AP sources: Al-Qaida link in failed plane attack

By LARRY MARGASAK and LARA JAKES, Associated Press Writer Larry Margasak And Lara Jakes, Associated Press Writer – 15 mins ago

WASHINGTON – U.S. officials say a Northwest Airlines passenger from Nigeria said he was acting on behalf of al-Qaida when he tried to blow up a flight Friday as it landed in Detroit.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., identified the suspect as Abdul Mudallad, a Nigerian. King said the flight began in Nigeria and went through Amsterdam en route to Detroit.

One of the U.S. intelligence officials said the explosive device was a mix of powder and liquid. It failed when the passenger tried to detonate it.

The passenger was being questioned Friday evening.

Both of the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing.

The motive of the Christmas Day attack was not immediately clear.

Remember The Sacrifices

Labeled “the bill that stole Christmas”, the health care bill is on it’s way to a vote. The vote will be held after sundown on Christmas Eve 2009, reported Phililp Rucker of the Washington Post in his article entitled “Health-Care Reform 2009“.

But as I read through the article, I noticed how much the Senate and staff were whining about having to “work” on Chritmas Eve. As my daughter says when one of her kids cries, “call the whaaam-bulance!”

I am feeling very fortunate that our elected officials are willing to sacrifice their holidays, for me. That they are working on little rest and poor quality food, for me. I’m sad beyond compare that this group of “representatives” would put their families on hold on the holiday to destroy mine.

And, destroy it will. It will not destroy the bonds we have, but this bill and others like it will drive working class folks like us into poverty. I, my son and my son-in-laws all work with our backs as well as our brains. We work hard to care for our families and ask nothing of the government. And we are proud of it.

This is not to say that I am prejudice against people who need help and get that help from Washington. But, my family and I didn’t ask for the government’s help to keep us healthy. Is Michelle Obama going to come here and clean house and make soup for my wife when she is sick? I don’t think so, scooter.

Is Harry Reid going to get up before dawn, climb in my old truck with no heat, and walk rooftops all day long to pay my bills when I can’t work. Now that would be a great photo op.

But, you can bet your bottom dollar that I will do these things because it is my job. From Nancy Pelosi on down the line, the democats, the other side of the same coin, are not representing us, the people. They represent the banker agenda, the New World Order.

They are not by the people or for the people. So, we better be for the people, for we are the people. We must take care of each other like never before. We are all we have.

The article also mentions at least two other occasions when bills were heard on Christmas Eve. But the one that stands out in my mind is the “Federal Reserve Act of 1913″. Nearly one hundred years later, we see what a monster that one turned into.

So as many of you enjoy this holiday season with your loved ones, remember your Seantors and their sacrifices, as they shove a reindeer up your backside.

Southern Patriot

I Think Dr. Begich Would Agree With This Law, Although It Is A Little To Late

By GLENN ADAMS, Associated Press Writer Glenn Adams, Associated Press Writer – Sun Dec 20, 12:07 pm ET AUGUSTA, Maine – A Maine legislator wants to make the state the first to require cell phones to carry warnings that they can cause brain cancer, although there is no consensus among scientists that they do and industry leaders dispute the claim.

The now-ubiquitous devices carry such warnings in some countries, though no U.S. states require them, according to the National Conference of State Legislators. A similar effort is afoot in San Francisco, where Mayor Gavin Newsom wants his city to be the nation’s first to require the warnings.

Maine Rep. Andrea Boland, D-Sanford, said numerous studies point to the cancer risk, and she has persuaded legislative leaders to allow her proposal to come up for discussion during the 2010 session that begins in January, a session usually reserved for emergency and governors’ bills.

Boland herself uses a cell phone, but with a speaker to keep the phone away from her head. She also leaves the phone off unless she’s expecting a call. At issue is radiation emitted by all cell phones.

Under Boland’s bill, manufacturers would have to put labels on phones and packaging warning of the potential for brain cancer associated with electromagnetic radiation. The warnings would recommend that users, especially children and pregnant women, keep the devices away from their head and body.

