I posted a few days ago about a recent action at Niagara Falls by the Rainforest Action Network. Last Tuesday the group pulled off a spectacular guerilla stunt — unfurling a huge banner from the catwalk of the visitors’ observation deck — in an attempt to embarrass the Canadian prime minister and draw negative attention to the extraction of oil from oil sands, also known as “tar sands”.Our Flemish correspondent VH is an adept when it comes to investigating the overlapping networks of the socialist Left and the radical environmental movement. The big question about the “tar sands” controversy is whether Saudi money helps fund the opposition, since Middle Eastern oil producers stand to come under competitive pressure if production from oil sands takes off.
VH has done a little digging to produce the follow-up report below.
Can’t See the Rainforest for the Trees
by VH
The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has for a long time been a regular participant in the World Social Forum (WSF), which each year attracts some 100,000 militant socialists.
The WSF is an offspring of the anti-NAFTA radical Left’s involvement with the Mexican guerilla group EZLN (known as “Zapatistas”, with ties to FARC), which in 1999 declared the Fourth World War against “neoliberalism” (i.e. the Western democracies and free market economy). A number of NGOs, including Oxfam and Unicef, and the French revolutionary Socialist ATTAC!, together with the EZLN founded the WSF.
One offshoot of this WSF, in addition to regional chapters such as the USF [USA] and ESF [Europe], is the People’s Global Action (PGA), Global Day of Action, or Direct Action. All the riots at the WTO and Economic forums (“Davos”) and the G8 — starting with Seattle — find their roots in this PGA (for the full list, see here). Not only was the WSF involved in the Greek riots in late 2008, but it also called for global action against Israel in December 2008, shortly after the operation “Cast Lead” began.
A “tar sands” campaign is run by the “Indigenous Environmental Network” out of the USA and Canada: “…building alliances among Indigenous communities, tribes, inter-tribal and Indigenous organizations, people-of-color/ethnic organizations, faith-based and women groups, youth, labor, environmental organizations and others.” Their issues include, among other things: “De-colonization and symptoms of internalized oppression/racism/tribalism.” This organization is also linked to the World Social Forum (WSF), and it works with and is trained by the Rainforest Action Network (RAN).
A background article by Scott Thompson on this WSF-PGA can be read here.
The WSF is funded by major NGOs such as Oxfam, and foundations such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Ford Foundation (which also fund RAN), and increasingly by the up-and-coming South American socialist dictatorships, notably Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. Chavez in his turn is a close ally of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
RAN, crime, and the Greenpeace link in the board
In its 1999-2000 annual report RAN said it “works hard to combine sophisticated strategies with radical demands.” A recent San Francisco Chronicle article noted that RAN’s “activists wear their arrest records like badges of honor.” [David Hogberg, CRC, May 2005]
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The Green Tracking Library writes that RAN — which has tax-exempt status — is “a social shakedown group, harassing companies until they cave in to RAN demands for payoffs to related groups, thus avoiding charges of blackmail if they were to demand funds for themselves in return for stopping unlawful actions [The ‘Eco Mafia’ — translator]. They have 150 allied groups, some performing unlawful acts such as trespassing and theft of goods, according to Rainforest Action Network plans and advisories.” Michael Brune, one of the RAN’s twelve Executive Directors, received $95,417 “compensation” for the job done, and prior to this he ran the San Francisco office for Greenpeace.
RAN, in addition to receiving funding from several foundations, is also indirectly funded by associated activist groups like the Earth Island Institute (which in its turn is indirectly funded by Theresa Heinz Kerry; more later).
RAN enlists children as pawns in its anti-corporate campaigns. In order to do that, it makes use of teacher-moles to recruit children as activists “and exploit them as Fundraisers for the rainforest” (David Hogberg, CRC, May 2005). Greenpeace also abuses children for their own purposes: “Angry child soldier of Greenpeace” [a really sickening video, taken from De Groene Rekenkamer].
Many links point to a few people who seem important for their Muslim/Arab contacts. They also seem to be the people making headlines these days.
RAN Link 01: WSF, STORM, pro-Arab, Black Panthers/NoI, adviser to Obama
[Anthony] Van Jones, the former White House environmental adviser, “a self-avowed communist”, and a committed Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, is also a national environmentalists frontman, and served on the board of Rainforest Action Network (RAN).
