[The] man of sin [shall] be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4 KJV)
Jesus saith, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." (John 14:6 KJV)
For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. (Romans 10:13 KJV)
Iris Scan, Fingerprints Substituted for TSA Screening
November 23, 2010
Another Voice (Rev. 18:4) - An opt-in program that charges airline passengers to bypass airport security lines is being resuscitated more than two years after its abrupt shutdown. The CLEAR program re-launched in Orlando last week, and is preparing to start up in Denver.
After submitting fingerprints and iris scans, members are issued a CLEARcard with these biometric data. Kiosks at participating airports then allow them to confirm their identity and “speed through security.”
Verified Identity Pass shut down the previous program suddenly in June 2009, leaving approximately 165,000 members without refunds. The new owners—Alclear, LLC—purchased CLEAR’s assets in bankruptcy reorganization, and are offering reinstatement to those who were left stranded. Under the current terms, membership will be renewed upon first use or when CLEAR begins operating in the member’s home market, whichever occurs first.
A similar program, dubbed iQueue, currently operates in Indianapolis and “expects” to launch in additional cities this year. Annual enrollment is $119, and former CLEAR members are credited up to 12 months.
The program was "suddenly" shut down in June 2009, seemingly just in time for naked-scanner-madness to be introduced across the globe. Now that that is accomplished and patdown/scanner chaos is running rampant, the million dollar question is will people now be ready to give up their bio-info to the NWO in exchange for passage onto a plane...or courthouse...or stadium? Evil schemers they are. fyi
"The superstructure for the international green movement is now visibly rising on the global landscape like the Tower of Babel of old as puppet political figures, pandering to the Kabbalist-driven whims of their demonically possessed masters, defiantly create a global regulatory system with which they will attempt to finalize their ages-old plan to micromanage the earth and dominate all of mankind on it" [see April 4, 2010, 1st meeting update].
A few years back there was a long running anti-drug campaign addressed to parents of teens asking something along the lines of 'parents, do you know where your kids are tonight?' Presumably designed to motivate parents to take greater interest in the lives of their children so as to steer them clear of falling into the trap of drug use.
Which brings up the subject of a question that needs to be asked here to all the people of the various cities of the various nations of the world: People...do you know where your mayors are tonight?
Did you know that they just signed up to submit you and your city to a "global climate monitoring and verification mechanism" that calls for establishing "climate action plans," entailing the creation of "local laws and initiatives" which will be used to in essence 'de-carbonize' your existence; and, even worse, that they agreed to be held accountable to these plans by a mysterious entity going by the name of the "Carbon Cities Climate Registry"...with the 'reporting center' located at a place cleverly acronym-ed "carbonn"?
As noted in the article, this is only a prelude to next week's (beginning November 29, 2010) "United Nations Framework Convention For Climate Change" (UNFCCC). This conference will pick up where Copenhagen 'left off' one year ago with another "global binding treaty" for governments of nations on the table. The convention's name is accurate. The "framework" for a global dictatorship is exactly what is materializing before our eyes.
As it stands, mayors from around the globe will now 'officially' manage the cities of the world according to the dictates of an unaccountable global body. As it stands now, the cities of the various nations of the world have just been 'officially' fitted into that framework, the superstructure of a new Tower of Babel.
A communitarian global management system, forced upon the planet by the great green lie. It is here. It signals the nearness [Daniel 8:23] of the coming again of another 'Nimrod' to rule over this new 'Babel' [Genesis 10:8,10]. This new Nimrod will be the false Jewish messiah, aka the 'Antichrist.' Reigning over the earth from the capital city Jerusalem, they will call his kingdom 'Zion,' meaning 'city of god,' but the Word of God says that it "spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt" [Revelation 11:8]. For the record, that signifies perversion and corruption, respectively.
The tower rising today has a corrupt and perverse foundation. It cannot stand. After these things have run their course, it will be 'razed.' Only at the return of the true Saviour of Israel and the world — the real 'Christ' — the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, will the true 'Zion,' the very city of God, be 'raised.' He Himself is the foundation. He will come. It is written. "He that believeth shall not make haste" (Isaiah 28:16).
True member of the body of Christ — His bride, as He promised (John 14:3), He will first come for you before this all comes down. Ready at any moment?
Note: The official list of the Cities that have signed the Pact of Mexico City is in charge of the Organizing Committee of the World Mayors Summit on Climate (WMSC). All related information of cities can be considered as official if it appears at the web site of the WMSCS. It is important to mention that a very wide group of cities have expressed their interest to sign the Pact of Mexico City however they have not been included in this list since they have not sent yet their respective document.
1. Buenos Aires, Argentina 2. La Falda, Argentina 3. Requinoa, Argentina 4. Rosario, Argentina 5. Santa Fe, Argentina 6. Brussels, Belgium 7. Belmopan, Belize 8. La Paz, Bolivia 9. San Carlos de Santa Cruz, Bolivia 10. Santísima Trinidad, Bolivia 11. Belo Horizonte, Brazil 12. Curitiba, Brazil 13. Diadema, Brazil 14. Manaus, Brazil 15. Porto Alegre, Brazil 16. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 17. Sao Paulo, Brazil 18. Association of Forestry Municipalities of Cameroon, Cameroon 19. Delta-Vancouver, Canada 20. Vancouver, Canada 21. Coltauco, Chile 22. El Bosque, Chile 23. Graneros, Chile 24. Lautaro, Chile 25. Quilpué, Chile 26. Santiago, Chile 27. Santiago (Metropolitan Area), Chile 28. Bogota DC, Colombia 29. Gigante-Huila, Colombia 30. Montería, Colombia 31. San Jose, Costa Rica 32. Koprivnica, Croatia 33. Cuenca, Ecuador 34. Pichincha, Ecuador 35. Quito, Ecuador 36. Santa Ana, El Salvador 37. Brest, France 38. Bordeaux, France 39. Ile de France Regional Council, France 40. Communauté d’Aglomeration de la Plaine Commune, France 41. Dunkerque, France 42. Grenoble, France 43. Lyon, France 44. Mellac, France 45. Nantes, France 46. Orleans, France 47. Paris, France 48. Guatemala, Guatemala 49. Jakarta, Indonesia 50. Jerusalem, Israel 51. Kyoto, Japan 52. Nagoya, Japan 53. Mandera, Kenya 54. Benslimane, Morocco 55. Casablanca, Morocco 56. Essaouira, Morocco 57. Kenitra, Morocco 58. Khouribga, Morocco 59. Meknes, Morocco 60. Ouarzazate, Morocco 61. Rabat, Morocco 62. Settat, Morocco 63. Temara, Morocco 64. Acatzingo, Mexico 65. Acotepec, Mexico 66. Aguascalientes, Mexico 67. Amixtlan, Mexico 68. Ayotlán, Mexico 69. Camerino Z. Mendoza, Mexico 70. Mexico City, Mexico 71. Cancun, Mexico 72. Chalma, Mexico 73. Chahuites, Mexico 74. Chihuahua, Mexico 75. Cintalapa de Figueroa, Mexico 76. Coyoacán, Mexico 77. Cuatro Cienagas, Mexico 78. Chiconamel, Mexico 79. Chetumal, Mexico 80. Hidalgo, Mexico 81. Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico 82. Lerdo, Mexico 83. Luvianos, Mexico 84. Paso del Macho, Mexico 85. Santiago Apostol, Mexico 86. San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico 87. San Juan Lachao, Mexico 88. San Juan Guichicovi, Mexico 89. San Martin Hidalgo, Mexico 90. Santa Catarina Sachatao-Ixtlan, Mexico 91. Santa Lucia del Camino, Mexico 92. Santiago Papasquiaro, Mexico 93. Sierra Mojada, Mexico 94. Tecalitlan, Mexico 95. Tepetlaoxtoc, Mexico 96. Tlacatepec de Benito Juarez, Mexico 97. Totolapa, Mexico 98. Villa de Zaachila, Mexico 99. Yurécuaro, Mexico 100. Zimapan, Mexico 101. Zacatecas, Mexico 102. Wellington, New Zeland 103. Amuwo Odofin Local Government, Nigeria 104. Chaclacayo, Peru 105. Chancay, Peru 106. Comas, Peru 107. Lima, Peru 108. Santa Rosa, Peru 109. Trujillo, Peru 110. Albay, Philippines 111. Ligao City, Philippines 112. Lisbon, Portugal 113. Comerio, Puerto Rico 114. Pitesti, Romany 115. Dakar, Senegal 116. Nioro du Rip, Senegal 117. Saint Louis, Senegal 118. Cape Town, South Africa 119. Cape Winelands, South Africa 120. Dr JS Moroko Local Municipality, South Africa 121. Johannesburg, South Africa 122. Matlosana, South Africa 123. Gwangju, South Korea 124. Jeju, South Korea 125. Suncheon, South Korea 126. Yeonsu-Gu, South Korea 127. Barcelona, Spain 128. Barcelona & Mataro’s Province, Spain 129. Karlstad, Sweden 130. Malmö, Sweden 131. Taipei City 132. Istanbul, Turkey 133. Entebbe, Uganda 134. Montevideo, Uruguay 135. San Carlos, Uruguay 136. Burnsville, MN, Mayor Elizabeth Kautz & US Conference of Mayors, USA 137. Des Moines, USA 138. Los Angeles, USA 139. North Little Rock, USA
City Mayors Metro News - Mayors from the C40 group of cities vowed in Hong Kong to launch a number of initiatives to curb carbon emissions. Toronto’s outgoing mayor David Miller stressed the need to make buildings more energy efficient and increase the use of electric vehicles in urban areas. Hong Kong's chief executive Donald Tsang reminded delegates that cities consumed over two-thirds of the world's energy and emitted more than 70 per cent of total carbon dioxides.
