Copenhagen Doomed to Failure

World governments are acknowledging that the climate summit in Copenhagen will not produce a binding agreement primarily because the United States Congress has not passed pending climate legislation with emission targets. Congress is capable of focusing on only one major piece of legislation at a time, and that focus has been occupied by health insurance reform. If the summit can produce an agreement on limiting deforestation, it will be a major accomplishment. El Mensaje de Merida, from the site of the Ninth World Wilderness Conference to Copenhagen delegates, is that nature conservation on a large, interconnected scale is an effective strategy for mitigating climate change. Conservationists also endorsed 350ppm as the level of CO2 that is acceptable if wide spread ecological destruction is to be avoided. Host country Denmark has proposed achieving a political statement of intent on climate action followed by a second conference at the end of 2010 to forge a legal pact. While our government dithers, the Greenland ice pack is melting into the sea at an accelerating rate.

Japanese Whaling May Be Axed

The corrupt Japanese whaling program operates under a cover of "scientific research" in order to fit within an exception to the international whaling moratorium imposed in 1986. However, the program is not self-sustaining and requires a government subsidy of about $780 million to the Overseas Fisheries Cooperation Fund to keep the discredited Institute for Cetacean Research going. A spending review committee has recommended that the subsidy be eliminated. The final decision on funding rests with the Cabinet Office. Greenpeace, which was instrumental in achieving the moratorium, has determined that whale meat from "research" vessels is being sold by crew members for personal profit. Two Greenpeace activists, Toru Suzuki and Junichi Sato, are awaiting trial for their undercover work in exposing the corruption of the whaling program. They are charged with theft and trespass. Whaling is on the agenda of items to be discussed by President Obama with Prime Minister Hatoyama during his state visit.

Creature Feature: Cat Blogging Friday

The world's first video taken of the rare and elusive bay cat endemic to Borneo and threatened by deforestation. Researchers Andrew Hearn and Jo Ross of the Global Canopy Programme caught Catopuma badia in a camera trap. The cat was not photographed in the wild until 1998. Watch closely; the video only lasts seven seconds, and if you blink you will only see the reddish brown cat's tail:



The bay cat is only one of several small cat species whose habitat is threatened by palm oil plantations. Four out of five felids endemic to Borneo are vulnerable to extinction. A new species of clouded leopard was found last year. Conservationists are hoping to preserve a large area of intact forest before plantations and logging destroy most of Borneo's forest cover.

The Terrible Cost

The palm oil industry is rapidly denuding Southeast Asia, destroying the rainforest and replacing it with unsustainable monoculture plantations to produce a commodity used in cooking, foodstuffs and as a fuel. When the rainforest is torn down, the homes of endangered orangutans are also wiped out. That is bad enough, but the torture and abuse of orphaned orangutan infants uncovered on Borneo is truly sickening. Workers killed two mothers to eat them. Two of the infants [photo, International Animal Rescue] was found by conservationists beaten, emaciated and dehydrated. Helen was hog tied to a pole. Another younger infant apparently escaped the workers, but less than a year old, the orangutan undoubtedly died of starvation in the forest. Thankfully the rescued infants are recovering from their ordeal. Helen's wounds are responding well to antibiotics, and learning that not all homo sapiens are predators. They are the lucky ones because countless more primates are dying in captivity from similar torture and neglect. International Animal Rescue has signed an agreement with the Indonesian Forestry Department to set up a permanent rescue center in West Kalimantan where there is none at present. The group is also working on a proposal for research into suitable sites where orangutans can be released into protected areas of remaining forest.