Van Jones, a 9-11 skeptic (“The bombs the government drops in Iraq are the bombs that blew up in New York City”) who served on the boards of the National Apollo Alliance, Social Ventures Network, Bioneers, and Julia Butterfly Hill’s “Circle of Life” organization, was arrested during the L.A. riots, and spent a short time in jail: “I met all these young radical people of color. I mean really radical: communists and anarchists. And it was, like, ‘This is what I need to be a part of.’”
Jones co-founded Color of Change (COC), an organization that views the United States as a profoundly racist country, and helped establish Bay Area PoliceWatch, which specialized in demonizing the local police. He co-founded and until recently represented the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights (which in 2009 received more than $1 million from George Soros’s “Open Society Institute”).
He is a prominent founder of the (Marxist-Maoist) “Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement“ (STORM): “Oppose racist, anti-Arab bigotry. We expressed solidarity and support for Arabs and Arab-Americans, already under attack from the media and government,” he wrote, “Stereotypes and scapegoating will not lead us out of this crisis. Solidarity and compassion will.”[p.48]
According to Discover the Networks, Jones’ new approach was modeled on the tactics outlined by the famed radical organizer Saul Alinsky, who stressed the need for revolutionaries to mask the extremism of their objectives and to present themselves as moderates until they could gain some control over the machinery of political power.
Van Jones et al wrote in 2001: “On the morning of September 11, STORM convened in Oakland for an emergency meeting. We knew that the fall of the World Trade Center would mark a dramatic shift in international and domestic politics. We knew that the Left had to respond strongly.” […] “Anti-Arab hostility is already reaching a fever pitch as pundits and common people alike rush to judgment that an Arab group is responsible for this tragedy.” The vigil in solidarity with Arab- and Muslim-Americans was held in October in Snow Park. “STORM members articulated a strong anti-imperialist line that resonated with the everyday people there,” said Van Jones [ see also STORM, p.47]
At a press conference at the Masjid Dar El-Salam Mosque in San Francisco in 2004, Van Jones (et al) demanded the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, for “illegal behavior”.
He voluntarily resigned early this month from his assignment at the White House, because he got in the way of “Obama regaining his footing in the contentious health care debate”. “Apparently,” Don Surber wrote on his blog, “it is OK with the White House that Van Jones is a supporter of Mumia Abu-Jamal [Wesley Cook, Muslim convert and Black Panther Lieutenant, a pan-African nationalist and militant activist: the actions were organized by People of Color Task Force, POCTF, a subdivision of STORM], who had killed [executed] a police officer [Daniel J. Faulkner ] in 1981. […]”
Note: Van Jones’ job was to set up Green Jobs initiatives. Research by the renowned Dutch Groene Rekenkamer, shows not only that every “green job” costs between 571,138 and one million euros in taxpayer subsidies, but also that every green job destroys 2.2 regular (non-subsidized) jobs in other sectors of the economy.
RAN Link 02: WSF (Chavez), Iraq, Iran (Ahmadinejad), Obama fundraiser
Jodie Evans of “Code Pink” is a radical activist and Democratic fundraiser (good for at least $50,000 in donations for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign) and on the Board of Directors for the Rainforest Action Network (RAN).
Jodie Evans met with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in September 2008 (“It’s rare for a head of state to take time during an official U.N. visit to meet with the peace community”), and said that year that “Al Qaeda may have had a point on 9/11”. Together with Cindy Sheehan she went on a trip to Iraq in 2006 (with an introductory letter from — far left — Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA, who in 2008 became chairman of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee — the choice of Speaker Nancy Pelosi), sponsored by — among others — the terrorist leader Saleh al-Mutlaq[1]. Evans later admitted: “We were trying to undermine the war effort!”. A few years earlier, in December 2004, Evans and Code Pink delivered $600,000 to “the other side” [i.e. the insurgents] in Fallujah, writes FrontPage, “And now she sees her savior in Barack — and Michelle — Obama.”
([1] Memri 2007 Saleh al-Mutlaq: “It Is in Iraq’s Interest to Support the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization”)
Jodie Evans — also called “Obama’s Jane Fonda” — met Hugo Chavez in January 2006 during the revolutionary-militant socialists’ World Social Forum, where, as is customary at WSF jamborees, Chavez gave his “Socialism or Death” speech (Chavez also sponsors the WSF): “He was a doll. […] I was fascinated to learn what a well educated environmentalist he is.”
