From the Department of The Great Majority Of The Police, Seemingly Ever-Patient And Self-Controlled, Stood For Hours As Kids Baited And Yelled, Shoved And Provoked. A Handful Of Officers Used Well-Placed Elbows While Batons Were Raised Only In Response to the Vandalism:
What began as a peaceful gathering of people hoping to see President Barack Obama last night became an 8-hour-long protest-turned-riot that damaged Oakland businesses and prompted police to use force.
About 50 people gathered near the bridge to Schenley Park at 4 p.m. yesterday to see Obama’s motorcade drive to the Phipps Conservatory.
The Obamas were hosting a working dinner in the greenhouse for the other G-20 leaders and their spouses. It was a precurser to the G-20 Summit, which officially opens tomorrow.
The gathering was peaceful until additional protesters joined the original group at around 6 p.m. Police sent in reinforcements as the crowd grew and placed caution tape near the traffic light at the bridge to Schenley Park.
Demonstrators ripped the tape and began leap-frogging over one another and toward the police.
Police declared the event an “unlawful assembly” and warned protesters, in both English and Spanish, that if they didn’t leave, they could be arrested or “subject to other police action.”
When the people didn’t move, police launched a smoke bomb into the group.
It was the first of many times police would fire gas or smoke into the crowds, which eventually grew to include hundreds of, if not more than 1,000 people.
The crowd simmered down for a few hours after the initial smoke bomb, at one point dancing to music provided by the Pittsburgh Hare Krishnas.
“It’s imposible for us to be stronger than them. They’ve sticks and shields, but we’ve got voices and we can all sing and be louder than them,” said one man, who claimed to be a chaitanya, or leader, of the Hare Krishnas.
Other groups began protesting around 10 p.m.
People marching dressed in all black and wearing bandanas weaved their way throughout Oakland screaming, “We’re here. We’re queer. We have no fear.”
Many other people, most of whom looked college-aged, joined the march.
Some of the protesters used bricks to bash in windows to McDonald’s, Kinko’s, The Pitt Shop, Pamela’s and Bruegger’s among other businesses. They also lit Dumpsters on fire.
The group eventually joined the people protesting in Schenley Plaza and around the Cathedral of Learning.
They showed up just in time to hear the police once again declare the event an “unlawful assembly,” at 10:37 p.m. over a loud speaker system.
Police threw more than 30 canisters of gas into the crowds, which were now dominated by mostly college-aged people. Police surrounded the Cathedral around 11:30 p.m. and eventually covered the lawn of the William Pitt Union. At one point, they marched through the Schenley Quadrangle and onto Towers patio.
Popping sounds could be heard from the Union.
After one round of the sounds, two people laid on the ground, one of them over the Pitt logo on Forbes Avenue.
Officers with batons hovered over one of the people, who took several minutes to stand up.
Police eventually handcuffed both men.
The police had said they would use “less lethal weapons” on people who wouldn’t disperse. City police officers in Zone 4, which covers Oakland, declined to comment last night.
One ACLU volunteer said he was disappointed in the way the police handled the protests.
“They are just kids,” said Dave Ninehouser, an ACLU legal observer. “They need to call their parents and cry bloody murder.”
“G20: Chilling arrest by men in military fatigues. There are more and more examples of military personnel doing police work on the streets of the good old U.S. of A. I wonder if anyone in the media will ask about potential posse comitatus violations in Pittsburgh? Nah. I hope someone got that kid’s name.”
By authority of the city of Pittsburgh Chief of Police, I hereby declare this to be an unlawful assembly. I order all those assembled to immediately disperse. You must leave the immediate vicinity. If you remain in this immediate vicinity, you will be in violation of the Pennsylvania crimes code. No matter what your purpose is, you must leave. If you do not disperse, you may be arrested and/or subject to other police action. Other police action may include actual physical removal, the use of riot-control agents and/or less-lethal munitions, which could cause risk of injury to those who remain.
Australia’s race discrimination commissioner says he is confident YouTube, MySpace and Facebook will remove references about a fictional Aboriginal character – but he needs public complaints before he will approach the internet giants.
Graeme Innes was referring to the furore that erupted over the “Nigel the Crazy Noonga” website [www.crazynoonga.com] created by a 19-year-old Curtin University student.
The site featured audio excerpts of a character who prank calls businesses using a fake Aboriginal accent.
