 2006
2/6/14
PROTEST FOR RUSSIAN GLBT RIGHTS @ LA.LIVE- FRIDAY
L.A. Live 800 W. Olympic Blvd, Los Angeles, California 
Encourage the U.S. and International Olympic Committees, Olympic Sponsors, Athletes and fans to condemn the attacks on Russia's LGBT community!
The national "Road To Sochi Tour', and Olympic Roadshow with attending sponsors and athletes will be in Los Angeles on February 7, 2014. This is amilestone date for the tour as it will be held on the same day as the Sochi Olympic Games Opening Ceremonies.
Join local activists as we continue to DEMAND official condemnations of LGBT persecution by the Olympic Host Nation.
This will be a peaceful, but LOUD demonstration. We will be there to rouse the general public to anger and action against Russia's anti-gay politics and violence against the LGBT community there.
Queer Nation NYC is supplying us with one of their HUGE rainbow banners and with fliers which we will distribute to fans and media there We will engage the public in meaningful conversations on what they can do, personally, to make a difference.
Oppression and violence must end and so we stand in solidarity with our Russian brothers and sisters against the government sanctioned hate being inflicted on our brethren there.
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