What’s more, Evans is involved in Global Exchange (which was associated with the anti-Rumsfeld campaign), an offspring of Code Pink that organized “educational tours” to Cuba (which has an “internationally lauded health care system”), as well as Iran, in order to “demystify and contextualize the negative images of Iran,” and “Learn about Islam as practiced in Iran — visit beautiful mosques decorated with intricate and colorful mosaic designs.”
RAN Link 03: Earth First, Greenpeace, Ruckus Society, Theresa Kerry Heinz … and back to RAN
Mike Roselle is an activist and co-founder of Rain Forest Action (RAN), and was arrested in April 2009 during an action against “climate hypocrisy”. He is also co-founder of the [domestic] terror group Earth First!, and together with Howard Cannon of Greenpeace founded the Ruckus Society (direct action training camps, including vegetarian meals: they seek abolition of Western style governments and large business enterprises, and are now “turning up the heat on demanding universal (single payer) healthcare”). He also founded Climate Ground Zero.
In 2006 Senator Obama was the “highlight” at a Campus Progress plenary, opened by Adrienne Marie-Brown of the Ruckus Society. Senator Obama: “It’s easy to just take that diploma, forget about all this progressive politics stuff, and go chasing after the big house and the large salary and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy,” he said there, “But I hope you don’t. Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself, and it will leave you unfulfilled.”
This Ruckus Society, sponsored by Theresa Kerry Heinz, tried to disrupt the Republican convention in 2004 with blockades, chaos, and interruptions.
Theresa Kerry Heinz also sponsors other radicals, such as the Zapatistas (the WSF-related Zapatista Alliance Pittsburgh and WSF related Pittsburgh Social Forum), and jihadists. Through the The Democratic Justice Fund, funded indirectly by Heinz (Tides Foundation) and Soros, restrictions on Muslim immigration are opposed. Heinz also indirectly (Tides Foundation) funds the Council for American Islamic Relations. Heinz further supports the Earth Island Institute: “We currently serve as the fiscal sponsor for more than 40 groups […]. Successful Earth Island Institute alumni projects include […] Rainforest Action Network […].
In brief: The militant socialist Rainforest Action Network (RAN) obviously has as its main purpose to undermine the Western economy using undemocratic means to enforce a socialist police state. At least that is what it will lead to —the Green Nazis. It has direct and indirect links with all major Eco-Fascist organizations, and itself seems to have penetrated the White House or “big politics”.
RAN’s Arab connections may be external via the Chavez and Ahmedinejad links, and/or domestic and indirect via Muslim organizations and others with links to the Arab world. Its connections extend not only to oil-rich Arab countries, but also to hostile socialist regimes.
Those who would undermine efforts to achieve secure and ever more independent energy sources can best meet their goals by empowering the fifth column of Eco-Fascists.
Notes and addenda:
- The fact that the CO2 emission panic is about moving money away from the developed countries to anywhere else (a fifth-column dream) is nicely illustrated in this nonsense discussion.
- A final thought, on Saudi Islamic funding:
The total amount spent by just one Muslim country (admittedly the richest), Saudi Arabia, in furthering the cause of Islam over the past three decades, is close to 100 billion dollars. […] It should not be beyond the wit of the American government to find ways to halt this flow of foreign Muslim money, either by seizure as money that is being used for purposes that naturally tend to increase the threat to national security, or by demanding of the Saudis that they stop that flow — on pain of having all kinds of things happen, beginning of course with exposure and Congressional hearings about this Saudi money, and what it buys, and about all the Western hirelings who, over the years, have done the Saudi bidding.
17 comments:
Makes you wonder how much further down the socialist road we'd be by now if Kerry had won that election. It would have given Teresa Heinz her greatest opportunity to wreak havoc.
With Russia supporting Iran (no matter what the outcome of the rebellion, Russia is still on the inside track and the US and Israel are the Evil Enemy) and our president abandoning Eastern Europe to the caprice of its former captors, our outlook is bleak.
In the old days, the enemy was a monolith: the USSR. Now it has become protean, with the KGB, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the enemy within the walls. The latter has connections to all those who would bring us down.
Ain't gonna be a pretty ride with a headless horseman holding the reins.
This parcel of rogues is what I term neoliberal - there is some confusion over the definition of this political label can anyone please clarify.
You have done a very good job in detailing the connections to all the various groups associated with the activists. I was amazed by just how many of these connect to radical/terror groups and also get funding via foundations of dubious nature. Chasing this down must have been akin to herding cats!
