It comes as no surprise that the ABC, which laughingly fancies itself as presenting a balanced view of the world, would promote a Greenpeace climate change propaganda piece by Ben Pearson, a clean energy campaigner for Greenpeace, on the front page of its website:
The draft APEC leaders' declaration leaked to Greenpeace last week was vague as to what the meeting would agree to, and by when. But one thing was crystal clear: John Howard and George W Bush will try and use APEC to undermine international action to address climate change. And they will do this to protect the Australian export coal industry, and American fossil fuel interests.
The declaration was leaked directly from one of the APEC member nations. There is no doubt it is genuine, and the work of the only two major industrialised countries that have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol; the declaration is made in the USA and covered in Australian coal dust.
There are no binding targets for action and no timetables by which anything has to be achieved. It is a declaration designed not to reduce greenhouse gases, but to reduce the political pressure Howard and Bush are feeling after years of climate inaction. The timetables that matter to them revolve around national elections in the US and Australia over the next 18 months.
The key political aim of the declaration is to get agreement on an 'aspirational' long-term greenhouse gas reduction target. Yet if APEC nations sign onto this goal, it will undermine efforts to extend and strengthen the legally binding targets that are at the heart of the Kyoto Protocol. The international community will meet in Bali in December to begin negotiations on new targets under Kyoto once the current ones run out in 2012. The APEC declaration aims to stymie progress at these talks.
Howard and Bush are implacably opposed to binding targets. Why? Because they work.
Aspirational targets, on the other hand, do not, as experience has shown across many different industries and countries. Greenpeace has labelled them "Bridget Jones" targets after the heroine in the eponymous book.
Despite her best intentions, Bridget is constantly failing to meet her 'aspirational' targets of drinking and smoking less. Her daily diary is a record of her failure. Aspirational targets for greenhouse gas emission reductions would be just as ineffective.
The Kyoto Protocol's binding targets grew out of the international community's recognition 12 years ago that the voluntary targets agreed under the original United Nations Climate Convention were insufficient.
As a result, a meeting of parties to that Convention in Berlin in 1995 concluded that an additional protocol had to be negotiated which would set legally binding targets for industrialised nations. Two years later, the Kyoto Protocol was concluded. To return to voluntary targets now would be to throw away the last 12 years of progress, and return to a system that was acknowledged as being ineffective in addressing climate change.
What is needed out of APEC is simple. Australia and the US could start by joining the rest of the international community in ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. And the final summit communique must unambiguously endorse extending and strengthening that Protocol, starting in Bali this December. That means binding targets for industrialised nations.
There simply is no other way of avoiding climate change: the greatest environmental, economic and social threat that we face.
Well, that's something I can agree with Ben on - climate change does indeed present the greatest environmental, economic and social threat we face.
Implementing the socialist, world-government solutions advocated by Greenpeace and their climate ilk will result in the same environmental catastrophe discovered when the Soviet Union collapsed.
For Climate Brown Shirts like Greenpeace to still be banging on about the ineffective, immorally expensive Kyoto Protocol shows that their thinking is stuck in a political rut with an agenda of promoting whatever policies are anti-capitalism, anti-business, anti-development and anti-people. To say that binding CO2 targets work is to completely disregard the fact that they have yet to make any difference in Europe where CO2 levels continue to rise. These people are profoundly dishonest.
The threat to our economy, society and environment has never been under greater threat - from Greenpeace and the environmental movement.
That most morally depraved of organisations, the United Nations, is preparing itself to support Muslim nations' position to deal with the world-ending problem of "Islamophobia".
"Islamophobia" and the defamation of Islam are the most conspicuous forms of racism and intolerance today, and a global U.N. conference on racism planned for 2009 should come up with practical solutions to deal with them, an Islamic bloc representative told a preparatory meeting in Geneva Monday.
The 2009 meeting is intended to review a U.N. conference on racism, held in Durban, South Africa, just days before 9/11, but the 56-nation Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC) wants Islam to be high on the agenda.
"The world since 2001 has not remained static and witnessed new forms of racism and racial discrimination," Pakistan's representative to the U.N., Masood Khan, said at a meeting of the planning body, or "prepcom bureau," according to prepared remarks.
Speaking on behalf of the OIC, Khan told the meeting that "there has been a stark rise in hate crimes, discrimination, racial profiling and intolerance against Muslims in many countries."
He also said the 2009 gathering should focus on "the continued plight of Palestinian people and non-recognition of their inalienable right to self-determination."
Khan's reference to the Palestinian situation suggests that if the planning body has its way, the review conference may echo a major theme of the 2001 Durban meeting. Critics, including the U.S. government, said the Durban conference was tarnished by a strong anti-Israel bias, as some participants tried to revive the U.N.'s earlier "Zionism equals racism" position.
The 2009 meeting is currently being called the "Durban review conference." Critics have labeled it "Durban II" - not a reference to the venue, which has yet to be decided, but because they predict a repeat of some of the controversies that prompted a walk-outby the U.S. delegation in 2001.
The Hudson Institute's "Eye on the U.N." project, which is observing the process in Geneva, described it Monday as the U.N.'s "latest anti-Jewish and anti-American extravaganza."
U.N.-watchers' concerns have been reinforced by the appointment of Libya to chair the prepcom bureau, and the inclusion among its 20 members of countries such as Cuba, Iran and Pakistan. The countries were elected by the U.N. Human Rights Council, a body, which has itself been criticized by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and others for a skewed emphasis on Israel.
Iran's delegate, Seyed Mohammad Kazem Sajjadpour, referred in his speech Monday to "new forms of racism" after 9/11, "under the pretext of so-called war against terror."
The envoy for another prepcom bureau member, Egypt, speaking on behalf of the African nations, raised concerns including "the Israeli occupation of Palestine" and the publication by a Danish newspaper of cartoons caricaturing Mohammed, "which deeply hurt over a billion Muslims around the world."
The Egyptian delegate also decried the "largely insufficient" steps taken since 2001 "to redress and reverse the situation of the descendants of the victims of the transatlantic slave trade."
Along with Zionism, slavery was one of the issues that caused dissent in Durban.
The document that came out of the Durban conference "note[d] that some States have taken the initiative to apologize and have paid reparation, where appropriate, for grave and massive violations committed [in the slave trade]."
"We further note that some have taken the initiative of regretting or expressing remorse or presenting apologies, and call on all those who have not yet contributed to restoring the dignity of the victims to find appropriate ways to do so ..." it added.
Islamophobia is, of course, a construction by activist Muslim organisations used as a label against enemies of its violent, expansionist doctrine.
When part of the evidence are the cartoons published in a Danish newspaper you know that the intolerance bar will be set at an intolerantly low level.
