A truck engine is tested for pollution exiting its exhaust pipe as California Air Resources field representatives (unseen) work a checkpoint set up to inspect heavy-duty trucks traveling near the Mexican-U.S. border in Otay Mesa, California September 10, 2013. REUTERS/Mike Blake

By Bruce Wallace

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A significant majority of Americans say combating climate change is a moral issue that obligates them – and world leaders - to reduce carbon emissions, a Reuters/IPSOS poll has found.

The poll of 2,827 Americans was conducted in February to measure the impact of moral language, including interventions by Pope Francis, on the climate change debate. In recent months, the pope has warned about the moral consequences of failing to act on rising global temperatures, which are expected to disproportionately affect the lives of the world’s poor.

The result of the poll suggests that appeals based on ethics could be key to shifting the debate over climate change in the United States, where those demanding action to reduce carbon emissions and those who resist it are often at loggerheads.

Two-thirds of respondents (66 percent) said that world leaders are morally obligated to take action to reduce CO2 emissions. And 72 percent said they were “personally morally obligated” to do what they can in their daily lives to reduce emissions.

“When climate change is viewed through a moral lens it has broader appeal,” said Eric Sapp, executive director of the American Values Network, a grassroots organization that mobilizes faith-based communities on politics and policy issues.

“The climate debate can be very intellectual at times, all about economic systems and science we don’t understand. This makes it about us, our neighbors and about doing the right thing.”

Some observers believe the pope’s message can resonate beyond his own church.

“The moral imperative is the way to reach out to conservatives,” said Rev. Mitch Hescox, president of the Evangelic Environmental Network, a large evangelical organization that advocates for action on climate change.

Talking in terms of values is “the only way forward if we are to bring our fellow Republicans along,” he added.

Some Republican politicians have begun to search for a new message on climate change, in an attempt to distance the party from those who oppose most efforts to limit greenhouse gases and have questioned the science explaining human-caused climate change.

POPE TAKES LEAD

Whether shifting moral beliefs can translate widely into a willingness to modify carbon-intensive lifestyles and assume the costs of weaning the U.S. economy off fossil fuels remains to be seen. U.S. sales of trucks and SUVs have been rising in recent months, for example, spurred by lower gasoline prices.

But moral questions are increasingly invoked in the climate debate – and not just among anti-carbon activists.

In a Feb. 12 speech to oil industry leaders in London, Royal Dutch Shell CEO Ben van Beurden noted that “the issue is how to balance one moral obligation, energy access for all, against the other: fighting climate change.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has also wrapped some of its anti-pollution initiatives in the language of “climate justice,” likening the battle against climate change to the mid-20th century fight for civil rights.

Pope Francis also vowed to make fighting climate change a centerpiece of his papacy, using his authority as head of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics to push political leaders toward a deal at a United Nations-sponsored conference in Paris this December that is aimed at cutting carbon emissions.

The pope has confronted critics of climate change science that finds human activities responsible for increases in global temperatures, saying in January that it is mostly "man who has slapped nature in the face.”

Sixty-four percent of those polled agreed with the pope that human activities are largely responsible for the rising CO2 levels that scientists say drive climate change.

The pope also criticized the negotiators at a global climate conference in Peru last December for “a lack of courage” and has promised to issue an encyclical – a letter setting out papal doctrine – on climate issues that he hopes will add momentum to getting a deal in Paris.

In turn, he has been attacked by those who deny the scientific findings on global warming for aligning himself with environmentalists.

But only one in 10 saw him as a voice of authority on the issue, on a par with Democrats and Republicans in Congress and less than the percentage citing President Barack Obama (18 percent). The poll respondents also said that United Nations scientists and a popular U.S. television host, Bill Nye "The Science Guy", carry more authority on climate change than U.S. politicians.

The Reuters poll was conducted from Feb. 13 to 25 and the results were weighted to current U.S. population data by gender, age, education and ethnicity. It has a credibility interval - which measures the survey's precision - of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.

(Editing by Stuart Grudgings)

Ottawa (AFP) - At least six young Canadian men and women from Montreal and its suburbs travelled overseas last month to join the Islamic State group, local media reported Thursday.

Some of them, including two young women, were students at Montreal CEGEP College de Maisonneuve.

They flew to Turkey on January 16 with the aim of crossing its border into Syria, the Montreal daily La Presse said.

It is unclear if they reached their final destination.

The father of one of the young men, fearing his son's downward spiral since taking up religious and Arabic studies, seized his passport. But his son reported it lost and obtained a replacement from authorities.

The six are aged 18 to 19 and of Mideast and North African descent.

A spokeswoman for Montreal CEGEP College de Maisonneuve confirmed that three of them had attended the high school last semester, but did not know if they knew each other.