Crackpots United

Some more evidence that the GOP is being taken over by fringe groups and fascist extremists from Mother Jones. Assorted nuts and tea baggers got a friendly welcome from GOP legislators on the steps of the Capital last week when they showed up to protest the painful progress being made on relieving America's healthcare crisis. Their placards are messages are sinking to new lows in our political debate--many of racial content insulting to the President--which already takes place at an elementary level. Their latest frenzy is truly laughable if not so ridiculous. The tea baggers have embraced the fringe political theories of a former KGB analyst, Dr. Igor Panarin, an academic and alleged expert on the United States. He holds forth on a weekly radio show and television appearances from Moscow about his pet theory that the United States will collapse around the year 2010 and splinter into separate regional states as did the Soviet Union in 1992. According to Dr. Panaran, who is a professor at the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the US will break up along regional, ethnic and cultural faults. His reasoning for the breakup:

A whole range of reasons. Firstly, the financial problems in the U.S. will get worse. Millions of citizens there have lost their savings. Prices and unemployment are on the rise. General Motors and Ford are on the verge of collapse, and this means that whole cities will be left without work. Governors are already insistently demanding money from the federal center. Dissatisfaction is growing, and at the moment it is only being held back by the elections and the hope that Obama can work miracles. But by spring, it will be clear that there are no miracles."

The veterans of the Grand Army must be turing in their graves upon hearing this agitprop. Of course the Civil War is the great subject of revisionist history in Texas. There the tea baggers sponsored Panarin to speak at the Houston Hilton. The fringe right media have also cited Panarin's opinions from the Drudge Report to Chuck Baldwin, a perennial also ran of the Conservative Party. The small detail that Panarin puts the locus of Hispanic unrest in the southeast rather than in the northern portion of Mexico annexed by the United States after the Mexican War ought to tell you something about the quality of his analysis.

End the Anti-War 'Treason' Rhetoric

US Person is truly disgusted with Washington politicans bashing the principled opposition to the Vietnam War by an entire generation of young Americans. Forty-four did it again on this Veterans Day, addressing the people gathered at Arlington National Cemetery for the traditional wreath laying at the Tomb of the Unknown. Denigrating millions of Americans who stood up to their government to end a war that was immoral and unjustified has itself become tradition:

"If we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that there have been times where we as a nation have betrayed that sacred trust," "Our Vietnam veterans served with great honor. They often came home greeted not with gratitude or support, but with condemnation and neglect. That's something that will never happen again."

Many Americans at the time of Vietnam were emotionally opposed to the continuation of bloodshed. They were ashamed of their country killing millions of Vietnamese. If some took their frustrations out on individual returning soldiers, that was wrong, but entirely understandable. They saw their patriotic duty as convincing their leaders to end the war. To their everlasting credit they succeeded. The American anti-war movement did not loose a war by betraying servicemen*. To think that is to dismiss the extreme sacrifice of the Vietnamese who wanted an end to colonialism whether under France or as a client state of the U.S. fighting the Cold War.

Incredibly less than fifty years later, The United States is having a deja vu moment again with Forty-four playing the role of LBJ. He is about to send more young Americans to pay in blood for the mistaken notion that to do otherwise would fail "to do right by them". Accusing anti-war Americans of treason by implication to garner support for continuing the confused war in Afghanistan is a reprehensible political maneuver. Afghanistan is probably more of a quagmire than Vietnam. At least there was a South Vietnamese army that on occasion fought well with American support. The history of Afghanistan's impoverished tribal struggle against foreign powers goes back centuries. They are just as motivated as the communists were to push the foreign invader out. It may be just possible that they do not want a western style democracy imposed on them. And once again the American people are saying no more war. Will it take another Kent State for the authorities to represent the desires of the people who elected them? Their mind set is as hard as the stone monuments for the dead to which they pay so much tribute. The living can go die in a faraway desert land.

*Repugnant Senator Tom Coburn (OK) has put a hold on a major veterans' benefit bill, drawing the ire of 13 military and veteran groups

Nepal Protects Tigers

The government of Nepal has expanded the Bardia National Park by 900 sq.kms. (347.5 sq.m.) specifically for tiger habitat. The first ever national census showed 121 adult tigers living in four protected areas of Nepal. WWF urged the government to increase habitat and anti-poaching efforts. It will also establish a National Tiger Conservation Authority and a Wildlife Crime Control Commission. Government sees the success of tiger conservation tied to the livelihoods of local communities. WWF believes that Nepal can be successful in doubling the number of endangered tigers and sees Nepal's commitment to tiger survival as an important example for other countries in tiger range where remnant populations are hanging in the balance. GREEN KUDOS to Nepal for helping one of nature's most magnificent animals survive.

[photo courtesy: PBS]