Sundance explains that the Paris Climate Treaty was only ever pretending to be about the climate.
The Paris Treaty was/is always about distribution of economic wealth; and the convenient use of “climate phrases†as branding instruments used to create political policy favorable to multinational corporate interests who control the shifting of economic wealth.
Listen to the responses from participating EU corporate comptrollers discussing climate and the entire purpose of the Paris Treaty becomes self-evident. Example:
“The preservation of our competitive position is the precondition for successful climate protection. This correlation is often underestimated.â€
The preservation of Germany’s competitive auto manufacturing position is contingent upon the U.S. exporting it’s wealth and handcuffing itself to a faux-climate treaty. Do not take my word for it, read Wissmann’s own interview. The Paris Treaty is nothing about climate, and everything about economics and multinational corporate interests.
…
To understand the larger objectives of the global and financial elite it is important to understand the three-decade global financial construct they now seek to protect. Global financial exploitation of national markets:
♦Multinational corporations purchase controlling interests in various national elements of developed industrial western nations.
♦The Multinational Corporations making the purchases are underwritten by massive global financial institutions, multinational banks.
♦The Multinational Banks and the Multinational Corporations then utilize lobbying interests to manipulate the internal political policy of the targeted nation state(s).
♦With control over the targeted national industry or interest, the multinationals then leverage export of the national asset (exfiltration) through trade agreements structured to the benefit of lesser developed nation states – where they have previously established a proactive financial footprint.
Ed Straker collects classic examples of liberal explanations for, and solutions to, the problem of jihadist attacks on unarmed civilians in London.
When Muslims kill people “in the name of Allah,” how do liberals react? We know they don’t equate the terrorist act with the Islamic religion. So what do they say? Because it is important to know how liberals think, I have donned a hazmat suit and dived deeply into the comments section of the HuffPo and the WaPo to enlighten you.
Pat Dayton Neff • Knightdale, North Carolina
Another sad chapter in our current world history. What will it take for all of us to realize all life is important
All of us? We can see the creeping moral equivalence here. Are there also Christians and Buddhists going around running people down in cars and stabbing them?
Stephen Haydel • Senior Software Engineer at Self Employed – Independent Contractor
Hate breads Violence.
Is it hate that really “breads” violence? Or is it more specifically Islamic terrorism? It is curious how Mr. Haydel generalizes the causes of violence while relying on pastries to explain the issue.
Zanna T Laws • City of London Polytechnic
I suspect it is not even terrorism anymore – simply unevolved males leaping at the chance to be randomly violent.
It’s not Islam, it’s men’s fault! Do you think Zanna is an “evolved” female? If so, does that mean she pays for her own abortions?
Sharon Perkins
Joblessness leads to dispair anger and fatalism….the economic imbalances – pervasive world wide – are boiling over into the lives of the everyday person. Until the elite 1-percent) and their heirs are also targetted global economics will be managed without regard to our everyday lives.
The unemployed are doing the killing! Except they are not unemployed. But Sharon Perkins prefers to blame the “one percent” when Muslims come a knockin.’
Yuseff Hilton
Simple put, anywhere there is a heavy flow of pedestrian traffic needs to havw barrier erected between the road and the sidewalk, it will mitigate this sort of attack, and reduce Jay-walking.
I think Yuseff is onto something. All we need are concrete barriers on every road in London, and such attacks will never occur again. Except outside of London. And excluding knife and bomb attacks. I guess it’s a lot easier to put barriers on every road than to consider the source of these attacks, isn’t it?
Pilar Navarro
And how many people die from gun violence in America every day? Oops! Thats not terrorism, its gun rights for a few privileged
Ooops! I think Pilar went a little off topic. Guns didn’t kill anyone. Muslims did. How Pilar makes the jump from Muslims killing people with knives, to the right to own a firearm is unknown.
Brian Dodge • Michigan State University
I wonder if the xenophobic Brexit vote has increased the antipathy felt by terrorists leaning nuts – more people feel they have nothing to lose?
When the British voted to leave the EU, they only made Muslims madder!
Dennis Umphrey
Criminals will always commit crimes, the ISIS criminals just use Islam as a excuse to carry out those crimes, true Muslims would not take another life, but then again they have become to terror rock stars because of the Islamophobia to scare the Republican voters into voting for Republican candidates to keep them safe
1) Islamists kill British people. Therefore,
2) Liberals blame Islamophobia.
Rick Shaw • Sydney, Australia
It’s time England banned Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and any other social media used by terrorists to radicalise young muslims.