The Federal Communications Commission, which maintains that all cell phones sold in the U.S. are safe, has set a standard for the “specific absorption rate” of radiofrequency energy, but it doesn’t require handset makers to divulge radiation levels.

The San Francisco proposal would require the display of the absorption rate level next to each phone in print at least as big as the price. Boland’s bill is not specific about absorption rate levels, but would require a permanent, nonremovable advisory of risk in black type, except for the word “warning,” which would be large and in red letters. It would also include a color graphic of a child’s brain next to the warning.

While there’s little agreement about the health hazards, Boland said Maine’s roughly 950,000 cell phone users among its 1.3 million residents “do not know what the risks are.”

All told, more than 270 million people subscribed to cellular telephone service last year in the United States, an increase from 110 million in 2000, according to CTIA-The Wireless Association. The industry group contends the devices are safe.

“With respect to the matter of health effects associated with wireless base stations and the use of wireless devices, CTIA and the wireless industry have always been guided by science, and the views of impartial health organizations. The peer-reviewed scientific evidence has overwhelmingly indicated that wireless devices do not pose a public health risk,” said CTIA’s John Walls.

James Keller of Lewiston, whose cell phone serves as his only phone, seemed skeptical about warning labels. He said many things may cause cancer but lack scientific evidence to support that belief. Besides, he said, people can’t live without cell phones. “

It seems a little silly to me, but it’s not going to hurt anyone to have a warning on there. If they’re really concerned about it, go ahead and put a warning on it,” he said outside a sporting good store in Topsham. “It wouldn’t deter me from buying a phone.

” While there’s been no long-term studies on cell phones and cancer, some scientists suggest erring on the side of caution.

Last year, Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director emeritus of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, sent a memo to about 3,000 faculty and staff members warning of risks based on early, unpublished data. He said that children should use the phones only for emergencies because their brains were still developing and that adults should keep the phone away from the head and use a speakerphone or a wireless headset.

Herberman, who says scientific conclusions often take too long, is one of numerous doctors and researchers who have endorsed an August report by retired electronics engineer L. Lloyd Morgan. The report highlights a study that found significantly increased risk of brain tumors from 10 or more years of cell phone or cordless phone use.

Also, the BioInitiative Working Group, an international group of scientists, notes that many countries have issued warnings and that the European Parliament has passed a resolution calling for governmental action to address concerns over health risks from mobile phone use.

But the National Cancer Institute said studies thus far have turned up mixed and inconsistent results, noting that cell phones did not come into widespread use in the United States until the 1990s.

“Although research has not consistently demonstrated a link between cellular telephone use and cancer, scientists still caution that further surveillance is needed before conclusions can be drawn,” according to the Cancer Institute’s Web site.

Motorola Inc., one of the nation’s major wireless phone makers, says on its Web site that all of its products comply with international safety guidelines for radiofrequency energy exposure.

Obama hails 60th Senate vote for health care

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent David Espo, Ap Special Correspondent

– 16 mins ago WASHINGTON – Jubilant Democrats locked in Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson as the 60th and decisive vote for historic health care legislation Saturday, putting President Barack Obama’s signature issue firmly on a path for Christmas Eve passage.

At the White House, Obama swiftly welcomed the breakthrough, saying, “After a nearly century-long struggle, we are on the cusp of making health care reform a reality in the United States of America.”

In the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid smiled broadly when asked if Nelson’s decision gave him the 60-vote majority necessary to overcome solid Republican opposition. “Seems that way,” he said. The Nevada Democrat agreed to a series of concessions on abortion and other issues demanded by Nelson in daylong talks on Friday, then informed Obama of the agreement in a late night phone call as the president flew home from climate talks in Copenhagen.

The Congressional Budget Office said the Senate bill would extend coverage to more than 30 million Americans who lack it. It also imposes new regulations to curb abuses of the insurance industry, and the president noted one last-minute addition would impose penalties on companies that “arbitrarily jack up prices” in advance of the legislation taking effect.

