Where were you on February 15, 2003? If you were a part of the biggest global demonstration in history against war, which took place that day, I’m sure you remember well.

I was in the streets of Castellon, a small town on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, where I was studying for a master’s in Peace Studies, with some 20,000 other Spaniards protesting the impending war against Iraq. It was really very moving to be a part of such a large gathering.

Now a team is working on a full-length documentary, called “We Are Many,” about that historic day. Although it’s not set to come out until late 2011 or early 2012, they have already completed a very nice trailer for the movie (above).

While I’m all for commemorating that important event, I also think it’s worth looking at critically. Yes, millions of people around the world came out to protest a war that had not even begun yet. Nothing like that has ever happened before. As Noam Chomsky has said, it took years for any comparable protest to develop during the Vietnam War. And there is hope in that.

Nevertheless, it didn’t stop the invasion of Iraq. Bush brushed off the demonstrations with ease. To let the protesters influence his decision to attack Iraq, he quipped, would be like saying “I’m going to decide policy based upon a focus group.”

And unfortunately, when the war began a little more than a month later, many who took part in that global day of protest felt deflated. Afterwards, it took months to build the momentum for action back up and it’s my sense that many people stopped demonstrating against the war for good. Perhaps they felt that it was of no use, since the massive protests before the invasion didn’t apparently bear fruit.

However, the hard truth is that we never should have expected one day of protest, no matter how big, to stop a war. That’s not how nonviolence works. If we actually wanted to stop the imminent attack on Iraq, we would have had to come back the next day, and every day after that, until the administration listened. Almost all nonviolent campaigns that have been successful against such a powerful, determined opponent required this type of sacrifice and perseverance from participants.

Protesters would also have needed to try other, more aggressive tactics – like civil disobedience or even a general strike – that more directly disrupt business as usual. If millions of people indefinitely refused to go to work, blocked roads around the country and filled the jails, then Bush may have perhaps faltered.

Rather than simply celebrate February 15, I would encourage the filmmakers to include some discussion along these lines, so that their very promising documentary can contribute to the building of a more effective movement in the future.

Last week, the Boston Globe had an interesting piece about how the research of Boston College sociology professor Lisa Dodson led to her new book, “The Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy.” As she was interviewing managers at stores that employed low-wage workers, she began hearing their discomfort with making enough to live well, while their workers were seriously struggling to make ends meet.

In response to this unjust situation, Dodson found that many managers participated in acts of what she calls “economic disobedience,” such as slipping “their workers extra money, food, or time needed to care for sick children,” in an effort to undermine the system. One story she tells is of Andrew, a manager at a large Midwest food business, who:

…said he put extra money in the paychecks of those earning a “poverty wage,” punched out their time cards at the usual quitting time when they had to leave early for a doctor’s appointment, and gave them food.

Andrew had decided that by supervising workers who were treated unfairly – paid too little and subjected to inflexible schedules that prevented them from taking care of their families – he was playing a direct role in the unfair system, and so he was morally obligated to act.

Not surprisingly, her book has sparked controversy for portraying such acts in a positive light. Some argue that she is essentially glorifying stealing from companies, rather than working through legal channels to try to rectify the situation.

I personally would tend to agree with Dodson, that these acts are moral. Corporations are not designed to care for the well-being of their workers. Their primary focus by law is on the bottom line and the interests of their shareholders, which are generally at odds with what would be best for the workers. (If you haven’t seen it already, I highly recommend watching The Corporation. It’s a documentary that came out a few years back that explores these issues and many more.)

I’d be interested to hear what you think. Are these acts of “economic disobedience” something to be lauded or is this theft by another name?

Thoughts from Dane County Jail

On entering the Dane County Jail, the first holding cell that Brian Terrell and I were placed in had only one other person. We previously saw this man outside the cell during our initial booking. He was a man with dark black skin and a full beard. I thought I heard one of the officers say he was from Gambia. When we entered the cell, the man was in mid-ritual in what appeared to be a Muslim’s midday prayer. A young white guard, who had the accent of a Midwesterner, looked disdainfully at the man and then somewhat positively at Brian and me. The guard said, “Just ignore that,” as if the man was insulting or threatening us by his peaceful act of prayer. To which I replied, “It’s fine with me.”