Rick is right; the problem is Facebook and Twitter, not Islam.
sdc512
No nation is more responsible for the export of the type of fundamentalism that underlies Islamist extremism than Saudi Arabia. If all of us who decry radical Islamist terrorism would lessen our dependency on oil, we could accomplish more to end that fundamentalist regime, and thereby terrorism, than anything else we could do.
I knew somehow, somewhere, someone would find a way to blame us for terrorism. It’s because we buy oil from Arab countries! That justifies terrorism, in this person’s “mind.”
AdrianMole
Trump wastes no time trying to exploit this in order to push his disgusting travel ban. A real president would have confined himself, for now, to expressing concern for the victims.
Andrew Roberts finds that the forces of Political Correctness have completed their long march right through the British National Army Museum.
Today’s huge new £24 million refurbished National Army Museum looks imposing inside, but instead of chronologically taking you through the history of the Army it is now broken down thematically into spaces such as ‘Society’, which ‘explores the Army as a cultural and military force that impacts on our customs, technologies and values’, and ‘Army’, which ‘explores the Army’s major role in the political development of the country’. Instead of seeing artefacts in a historical context, as part of a chronological narrative, the visitor is forced to explore themes, and as ever this has provided an opening for guilt, apology and political correctness.
In the old museum they just showed vast collections of uniforms, weaponry, regimental silver, medals and vast paintings of the battle of Omdurman; in today’s you are invited to press buttons to vote on whether ‘The money spent on the Army should be spent elsewhere’, and asked to decide ‘What issue should the Army focus on in the coming decade?’, giving you the choice of ‘Fighting international terrorism’, ‘Training other countries’ armed forces only’, ‘Cyber warfare’ or ‘Peacekeeping’. There is no choice available to vote for the job it has now done for four centuries, that is, ‘Defending Britain by fighting other countries’ armies’. …
[M]edals are thought of as old-fashioned and boring by the new right-on Museum, we are not told in very many cases what they are or even who they were awarded to. The wonderful pictures are still there, but in the Art Room there is now a big sign saying ‘Political Statement’ in red letters, which tells us that ‘Art became a means to legitimise territorial expansion’, and ‘Today, few artists are commissioned to celebrate military victories and triumphalism is seen as distasteful.’ For the iconic picture of the relief of Ladysmith we aren’t told the title or the name of the artist or what is happening in it, but just: ‘This was known as the Bovril War picture.’
‘The National Army Museum,’ it boasts, ‘challenges you to think again about what an army museum is.’
Maureen Callahan objects to the de-Americanization of Wonder Woman.
The long-awaited “Wonder Woman†has generated more buzz than any movie this year, and rightly so. She’s the most beloved and iconic female superhero ever, yet it’s taken decades — the film’s been in development since 1996 — for a Wonder Woman movie. It’s the first to pair a female director with a big-budget, comic-book film meant to be a franchise. In Gal Gadot, it has a star who served in the Israeli army and brings authority to her fight scenes.
“She is the ultimate symbol of strength,†Gadot said in 2015. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d grow up to be in a movie playing someone who influenced as many women as she has.â€
What’s curious about this version, coddled and crafted over decades, is the near-total absence of America. Wonder Woman was born during World War II, created by American psychologist William Moulton Marston, and her debut on the cover of DC’s Sensation Comics in 1942 depicted her in red, white and blue, storming into battle. She’d left her home, Paradise Island, to fight the Nazis in “America, the last citadel of democracy and of equal rights for women!â€
This new Wonder Woman, however, has almost nothing to do with America. The film is set during World War I, in London. Steve Trevor, the pilot Wonder Woman rescues and falls for, is American in name only — here, he’s working for British intelligence.
Most tellingly, Wonder Woman’s iconic costume has been leached of all color. The bald eagle on her chest, the white stars on her blue bottom, the red-and-white striped boots — all have disappeared. She’s no longer vibrant and strong; she’s sad, a pacifist whose armor resembles mourning attire.
Wonder Woman’s global box-office appeal, it seems, depends on no longer being American. According to a piece in the L.A. Times last year, 70 percent of box office revenue is generated overseas, and those markets now take precedence, no matter how closely your superhero is identified with the United States. In 2010, director Joe Johnson said that his Captain America “would not be a flag waver . . . just a good person.â€
The St. Louis Police Department is selling a stash of guns that bring to mind Prohibition-era gangsters for cash to put new a handgun in every officer’s holster, plus arm the department with a number of AR-15 rifles.
