Freddie Gray Case: Jury Selected, Baltimore Officer Trial to Begin (VIDEO)

Protesters will burn Baltimore to the ground if the officers are acquitted.

"No justice! No peace!"

At the Baltimore Sun.

Also, "Freddie Gray case: courtroom sketches offer peek inside first trial."

ISIS Prevents Civilians from Fleeing Ramadi

It's getting to be like the East Bloc during the Cold War. You can check in, but you can never leave.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Islamic State Prevents Civilians From Fleeing Iraqi City of Ramadi":

Islamic State fighters are preventing civilians from fleeing the city of Ramadi on pain of death after Iraqi forces warned people to leave ahead of an impending offensive.

Amazon Fulfillment Center in Phoenix, Arizona

I think it's Phoenix.

ABC News 10 Phoenix:



And shop, Ultimate Holiday Gift Guide.

Donald Trump Still Dominating as Ben Carson Fades, Poll Finds (VIDEO)

At CBS News, "Donald Trump still dominating as Ben Carson fades in GOP race, poll shows."

And Nancy Cordes reports, for CBS News This Morning:

Long-Hidden Details Reveal Cruelty of 1972 Munich Attackers

At the New York Times:

In September 1992, two Israeli widows went to the home of their lawyer. When the women arrived, the lawyer told them that he had received some photographs during his recent trip to Munich but that he did not think they should view them. When they insisted, he urged them to let him call a doctor who could be present when they did.

Ilana Romano and Ankie Spitzer, whose husbands were among the Israeli athletes held hostage and killed by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, rejected that request, too. They looked at the pictures that for decades they had been told did not exist, and then agreed never to discuss them publicly.

The attack at the Olympic Village stands as one of sports’ most horrifying episodes. The eight terrorists, representing a branch of the Palestine Liberation Organization, breached the apartments where the Israeli athletes were staying before dawn on
Sept. 5, 1972. That began an international nightmare that lasted more than 20 hours and ended with a disastrous failed rescue attempt.

The treatment of the hostages has long been a subject of speculation, but a more vivid — and disturbing — account of the attack is emerging. For the first time, Ms. Romano, Ms. Spitzer and other victims’ family members are choosing to speak openly about documentation previously unknown to the public in an effort to get their loved ones the recognition they believe is deserved.

Among the most jarring details are these: The Israeli Olympic team members were beaten and, in at least one case, castrated.

“What they did is that they cut off his genitals through his underwear and abused him,” Ms. Romano said of her husband, Yossef. Her voice rose.

“Can you imagine the nine others sitting around tied up?” she continued, speaking in Hebrew through a translator. “They watched this.”

Ms. Romano and Ms. Spitzer, whose husband, Andre, was a fencing coach at the Munich Games and died in the attack, first described the extent of the cruelty during an interview for the coming film “Munich 1972 & Beyond,” a documentary that chronicles the long fight by families of the victims to gain public and official acknowledgment for their loved ones. The film is expected to be released early next year...

Video from the movie production here, "Munich Memorial Project Interview with Dr. Steven Ungerleider."

And more from the Times, here.

Paris Attacker Abdelhamid Abaaoud Offers Insights Into Islamic State Strategy

This is a freakin' great cover story, at Der Spiegel, "Europe's Jihadists: What the Paris Attacks Tell Us about IS Strategy":

The biographies of those behind the Paris attacks offer deep insight into the structures and organization of Islamic State in Europe. And they confirm what experts have long warned about: The new jihadists have our cities in their sights.

On the horrific evening in Paris that only ended after 130 people had been slaughtered in jihadist attacks, something strange happened at 10:28 p.m., a development that only came to the attention of investigators much later. On the upper end of Boulevard Voltaire, where the Bataclan concert hall is located, three terrorists were in the process of gunning down people with their Kalashnikovs and exchanging salvos with the police, who were closing in on them. At the lower end of the street, another man exited from the Metro -- Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected leader behind the attacks.