"Each of our cities share common goals -- to reduce our carbon footprint, to make our environment more liveable and to join hands to combat global warming and climate change," Tsang said.
He went on to warn that climate change has posed an unprecedented challenge and that there was clear consensus that action is urgently required.
“Cities need to unlock the full potential of low carbon technologies,” he added.
Of course, Hong Kong has been suffering from with worsening air pollution, with downtown areas of the city often shrouded in smog.
Outgoing Toronto Mayor David Miller will today hand over the chairmanship of the C40 group to New York’s Michael Bloomberg. The New York mayor told the conference that his city was focusing on several green strategies, such as planting more trees and reducing building pollution.
In his last address as chairman, Toronto’s mayor said we all needed a variety of policies, programmes and projects with, and between, cities to succeed.
"The C40 has provided its network with an exceptional opportunity to share and learn on how to successfully remove greenhouse gas emissions," he added.
The C40 group was set up in 2005 to play a leading role in tackling climate change.
C40 is a group of large cities committed to tackling climate change.
UN Climate Change Treaty & the Final Push for World Government
The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. - Mayors and local leaders from around the world concluded a trio of meetings Nov. 21 with a pledge to work to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.
The Global Cities Covenant on Climate laid out 10 actions cities can take to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to a warming climate, including a commitment to develop ways for cities to access international funding for local actions.
The voluntary agreement, known as the Mexico City Pact, also highlighted the important role in addressing climate change played by the world's cities, which accounted for more than 70 percent of the Earth's greenhouse gas emissions in 2006, according to the International Energy Agency.
Cities that signed onto the agreement agreed to report any actions they take in a new carbonn Cities Climate Registry (cCCR). The registry will be operated by the Bonn Center for Local Climate Action and Reporting--hence the use of “carbonn” in the name. The registry was launched the same day the pact was signed, during the first World Mayors Summit on Climate, hosted by Mexico City.
The Mexico City Pact also envisioned the establishment of a Global Cities Covenant on Climate Secretariat that would be encourage more cities to join the agreement and would follow up on actions laid out in the pact.
The one-day summit was sponsored by Mexico City, the World Mayors Council on Climate Change, the ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability, and United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG).
The meeting also marked the final day of a pair of related meetings of mayors and local leaders. The Third Congress of United Cities and Local Governments and the Local and Regional Leaders World Summit both concluded six-day meetings in Mexico City with the Nov. 21 signing of the pact at the World Mayors Summit.
The trio of meetings attracted some 3,000 city officials from 114 countries.
Importance of International Funding
Earlier in the week, Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard discussed the importance of an international fund to help cities fight global warming.
“Today, almost all global credits are for nations, not cities,” Ebrard said Nov. 17. “For that reason, cities have great difficulty in accessing resources from the international communities. So this is a very interesting, new initiative that is also being adopted in this meeting.”
The objective is to promote investments in city climate change programs as quickly as possible, rather than waiting for an international accord that appears to be foundering, Ebrard told Radio Formula, a local radio station, Nov. 18.
“We can change energy, reduce auto emissions, and take other steps in our cities … and not wait for an international pact that we see is not coming and is being delayed,” Ebrard said.
Ebrard said the financing architecture used today is too slow and that the new fund for cities would speed up the allocation of resources to municipalities, where greenhouse gas emissions are highest and climate change is affecting more people. He did not specify how it would do so.
“The voice of cities must be heard at the climate summit,” Ebrard said.
UCLG president and Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë said at a Nov. 18 press conference that cities will pressure leaders in Cancun “to do what they have not done, what they haven’t been able to do.”
Handshakes after the pact has been signed at WMSC in Mexico City.
AFP - Mayors from around the world signed a voluntary pact Sunday in Mexico City to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at a meeting meant as a precursor to UN-sponsored climate talks in Cancun opening next week.
The gathering in one of the world's most polluted cities assembled thousands of local and regional leaders to discuss a wide range of economic and social issues, including climate change.
Participants from some 135 cities and urban areas -- including Buenos Aires, Bogota, Johannesburg, Los Angeles, Paris and Vancouver -- signed the pact which states their intention to adopt a slate of measures to stem climate change.
Each city "will have to register its climate data (commitments as well as performance) in the city climate record" during the next eight months, said Gabriel Sanchez, president of Think Foundation, a Mexican non-profit.
Residents will be able to track their cities' performance online, officials said.
The pact will be presented at UN talks in the Mexican resort of Cancun from November 29 to December 10.
That's when top climate scientists from around the world hope to break the deadlock on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and channeling aid to poor, vulnerable countries after the widely regarded failure of the last climate summit, in Copenhagen.
Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said his counterparts should seize the opportunity ahead of Cancun to highlight their key roles in the fight to put the brakes on climate change.
"We have to tell the international community that it's in the cities that the battle to slow global warming will be won," Ebrard said in the lead-up to the meeting.
And he has brought the battle to his doorstep; the leftist Ebrard pledged last week that Mexico City, with its teeming population of more than 20 million, would reduce its annual greenhouse gas emissions by around 14 percent.
The mayors emphasized the vital role that cities, where more than half the world's population now live, can play in the fight against climate change.
Urban areas consume up to 80 percent of global energy production and emit 60 percent of greenhouse gases, according to Christiana Figueres, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The pact sent a "clear signal" to countries that will sit at the negotiating table in Cancun that it is possible to reach agreement, Figueres said.
Meanwhile, a new study released on Sunday found that fossil-fuel gases edged back less than hoped in 2009, as falls in advanced economies were largely outweighed by rises in China and India.