One of the world's leading media outlets promoting the man made global warming myth and actively seeking to silence and discredit dissenters might have had somewhat of an epiphany:
Two of the BBC's most senior news and current affairs executives attacked the corporation's plans yesterday for a Comic Relief-style day of programming on environmental issues, saying it was not the broadcaster's job to preach to viewers.
The event, understood to have been 18 months in development, would see stars such as Ricky Gervais and Jonathan Ross take part in a "consciousness raising" event, provisionally titled Planet Relief, early next year.
But, speaking at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival yesterday, Newsnight's editor, Peter Barron, and the BBC's head of television news, Peter Horrocks, attacked the plan, which also seems to contradict the corporation's guidelines. Asked whether the BBC should campaign on issues such as climate change, Mr Horrocks said: "I absolutely don't think we should do that because it's not impartial. It's not our job to lead people and proselytise about it." Mr Barron said: "It is absolutely not the BBC's job to save the planet. I think there are a lot of people who think that, but it must be stopped."
Planet Relief appears to contradict BBC guidelines on impartiality. In June a BBC-endorsed report set out 12 principles on impartiality, warning that the broadcaster "has many public purposes of both ambition and merit - but joining campaigns to save the planet is not one of them".
A BBC spokeswoman said: "This idea is still in development and the intention would be to debate the issue and in no way campaign on a single point of view."
Meanwhile, in a session at the festival yesterday titled How Green is TV, the documentary producer Martin Durkin attacked the BBC as stifling debate on climate change. Durkin, whose film The Great Global Warming Swindle attracted a large number of complaints when it was shown on Channel 4 this year, said: "The thing that disturbs me most is that the BBC has such a leviathan position ... that if it decides that it is going to adopt climate change as a moral purpose, I have got a lot of trouble with that. I don't think it is the role of the BBC to spend my money on a moral purpose."
Given that the BBC's website has many tens of thousands of words of man made global warming propaganda it is somewhat refreshing to see that some people, at least, can see that they're far too biased.
Here's something to think about. Will NASA's head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen, be viewed positively by history or join the list of famous scientific fraudsters, some of which are listed below.
Charles Dawson (1864 – August 1916) was an amateur British archeologist who is credited and blamed with discoveries that turned out to be imaginative frauds, including that of the Piltdown Man (Eoanthropus dawsoni), which he presented in 1912. Dawson was often present at finds in the archeological digs, or was the finder himself. Trofim Lysenko - Genetics Fraudster
Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (September 29, 1898–November 20, 1976) was a biologist and agronomist who was director of Soviet biology under Joseph Stalin. Lysenko rejected Mendelian genetics in favor of the hybridization theories of Russian horticulturist Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin, and adopted them into a powerful political scientific movement termed Lysenkoism. His unorthodox experimental research in improved crop yields earned the support of Soviet leadership, especially following the famine and loss of productivity resulting from forced collectivization in several regions of the Soviet Union in the early 1930s. In 1940 he became director of the Institute of Genetics within the USSR's Academy of Sciences, and Lysenko's anti-Mendelian doctrines were further secured in Soviet science and education by the exercise of political influence and power. Scientific dissent from Lysenko's theories of environmentally acquired inheritance was formally outlawed in 1948, and for the next several years opponents were purgedfrom held positions, and many imprisoned. Lysenko's work was officially discredited in the Soviet Union in 1964, leading to a renewed emphasis there to re-institute Mendelian genetics and orthodox science...Today much of Lysenko's agricultural experimentation and research is largely viewed as fraudulent.
Hwang Woo-Suk (born 29 January 1953) is a South Korean biomedical scientist. He was a professor of theriogenology and biotechnology at Seoul National University (dismissed on March 20, 2006) who rose to fame after claiming a series of remarkable breakthroughs in the field of stem cell research. Until November 2005, he was considered one of the pioneering experts in the field of stem cell research, best known for two articles published in the journal Science in 2004 and 2005 where he fraudulently reported to have succeeded in creating human embryonic stem cells by cloning. Both papers have been editorially retracted after being found to contain a large amount of fabricated data. He has admitted to various lies and frauds.
James E. Hansen (born March 29, 1941 in Denison, Iowa), heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies[1] in New York City, a part of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, Earth Sciences Division. He is currently an adjunct professor in the Earth and Environmental Sciences department at Columbia University. Hansen is best known for his testimony on climate change to congressional committees in the 1980s that helped raise broad awareness of the global warming issue. He is a vocal critic of the Bush Administration's stance on climate change.
There are few figures held in such high esteem by proponents of man made global warming as is James Hansen. Al Gore is perhaps better known globally but Hansen's scientific credentials give weight to his global warming pronouncements.
Hansen's claims of global warming are based on the data from the global temperature data set. Of this data set the most reliable has been that in the US itself, as it has had the least disruption due to external influences and has the most naturally scientifically inquisitive, data-rational society on earth.
The recent discovery that Hansen had made an error in the surface temperature record that changed the warmest year in the US from 1998 to 1934 and resulted in five of the ten warmest years of the 20th century occurring before 1940 (and before a large rise in CO2 emissions) was a discovery of significant proportions. When much smaller errors have been made by those opposed to the man made global warming thesis are discovered the pro-AGW crowd, supported by a scientifically ignorant but politically compliant media, make a huge song and dance and use it to discredit the Deniers' arguments. Yet when this error was discovered it was met with barely a yawn from the media and accusations by Hansen that his opponents were 'Climate Jesters'.
If that was the only error that had been made then a correction would be all that is needed. However, upon further discovery it transpires that significant doctoring of the US surface temperature record has been taking place resulting in a clear warming bias when the underlying data does not support that conclusion.
Will James Hansen join this rogues' gallery of scientific fraudsters? It seems more likely than not when the false science of global warming is done and dusted.
Do those people not members of the Climate Brown Shirt brigade who support the hypothesis that we're in a period of 'unprecedented' climate change understand that their beliefs are based on climate models that have never been right? Not even once. That trillions of dollars will be spent on the output of these profoundly wrong models?
Fortunately, the air has been somewhat let out of the climate change sails as more and more evidence comes to light that the whole proposition is based on dodgy data at best and downright fraud at worst.
I've pointed out some of the issues with climate models previously and, as I said a few weeks' back, if 'the science is settled' then why does the IPCC need 17 climate models when only one should do?
One of the most strident critics of the anthropogenic global warming proposition has been Christopher Monkton, 3rd Viscount Monkton of Brenchley, a former scientific advisor to Margaret Thatcher. In this article he demonstrates that observations fail to match model predictions on one of the most important points - the lower troposphere.