He had just been a part of the group that had killed 39 people at La Belle Équipe, Le Carillon and Le Petit Cambodge. For a while afterwards, he had driven around aimlessly in a black SEAT through the neighborhood's streets, before parking it in the Montreuil suburb. He was then caught on CCTV cameras at 10:14 p.m. inside the Croix de Chavaux Metro station, as he jumped the turnstile to avoid paying and traveled back to the scene of the crime.
Over the next two hours, Abaaoud apparently went for a walk through the 10th and 11th arrondissements, the area where he had just unleashed a bloodbath. Investigators later used the geolocation data from his mobile phone to trace his movements that evening. At 12:28 a.m., as anti-terror units were entering the concert hall, the phone was just next to Bataclan. It's as if Abaaoud wanted to convince himself of his own success and view firsthand the inferno he had helped unleash. It wasn't much later that French President François Hollande arrived at the scene.

It's a disturbing thought, but one that also seems fitting for a terrorist as vain and brutal as Abaaoud. This, after all, was not the first time he had outfoxed security forces.

In terms of media coverage, Abaaoud had been Belgium's best-known jihadist, and yet he nevertheless managed to travel back and forth between Syria and Europe without raising attention and would ultimately conduct the Paris attacks together with an entire group of other jihadists. Few others have reported as openly on social media about their adventures in Syria as Abaaoud. In Dabiq magazine, an official propaganda organ of Islamic State (IS), he had boasted in January that he could "plan operations" and come and go as he pleased despite the fact that "my name and my picture have been all over the news."

Is the Worst Yet to Come?

With Abdelhamid Abaaoud and his men, Islamist terror in Europe has reached a new level. It's the first time that a major European city has experienced such a complex attack at the hands of the Islamic State, which resulted in 130 deaths and 350 wounded. In the week that followed, Brussels, another major European city, announced a state of emergency, a rare occasion in the postwar era. The city shut down its Metro system and closed schools. Local authorities said they took the dramatic steps in order to prevent attacks like the ones committed in Paris the previous weekend.

For years, terror experts had been warning about their fears of terrorist attacks in Europe and, in recent days, they appear to have become reality. The attacks on Charlie Hebdo in Paris and Copenhagen at the beginning of 2015 weren't isolated cases, Peter Neumann, a professor of security studies at King's College London, warned in his new book "The New Jihadists," published in September in German. He believes what we have just witnessed are the "first, very dramatic warnings of what will play out on the streets of Europe in the next decades." Europe, he cautions, is standing "at the precipice of a new wave of terror that will still occupy us for a generation to come."

French journalist and jihad expert David Thomson offers a similarly bleak assessment. "Attacks like this will no longer be something completely extraordinary," he warns. "I can't say whether something like this will happen every six months or every year."

Thomson says that, according to his research, an Islamic State unit led by a Frenchman is currently preparing attacks in Europe. After the terrorist attacks in Paris, Western intelligence agencies intercepted communications between Abaaoud and Islamic State leadership in Syria. There had been similar clues after the attack in Beirut the day before and also after IS brought down a Russian jet carrying vacationers over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. When IS issued a claim of responsibility for the Paris attacks a few hours later, it provided no information about the perpetrators. But German authorities say this is standard practice for IS: The order is issued by the leadership, but it is then carried out solely by the terrorist cell.

'Islamic State Is Acting in Europe'

"We must assume that this was the first coordinated series of attacks," an internal government paper dating from Nov. 23 states. "The Islamic State is acting in Europe. The concerted action and the means used in the crime point to very well-trained perpetrators prepared to do anything, as well as longer and highly conspiratorial planning of the attack."

It's a disturbing development. In contrast to al-Qaida before it, terror attacks on the West had not previously been a part of Islamic State strategy. Instead, the group had limited itself to expanding its territories in Iraq and Syria and establishing state-like structures....

A Trove of Mobile Phone Photos

For German jihadists, that included questioning from a German-speaking IS fighter about motivation, ancestry and acquaintances. Former jihadist Ayoub B., from Wolfsburg, likens such units to a kind of Islamic State domestic intelligence agency. Upon arrival, he was interviewed by Mustafa K. and Nils D., two men belonging to a group from Dinslaken who were involved in almost all relevant activities undertaken by Islamic State troops. After questioning, Islamic State divides foreigners into two groups: suicide bombers and fighters. Thus far, German officials have identified more than 20 German suicide bombers.

