Vox Sentences: Global climate talks are starting in Paris. Here’s what to expect.

The COP21 summit begins in Paris; what it means to call the Planned Parenthood shooter a terrorist; and a rape accusation rocks the porn world.

TOP NEWS

What to expect from the global climate summit

Anadolu Agency / Mustafa Sevgi

• The UN-affiliated world forum on climate change called COP21 opened in Paris today.

  [New York Times / Coral Davenport and Gardiner Harris]

• (As you might expect from the name COP21, this is going to be a jargon-heavy conference. Here's a handy guide.)

  [Slate / Eric Holthaus]

• Don't get your hopes up about COP21. It is not going to save the world, as Vox's Brad Plumer explains.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

• Countries have come to the conference with individual plans for curbing carbon emissions. But even if they follow those plans, we're still on pace for 3 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century.

  [World Resources Institute / Kelly Levin and Taryn Fransen]

• That is, it goes without saying, more than the 2 degrees scientists have estimated is the maximum warming the Earth can take without serious permanent damage.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

• After you've reduced your expectations, you might want to be optimistic — there's a hope that countries have made plans they actually can and want to stick to, and might even promise more.

  [Pacific Standard / Lucia Graves]

• But the point of the conference, as Plumer says, is to lend momentum to efforts that are already going on — not to make new commitments.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

Is this man a terrorist?

Getty Images / Handout

• On Friday, Robert Lewis Dear (is alleged to have) opened fire on the Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, CO, killing three people.

  [Denver Post]

• Based on comments from law enforcement, it doesn't sound like Dear's statements are coherent: one described them as 'rantings.' But he's also expressed an ideological opposition to Planned Parenthood: in one of his "rantings" to law enforcement, he made a reference to "no more baby parts."

  [NBC News / Andrew Blankstein and Pete Williams]

• The phrase "baby parts" was popularized by a series of "sting" videos that came out this summer, purporting to show PP staff selling the organs of aborted fetuses. As Vox's Sarah Kliff explains, the video controversy is just the latest proof that Planned Parenthood is essentially a symbol of abortion in America.

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

• So if Dear is ideologically motivated, does that make him a terrorist? A lot of supporters of Planned Parenthood have argued that he is — and that his actions prove that, as William Saletan writes, "the most dangerous religious extremists are migrants from North and South Carolina."

  [Slate / William Saletan]

• It's worth distinguishing terrorism from any sort of violence. Ross Douthat argues that it makes sense to limit "terrorism" to coordinated efforts to destabilize or replace the legitimate order.

  [New York Times / Ross Douthat]

• By that metric, however, there's a whole history of incidents of anti-abortion violence that would count as terrorism: taking something that is supposed to be legal and protected by law and rendering it a mortal peril.

  [Huffington Post / Chloe Angyal]

• In fact, just days before the Colorado Springs attack, NARAL asked the Department of Justice to start classifying attacks on abortion clinics as domestic terrorism.

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff and Emily Crockett]

• But terrorism isn't just a legal term. It's a culturally loaded one. And Roqayah Chamseddine argues that when supporters of Planned Parenthood indulge in jokey comparisons to Islam or calls for anti-abortion activists to denounce their ideological fellow travelers, they end up reinforcing the very stereotypes about terrorist Muslims they're trying to destabilize.

  [Roqayah Chamseddine]

A bombshell hits the porn world

Getty / Franco Origlia

• James Deen is probably the most famous male porn star of the last quarter century. We're talking GQ-profile famous.

  [GQ / Wells Tower]

• His fame is built on his appeal to women — he plays up his boy-next-door persona, and gives off nice feminist vibes.

  [GOOD / Amanda Hess]

• Deen's even been one half of a porn power couple — he once dated Stoya, who's a porn star, a great writer and an outspoken feminist.

  [Amuse / Karley Sciortino]

• All of this is why it was so shocking to many when over the weekend, Stoya tweeted that Deen had raped her when they were dating.

  [BuzzFeed / David Mack]

• And when at least two other porn actresses came forward afterward and said he'd raped them too.

  [Huffington Post / Hilary Hanson]

• Deen's team has simply posted a statement to Instagram accusing the women of defamation.

  [James Deen via Instagram]

• But the accusations are already hurting his career. Porn site Kink.com is cutting ties with him; sex site The Frisky has dropped his sex-advice column and will no longer be running his ads.

  [The Snitch / Julia Carrie Wong]

• The Frisky's Amelia McDonnell-Parry is very clear about what's going on here: Deen hasn't been convicted or even charged with a crime, but sites like hers are free to choose how to rule in the court of public opinion. And they have chosen to "believe women."

  [The Frisky / Amelia McDonnell-Parry]

MISCELLANEOUS

Kurds in northern Syria are attempting to build a feminist, secular, anarchist society that operates through direct democracy. Some crazy how, it's working. [NYT / Wes Enzinna]

• Michael Dukakis has a tradition of collecting people's Thanksgiving turkey carcasses and making soup with them. Really. This is a real thing, and he is very passionate about it.

  [Boston Globe / Matt Viser]

• (Post-Thanksgiving update: thanks to the above article, 12 people brought him turkeys this year.)

  [Boston Globe / Matt Viser]

• The Vauxhall Corsa is by far the shittiest motor vehicle I (Dylan) have ever encountered. And yet British gangsters have been stripping hundreds of them for parts. Why?

  [The Guardian / Homa Khaleeli]

• Attacking terrorism with military tactics doesn't work. Treating it as a crime, to be handled by law enforcement, does.

  [The American Conservative / Philip Giraldi]

• The Justice Department is arguing that homeless people have a Constitutional right to sleep outside. That's a big deal.

  [Washington Post / Emily Badger]

VERBATIM

"The opinions of the modern Americans on Government, like those of their good ancestors on witchcraft, would be too ridiculous to deserve any notice, if like them too, contemptible and extravagant as they be, they had not led to the most serious evils." [Jeremy Bentham, 1776]

• "She can write like a man, they said, by which they meant, She can write."

  [Tinhouse / Claire Vaye Watkins]

• "We have a deep and consuming desire to capture the divine and somehow align it with our human selves. Jackson was a vehicle for something divine, and so, perhaps, we find it pleasing to tether him more firmly to our world, by proving that he is exactly as shoddy and vulgar as we all are."

  [New Yorker / Carvell Wallace]

• "Obama seems to believe that you can stop harassment with the right comeback. Just one zinger and a sexist will see the error of his ways. But it doesn’t work like that in real life."

  [New Republic / Elspeth Reeve]

• "If you’re watching a Rivalry Week football game, there’s a good chance you are thinking—maybe consciously, maybe not—about your class status. Go team!"

  [Slate / Ben Mathis-Lilley]

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