It was shut down after protests from the Aboriginal community and a complaint to police, but excerpts can still be found on US-based social networking and video sites YouTube, MySpace and Facebook [“Sadly Nigel can’t read or write so this group was established on his behalf after he threatened to quote, “Knock me on my hole” if I didn’t” — and ‘excerpts’ can be found all over the place].
Mr Innes told WAtoday.com.au the Australian Human Rights Commission had “quite a deal of success” getting such material removed from the sites in the past, but he needed to receive complaints from the public before he could act.
Such complaints could be made at the commission’s website.
“Obviously this sort of material has a very negative impact on any community that’s vilified in this way,” Mr Innes said.
“It’s not funny, it’s not humurous [sic], it’s just having a go at Australian society.
“To vilify someone on the basis of their race doesn’t just damage that group, it damages society as a whole.”
A website set up by a Perth student about a fictional Aboriginal character has been shut down and is being investigated by police amid racism claims.
The website, which Radio 6PR reports was created by a 19-year-old Curtin University student, features audio excerpts of a character called “Nigel the crazy Noonga”, who prank calls businesses and fast-food outlets with a fake Aboriginal accent.
The portrayal of negative Aboriginal stereotypes has sparked outrage from the Aboriginal community…
See also : The One-Sided War on the Streets of Honduras, Jeremy Kryt, The Narco News Bulletin, September 23, 2009: “They’re the Only Ones Using Violence,” Human Rights Leader Bertha Oliva Observes of the Coup Regime on Day Two of [President] Zelaya’s Return.
The Sydney Forum is the No.2 forum on the fascist calender in Australia. So if you’re truly interested in hearing James ‘110% White’ Saleam, Andrew ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ Fraser, John ‘911 Was An Inside Job!’ Bursill, Terrie-Anne ‘Fuck Off We’re Full’ Verney, David Astin and a handful of others prattle on about Race & Nation and many, many other issues — all under the watchful eye of Herr Welf Herfurth — BOOK A TICKET NOW.
All enquiries in relation to the Sydney Forum should be directed in the first instance to:
Dr Jim Saleam
Tel: 0407 732 868
Email: [email protected]
Write: P.O. Box N291, Grosvenor Place, NSW, 1220
And don’t forget ‘Day Two’ volk, as this is the more casual, uninformed, un-uniformed assembly, that allows White Nationalists from around Australia to swap ideas and form important alliances — all in a site of great historical importance to the volk.
Excerpt from Leviathan by John Birmingham, about a bunch of violent nutters in the ’80s, including a deserving case who comes to a sticky end:
[National Action] unexpectedly found itself called upon to explain its position. The party’s slack-jawed mouthpiece denied they were in any way racist. [They] didn’t believe in the superiority of one race over another. [They] simply believed that the Anglo-Celtic culture of Australia should not be endangered. As more people noted what they were saying… the party’s internal bulletin, announced that the time had come for taking it to the streets.
Student unions noted an escalating number of bashings of Asian students after dark, both on campus and in the clutch of inner city suburbs around the neo-Nazis’ favourite watering holes. There was a shift not just in the frequency of political violence, but also in its intensity and focus. The targets began to change. The party bulletin [Audacity?] featured a regular [column] in which critics of the party would find their name, phone number and address published with an invitation to the ‘curious and adventurous’ to dish out a little nationalist justice. Journalists such as Gerard Henderson, Andrew Olle and Adele Horin who covered the immigration debate or related topics in an unsatisfactory manner began to receive phone calls and death threats late at night. Academics and unionists found their car tyres slashed and graffiti daubed on their houses. Greenpeace and Community Aid Abroad shops were broken into and looted.
Violent overthrow of the dominant paradigm doesn’t come cheap, however, so in early 1984 the party leadership cooked up a scam to rip off the GIO and raise money to buy all the firebombs, balaclavas and nail-studded clubs they would need to make people understand the righteousness of their cause. A woman who rented a room at [National Action’s] headquarters came home one day to find the place ransacked, her jewellery gone and party fuhrer [James Saleam] shaking his head…
[NA] began working its way down the enemies list, widening their attacks from vulnerable students and the occasional journalist to gays, lesbians, Aboriginal, peace and anti-apartheid groups, academics, liberal congregations such as the Pitt Street Uniting Church, the Anti-discrimination Board, union activists and, somewhat recklessly, a couple of Special Branch cops who had been assigned to their case. Terrorising the wives and families of heavily armed secret policemen was not the Nazis’ first step on the happy staircase to success. After [NA] raided the meeting of a gay migration lobby group the hammer came down.