The rifles and about 1,525 new 9 mm Beretta handguns will be paid for largely by the sale of 27 Thompson submachine guns, some dating to the 1920s. The proceeds from the vintage weapons will cover about half of the new arsenal — the first shipment of which is expected to arrive in August. The sale of the Berettas currently used by officers and other surplus weapons will make up the rest.
St. Louis decommissioned its Thompson submachine guns about 60 years ago. They have been stored in a basement bunker inside the police academy ever since. The guns, more commonly known as Tommy guns, were often the weapon of choice among gangsters during the Roaring ’20s and the 1930s, but they were also carried by lawmen of the time. In later years, FBI agents carried them.
Chesterfield-based Police Trades is the broker for the $1.2 million deal, which was signed in January by then-Chief Sam Dotson. Raymond Reynolds, the president of Police Trades and a retired St. Louis police lieutenant, is somewhat of a history buff with an affection for the iconic guns. He said he found original paperwork showing that the department had paid about $125 a piece for the submachine guns.
OKLAHOMA CITY — The owner of a local goth bakery refused to bake a wedding cake for an “unbearably happy†couple last week, sparking a swift and immediate backlash, according to multiple reports.
Atlas Obscura recounts Steve Libert’s search for Le Griffon, the first European ship to sail the waters of the upper Great Lakes, lost more than 300 years ago.
Since its disappearance in 1679, the Griffon has taken on a mythic air. Widely considered the Holy Grail of undiscovered Great Lakes shipwrecks, the Griffon carried no treasure, nor anything else that may have retained its value after several centuries underwater. All the wreck offers is a brush with history—and the chance for its discoverer to link their name with that of a legendary explorer.
Shipwreck hunters joke that the Griffon is the most searched for and the most found ship in the Great Lakes—meaning there have been countless false alarms. Wayne Lusardi, a maritime archaeologist for the state of Michigan, has investigated at least 17 Griffon claims since 2002. Only two were actual ships. “I’ve looked at telephone poles, pieces of people’s barns that have washed up on the beach, piles of rocks, things like that,†Lusardi says.
Each new claim inspires a flurry of breathless headlines, but decades of dead ends have made the local shipwreck community wary. So far, the doubters have been right every time. The state’s official position is that no evidence of the Griffon has been found to date.
The cold, fresh water of the Great Lakes is kind to shipwrecks, and the 337-year-old wreckage could theoretically be found almost entirely intact. Each year, the lakes’ eerily preserved wrecks attract thousands of divers, tourists, researchers, and history buffs. Of those, only an elite handful are dead-set on finding the Griffon, but everyone knows the story.
On January 26, 1679, Robert de La Salle drove the first bolt into the keel of what would become the Griffon, a barque longue of 30-50 feet. He planned to sail to the western shores of Lake Michigan, where he would hopefully collect enough furs to assuage his debtors while establishing a French presence in the region.
The Griffon set sail from Niagara on August 7 of that year. The crew launched earlier than planned to avert sabotage, then faced a hard slog through the shallow St. Clair River and a near-fatal storm on Lake Huron. Despite all this, La Salle arrived at the mouth of Green Bay almost a month after his initial departure: September 2, 1679. Some of his men had gone ahead via canoe to barter for furs, and awaited him onshore. Sixteen days later, the Griffon re-embarked for Niagara without La Salle aboard.
What happened next is lost to history.
La Salle continued exploring the continent’s interior, but the Griffon was never far from his mind. He began to worry about the ship’s safety after months passed without word from his crew. Neighboring tribes reported seeing the boat sail into a violent storm, then finding a hatch cover, spoiled pelts, and other apparent wreckage the following spring.
La Salle would eventually come to believe something more sinister. In a letter from 1683, he reported hearing strange rumors: A nearby village had been visited by a neighboring tribe. They had brought captive Frenchmen carrying pelts and explosives—both of which the Griffon had been carrying. One of the men may have matched the description of the ship’s pilot, a man most records refer to as Luc the Dane. Luc, La Salle decided, must have sabotaged the ship to sell the furs himself.
Until his death in 1687, La Salle believed his crew had betrayed him.
It was three hand-hewn pegs in the beam that first made Libert suspect he’d finally solved one of the biggest mysteries of the Great Lakes. Given the wood’s shape, apparent age, and location, he concluded the beam was the Griffon’s bowsprit, used to maneuver the sails. And so he returned year after year.