The life of Abdelhamid Abaaoud of Belgium is better documented than almost any other jihadist. In spring 2014, the French journalist Étienne Huver came into possession of photos and videos that had been saved on Abaaoud's mobile phone. Huver had traveled to the Syrian city of Azaz, just a few kilometers from the border with Turkey, not long after Syrian rebels had finally managed to push the Islamic State out following an extended occupation. In Azaz, Huver was contacted by Syrian rebels who offered him photos of European IS fighters. "They told us: You have to publish them. People are coming from you to us and killing Syrians," Huver says.

The rebels had managed to copy the data with the help of a supporter who worked in an Internet café that Abaaoud frequented. When Abaaoud connected his mobile phone to a computer to share his photos with friends via Facebook, the Internet café employee made a secret copy. All of the photos were taken between Jan. 7 and Feb. 26, 2014.

An image taken on Feb. 1 shows him in Syria for the first time, wearing a wool vest and an oversized Afghan pakol cap and posing for selfies with a Kalashnikov. In one photo, he has his head thrown back and the morning sun shines onto his face. He sent the photo to friends and acquaintances back home in Belgium -- and also to young women he wanted to impress.

The photos and videos Abaaoud made during the ensuing four weeks were for his own private use. They consistently show him with the same group of people: Eight young men who speak accent-free French and broken Arabic with a North African accent. All of them are Frenchmen or French-speaking Belgians. It almost seems as though they were a group of friends enjoying a bit of adventure in Syria.

Francophone Fighting Unit

Abaaoud gave himself the nom de guerre "Abu Omar al-Soussi" -- Abu Omar from the Souss Massa, a region in Morocco where his parents are from. Islamic State, however, dubbed him "Abou Omar Al-Beljiki," transforming him back into the Belgian he was.

Some of those in the group already knew each other from Brussels. Others likely only met in Syria when they joined the French-speaking unit that Belgians and French fighters were assigned to for matters of simplicity. It was deemed too problematic to put them in Arabic-speaking units because they wouldn't have been able to understand the orders given.

German security officials believe that the plans for the Paris attacks were likely developed within this Francophone fighting unit. German Islamic State fighters, by contrast, are spread out among several different units.

During his first days in Azaz, it has become clear, Abaaoud had close contact with notorious German Islamists; in spring 2014, his group lived in the same house with the "Lohberger Brigade," a group of young men from the Lohberg neighborhood of the Ruhr Valley city of Dinslaken who joined the jihad in 2013. During the time they lived together, the two groups posed with decapitated heads in front of the same statue in the center of Azaz.

Early on, Abaaoud seemed fascinated by the violence perpetrated by the Islamic State fighters and documented it on his mobile phone. "They fought for democracy and secularism, and thus, against us," Abaaoud narrates in one video of dead rebel fighters -- a comment that had little to do with the power struggle underway between the Syrian rebels of Azaz and Islamic State.

Abaaoud was notable even then, a natural leader because of his charisma. He instructed his comrades to speak into the camera or told them to take a picture of him next to a foreign IS fighter. He seemed to have a clear goal in mind with his photos and videos: that of encouraging more young people from Europe to join Islamic State....

A Shoot Out in Saint-Denis

It was only four days after the attacks in Paris that officials were able to track down Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who spent the evening of the attacks near the Bataclan. Together with two other members of his cell, Abaaoud had barricaded himself in an apartment in Saint-Denis. One of them was his alleged cousin, Hasna Ait Boulahcen.

Officials believe they were planning another attack, this time on the La Défense quarter of Paris. In Saint-Denis, he and his accomplices engaged in a seven-hour battle with the hundreds of police, anti-terror officers and soldiers who deployed to capture him. The operation ended with their deaths.

French security officials knew soon after the operation that Abaaoud was among the dead, but kept the information quiet for quite some time. The police had found several mobile phones in the possession of the now dead terror suspects and hoped to use them to find Abaaoud's contacts.
Still, two weeks after the attacks in Paris, many questions remain open. Not all of the perpetrators have yet been identified and investigations continue into several suspects.

Most of all, though: Nobody knows if the next Abdelhamid Abaaoud has long-since set up shop in Europe.

'Don't stop ... thinking about tomorrow...'

From yesterday afternoon's drive time, at the Sound L.A.



It's a terrible video, but Christine McVie's seen at this more recent comeback concert, "Fleetwood Mac (with Christine McVie) - Don't Stop - The O2 Arena - Live in London - Sept 25 2013."