Having suffered through months of harassment the gays were ready for a fight. Their resistance seemed to unnerve the storm troopers and a handful of hysterical pansies and angry dykes proceeded to bitch slap them out of the room. Special Branch quickly obtained a search warrant and charged over to a house in Petersham used as an alternative headquarters by [NA]. They found a tape recording and photographs of the raid. Most of those who took part were arrested and charged. The cases were heard in Glebe local court and attended by observers from a resistance group called Community Alert Against Racism and Violence.
‘It was unbelievably pathetic,’ said CAARAV’s Betty Hounslow. ‘Shane Rosier, one of their big men, was just this really pathetic bloke in his late forties who was, you know, a bit chubby. He wore these brown trousers that kept riding up the back and an old yukko-looking brown cardigan. They found a lot of weapons in his house… coshs, chains, and studded balls. And his story to the magistrate was that the weapons were part of his collection. He’d always been interested in weapons, he said. His grandfather was a famous gun collector. He and his dad had always wanted to have a gun collection just like old Granddad’s, but they’d never had enough money to collect guns so they had to collect cheaper, working-class weapons. And this was why he had all these things. He said the tape of the raid was left on his doorstep one morning. Like a little abandoned baby.’
The pressure told and the Nazis turned on each other as deeply repressed suspicions and rivalries burst through to the surface. Everybody seemed to accuse everyone else of being police spies and sexual deviants. The final slide into ignoble collapse was marked by the gunshot murder of Wayne ‘Bovver’ Smith in [NA’s] headquarters at Tempe a few years later. It was an almost perfect example of the hapless farce which so often attended the adventures of Sydney’s neo-Nazi elite in the 1980s. Bovver, twenty-five years old and already weighing 108 kilos thanks to the three or four stubbies of beer he’d consume for breakfast each morning, was shot eight times with a sawn-off .22 rifle by Perry Whitehouse, ten years his senior but less than half his size, during a drunken, confused and basically pointless argument. When Whitehouse blew him away, Bovver was wearing a singlet bearing the message: Say No To The New Gun Control Laws.
On 20 April 1991 — Adolf’s birthday… — National Action member Perry Whitehouse gunned down fellow member Wayne ‘Bovver’ Smith at the National Action headquarters. What Whitehouse didn’t know, as he closed the hand of his bullet-riddled former comrade around a knife to make it look like self-defence, was that ASIO had bugged the place, and the whole sorry affair was down on tape.
Smith : What’s it say?
Whitehouse: Ask him, mate. Just ask him. He’s…
Smith : You’re the one that’s fuckin’ sayin’ this.
Whitehouse : Just wait here. Footsteps. I’ll show what I got to say.
Smith : All right. Music. Pause in conversation. Six sharp noises in succession. Distinct sound similar to a gun being fired. Crashing sounds. Music.
Whitehouse : That’s what I got to fuckin’ say, you fuckin’ cunt. Another member, Gregory Jorgensen, then speaks. His words are inaudible.
Whitehouse : I just killed the prick. You wanna know. Yeah, you wanna fuckin’ know. What’ya wanna know… to kill you too… I just shot the fuckin’ prick. Right. I just shot the cunt. Wanna know. Music stops.
Whitehouse : Because he’s a fuckin’ arsehole, that’s why I shot him. Right. Do you think I’m fuckin’ scared of fuckin’ goin’ to jail. I don’t give a fuck. I’m not scared. Right. I shot the cunt dead. That’s what it’s all about boy, that’s what it’s all about, right. You ain’t got the guts to fuckin’ face up to that, you’re fuckin’ weak as piss. Right, he’s fuckin’ dead. Now we gotta get rid of that body or I’m gonna get rid of the fuckin’ body, right. A gasp is heard.
Whitehouse : Shut up, ya fuckin’ prick.
A cat shot 13 times in the head has survived to return home three days later in what police have dubbed an “horrific act of cruelty”…
“This is typical of a whole range of attacks on animals, whether it’s the city or the country,” RSPCA national president Dr Hugh Wirth said.
Bow-and-arrow attacks on cats and shootings of larger birds like swans were on the rise, he said.
He said there was a “well-established link” between cruelty to animals by young people and harm to other adults later in life.
Police have launched a local investigation into the attack.
Anyone with information can call CrimeStoppers on 1800 333 000 or go to crimestoppers.com.au.
