Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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The Green Religion

Via Ed Driscoll, Is Environmentalism a Religion?

Novelist Michael Crichton said that environmentalism had all the trappings of a religion: “Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday.” Atwood is filling it out with saints and hymns.

Actually, Al Gore had already beat her to it:

Environmentalism is a religion, and Al Gore is its Prophet:

Al’s Gore’s much-anticipated sequel to An Inconvenent Truth is published today, with an admission that facts alone will not persuade Americans to act on global warming and that appealing to their spiritual side is the way forward.

nat_post_al_gore

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Zelaya’s Christmas at the Brazilian embassy

ZelayaXmas

Still cooped up in the tin-foil lined room at the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, deposed president Mel Zelaya celebrated Christmas in Honduras as he sang some tunes into his cell phone. Noticias 24 has a slideshow.

Zelaya had plenty of visitors. La Gringa points out,

Several articles were written about US Ambassador Hugo Llorens’ visit to Zelaya over the weekend, but only the Honduran La Prensa and El Heraldo newspapers noted that he was accompanied by Zelaya’s three Guaymuras negotiators. Maybe the others didn’t realize the significance of that.

With all of Zelaya’s claims about what the Tegucigalpa Accord was “really” supposed to do (return him to office, as dutifully and erroneously reported by all of the news media outside of Honduras), no one seemed to notice that the three Zelaya negotiators never backed up his claims. They have been completely out of the public eye since the Accord was signed.

To me, that signifies that they were completely aware that there was no guarantee that Zelaya would be returned to office and that they only agreed to the congressional vote and the removal of any amnesty provision precisely because Zelaya demanded it.

For the time being, Zelaya’s stuck at the Brazilian embassy until a country offers him political assylum.

Which, by the way, the Brazilians are not about to do.

And no, he did not go to Copenhagen. Whoever organizer was who misled the public into thinking he was there, lied.

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The Christmas Week Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean

LatinAmerWelcome to the Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The story of the week: the Copenhagen Climate Talks.

LATIN AMERICA
The ALBA’s sucre bill is no such thing

Noteworthy article from last February’s WaPo: Latin America’s Document-Driven Revolutions
Team of Spanish Scholars Helped Recast Constitutions in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador

ARGENTINA
Argentina’s Dirty War Orphans

BOLIVIA
Bolivia seizes land from TV network owner

Bolivia Pres Morales Calls For Billions In Climate Reparations

‘Mr. Bolivia’ wins world’s most handsome man contest

BRAZIL
Los pensamientos de Lula

Brazil – a hug from Lula

Roubini Says Brazil Real Overvalued, New Laws Needed

Resource-rich Brazil puts up its guard
The nation is reviving its space program as part of a push to secure its territory. ‘In the coming era of scarcity, we’re going to have to defend what we’ve got,’ a consultant to the Defense Ministry

CHILE
Another Test for the Chilean Model

Frei’s strategy

Chile’s presidential election
Piñera flies the flag: Sebastián Piñera, an airline tycoon, is well placed to break his country’s political mould. But he promises less change than meets the eye

COLOMBIA
Security in Colombia
Calling freedom: How mobile phones may help to deter kidnaps

Colombia to Build Military Bases on Venezuela Border

CUBA
Tell me again how American tourists can make a difference in Cuba?

For those of you who think Cubans actually own a house in Cuba, Karina’s patio is neither private nor special*

Before he left for Denmark, Hugo stopped in Havana: Fidel gives Chávez a breakfast sendoff

ECUADOR
Ecuador Parliament Discusses Education Law

GUATEMALA
Rash of public lynchings hit Guatemala
Mistrust of justice system to blame, experts say (h/t Islam in Europe)

HONDURAS
Guest blog: Enough is enough!

Manuel Zelaya: Eligible to lose Honduran citizenship

MEXICO
Mexico City backs gay marriage in Latin American first

Via Gates of Vienna, Islam is the new religion in rebellious Mexican state Chiapas

The City That Went to Hell

NICARAGUA
Pro-Iranian Chavista Daniel Ortega overturns term limits

PANAMA
Birds of a feather (sort of)

PUERTO RICO
Sotomayor disappointed by ‘wise Latina’ souvenirs. Let’s hope no one’s bought her one of the NY Times t-shirts for peoples of color as a Christmas gift.