This experience was contrasted by the next encounter I had with another officer who made digital copies of my fingerprints and pictures. As this middle-aged man placed my hand on the machine, I made a remark that I was surprised that he did not already have my information handy. (This was the third time I was fingerprinted and pictured for this same charge.) He said, “Oh yeah? You arrested a lot? What are you in for?” I told him that I was arrested with a group who engaged in civil disobedience at Ft. McCoy. Getting the sense that this man may have previously been in the armed services, I explained that we were not against the men and women in the military personally, but that our goals were to enter the base to talk to the rank and file soldiers about ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to make certain the soldiers were aware of their right to refuse illegal and immoral orders.

Before I could get all of this out of my mouth, the officer piped in abruptly and surprisingly, “I understand folks like you. I was in Vietnam, and this is the same shit happening today.” I said, “Oh yeah? What did they have you doing over there?” He replied, “Killing people and breaking shit, and this is just the same.” He gazed at me with a fierce intensity and honesty. I was now a bit nervous, feeling that I had asked too much too quickly. After a moment I said, “I’m sorry sir. I’m sorry they had you do that.” I continued, “Well, from my perspective, I don’t want any more young men and women to have to do what you did, nor to put themselves in harm’s way for a war that has no goals or objectives…” He cut me off. I was planning to finish my sentence with something like “…no goals other than bringing more profits to corporations and expanding the U.S. empire.” But he continued in an angry tone, “There was no goal then and there is no goal now. It’s all pointless.” I nodded my head in agreement.

A few more words were exchanged between us about the families being torn apart in the U.S., Iraq and Afghanistan. The disgruntled Vietnam Veteran, now turned law-enforcement officer, concluded taking my fingerprints. He then told me his name and again repeated something to the tune of “I can respect people like you.” After the unexpected bond of our short conversation, the feeling was mutual. Ironically, this same man sent me along the way to serve my jail sentence for speaking out against the crimes being committed by our government and soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have now expanded to illegal drone strikes and extra-judicial killings in Pakistan and Yemen.

Until we build a culture that widely accepts that it is okay and necessary to resist war and injustice, I suppose that’s the way it will go. I don’t know when or if the day will come, but I look forward to the day of the “coming revolt of the guards” that our late brother Howard Zinn predicted; a day when veterans, soldiers, policemen and judges can stand together with civilians, workers and activists alike to put and end to any further senseless tragedies and atrocities.

Vredesactie (Peace Action), a “movement that radically acvocates a society in which conflicts are settled without violence or the threat to use violence,” posted this video on YouTube on Monday of a group of Bombspotters sneaking into the Kleine Brogel Air Base in Belgium, where they say around 20 NATO nuclear warheads are stored.

According to their website:

April 3rd will be a European Day of Action to ban nuclear weapons. Mass actions will take place at every European NATO nuclear weapons base in Germany, The Netherlands, France, Italy, Turkey, United Kingdom, and Belgium.

To learn more about the history of Bombspotting actions, which involve widespread “civil disobedience by trespassing and inspecting military bases and headquarters,” click here.

One of our good friends, Sr. Anne Montgomery told Kairos – a local peace group that I’m a part of in New York City – at our last meeting about this great satirical video that the Seattle Times made about the Disarm Now Plowshares action that she participated in, along with four others, at the Kitsap-Bangor Naval Base in Washington State.

For a brief recap of their action:

They entered the base in the early morning hours of November 2, 2009, All Souls Day, to call attention to the illegality and immorality of the existence of the first strike Trident weapons system.  They entered through the perimeter fence, and walked through the base for four hours.  During that time they made their way to the Strategic Weapons Facility – Pacific (SWFPAC) where they cut through the first chain link fence surrounding SWFPAC. They then walked to and cut the next double layered fence, both chain link and barbed wire, and entered the grounds of SWFPAC.  This bunker area holds the largest nuclear weapon stockpile in the United States.