The significant shortfall between the magnitude of modeled and observed altitude-vs-latitude trends of decadal temperature increase in the tropics. Prediction and observation overlap only in the first mile of the atmosphere, demonstrating that the observed temperature forcing by anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions is considerably less than the forcing predicted by the models and accepted by the IPCC.
The 20-model mean predicted temperature trend (heavy red curve) ± 1 standard deviation (thin red curves) is plotted against observations from RSS 2.1 (yellow triangles); the University of Alabama at Huntsville’s UAH 5.2 (yellow diamonds) Hadley Centre’s AT2 (green curve); IGRA (light blue curve); RATPAC (dark blue curve); and Global Historical Climate Network surface trend (blue square) (Douglass et al., 2007).
A report by the US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP, 2006), says –
“For longer-timescale temperature changes over 1979 to 1999, only one of four observed upper-air data sets has larger tropical warming aloft than in the surface records. All model runs with surface warming over this period show amplified warming aloft.
“These results could arise due to errors common to all models; to significant non-climatic influences remaining within some or all of the observational data sets, leading to biased long-term trend estimates; or a combination of these factors. The new evidence in this Report (model-to-model consistency of amplification results, the large uncertainties in observed tropospheric temperature trends, and independent physical evidence supporting substantial tropospheric warming) favors the second explanation.
“A full resolution of this issue will require reducing the large observational uncertainties that currently exist. These uncertainties make it difficult to determine whether models still have common, fundamental errors in their representation of the vertical structure of atmospheric temperature change.”
Climate models have already been shown to overestimate by a factor of more than three the amount of water vapour in the air due to increasing temperature. Water vapour is the major feedback mechanism under climate models so the fact that observations don't match predictions makes a serious dent in their credibility.
Now we have more proof that reality doesn't match the models' predictions - and it's not even a close miss.
The credibility of climate science as a discipline gets closer and closer to eugenics every day.
The Bee Geeswere a singing trio of brothers — Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb — that became one of the most successful musical acts of all time. They were born on the Isle of Man to English parents, lived in England and moved to Brisbane, Australia during their childhood years, where they began their musical careers. Their worldwide success came when they returned to England and signed with producer Robert Stigwood. The group's name is derived from the initials "B.G.", primarily standing for "The Brothers Gibb."
It has been estimated that the Bee Gees' record sales total more than 220 million, easily making them part of the list of best-selling music artists. Their 1997 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame citation says "Only Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Garth Brooks and Paul McCartney have outsold the Bee Gees".
Here's a video of what happens when an aeroplane hits a dirty, great wall that's designed to absorb such an impact. It's yet another piece of evidence that 9/11 Nutjobs must ignore to continue their 'a missile hit the Pentagon...if it was a plane then where did it go?' conspiracy lunacy.
The following is an example of the intellectual and emotional immaturity of those people that run Payne Junior High in Arizona. For some reason the left seems to go overboard on non-issues such as this or global warming while at the same time providing moral support for such existential threats such as Islamic terrorism.
Officials at an Arizona school suspended a 13-year-old boy for sketching what looked like a gun, saying the action posed a threat to his classmates. The boy's parents said the drawing was a harmless doodle and school officials overreacted.
"The school made him feel like he committed a crime. They are doing more damage than good," said the boy's mother, Paula Mosteller.
The drawing did not show blood, bullets, injuries or target any human, the parents said. And the East Valley Tribune reported that the boy said he did not intend for the picture to be a threat.
Administrators of Payne Junior High in nearby Chandler suspended the boy on Monday for five days but later reduced it to three days.
The boy's father, Ben Mosteller, said that when he went to the school to discuss his son's punishment, school officials mentioned the seriousness of the issue and talked about the 1999 massacre at Colorado's Columbine High School, where two teenagers shot and killed 12 students, a teacher and themselves. Mosteller said he was offended by the reference.
Chandler district spokesman Terry Locke said the crude sketch was "absolutely considered a threat," and that threatening words or pictures are punishable.
The suspension of this student demonstrates a totalitarian mindset by those involved. Comparing a drawing - and a 'crude sketch' at that - to what happened at Columbine is one of the most intellectually bankrupt things I've heard for a long time.
If he had have drawn a picture of two men holding hands then would he have been suspended? What about a picture of a suicide bomber? He'd probably have been awarded a prize.
I'm one of those people that loves aeroplanes but hates flying. Actually, the flying is OK, it's just the crashing that I'm not too thrilled about. Like most people that hate flying the phobia gets worse as I get older and, predictably, my work has seen me take over a hundred flights in the last few years. My method of dealing with it is to book myself with the same airline, pick the same type of aircraft where possible and sit in the same seat (exit row) every flight because then I know all of the noises and bumps and what to expect. I also force myself to look out of the window during the entire take off and landing phases rather than doing what a lot of people do - sit back and close my eyes, as that simply magnifies the bumps.
Today's cool airport of the day is at the ski resort of Courcheval in France. At one end, the runway is 1941m (6386') and at the other it's 2006m (6581'). There's a 535m (1760') part of the runway that is at an amazing angle of 18.5 degrees.
You know there's no flat spot anywhere in the area when the airport has to look like this:
It must be a daunting view for first time visitors.
So what's at the end of the runway if you don't have enough speed up?
OK. Nothing...
And what does an aeroplane look like when it's on its departure run?
An amazing place that just goes to show how versatile aeroplanes really are.
From the UK's Daily Telegraph comes this telling article on the result of the UK spending all of that money on health care.
Cancer survival rates in Britain are among the lowest in Europe, according to the most comprehensive analysis of the issue yet produced.
England is on a par with Poland despite the NHS spending three times more on health care.
Survival rates are based on the number of patients who are alive five years after diagnosis and researchers found that, for women, England was the fifth worst in a league of 22 countries. Scotland came bottom. Cancer experts blamed late diagnosis and long waiting lists.
In total, 52.7pc of women survived for five years after being diagnosed between 2000 and 2002. Only Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, the Czech Republic and Poland did worse. Just 44.8pc of men survived, putting England in the bottom seven countries.
The team, writing in The Lancet Oncology, found that Britain's survival rates for the most common cancers - colorectal, lung, breast and prostate - were substantially behind those in Western Europe. In England, the proportion of women with breast cancer who were alive five years after diagnosis was 77.8pc. Scotland (77.3pc) and Ireland (76.2pc) had a lower rate.
Rates for lung cancer in England were poor, with only 8.4pc of patients surviving - half the rate for Iceland (16.8pc). Only Scotland (8.2pc) and Malta (4.6pc) did worse.
Fewer women in England lived for five years after being diagnosed with cervical cancer (58.6pc) despite a national screening programme. This compared to 70.6pc in Iceland. Dr Franco Berrino, who led the study at the National Cancer Institute in Milan, said cancer care was improving in countries that recorded low survival figures. He added: "If all countries attained the mean survival (57pc) of Norway, Sweden and Finland, about 12pc fewer deaths would occur in the five years after diagnosis."