Their departure follows the alleged radicalization of a 23-year-old Alberta woman who left her family mid-2014 to join the Islamic State group in Syria.

Western governments are increasingly concerned about a rising number of foreign fighters travelling to Syria through Turkey to join extremist groups.

US intelligence officials warned earlier this month that more than 20,000 volunteers from around the world had gone to Syria to link up with extremists.

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Flash Points: Is Turkey ready for a bigger role in the fight against ISIS?

Washington (AFP) - Turkey does not place a high priority on fighting Islamic State jihadists and as a result foreign fighters are able to travel through the country into Syria, US intelligence chief James Clapper said Thursday.

When asked, Clapper told senators he wasn't optimistic Turkey would take a more active role in the war against the IS group.

"I think Turkey has other priorities and other interests," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The Turkish government was more concerned with Kurdish opposition and the country's economy, the director of national intelligence said.

"Public opinion polls show in Turkey they don't see ISIL as a primary threat," said Clapper, using an alternative acronym for the extremists.

The effect of Turkey's approach was to allow a "permissive" climate for foreign recruits heading to Syria to take arms for the IS group, he said.

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The eastern part of the destroyed Syrian town of Kobane, also known as Ain al-Arab, on January 30, 2 …

"And of course, the consequence of that is a permissive environment... because of their laws and the ability of people to travel through Turkey en route to Syria," Clapper said.

"So somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 percent of those foreign fighters find their way to Syria through Turkey."

The spy chief said some other governments in the Middle East have been reluctant to join the US-led coalition against the IS group because of Washington's reluctance to directly confront the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

But the "brutal savagery" of the IS militants, including the beheadings of hostages and the immolation of a captured Jordanian fighter pilot, "have had a galvanizing effect on opinion in the Mideast region," he said.

There was more willingness to cooperate with the United States in the war effort, with some Arab countries now sharing intelligence with Washington, he said.

View gallery

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on February 26, 2 …

The spy chief acknowledged that the United States faced intelligence "gaps" in Syria, as Washington had no embassy or any major presence on the ground.

- IS money problems -

In the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the Islamic State group was struggling to find the money to pay for electrical power and other services, Clapper said.

"They do not have enough financial wherewithal to provide the services, municipal services that are required to run a city of a million people," he said.

"We're seeing signs of electricity outages, shortages of food and commodities."

There were signs the IS group was resorting to conscription to fill their ranks after having suffered heavy losses on the battlefield, especially in the Syrian border town of Kobane where large numbers of jihadists were killed in US-led air strikes, he said.

"At least" 3,000 IS fighters were killed in Kobane, he said.

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday adopted sweeping new regulations sought by President Obama for how Americans use and do business on the Internet, in a party-line vote that is sure to be challenged by the broadband industry.

The commission, following a contentious meeting, voted 3-2 to adopt its so-called net neutrality plan -- a proposal that remained secret in the run-up to the final vote.

On its surface, the plan is aimed at barring service providers from creating paid "fast lanes" on the Internet, which consumer advocates and Internet companies worry would edge out cash-strapped startups and smaller Internet-based businesses. Chairman Tom Wheeler said it would ensure an "open, unfettered network."

But the rules, more broadly, would put the Internet in the same regulatory camp as the telephone by classifying it like a public utility, meaning providers like Comcast or Verizon would have to act in the "public interest" when providing a mobile connection to your home or phone.

Republican Commissioner Ajit Pai, who delivered some of the most scathing criticism of the plan Thursday, warned the policy represents a "monumental shift" to "government control of the Internet."

Further, he accused the FCC of bending to the will of Obama, who last fall came out in favor of such a sweeping regulatory plan.

Pai said the FCC was reversing course from past positions for one reason: "President Obama told us to do so."

He warned of a litany of negative consequences, intended or not, from the net neutrality plan. He said it allows rate regulation -- and, ultimately, rates will go up and broadband service will slow.

Pai said that while the plan defers a decision on applying a service fee to Internet bills -- much like is applied to phone bills -- that surely will change.

"The order explicitly opens the door to billions of dollars in new taxes," he said. "Read my lips: More new taxes are coming. It's just a matter of when."

Further, he pointed to slower Internet speeds in Europe, which largely treats the Internet as a public utility, in warning that the additional regulation will lead to less investment and slower speeds in the U.S. as well.

"The Internet is not broken. There is no problem for the government to solve," Pai said.

Fellow Republican member Michael O'Rielly called the plan a "monumental and unlawful power grab."

Republican lawmakers, as well, blasted the proposal as an antiquated solution that would hurt, not help, Internet innovation.

"The Obama Administration needs to get beyond its 1930s rotary-telephone mindset and embrace the future," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement.