As they walked they held a banner saying…… “Disarm Now Plowshares: Trident: Illegal and Immoral”.  The Plowshares activists knew that they were in a shoot to kill zone, but they also remembered the many people who live in shoot to kill zones all the time because of US occupation of their country.

The unarmed activists were then held on the ground face down, handcuffed and hooded for over three hours. They were carried out, still hooded, through the very holes in the fence that they had made, and questioned by FBI and NCIS for several hours.

Although they gave only their names, they were given Ban and Bar letters and citations for trespass and destruction of government property.

The last I’ve heard on the status of their case is that the misdemeanor charges were dropped, but the government is currently exploring whether it should file felony charges against the group. To learn more about their action, follow their case as it develops or show your support, visit their blog.

Yesterday, Dr. Carol Paris – a psychiatrist from Maryland who was part of the Baucus 8 – wrote a nice reflection on her experience protesting and getting arrested in front of the Harbor Hotel in Baltimore last Friday, where President Obama was scheduled to give a speech. While she held a banner that read, “Letting you know: Medicare for all,” with Dr. Margaret Flowers, and spoke with the police and Secret Service about why they were there, many thoughts were running through her head:

“How do I get myself into these things?”

“This is crazy.”

“This is pointless.”

“I can’t even make sensible statements; I know what I want to say but I’m so nervous.”

“Other people are so much more knowledgeable and speak so much more eloquently.”

“But I am doing it!”

These thoughts are no doubt familiar to anyone who has risked arrested for a cause they believe in. It’s indeed difficult to overcome the fear in such situations, and I appreciate her candor in discussing these feelings.

Read the rest of this article »

In memory of Howard Zinn, who died yesterday, I reread an address he gave at Johns Hopkins University in November 1970, titled, “The Problem is Civil Obedience,” and reprinted in Voices of a People’s History of the United States.

Zinn discussed his frustration with the so-called “problem of civil disobedience.”  That’s “topsy-turvy,” he said, just plain backwards, like a protester getting clubbed by the police and then getting arrested for assaulting a police officer.

Here’s Zinn:

Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. And our problem is that scene in All Quiet on the Western Front where the schoolboys march off dutifully in a line to war. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.

Facing injustice, we are oblivious if not complacent – a stance that stems from undue deference for the law, as if it were holy.  “There is nothing sacred about the law,” Zinn said.  “The law is not made by God, it is made by Strom Thurmond.”

In the absence of an intact corpse, families often gather for memorial services rather than funerals.

The families of Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani – three Guantánamo prisoners whose earlier purported suicides were declared “asymmetrical warfare” by the Bush Justice Administration – received Salah’s, Mani’s and Yasser’s broken and lifeless bodies. Previously the families had gathered to wake their loved ones, after authorities in their countries informed them that their sons had died in Guantánamo.

Following three grueling years of unanswered questions and heartache, Scott Horton’s recent article in Harper’s Magazine has revealed that the deaths of these three detainees may not, in fact, have been due to suicide, but to having been tortured to death in U.S. custody.

Compelled to act by this tragic news, fourteen members of the Witness Against Torture fast were arrested in the Capitol Rotunda on Thursday, January 21st for holding a memorial service in remembrance of the three men. The activists paid respect to the families of the dead in the very room where U.S. presidents are historically waked, adorning a makeshift burial shroud with handfuls of rose petals and filling the enormous Rotunda with story and song.

The Yemeni and two Saudis have stories much like many of the other men who were (and still are) indefinitely detained at Guantánamo; snatched and handed over to the United States for bounty money, 16-year-old Al-Zahrani spent the last five years of his short life in custody. Al-Utaybi, orphaned in his youth and described as “a peaceful person who would harm no one,” was intercepted after traveling to a conflict zone that straddles Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to do humanitarian work. The U.S. Justice Department has no evidence linking Al-Salami to Al Qaeda or the Taliban. Two of them had already been cleared for release by the U.S. government; it was determined that they could not be held any longer, and they were flagged, finally, for return to their home countries.

All three were on hunger strike to challenge their illegal detention.

