A place where I can lament the changing times; for eccentric comments on current affairs and for unfashionable views, expressed I hope, in cogent style; also occasional cris de coeur largely concerned, I regret to say, with myself.
Well we can't have too many depressive posts - er can we?
Anyway my bouquet goes to ANONYMOUS who have launched a DDOS attack on Zimbabwe government websites according to The Register
The organisation states:
"We are targeting Mugabe and his regime in the ZanuPF who have outlawed the free press and threaten to sue anyone publishing Wikileaks."
Good luck to them! Anything that interferes with the appalling Mugabe and his bunch of thugs gets a hearty cheer from me.
Until the next time
I genuinely wish you a Happy New Year, though given the financial gloom that seems continually to deepen with each passing week and the ever expanding government control that prevails, a "Happy New Year" does seem rather a forlorn hope.
Meanwhile Frank Davis in his latest posting says:
"But for myself I believe that it is one of the most terrible things that can be done to a human being, to deprive them of friendship and community, to isolate and exclude them from civil society. What can be more destructive to anyone's well-being?
And for what? Simply to make people stop smoking. To deprive them of one of life's simple pleasures. To force them to comply with medical orthodoxy. To make them live "healthy" lives, where "health" is mere longevity, devoid of any other considerations of social or psychological well-being."
Eloquent as ever, he is of course, talking about the absurd smoking ban introduced in England in 2007 (and in France January 2008) and shortly to begin in Spain, as if those poor people didn't already have enough problems.
I loved the quote from a World War II veteran who, cursing the smoking ban in the cold outside a pub, said "The fascists have won after all... they say it's for my health - I'm 85 for fuck's sake!"
Happy New Year!
Until the next time
The BBC reports today that the government has given the go-ahead to the debating of on-line petitions in the House of Commons, although only under the private member's bill procedure, which is easily blocked.
Well, all you frustrated smokers, 20-odd percent of the population, here's your opportunity. This wants very careful thought though - I think that a petition should be eminently moderate and I think that there should be only one grand petition.
Until the next time.
I hope that you had a peaceful and plentiful Christmas, faced as you all you are with what is shaping up to be an austere 2011 (except of course for the bankers amongst you whose bonuses I understand, will be robust).
I see that in England, nine suspects have been remanded in custody charged with conspiring to cause explosions. All well and good; I hope that they are thrown out of the country if guilty.
However, the BBC report contains a paragraph which did shock me deeply:
Five of the defendants are also facing a third charge of possessing documents and records containing information likely to be of use to terrorists.
What were these "documents" I wonder? A life story of Guy Fawkes? A map of London? I find it incredible that anyone in a so-called free country (which of course it isn't) can be charged with the "possession of documents" unless of course the documents in question were stolen, in which case they would be charged with "stealing documents" wouldn't they?
So the English are now having to be careful what they read?
Meanwhile the New York Times reports:
"Allegations against them, the police said, included downloading and researching material from the Internet."
That of course changes everything: researching material from the Internet? Whatever next?
To me this is as disgraceful as the sham trial in Russia of Mikhail Khordokovsky on what are apparently trumped-up embezzlement charges. That one really stinks I think.
Here's an extract from a Daily Telegraph analysis:
"At times too during the trial it seemed like the defence would win. Several high profile figures, including a former Putin trade minister who is head of the Russia's largest state-owned bank, testified to Mr Khodorkovsky's and Mr Lebedev's innocence. They were also absolved by their auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers.
In the end, the semblance of true process was, as an American diplomat wrote in a leaked embassy cable last November, like putting "lipstick on a pig". The political reality is that powerful people are determined to keep Mr Khodorkovsky behind bars. This is partly because they fear a challenge to the redistribution of assets that followed Mr Khodorkovsky's downfall. More generally though, Mr Khodorkovsky's incarceration has become harder to overturn as it has become a central part of the narrative of Mr Putin's political career."
Big Government...
Grrr!
Until the next time
No "happy holidays" nonsense for me, nor any stupid "Winter Festival." If this "offends" anyone, well, tough! It might not be the correct, true Christmas spirit, but I grew up with Christmas as with many other things, and I see no reason why I should yield to the revisionists.
So, from Western Europe, racked with "global warming" (two feet of snow on the roof of Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris today) I wish you all as politically incorrect a Christmas as is possible in these straitened times.
So here's a silly festive video for you.
Quite obviously, I mentioned that African "Presidents" (i.e. in many cases dictators) must be able to rely on their armies, and today we have news of the repellent "Dr" Robert Gabriel Mugabe; I have written numerous times on the subject of this extraordinary survivor, for example in my "Bandits" series a couple of years ago.
The Daily Telegraph reports that he is to impose an election on an unwilling populace and to ensure a proper democratic outcome, has sent forces out over the country to "persuade" the electorate that their best interests lie in supporting Zanu PF, "best interests" in this case meaning such as staying alive or retaining one's legs. He says he is ready to "bury the opposition." How reassuring; is he referring perhaps to the free graves that the Zimbabwean government offered to the thousands of cholera victims?