Don't Stop
Fleetwood Mac
4:09 PM

Cat Scratch Fever
Ted Nugent
4:05 PM

Beds Are Burning
Midnight Oil
4:01 PM

Telephone Line
Electric Light Orchestra
3:50 PM

Sultans of Swing
Dire Straits
3:45 PM

What Is and What Should Never Be
Led Zeppelin
3:40 PM

Takin' Care of Business
Bachman-Turner Overdrive
3:35 PM

De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da
The Police
3:24 PM

Too Much Time On My Hands
Styx
3:19 PM

All Right Now
Free
3:14 PM

Burning Down the House
Talking Heads
3:10 PM

Purple Haze
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
3:07 PM

Can't You See
The Marshall Tucker Band
3:01 PM

ICYMI: Erick Stakelbeck, ISIS Exposed

At Amazon, ISIS Exposed: Beheadings, Slavery, and the Hellish Reality of Radical Islam.

Alana Blanchard Catches Some Great Surf in Mexico (VIDEO)

She's so smooth and effortless.



FLASHBACK: "Afternoon Alana Blanchard Rule 5."

Islamic Jihadists Reach Out to Refugees in Germany

Heh.

Of course it's a huge surprise. Huge!

At WSJ, "German Officials Warn of New Security Risk: Local Extremists Recruiting Refugees":

German officials warn of another security risk: local extremists recruiting refugees https://t.co/IVbT0e4F81 pic.twitter.com/2Wq3oVTcOx

— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) November 30, 2015

BERLIN—The Paris attacks have raised fears of terrorists slipping into Europe by posing as refugees. But in Germany, the top migrant destination, security officials have another worry: Local extremists will recruit the newcomers to join the Islamist cause once they arrive.

German authorities warn that migrants seeking out Arabic-language mosques in search of the familiar are increasingly ending up at those attended by Islamist radicals. In interviews, security officials from Berlin to the southwest German state of Saarland said they have registered a sharp rise in the number of asylum-seekers attending mosques they believed attracted extremists.

Federal officials said they have counted more than 100 cases in which Islamists known to them have tried to establish contact with refugees. According to state and local agencies across the country, Islamists have offered migrants rides, food, shelter and translation help. In some cases, they have invited them to soccer games and grill parties, or brought them copies of the Quran and conservative Muslim clothing.

“They start by saying, ‘We will help you live your faith,’ ” said Torsten Voss, the head of the German domestic intelligence agency’s Hamburg branch. “The Islamist area comes later—that is, of course, their goal.”

Security officials across Germany describe the potential radicalization of migrants, still entering the country by the thousands every day, as a challenge that adds to Europe’s existing security threats. With Germany expecting to take in roughly one million asylum-seekers from the Middle East and elsewhere this year, authorities are scrambling to prevent new pockets of radicalism from forming.

Intelligence services say they have no evidence of successful recruitment efforts, pointing to the risk as a long-term problem.

Many politicians and migrant advocates argue that refugees fleeing Islamic State and religious conflict generally have no interest in extremism. Still, others, including Jewish organizations, warn that many of the migrants are coming from places where radical views are common.

“Many of the refugees hail from societies in which anti-Semitism and enmity of Israel are propagated,” Josef Schuster, president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, said last week, urging that new arrivals be well-integrated and arguing that Germany’s capacity for doing so was limited.

Germany—the European Union’s most populous country—hasn’t experienced a major Islamist terror attack in recent years, though it is home to one of Europe’s largest Muslim populations. Part of the reason, security officials say, is that most of Germany’s Muslims have roots in relatively secular Turkey rather than the Arab world.

But many of the migrants arriving now are from Syria and other Arab countries and are seeking out Arabic-speaking mosques—some of which have ties to extremists, security officials say.

Berlin authorities describe the Ibrahim Al Khalil mosque, inside a ramshackle, two-story brick warehouse in an industrial section of the German capital, as a key meeting point in the city for fundamentalist and potentially militant Muslims. On Friday, many recently arrived migrants were among the several hundreds who gathered for weekly prayers.

Many of the migrants there said they were there simply out of convenience. One Syrian man, who said at least 40 people in his refugee shelter rode the subway to Al Khalil every Friday, said he had discovered it via a smartphone app listing nearby mosques.

