RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.