VENEZUELA
As the adoring crowd cheers Chavez in Copenhagen, the environmental record of the revolution is abysmal

That “inherited” excuse getting popular with Leftists these days

VIDEO Chavez declares himself a Marxist:

Losers of the world unite – in Denmark

All you really need to know about them

Venezuela Imprisons Judge Who Freed Banker Without Trial

Venezuela’s Chavez accuses Dutch of aggression

Venezuela passes banking law raising government control

Morning Bell: The Hugo Chavez Case for Cap and Trade

Daily Gut: Green–It’s the New Red

Anunciantes que abandonaron a Tiger Woods acuden al Presidente Chávez

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
Putting our economy in the hands of Chavez fans

The week’s posts and podcasts:
Jake Tapper picks up the scent of Chavez’s sulfur
Chavez: Obama smells of sulfur, too
Chile’s new prosperity: 15 Minutes on Latin America
Chavez does Denmark
At Real Clear World:
Former Sinaloa Drug Lord Dead in Shootout

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Jake Tapper picks up the scent of Chavez’s sulfur

Last Friday I translated and posted Hugo Chavez’s video (in Spanish) where he says Obama smells of sulfur, during his speech at the Copenhagen Climate Summit,

Vlad Tepes subtitled the video with my translation and posted it on YouTube.

The media, which made a huge fuss over the times that Chavez said that GW Bush smelled of sulfur, has ignored Chavez’s insult to Obama.

About the only one who hasn’t is Jake Tapper, who posted my subtitled video,
At Copenhagen, Chávez Suggests Obama is the Devil and posted my translation.

I wish Jake would have linked to my post particularly since I specifically request it because this is a professional translation, but looking at the bright side, the subtitled YouTube has had over 11,000 viewings – so I appreciate that he picked up the YouTube.

I’ll be talking about this and other news in today’s podcast at 11AM. The Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean will be up later this afternoon.

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DC snowstorm chills Pelosi’s global warming trip

Bwahahahahah!
DC snowstorm chills Pelosi’s global warming trip

In a strange twist, a Washington snowstorm is forcing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, to make an early departure from a global warming summit here in Denmark.

Pelosi told CNN that military officials leading her Congressional delegation have urged the 21 lawmakers to leave Copenhagen several hours earlier than scheduled on Saturday.

The Speaker said she has agreed to the new travel plan so that lawmakers can get back to Washington before much of the expected storm wallops the nation’s capital.

You’d think that the Church of Global Warming would be holding its holy conclave in tropical lands – such as Cancun, Puerto Rico or Hawaii – or perhaps somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere where it’s almost summer now, instead of snow-covered Copenhagen, but even then the believers from the colder climates would still have to face the inclement weather at home.

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Al “Gaia Angelou” Gore poetic oeuvre

… encapsulated in two versions:
Moe Lane‘s dramatic (really dramatic) reading,

And Al’s own soporific rendition,

Big Hollywood‘s reaction:

When Harry Smith starts talking somewhere around the 1:29 mark, get ready to ask yourself, “Whatever happened to men?”

While we wait for the weekend’s snowstorm and the Danes enjoy theirs, here’s more pseudo-lyricism at Ace’s post, Let Me Put My Poem In You.

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Chavez: Obama smells of sulfur, too

Hugo Chávez, in Copenhagen (my translation. If you use this translation, please link to this post),

…That’s why we thank the president for giving President Morales and me a chance to speak.

It would have been regrettable if they had attempted to veto us in this meeting. I don’t even want to think about it, no, nor suspect it.

As Lula already said, the Kyoto Protocol can not be declared dead or extinguished, which is what the US pretends to do.

Which is why Evo tells a great truth: If Obama, Nobel War Prize, said here, by the way, it smells of sulfur here.

It smells of sulfur. It keeps smelling of sulfur in this world.

The Nobel War Prize has just said here that he came to act. Well, then show it, sir, don’t leave by the back door, eh?