CBO analysts also said the legislation would cut federal deficits by $132 billion over 10 years and possibly much more in the subsequent decade.

The developments unfolded on a day of improbables — a snowstorm enveloped the Capitol, creating whiteout conditions outside; while inside senators staged dueling news conferences as if their presence on the Saturday before Christmas was the rule rather than the rarest of exceptions.

At its core, the legislation would create a new insurance exchange where consumers could shop for affordable coverage that complied with new federal guidelines. Most Americans would be required to purchase insurance, with federal subsidies available to help defray the cost for lower and middle income individuals and families.

In a concession to Nelson and other moderates, the bill lacks a government-run insurance option of the type that House Democrats inserted into theirs. In a final defeat for liberals, a proposed Medicare expansion was also jettisoned in the past several days as Reid and the White House maneuvered for 60 votes.

Outnumbered Republicans unleashed a new series of attacks against the legislation and vowed to delay its passage as long as possible. The next — and most critical — test vote was set for about 1 a.m. Monday.

To secure passage, Democrats will need to show 60 votes on two additional occasions, and in the meantime, Reid made sure Republicans would have no additional chances to seek changes to the measure.

“This bill is a legislative train wreck of historic proportions,” the party’s leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said at a news conference. He pointed to cuts to Medicare that CBO said totaled more than $470 billion over a decade, with reductions in planned payments to home health care agencies and hospices. He also said the bill includes “massive tax increases” at a time of double-digit unemployment.

Republicans also noted that CBO concluded that under the bill, “federal outlays for health care would increase during the 2010-2019 period, as would the federal budgetary commitment to health care.”

True to their word, Republicans objected when Reid sought permission for Nelson to announce his decision in a speech on the Senate floor, then insisted clerks read aloud 383 pages of last-minute changes the majority leader unveiled.

Many of Reid’s revisions were designed to secure the 60 votes needed to steer the bill past the GOP filibuster.

Those drafted at Nelson’s behest drew the most attention, and included further restrictions on abortion coverage in policies sold inside the exchanges.

States would be permitted to ban insurance coverage of abortions in policies sold in the exchange, except in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is in jeopardy. In states where such coverage is permitted, consumers must notify their insurance company they want it, and pay for it separately.

The Nebraskan also won increased federal funds to cover his state’s cost of covering an expanded Medicaid population at a cost that one Democratic official put at $45 million over a decade, and took credit for easing the bill’s impact as well as other, smaller changes.

When he finally announced his decision, Nelson did so at a news conference in a Capitol corridor, rather than from his Senate desk as Democrats had preferred. Noting the bruising negotiations over abortion, he said, “I know this is hard for some of my colleagues to accept and I appreciate their right to disagree. But I would not have voted for this bill without these provisions.”

Senators who support abortion rights accepted the changes reluctantly. But conservative Republicans and the National Right to Life Committee criticized them as a step backward from the equivalent part of the House bill, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also opposed them.

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., who pushed through the restrictions in the House-passed bill, also rejected Nelson’s deal. He called it “not acceptable” because it “would allow the federal government to subsidize insurance policies with abortion coverage.” He said he intends to keep working to find a solution that would allow him to ultimately vote for the health care bill.

Nelson, Nebraska’s former state insurance commissioner, wasn’t the only squeaky senatorial wheel within the 60-member Democratic caucus.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., claimed credit for a last-minute, $10 billion increase in funding for community health centers nationwide, which he said would create new or expanded facilities in 10,000 areas and provide primary care for 25 million more Americans.

Sanders made an impassioned speech on the Senate floor earlier in the week on behalf of a doomed proposal for government-run health care. In an interview, he said he only agreed to vote for the legislation on Friday, when Reid told him additional billions for the health centers would be included.

Another provision in Reid’s changes provides additional federal funding for hospitals in Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming and the Dakotas, although no cost estimate was available.

