RUTHFULLY YOURS

The running melodrama of the world climate-change talks reassembled in Paris this week, and word from the worthies is that this time the 196 nations are poised for a momentous breakthrough. Well, not quite. The politicians want a deal so badly that they’ll accept anything that can pass as one, but it won’t amount to much.

Not that you’d know this from the grandiose rhetoric. President Obama called it an historical “turning point,” the “moment we finally determined we would save our planet.” French President François Hollande declared: “Never have the stakes of an international meeting been so high, since what is at stake is the future of the planet, the future of life.” And Pope Francis chimed in that “if I may use a strong word I would say that we are at the edge of suicide.” The theme is Apocalypse Right Now.
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The last climate talks collapsed in 2009 amid differences between rich and developing nations. The International Energy Agency estimates developing countries will emit 70% of world CO2 by 2030 and contribute 170% of emissions increases between now and then. Without their participation in a deal, atmospheric CO2 will continue to accumulate whatever the U.S. does.

Senator Gardner was a Congressman who defeated Mark Udall the Incumbent Democrat Senator in 2014…rsk
Chaos in the Middle East has diverted Western eyes, but Kim Jong Un’s reign of terror in North Korea continues. Last month one high-ranking official was conspicuously absent from an important military funeral, leading to speculation of a new purge. On Oct. 10, North Korea marked the 70th anniversary of its ruling Workers’ Party with a military parade. “Our party can confidently state,” Mr. Kim said in a speech, “that our revolutionary armament today can deal with any kind of war U.S. imperialists ask for.”

It is time for the U.S. to counter this forgotten maniac. North Korea is a proliferator that has tested nuclear weapons on three separate occasions in violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions. This past weekend it test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine. That attempt failed, but Mr. Kim will try again. “They have the weapons, and they have the ability to miniaturize those weapons, and they have the ability to put them on a rocket that can range the homelands,” Adm. William Gortney, head of the U.S. Northern Command, said in October.

For civilisation to continue in the civilised parts of the world, we have to seal off the Middle East and the pestilence it nurtures. The sooner we start that process, the better. The latest barbarities in Paris are a good enough excuse>
At the time of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, President Bush asked rhetorically if the Iraqi people deserved to be ruled by dictators in perpetuity. Shouldn’t they have the opportunity to embrace democracy and appreciate its benefits, as in the good countries on the planet? Subsequent events proved those liberated from Saddam Hussein unable and unwilling to set aside their tribal hatreds and religious animosities, in effect proving President Bush wrong.

Cut to the current day. Parts of Iraq and Syria are now controlled by ISIS which does the basic functions of a state, including collecting garbage, running schools and hospitals, and so on. ISIS also likes to inflict murder and mayhem on other countries near and far. The state of ISIS runs at a loss so it is kept in business by funding originating in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and by support from Turkey and the United States.

You read the last bit correctly. ISIS does not grow enough food to keep body and soul together. Starvation is averted by imported grain, supply of which is organised by UN agencies with the full approval of the United States. At the same time the United States is conducting an air campaign against ISIS — but that is more aimed at behaviour modification of the regime, rather than changing facts on the ground. Australia is contributing to this Children’s Crusade-level endeavour, with our aircraft operating under rules of engagement which make them ineffectual.

The consummate sleazebag, thief and all-round corruptocrat who launched and shaped the UN effort to rid the world of CO2 has died, appropriately enough as his heirs gather in Paris to rob the world blind. Good riddance
Editor’s note: Five years ago, Quadrant Online published this profile of Maurice Strong (left), the man who, more than any other, redefined a trace gas as the meal ticket for tens of thousands of climate functionaries — the same people whose light-fingered heirs are today gathered in Paris. To mark his passing, we once again present John Izzard’s profile of the man who did very nicely by costing everyone else dearly.

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The Yellow Brick Road to Climate Change

January has certainly been a defining month in the quest for truth about climate change, and the custodians of that “truth” aren’t looking that flash at the moment. Indeed in the month of January some of the major doomsday prophecies unravelled and the prophets themselves seemed to undergo vows of silence. Kevin Rudd, Penny Wong, Tim Flannery — who are never lost for words — seemed, well… totally lost for words!

Like Dorothy, Lion, Tin Man and Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, we’ve all been dancing down the Yellow Brick Road of “settled science” in search of answers from the Emerald City, only to find that what we suspected all along — the Wizard has been telling us fibs.

But who exactly is the Wizard? And where did this seeming-madness all begin?

Undoubtedly there are many “wizards”, but the man behind the green curtain, the man who managed to get the climate industry to where it is today is a mild mannered character by the name of Maurice Strong. The whole climate change business, and it is a business, started with Mr Strong.

The Schengen Agreement led to Europe’s borderless Schengen Area. comprising 26 European countries that have abolished passport and any other type of border control at their common borders, also referred to as internal borders. It mostly functions as a single country for international travel purposes. rsk
Watching all the videos and news coverage of Americans blitzing the stores on the day after Thanksgiving, the day we know as Black Friday, I found myself thinking about our priorities. The news cycle reminds me daily that they aren’t quite in order. I learned last Friday from Reuters that Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the malevolent author of the latest terrorist attacks in Paris, “boasted of the ease with which he had re-entered Europe from Syria via Greece two months earlier, exploiting the confusion of the migrant crisis and the continent’s passport-free Schengen system….”

Now, I know there are some who really think the Schengen Agreement is an indispensable part of the newer, better, enlightened Europe. But I’m going to be straight with you about this: it strikes me as odd that anyone could place so much emphasis on passport-free travel as a measure of our civilisation’s moral worth. After all, those most likely to be titillated by the Schengen ideal are generally the same people who think the government should decide what kind of lightbulbs we use in our homes. How odd that these obsessed micro-managers become total anarchists at the border, one of the few places the state should have a say.