Read the rest of this article »

After more than half a century of intransigent injustice, the Palestine/Israel “conflict”—or “disaster,” or whatever you want to call it—only seems to get worse. In the last few years, Israel has pummeled both Lebanon and the Gaza Strip with devastating impunity and, especially in the Strip, forcibly prevented its victims from making any kind of meaningful recovery. Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian activism in Israeli civil society is reportedly on the decline. But, in one of a series of events since returning from the partly-thwarted Gaza Freedom March, a group of activists spoke of their experiences on Thursday at Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, telling a packed room of more than 200 people, “We are here to celebrate an achievement.”

The Egyptian government didn’t let most of the over 1,300 protesters from around the world into Gaza for the planned march, but those at Judson said that they witnessed a new stage in the emergence of a global movement, facilitated by the Internet, that may well be poised to end the international support that makes Israel’s policies possible. The linchpin of the movement, the Cairo Declaration of the Gaza Freedom March, was drafted by would-be marchers while they waited in Egypt. It includes commitments to:

Palestinian Self-Determination

Ending the Occupation

Equal Rights for All within historic Palestine

The full Right of Return for Palestinian refugees

The Declaration also calls for comprehensive boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel and the interests that enable its occupation. Read the rest of this article »

Our good friend Kathy Kelly, who is also a contributor to this site, sent along a nice article a couple days ago – which ran on Common Dreams and several other sites – about the staggering human and financial cost of the many wars that the United States is currently engaged in. She also examines how our violence is only exacerbating the problems of terrorism and extremism, while the average Afghan continues to live in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. Kelly then explains the campaign that Voices for Creative Nonviolence has launched to address these concerns:

The U.S. Constitution states that Congress shall make no law to abridge the right of people to assemble peaceably for redress of grievance.  We are deeply aggrieved by the folly of these wars. Our right to free speech is irrelevant if we don’t exercise it, and so we intend to raise the lament of those who bear the brunt of our wars but whose voices seldom reach U.S. government figures.

For two weeks this January, leading up to the date when President Obama is due to submit his budget for Fiscal Year 2011 to Congress, Voices for Creative Nonviolence and friends will gather in Washington D.C. for a “Peaceable Assembly Campaign” project.  (www.peaceableassemblycampaign.org)

We’ll be meeting with elected representatives to raise questions about the folly and the crime of war, holding daily vigils at the White House, and engaging in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience to emphasize our refusal to cooperate with the war makers.

Please join us in this year-long campaign, whether in Washington D.C. this month, or participating locally where you live.   Visit the Voices website, www.vcnv.org, to learn more about ways to become involved, both locally through this coming summer and in the Days of Resistance in Washington.

We’ll be there from January 19th through February 2nd.

A pro-Kurdish demonstrator flashes a victory sign during a sit-in protest in central Istanbul on January 3. Hundreds of Kurdish women gathered in central Istanbul to protest against a ban on the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party.

• More than 100 demonstrators were detained Tuesday evening at a rally in downtown San Francisco held by hotel workers who have been without new contracts since August, police and rally organizers said. Unite Here Local 2 President Mike Casey estimated 1,300 demonstrators took part in yesterday’s action.

• More than 2,800 Chuquicamata and Mina Sur miners in Chile did not report to work on Monday to protest the wage and bonus package offered by Codelco, which is the world’s largest copper producer.

• In Manhattan yesterday, about 100 people protested the detention of Jean Montrevil, a Haitian who has had a green card since 1986 but, owing to a drug conviction for which he served time in the 1990s, has been subject to supervision and was detained by U.S. Immigration authorities on December 30. Ten protesters were arrested after failing to heed a police order to disperse as they blocked traffic.

• Angry farmers wearing broad-brimmed hats and cracking kangaroo-hide whips rallied outside Parliament in Canberra on Monday as one of their colleagues, sheep farmer Peter Spencer, entered his 43rd day on a hunger strike to demand compensation for Australian climate change policy.

• A two-day strike by Kenya’s matatu minibus taxis, which had stranded thousands of commuters, has been called off after government intervention. Matatu operators agreed to go back to work after the government promised to deal with their grievances.

• Virgin Trains booking office staff have gone on a 24-hour strike on one of Britain’s busiest rail lines, in protest of the company’s planned cutbacks.

