Dept. Of N-CHEAT*: Rich Countries Hijack Global Enviro-Crisis Conference

*N-CHEAT: "Nobody Could Have Ever Anticipated That." Chris Floyd declaims on the approaching global "Boiling Point": how the US, Britain, and other 'developed countries are planning to impose their will on the matter of what's acceptible to combat global chimate change on the Copenhagen Climate Conference next week, when the Obamanable Snow-job Man, and Gordon Brown storm into the international klieg lights to close the summit. This sounds familiar, nest, paw?:

The Copenhagen talks have become captive of what we might call the "Reform Syndrome"; i.e., the absolute, urgent imperative to put together a crappy deal that gorges the rich and hobbles the poor in egregious ways -- but which can be palmed off on a compliant media and a diverted public as some kind of "reform." The important thing is that an illusion of positive action be created -- while the same-old same-old keeps grinding on behind the scenes.

This scenario has been playing out in the most crude and brazen fashion during the "debate" over health care "reform" in the United States, which has seen a "progressive" administration literally sell its "reform" agenda to the very corporate interests that are the ostensible target of the reforms, allowing them, again literally, to write most of the "reform" legislation themselves.

And this has been the modus operandi of most of the international climate change efforts, which have seen no appreciable reduction in the pollution that is driving the destabilization of the planet -- but has seen the creation of vast new "carbon trading" markets an other speculative ventures for the rich and powerful to feast upon.

Floyd has a disconcerting way of connecting dots in patterns that do not earn him much esteem in the way of fans of the status quo. To round out this argument, he links the global Rulers' indifference to resolving climate change with a similar indifference to the suffering of Palestinians under the Israeli thumb in Gaza, and the escalation of the war in AfPak-ville, and concludes:

Yes, who could possibly have foreseen that the avatars of such a system would seek to exploit the growing anxiety over climate change to augment their own dominance? Whatever happens to the planet -- or to the Iraqis, or to the Afghans, or to the millions of people going down in the flood of financial flim-flam and health care "reform" scams -- the elites will remain as they are now: well-wadded, well-protected, and well-connected in their fortified enclaves of privilege and power.

To paraphrase John Ging: We are running out of words to describe how bad it is around here.

At the risk of redundancy, Floyd (and a soul-mate, Arthur Silber) keep the words coming, however. And good on 'em. Cuz words are the only universal solvent...