“We come here to do our Islamic duty,” said another Syrian, 27-year-old Ali Kafri. Referring to fundamentalist movements, he added: “We don’t care if it’s a Salafi or a Muslim Brotherhood mosque.”

The chairman of the Al Khalil mosque in Berlin, Adnouf Nazir, rejected the authorities’ claim that his congregation had ties to extremism.

“We want to live in peace,” Mr. Nazir said. “It can be that some people have other thoughts, but that doesn’t mean that we are responsible for this.”

Still more.

USC Names Clay Helton Permanent Head Football Coach (VIDEO)

Hey, USC made a major move here, offering Helton a full five-year contract.

At LAT, "USC names Clay Helton as head football coach."

And from Bill Plaschke, "USC got it right with hiring of Clay Helton."

Watch #USC players go bonkers when the announcement was made that Clay Helton is coach: https://t.co/p5BHP5XZPF

— Lindsey Thiry (@LindseyThiry) November 30, 2015

Anne-Marie Slaughter 'Devastated' After Hillary Clinton Slammed Atlantic Monthly Cover Story About Women 'Having It All...'

This a juicy little piece, at Politico, "Anne-Marie Slaughter 'devastated' by Clinton's take on her 'have it all' article."

What's particularly interesting is that Slaughter, who was Director of Policy Planning at the State Department from January 2009 until February 2011, was jonesing for direct access to Clinton, and was brutally denied. I guess her emails protesting were "forwarded" to Secretary Clinton, heh.

Here's the Atlantic piece, which I vaguely remember reading at the time, "Why Women Still Can’t Have It All."

New from David Horowitz, The Black Book of the American Left — Volume 5: Culture Wars

At FrontPage Magazine, "CULTURE WARS: VOLUME V OF THE BLACK BOOK OF THE AMERICAN LEFT."

And at Amazon, The Black Book of the American Left — Volume 5: Culture Wars.

The Irrationality of the Leftist Narrative

Yeah, leftists are pretty irrational alright.

It's like a clinical syndrome, sheesh.

At iOWNTHEWORLD Report.

Target's Website Crashes on Cyber Monday

At Bloomberg, "Target Site Stumbles on Cyber Monday, Locking Out Some Users."

And USA Today, "Target website couldn't keep up with record traffic on Cyber Monday."

Charles Krauthammer on Syria Ground Troops: 'I wouldn't do any operations of this scale under Obama because there's going to be a lot of needless deaths..." (VIDEO)

Oh man, that's harsh.

On Bill O'Reilly's earlier:



RELATED: At Politico, "Hillary Clinton: No troops in Syria or Iraq."

Another huge surprise there.

Rosie Huntington-Whiteley Strips Down for Very Racy Burberry Fashion Campaign (PHOTOS)

She's a good lady!

At the Express UK, "Rosie Huntington-Whiteley strips NAKED for Burberry's 2015 Christmas campaign."

Monogrammed for @RosieHW, the @Burberry cashmere scarf. Shot by @MarioTestino pic.twitter.com/8K8p8ujgd2

— Burberry (@Burberry) November 30, 2015

China Chokes on Smog as World Climate Change Talks Begin in Paris (VIDEO)

China just released some catastrophic report on the coming climate change apocalypse.

See, the Boston Globe, "Chinese assessment of climate change depicts grim scenarios."

But I think the Chinese should worry about their own backyard --- and refrain from lecturing the international community about catastrophic scenarios --- considering the literally unlivable conditions in Beijing, and I suspect the other major Chinese urban centers.

Watch this mind-boggling report from Beijing just today, from Seth Doane, at CBS News This Morning:

Developing Countries Announce 'Global Solar Alliance' to Combat Climate Change

Solar energy accounts for about 1 percent of global energy supply, so India's Narendra Modi has his work cut out for him.

At the Guardian UK, "India unveils global solar alliance of 120 countries at Paris climate summit":

India’s prime minister has launched an international solar alliance of over 120 countries with the French president, François Hollande, at the Paris COP21 climate summit.

Narendra Modi told a press conference that as fossil fuels put the planet in peril, hopes for future prosperity in the developing world now rest on bold initiatives.

