Sky News on our (absurdly hopeful) 2° Future

Just in time for the talks in Paris* and as the last hopes of our keeping temperature-increase under 2 degrees Celsius evaporate, here's a nice video from Sky News illustrating what, at this point, our most optimistic future might look like due to our greedy shortsighted stupidity.

This video, released in the last 24 hours or so, on our 2° future was accompanied by scarier videos illustrating 3° & 4° respectively.  For some reason, Sky has since chosen to set the accompanying videos to 'Private' status on YouTube.

To be generous to Sky, maybe these videos were just released prematurely by accident, and will be re-released shortly.  Maybe.**

The remaining video is instructive.****  But we're missing the progression that the video-makers clearly intended with just the one.  Also, each video ended with an encouragement to share said content via social media.  Kinda hard to do that Sky when you disappear the videos with no warning, and no explanation.



* Which due to our ever currently convenient obsession with 'The War on Terror'*** are to occur under a 'State of Emergency' with protests conveniently banned.

** That, or representatives of Murdoch's buddies in the fossil-fuel-industries got wind of what one of his media-outlets was putting out, and convinced Sky of the benefits of a little self-censorship ?

*** Many of the roots of which can be directly tied back to our dependence upon fossil-fuels, and support of the backwards regimes who control much of the supply thereof.

**** Myself, I think there's an argument that some of the millennials and younger may have an excuse (living under Western corporate media & the likes of GOP-compromised educational systems) for not understanding just how dire the threat is.  But, really, if you're over thirty or so and need any further convincing, then at this point I can't put it down to any better than, at most generous, wilful ignorance.


Update: This vid. on 5° change may be a replacement for the other two videos I mentioned.

Because We Need to Laugh at ISIS

Organisers of an art exhibition celebrating freedom of expression have found themselves removing one of the exhibits after police raised concerns it was "inflammatory" and warned it would cost an extra £36,000 to secure the event.

The artwork in question was a series of tableaux entitled 'Isis Threaten Sylvania' that used children's Sylvanian Families dolls to satirise the Isis terrorist group.

In the work Sylvanian Families dolls are seen enjoying a picnic or a day on the beach, while other black-clad dolls, some of them armed, one carrying a black flag, gather on the sidelines.

In each piece an otherwise tranquil scene appears set to turn violent.

This needs a GoFundMe ASAP.  How can the world continue to be denied such brilliance over £36,000 security-costs ?  Satire is power peeps.

Some more background on the artist & her intent from the Guardian:

Mimsy said she had adopted a pseudonym because, as the daughter of a Syrian father whose Jewish family had to go into exile in Lebanon when he was a child, she was acutely aware of the potential risk of speaking out.

“I love my freedom,” she said. “I’m aware of the very real threat to that freedom from Islamic fascism and I’m not going to pander to them or justify it like many people on the left are doing.”

She added that the idea of using Sylvanian Families “just popped into my head” as a way of demonstrating that fanaticism was not a question of race. Though the jihadis in the work are called “MICE-IS”, some are clearly cats or koalas and others have rabbits’ ears popping out of their masks. “I’m sick and tired of people calling criticism of fanatical Islam racist, because racism is about your skin colour and radical Islam is nothing to do with that. There are millions of Muslims who are shocked by it too,” said Mimsy.

She added that she had made the tableaux between December 2014 and May 2015 and had looked on in horror as, one by one, her imagined scenarios came true. In one scene, jihadis lurk outside a schoolroom, while a class of girls sit at their desks; in another, gunmen bristle on the horizon as holidaymakers sunbathe on a beach. “It was creepy, because each time I imagined a scene it happened in reality. I made the beach scene before the Tunisian massacre and the schoolroom scene before Boko Haram abducted the schoolgirls in Nigeria,” she said.

We need this.

Cartoonist Ted Rall's Firing from the LA Times: How You Can Help (Even if you don't personally like Ted Rall)

Links to petitions & letters to the LAT, links to encourage various media-outlets to cover the story, or to just buy Ted's books or donate directly here.

Update: So apparently, Ted is reviewing his legal options, but perhaps more importantly whether he can afford the costs of what could be a difficult legal battle.  So if you'd be willing to support him with that, you could let him know so in the comments here.