Do everything you need to do for the US to adhere to the Kyoto Protocol, and let’s respect Kyoto, and empower Kyoto, and respond to the world in a transparent fashion.

Listen to him say it,

I guess Hugo must have changed his mind from the last time he spoke at the UN about Obama, when he was saying “It doesn’t smell of sulfur here. It smells of hope,”

Special thanks to Vlad Tepes for subtitling the video and posting it on YouTube.

UPDATE
NewsBusters looks at the media’s silence:

Readers are advised that when Chavez made this comment about Bush in 2006, the media were all over it.

A Google search of “Chavez,” “Bush,” and “Devil” yielded over 40,000 results. There’s even a Wikipedia page about it.

This was such a popular media incident that when Chavez told the U.N. the sulfur smell was gone in September 2009 — a reference to Bush being out of the White House and Obama being in — the press had another field day with the story.

With that in mind, it should be fascinating to see how the Obama-loving media report this now that the tables have been turned on the object of their affection.

Welcome, Gateway Pundit, Hot Air and Memeorandum readers. Please visit often.

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The Copenhagen blizzard

Ah, the irony, Blizzard Dumps Snow on Copenhagen as Leaders Battle Warming, or do they mean, struggle to stay warm?

World leaders flying into Copenhagen today to discuss a solution to global warming will first face freezing weather as a blizzard dumped 10 centimeters (4 inches) of snow on the Danish capital overnight.

“Temperatures will stay low at least the next three days,” Henning Gisseloe, an official at Denmark’s Meteorological Institute, said today by telephone, forecasting more snow in coming days. “There’s a good chance of a white Christmas.”

Apparently they haven’t had a white Christmas in 14 years. Nice.

Not so nice, the reaction to Chavez’s speech: The Copenhagen, Chavista Consensus: Free Markets Kill Polar Bears

As Ron Bailey pointed out in his latest dispatch from the Copenhagen climate change conference, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave a predictably insane speech blaming capitalism for the melting if the polar ice caps and all sorts of other environmental degradation. Of course, he likely remembers that the Soviet Union and its slave states were all terrific stewards of the earth, using green technology to eliminate the kulaks and giving Andrei Sakharov fair trade chicory coffee in prison.

I am not a scientist, don’t pretend to be a scientist, and defer to Bailey on all things science related, but am I allowed to be more than slightly troubled that those formulating policy on such matters appear to be barking mad?

Oh yes, indeed. So many despots, so little time!

Be that as it may — and even though there is still a lot of bickering over the hand-outs … er, budget — this city is about to be descended upon by some 115 world leaders. One of them, Hugo Chavez, is already here, evidently to great acclaim. I missed his speech yesterday (somehow I’m not on the invite list), but I will take one for the team today and go hear Chavez speak off campus at a place called Valby Hallen. He won’t be alone. Accompanying him on the program are Raul Castro, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Eva Morales of Bolivia, the Foreign Minister of Ecuador and the recently deposed president of Honduras Manuel Zelaya. (Wasn’t he supposed to be in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa?) Anyway, it’s a veritable rogue’s gallery of the Latin American left.

I really want to know how Zelaya managed to get out of the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, but I digress.

European Carbon Credit Trading System Plagued by Fraud, which may explain the appeal from the tyrants: it is yet more root-cause corruption.

Meanwhile, the Russians are piping in, with yet another inconvenient truth,
Climategate goes SERIAL: now the Russians confirm that UK climate scientists manipulated data to exaggerate global warming

What the Russians are suggesting here, in other words, is that the entire global temperature record used by the IPCC to inform world government policy is a crock.

But fret not, The Obama administration is making a last-gasp effort to put together a deal in Copenhagen, with Hillary promising $100 million billion right off the bat. As if it wasn’t a big enough zoo, Nancy Pelosi is leading a large delegation on at least two Air Force jets to Copenhagen.

Can’t wait to find out what Lady M will be wearing to the blizzard…

UPDATE
Lord Monckton reports on Pachauri’s eye opening Copenhagen presentation, and manages to slice, dice, chop and fillet Pachauri’s list of errors. More on Pachauri at EU Referendum.

And,
Chavez-hagen!

Post re-edited to include an omission.

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