I would like to add to my previous statement regarding the terms, "tar sands" versus "oil sands".
The following explanation should help to highlight why it is incorrect to use the aforementioned term.
The hydrocarbon mixtures found in northern Alberta have historically been referred to as tar, pitch or asphalt. However, 'oil sands' is now used most often to describe the naturally occurring bitumen deposits. This helps distinguish it from the other terms, which are associated with distilled or man-made products, such as the mixtures used to pave roads.
Oil sands is an accurate term because bitumen, a heavy petroleum product is mixed with the sand. It makes sense to describe the resource as oil sands because oil is what is finally derived from the bitumen.
Perception is a tool of industry, and to get the right information out to people so as to base their opinions on fact versus fiction is a constant battle. I hope you continue to spot light the ties of these radicals and their supporting mechanisms, Thank You.
Thank you for a very well-researched post. VH must be a highly intelligent person; he always does a good job at what he writes here.
We need to permanently squash Western Leftists. They constitute nothing less than a mortal threat to us and our entire civilization. None of our external enemies would have been able to infiltrate us so much and so easily without their aid.
Prairie dog: as much as the term "tar sands" has been hijacked by leftists, its use goes back quite far. At a rural museum in Saskatchewan I saw a map dated 1910 with tar sands labeled over the Ft. McMurray area.
Quote
The fact that the CO2 emission panic is about moving money away from the developed countries to anywhere else (a fifth-column dream) is nicely illustrated in this nonsense discussion./quote
Darn right! When it comes right down to it, wealth confiscation is ALL the Left is really good at. They love government jobs (I am sure that most bureaucrats are left wingers), because they get to dish out other people's money and take the credit for so doing.
The Left is more or less parasitical, infecting government and other regulatory agencies and creating law after law to wrap us all more tightly in their bureaucratic empires.
More or less, of course.
Greenpeace also abuses children for their own purposes: “Angry child soldier of Greenpeace” [a really sickening video, taken from De Groene Rekenkamer].
I wish I could be around when that little punk is finally gobsmacked by reality, in the form of NO JOBS because all further American employment is either outsourced overseas or deemed to cause too much pollution.
As noted in the article:
Research by the renowned Dutch Groene Rekenkamer, shows not only that every “green job” costs between 571,138 and one million euros in taxpayer subsidies, but also that every green job destroys 2.2 regular (non-subsidized) jobs in other sectors of the economy.
Yet more proof of just how parasitic Liberals are. They only know how to redistribute the wealth of others and never actually create any real wealth of their own.
There are exactly three, count them THREE, ways of creating wealth:
● Mining
● Agriculture
● Manufacturing
That's it.
Everything else is a service economy. Personally, I regard inventing as a form of creating wealth but that is a sidebar to the simple fact that the occupations of most Liberals, politicians included, are located in the service sector.
Very few of them seem willing to get their hands dirty actually creating any wealth and, instead, clearly prefer designating how much of other people's money should be siphoned off to their pet causes.
Notice how often the Left is at total odds with any of the above three methods of wealth creation? Is it little wonder that they adore The Great Warmening™ as their new cause célèbre? The fact that mankind generate all of 00.5% of the planet's carbon dioxide emissions must not be allowed to interfere with that little brat's desire to run "Wild in the Streets".
The smug, smarmy and sanctimonious demeanor of that young punk in the video makes me want to go out and buy a pair of brass knuckles.
Excellent job, VH! Keep up the good work.
Papa Whiskey --
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Papa Whiskey said…
Very fine work here. It also bears noting that Canada is by far our most important foreign source for crude oil, with exports almost double those of second-place Venezuela:
link
These pestiferous protestors know what they're doing.
Zenster, I like how you think!
Cyrus when the good people of 1910 made that map, they were simply at a time when that word sufficed for what was to become one of the greatest sources of oil in our time. Our industry has moved past the ignorance of a century ago, those who stay do so willfully.
Ciao Zenster,
"........Yet more proof of just how parasitic Liberals are. They only know how to redistribute the wealth of others and never actually create any real wealth of their own.
There are exactly three, count them THREE, ways of creating wealth:
● Mining
● Agriculture
● Manufacturing
That's it....."
I agree, but I would pin the blame on the greed of Wall Street Capitalism (as opposed to the Main Street variety). I guess you can call them "liberals" too. But the loss of mining, agriculture, manufacturing (real non-tertiary wealth) is in my view a much bigger story. It's system thinking (the laws of profit will govern us best) as opposed to strategic governance (supply, demand, profit, but also our commonwealth, identity, culture, race).