The House passed its version of the bill in November, and final compromise talks are expected to begin after a brief break for the holidays. Numerous issues must be resolved — including the role of government in the new insurance market and abortion restrictions. But Democrats have made a point all year of compromising on difficult issues in the name of the most far-reaching changes in the nation’s health care system in generations, and hope to have a bill for Obama to sign before next month’s State of the Union address to Congress.

In place of a government-run insurance option, the estimated 30 million Americans purchasing coverage through new insurance exchanges would have the option of signing up for national plans overseen by the same office that manages health coverage for federal employees and members of Congress.

Those plans would be privately owned, but operated on a nonprofit basis, as many Blue Cross Blue Shield plans are now. Insurance companies would be barred immediately from denying coverage to children because of a pre-existing health condition. The prohibition on denial of coverage for adults would not take effect in the Senate bill until 2014, a disappointment for consumer advocates.

Among the changes Reid incorporated was dropping a proposed tax on cosmetic surgical procedures, including Botox injections. Instead, Senate Democrats are proposing a 10 percent sales tax on tanning salons, to be paid by the person soaking up the rays. The Food and Drug Administration says ultraviolet radiation from tanning can increase the risk of skin cancer.

The revised bill also calls for a .9 percent increase in the Medicare payroll tax on incomes over $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples. Reid’s earlier bill had a smaller hike, .5 percent.

Reid’s earlier bill had a smaller hike, .5 percent. The bill also taxes high-cost insurance plans as part of a plan to put downward pressure on health care use.

Car Sounded Like It Was Speeding, Officer Testifies

source:loweringthebar.net

In 2007, Daniel Freitag got a speeding ticket in West Salem, Ohio. Patrolman Ken Roth said he had measured Freitag’s speed with a radar gun, but that evidence was thrown out on appeal because the state had failed to provide details about the radar. But the case was remanded rather than dismissed because Roth had also testified to another basis for the ticket: he could tell the car was speeding because it sounded too fast.

“As it approached,” he testified, “I could hear the vehicle on the roadway, which based on my training and experience it is [sic] consistent with a vehicle that was in excess of the posted speed limit.” Roth said he had learned to “audibly determine if a vehicle was speeding” as part of his field training several years before, although he did not identify the sensei who taught him this skill or how, exactly, he was trained to do it. Roth also claimed he had visually determined that Freitag was speeding by viewing the car’s headlights in his mirrors, but again gave no details, such as whether he had timed the headlights in relation to landmarks or done anything else apart from just look at the car.

Remarkably, the trial court accepted this testimony, and found Freitag guilty. He appealed (again), and this time the court of appeal ruled in his favor, finding Roth’s testimony “incredible”:

The weight of the evidence does not support the conclusion that Freitag was exceeding the posted speed limit, specifically because Patrolman Roth’s testimony that he audibly and visibly determined that Freitag was speeding is not credible. . . . It is simply incredible, in the absence of reliable scientific, technical, or other specialized information, to believe that one could hear an unidentified vehicle ’speeding’ . . . . In addition, although he admitted that there was another vehicle on the roadway and traveling the same direction as Freitag’s at the time, the officer did not explain why he could hear and distinguish Freitag’s vehicle, while he could not even hear the other traffic. . . . A thorough review of the record compels this Court to conclude that the trier of fact lost its way and committed a manifest miscarriage of justice in convicting Freitag of speeding.

It is also worth noting that, for his part, Freitag had testified that it was “completely impossible” for him to have been speeding because he is “aware that the police constantly patrol U.S. 42.” His wife, who was also in the car, supported him by testifying that he had been driving “normally” and could not possibly have been speeding because he “never exceeds the speed limit in West Salem or anywhere else.” Here we see one of the most important principles of the American legal system at work: a defendant is innocent until proven guilty, even if he, too, is obviously full of crap.