His co-researcher, Prof Ian Kunkler from the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, said waiting lists for radiotherapy were partly to blame.
"Although there has been a substantial investment in radiotherapy facilities, there is still a shortfall," he said.
"We have good evidence that survival for lung cancer has been compromised by long waiting lists for radiotherapy treatment."
A second article, which looked at 2.7 million patients diagnosed between 1995 and 1999, found that countries that spent the most on health per capita per year had better survival rates.
Britain was the exception. Despite spending up to £1,500 on health per person per year, it recorded similar survival rates for Hodgkin's disease and lung cancer as Poland, which spends a third of that amount.
An accompanying editorial said the figures showed that the NHS Cancer Plan, published in 2000, was not working.
"Survival in England has only increased at a similar rate to other European countries and has not caught up with the absolute values seen elsewhere," it said.
Prof Richard Sullivan at Cancer Research UK said: "Cancer is still not being diagnosed early enough in all cases."
The United States on the top of the list? That's sure to be ignored by those promoting the virtues of socialised medicine.
A clear inverse relationship exists between the level of government control and individual freedom, which is why Western Europe is experiencing the social problems that it is. Society needs strong common values to tie communities together. However, in post-modern Europe values are now completely relative with the result that not only do communities not trust each other or work coherently together for the common good but also certain immigrant groups, of which Muslims are the most glaring example, use the incumbent society's tolerance against it in order to gain concessions and impose their own values on the majority. In this morass of competing values there's only one organisation that can direct society - government - with the result that more and more laws are passed resulting in a reduction of individual liberty.
This political penchant for passing laws so that society doesn't have to be responsible for maintaining strong values is one reason that I see the potential for a currently 'free' European country becoming a fascist state in the medium-term.
As I pointed out in comments a day or so ago, fascism has been recast by leftist intellectuals as a right wing political construct, chiefly in order to remove from the left the guilt of the Holocaust. They've invested heavily in setting up opposites to their ideology so that socialism is the opponent of capitalism, for example. This intellectual sleight of hand is typical of the left's need to create opposition in order to sustain their endeavour.
Take a fully functioning democracy, for example the UK, in which school children as young as ten end up in court for calling their opponent a 'Paki' in a schoolyard fight or a teenage girl is charged with racist crimes for complaining at school that she couldn't understand the study group she had been placed in on the not unreasonable grounds that the rest of the group were from Pakistan and all speaking Urdu, and add to that democracy an increasing level of government intervention in people's lives due to so called 'hate speech' laws, environmentalist causes including reducing garbage pick ups to once a fortnight, city inspectors looking through people's garbage to make sure they're recycling properly and a plan to publicly shame high energy users and ask yourself this question; are people more free or less free than they were before?
From that point it's not too far a step leftward into fascism in which government, supported by the military, dictates how much of what product is needed - which we're already seeing with the self-destructive response to the global warming myth - but allows the market to, on the whole, set prices. From there it's not too far a step into socialism in which major businesses are gradually subsumed by the state (as Venezuela is doing) and, of course, from there it's only a short step into communism at which point the state controls everything.
Thus, fascism is a leftist political construct.
It's difficult for the post-modern left to accept that those who were previously called liberal are now called conservative. Today's conservative believes in individual liberty and a non-coercive, functioning society. We are prepared to give up some personal freedoms in order to ensure our nation's security, provide infrastructure and deliver health and education services etc but want individuals to take responsibility for themselves and for the state to only ever be the provider of last resort.
Click to embiggen
From the graph it's clear that the opposite of communism is anarchy. That clearly makes sense. The opposite of fascism is libertarianism. That also makes sense with each doctrine's emphasis on the role of government; fascism more intervention, libertarianism less intervention.
Given the left's predilection for resorting to ad hominem labels, it will come as a surprise that someone would claim that fascism is part of the prism of left wing ideologies. Naturally, they will reject the claim out of hand because it doesn't comport with their understanding of the world and themselves. That's what happens when people embrace the intellectually immature philosophy of left wing politics; reality is the first casualty.
As the saying goes - being conservative means that I don't need to get up in the morning and live a lie. No wonder that, when polled, those on the right come out as being more happy and content than those on the left.
Over the last one hundred years the world has become a much smaller place. A trip from London to Sydney that used to take weeks at sea can now be achieved in less than a day. Clearly, news can only travel as fast as the fastest medium and as radio and then television caught on the world became so much closer than before. Now, with worldwide mobile services, email and instant communication brought about by the rise of the Internet the world is probably as small as it's ever going to get (at least until faster than sound air travel becomes the norm). We feel like people in London, New York, Moscow or Nairobi are right next door, in our own neighbourhood. We hear their problems, which are like ours, we empathise with their aspirations for a successful life and we agree that we all need to look after the world. We watch American sitcoms, British documentaries and subtitled French movies and absorb a part of it all into ourselves.
In this way our sense of ourselves as having a national identity has been eroded away and replaced with that of a Global Citizen.
Don't agree? Why do you see so many more Australians now referring to the Australian flag not as a national emblem but as a symbol of racism? Ditto in the USA, England and other Western countries. Why does the hopelessly corrupt and mostly ineffective United Nations receive such wide support? Because it is seen as the global authority needed in an age of globalisation. We see Al Gore stride the globe promoting catastrophic predictions due to climate change and are left with the impression that this large, earnest gentlemen cares about the world because he's a Global Citizen first and an American second. Ditto with the ubiquitous Richard Branson. We see him flying here, there and everywhere and recognise him as an international figure - a Global Citizen. We are also bombarded with visiting sporting stars like Roger Federer who come here, win all the time, and we take to heart. Same with 'Our Kim', Kim Clijsters. We form bonds with these non-citizens in almost the same was that we do with our own sporting stars. I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with that, as it happens, I just use it by way of example of showing how resistance is lowered by a series of little things. How about this? In countries that do not have the same development of infrastructure in the West, and therefore little or no access to the Internet, we see terrific patriotism and flag waving at even the slightest opportunity. Don't agree? Then why can you tell me what the flag of Lebanon looks like?
There's an old saying, "Think global, act local", which was thought up by the environmental movement to make a connection between people's local activity and 'the good of the world'. Given the loopy things people actually get up to I modified it to "Think global, act loco" but a Google search a couple of years ago showed that I was about twenty years late with that one.
The loss of belief in God in secular Europe has certainly created the vacuum for Global Citizenship (and its attendant belief in environmentalism) to fill the void, as has the sustained attack by leftist institutions on our Judeo-Christian values.