It is Marx's prediction that Capitalism will eventually produce the rope to hang itself come true. Actually it's that but with a twist, it will only produce the know-how and Swoosh logo and have it materially made in China.
Liberals... but also extreme economic libertarians who just go with and for the money with little or no consideration of amor patria, morality, culture, nation, tradition, little guys. There are reasons why the richest and most successful nation FREELY voted for Hope and Change. Gramsci and big capital.
I've got no love for RAN or any of its associates, but really, this piece is off the rails. This is even more tenuous than the links used to tar blogs like Gates of Vienna as Nazis. If there were proof of interlocking directorates, members of CAIR in the management, or anything like that, it would mean something. All this piece shows is that groups in the socialist sphere tend not to take positions against Islamists, and lots of ecology organizations lean socialist.
This begs the question: why do most ecology organizations lean socialist? Theodore Roosevelt was one of the founders of the modern conservation movement, and there are distinctly non-leftist groups like Ducks Unlimited which are all about conservation of wetlands; no wetlands, no ducks. Surface mining of tar sands leaves huge pools of tailings which contain toxics which wind up in the river; there are measurable impacts to fish in the Athabasca from the tar sands mining in Ft. McMurray. The impacts are not trivial and infringe on treaty rights:
“The river used to be blue. Now it’s brown. Nobody can fish or drink from it. The air is bad. This has all happened so fast,” says Elsie Fabian, 63, an elder in a Native Indian community along the Athabasca River.... According to many Fort Chipewyan residents, the tar-sands mining is the principle cause of both the toxins in the water and the recent dramatic increases in the number of cancers and other diseases. [emphasis added]
I am a dedicated advocate of nuclear power and favor hunting and the whole "gun culture", and I've been dismissed as boyfriend material because I don't care for Islam. I just think you're throwing yourselves into disrepute by putting all this hype behind a non-connection.
"Why should we care?" Fair question. It's well-established that the "socialist movement" is throwing lots of its interest groups under the bus to cater to Islamists. As long as there's nowhere else for most environmentalists to go, they still have a lock. But you're missing a huge impact yourself. Canada's tar sands only produce about 1.2 million bbl/d, and the projected increase to 3 million is in doubt due to the credit crisis. Why not pull environmentalists away by opposing surface mining (keep SAGD and THAI production) and push both US and Canadian fuel economy a lot higher? The USA is still consuming nearly 9 million bbl/d of gasoline. Raising US fuel economy by 25% would cut consumption by as much as tar sands production was set to increase, and it would save money instead of spending it. That one change would reduce US imports by close to 15%. European fuel economy is some 50% better than the US average, so it isn't technically difficult.
The emphasis at GoV should be about defeating jihad, including the money weapon. You need all the allies you can get, and you sure don't need any "own goals".
Incidentally, zenster is flat wrong about carbon. Read the lit, and not denialist sites like Wattsupwiththat or the ironically-named junkscience.com.
@ Engineer-Poet: "[…] putting all this hype behind a non-connection […]"
You qoute the "Indigenous Environmental Network" (IEN) accusing Oil Sands mining of all kinds of things, "according to many Fort Chipewyan residents", which is more than vague. (Robohobo already explained in an earlier interesting comment the Oil Sands mining technique.)
But the IEN is not vague in demanding "Clean energy and green jobs" [who will pay that?] and "wind and solar energies" [who will invent and produce that?] and is involved in the World Social Forum (WSF). Groups like the IEN are also talking of "Western science creates data and information [that] is not based on the type of cultural outlook that we have in our spiritual teachings," and of the Constitution as "their ideas of democracy". In this way, groups like the IEN are making non-connections themselves.
But back to the Rainforest Action Network: RAN is involved in the anti Western WSF —like the IEN and most other organizations mentioned. RAN also took part in anti-Israel and anti-Iraq-War rallies and is a member of the Abolition 2000 anti-war coalition. RAN further took part in a "Solidarity March" for "Palestinians" [2002], defending Palestinian suicide bombers and condemning Israel.
Engineer-Poet: "It's well-established that the "socialist movement" is throwing lots of its interest groups under the bus to cater to Islamists."
Then researching and exposing such networks can not be put away as "a hype".