FEMA 101 Developing And Maintaining State, Terrortorial, Tribal and Local Government Emergency Plans

This Comprehensive Preparedness Guide, CPG 101, expands on the Federal Emergency Management Agencys (FEMAs) efforts to provide guidance about response and recovery planning to State, Territorial, Tribal, and Local governments. It also extends those planning concepts into the prevention and protection mission areas. Some predecessor material can be traced back to the 1960s-era Feder

For the complete PDF click here

Internet’s Primary Gatekeeper in Bed With Big Brother?

source: American Free Press

By Victor Thorn

LIKE AN ORWELLIAN SET OF EYES watching society’s every move, Google—the world’s predominant search engine—is quickly becoming a modern-day Big Brother. Robert Verkaik, law editor for The Independent, described their intent on May 24, 2007 as “setting out to create the most comprehensive database of personal information ever assembled, one with the ability to tell people how to run their lives.”

Similarly, Clint Boulton of GoogleWatch described the corporation on September 9. “Google conjures an image of science fiction films such as War of the Worlds.  The servers are like alien ships covering all of humanity, though instead of harvesting food sources, they are harvesting our search data for better advertising opportunities.”

But their motives aren’t simply financial. Andrew Keen, author of Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is Killing Our Culture, provided a glimpse into their larger agenda in a June 30 article for the Daily Telegraph. “Back in 2006, when asked where he wanted Google to be in five years time, company CEO Eric Schmidt confessed that he hoped his search engine would be so knowledgeable about all of us that it would know what we wanted to do tomorrow.”

If information is power, Michael Malone’s comments for ABC News on September 5, 2008 put this matter into perspective. “Google’s real business now is not providing a service to its users, but owning the world’s data.” The Independent’s Robert Verkaik is even more blunt in his assessment. “Google wants to know everything —all the knowledge contained on the World Wide Web, and everything about you as a computer user, too.”

When Neil Cavuto of Fox News asked, “How can the public be sure that Google is deleting their private information and not storing it?” CEO Eric Schmidt replied, “Because we say so.” Using technology called Deep Packet Inspection, Google can track not only our search histories, but also our very identity. In the Matrix-like world of these high-tech wizards, a new ‘morality’ emerges.

ABC’s Malone pinpoints it. “The empiricism of science and technology supercedes messy human institutions . . . for these young techno-utopians, technology trumps all, even privacy.”

In this context, is a dystopian universe of computer-generated artificial intelligence merely a pipedream, or an actual possibility? On May 16, 2007 Internet commentator Nick Douglas explained how a Google database could actually become ‘self-aware.’ “A computer doesn’t have to be conscious to be powerful. Just teach it relationships, feed it data, and tell it to make connections.” He adds, “This company has history’s finest catalog of human wants, habits and inquiries cataloged by user,” along with “earth satellite imagery, image-recognition technology and ambient-audio tech.”

Even creepier, on July 16, Michel Wester of “Web- Sonic” exposed Google’s use of “easter eggs” (or hidden features) in their graphics. Specifically, he illustrated how “Triforce” symbols were being subliminally embedded on Google’s homepage. (These have since been removed.) In essence, a Triforce is an inverted equilateral triangle inscribed inside an upright triangle. On the surface, this icon appears harmless. But if the inner inverted triangle is expanded, the Triforce transforms into a Star of David—it is also reminiscent of the triangular All-Seeing Eye on the back of our Masonic dollar bills; is this symbolism indicative of an omnipotent Big Brother’s totalitarian control of our computer screens?

Or, as Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare author Michael Hoffman stated in a November 10 interview: “We are losing our humanity.As our digital gadgets and personal computers evolve to even higher planes of magical realism, the [real] alchemical component in this process is not base metals to gold, it is the gold of humanity coagulated into the basest shadow of what it means to be human.”

The Star of David-Triforce imagery becomes vital when considering that Google’s two founders—Larry Page and Russian Sergey Brin—are both Jewish, as is Senior VP Jonathan Rosenberg. On the other hand, Jewish venture capitalist Michael Moritz—who financed Google during its inception—mentored Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt. Equally as important, Schmidt attended both the 2008 and 2009 Bilderberg meetings.