I do desperately hope that Mugabe's army proves to be unreliable, but I fear that my hopes are likely to be unfulfilled.
Meanwhile, today the New York Times has a piece showing some Zimbabwean reality - health-care for peanuts or other barter items:
Image source: New York Times
Never forget that under Ian Smith's government, the country, then called Rhodesia, was arguably one of the most prosperous on the continent.
Until the next time
Those of you who have followed my suggestion to visit Dr John Ray's Greenie Watch, will probably know about this already, but for those who haven't...
"This [Greenie Watch] is one of TWO skeptical blogs that I update daily. During my research career as a social scientist, I was appalled at how much writing in my field was scientifically lacking -- and I often said so in detail in the many academic journal articles I had published in that field. I eventually gave up social science research, however, because no data ever seemed to change the views of its practitioners. I hoped that such obtuseness was confined to the social scientists but now that I have shifted my attention to health related science and climate related science, I find the same impermeability to facts and logic. Hence this blog and my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC blog. I may add that I did not come to either health or environmental research entirely without credentials. I had several academic papers published in both fields during my social science research career"
The Food & Health Skeptic blog carries this nice quote from the late Bertrand Russell:
Bertrand Russell could have been talking about today's conventional dietary "wisdom" when he said: "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”
Finally I heartily recommend this piece from the same blog concerning the "five a day" fruit and vegetable advice that the British and French governments keep harping on about!
EDIT: I see that Dr Ray "has no time for smokers", an opinion to which of course he is perfectly entitled; nevertheless he is satisfyingly robust on other topics!
Until the next time
As if that beleaguered continent needed another!
This time it's a bloke called (unpronounceably) Gbagbo who thinks that he is president of the Ivory Coast or Côte d'Ivoire. It seems that he might not be following a presidential "run-off" that took place recently. It seems that Gbagbo (did I get that right?) follows Stalin's dictum that "it doesn't matter who voted for whom; what is important is who counts the votes." Or in this case who has an army that is for the time being, loyal - always a bit tricky where the Afs are concerned.
The Daily Telegraph article includes an intriguing paragraph:
Earlier on Saturday masked men in military uniforms opened fire on the UN base. No one was injured, but the incident underscores the perilous position of the 10,000-strong mission that includes personnel from Ireland, France and Poland. UNOCI deployed in 2004 to help keep the peace after civil war divided the country, once one of Africa's most stable.
10,000-strong says the article. These are modern western-trained troops, one hopes for their sakes, equipped with proper stuff. Why didn't they vaporise these scum? The problem with these "peace-keeping" missions is that their rules of engagement are probably crap - as we saw with the Dutch in Bosnia.
Give them proper rules: let them blow away these shitheads; I'm fed up with hearing about these bloody people; I suppose Gbagbo won't suffer too much: he's probably got billions salted away like the rest of them - even that appalling turd "Omar al-Basher" in Sudan (according to Wikileaks). Of course he's an "al"; he would be wouldn't he?
Grrrr!
Until the next time
Occasionally one reads of Hitler's "illegal" régime". No it wasn't: Hitler was democratically elected. Similarly, Hugo Chavez, whom I like to call "Raspberry Beret". Once again, according to the New York Times, Chavez has decided to adopt dictatorial powers; this is how Hitler started. If one is permitted to rule by decree, then nothing short of a revolt by the armed forces could stop Chavez theoretically proclaiming himself king.
I have written a number of times about this deranged maniac, so after a quietish period it is fun (as I do not live in Venezuela) to have him back again. For more, just search for "Chavez" on this blog.
Until the next time
From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
Cancun, Mexico
I usually add some gentle humor to these reports. Not today. Read this and weep. Notwithstanding the carefully-orchestrated propaganda to the effect that nothing much will be decided at the UN climate conference here in Cancun, the decisions to be made here this week signal nothing less than the abdication of the West. The governing class in what was once proudly known as the Free World is silently, casually letting go of liberty, prosperity, and even democracy itself. No one in the mainstream media will tell you this, not so much because they do not see as because they do not bl**dy care.
The 33-page Note (FCCC/AWGLCA/2010/CRP.2) by the Chairman of the “Ad-Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Co-operative Action under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change”, entitled Possible elements of the outcome, reveals all. Or, rather, it reveals nothing, unless one understands what the complex, obscure jargon means. All UNFCCC documents at the Cancun conference, specifically including Possible elements of the outcome, are drafted with what is called “transparent impenetrability”. The intention is that the documents should not be understood, but that later we shall be told they were in the public domain all the time, so what are we complaining about?
Since the Chairman’s note is very long, I shall summarize the main points:
Finance: Western countries will jointly provide $100 billion a year by 2020 to an unnamed new UN Fund. To keep this sum up with GDP growth, the West may commit itself to pay 1.5% of GDP to the UN each year. That is more than twice the 0.7% of GDP that the UN has recommended the West to pay in foreign aid for the past half century. Several hundred of the provisions in the Chairman’s note will impose huge financial costs on the nations of the West.