Annual global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the burning of oil, gas and coal were 30.8 billion tonnes, a retreat of only 1.3 percent in 2009 compared with 2008, a record year, they said in a letter to the journal Nature Geoscience. The decrease was less than half what had been expected, because emerging giant economies were unaffected by the downturn that hit many large industrialized nations. In addition, they burned more coal, the biggest source of fossil-fuel carbon, while their economies struggled with a higher "carbon intensity," a measure of fuel-efficiency.
Emissions of fossil-fuel gases in 2009 fell by 11.8 percent in Japan, by 6.9 percent in the United States, by 8.6 percent in Britain, by 7.0 percent in Germany and by 8.4 percent in Russia, the paper said. In contrast, they rose by eight percent in China, the world's number one emitter of fossil-fuel CO2, which accounts for a whopping 24 percent of the total.
CNN - City mayors from all over the world will be attending the World Mayors Summit on Climate in Mexico City later this month to pledge their commitment to combating global warming.
The centerpiece of the one-day summit will be the signing of "The Mexico City Pact" -- formally known as the Global Cities Covenant on Climate -- which will recognize the strategic importance cities need to play in reducing carbon emissions.
Convened by the World Mayors Council on Climate Change (WMCCC), ICLEI -- Local Governments for Sustainability and United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) the summit will take place eight days before the United Nations climate change conference in Cancun, Mexico.
Anke Stoffregen, ICLEI communications manager told CNN:
"The summit is very much about the mayors taking the leadership role and pulling their strength together to show that they are willing to make commitments and that they are able to deliver actions as well."
A crucial ingredient of the pact is the launch the "carbon Cities Climate Registry" which commits mayors and local governments to regular and transparent reporting of CO2 emissions.
Over half of the world's population now live in cities. According to the International Energy Agency cities accounted for two thirds of the world's primary energy demand in 2006 contributing around 70 percent of global CO2 emissions.
Stoffregen says city leaders already understand the need to act. What this summit is trying to do is speed up the process of global coordination on climate change and press national governments to act faster.
"With more and more people living in urban areas it becomes more important that we realize that we have to provide for a more varied lifestyle," Stoffregen said.
"People who live in cities have an enormous power to demand of their local governments an improvement in their climate policy."
Nature.com - Scientists should do the research to help mayors prepare for a warming world, say Cynthia Rosenzweig, William Solecki, Stephen A. Hammer and Shagun Mehrotra.
For years, the focus on the world's response to climate change has been on nation states, which have been mostly unsuccessful in brokering comprehensive agreements or taking action. Cities, by contrast, are preparing risk assessments, setting greenhouse-gas emission reduction targets, and pledging to act ...
The World Mayors Council on Climate Change (WMCCC) was founded by Kyoto’s mayor in December 2005, following the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol. The WMCCC and its chair Marcelo Ebrard, mayor of Mexico City, will host the World Mayors’ Summit there the week before the 16th Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol in Cancun, Mexico, this November.
Mayors will be invited to sign the Mexico City Pact, which seeks to strengthen cities’ commitment to mitigation measures,monitoring and adaptation (see ‘Urban action’). The summit also gives city leaders the opportunity to demand a seat at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations, helping them to get funding to implement their policies. There are currently more than 50 members (mayors and former mayors) of the WMCCC ...
AP - Rahm Emanuel officially announced Saturday what everyone has known since he quit his job as White House chief of staff, hugged President Barack Obama and returned to Chicago: He's running for mayor.
To the surprise of no one, Emanuel, who has long talked about his desire to be mayor, told a packed auditorium at a school on Chicago's North Side that he is a candidate to succeed retiring Mayor Richard Daley.
The election is Feb. 22.
Emanuel represented the city's North Side in Congress before he went to the White House.
He has been actively campaigning in the city since his return about two months ago. He also has been courting donors who can add to the $1.2 million left from his congressional campaign fund.
Emanuel is one of about a half dozen candidates who have either formally announced or are about to.
State Sen. James Meeks and U.S. Rep. Danny Davis have similar events scheduled Sunday, and former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun is expected to announce in the next week or so. Former city schools President Gery Chico and City Clerk Miguel del Valle have already declared they're running.
But Emanuel has emerged as the front-runner, in part because of his money and national profile and because other high-profile candidates, such as Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, have dropped out.
Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who assisted the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the 1991 Iraq war and whose father was in Irgun, is a strong supporter of AIPAC; he personally introduced fellow Chicagoan Barack Obama to the organization's directors during the 2008 presidential campaign. "Rahm is the Democrats' Newt Gingrich," says Bruce Reed, who served with Emanuel in the Clinton White House. "He understands how much ideas matter, he always knows his message, he takes no prisoners, and he only plays to win." Friends and enemies agree that the key to Emanuel's success is his legendary intensity... the night after Clinton was elected, Emanuel was so angry at the President's enemies that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign, grabbed a steak knife and began rattling off a list of betrayers, shouting "Dead! . . . Dead! . . . Dead!" and plunging the knife into the table after every name. "When he was done, the table looked like a lunar landscape," one campaign veteran recalls. "It was like something out of The Godfather. But that's Rahm for you." - Obama Picks Israeli Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff, HAARETZ, November 6, 2008
AP — Facing another year without a global deal to curb climate change, the world's nations will spend the next two weeks debating how to mobilize money to cope with what's coming — as temperatures climb, ice melts, seas rise and the climate that nurtured man shifts in unpredictable ways.
Beginning Monday, 15,000 government delegates, environmentalists, business leaders, journalists and others will gather in the meeting halls of this steamy Caribbean resort for the annual conference of the 193-nation U.N. climate treaty.
They meet late in a year that may end tied for the hottest globally in 131 years of record-keeping.
As the world warms, the long-running U.N. negotiations have bogged down, unable to find consensus on a legally binding agreement requiring richer countries — and perhaps some poorer — to rein in emissions of carbon dioxide and other industrial, transportation and agricultural gases blamed for global warming.
The Republican takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives and a recent historic shift in emissions — developing countries now produce more greenhouse gases than the old industrial world — all but guarantee the standoff will drag on, at least for another year or two.
"The world is waiting for fruitful negotiations," Mexico's environment secretary, Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada, told The Associated Press. "What we want to have is really some action, not just talking."
But what U.N. officials and others foresee here is "incremental progress," not an overarching deal, in two weeks of negotiation ending with three days of high-level bargaining among the world's environment ministers.
Hoping to revive momentum in the talks, delegates look for decisions leading to better terms for developing nations to obtain patented "green" technology from advanced countries, and toward a system for compensating poorer nations for protecting their forests.
In particular, the developing world wants a significant deal on finance, a decision to establish a green fund to handle billions in aid dollars pledged by developed nations to help poorer countries adapt to a changing climate by, for example, building shoreline protection and upgrading water systems to deal with drought, and to install clean energy sources.
In a nonbinding Copenhagen Accord reached by world leaders at last year's climate summit in the Danish capital, richer nations set a goal of $100 billion annually in such climate finance by 2020.
The fund's operational and leadership details would likely be left for post-Cancun negotiation, as would the key question of how it would be financed. A U.N. panel of international political and financial leaders has presented a menu of revenue-raising options, including levies on international flights and on foreign-exchange transactions.
More immediately, less-developed nations will raise concerns about short-term aid, "fast-start finance" promised in the Copenhagen Accord.
"There's been too little for small island developing states. It's a trickle," said Grenada's U.N. ambassador, Dessima Williams, chair of an alliance of island states.