• San Diego City College students were escorted out of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Front Street office Monday afternoon after they staged a sit-in during the morning to protest recent budget cuts in higher education.

• Anti-wall activists demonstrated outside Israel’s Ofer Prison near the West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday to demand the release of detained activist Jamal Juma to concide with the convening of his military court hearing.

It’s hard not to mourn the extent to which the origin of Christmas is lost in the orgy of holiday shopping. One veteran of the peace movement recently told me that she even hoped a judge would expedite her case and let her serve the month in jail that she is expecting for a previous action now, so that she could escape the madness.

While we must always use this time to remind folks that this holiday is ultimately a celebration of the birth of Jesus – who not only taught the gospel of nonviolence, but perfectly embodied his teaching to “love your enemies” by voluntarily dying on the cross - a fascinating article in The Cowl, Providence College’s student newspaper, recently alerted me of another connection between Christmas and nonviolence that should be highlighted.   

The 1970 classic stop motion film, Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, could actually be seen as a story of nonviolent resistance. As Tim Fleming recounts:

…it’s the movie that tells the story of Santa Claus from start to finish. It explains how he chose to enter homes via chimneys and how one man can be named Kris Kringle, Santa Claus, and Saint Nick at the same time. The birth of the Christmas stocking is explained, and Winter Warlock is introduced as the in-charge director of seasonal cold and snow. However, as I watched this film with my eight-year-old sister I couldn’t help but think that we were viewing, for all intents and purposes, different films. For her the movie was about the history of Christmas, but I saw something different. It’s possible that my being a global studies major had influenced this perceived difference but I saw a case study in Yuletide civil disobedience.

Unfortunately for the children of Little Sombertown, toys had been outlawed by the evil Burgermeister Meisterburger. This unjust decree was enacted on the basis that toys do not foster civil productivity, but instead lead to laziness, dependence, and in the worst case scenario, a healthy imagination. Kris Kringle, however, will not stand for such intolerable rules. He is told over and over that his practices of delivering toys on “the holiest day of the year,” Christ’s birthday, are morally, socially, and lawfully wrong, yet he refuses to cease and desist as his orders prescribe. When he no longer can work in the daylight because of the law, he continues under the cover of night. When he can no longer walk freely through the front doors of houses, he resorts to chimneys. He starts stuffing socks with small toys to hide them from the Burgermeister’s guards when they begin searching houses. In my eyes Kris Kringle was one of the original champions of civil disobedience.

• The streets of Qom, Iran’s holy city and the center of its religious life, filled with tens of thousands of mourners on Sunday. They came both to honor a founding father of modern Iran, Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, and to protest the government he had come to oppose.

• More than 3,000 female Burmese workers at a bra factory in Tak’s Mae Sot district again went on strike on Monday over an assault on two of an employee’s relatives by four security officers.

• In New York City, students left school early on Monday in a walk-out to protest the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s plan to stop giving students free Metrocards. The youngsters left school at 2 pm and gathered in front of the MTA’s headquarters to demand that the agency find a way to fill its $400 million budget shortfall that won’t force students to pay to commute to city schools.

• Some 300 municipal staff began a sit-in at the Town Hall in Alcoy, Spain on Monday against the local government’s decision to sack nine workers, saying they will remain there until this afternoon.

• Over 5,000 indigenous, Afro-Colombian and farming community members are occupying the community center of Piñuña Negro in the department of Putumayo, Colombia. A crowd of all ages has gathered at the highest government office in the area—the Police Inspector’s office—to demand negotiations with local and national government representatives and an end to military and paramilitary harassment and coca eradication programs that are causing thousands of residents to be displaced.

• Hundreds of Palestinian citizens on Monday evening participated in a sit-in organized by Hamas Movement near Salahuddin terminal on the Palestinian-Egyptian borders in protest at the building of a steel wall on Gaza borders.

• A protest at the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX) on Monday drew attention to the contribution of the New Zealand business to climate change. A sit-in occurred, blocking the entrance to the building, and police arrested nine activists. The protest featured ‘Radical Cheerleaders’, a samba band, and around 80 diverse protestors.