This fact is important because, as computer scientist Daniel Tunkelang wrote for The Noisy Channel on September 5, Google is “the primary gatekeeper to the Internet for a substantial majority of Americans.” In this capacity, their political views have a significant sway over what computer users see (and don’t see).

Ex-CIA clandestine services officer Robert David Steele publicly claimed in October, 2006 that Google is “heavily in bed with the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Considering the CIA’s incestuous relationship with Israel’s Mossad, it’s now clear why websites that are considered “anti-Jewish” have been targeted and censored. After the Anti-Defamation League convinced Google’s Internet monitoring team to make “technical modifications” to its search engine, ADL Director Abraham Foxman beamed, “We are extremely pleased that Google has heard our concerns [about] the unusually high ranking of pedlars of bigotry and anti-Semitism.”

Victor Thorn is a hard-hitting researcher, journalist and the author of many books on 9-11 and the New World Order. These include 9-11 Evil: The Israeli Role in 9-11 and Phantom Flight 93.

Fugitive Located Inside Homeland Security Department Office

source: loweringthebar.net

Reports last week said that Tahaya Buchanan had simply walked into the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Atlanta, despite the existence of a nationwide alert seeking her arrest. In fact, she apparently did this repeatedly for quite some time, because, you see, she worked there.

Buchanan had been indicted in New Jersey for insurance fraud in 2007, and a warrant for her arrest was issued that December and was posted to the National Crime Information Center in January 2008. New Jersey prosecutor Michael Morris said they believed Buchanan had been working for Homeland Security in New Jersey in 2007, and might have been transferred to the department’s immigration office in Georgia at some point during the investigation.

That’s where authorities lost track of her. “We found it surprising [and] alarming,” Morris said, “that an employee of the Department of Homeland Security is a fraudster, and we do not understand how she could have remained employed there with an open criminal warrant for her arrest remaining on the interstate system without being discovered.” You don’t? I do. According to the Newark Star-Ledger, a USCIS spokesperson said on Wednesday that the bureau was still investigating the matter and that she “did not have information available as to whether the office regularly checks its employee list against national criminal warrants.” Because why would it do something like that?

Developing nations stage climate summit walkout

By Emma Alberici in Copenhagen

Posted Mon Dec 14, 2009 8:25pm AEDT
Updated Tue Dec 15, 2009 6:05am AEDT

Intense negotiations: more than 110 heads of state are due to arrive on Wednesday (Australian Science Media Centre)

//

• Video: Negotiations stalemate sparks G77 walkout (Lateline)
• Video: Climate negotiations reach stalemate (7pm TV News NSW)
• Audio: PM Kevin Rudd heads to Copenhagen (PM)
• Audio: No deal at Copenhagen yet (PM)
• Audio: Call for droughts, bushfires exclusion (PM)
• Related Story: Opposition climate plan ‘a magic pudding’
• Related Story: Copenhagen talks stagnate as protests turn violent
• Related Story: Australia accused of cooking carbon books

Talks have resumed at the international climate change summit in Copenhagen after a walkout by developing countries.

The protest was led by African nations, which accused rich countries of trying to wreck the existing UN Kyoto Protocol.

The G-77 group of developing nations want talks on a second period of commitment to Kyoto to be given priority over broader discussions on a long-term vision for co-operative action.

At the moment Kyoto calls on rich nations to curb emissions, but does not apply to developing countries.

The Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, says the move is regrettable, describing it as a protest over process, not a walkout over policy.

After six days of little progress in Copenhagen, the US climate envoy earlier said the possibility of a deal on climate change hung in the balance.

The world’s leaders will be arriving in the Danish capital over the next few days for the final round of negotiations.

Leaders met overnight in an informal session with the conference president. They emerged announcing that there was still a lot of work to be done to arrive at a new deal that could somehow align the interests of rich and poor countries.

The conference centre was closed for what was supposed to be a day of rest, but across Copenhagen people were meeting in cafes, hotel foyers and at the ministry of foreign affairs.