At Copenhagen, industrial nations as a group pledged $30 billion in quick financing over 2010-2012. Independent analysts find that governments individually since have promised $28 billion for the three years.
Poorer nations complain much of the money may not be new, but funds simply reshuffled from other development programs. At Cancun, they're expected to demand a clearer accounting of fast-start finance.
That "would build confidence in the overall funding process," Robert Orr, a U.N. assistant secretary-general, told reporters in New York. "We need new and additional money to address the problem, not repackaged money."
On the flip side, the developed north will seek a better accounting from China, India and other emerging economies of the south on what they're doing to slow the galloping growth of their greenhouse gas emissions.
Nations north and south pledged under the 2009 accord to voluntarily lower emissions by specific amounts or, in the case of emerging economies, to slow emissions growth. Developing countries also agreed to some international scrutiny of the steps they take, but the U.S. complains China has backtracked on that.
At Cancun, India will submit a compromise monitoring plan it hopes will help satisfy the north on the south's emissions actions, while the south obtains a better accounting on climate finance.
Monitoring is "the crux of all issues at Cancun," India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, told the AP in New Delhi.
The Copenhagen emissions pledges, even if all were met, would take the world only 60 percent of the way toward preventing serious climate change, the U.N. Environment Program reported last week.
Scientists say emissions overall should be cut 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to prevent a dangerous temperature rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F) above preindustrial levels. Temperatures already rose 0.7 degrees C (1.3 degrees F) in the 20th century.
The Copenhagen pledges would together reduce emissions by only 18 percent, independent analysis shows. In the U.S. case, emissions would be cut by only 3 percent below 1990 levels.
For 13 years the U.S. has refused to join the rest of the industrialized world in the U.N. climate treaty's Kyoto Protocol, a binding pact to curb fossil-fuel emissions by modest amounts.
The rise of Republicans in Washington, many of whom dismiss powerful scientific evidence of global warming, seems to rule out for now U.S. legislation to cap emissions, essential for drawing others into a binding global deal to succeed Kyoto, expiring in 2012.
American negotiators say Washington will never submit to a new Kyoto-style deal on emissions unless China, India and others take on commitments under a legally binding treaty. The Chinese and Indians counter that they're still too poor to risk stifling economic growth, and the historic responsibility for industrial emissions lies with the north.
The Obama administration, meanwhile, seeks limited emissions reductions via executive action, such as the Environmental Protection Agency's 2011 guidelines on energy efficiency at power plants, cement factories and other big emitters. But the rest of the world, from Europe to island states facing rising seas, is skeptical of the American will to take demanding long-term action.
"They'll say to the U.S., `Show us how you're going to do it. Give us confidence in how you're going to do it,'" said Lou Leonard, the World Wildlife Fund's climate policy chief. "If the U.S. isn't able to do it, it's quite hard for countries to engage in those discussions."
As the debates drag on, heat-trapping carbon dioxide fills more of the atmosphere. From 280 parts per million before the Industrial Revolution, the concentration stood at 386.8 ppm in 2009.
If too little is done, temperatures this century may rise by up to 6.4 degrees C (11.5 degrees F), leading to severe climate disruption, say scientists of the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The disruption may already have begun.
Researchers point to this summer's historic heat wave in Russia and nationwide floods in Pakistan as portents of things to come. They wonder whether this year's extreme drought in the Amazon is the beginning of an expected drying out of parts of that region. In the Arctic Ocean, the summer melt of the ice cap has reached unprecedented proportions in recent years, and studies suggest the summer ocean may be ice-free as early as this decade.
Here in Mexico, research points to a drying out and shrinking of farm output in some regions, which, might lead to a greater exodus of Mexican migrants to the U.S. One Pentagon analysis suggests the U.S. military will have to take over U.S. borders in the coming decades as "climate refugees" flee stricken lands.
Reuters - China's chief climate change negotiator Xie Zhenhua admits for the first time that his country is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases ahead of a climate change conference in Mexico.
The Ticket via Yahoo! News - It's crunch time for Congress as members head back to Washington this week for a lame-duck session packed with major initiatives.
Tax cuts, income support, national security issues and the military's policy banning openly gay service are among the issues on Congress' agenda. But each faces a complicated battle in Washington.
Below, we take a look at how each of these issues may fare in a packed lame-duck Congress.
Tax cuts: Tax cuts enacted during the George W. Bush administration are set to expire at the end of this year. Most Democrats, including the president, are pushing for an extension of "middle-class tax cuts" only, which affect those making $250,000 or less. Democrats argue tax cuts should expire for those making more than $250,000. But most Republicans favor extending all tax cuts and suggest that Democrats risk hurting the economy by only extending the middle-class cuts. It's unclear whether Democrats will push for a separate vote on middle-class cuts or whether Congress will vote on the complete tax cut package. Another fight looms over how long Congress may approve these extensions--a span of either years or months.
Unemployment benefits: The latest extension of federal unemployment benefits is set to expire on Nov. 30. Letting those benefits lapse would mean that an estimated 2 million Americans would lose their jobless benefits in December--with other unemployed Americans losing benefits in each month that follows. Fiscal conservatives argue that another extension is unnecessary and will not help the economy. But with joblessness soaring, others argue an extension is necessary to aid the many unemployed and their families. The House attempted to pass the extension in November, but failed.
Government spending bill: Congress has a Dec. 3 deadline to pass a $1 trillion spending bill to keep the federal government operational. Congress will probably pass the bill, but it's unclear whether members will decide to fund the government for a longer period, such as a year, or will elect to fund the government for just a few months, thereby forcing the next Congress to vote again on the issue in 2011.
DREAM immigration act: The White House and congressional Democrats are pushing for a lame-duck vote on a bill offering a path to citizenship for some illegal immigrants who arrived in the United States as children and later studied in American colleges or served in the military. Majority Leader Harry Reid has pledged to hold a vote on the bill this year, but Republicans say that the votes aren't there to win passage of the DREAM act.
Nuclear START treaty: Democrats, including Barack Obama, want the Senate to ratify a nuclear treaty with Russia. But Republicans dispute some of the treaty's language and are asking for the vote to be delayed until next year. Democrats such as Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill argue that Republicans are holding up the vote for political reasons to weaken President Obama. Arizona GOP Sen. Jon Kyl is leading the charge to postpone a vote on START until next year.
The health commission of Codex Alimentarius, and the subsequent legislation to come from it, has provable roots to Nazism, Communism, eugenics, and one-world government initiatives. Let’s put forth a few of the names and philosophies of the tyrants responsible for this proposed global health tyranny.
I.G. Farben was not isolated to Germany. Not only were they a conglomerate of Bayer, Hoechst, BASF and other companies, I.G. Farben was also welded to Shell Oil of Britain and Standard Oil and DuPont of the United States by 1929. This occurred after I.G. Farben discovered how to make petroleum out of coal. Subsequently, there was an agreement for I.G. Farben to stay out of the petroleum market if Standard Oil would stay out of the chemical market
Hermann Schmitz, who was chairman of the board for I.G. Farben, as mentioned above, had a large amount of stock in Standard Oil New Jersey, while the Rockefeller Foundation likewise owned a substantial amount of stock in I.G. Farben. So much stock that when I.G. Farben’s holdings were completely sold off in 1962, the Rockefellers were the dominant holders involved in the transactions. This is significant because the Rockefeller Foundation and the Rockefeller family in general were major supporters not just of the Nazi regime and eugenics, but the creation of the United Nations.
