"5 barfies" award!!
....
Posted on 02/22/2007 3:51:32 AM PST by mkleesma
Eco-pilgrims gather to 'heed the Goracle' Hundreds pack U of T hall in show of devotion to climate cause.
They came in their hundreds to hear him speak, and even those left standing outside the crowded hall would not be deterred from lingering in the proximity of the Baptist prophet from Tennessee.
It wasn't any old-time religion that drew these believers to Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto, but a concept they feel is every bit as crucial to humanity -- global warming -- that made them want to get close to Al Gore, the impassioned former U.S. vice-president, as he delivered his now famous Inconvenient Truth about climate change.
Like many a bygone leader who happened along at a key moment in history, Mr. Gore -- who has been sounding the environmental warning bell for years -- has suddenly inspired the kind of faith and fervour in others that he insists will be needed to overcome such a monumental problem.
"From my perspective, it is a form of religion," said Bruce Crofts, 69, as he held a banner aloft for the East Toronto Climate Action Group amid a lively prelecture crowd outside the old hall.
"The religion for this group is doing something for the environment."
While he no longer espouses traditional religion, Mr. Crofts recalled how, as a Sunday school teacher decades ago, he included Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and Robert Kennedy as well as Jesus Christ in his lessons, as examples of great leaders who stepped forward when called upon by circumstance. In that sense, he feels Mr. Gore fits the bill.
"We don't have seats tonight, but we just felt it was important to show some support for this guy," Mr. Crofts said. "He's flown in the face of the Bush administration and a lot of negative politics in the U.S. in order to do this stuff."
"The religion for this group is doing something for the environment."
While he no longer espouses traditional religion, Mr. Crofts recalled how, as a Sunday school teacher decades ago, he included Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and Robert Kennedy as well as Jesus Christ in his lessons, as examples of great leaders who stepped forward when called upon by circumstance. In that sense, he feels Mr. Gore fits the bill.
"We don't have seats tonight, but we just felt it was important to show some support for this guy," Mr. Crofts said. "He's flown in the face of the Bush administration and a lot of negative politics in the U.S. in order to do this stuff."
Mr. Gore's Toronto appearance was undoubtedly the hottest ticket in town, judging by the many adherents milling about outside, hoping to score tickets, few of whom succeeded.
With just 1,500 seats, 500 of which had been reserved for invited guests, the hall sold out in just three minutes when tickets went on sale for $20 each on Feb. 7.
The university's website for ticket sales crashed under the weight of 23,000 people vying for the prized seats. In the intervening days, some of the lucky few took full advantage of the chance to profit from the demand, asking for up to $200 for a single ticket on various Internet sites.
Victor Storm, who owns a chain of Toronto-area bedding outlets, went online Feb. 7 and offered a $40 duvet in exchange for a ticket. He wound up surrendering a $150 duvet instead, after a fair bit of questioning over thread counts.
"Because it was so cold, it was something people warmed up to," Mr. Storm said yesterday.
Last night, before Mr. Gore gave his slideshow, it looked more like a sideshow outside, as hopefuls looked for tickets, scalpers told reporters they were not scalpers, and bona fide ticket holders ran a gauntlet of activists handing out leaflets for various causes.
There were vegans seeking new recruits, people calling for the closing of Ontario's coal-fired power plants, a Greenpeace mascot dressed as a polar bear -- even the UFO believers showed up.
"I know you won't believe this," one of them, a man named Victor Viggiani, said with a practised tongue, "but the extraterrestrial technology involved in this . . . it's free energy, man. Absolute free energy, and it'll be the end of fossil fuels."
Mr. Viggiani, a retired school principal, tried to get an information package to Mr. Gore when he arrived at a side door, but "the Secret Service were there; they saw my backpack and they pushed me away."
Across the driveway in front of the hall, a large banner exhorted the crowd to "Heed the Goracle." Belonging to a fledgling group called ecoSanity, it was still there hours later, as Mr. Gore enjoyed a reception at the adjacent Simcoe Hall and the dispersing crowd voiced its praise.
"He's the prime minister we need in Canada," said Reid MacWilliam, who has been re-examining his entire life to make it more environmentally responsible.
Many attendees said that the speech closely mimicked the documentary An Inconvenient Truth, but they seemed pleased to listen to it again.
"You can't hear that message enough," said Shawn Omstead, attending with his daughter Meredith. "When we watched the movie, the next day we went and replaced all the light bulbs in the house . . . you see the movie and it sticks with you for a bit and then it fades."