“Solar technology is evolving, costs are coming down and grid connectivity is improving,” he said. “The dream of universal access to clean energy is becoming more real. This will be the foundation of the new economy of the new century.”

Modi described the solar alliance as “the sunrise of new hope, not just for clean energy but for villages and homes still in darkness, for mornings and evening filled with a clear view of the glory of the sun”.

Earlier, France’s climate change ambassador, Laurence Tubiana, had called the group “a true game-changer”.

While signatory nations mostly hail from the tropics, several European countries are also on board with the initiative, including France.

Hollande described the project as climate justice in action, mobilising public finance from richer states to help deliver universal energy access.

“What we are putting in place is an avant garde of countries that believe in renewable energies,” he told a press conference in Paris. “What we are showing here is an illustration of the future Paris accord, as this initiative gives meaning to sharing technology and mobilising financial resources in an example of what we wish to do in the course of the climate conference.”

The Indian government is investing an initial $30m (£20m) in setting up the alliance’s headquarters in India. The eventual goal is to raise $400m from membership fees, and international agencies.

Companies involved in the project include Areva, Engie, Enel, HSBC France and Tata Steel...

Keep reading.

World Leaders in Paris Vow to Overcome Divisions on Climate Change

I'd like to see how they're actually going to overcome these divisions, because any global climate change agreement is going to suffer from a major collective action problem.

At WSJ, "President Barack Obama calls on countries to ‘rise to this moment’":

PARIS—World leaders on Monday vowed to finish a deal to curb greenhouse gases and overcome a thorny divide on financing, as they kicked off international climate talks against a backdrop of heavy security.

President Barack Obama called on governments to develop a long-term framework to cut greenhouse emissions, saying the time is coming when it will be too late. He pledged the U.S. would do its part to slow the warming of the planet, and urged other countries to “rise to this moment.”

“I’ve come here personally as the leader of the world’s largest economy and the second-largest emitter to say that the U.S. not only recognizes our role in creating this problem, we embrace our responsibility to do something about it,” Mr. Obama said.

At a heavily guarded airport complex just two weeks after terrorist attacks killed 130 people, other leaders from Russian President Vladimir Putin to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon underscored the urgency of addressing global warming in the two-week conference, dubbed the Cop 21.

Evidence of a long-standing divide quickly re-emerged. Developing countries said the richest nations that have emitted the most carbon dioxide must do more to finance a transition to greener energy and help prepare poor countries to stave off the early effects of a changing climate.

Developing countries want their highly industrialized peers to make good on pledges to mobilize $100 billion a year in public and private climate financing from 2020 onward. Some officials have warned they won’t support a deal in Paris that doesn’t deliver high levels of funding. Any agreement would require the consent of nearly 200 countries.

To help bridge the divide, several rich countries unveiled programs to boost funding. Germany, Norway and the U.K. said they would provide $1 billion a year until 2020 for payment based on emissions reductions from forests and improved land use.

Mr. Obama and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates unveiled a multibillion-dollar program involving 20 countries to boost green-energy research and development.

Yet another commitment Monday—from Germany, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland—would provide $500 million for projects in poorer countries via the World Bank.

Emerging economies made it clear that to conclude a deal in Paris, they want to see more progress in the 2020 goal and perhaps even more funding afterward.

“Developed countries should honor their commitment of mobilizing $100 billion each year before 2020 and provide stronger support to developing countries afterwards,” Chinese President Xi Jinping said, adding that Beijing would also help finance poorer countries through its own funding vehicle.

South African President Jacob Zuma said rich countries have a “historic responsibility” to at least meet the $100 billion target.

Just before officials gathered, India slammed an October estimate on how much financing rich countries have provided to poorer countries, saying the “methodologies were inconsistent.” The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which produced the estimate, sees India’s criticism as “misjudged and inaccurate,” according to Simon Buckle, head of climate change at the organization representing highly industrialized countries.

Ahead of the Paris talks, most of the countries involved submitted their own plans for curbing emissions of greenhouse gases linked to climate change or boosting the share of green energy after 2020.

An accord clinched in Paris would codify those national plans, part of an original goal to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels...

Sounds like a pretty sophisticated shakedown scam to me. Jacob Zuma? The guy's a freakin' crook.

But keep reading, in any case.