While the broadband industry is expected to sue, Republicans in Congress said they will try to pass legislation scrapping the rules, although it's unlikely that such a bill would be signed into law by Obama.

But Democrats on the commission hailed the plan. To charges that the plan represents a secret scheme to regulate the Internet, Wheeler said: "Nonsense."

He claimed it was no more a plan to regulate the Internet "than the First Amendment is a plan to regulate free speech."

Democratic Commissioner Mignon Clyburn -- despite reports she was seeking last-minute changes in the plan to scale it back -- also voted with Wheeler on Thursday. She said it "strikes the right balance."

At stake, Clyburn said, is the risk of businesses getting preferential treatment over start-ups by getting better Internet speeds, or teachers having to worry about whether students can do research online without websites loading at "dial-up speeds."

Twitter said the new rules were a matter of protecting free expression.

"Safeguarding the historic open architecture of the Internet and the ability for all users to `innovate without permission' is critical to American economic aspirations and our nation's global competitiveness," Twitter wrote in a company blog post this week.

Net neutrality is the idea that websites or videos load at about the same speed. That means you won't be more inclined to watch a particular show on Amazon Prime instead of on Netflix because Amazon has struck a deal with your service provider to load its data faster.

For years, providers mostly agreed not to pick winners and losers among Web traffic because they didn't want to encourage regulators to step in and because they said consumers demanded it. But that started to change around 2005, when YouTube came online and Netflix became increasingly popular. On-demand video became known as data hogs, and evidence began to surface that some providers were manipulating traffic without telling consumers.

By 2010, the FCC enacted open Internet rules, but the agency's legal approach was eventually struck down. FCC officials would erase the legal ambiguity by no longer classifying the Internet as an "information service" but a "telecommunications service" subject to Title II of the 1934 Communications Act.

That would dramatically expand regulators' power over the industry by requiring providers to act in the public's interest and enabling the FCC to fine companies found to be employing "unreasonable" business practices.

The FCC says it won't apply some sections of Title II, including price controls. That means rates charged to customers for Internet access won't be subject to preapproval, though critics warn of future regulation. But the law allows the government to investigate if consumers complain that costs are unfair.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

THE U.S. HAS AT LEAST 22 ISLAMIST TERROR TRAINING CAMPS, HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT. THESE CAMPS ARE OPERATED BY THE PAKISTAN-BASED GROUP JAMAAT AL-FUQRA AND ITS MAIN US FRONT GROUP, MUSLIMS OF THE AMERICAS.

The reason that Pamela Geller, of Atlas Shrugs fame, gives for these camps being left alone to grow is that the group Jamaal al-Fuqra is not listed as a terrorist group by the U.S. government, and they are reluctant to interfere.

You’ve heard of “No-Go Zones?” Well, these camps are those zones. This is sharia law in action. Are you shocked? Honestly, I’m numb at this point.

Most of these camp sites can be found on the following map:

“Federal Bureau of Investigations documents detailing a 22-site network of terrorist training villages sprawled across the United States. According to the documents, the FBI has been concerned about these facilities for about 12 years, but cannot act against them because the U.S. State Department has not yet declared that their umbrella group, MOA [Muslims of the Americas]/Jamaat ul-Fuqra, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.”

Geller goes on to say that that most of the members of these camps are African-Americans who have converted to Islam while doing time in state or federal prison.

“Prisons have become recruitment and training centers for future jihadists. It is an escalating crisis that is taking a toll, as Americans are murdered by those who convert to Islam in prison.

Match the numbers here with the map of the United States above to see where all known Islamic training camps are right now.

The rising influence of Islam in our prisons is due to a disproportionately high number of Muslims who are incarcerated, skyrocketing conversion rates, powerful Muslim gangs, the proliferation of Muslim chaplains, an uninformed prison power structure, and the outside influence of Islamic terror organizations.

Oh, and the fact that the FBI isn’t allowed to say “Islam,” “jihad,” or target the very people who are trying to kill us as part of America’s dangerous ride on the Dhimmi bandwagon.

MUSLIM INCARCERATION RATE

Muslims comprise 15% of the prison population. This number far exceeds the percentage of Muslims in the general population. It is eighteen times greater, to be exact. Put another way, there are about 2.4 million Muslims in the United States and 350,000 of them are in jail. That means more than 12%* of Muslims in America are incarcerated.

CONVERSION RATES

Reports on the number of prisoners who convert to Islam vary and are framed in different ways. Some sources estimate 40,000 prisoners per year convert. Others put the numbers closer to 135,000 per year. Some posit that 80% of inmates who “find faith while in prison convert to Islam.”

One thing is for sure: The majority of those who convert to Islam in prison are black, with as many as one in three black prisoners converting. (The number of Hispanic prisoners converting to Islam is also on the rise.)” [1] – source

(NTEB)