"It was not our intention to have a religious approach," ecoSanity group founder Glenn MacIntosh said, "but it was our understanding that it was that kind of movement that people were craving; that kind of spiritual connection in their gut."
With a track record for concern about climate change that extends back to when relatively few were interested, Mr. Gore was "the right person at the right time" when he parlayed his high profile into a successful and sobering documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, last year, Mr. MacIntosh said.
People responded because "they know this is happening, they know it's not good and that it has to stop," he said. "And, at last, the media and the world are beginning to pay attention."
It *is* a religion, for these people.
....
Mr. Viggiani, a retired school principal, tried to get an information package to Mr. Gore when he arrived at a side door, but "the Secret Service were there; they saw my backpack and they pushed me away."
I'm glad I didn't go to his school.
Of course it is. Al Gore has been a member of the "new age" Mother Earth (Gaia) church for the past 30 years, since it's founding. In fact Al Gore helped carry the "ark" of it's covenant during it's founding ceremony. Al Gore can most certainly be considered one of the "high priests" in the church, along with the Rockerfellers, Maurice Strong, and many other Democrats and Republican politicians who belong to this mother earth cult and work to iplement it's agenda.
It seems like anyone can take a crap and draw flies.
Sheehan , Gore, Bubba Clinton. Just leave a smelly pile in the corner and it will attract the attention of a certain group of maggots.
I can only imagine what it smells like at such a gathering.
I don't think it will even take 40 years. I say 20 or less.
If the sea hasn't risen 5 feet or so in the next ten years, maybe some of these Earth worshippers will begin to realize that it's all a hoax. Then again, they might think they actually stopped global warming. Some global warming "scientists" are already saying that the damage is already done, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. The Ice caps will melt, even though it may take a few THOUSAND years. (That's a pretty safe prediction, considering the fossil evidence under them which shows the arctic and south pole were once a lush, tropical place)
Tinfoil hat man eh?
You may be right but it wil take a century to undo the economic disaster they (environmentalists) will leave behind as a result of their economic policies. 40 yrs from now Gore,Strong and all will have long departed. And no one will be held accountable. Sadly we have short-term memories. If it requires the destruction of our economies to achieve their goals so be it. Redistribution of wealth is what they seek nothing more.
Gore is the Pope of Global Warming. Unfortunately, he couldn't pass a freshman Geology course at any reputable University.
If algore and the all the other global warming freeks would stop running all over the world blowing hot air and burning jet fuel, how much carbon would that save?
(He still has secret service??)
"From my perspective, it is a form of religion," said Bruce Crofts, 69, as he held a banner aloft for the East Toronto Climate Action Group
Absolutely, it's a religion. Faith in and worship of "Mother Earth" is at the expense of human life.
Yup.
My question: which smells worse, this or the crowd at a Phish concert?
I've got an idea. Let's crucify Al to death, bury him, and see if he's up and about after a few days.
I don't know. I guess the Phishheads probably don't hallucinate as much.
Heed the Goracle. Simply astounding. I'm still trying to find my lower jaw.
One of them finally says it out loud.
Goracle is laughing all the way to the bank. P.T. Barnum says "Atta boy, Al".
Well, at least they're finally admitting it. From Michael Crichton:
I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people---the best people, the most enlightened people---do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.
Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.
There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.
Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.
And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.
Am I exaggerating to make a point? I am afraid not. Because we know a lot more about the world than we did forty or fifty years ago. And what we know now is not so supportive of certain core environmental myths, yet the myths do not die. Let's examine some of those beliefs...
Ecosheeple.
Al Gore as a modern Elmer Gantry? Or Jimmy Swaggert?
Here's an improved banner for these nutjobs:
"Heed the BORacle!"
Albore is a joke, and the fact that a "university" lends itself to this campaign of irrationalism is simply pathetic.
Think so?
The New World Religion
Presented to the world as a mystical revelation, the UN Earth Charter is actually a diabolical blueprint for global government.
“My hope is that this charter will be a kind of Ten Commandments, a "Sermon on the Mount," that provides a guide for human behavior toward the environment in the next century and beyond.”
Mikhail Gorbachev
Millions of Americans were justifiably shocked and outraged over the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ notorious ruling on the Pledge of Allegiance. "Can our courts really have sunk this low?" people asked. "How can little Johnny and Suzie violate the Constitution by uttering the words “under God” while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in a public school?"