That is where the 48 environment ministers spent the day locked in talks with the Danish President of the proceedings and Yvo de Boer, the UN’s top climate change official.

He believes the biggest resistance to a strong deal is coming from China.

Chinese negotiators do not want to sign up to an agreement that involves inspectors visiting the country to verify progress on climate commitments.

“Actions – how will they be measured, reported on and verified in the case of action the countries take on their own or in the case of actions that countries take with international support?” Mr de Boer said.

“Do we need to enhance the reporting obligations of all countries? In other words, a lot of things on reporting and on transparency and on being sure that whatever is committed to is actually achieved.”

The European Union has now joined the United States in criticising a draft agreement by the UN that says that developing nations will only reduce their emissions if they receive financial help.

Dessima Williams speaks for the 43-member association of small island states.

“We want a legally binding agreement that retains the obligations of the Kyoto Protocol and the convention but escalates the expectation and the voluntary commitment of the developing countries,” Ms Williams said.

She says her association agrees with that, but the developed world and rich countries will not agree to that.

“A way has to be found to come to an agreement that is both politically and legally acceptable to all. That’s why we have the few days ahead – that’s a tough one,” she said.

Separate agreements?

It is so tough that many are now suggesting that there should be two separate agreements reached in Copenhagen.

The developed world wants a completely new treaty which would bring China and the US into the fold. Neither country is currently a member of the Kyoto Protocol.

They reject the Kyoto agreement precisely because it does not impose emissions reduction targets on all countries.

There was also a vital escape clause in Kyoto, especially for Australia.

It allows Australia to omit its greenhouse gas emissions from land use in the overall calculations of carbon emissions.

Despite Australia’s official carbon emissions readings, figures revealed today showed that the country actually emitted 82 per cent more in 2007 than it did in 1990; the result of including land use emissions in the sums.

Sean Cadman, a forest and climate consultant for the Wilderness Society, is among a group of environmentalists outraged that Australia is trying to have land use removed from the new agreement, but wants to be allowed to use the emissions saved from good practices on the land to be offset against Australia’s fossil fuel emissions.

“Australia has been seriously under-reporting its emissions from that sector since they started,” Mr Cadman said.

“They use extraordinarily poor quality data inputs which in our view and our analysis of the real data – because we’ve now got real data – is what has been being reported as a sink.

“In other words, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is probably in fact an emission.

“So we haven’t been accounting properly for the fact that we’ve been turning old growth forests into regrowth, that we’ve been clearing forests for plantations, all of those things.

“Now what’s on the table here for the first time is to see that countries have to report properly for those emissions.”

More than 110 heads of state are due to arrive on Wednesday for an intense 48 hours of final negotiations.

Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges

Preparing for the climate change summit that will produce as much carbon dioxide as a town the size of Middlesbrough.

by Andrew Gilligan

On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen’s biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the “summit to save the world”, which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.

“We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention,” she says. “But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report.”

Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. “We haven’t got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand,” she says. “We’re having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden.”

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? “Five,” says Ms Jorgensen. “The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don’t have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it’s very Danish.”

The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.

As well 15,000 delegates and officials, 5,000 journalists and 98 world leaders, the Danish capital will be blessed by the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio, Daryl Hannah, Helena Christensen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prince Charles. A Republican US senator, Jim Inhofe, is jetting in at the head of an anti-climate-change “Truth Squad.” The top hotels – all fully booked at £650 a night – are readying their Climate Convention menus of (no doubt sustainable) scallops, foie gras and sculpted caviar wedges.

At the takeaway pizza end of the spectrum, Copenhagen’s clean pavements are starting to fill with slightly less well-scrubbed protesters from all over Europe. In the city’s famous anarchist commune of Christiania this morning, among the hash dealers and heavily-graffitied walls, they started their two-week “Climate Bottom Meeting,” complete with a “storytelling yurt” and a “funeral of the day” for various corrupt, “heatist” concepts such as “economic growth”.