Rounding out the erosion of national identity is the implementation of a multicultural policy and its associated cultural relativism. Unfortunately, cultural relativism is the Mr Hyde to our multicultural aspirations' Dr Jekyll. We are taught that our culture is no better than anyone else's, thus the exceptional aspects of our culture are flattened by cultural relativism's lowest common denominator outcome.
So now we have a large number of people that think of themselves as Global Citizens first and Australians (or Americans or Brits or Germans or, especially, Belgians) second. These people are almost exclusively on the left of the political spectrum and this inversion of citizenship priorities helps explain their support for Islam, a culture which puts Islam, and the desire for a worldwide Umma, first and the requirements and expectations of their nationality or place of residence second.
Global Citizenry is a fool's dream. It is based on the assumption that you can be more important than you really are but without having to change much to be more important, and let's face it, who doesn't want to be more important than we are right now? Hugo Chavez sees himself as a Global Citizen and world leader. In the meantime, the Venezuelan economy is going through the floor, there are food shortages and inflation is heading towards three figures. The crazy Iranian, Armindinnerjacket, promotes himself in the same way. Meanwhile, the oil-fed Iranian economy spirals out of control, forcing people onto the street in protest (a dangerous thing in Iran), while the Mullahs continue to build nuclear weapons. In the name of Global goodness the Global Citizen Gore would implement policies that would in all likelihood double the US unemployment rate sending the US and, ironically, Europe into a massive recession.
In order to promote the leftist concept of a Global Citizen, the left uses its instruments of influence, the media, universities, unions and political parties to attack national emblems. Thus the attack on the flag as a racist symbol, the support of indigenous people that refer to Australia Day as Invasion Day, the writing out of the high points of our cultural achievements, which are replaced with a raising in importance of even the smallest sin of our past. Why would a young student want to identify with a culture whose history is thus distorted?
The greatest person you can be in life is a patriot. Defend those values that made us great, that are exceptional, that underpin our progress and allow us to achieve our multicultural aspirations without losing our unique sense of national identity. It is up to all good people of the world, regardless of political association, religious belief or ethnicity to stand up and fight against the malign concept of Global Citizenry.
A glaring feature of what defines someone as a true Climate Brown Shirt is a penchant for accusing their opponents of fraud and being deliberately misleading while participating in exactly that activity.
In his response to the those of us who self-identify as Climate Blasphemers on the issue of the change in NASA's data at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) showing that 1998 is no longer the warmest year in United States' recorded history - 1934 is - head of the GISS, celebrity scientist James Hansen has this to say:
What we have here is a case of dogged contrarians who present results in ways intended to deceive the public into believing that the changes have greater significance than reality. They aim to make a mountain out of a mole hill. I believe that these people are not stupid, instead they seek to create a brouhaha and muddy the waters in the climate change story. They seem to know exactly what they are doing and believe they can get away with it, because the public does not have the time, inclination, and training to discern what is a significant change with regard to the global warming issue...The proclamations of the contrarians are a deceit, but their story raises a more important matter...
That paragraph could well have been written by any of the now majority of people who doubt the sound scientific basis of the global warming argument.
Hansen then posts two graphs, shown below, with before and after plots to demonstrate how minor the changes to the temperature record really are with the implication being that it's all much ado about nothing. On the left is the global record and on the right is the US record. As you can see, the change in global temperature shows a quite dramatic rise while the US change is less so. Putting the graphs side by side puts into context how meaningless any change in the US temperature record really is. Right?
Here's an expanded view of the global temperature graph...
...and here's the expanded US graph:
Notice anything? Anything at all?
James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a man who wrote (as quoted above) that we "...dogged contrarians...present results in ways intended to deceive the public into believing that the changes have greater significance than reality..." has, in fact, done exactly that.
The global temperature graph above is plotted using a 1C range (-0.4 to +0.6) while the US temperature graph is plotted with a 3C range (-1.5 to +1.5). The effect is to flatten out the US graph while making the global one more visually dramatic.
Hansen is simply a politician dressed up as a scientist - and not a very good scientist at that it seems.He has deliberately tried to - let's paraphrase his words - present results in ways intended to deceive the public into believing that the changes have less significance than reality.
I've said it before and I'll say it again now - the damage being done to the reputation of science and the public's perception of it, and trust in it, by Climate Brown Shirts such as Hansen is incalculable.
UPDATE: Steve McIntyre has an important piece on Hansen's and Schmidt's talking down of the significance of the change. CO2science.org also has a terrific rebuttal of Hansen's position.
If Countdown was a regular fixture on your Sunday night viewing schedule and you didn't buy a copy of The Radiators' Scream Of The Real then you weren't a genuine Aussie rock lover.
The Radiators are a one of Australia's longest surviving original pub rock bands from Sydney, Australia, formed in 1978. Their best known songs include "Coming Home", "No Tragedy" and "Gimme Head"...The Radiators have carved themselves a niche in the annuls of Australian Rock History, headlining, and sharing the stage with other great oz acts such as AC/DC, Midnight Oil, The Angels and INXS. Consistently delivering high quality shows (approaching the 3000 mark), the Rads have played to an estimated two million punters throughout Australia. They have made over 100 original songs, 2 platinum album sales and 2 gold albums...With the release in 1983 of the album "Scream of the Real", it sent Michael Jackson's "Thriller" off the Australian Number One Album position. The hit single off this album being 'No Tragedy'. This saw The Radiators with three albums and one EP in the Top 100 Australian Album Chart at the one time.
Once upon a time there existed something in our universities, the media and amongst the cognoscenti called debate. Debate was a process whereby people on both sides of the argument would put their positions and, for the most part, that which was superior became the prevailing order of the day.
This is no longer the case. If you happen to watch the BBC on cable TV and tune into any debate on the topic du jour then you'll see representatives from the left, the hard left and the loopy left all arguing different degrees of the same world view all of which is moderated by a clearly left-leaning presenter. The media has tipped over the edge from being part of the responsible centre-left to the agenda-driven hard left and seem to be in a race to join their compadres on the bilious, loopy left, as far as I can see. The BBC, CNN, The Guardian, The Independent, The New York Times, The Washington Post and even our own Melbourne Age fall into this category. None of these publications provide a fair and balanced message and, indeed, actively work against those they disagree with politically and ensure that 'political correctness' is the order of the day.
So what is political correctness, where did it come from and how are its labels used to stifle debate?
Political correctness has its roots in Marxist philosophy and is sometimes referred to as Cultural Marxism. Bill Lind has a terrific description on the origins of political correctness, which I commend to you. It's our education system, and especially the humanities departments of our universities, that does the most to instil political correctness into the world. Students, unfortunately, are taught more and more what to think and not how to think and in the process are taught a number of labels to throw at their opponents which have the effect of stifling debate. Those labels are: racist, homophobe, Islamophobe, xenophobe, bigot, fascist, Zionist and sexist.
