December, 06 2010, 03:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
The Real Climate-Gate? WikiLeaks and Climate Talks
WASHINGTON
The United Nations summit on the climate crisis is continuing this week in Cancun, Mexico. The following are there and reachable for interviews:
MICHAEL DORSEY
Professor of global environmental policy at Dartmouth College, Dorsey can comment on events in Cancun as well as the U.S. diplomatic cables recently released by WikiLeaks regarding climate negotiations. See in the Guardian: "WikiLeaks cables reveal how U.S. manipulated climate accord: Embassy dispatches show America used spying, threats and promises of aid to get support for Copenhagen accord."
ORIN LANGELLE
JEFF CONANT
Langelle and Conant are with the Global Justice Ecology Project. They can arrange interviews with a number of activists on global warming and climate disruption from around the world currently at the summit.
Also, see climatevoices.wordpress.com
Conant said today: aEURoeThe WikiLeaks cables reveal that the can-do, earth-saving rhetoric of the U.S. administration masks disturbing behind-the-scenes efforts to sabotage the climate negotiations. The U.S. is putting economic interests ahead of its moral and environmental responsibilities. The WikiLeaks cables open a window, too, into the disturbing nature of the policies themselves: a policy like REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), and carbon offsets in general, are fronts not only for evading moral and political responsibility, but for denying land rights to peasants and indigenous peoples, while allowing dirty industries to continue driving climate change."
LAURA CARLSEN
Carlsen is director of the Mexico City-based Americas Program of the Center for International Policy. She said today: "It's a foregone conclusion that world leaders will fail to win a binding agreement on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming at the COP [conference of the parties] 16 in Cancun. Although they'll announce 'progress' toward continued talks next round, their inaction will mark an historic failure and an affront to future generations.
"Meanwhile, the proposed market-based mechanisms to supposedly mitigate climate change, like the UN forestation program REDD, instead of solving the climate change crisis, pose threats to governments' regulatory role and local and national stewardship of natural resources."
She recently wrote a piece titled "In Mexico City, a Message for Cancun."
Democracy Now is broadcasting from the summit this week: democracynow.org
A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.
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Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is escalating his fight against the U.S. oligarchy with a new campaign directed at the nation's wealthiest individuals—including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg—who he says are key culprits in a global race to the bottom that is stripping people worldwide of political agency while impoverishing billions so that the rich can amass increasingly obscene levels of wealth.
Announcing a new series that will detail how "billionaire oligarchs" in the U.S. "manipulate the global economy, purchase our elections, avoid paying taxes, and increasingly control our government," Sanders said in a Friday night video address that it makes him laugh when mainstream pundits talk openly about the nefarious oligarchic structures in other places, but refuse to acknowledge the issue in domestic terms.
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Bernie Sanders talks about the oligarchy
While rarely discussed in the corporate press or by most elected officials, argues Sanders, the reality is that a "small number of incredibly wealthy billionaires own and control much of the global economy. Period. End of discussion. And increasingly they own and control our government through a corrupt campaign finance system."
Since the the victory of President-elect Donald Trump in November, Sanders has been increasingly outspoken about his frustrations over the failure of the Democratic Party to adequately confront the contradictions presented by a party that purports to represent the interests of the working class yet remains so beholden to corporate interests and the wealthy that lavish it with campaign contributions.
In a missive to supporters last month, Sanders bemoaned how "just 150 billionaire families spent nearly $2 billion to get their candidates elected" in this year's elections, which included giving to both major political parties. Such a reality, he said, must be challenged.
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According to the newspaper:
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After the article was published, Siri called it a "typical NYT hit piece plainly written by those lacking basic reading and thinking skills," and posted a series of responses on social media. He wrote in part that "ICAN's petition to the FDA seeks to revoke a particular polio vaccine, IPOL, and only for infants and children and only until a proper trial is conducted, because IPOL was licensed in 1990 by Sanofi based on pediatric trials that, according to FDA, reviewed safety for only three days after injection."
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Trump toldNBC News last weekend: "Hey, look, I'm not against vaccines. The polio vaccine is the greatest thing. If somebody told me to get rid of the polio vaccine, they're going to have to work real hard to convince me. I think vaccines are—certain vaccines—are incredible. But maybe some aren't. And if they aren't, we have to find out."
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Multiple critics altered Trump's campaign slogan to "Make Polio Great Again."
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) responded with a video on social media:
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