The Danish government is cunningly spending a million kroner (£120,000) to give the protesters KlimaForum, a “parallel conference” in the magnificent DGI-byen sports centre. The hope, officials admit, is that they will work off their youthful energies on the climbing wall, state-of-the-art swimming pools and bowling alley, Just in case, however, Denmark has taken delivery of its first-ever water-cannon – one of the newspapers is running a competition to suggest names for it – plus sweeping new police powers. The authorities have been proudly showing us their new temporary prison, 360 cages in a disused brewery, housing 4,000 detainees.

And this being Scandinavia, even the prostitutes are doing their bit for the planet. Outraged by a council postcard urging delegates to “be sustainable, don’t buy sex,” the local sex workers’ union – they have unions here – has announced that all its 1,400 members will give free intercourse to anyone with a climate conference delegate’s pass. The term “carbon dating” just took on an entirely new meaning.

At least the sex will be C02-neutral. According to the organisers, the eleven-day conference, including the participants’ travel, will create a total of 41,000 tonnes of “carbon dioxide equivalent”, equal to the amount produced over the same period by a city the size of Middlesbrough.

The temptation, then, is to dismiss the whole thing as a ridiculous circus. Many of the participants do not really need to be here. And far from “saving the world,” the world’s leaders have already agreed that this conference will not produce any kind of binding deal, merely an interim statement of intent.

Instead of swift and modest reductions in carbon – say, two per cent a year, starting next year – for which they could possibly be held accountable, the politicians will bandy around grandiose targets of 80-per-cent-plus by 2050, by which time few of the leaders at Copenhagen will even be alive, let alone still in office.

Even if they had agreed anything binding, past experience suggests that the participants would not, in fact, feel bound by it. Most countries – Britain excepted – are on course to break the modest pledges they made at the last major climate summit, in Kyoto.

And as the delegates meet, they do so under a shadow. For the first time, not just the methods but the entire purpose of the climate change agenda is being questioned. Leaked emails showing key scientists conspiring to fix data that undermined their case have boosted the sceptic lobby. Australia has voted down climate change laws. Last week’s unusually strident attack by the Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, on climate change “saboteurs” reflected real fear in government that momentum is slipping away from the cause.

In Copenhagen there was a humbler note among some delegates. “If we fail, one reason could be our overconfidence,” said Simron Jit Singh, of the Institute of Social Ecology. “Because we are here, talking in a group of people who probably agree with each other, we can be blinded to the challenges of the other side. We feel that we are the good guys, the selfless saviours, and they are the bad guys.”

As Mr Singh suggests, the interesting question is perhaps not whether the climate changers have got the science right – they probably have – but whether they have got the pitch right. Some campaigners’ apocalyptic predictions and religious righteousness – funeral ceremonies for economic growth and the like – can be alienating, and may help explain why the wider public does not seem to share the urgency felt by those in Copenhagen this week.

In a rather perceptive recent comment, Mr Miliband said it was vital to give people a positive vision of a low-carbon future. “If Martin Luther King had come along and said ‘I have a nightmare,’ people would not have followed him,” he said.

Over the next two weeks, that positive vision may come not from the overheated rhetoric in the conference centre, but from Copenhagen itself. Limos apart, it is a city filled entirely with bicycles, stuffed with retrofitted, energy-efficient old buildings, and seems to embody the civilised pleasures of low-carbon living without any of the puritanism so beloved of British greens.

And inside the hall, not everything is looking bad. Even the sudden rush for limos may be a good sign. It means that more top people are coming, which means they scent something could be going right here.

The US, which rejected Kyoto, is on board now, albeit too tentatively for most delegates. President Obama’s decision to stay later in Copenhagen may signal some sort of agreement between America and China: a necessity for any real global action, and something that could be presented as a “victory” for the talks.

The hot air this week will be massive, the whole proceedings eminently mockable, but it would be far too early to write off this conference as a failure.

Global Research Articles by Andrew Gilligan