The application of any of these labels replaces the requirement for cogent argument for those that use them, which is handy, as they tend to have spent more time in university forming opinions than actually learning the history and facts about the subject.
If I want to argue the case that men and women are, in fact, not equal, that men are stronger than women, that women are better linguists, that men are better at the sciences or that women are more socially sensitive, with my goal being to make sure that we get the best out of either of the sexes then I am labelled a sexist and that's the end of the argument. The differences between the sexes don't matter and it's equality of outcome that counts. That must be why we have affirmative action for women but not for men.
If I want to argue that forcing women to wear the hijab is a demeaning, disgusting and evil symbol of the backwards, bigoted, sexist, racist and homophobic culture known as Islam then the cultural relativists shout me down as an Islamophobe, or racist, or xenophobe, or all three. And then some. All cultures are equally valid, they tell me, and I should be forced to take counselling in cultural awareness. End of argument. By the way, how is it that feminists defend Islam? It is such a paradox. If I try to go on with the argument by pointing out that Sharia Law includes stoning rape victims to death (because they've been unfaithful) and honour killings then the invective simply rises in volume, along with the bile spewed forth at me.
If I point out that Israel is the only democracy in the Arab world (and a very left wing one, at that), in which a million Arabs live peacefully alongside Jews, in which those Arabs have the highest standard of living in the Arab world (by miles), in which Arabs serve on the judiciary and in which Arabs are elected to the Knesset (their parliament), and I want to make the case that perhaps the reporting out of the Middle East is a wee bit at odds with reality then, bingo!, I'm labelled a Zionist and that's the end of that debate.
Of course, I could go on and on with the examples including the insidious new one applied to those that question the catastrophic predictions made by the Global Warming alarmists - Denier. In the past those on the other side of the debate have been deemed to have received funding from Big Oil. However, too many skeptics started cropping up who were clearly not associated with Big Oil (such as Bjorn Lomberg, Steve McIntyre and Roger Pielke) and so a new pejorative term had to be devised and what better one than Denier? It overcomes the problem with the Big Oil tag and puts skeptics on the same moral plane as fruit loops like David Irving and the Iranian wackjob, Ahmadinejad.
Marxist doctrine aims to control the language in order to control the debate. Political correctness serves this function very effectively and seriously weakens society by only allowing one side of an argument to be 'legitimate'.
Full marks to whoever put this together. I've commented previously that Kevin Rudd has the economics understanding of Gough Whitlam and the temperament of Mark Latham. This video reminds me that I need to add that he has the prolixity of Kim Beazley.
We live in an age of cognitive dissonance, of inverted values and of true Orwellian doublethink. The Left believes in, amongst other things, gay rights, women's rights and rehabilitation for thieves while also offering moral support to radical Islam, which hangs gays, stones errant women to death and chops the hands off thieves. On the Right, we stand in bewilderment wondering why nobody has learned the lessons of the evil of socialism throughout the last century or understands the threat of totalitarianism in this one.
Given all of this topsy turvey-ness it seems to me that we need some sort of test, a guide, in order to establish whether your moral compass is tuned correctly. Therefore, I have prepared the following 10 signs that you're a Moral Idiot and hope that it helps guide you towards good, solid values in life.
UPDATE - The original list called for ideas for the #10 sign. I've updated the list to include it.
1. You can't tell the difference between Israel and her enemies*. This really is the ultimate test. If you are so dozy, so hopelessly indoctrinated with University-educated ignorance that you equate a democratic (and extremely left wing!) Israel, a country that has had to defend itself from attack for all of its existence, in which a million Arabs live peacefully alongside Jews, in which Arabs have the highest standard of living (by miles) of any country in the Middle East, in which Arabs serve on the judiciary, in which Arabs stand for, and are voted into, the Knesset (their parliament) with the suicide bombing, fanatical, genocidal, death cults known as Hamas, Hezbollah or Fatah then you are definitely a Moral Idiot and there's no hope for you. Click here to go to a website of like minded and racist moral idiots.
2. You believe that the United States is the greatest threat to world peace. This sign is similar to the first sign about Israel. In order to hold this view you must forget that America fought a civil war to eradicate slavery, costing a huge number of lives, proving the moral strength that underpins its values even to this day. You must forget about America's role in saving the Allies in WWII, rebuilding the Japanese and European economies afterwards and defeating socialism during the Cold War (probably something you're still not too thrilled about anyway) and then going home afterwards when it could have annexed half of Europe. You must forget about the fact that the US is the largest provider of humanitarian aid on the planet, exceeding all other nations combined and is the first and only non-Imperial superpower in history (even France still has greater imperial influence than America). You must forget that its free market approach and entrepreneurship have driven the economies of the world forward in a way unlike the collective efforts of all nations through history. China is on the rise because of it, as is India and many others. The result? Vastly increased living standards and hugely longer life expectancy. How appalling! You must forget about the positive outcome of the civil rights movement that, while divisive and momentarily destructive, has led to equality of opportunity for all citizens of the United States. You must forget about the threat of the deranged regime of North Korea or the completely round the bend Islamic Revolution in Iran building nuclear weapons and you must laugh off their threats to annihilate their neighbours and Israel because 'they're not really serious'. You must forget about Al Qaeda's declaration of war in 1996 on the US (before 9/11, imagine that!), as well as the Lebanon peacekeepers bombing, the attack on the USS Cole, the attacks on the embassies in Africa that left hundreds dead and the first World Trade Centre attack - and you must recast all of those events into a "it's all due to US policies in the Middle East" and "we've brought it all onto ourselves" framework. You must magnify the smallest US mistake into the greatest sin, believe that Vietnam was the worst war ever, that Iraq is just a repeat of it and that we were all better off with the world's worst living mass murderer, Saddam Hussein, who had killed hundreds of thousands of his own citizens and was an existential threat to the world, still in power. In short you must believe that there is nothing exceptional about the United States at all and that its only intention is to rule the planet in spite of the fact that there is nothing in the evidence cupboard to support the argument. If you believe that the United States is the greatest threat to world peace then you're a Moral Idiot.