Indeed, the connections between the Rockefellers and the atrocities of Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, and Communist China are so plentiful as to preclude them from being dealt with in much detail in this article. This evidence is readily available to anyone who wishes to investigate and is made much easier because, in large part, the Rockefellers do not deny it. In addition to open support for eugenics, the Rockefellers are also committed globalists, again a philosophy which is readily admitted. The Rockefeller connections to globalist organizations such as the United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission to name a few are widely documented and discussed. Indeed, it was John D. Rockefeller that donated the land on which the United Nations headquarters was built.
As one digs deeper and deeper into the history of the United Nations and even the concept of globalization itself, one encounters more and more of the Rockefeller family tree along the way. It eventually becomes obvious that the Rockefellers, along with other elite families, had a vested interest in the creation of an international governing body as well as a powerful hand in its creation through organizations such as those mentioned above, specifically the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, and the Royal Institute of International Affairs. All of these groups and organizations exist for the stated purpose of world government, with the UN in particular being a vital piece of the infrastructure used to facilitate it. Indeed, much evidence has shown definite links between these organizations and the creation of the United Nations.
But eliciting perhaps even more concern, especially since the Rockefeller family has as much control as it does, is their obsession with eugenics. It seems that the Rockefeller family has been involved in the eugenics movement since the inception of its more modern form. To be clear, eugenics is the pseudo-scientific theory that some humans are hereditarily more fit than others and that those deemed unfit should be eradicated through various means. Its contemporary form originated with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection, but gained more steam when Sir Francis Galton (a cousin of Darwin’s) began to push these theories with increased vigor. Galton also claimed that if fit or talented human beings would only marry other fit or talented human beings then the end result would be much more fit and talented offspring.
At the same time Darwin and Galton’s theories were being considered, the idea of heredity was being given more attention as well. Yet, in just a few years, what were mainly just bizarre theories came to be not only accepted but turned into a mass movement of eugenics that resulted in forced sterilizations, abortions, euthanasia and even infanticide in the United States. This was years before these practices were introduced and intensified in Germany. In fact, it was the United States that Hitler took as a model for his own plan to eliminate “unfits.” These practices blossomed in the years before World War II due to large scale acceptance of eugenics in academia and the media as well as massive funding from hereditary elite families such as the Rockefellers and Carnegies.
Though certainly not the only proponents of eugenics, these families played an immensely important role in its expansion. The Rockefeller Foundation alone funded the American Eugenics Society to the point where its own eugenics foundation, the Rockefeller Population Council, was virtually indistinguishable from it. The Foundation funded the Eugenics Society, which eventually changed its name to the Society for the Study of Social Biology, the name that it currently holds. Rockefeller also helped to create and subsequently fund the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Eugenics, and Human Heredity.
The latter was directly responsible for the coordination, funding, and implementation of the program in which Josef Mengele worked prior to his infamous experiments at Auschwitz. Indeed, many of the experiments themselves were funded by the Rockefeller Foundation via the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Eugenics, and Human Heredity. Through the Bureau of Social Hygiene, another Rockefeller eugenics foundation, John D. Rockefeller also anonymously funded the notorious racist, eugenicist, and abortion pioneer Margaret Sanger’s American Birth Control League, Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau, and Planned Parenthood of America.
Sanger was the initiator of The Negro Project, a concerted effort to eliminate the black race. In a 1939 letter to Clarence Gamble she wrote,
“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to their more rebellious members.”
In 1939, Sanger renamed her Clinical Research Bureau to the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau, both integral institutions to the Negro Project, which became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942, its current name as it exists today.
Considering the many connections of the Rockefellers to the United Nations and their role in its creation, it would seem logical that the two would share ideals. Indeed, population control and reduction is one of the main concerns of the UN as they fund and operate a variety of different organizations under the UN umbrella to serve just that purpose; most notably the United Nations Population Fund. Sven Burmester, a representative of the latter organization, even stated publicly his support for the barbaric practices of China’s population control programs. He said,
“China has had the most successful family planning policy in the history of mankind in terms of quantity and with that, China has done mankind a favor.”
This is only one example of the ideology that is pervasive among those intricately involved in the United Nations and, unfortunately, much of the scientific community. Although little more will be said about the elite and UN ideologies here, the evidence is readily available and it should be researched in order to gain a clearer picture of the direction this system of global governance is moving.
When one has a basic understanding of the connections between the Rockefellers and the UN, as well as the common belief system of eugenics and population reduction, it is not such a stretch to see traces of these elitists in the architecture of Codex Alimentarius. Codex, after all, is an organization created under the FAO and WHO, which are both under the jurisdiction of the UN. The connections between the Rockefellers and the pharmaceutical industry and medical establishments also serve as a motive for the destruction of the natural healthcare industry and natural supplement access.
However, this evidence is not presented in order to pin the goal of global tyranny and mass population reduction on the backs of the Rockefeller family alone. The Rockefellers are not the only elite hereditary ruling class family with this ideology, nor are they necessarily at the top of the heap when it comes to the pecking order of those that are. The Rockefellers themselves are only agents of individuals in even higher places, but who manage to remain unseen. Nevertheless, the Rockefeller connection to Codex should not be ignored because in this case, as in many others, history predicts the future. The globalists plans of a one-world state built upon eugenics were not born with Adolph Hitler and they certainly did not die with him. It is as alive today as it ever was.
TownHall.com - When the liberals and the feminists, including Hillary Clinton, began saying the "village" should raise the child, most people recognized village as a metaphor for government. We're now seeing how intrusive Big Government Nannyism really is.
Operating under various names, state agencies such as Child Protective Services (CPS) have been assigned the task of protecting kids from abuse or neglect by any adults, especially by their own parents. A new study casts doubt on the value of CPS.
Child Protective Services, which rushes into action based on anonymous tips, investigated more than three million cases of suspected child abuse in 2007. Alleged to be at similar high risk for abuse, researchers examined the records of 595 children nationwide and tracked them from ages 4 to 8.
The researchers concluded that CPS's intervention did little or nothing to improve the lives of the children, and there was no difference between children in the families CPS investigated or did not investigate. The social scientists looked at all the factors known to increase the risk for abuse or neglect: social support, family functioning, poverty, caregiver education and depressive symptoms, plus child anxiety, depression and aggressive behavior
The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act was passed by Congress in 1974, and about 45 states passed complementary state laws. Taxpayers' money began to flow big time to the bureaucrats.
The research results were reported in the October issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. The report was accompanied by an editorial entitled, "Child Protective Services has Outlived its Usefulness." It argued that CPS should not be engaged in law enforcement. If it's a crime, call the police; if it's neglect, call a public health nurse; if it's an unsuitable living situation, call the appropriate social services.
Unfortunately, the researchers did not look at the harm caused by CPS bureaucrats who arrive unannounced with the police, interfere with a functioning family, and often take the children away from their parents and turn them over to foster care. When Congress and state legislatures vote on taxpayer appropriations next year, CPS bureaucrats should be required to demonstrate whether any good outweighs the harm.
Two cases involving Child Protective Services are now before the U.S. Supreme Court. The High Court has just agreed to take a case involving the interrogation of an elementary child at school by a CPS caseworker and a deputy sheriff about possible sexual abuse at home.
This is a Fourth Amendment case: Camreta and Alford v. Greene. Oregon investigators are appealing a lower court ruling that they violated a 9-year-old girl's constitutional right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure when they interviewed her for two hours at school without a warrant, a court order, parental consent or exigent circumstances.
This case could have a significant impact nationwide. Unfortunately, some government agencies are more solicitous in guaranteeing constitutional due process to vicious criminals than to parents.
The other CPS case now before the Supreme Court -- Los Angeles County v. Humphries -- has already been briefed and argued. This case involves the constitutionality of the child abuse index, or list, maintained by Child Protective Services in California.