With AAP
Whenever any of these animals dies, they wrap its carcass in fine linen; and beating their breasts in lamentation, they take it to be embalmed. There they treat the body with oil of cedar and sweet-smelling substances that can preserve it for a long time, then they bury it in a consecrated grave. Anyone who intentionally kills one of these animals is put to death. But should someone kill a cat or an ibis, whether purposely or accidentally, his doom in either case is sealed; for the people rush to the spot and dispose of the offender in fearful measure, sometimes without a hearing. And through fear of these consequences, anyone who sees one of these animals that has died draws afar back and cries out with horror, bewailing the deceased and calling to witness that he has found it already dead. And so deeply has superstitious awe of these creatures sunk into the minds of the populace, and so unalterably disposed by temperament is every man to respect them, that when a certain Roman chanced to kill a cat, a mob quickly assembled at his house, and neither the officials sent by the king to intercede for him, nor even the widespread fear of Rome, was able to save the man from being massacred, notwithstanding his act had been inadvertent. This happened even though, at the time, Ptolemy the king had not as yet been designated “Friend” by the Romans, and when the people, sparing no pains to appease the delegation from Italy, in their anxiety were straining themselves to give no cause for complaint or for war. And we relate this incident not from hearsay; for we saw it happen during the time we spent in Egypt.
~ Diodorus Siculus, late 60/early 59 BC (Edwin Murphy, The Antiquities of Egypt: A Translation, with Notes, of Book I of the Library of History of Diodorus Siculus, 1990).
Tim Noonan of Today Tonight has struck a real blow for justice with his earlier report on Justin Sheridan, an unemployed man from Byron Bay. Such is the seriousness of Noonan’s crusading act of investigative journalism, questions have been raised in Federal Parliament — by University drop-out and Nationals Senator Joe Williams — surrounding the circumstances in which Justin receives the colossal sum of of $427 per fortnight from the Government.
Joe Ludwig provides the following answers.
They, they always try to blame it on the blacks
But it’s really those in power that stab you in the back
I seek leave to incorporate in Hansard an answer to a question from Senator Williams asked of the Minister representing the Minister for Human Services on 15 September 2009.
Leave granted.
The statement read as follows—
Question
Senator Williams asked the Minister Assisting the Minister for Human Services, in Parliament, on 15 September 2009:
(a) Will the minister inform the Senate how many people were detected breaching their obligation to look for work last financial year?
(b) Given that the Labor government has forecast a massive increase in the number of people seeking to claim unemployment benefits, will the minister explain why the government has not increased the resources to assess and audit these claims? Doesn’t this failure mean that the number of Justin Sheridans in our community is likely to increase?
(c) Will the minister reassure the Australian taxpayers that the subject of last night’s television program, Justin Sheridan, will be fully investigated by Centrelink for his wanton disregard of welfare payment rules?
Answer
SENATOR LUDWIG – The answer to the honourable senator’s question is as follows:
(a) In the 2008-09 financial year, 628,987 participation reports were investigated by Centrelink regarding potential breaches of job seeker obligations. This is made up of 562,777 participation failures and 66,210 serious failures.
(b) Under the Centrelink funding model the funding Centrelink receives varies in line with movements in customer numbers and is calculated using Government forecasts in the budget. This is later reconciled with actual customer numbers.
(c) Yes. Centrelink conducts investigations into any customers who come to their attention as potentially failing to meet the rules governing their entitlements.
Senator Joe Ludwig
Australian Labor Party Senator for Queensland
Special Minister of State (since June 9, 2009)
Cabinet Secretary (since June 9, 2009)
Manager of Government Business in the Senate (since December 3, 2007)
Became a Senator on July 1, 1999
Ludwig (July 21, 1959–) is a law-talking guy, a former Reservist, and a former employee of Australia’s Worst Union (AWU). (Other law-talking guys and girls on the twenty-member ALP front bench include Garrett, Gillard, McLelland, Roxon, Smith, Tanner and Wong.) Joe comes from Labor aristocracy: his father Bill is currently National President of the AWU, and is boss of the Labor Forum, the AWU faction which dominates the Queensland branch of the Party.
As for Labor in Queensland: “Former Queensland Labor cabinet minister Gordon Nuttall was sentenced to seven years jail on July 17. He was found guilty of corruptly receiving secret payments from two Queensland businessmen” (Gordon Nuttall: tip of the corruption iceberg, Mike Crook, Green Left Weekly, August 2, 2009). According to Crook (a member of the ALP for 20 years who joined the Socialist Alliance in 2008):
The Labor Unity faction, the smallest of the 3 factions in the Queensland ALP, has attracted some of the most opportunist careerists due to its “balance of power” position between the other two factions — the AWU/Labor Forum and the Left faction.