3. You believe that all cultures are equally valid. This particular piece of hare-brained logic has its roots in secular multiculturalism. The loss of belief in God, particularly in oh so enlightened Western Europe, has resulted in a loss of societal values and along with that has gone the ability to differentiate good from evil and right from wrong. Cultural relativism dictates that equality is the order of the day and that all cultures are equally good. What a complete load of bollocks. If I go to Saudi Arabia I will behave exactly in accordance with their culture and customs, understanding all the while that they have certain harsh punishments for crimes that if they were committed here would result in a slap on the wrist compared to a complete loss of the wrist over there. If a Saudi comes here and enslaves his house keeper, beating her along the way such as is reported from time to time then he should expect to be given time in jail for something that isn't even considered a crime over there. But, oh no, cry the cultural relativists. We can't offend people with cartoons! We must respect their culture and bend over backwards to accommodate their disgusting values even if it means allowing Muslim women to wear the profoundly demeaning mask of oppression, the burqa, when in public here, giving moral support to the obnoxious and evil Sheik 'cat meat' Al Hilaly or agreeing to replace our own symbols for fear of offending a violent and backward religion. It demeans us and cheapens our culture. Congratulations, if you believe that all cultures are equally valid then you're a Moral Idiot.
4. You believe that Iraq 2.0 is all about oil. "No blood for oil!" wailed the crowds of bra-less grandmothers and grey haired, pony tailed protesters as the US prepared itself to invade Iraq in 2003. The only reason that the US could have to go into Iraq was oil. Nothing else. It's all about the oil. That it was the home to a terrorist supporting, brutal dictator with masses of the blood of his citizens on his hands after the repeated use of WMD against the Kurds, who was defying UN resolutions and whose daily activity included shooting at US aircraft patrolling the no fly zone protecting the Kurds is completely lost on people (by the way - if you believe the war was illegal then go and read the text of UN resolution 1441, which clearly states the consequences of non-compliance). Here's a fact that people don't know - 80% of the United States oil supply comes from itself, Canada and Mexico. Hmmmm. Bet you didn't know that, did you? Now, here's a really big question. I want you to concentrate really hard. Put on your tin foil hat if you think it'll help. If the United States wanted Iraq's oil then...why didn't it just buy it? Would have been much cheaper. Because they're warmongers and wanted it for free, you cry, thus demonstrating the terrific double standard you have that also supports socialist confiscation of western companies' assets such as happened in Chile and Cuba, and is going on in Venezuela today particularly with foreign owned oil companies. If the US wanted the oil then they would have simply taken over the refineries and pipelines, rolled up the oil tankers and pumped away. Would have been much easier. Did that happen? No. If you believe that Iraq 2.0 is all about oil then you're a Moral Idiot.
5. You believe that war is not the answer. The irony is that war was the answer when it was needed to protect your ongoing right to say that war is not the answer. It was the answer to defend Europe from Germany in both WWI and WWII. It was the answer when socialism threatened South Vietnam (and would have been the ongoing answer if Congress hadn't cut off funds to the South Vietnamese Government). It was the answer in Korea. It was the answer in the First Gulf War. It was the answer in Kosovo. It was the answer in Panama. It was the answer in Grenada. It seemed to be a pretty good answer to the question of freeing the slaves in the South even if there were more Americans killed than in WWII. And I think you'll find that Israel thinks it's been a pretty good answer to 60 years of Arab aggression. Oooooooh, sorry. I completely missed your point. It's only not the answer when the major nations like the United States, Australia or the UK go to war. Of course, how silly of me. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan you didn't protest against that because it was obviously OK for them to cause the death of 1.5 million people. Not a peep when the Rwandans started a war that exterminated a million or more Hutus. Must have been the answer to something, surely? Perhaps their library books were overdue. Let me see here. Uh huh, no protests against the Iran-Iraq War with another million dead. No protests about Ethiopia or Mozambique or the 1.5 million killed in the Congolese conflict. Checks the history...nope, no protests against Cambodia and the 1.6 million dead there or the 2 million dead in the Second Sudanese Civil War. If you stay silent on totalitarian and socialist atrocities while advocating that for the good guys 'War is not the answer' then you're a Moral Idiot (and a bloody dangerous one at that).
6. You believe that Fidel Castro has been a positive influence for Cuba and a role model for the world. This really is one of my favourites. Cuba used to have a vibrant, competitive economy and now has a stagnant, pitiful self-enriching dictatorship. But they have free health care for all, you cry, and free education too! Well guess what? So did the Soviet Union and look what a bastion of enlightenment and progress that turned out to be in its hideously murderous and repressive seventy-something year history. And guess what else? Cuba has been just as repressive and backward as it. Read Against All Hope and check out The Real Cuba and if you can look at the reality of the health care, education and living standard and still believe that Fidel Castro has been a positive influence for Cuba and role model for the world then you're a Moral Idiot.
7. You believe that 9/11 was an inside job. Another particular favourite of mine. In order to believe this one you must first believe that America is rotten to its core and that it will do anything in order to promote its interests, including killing 3000 of its own citizens. Popular Mechanics profoundly debunks all of the hilarious and bogus claims about rate of building collapse, use of explosives, explosive pods on the 767s and the collapse of Tower 7. Even more hilarious than the 9/11 conspiracy sites are the ones that debunk the Popular Mechanics debunking. Here's a question. If the administration's goal (which had only been in office for eight months so obviously they were speedy workers) was to give it a cause to invade Afghanistan, and then Iraq, then why did it need four aircraft? Assuming that the conspiracy is true then one plane into the WTC might frighten people but not anger them into action so I can see that a second would be necessary. But a third? And a fourth? And why 'bring down' Tower 7 at all? It's completely unnecessary to the overall plot. The key, for me, was the reaction of George W Bush when told of the attacks. He sits there looking like a stunned mullet without a clue what to do for nearly ten minutes. If it was a set up then he would have been immediately up on his feet, in front of a camera, marshalling the country and showing himself to be a man of action in time of crisis. Conspiracy theories always rely on thousands of people keeping quiet and the hyper-competence of government. In spite of proving itself to be less than competent on a near daily basis on a wide range of issues it's still possible to believe that on this one issue it's hyper-competent. Want more proof? If there was something in it then the traitors at the New York Times would have gone looking, found one of those thousands of people keeping quiet and exposed it to the world like they have with so many other national security secrets. So, despite a plethora of incontrovertible evidence you continue to be driven by ideological hatred and maintain your lunatic position. If you believe that 9/11 was an inside job then you're a Moral Idiot.
8. You believe we should sign the Kyoto Protocol. Hmmm, you say, why is there a moral aspect to this? If you disagree with me then aren't I just an idiot and not a moral idiot? Good question, I'm glad you asked. A fully implemented Kyoto Protocol (the US and Australia sign, China and India etc are exempt) would cost the world $20 trillion and save 0.1C by 2050 and, if you're wondering, there's not much argument on those figures from either side of the political spectrum. The moral aspect comes into play in that it is completely immoral to spend such a massive sum of money on a completely symbolic project when millions of people in the world currently don't have access to clean drinking water, don't get enough to eat, suffer from diseases that were eradicated in the West decades ago (malaria, polio, cholera etc), live in totalitarian African regimes and have an average life expectancy of about 35. When the environmentalist Bjorn Lomberg gathered representatives from countries affected by these issues and created the Copenhagen Consensus Centre they came out with a report ranking the priority that aid money should be spent (in their case they assigned a hypothetical $50 billion). The first of the climate change issues, the Kyoto Protocol, ranked 27th on their list of 40. If you want to hamstring the US economy (the greatest provider of humanitarian aid on the planet) and transfer money to China and Russia through carbon trading schemes (which is their net effect) while we have a here and now crisis in Africa then your values are inverted and you're a Moral Idiot.