More than 800,000 people are now listed on California's child abuse index. These listings are very hurtful to individuals, since employers consult the list before hiring employees to work with children.
CPS puts people on this list from agency reports that are based on anonymous tips and suspicion, not proof. It's mighty easy for a malicious wife or ex-wife to allege child abuse as part of her game plan to get child custody or increased child support.
The issue in this case is the fact that there are no procedures, no standards and no criteria for a wrongly accused person to get his name off the child abusers index. The Supreme Court is reviewing the Ninth Circuit ruling that Craig Humphries (whom a court pronounced innocent of all charges) had a "nightmarish encounter" with the California system, and "There is no effective procedure for Humphries to challenge this listing."
In 2006, Congress toyed with a plan to create a national child abuse registry. The plan was abandoned because of the unreliability of state lists and lack of due process (blog.eagleforum.org).
The child abuse registry should not be confused with the sex offender registry, which lists only those who have been convicted of sex crimes. The child abuse registry puts men on the list who have never been proven guilty of anything or even charged with a crime -- a punishment that is entirely contrary to our legal assumption of being innocent until proven guilty.
Humphries has been trying to clear his name for nine years. Congress should defund these abusive registries, and we hope the Supreme Court declares them unconstitutional.
The Business of Green and the UN Climate Change Conference in Mexico
IISD at COP16 - The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) is in Cancun, Mexico for the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP 16) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from November 29 to December 10, 2010. IISD will be working with the international community to promote global efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
IISD’s Reporting Services will be providing coverage of:
At Development and Climate Days, IISD will be hosting the following panel discussion:
Low-Carbon, Resilient Development: Lessons learned from early implementation Saturday, December 4, 2010 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM Cancun Caribe Park Royal Grand
Despite the current difficulties in the international negotiations, they remain an effective “launching platform” for a series of important implementation activities, such as REDD and adaptation. We are starting to see the same sort of “roll out” with Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) in support of low-carbon, resilient development. While the development and implementation of NAMAs is very much at a nascent stage, they are already demonstrating that developing countries are keen to take advantage of the multiple benefits that can accrue from sustainable growth. This session will examine lessons from early experiences that could in turn inform the negotiations going forward.
IISD will be hosting an Official UNFCCC side event:
The side event will examine governance and accountability in the international climate change system. Panelists will explore realistic but ambitious actions to improve accountability, through policies, actions and improved performance in meeting commitments and pledges. A positive agenda on accountability requires building credible and individual capacity in countries, and building on successes in the climate change and other regimes. The session will look at perceptions of accountability and helping to understand ideological and political positions as a starting point, as well as explore potential innovations to improve accountability, such as steps to track fast-start financing and accountability tools from other regimes that may be applicable to the climate change system.
In addition to these activities, IISD Staff and Associates will also be involved in the following events:
UNFCCC Negotiations Now: Prospects for everything, or anything Panel Discusison hosted by the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) Thursday, December 9, 2010 8:30 AM – 9:45 AM Rivera Room, Westin Hotel
The session will be moderated by John Drexhage, Director, Climate Change and Energy at IISD. Panelists will include:
Yvo de Boer, KPMG
Bjorn Stigson, WBCSD
Henry Derwent, IETA
Mountains in Peril: Mainstreaming sustainable mountain development into climate change agreements Official UNFCCC Side Event hosted by theInternational Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) Thursday, December 2, 2010 4:45 PM – 6:15 PM Room Aguila, Cancún Messe
The side event will explore: why mountains are important to addressing climate change impacts, key issues in mountain countries and ecosystems, and how mountain ecosystems can be made more resilient systems for climate change adaptations. John Drexhage, Director, Climate Change and Energy at IISD will speak on the panel.
EU plans 2013 ban on disputed HFC carbon offsets The European Union's executive Commission has proposed banning from 2013 the most common types of carbon offsets, mostly from India and China, to help restore credibility to the disputed system.
Investors hope U.N. talks keep climate deal on track Investors in "green" assets hope that upcoming U.N. climate talks in Mexico will salvage a deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions in 2011, and in the meantime widen and simplify existing carbon markets.
U.N. panel issues 20 million carbon offsets A United Nations panel overseeing trade in carbon offsets under the Kyoto Protocol decided late on Friday to issue 20 million tonnes of offsets, the information company Point Carbon reported.
People are not being educated, they're being tested for levels of obedience.
November 18, 2010
Catholic Families & Human Rights Institute - A sign nailed to a tree trunk in a family’s front yard reads, “NO IB, Stop Wasting Money, Keep the UN Out of Our Schools.” Across the Arizona town, a school board member criticizes a curriculum she says surrenders local control to a foreign organization that promotes world government.
The debate means one American community has awakened to the International Baccalaureate, a study program quietly embraced by nearly 1,000 U.S. campuses and 139 countries worldwide. While found mostly in public high schools, the curriculum has touched middle and elementary schools, and even a number of Catholic schools.
“IB is the biggest educational scam perpetrated on American schools today,” says Lisa McLoughlin, a Long Island mother and leading critic.
She says schools shouldn't spend tax dollars on the program, and questions if Catholic schools are aware of its underlying, liberal internationalist philosophy.
“IB students learn diversity, multiculturalism, and international-mindedness, but can they do math? Do they learn grammar? Can they write a paper?” says McLoughlin.
The IB comes from a non-profit educational foundation of the same name founded in Switzerland in 1968. Its early money came from the United Nations, as well as the 20th Century Fund and Ford Foundation.
The baccalaureate foundation maintains close ties to the UN through its cultural and education agency, UNESCO. It regularly participates in UNESCO meetings and comments on its proposals in education. UNESCO still funds some IB projects, as does the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Despite its direct relationship with the UN, IB denies any UN influence on its curriculum.
But critics say IB is anti-American, undermines national sovereignty, and promotes radical environmentalism. Until recently, IB endorsed the Earth Charter, which supports population control and socialism. The Earth Charter argues that all nations should implement its principles in an international treaty.
Some also criticize IB’s non-traditional curriculum and lack of transparency. To discover the actual curriculum, outsiders must buy course guides from the foundation itself. But even then the course guides are vague, McLoughlin says.
McLoughlin became interested in the curriculum after it arrived at her family’s public high school. She created the website, www.truthaboutib.com, described by a Washington Post column as “remarkably fair” despite its clear anti-IB agenda.
She says IB promotes moral relativism and undermines familial values. An IB director, for example, said in a speech that questions about ethical obligations, human rights, beliefs, and moral responsibility have “no right or wrong answers.”
A document on IB’s website contains a curriculum model that emphasizes “Sharing the planet.” It promotes world citizenship, and says students need a greater understanding of internationalism because of the “prevalence of discrimination, racism in all its forms . . . and environmental destruction.”
Whatever its official relationship to the UN, the IB's personal ties run deep. The foundation's chair is Carol Bellamy, who formerly led the United Nation’s Children’s Fund. During her tenure, UNICEF promoted abortion rights, sex ed for children that encouraged promiscuity, and a radical feminist agenda.
And its close relationship to UNESCO draws the IB into another education controversy. As recently reported by the Friday Fax, UNESCO promotes sex education for children of all ages. UNESCO also supports legalized abortion, homosexuality, and the abolishment of traditional gender identities.
The majority of students are put through the same brainwashing techniques in order to create a complacent labor force working in the interests of large corporations and secretive government; and, worst of all, they are completely unaware of it. - Erica Goldson, Valedictorian, Coxsackie-Athens High School, Greene County, NY
July 7, 2010
Erica Goldson - There is a story of a young, but earnest Zen student who approached his teacher, and asked the Master, "If I work very hard and diligently, how long will it take for me to find Zen? The Master thought about this, then replied, "Ten years ..." The student then said, "But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast — How long then?" Replied the Master, "Well, twenty years." "But, if I really, really work at it, how long then?" asked the student. "Thirty years," replied the Master. "But, I do not understand," said the disappointed student. "At each time that I say I will work harder, you say it will take me longer. Why do you say that?" Replied the Master, "When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path."