Along with Nuttall, Labor Unity included former deputy premier Terry Mackenroth who has been referred to the Crime and Misconduct Commission for alleged corruption.
Several former Labor Unity-aligned ministers were part of the “net bet” fiasco in 1999, where the first internet betting license in Queensland was given to a company in which ALP officials had interests.
Meanwhile, former AWU faction ministers have gone on to work as highly paid business lobbyists.
Factions own positions and seats. Factional hacks are parachuted into seats without reference to the local membership. In Sandgate, Vicki Darling was appointed overnight by the party head office as Nuttall’s heir — despite having done no work within the local branch, and with no consultation of the local ALP members.
In reality, all decisions are made by a relatively small number of factional warlords, with no pretence at having a democratic process. Under this system, party membership has dropped from over 12,000 when I joined in 1989 to less than 6000 and falling.
The AWU faction has control over the ALP state government. The ALP objectives and policies are now ignored. Almost 20 years of Labor government in Queensland have been a missed opportunity.
Instead of the state becoming a more equitable, fairer place to live, the public service has been attacked, a bureaucracy has been cultivated, and the government’s own workforce has been treated in an unjust manner.
The ALP’s shady dealings with business and its refusal to allow scrutiny indicates graft is out of control. The brown paper bag days are back. Peter Beattie repeatedly used “commercial in confidence” to shield the murkiest business deals from scrutiny…
The Inaugural Griffith University – Tony Fitzgerald Lecture was held on Tuesday 28 July [2009] at the State Library of Queensland [PDF]:
…I propose to speak bluntly. Every generation has a duty to historical truth.
At the end of 1989, in the aftermath of my inquiry, Queenslanders decided they had had enough of the systemic corruption & repression of Bjelke-Petersen & some of his cronies and voted in a new government. Wayne Goss, Matt Foley & others were elected in a spirit of renewal & reform. The Electoral & Administrative Review Commission & the Criminal Justice Commission (after a slow start) did some sterling work, Glyn Davis & Peter Coaldrake set out to redesign & energise the public sector, there was an attempt to modernise the court system & revitalise a moribund judiciary by the establishment of a Court of Appeal & a Litigation Reform Commission & subsequently, when Matt Foley became Attorney-General, the welcome, long overdue, appointment of female judges.
However, by the mid-1990s, Australia generally had wearied of change and moved to the right & Queensland, where a long period of conservative government had consolidated a predisposition to conservative thought, moved right with the rest of the country. The Pauline Hanson/One Nation phenomenon would soon emerge, again in Queensland, & a coalition of Nationals & so-called Liberals, including relics of the Bjelke-Petersen era, regained power in Queensland with the help of the Police Union.
The Connolly-Ryan inquiry was soon set up to discredit the reforms which had been introduced on my recommendation so that they could be dismantled with minimum community disquiet, but that exercise failed when the Supreme Court stopped the farce because of Connolly’s manifest bias.
It soon became apparent to Queenslanders that the Coalition was at that time still not fit to govern but it had succeeded in interrupting & damaging the reform process. By the end of the Coalition’s term in power in 1998, the political situation in Queensland was volatile, Wayne Goss had departed from politics, the Labor Party was led by Peter Beattie & much of the principled willingness to confront Queensland’s dark past had been lost & with it the momentum for reform. I had always known that I might have to leave Queensland to work elsewhere as a consequence of my inquiry, & in 1998 I accepted that that time had come, resigned & took up a position in NSW.
Labor regained power in Queensland in 1998 and has retained it ever since. Perhaps, on its assessment, that is all that matters. Perhaps, to it, the adverse consequences of its political tactics are just collateral damage.
Under Beattie, Labor decided that there were votes to be obtained from Bjelke-Petersen’s remaining adherents in glossing over his repressive and corrupt misconduct. Tacitly at least, Queenslanders were encouraged to forget the repression & corruption which had occurred & the social upheaval which had been involved in eradicating those injustices. Younger Queenslanders know little of that era & are largely ignorant of the possibility that history might be repeated.
Ethics are always tested by incumbency. Secrecy was re-established by sham claims that voluminous documents were “Cabinet-in-confidence”. Access can now be purchased, patronage is dispensed, mates & supporters are appointed & retired politicians exploit their connections to obtain “success fees” for deals between business & government. Neither side of politics is interested in these issues except for short-term political advantage as each enjoys or plots impatiently for its turn at the privileges & opportunities which accompany power.