Yet that is what the Court said in its June 26th decision. This ruling was a continuation of an ongoing subversive campaign aimed at expunging all mention of God and all Christian symbols from the public sphere. Judicial activists have ordered our students not to invoke the Almighty's name in prayer on school property. Posting the Ten Commandments on classroom walls is also supposedly a major no-no. Traditional Christmas carols with religious themes are out, as are Nativity scenes. Christmas and Easter vacations have been de-Christianized to, respectively, winter and spring breaks. Many textbooks have dropped the traditional "Christocentric" dating system of B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (Anno Domini, In the Year of Our Lord) in favor of B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era).
Many Christians concerned about this trend are looking hopefully to the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the 9th Circuit’s ruling, as it has done with some of that court’s previous radical rulings.
Even if that were to happen, developments at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (also known as Earth Summit II) could ultimately undo any Supreme Court reversal. If the Earth Summiteers have their way, Johnny and Suzie will not be able to pledge allegiance to "one nation, under God," but they will be able to pledge to "One World, under Gaia" that is, Mother Earth. They will not be allowed to have the Ten Commandments or the Holy Bible in class, but could soon be bowing before the pagan "Ark of Hope," reading the "sacred" Temenos Books, and reverently intoning the text of the new UN Earth Charter.
Those decrying the 9th Circuit Court’s harmful decisions will take little comfort in learning that senior 9th Circuit Court Judge J. Clifford Wallace was among the jurists attending the Johannesburg Summit’s Global Judges Symposium. That meeting was hosted by several globalist institutions with a pronounced hostility toward the United States. The participants, which included judges from Communist regimes, pledged to "apply new legal instruments in keeping with the principles of sustainable development," and the international "Rule of Law."
One of the documents designed to advance this process, the long-awaited Earth Charter, was formally unveiled to the world at Johannesburg. Crafted by a conclave of "Wise Persons" headed by former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev, it is set to become the Holy Writ of the UN’s new "global spirituality." Although the Earth Charter is not a legally binding document, its impact may prove damaging and pervasive. Its benign-sounding verbiage and symbolic nature camouflage its dangerous purpose. The Charter is intended to become a universally adopted creed that will psychologically prepare the world’s children to accept the necessity of world government to save the environment. It is also an outrageous attempt to indoctrinate your children in the UN’s New Age paganism.
The Preamble of the Earth Charter states:
“We are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature.... Towards this end, it is imperative that we, the peoples of Earth, declare our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations”.
According to the Charter, humanity must undergo a global "change of mind and heart." And the UN’s all-wise seers visualize themselves as the lead change agents for this global undertaking. The Earth Charter Initiative, however, candidly admits that it intends to recruit your children as change agents, as well.
"We seek to increase the participation of young people in utilizing the Earth Charter as a guideline in their work as active agents of change,"
says the Earth Charter Initiative website. They have been doing precisely that, and will be accelerating their program throughout the world, including schools in your neighborhood. The U.S. Conference of Mayors is but one of hundreds of organizations, schools, municipalities, and other entities that have signed on as supporters of this declaration of a new "global ethic" for the world.
Blasphemous Symbols
Weeks before the start of Earth Summit II, the Earth Charter arrived in Johannesburg for a series of rituals, celebrations, and promotions aimed at setting the spiritual tone for the global conference. The venerated Charter is housed and transported in the Ark of Hope, a blasphemous mimicry of the biblical Ark of the Covenant, which held the two tablets containing the Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses. The Ark of Hope is actually designed to look like the Ark of the Covenant and its devotees carry it around with worshipful solemnity. Accompanying the Charter and the Ark are the Temenos Books, containing aboriginal Earth Masks and "visual prayers/affirmations for global healing, peace, and gratitude," created by 3,000 artists, teachers, students, and mystics. According to the Temenos Project, which launched the effort, a Temenos is "a magical sacred circle where special rules apply and extraordinary events inevitably occur."
The Ark, Charter, and Temenos Books were placed on display at the UN summit site and then put to work building the new global ethic. Day after day, UN acolytes carried the sacred objects from school to school, where tens of thousands of children already had been prepped with Earth Charter propaganda. Public ceremonies with mayors and celebrities augmented the school events.