9. You believe that socialism is still the answer. The fact is that socialism is still surprisingly popular, especially among the world's academics and others that suck at the public teat. And just as a point of clarification - Marx made no distinction between communism and socialism - which is why I always use the latter, more accurate term (after all, it was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). The theory is that 'we just haven't got it right yet' and we still need to do some fine tuning. Well, Stalin fine tuned 20 million of his compatriots into early graves, but even he was left for metaphorical dead by Chairman Mao whose Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution and other assorted attempts at fine tuning socialism into something workable required the digging of 40 million graves in order to bury the evidence of failure. Those are extreme cases, you say, clutching feebly to the last straws of logic still left in your argument. Really? How many million did the Vietnamese knock off with their fine tuning? The Cambodians? And what about our current favourite socialists, those crazy North Koreans? The evidence against socialism is overwhelmingly stronger than the evidence in support of Global Warming but our pinko friends still reject the socialist reality while embracing wholeheartedly the results of computer climate models that have never shown to be remotely accurate even once. The European Union is the latest organisation to impose its socialist ideology. Do you know that the EU costs 600 billion Euros a year to operate? All it has done is add in a layer of unelected, totalitarian ideologues and detract spectacularly from economic development. Thus, the socialist EU is being completely outperformed by free market economies such as the US and Australia. But that's OK because they'll just keep fine tuning until they get it just right. How many millions of lives that costs is yet to be tallied. If you believe that socialism is still the answer then you're a Moral Idiot.
10. You support the troops but don't support the war. The people that are most vocal in their opposition to the war point to the goings on at Abu Ghraib, the killing of civilians by the US military and claim that it is all about funding Halliburton and Big Oil not to mention that it's an 'illegal' war. Saying that they support the troops but not the war is a way of protecting themselves from claims of being anti-military. If you believe in the troops then how can you support them if they tortured and killed at Abu Ghraib? If you believe in the troops then how can you support them if they wantonly kill Iraqi civilians? If you believe in the troops then how can you support them if they're really working for Halliburton and Big Oil? If you believe in the troops then how can you support them if the war is illegal in the first place? How can you support those troops that volunteered for service after the war started, after Abu Ghraib and in the 'knowledge' that it is a blood war fought for the profit of a few companies? If you claim to support the troops but don't support the war then you're a Moral Idiot.
How funny is the news that a 1922 edition of The Washington Post contained...shock, horror...a headline that would look right at home in the here and now...
D.C. resident John Lockwood was conducting research at the Library of Congress and came across an intriguing Page 2 headline in the Nov. 2, 1922 edition of The Washington Post: "Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt."
No doubt the article didn't list CO2 emissions as the cause. I haven't seen the full article anywhere. If anyone finds it then send it to me.
The 1922 article, obtained by Inside the Beltway, goes on to mention "great masses of ice have now been replaced by moraines of earth and stones," and "at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared."
And they came back again subsequently in order to disappear once again so that the Climate Faithful can blame things on man made CO2...
"This was one of several such articles I have found at the Library of Congress for the 1920s and 1930s," says Mr. Lockwood. "I had read of the just-released NASA estimates, that four of the 10 hottest years in the U.S. were actually in the 1930s, with 1934 the hottest of all."
That's right. After four of the hottest years being in the 1930s the world entered a cooling phase lasting from 1940 to the mid-1970s. Solar activity clearly shows that we're going to get a little bit warmer before entering into a cool phase probably akin to the Little Ice Age.
Our future climate was decided well in advance of pumping CO2, NH4, O3 or anything else into the atmosphere but to those with the enviro-religion called global warming that doesn't matter.
I tune in to the ABC every so often to watch David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz present At The Movies, a weekly show dedicated to reviewing the latest movie releases. On the whole they do a pretty good job though when films stray into political territory then their personal biases tend to be on clear display, which is always unfortunate for Pomeranz, as she's so profoundly ignorant of history, economics and science etc. Stratton, however, usually maintains his trademark aloofness while Margaret beclowns herself.
In his recent review of This Is England, an apparently outstanding movie well received by critics and in line for a number of awards, one would think, Stratton let slip one of the standard lines used by the left to diminish the positive outcomes of the early 1980s conservative governments.
It’s July, 1983, a year after the end of the Falklands War. Shaun, (THOMAS TURGOOSE), lives with his Mum, Cynth, (JO HARTLEY), in a scruffy seaside town in North Yorkshire. His Dad was killed in the war.
Shaun gets teased a lot, but he can stand up for himself. Woody, (JOE GILGUN), leader of a gang of skinheads, takes a liking to Shaun and invites him to join them. At last he has a family.
But things change when Combo, (STEPHEN GRAHAM) comes out of prison; he’s a passionate supporter of the racist National Front, and he causes a split in the gang.
Shaun, impressed with what Combo has to say about his father’s memory, stays with his faction, but Combo is getting more and more irrational.
Writer-director Shane Meadows has made a number of interesting films, some better than others, but THIS IS ENGLAND is his most assured achievement to date.
It’s autobiographical to a degree – Meadows himself joined a skinhead gang in the early 80s – and it goes a long way towards explaining the roots of racially motivated violence bordering on fascism.
The Australian film ROMPER STOMPER explored similar territory, but lacked the insights Meadows brings to the material.
Young Thomas Turgoose is quite remarkable as the boy who is older and tougher than he looks, and the supporting cast is excellent, too, with a special nod to ROSAMUND HANSON who plays Smell, a strange girl with a Boy George fixation.
The underlying theme – the effect of Margaret Thatcher’s policies on the less prosperous parts of Britain – adds to the surprises and the accomplishments of this very fine, very disturbing film.
Now, there was nothing wrong with the review until the last, unnecessary, paragraph.
Do people remember the societal destruction being wrought in the United Kingdom by a whole host of leftist institutions? The miners' strikes? The media wars? The place was heading into the abyss at a terrific rate with those at the bottom of society affected the most.
Thatcher's policies, far from being a negative for those less prosperous parts of Britain, were, in fact, their salvation.
But that's a pill too bitter for faux intellectuals like Stratton to swallow in spite of its reality. He should stick to reviewing what he's watching and not reading political messages into things when they don't exist.