This is the dilemma I've faced within the American education system. We are so focused on a goal, whether it be passing a test, or graduating as first in the class. However, in this way, we do not really learn. We do whatever it takes to achieve our original objective.
Some of you may be thinking, "Well, if you pass a test, or become valedictorian, didn't you learn something?" Well, yes, you learned something, but not all that you could have. Perhaps, you only learned how to memorize names, places, and dates to later on forget in order to clear your mind for the next test. School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.
I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work.
But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer — not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition — a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it.
So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I'm scared.
John Taylor Gatto, a retired school teacher and activist critical of compulsory schooling, asserts,
“We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness — curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids into truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then. But we don't do that.”
Between these cinderblock walls, we are all expected to be the same. We are trained to ace every standardized test, and those who deviate and see light through a different lens are worthless to the scheme of public education, and therefore viewed with contempt.
H. L. Mencken wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim ... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States. (Gatto)
To illustrate this idea, doesn't it perturb you to learn about the idea of “critical thinking.” Is there really such a thing as “uncritically thinking?” To think is to process information in order to form an opinion. But if we are not critical when processing this information, are we really thinking? Or are we mindlessly accepting other opinions as truth?
This was happening to me, and if it wasn't for the rare occurrence of an avant-garde tenth grade English teacher, Donna Bryan, who allowed me to open my mind and ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine, I would have been doomed. I am now enlightened, but my mind still feels disabled. I must retrain myself and constantly remember how insane this ostensibly sane place really is.
And now here I am in a world guided by fear, a world suppressing the uniqueness that lies inside each of us, a world where we can either acquiesce to the inhuman nonsense of corporatism and materialism or insist on change. We are not enlivened by an educational system that clandestinely sets us up for jobs that could be automated, for work that need not be done, for enslavement without fervency for meaningful achievement. We have no choices in life when money is our motivational force. Our motivational force ought to be passion, but this is lost from the moment we step into a system that trains us, rather than inspires us.
We are more than robotic bookshelves, conditioned to blurt out facts we were taught in school. We are all very special, every human on this planet is so special, so aren't we all deserving of something better, of using our minds for innovation, rather than memorization, for creativity, rather than futile activity, for rumination rather than stagnation? We are not here to get a degree, to then get a job, so we can consume industry-approved placation after placation. There is more, and more still.
The saddest part is that the majority of students don't have the opportunity to reflect as I did. The majority of students are put through the same brainwashing techniques in order to create a complacent labor force working in the interests of large corporations and secretive government, and worst of all, they are completely unaware of it.
I will never be able to turn back these 18 years. I can't run away to another country with an education system meant to enlighten rather than condition. This part of my life is over, and I want to make sure that no other child will have his or her potential suppressed by powers meant to exploit and control. We are human beings. We are thinkers, dreamers, explorers, artists, writers, engineers. We are anything we want to be — but only if we have an educational system that supports us rather than holds us down. A tree can grow, but only if its roots are given a healthy foundation.
For those of you out there that must continue to sit in desks and yield to the authoritarian ideologies of instructors, do not be disheartened. You still have the opportunity to stand up, ask questions, be critical, and create your own perspective. Demand a setting that will provide you with intellectual capabilities that allow you to expand your mind instead of directing it. Demand that you be interested in class. Demand that the excuse, “You have to learn this for the test” is not good enough for you. Education is an excellent tool, if used properly, but focus more on learning rather than getting good grades.
For those of you that work within the system that I am condemning, I do not mean to insult; I intend to motivate. You have the power to change the incompetencies of this system. I know that you did not become a teacher or administrator to see your students bored. You cannot accept the authority of the governing bodies that tell you what to teach, how to teach it, and that you will be punished if you do not comply. Our potential is at stake.
For those of you that are now leaving this establishment, I say, do not forget what went on in these classrooms. Do not abandon those that come after you. We are the new future and we are not going to let tradition stand. We will break down the walls of corruption to let a garden of knowledge grow throughout America. Once educated properly, we will have the power to do anything, and best of all, we will only use that power for good, for we will be cultivated and wise. We will not accept anything at face value. We will ask questions, and we will demand truth.
So, here I stand. I am not standing here as valedictorian by myself. I was molded by my environment, by all of my peers who are sitting here watching me. I couldn't have accomplished this without all of you. It was all of you who truly made me the person I am today. It was all of you who were my competition, yet my backbone. In that way, we are all valedictorians.
I am now supposed to say farewell to this institution, those who maintain it, and those who stand with me and behind me, but I hope this farewell is more of a “see you later” when we are all working together to rear a pedagogic movement. But first, let's go get those pieces of paper that tell us that we're smart enough to do so!
Paramilitary Police State & Electronic Surveillance
Freedom and initiative are being replaced by ever higher taxation, regulation and centralization of power in Washington. Our economy is now stagnant and our standard of living is declining. Each year government takes a bigger share of our earnings, employs more and more of our people, enacts more rules that strangle our economy, and controls more and more of our lives. In the enjoyment of plenty, have Americans lost the memory of freedom? When citizens are willing to sacrifice their liberty for security, they will have neither liberty nor security and will soon find themselves living under tyranny. - Ellen Sauerbrey, The Spark That Has Triggered Rebellion, American Thinker, September 13, 2009
Bloomberg - New York City, after tripling since June the number of cameras to monitor signs of terrorism, is almost halfway to its goal of installing 3,000 of the devices as part of its security network.
The spurt in additions to the $201 million initiative, which officials said is to be completed by 2013, may represent an increased urgency to finish the project. It comes in a year that saw federal convictions starting in June based on plots to bomb Times Square, John F. Kennedy International Airport and synagogues in the Bronx.
The New York Police Department unveiled the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative in 2005 as a proposed web of cameras, license-plate readers and radiation detectors. Advocates of the effort said a terrorist strike in the 1.7 square miles south of Canal Street, like the one on Sept. 11, 2001, might send financial shockwaves across the nation and around the globe.
“This is a critical component of the nation, indeed of the world’s financial system,” said Brian Michael Jenkins, a terrorism specialist at the Rand Corp., a Santa Monica, California-based policy group. “A major disruption caused by a terrorist attack inside this perimeter could have cascading economic consequences across the planet.”
About 1,300 cameras are connected to the network as of this month, according to Paul J. Browne, a spokesman for the NYPD. In June, the network, which will be spread out to include Midtown Manhattan, had only 450 cameras, New York Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly has said.
As of February 2009, he said there were 300 cameras.
Evenly Divided
Browne said the cameras installed to date are about evenly divided between the original plan area and Midtown, which lies between Manhattan’s 30th and 60th streets. They currently include 586 subway cameras added last month in Times Square, Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central Terminal.
The system is to be 90 percent funded by the U.S. Homeland Security Department. Its projected cost has grown from $81.5 million in 2006 to $201 million, of which about $136 million was approved for spending, Browne said by e-mail.
Another $42 million has been requested, and the city will ask for the rest in the future, since the project “will take several years to complete,” said Jason Post, deputy press secretary to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the founder and principal owner of Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News.
At a ceremony Nov. 9 at the New York City Police Museum in lower Manhattan, Kelly said the rapid expansion over the past five months is “great,” noting the recent addition of transit system cameras to the network.
