World’s largest carbon producers face landmark human rights case

Stephan:  This is a potentially game changing action on the part of the Philippines. Small countries may not have military power but if multiple countries were to act as the Philippines has it could create a trend of  legal challenges that the big multi-national polluters could not avoid. So I take this as good news.
Typhoon Haiyan, known locally as Yolanda, struck in 2013 and was one of the most powerful storms ever recorded. Credit: Erik de Castro / Reuters/Reuters

Typhoon Haiyan, known locally as Yolanda, struck in 2013 and was one of the most powerful storms ever recorded.
Credit: Erik de Castro / Reuters/Reuters

The world’s largest oil, coal, cement and mining companies have been given 45 days to respond to a complaint that their greenhouse gas emissions have violated the human rights of millions of people living in the Phillippines.

In a potential landmark legal case, the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines (CHR), a constitutional body with the power to investigate human rights violations, has sent 47 “carbon majors” including Shell, BP, Chevron, BHP Billiton and Anglo American, a 60-page document accusing them of breaching people’s fundamental rights to “life, food, water, sanitation, adequate housing, and to self determination”.

The move is the first step in what is expected to be an official investigation of the companies by […]

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Koch’s Latest Propaganda Disaster: Another Academic Sell-Out Sets Off Controversy With Remarks

Stephan:  The Kochs use their money to buy a world that serves their interests. That's ethically shabby but not surprising. They are but the latest generation of a type. They have a lot of money so in the post Citizens United world they can spend a lot to achieve their political ends. And there is no limit as to what they can spend in academia.  For me the moral turpitude is not so much that ethically challenged rich people try to buy influence, but that so many institutions and individuals in our culture seem all too happy to sell themselves. Western universities with interdisciplinary faculties and great libraries trace to the Alexandrian Mouseion begun by the Ptolemy I (311-283 BCE)  and part of the collegium function was to both encourage the arts, sciences, and philosophies in a non-political way, and to protect individuals from influence. They did this in two ways, by according them a stipend that would allow them a decent living, and by the institution protecting them from being bullied or seduced. This report gives a good assessment of what the Koch's are doing.

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Credit:radio.foxnews.com

Credit:radio.foxnews.com

Yet another controversy is boiling at a Charles Koch-funded university project to promote an extreme economic agenda, this time at Troy University in Alabama. The libertarian billionaire, who is known for his powerful, conservative political donor network, has led a movement to create academic centers on college and university campuses that promote his brand of tax-slashing, regulation-killing economics, benefiting his massive industrial corporation’s bottom line.

Since 1980, the Charles Koch Foundation (CKF) has granted $200 million to hundreds of colleges and universities, often to establish free-market academic centers and in other cases funding professors, doctoral students and free-market courses within established programs. From 2005 to 2014, Koch family foundations, led by CKF, donated nearly $108 million to 366 colleges and universities, as Facing South reported.

With a large grant in 2010, CKF helped establish Troy University’s Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy, an on-campus think tank that advocates right-wing extremist versions of smaller government, lower taxes, decreased regulation and privatization, designed to aid big business. George Crowley, on faculty at the Johnson Center, spoke at an […]

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Sandy Rios Questions Khizr Khan’s Patriotism: ‘We’re Not Even Sure About You, Sir’

Stephan:  The Great Schism Trend has reached extremes of public discourse unlike anything in my lifetime, except perhaps the McCarthy Era. Both hate manifestations it should be noted arising from the Rightist community. You may have watched the Democratic Convention and seen Mr. and Mrs. Khizr Khan's extraordinary appearance there. Or perhaps you saw them interviewed on Lawrence O'Donnell MSNBC show; or just saw one of the clips that is circulating. Anyway I assume you have some sense of them. This is what they look like in the Rightwing media bubble.
Sandy Rios

Sandy Rios

On her radio show today, Sandy Rios of the American Family Association (AFA) questioned the patriotism of Khizr Khan, the father of U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who died while serving in Iraq. Khan gave a rousing speech at the Democratic National Convention yesterday, in which he criticized Donald Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S.

Rios, who serves as the AFA’s director of governmental affairs, said that because of his Muslim faith, Khan may be lying to Americans about his true beliefs, arguing that “supporters of Islam and the Quran cannot embrace the Constitution” and that it’s Khan’s “responsibility” to publicly “condemn Islamists” to prove his allegiance to the country.

 

“From my perspective, it is the responsibility of Mr. Khan to distinguish himself from Islamists, from the Muslim Brotherhood whose treatise is to destroy us from within,” Rios said. “If he is a patriotic, loyal, American-Muslim, then we want to hear that, that’s great, and we grieve with them over the death of […]

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A Transformative Event

Stephan:  The sequence of the Democratic Convention has done something you don't see very often; it has changed a gestalt. During these four days and nights the Democrats took control of the patriotic iconography that for decades has been  under the control of the Republicans while, at the same time the party surrendered to Bernie Sander's agenda. In the end Bernie won. For the first time  since John Kennedy's administration, social progressive policies have been wedded to traditional American family centered, we can do it together, patriotism.  Balloons and stars and all. It has left me much more optimistic about the future.
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Scorching Global Temps Astound Climate Scientists

Stephan:  There are two constants about climate change: It is coming faster than we estimated, and the results will be worse than expected. And you and I are going to live with these changes, as will our children and grandchildren; it will not be pretty.


Southern California’s years-long drought has resulted in one of the “most extreme” wildfires the region has ever seen. Credit: Nick Ut/AP

Record global heat in the first half of 2016 has caught climate scientists off-guard, reports Thompson Reuters Foundation.

“What concerns me most is that we didn’t anticipate these temperature jumps,” David Carlson, director of the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) climate research program, told Thompson Reuters Foundation late Monday. “We predicted moderate warmth for 2016, but nothing like the temperature rises we’ve seen.”

“Massive temperature hikes, but also extreme events like floodings, have become the new normal,” Carlson added. “The ice melt rates recorded in the first half of 2016, for example—we don’t usually see those until later in the year.”

Indeed, extreme weather events are currently wreaking havoc around the world.

In Southern California, firefighters are battling one of the “most extreme” fires the region has ever seen. The so-called sand fire had consumed 38,346 acres as of Wednesday morning and forced the evacuations of 10,000 homes, and one person has died.

Meteorologist Eric Holthaus reported on […]

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