Oil sands and "spiritual teachings", rainforests and Palestinian suicide bombers, indeed are non-connections. RAN and others obviously disagree, and do connect those non-connections.
As President Václav Klaus earlier this year in his impressive speech [video] stated: "The environmentalists don't want to change the climate, they want to change us, our behavior. Their ambition is to control and manipulate, us. […] The environmentalists are speaking of 'saving the planet'. You have to ask: from what, and from whom? One thing I know for shure. WE have to save it, and us, from them."
Engineer-Poet: Incidentally, zenster is flat wrong about carbon. Read the lit, and not denialist sites like Wattsupwiththat or the ironically-named junkscience.com.
Regardless of numbers, all of this hysteria over The Great Warmening™ is just that, hysteria. For example, climate scientist James Hansen wants to jail those who deny global warmening.
Run some calculations and you will find that the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill, with its devastating impact upon America's economy, will result in a statistically insignificant alteration in global warmening. Carbon credits and all of the related scams are the new century's snake oil. Al Gore is responsible for one of the greatest hoaxes in modern history. If anyone needs to be tried for crimes against humanity, it's him.
While climate change may be happening, its causes and methods of abating it are not at all clear. The prospect of hobbling our global economy based on Leftist hysteria and Eco-Nazi group-think is a mass suicide on a level with Europe's embrace of Islam.
I can only echo President Václav Klaus (hat tip VH):
" The environmentalists are speaking of 'saving the planet'. You have to ask: from what, and from whom? One thing I know for shure. WE have to save it, and us, from them.".
The Left continues to display an obsession with controlling people's behavior and even their thoughts. Political Correctness, Moral Relativism plus a host of other Liberal nostrums are eroding what little there is that remains of enlightened intellectual and philosophical endeavor.
The level of indoctrination required to warp the mind of that child who appears in the Greenpeace video is flat out disturbing. Especially so when one considers that Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore, who spent decades ensuring that Americans associated nuclear power with nuclear weapons, has now come out in favor of building nuclear reactors to combat fossil fuel-based energy generation.
Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore says there is no proof global warming is caused by humans, but it is likely enough that the world should turn to nuclear power - a concept tied closely to the underground nuclear testing his former environmental group formed to oppose. [emphasis added]
The incalculable damage that Moore did to America's nuclear energy program is matched only by the resurgence of Islamic terrorism that resulted from the way his efforts only served to extend our nation's dependency upon fossil fuels.
Once again, ill-thought-out Leftist agendas summon up the Law of Unintended Consequences™ and its merciless adherence to reality, something that Liberals continue to avoid like the plague. There is no better example of the Left's Magical Thinking™ than America's current administration. What would, in ordinary circumstances, be riotously laughable becomes terrifyingly possible with delusional Socialists at the helm.
The Left's embrace of Global Warmening is just one more facet of its overall quest for the self-extinction of humanity. As always, it is nameless others who must first go to the wall while these anti-human zealots remain behind to continue the all important task of waving their banners. We would all be so much better off if they would instead adhere to the ancient tradition of leading by example. Alas, "ancient traditions" are just too conservative for such "modern thinkers". These bastards will be the death of us yet.
VH: Do you dispute the scientific papers about water contamination I've linked to? (This contamination includes arsenic and mercury as well as hydrocarbons; arsenic is a carcinogen as well as an acute poison.) Do you have any doubt that the tar-sands industry isn't doing exactly what so many other industries have done to other rivers?
Finally, do you claim that tar sands operations can be scaled up to well over 10 million bbl/d? That's what it would take to replace US imports from the rest of the world. If not, we still have to take action on the demand side. Start thinking about that.
Zenster: I think Waxman-Markey is the wrong solution to the problem. It uses a trading system and a subsidy system to "solve" an unrelated emissions-control problem. The trading is to benefit traders like Goldman-Sachs, and the subsidy is to benefit the transnationalists who'd skim the transfer payments. These are deadweight losses and rent collections, and have no place. We need a straight carbon tax, collected in the nations where the products are used and equalized so that the most carbon-efficient producers reap the benefits. That means not-China and not-India, which is why they don't want anything to do with it.
Finally, your use of "warmening" shows that you are in deep denial. It's called "anthropogenic climate change" (ACC), and it's real. A guy took a swim at the North Pole last summer, ferchrissakes! Will you open your eyes? And no, Moore's anti-nuke efforts had no effect on oil dependency; nukes displaced oil in the electricity market, which you can see by looking at the EIA historical data. Yes, he screwed the pooch on CO2 emissions and figured it out too late (I've been saying nukes were the solution for 20 years now). Better late than never.