• The Islamabad Bar Association (IBA) on Saturday protested near Sihala police training college in Islamabad to urge the government to expel the US private security company Blackwater, which lawyers said was operating inside Sihala college.

Last June was the 27th anniversary of one of the largest protests in history, when upwards of one million people gathered on the Great Lawn in New York’s Central Park to rally against nuclear weapons while the UN held a Special Session on Disarmament. Two days later 1,600 demonstrators were involved in acts of civil disobedience at the consulates of five countries.

One of the seminal figures of this movement was author Jonathan Schell, whose 1982 book The Fate of the Earth reinvigorated the anti-nuclear movement with its rallying call for a nuclear freeze. Though still very much focused on the issue today, Jonathan has started to pursue climate change with a like-minded passion, which is fitting given the similarities of the two movements. (Something about protesting outside a UN meeting sounds all too familiar right now.)

I met him at the Brooklyn Bridge March for Climate Leadership, which was one of 5,000 plus actions that took place on October 24, the 350-organized International Day of Climate Action. Although very little came of the march, it ended up being a great opportunity to hear Jonathan trace his interest in the issue back to when his good friend Bill McKibben first started writing about global warming two decades ago.

Not long after that, we sat down for a more formal discussion of climate activism. Drawing from his deep knowledge of nonviolent movements–which was the focus of his 2003 book The Unconquerable World–Jonathan offered tactical suggestions for climate activists, compared the threat of climate change to nuclear war and spoke of the general mystery surrounding the rise of mass public movements.

Bryan Farrell: Why has it taken so long for a climate justice movement to emerge.
Jonathan Schell: We just haven’t seen all that much in the way of social movements recently. We had the anti globalization movement in late 90s which flared up and died away. We also had the antiwar movement against the Iraq War but that also has kind of died away. There just hasn’t been much energy in social movements. Why that is is a very deep question. It’s a crippling disability when it comes to changes in policy that are on a deep and fundamental level, whether that’s changing the economic system or opposing these wars and the whole imperial mindset behind them or addressing global warming. If you just look historically, it’s very hard to find fundamental change in policy that wasn’t preceded by a very powerful social movement. So if you don’t have that card in your deck, I think it’s incredibly difficult to get fundamental change. In terms of public awareness [climate change] has been stronger than some of the other movements. Certainly it’s been longstanding and there are lots of strong organizations. Read the rest of this article »

As the UN Copenhagen climate talks began yesterday, a series of strict new laws went into effect. Danish police now have sweeping power to preemptively arrest protesters, enact harsh fines and dole out extended sentences for those engaging in civil disobedience. According to the New York Times, holding facilities that contain approximately three dozen small steel cages and can accommodate up to 350 protesters have already been set up around the city. Police have also been making public displays of their newly acquired anti-riot gear.

All this money and effort has had the effect of turning one of Europe’s most open and democratic cities into a virtual police state for anyone who considers the certain failure of a climate treaty worth protesting. But those not interested in saving the planet–like say, delegates from rich nations–can rest assured that Copenhagen still allows prostitution. In fact, the city expects UN delegates to take advantage of this freedom. But realizing that it is not exactly befitting of a government official attending a landmark conference, the city is requesting that the delegates not patronize Danish sex workers. According to Spiegel Online:

Copenhagen’s city council in conjunction with Lord Mayor Ritt Bjerregaard sent postcards out to 160 Copenhagen hotels urging COP15 guests and delegates to ‘Be sustainable – don’t buy sex’.

“Dear hotel owner, we would like to urge you not to arrange contacts between hotel guests and prostitutes,” the approach to hotels says.

So, just to be clear, when it wants to dissuade people from taking legitimate action against life-threatening policies, the city of Copenhagen is willing to reform its laws, enact draconian police measures and spend millions in the process. But when it wants to dissuade world leaders from engaging in an act that is illegal in most other countries, during a historic future-in-the-balance conference, the city of Copenhagen sends out postcard warnings.

Of course, this has upset sex workers, who are now firing back at the city by offering a special deal: free sex to anyone who can produce one of the postcards and their COP15 identity card. No joke! What a time to be a sex crazed and completely unaccountable UN climate delegate.