A NYT article updates the COP28 AGW (anthropogenic global warming) meeting in staunchly pro-pollution and pro-propaganda Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The meeting is boiling down to a knife fight between now freaked-out climate science experts and cynical wealthy, lying, climate science denying oil elites and their gigantic lying corporations with more than human rights, i.e., super human rights. The NYT writes:
It’s Big Oil vs. Science at the U.N. Climate Summit
Five days into the two-week conference, known as COP28, the talks have become consumed by an intense debate over the future of fossil fuels.
The president of the event is under fire for having suggested that it is not necessary to phase out oil, gas and coal, the burning of which is dangerously heating the planet. At least 1,300 fossil fuels lobbyists, a record, are participating in the talks. And Saudi Arabia has said it opposes any agreement that calls for an end to fossil fuels — significant because, under U.N. rules, any single country can scuttle a deal.
At the same time, scientists, activists and dozens of world leaders are growing more adamant in their calls for a rapid reduction in oil, gas and coal, arguing that, without a pivot away from fossil fuels, the planet is destined for catastrophe. Agreement on a phaseout would be historic; Past U.N. climate deals have shied away from even including the words “fossil fuels.”
Against this backdrop, negotiators from more than 170 countries are frantically working to hash out an agreement that can be approved by every nation by next Tuesday.
“The COP presidency has brought baggage to this process, and far too many oil lobbyists,” said Tzeporah Berman, a Canadian activist who is chairwoman of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. “He has also brought a chance for a real conversation on how to phase out fossil fuels.”
Tensions over the decision to hold the event in the Emirates have swirled for months and burst into view on Monday, when Sultan Al Jaber, the oil executive presiding over the climate talks, came under fire for saying there is “no science” behind the idea that fossil fuels must be phased out in order to keep average global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
“I don’t think we are going to leave Dubai without some clear language and clear direction about moving away from fossil fuels,” said David Waskow, director of the international climate initiative at the World Resources Institute, an environmental research group.
But several Gulf state leaders and top oil executives have indicated they are not open to such language.
“Absolutely not,” the Saudi energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, said when asked during a television interview in Riyadh whether his country would support an agreement that called for the phase-down or phaseout of fossil fuels.
Aaron Padilla, the vice president of corporate policy at the American Petroleum Institute, which represents some of the biggest oil and gas companies in the United States, called the effort to demand a fossil fuel phaseout “misguided.”
The Sultan: A happy, filthy rich, cynical liar
There we have it, we hear the science denial argument from a lying, filthy, oil rich, morally rotted, jackass Sultan and staunch opposition from a cynical, filthy oil rich, lying Saudi Prince, and a lying American dark free speech jackass. The Sultan is especially shameless when he lies, telling us that climate science experts have “no science” behind their climate projections. That says everything we need to know about this fight. Cynical human elites and gigantic corporate defenders of pollution, global warming and species extinction are immoral liars who fight dirty and shamelessly.
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In the last month or two, something changed. It’s sort of like a switch flipped. All of a sudden dire warnings about a second DJT term in office are popping up all over the place. Liz Cheney’s books full of dire warnings just came out. The NYT and WaPo are publishing a major warning every couple of days. What happened to flip the switch from asleep to not? People got woke, but it's not clear to me what woke ’em up. Maybe DJT’s increasingly explicit threats about what he plans to do once he gets back in power was a hard kick in the groin that caught people’s attention. Some of us have been woke from a long time. regardless of the cause, this awakening is cause for celebration.
Celebrating!
Among the long-time aware people issuing warnings is former Russian journalist Masha Gessen, who reported the fall of Russian democracy to Putin’s kleptocratic dictatorship. She has first hand experience with the fall of democracy. She wrote this a day or two after DJT was elected in Nov. 2016, commenting of the piss poor, clueless concession speech Hillary made after she lost:
“Thank you, my friends. Thank you. Thank you. We have lost. We have lost, and this is the last day of my political career, so I will say what must be said. We are standing at the edge of the abyss. Our political system, our society, our country itself are in greater danger than at any time in the last century and a half. The president-elect has made his intentions clear, and it would be immoral to pretend otherwise. We must band together right now to defend the laws, the institutions, and the ideals on which our country is based.”
That, or something like that, is what Hillary Clinton should have said on Wednesday [in her concession speech to Trump].
Donald Trump’s threats for another presidency are deeply alarming, historians and legal experts say.
DJT has promised to use the powers of the federal government to punish people he perceives to be his critics and opponents, including the Biden family, district attorneys, journalists and “the deep state.” He has suggested that Mark Milley, a retired top general, deserves the death penalty. Trump has called President Biden “an enemy of the state” and Nancy Pelosi “the Wicked Witch.” He has accused former President Barack Obama — “Barack Hussein Obama,” in Trump’s telling — of directing Biden to admit “terrorists and terrorist sympathizers” into the U.S.
Trump’s threats, often justified with lies, are deeply alarming, historians and legal experts say. He has repeatedly promised to undermine core parts of American democracy. He has also signaled that, unlike in his first term in the White House, he will avoid appointing aides and cabinet officials who would restrain him.
The warnings of a DJT kleptocratic dictatorship are so bad that some radical authoritarian Republicans are actually abandoning the KYMS (keep your mouth shut) propaganda tactic and starting to respond with the usual barrage of lies, slanders and cynical elitist bullshit. For example:
“All of these articles calling Trump a dictator are about one thing: legitimizing illegal and violent conduct as we get closer to the election,” Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), a Trump ally, wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Everyone needs to take a chill pill.”
“It’s August 2016 all over again. Skyrocketing cost of health care has millions worried. President Trump’s Dem. opponent off the campaign trail & hiding from the press,” senior Trump adviser Jason Miller wrote on X.
“Dems & their media allies have given up on debating issues & have shifted to name-calling & rhetorical fearmongering,” he added. “This is nothing more than another version of the media’s failed and false Russia collusion hoax,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said of The Atlantic project, claiming the magazine “will be out of business soon because nobody will read that trash.”Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), addressing The Atlantic piece, accused the left of using “the same hysterical scare tactics from 2016 & 2020 to attack Trump.”
Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas), referencing The Washington Post column, claimed the left had gone into “FULL PANIC Mode” and suggested another Trump term would mean “the end of dictators in America, NOT the beginning.”
That is sooo satisfying. Fear of radical right kleptocratic dictatorship is now so loud that its defenders feel they have to actually respond. That is amazing.
Well, now I feel fully vindicated in my warnings, which some people confidently told me were overblown, exaggerated, lies, stupidity, brainwashed BS, blithering nonsense, etc. According to me (an expert on me), I've been harping on the DJT threat for quite a while. This is from Feb. 2020:
Since February or March of 2017, I've been arguing that the president wants to convert America from a rule of law democracy into some kind of kleptocratic tyranny-oligarchy-theocracy. Before then, I believed that is what the president wanted to do, but thought it made sense to see how he would speak and otherwise behave once in office. Early on, most Americans, but not all, would have dismissed the Trump tyrant-kleptocrat argument as nonsense, hyperbole, a lie or whatever was needed to make the argument go away. That was dismissed here as recently as a couple of weeks ago, with the argument that any tyrant-kleptocrat argument was gross hyperbole and such a thing as a kleptocratic tyranny didn't even exist. As usual, citation of contrary evidence changed absolutely nothing.
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