E-P: "Do you dispute the scientific papers about water contamination I've linked to?"
There is too not much to dispute to be honest, for the scientific part of the Scientific Summary you point at is in not conclusive of any connection.
E-P: "10 million bbl/d?"
RAN, WSF, your IEN, etc., aim at nil per day. Start thinking about that.
In the meanwhile, RAN for instance, is trained by people like Lisa Fithian of Acorn [Wade Rathke], Common Ground, Root Activist Network of Trainers, CodePink, WSF, USF, etc. She was a "human shield" for "Palestinians" and possibly involved in the bomb plot against the Republican National Convention: "When people ask me, ‘What do you do?’ I say, ‘I create crisis’, because crisis is that edge where change is possible."
And that "change" [if you look at her record] may well lead to a low-carbon Islamic Police State.
E-P: "we still have to take action on the demand side"
Voilà.
E-P: "It's called 'anthropogenic climate change' (ACC), and it's real"
You mean that "research" [Briffa] on twelve carefully selected trees? Maybe better use "Presumed Anthropogenic Climate Change Theory" from now on, and "some believe its real". Furthermore, there are no people in "deep denial", but ever more who disagree.
By the way, the founder of Ducks Unlimited [the former hunting organization "More Game Birds in America"] you mentioned earlier, Joseph Knapp [a Democrat close with the klansman and Democrat Thomas Dixon] once was arrested for shooting too many ducks, and at the same time openly worried that "birds were disappearing" from the US. This in a way resembles Al Gore [whose father, a Democrat, blocked the Civil Rights Act in the 60's and was ostensibly "elated" at the idea of young Al going to school with black children] who invested in an on-line grocery store [guess how they deliver the salads] while wasting 221,000 kWh a year, and at the same hopes you to believe this latest £6 million Co2 Bedtime Story.
VH, pardon the delay in response, but I was off-line due to travel and am just now catching up.
First, you are hypocritical to ignore the water pollution in the Athabasca river and then tout a "miracle device" like the Z5. There is no reason whatsoever to believe the claims in the article. I will bet you any sum you care to risk that this device has exactly as much confirmed capability as the Steorn free-energy device, which is none whatsoever. It is one of a long line of frauds, including the cow-magnets-on-the-fuel-line hoax; these frauds proliferate when the economy is down and fuel costs weigh heavily on people's finances. I can assure you that the automotive engineers who work to meet CAFE targets and emissions limits could not have missed anything so obvious.
Second, I asked you if tar sands can boost production to well over 10 million bbl/day. You punted on that. Even if gasoline demand can be cut by 1/3 using some miracle device, that is only about 3 million bbl/day out of total US demand of over 19 million (and US imports of about 12 million). Since you punted, I'll assume that your answer is "no" and you're just trying to avoid the admission.
Third, it doesn't matter what RAN aims for. RAN and its leadership aren't at issue here, what's important is the membership which might overlap with e.g. the Sierra Club. What are THEY about? Are they taking the leftist politics as part of the package because nobody else is offering what they think is important? In rejecting the conservation ethic out of spite, are you alienating potential allies? I believe you are. I said it before, and I'll say it again: the "patriot" who drives a 4x4 pickup to a counter-jihad rally is giving aid and comfort to the Wahhabists, while the "leftie" driving a Prius or Jetta TDI is doing more to hurt Riyadh and its causes than you are. If the counterjihad could manage to get the Tango 100 through crash-testing and into production, it would do more to boost the USA against Islamic control than any number of phone calls to Washington. Would you reject it just because it's "green"?
There was a post at Dr. Sanity about the Leftist Food Chain. I'm sure none of this is new to any GoV reader, but read it anyway just to refresh your appreciation of the hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance of the left (of which RAN is a part). Now consider this:
1. If the Left is doing more in some ways to advance the counterjihad than you are, why are you letting this situation stand?
2. If the Left is selling out so many of its putative allies, why aren't you moving to bring them under the counterjihad tent?
3. Why not co-opt the membership of these organizations by adopting REAL conservationism, REAL human rights, etc. as a platform, and give people a hypocrisy-free way to support what they think is important as well as the counterjihad... assuming that you can free yourself from the reactionary shibboleths which those people would rightly see as hypocritical?
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