Alarms and Algorithms
“These are cameras that you can use as alarms, you can put algorithms in to sound an alarm if someone leaves a package in an area for an extended period of time or if you want to go back and look at somebody in a red shirt who passed by a camera in the last 30 days,” Kelly said.
The commissioner attributed the five years it has taken to approach the midway point to complications of technology and topography.
“There’s always technology challenges,” he said. “It’s just not a question of turning on a switch. It’s a very complex environment. The topography doesn’t lend itself to a lot of the things that we want to do easily.”
“Transmissions, the camera positioning: all of that because of the layout of Lower Manhattan makes it difficult to do,” Kelly said.
‘Moving Target’
“It’s been a moving target for a long time,” City Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr., chairman of the council’s Public Safety Committee, said of the initiative. “The first goal as always is to get federal funding for things.”
Amy Kudwa, a Homeland Security spokeswoman, said the department “can’t speculate on future competitive grant disbursement.”
The Lower Manhattan area is home to landmarks such as the site of the World Trade Center attacks, the New York Stock Exchange and City Hall. Midtown includes Times Square, where a Pakistani immigrant tried to detonate a car bomb in May, and the headquarters of many major U.S. banks and securities firms.
The surveillance system combines cameras, owned by the city and partners in the public and private sectors, with automated license-plate readers and biological, chemical, nuclear and radiation detectors, according to the police department.
Public ‘Stakeholders’
Fourteen business and public “stakeholders” own about 400 of the Lower Manhattan cameras, Browne said. They include the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and companies such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the fifth biggest U.S. bank by assets. The bank’s headquarters on 200 West Street are across an intersection from ground zero, where the twin towers once stood.
The police will start to add cameras from partners in Midtown next month, Browne said. The current network can accommodate 3,000 camera feeds and is designed to be expandable.
Andrea Raphael, a spokeswoman for Goldman Sachs, and Jeffrey Smith, a spokesman for the Federal Reserve Board of New York, declined to comment.
There are “memorandums of understanding that have evolved because of technology differences because all cameras are not alike,” Kelly said. “Meshing them together is not an easy thing to do.”
A command center opened two years ago in a Broadway office building a few blocks south of Wall Street. Personnel from the NYPD and its partners examine feeds from the cameras, alerts from license-plate readers and reports from 911 calls.
‘Force Multiplier’
“It’s a force multiplier” for the police, said Andrew Wartell, a security consultant who was Goldman Sachs’s representative to the project and the bank’s vice president of global security from 2004 to 2008. “They don’t have to put cameras out on the same street that a company already has cameras on to watch their own facility.”
The system is based in part on the City of London’s “Ring of Steel,” a camera network in the square-mile financial district in the 1990s after Irish Republican Army bombings.
New York’s system links cameras with a fiber-optic network, completed in July, that lets investigators search through a month’s worth of video, Kelly said.
The department this year began using analytic software in some cameras that can spot suspicious signs, such as unattended packages and movement in restricted areas, he said.
“It doesn’t do you any good to put 3,000 cameras out and then have an expectation that anyone’s going to watch any of them,” said Wartell, explaining the need for software. “That’s certainly the thing you’ve seen in London with the Ring of Steel. They have tons of cameras, but they don’t have tons of people watching.”
Times Square Attack
In the probe of the attempted May 1 bombing of Times Square, surveillance cameras caught Faisal Shahzad’s vehicle as it traveled along West 45th Street before being left at a curb near Broadway theaters, officials said. Shahzad pleaded guilty to the bombing attempt June 21 in Manhattan federal court.
In London, images from security cameras helped investigators there identify four suicide bombers who attacked that city’s transit system in July 2005, killing 52 people.
“People can say, ‘Well, the cameras in London didn’t prevent the bombings from happening,’ and that’s correct,” said Fredrik Nilsson, general manager of Lund, Sweden-based Axis Communications AB, a maker of surveillance equipment. Nilsson said he was staying in a Times Square hotel on the day of Shahzad’s attempt. “For forensics, it was invaluable to figure out where it happened and who did it.”
JFK, Synagogues
In the 2007 plot to blow up JFK Airport fuel lines and tanks, static surveillance cameras weren’t a key issue because the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with the help of an informant, was already following and recording the conspirators.
This was also the case in a 2008 plan hatched by four New York men to bomb Bronx synagogues. The JFK plotters were convicted Aug. 2 in Brooklyn, New York, federal court. The Bronx conspirators were convicted in Manhattan federal court Oct. 18.
“We’re not saying technology alone is the answer, but it helps,” said Browne, the NYPD spokesman, in an e-mail.
In addition to delays tied to cuts in federal terrorism grants, the camera network also faces opposition from civil liberties advocates. The proposal invades privacy and doesn’t prevent terrorist attacks, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union.
‘Enormous Implications’
The group sued the NYPD and the Homeland Security Department, claiming freedom-of-information requests yielded too little data on a program with “enormous implications for privacy rights.”
The NYCLU is seeking to learn how the police will use the information, who else will see it and how long the data will be kept, according to its complaint.
The NYPD case, filed two years ago, is pending in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. The suit against Homeland Security is in New York federal court in Manhattan. The government has moved for a judgment in its favor.
“Our main concern is that it’s unlike most police activity, which is focused on people who are suspected of unlawful activity,” said Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the NYCLU, the state affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union. “In fact, 99.99 percent of people who are captured in the system are just going to be people walking around, going about their business.”
Privacy Guidelines
Police privacy guidelines state that the cameras are aimed at public places “where no legally protected reasonable expectation of privacy exists” and stipulate that video recordings must be disposed of within 30 days unless the deputy commissioner for counterterrorism orders otherwise.
“The law is settled that there is no privacy right in a public area,” said Vallone, of New York’s city council. “None of us are thrilled about being observed in public places, but I think the vast majority of New Yorkers understand that it’s necessary.”
The government argues that the project information sought by the NYCLU is being legally withheld because it’s used for law enforcement purposes and disclosure would expose “critical infrastructure” to attack.
Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the union representing about 22,000 city police officers, said that while cameras can help investigate a terrorist attack, “they don’t help prevent it.”
“A camera has never arrested an armed robber or thwarted a terrorist threat,” Lynch said in a statement. “You need police boots on the ground to make that happen, and with 6,000 fewer police officers on our streets than in 2001, the NYPD is already stretched too thin.”
Browne, the police spokesman, said there’s no doubt that cameras help in investigations.
Brooklyn Bridge
In 2003, cameras on the Brooklyn Bridge discouraged a possible attack there, according to federal prosecutors. Iyman Faris, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for plotting with al-Qaeda to bring down the span, sent a message to colleagues in Pakistan that the “weather is too hot,” indicating that cameras and other security measures made the plot unlikely to succeed, the U.S. said.
Browne said the efficacy of a camera network has already been proven in some New York City neighborhoods.
“While it’s harder to document when the crime hasn’t occurred because of cameras, we know that crime in public housing plummeted by a third within a year after cameras were installed,” he said.
The lawsuits are New York Civil Liberties Union v. New York City Police Department, 112145-2008, New York State Supreme Court, New York County (Manhattan), and New York Civil Liberties Union v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 1:09-cv-05325, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
When we lose our economic security, we also lose our freedom and are forced to survive any way we can. The subliminal, one-world religion is self-preservation — the survival instinct. It's basic to human nature. The Bible shows a coming world leader who will exploit this self-preservation instinct and will bring this religion to its logical conclusion. And, if possible, even some of the very elect will be deceived by this appeal to their pocketbook and personal security.
“Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.” (1 John 4:1 KJV)
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:32 KJV)
"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." (Ephesians 6:12 KJV)
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