The summit’s opening day featured a four-hour symposium entitled, "Educating for Sustainable Living with the Earth Charter." Steven Rockefeller, a religion professor and scion of the fabulously wealthy banking family that donated the land for the UN headquarters in New York, was preeminent among the presenters. Professor Rockefeller is also chairman of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Earth Charter International Drafting Committee. According to Rockefeller, the way to go about "building peace on earth" is through the "inclusive, integrated and spiritual approach" of the Earth Charter.
Covering the summit for USA Radio, Cathie Adams told The New American that Rockefeller described the Charter as an effort to incorporate the "wisdom of the world’s religions." Razeena Wagiet, environmental adviser to South Africa’s national minister of education, was one of the presenters who followed Rockefeller to the podium. According to Wagiet, astrologers have foreseen that the world is about to enter a "Golden Age, a New Age, an Age of Aquarius."
Earth Charter Integration
Outlining how the Earth Charter is to be integrated into lifelong education for all, Hans van Ginkel, chairman of the International Association of Universities, told the symposium: "We must mobilize all in education about sustainability; that’s how we meet the next generation." Sixteen million teachers must be trained, he noted, and "the only way to move forward is by integrating the Earth Charter into curriculum."
The Rockefeller-Gorbachev Earth Charter effort is already fast at work on that score. Their website declares:
The Earth Charter values and principles must be taught, contemplated, applied and internalized. To this end, the Earth Charter needs to be incorporated into both formal and non-formal education. This process must involve various communities, continue to integrate the Charter into the curriculum of schools and universities, and constitute an ongoing process of life-long learning.
According to the same website, the Earth Council, UNESCO, and the Earth Charter Initiative folks already have many of the curriculum materials and programs prepared; in fact, they’re already up and running in schools across the globe. Some American schools got an advance start on the rest of humanity with Charter activities, coinciding with the journey last year of the Ark and its contents to the UN in New York. The pilgrimage began in Vermont, where Steven Rockefeller, in his role as dean of religion at Middlebury College, held a sacred Earth ceremony. Joining him and the other worshipers was Jane Goodall, the celebrity chimpanzee lover who has become a fixture at forums sponsored by Mikhail Gorbachev and the UN. The Charter was carried on foot, by car, and by boat, arriving in New York City on November 8th, to be greeted by Pete Seeger, the leftist folksinger. On January 24th, the Ark and Charter were carried in a procession from the Interfaith Center of New York to the United Nations Church Center Chapel, a distance of about 15 blocks.
The Charter’s authors are not shy about the importance of their handiwork. "My hope is that this charter will be a kind of Ten Commandments, a “Sermon on the Mount,” that provides a guide for human behavior toward the environment in the next century and beyond," Gorbachev stated in a 1997 interview with the Los Angeles Times.
Canadian billionaire socialist Maurice Strong, who presided over the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, is somewhat less tentative. "The real goal of the Earth Charter," said Strong, "is that it will in fact become like the Ten Commandments." (Emphasis added.) Mr. Strong had high hopes that the Charter, conceived in 1987, would be adopted by the world at Rio. Alas, there were too many other messianic projects on Gaia’s burners at that confab. Gaia, the Greek goddess of Earth, has become the supreme deity in the green theology of the militant environmentalists.
In his opening address to the Rio summit, Strong directed the world’s attention to the "Declaration of the Sacred Earth," which was part of the pre-Summit ceremonies. "The changes in behavior and direction called for here," said Strong, "must be rooted in our deepest spiritual, moral, and ethical values." According to the declaration, "The [ecological] crisis transcends all national, religious, cultural, social, political and economic boundaries." "The responsibility of each human being today is to choose between the force of darkness and the force of light," Strong exhorted.[suggesting we should choose his darkness] "We must therefore transform our attitudes and values, and adopt a renewed respect for the superior laws of Divine Nature."
The "Sacred" Text
"The protection of Earth’s vitality, diversity, and beauty is a sacred trust," the Earth Charter asserts. However, "an unprecedented rise in human population has overburdened ecological and social systems. The foundations of global security are threatened." Thus, "we urgently need a shared vision of basic values to provide an ethical foundation for the emerging world community."
According to the Charter, we must:
"Recognize that all beings are interdependent and every form of life has value...." (Unborn children, of course, are not included in the UN’s definition of "every form of life." The Earth Summit II documents continue to support the UN’s pro-abortion policies.)
"Affirm faith in the inherent dignity of all human beings." (UN agencies, however, support policies of euthanasia for those determined not capable of living a "quality" life.)
"Adopt at all levels sustainable development plans and regulations...." (This is a prescription for global socialism in a super-regulated global state.)