Unfortunately, cynical, short-sighted political attitudes adopted for the benefit of particular politicians & their parties commonly have adverse consequences for the general community. The current concerns about political and police misconduct are a predictable result of attitudes adopted in Queensland since the mid-1990s. Despite their protestations of high standards of probity, which personally might well be correct, & irrespective of what they intend, political leaders who gloss over corruption risk being perceived by their colleagues & the electorate as regarding it of little importance. Even if incorrect, that is a disastrous perception. Greed, power and opportunity in combination provide an almost irresistible temptation for many which can only be countered by the near-certainty of exposure and severe punishment.
Even if we cannot rely on politicians to voluntarily curb their excesses or tell the truth, a well-informed community which is committed to doing so can influence the way it is governed, just as Queenslanders did in 1989. Matters are much better than they were but it is a mistake to take that for granted. Universities which inform & increase community awareness & understanding provide one of our best defences against historical amnesia and revisionism by speaking truth to power & assisting us to confront, acknowledge and learn from the past…
Early this morning, nearly a million New Yorkers were stunned by the appearance of a “special edition” New York Post blaring headlines that their city could face deadly heat waves, extreme flooding, and other lethal effects of global warming within the next few decades. The most alarming thing about it: the news came from an official City report.
Distributed by over 2000 volunteers throughout New York City, the paper has been created by The Yes Men and a coalition of activists as a wake-up call to action on climate change. It appears one day before a UN summit where Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon will push 100 world leaders to make serious commitments to reduce carbon emissions in the lead-up to the Copenhagen climate conference in December. Ban has said that the world has “less than 10 years to halt (the) global rise in greenhouse gas emissions if we are to avoid catastrophic consequences for people and the planet,” adding that Copenhagen is a “once-in-a-generation opportunity.”
Although the 32-page New York Post is a fake, everything in it is 100% true, with all facts carefully checked by a team of editors and climate change experts.
“This could be, and should be, a real New York Post,” said Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men. “Climate change is the biggest threat civilization has ever faced, and it should be in the headlines of every paper, every day until we solve the problem.”
The fake Post‘s cover story (“We’re Screwed”) reports the frightening conclusions of a blue-ribbon panel of scientists commissioned by the mayor’s office to determine the potential effects of climate change on the City. That report was released in February of this year, but received very little press at the time.
Other lead articles describe the Pentagon’s alarmed response to global warming (“Clear & Present Disaster”), the U.S. government’s sadly minuscule response to the crisis (“Congress Cops Out on Climate”), China’s alternative energy program (“China’s Green Leap Forward Overtakes U.S.”), and how if the US doesn’t quickly pass a strong climate bill, the crucial Copenhagen climate talks this December could be a “Flopenhagen.”
The paper includes original investigative reporting as well. One article (“Carbon counter counts New Yorkers as fools”) reveals that Deutsche Bank – which erected a seven-story “carbon counter” in central Manhattan – not only invests heavily in coal-mining companies worldwide, but has recently entered the business of coal trading itself.
The paper has the world’s gloomiest weather page, covering the next 70 years rather than just 7 days. The “Around the World” section describes the disproportionate effects of climate change on poorer parts of the world, including extreme droughts, floods, famines, water shortages, mass migrations and conflicts.
Developing countries will bear the brunt of climate change effects even though they have done very little to cause the problem.
But the paper isn’t all doom and gloom. An article called “New York Fights Back” notes that the carbon emissions of Big Apple residents are only one third the national average, and that the city is building 1800 miles of bike paths, planting one million trees, and replacing its fleet of police cars with hybrids. There’s also a page of black-humor cartoons (in one, Charlie Brown finds Snoopy drowned), a gossip section that takes no prisoners, and a number of truly cheerful ads – for sex (“Awesome. No carbon emissions.”), tote bags, bicycles, and tap water (“Literally comes right out of your faucet!”).
Another ad promotes civil disobedience, encouraging readers to visit BeyondTalk and pledge to risk arrest in a planned global action November 30, just before the conference in Copenhagen.
“We need strong action on climate change,” said David Solnit of Mobilization for Climate Justice West, one of the partners in BeyondTalk.net. “But history shows that leaders act only when people take to the streets to demand it. That’s what needs to happen now.”
This paper is one of 2500 initiatives taking place in more than 130 countries as a response to the “Global Wake-up Call” on climate change. For more information.
Two Greek anarchists are making molotov cocktails. One says to the other: "So who will we throw these at then?" The other replies: "What are you, some kind of fucking intellectual?"