"Prevent pollution of any part of the environment...." (Enforcing this dictum would mean stopping virtually all human activity.)
"Internalize the full environmental and social costs of goods and services in the selling price." (This seemingly harmless sentence would empower the state to price, tax, and regulate all production and consumption.)
"Ensure universal access to health care that fosters reproductive health and responsible reproduction’’. (This is a thinly disguised call for socialized medicine that includes abortion and population control.)
"Eliminate discrimination in all its forms, such as that based on race [and] sexual orientation." (This provision is clearly aimed at criminalizing those who refuse to accept homosexuality as positive and good.)
"Promote the equitable distribution of wealth within nations and among nations’. (Few Marxist documents have put their "redistribution of wealth" program more plainly.)
The Charter includes much, much more. It ends with this stirring exhortation: "In order to build a sustainable global community, the nations of the world must renew their commitment to the United Nations, fulfill their obligations under existing international agreements, and support the implementation of Earth Charter principles with an international legally binding instrument on environment and development."
The Charter will soon be making its way to schools, city governments, state legislatures, teachers’ organizations, civic groups, professional associations, judges, and law schools. The aforementioned Global Judges Symposium concluded its summit activities by issuing the so-called Johannesburg Principles on the Rule of Law and Sustainable Development. "We recognize," it states, "the importance of ensuring that environmental law and law in the field of sustainable development feature prominently in academic curricula, legal studies and training at all levels, in particular among judges and others engaged in the judicial process."
The judicial symposium was sponsored by the United Nations Environmental Program (largely supported by U.S. tax dollars) and the Environmental Law Institute, one of the principal eco-activist legal groups supported by U.S. tax-exempt foundations.
For the amount of time, effort, and money invested in the Earth Charter program over the past decade, its profile at the recent Johannesburg Earth Summit was remarkably subdued. Apparently, the plan is to orchestrate a global stealth campaign for the Charter among a sympathetic core constituency. As the campaign picks up steam, activists will obtain signatures and public support for this new global ethic from local, state, and national governments, schools, and organizations, without stirring the suspicions and opposition of churches, pro-life, and pro-family forces.
Once a critical mass of support has been built among students, teachers, journalists, and public officials, the Charter will appear to be universally accepted and unstoppable.
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Irony seems to follow albore around, doesnt it?
Almost forgot...
PING!
Well said.
Behold the Prophet St Algore and his attendant maggots.
Isn't this Gaia religon supposedly connected to Satanic cults???
Mikhel Gorbachev has returned to being a Soviet again, and now backs Putin and his KGB cronies. Gorbachev also said that the collapse of the USSR was a mistake.
I also forgot to mention that the Earth Cult is connected to Satanic worshippers (so is Islam).
That's because the Algore/Dingaling Circus was in town!
...as hopefuls looked for tickets, scalpers told reporters they were not scalpers, and bona fide ticket holders ran a gauntlet of activists handing out leaflets for various causes.
There were vegans seeking new recruits, people calling for the closing of Ontario's coal-fired power plants, a Greenpeace mascot dressed as a polar bear -- even the UFO believers showed up.
Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Get your tickets today for Great Algore and his Traveling Freak Show, coming to a college campus near you!
See the vegans, see the human polar bear, see the man from another planet! See and listen as the Great Algore hypnotizes thousands and put them into a deep sleep with just the sound of his voice!
"Because it was socold, it was something people warmed up to..."
Funniest quote in the entire article! I wonder if he actually realized what he said....
Speaking of religion, I believe God has a very good sense of humor. It seems that anywhere "The Great Algore" shows up to do a speech about "global warming", it happens on one of the coldest days of the year. (Maybe if we send him to the North Pole to speak to a gathering of polar bears, the ice cap will re-freeze...)
What a jerk!
Here is his My Space page.....Victor Storm
Canada ping.
Please send me a FReepmail to get on or off this Canada ping list.
Bingo. For whatever reason, the market for that they were selling is shrinking.
Follow the money.
That would definitely NOT be a fair trade.
How about we trade Stephan Dion for Algore.
We could teach Gore French, and you could teach Dion English.
;-)
"The religion for this group is doing something for the environment."
Admission that this is a religious thing for them.
Interesting.
Is it supposed to be the thought that counts?
Gee, CINYC, that's a mean thought!
I bet the guy doesn't realize he agrees with Rush Limbaugh.
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