The world-government Secretariat: In all but name, the UN Convention’s Secretariat will become a world government directly controlling hundreds of global, supranational, regional, national and sub-national bureaucracies. It will receive the vast sum of taxpayers’ money ostensibly paid by the West to the Third World for adaptation to the supposed adverse consequences of imagined (and imaginary) “global warming”.
Bureaucracy: Hundreds of new interlocking bureaucracies answerable to the world-government Secretariat will vastly extend its power and reach. In an explicit mirroring of the European Union’s method of enforcing the will of its unelected Kommissars on the groaning peoples of that benighted continent, the civil servants of nation states will come to see themselves as servants of the greater empire of the Secretariat, carrying out its ukases and diktats whatever the will of the nation states’ governments.
Many of the new bureaucracies are disguised as “capacity-building in developing countries”. This has nothing to do with growing the economies or industries of poorer nations. It turns out to mean the installation of hundreds of bureaucratic offices answerable to the Secretariat in numerous countries around the world. Who pays? You do, gentle taxpayer.
Babylon, Byzantium, the later Ottoman Empire, the formidable bureaucracy of Nazi Germany, the vast empire of 27,000 paper-shufflers at the European Union: add all of these together and multiply by 100 and you still do not reach the sheer size, cost, power and reach of these new subsidiaries of the Secretariat.
In addition to multiple new bureaucracies in every one of the 193 states parties to the Convention, there will be an Adaptation Framework Body, a Least Developed Countries’ Adaptation Planning Body, an Adaptation Committee, Regional Network Centers, an International Center to Enhance Adaptation Research, National Adaptation Institutions, a Body to Clarify Assumptins and Conditions in National Greenhouse-Gas Emission Reductions Pledges, a Negotiating Body for an Overall Level of Ambition for Aggregate Emission Reductions and Individual Targets, an Office to Revise Guidelines for National Communications, a Multilateral Communications Process Office, a Body for the Process to Develop Modalities and Guidelines for the Compliance Process, a Registry of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions by Developed Countries, a Body to Supervise the Process for Understanding Diversity of Mitigation Actions Submitted and Support Needed, a Body to Develop Modalities for the Registry of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions, an Office of International Consultation and Analysis; an Office to Conduct a Work Program for Development of Various Modalities and Guidelines; a network of Developing Countries’ National Forest Strategy Action Plan Offices; a network of National Forest Reference Emission Level And/Or Forest Reference Level Bodies; a network of National Forest Monitoring Systems; an Office of the Work Program on Agriculture to Enhance the Implementation of Article 4, Paragraph 1(c) of the Convention Taking Into Account Paragraph 31; one or more Mechanisms to Establish a Market-Based Approach to Enhance the Cost-Effectiveness Of And To Promote Mitigation Actions; a Forum on the Impact of the Implementation of Response Measures; a Work Program Office to Address the Impact of the Implementation of Response Measures; a Body to Review the Needs of Developing Countries for Financial Resources to Address Climate Change and Identify Options for Mobilization of Those Resources; a Fund in Addition to the Copenhagen Green Fund; an Interim Secretariat for the Design Phase of the New Fund; a New Body to Assist the Conference of the Parties in Exercising its Functions with respect to the Financial Mechanism; a Body to Launch a Process to Further Define the Roles and Functions of the New Body to Assist the Conference of the Parties in Exercising its Functions with respect to the Financial Mechanism; a Technology Executive Committee; a Climate Technology Center and Network; a Network of National, Regional, Sectoral and International Technology Centers, Networks, Organization and Initiatives; Twinning Centers for Promotion of North-South, South-South and Triangular Partnerships with a View to Encouraging Co-operative Research and Development; an Expert Workshop on the Operational Modalities of the Technology Mechanism; an International Insurance Facility; a Work Program Body for Policy Approaches and Positive Incentives on Issues Relating to Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries; a Body to Implement a Work Program on the Impact of the Implementation of Response Measures; and a Body to Develop Modalities for the Operationalization of the Work Program on the Impact of the Implementation of Response Measures.
The world government’s powers: The Secretariat will have the power not merely to invite nation states to perform their obligations under the climate-change Convention, but to compel them to do so. Nation states are to be ordered to collect, compile and submit vast quantities of information, in a manner and form to be specified by the secretariat and its growing army of subsidiary bodies. Between them, they will be given new powers to verify the information, to review it and, on the basis of that review, to tell nation states what they can and cannot do.
Continuous expansion: The verb “enhance”, in its various forms, occurs at least 28 times in the Chairman’s note, Similar verbs, such as “strengthen” and “extend”, and adjectives such as “scaled-up”, “new” and “additional”, are also frequently deployed, particularly in relation to funding at the expense of Western taxpayers. If all of the “enhancements” proposed in the note were carried out, the cost would comfortably exceed the annual $100 billion (or, for that matter, the 1.5% of GDP) that the note mentions as the cost to the West over the coming decade.
Intellectual property in inventions: Holders of patents, particularly in fields related to “global warming” and its mitigation, will be obliged to transfer the benefits of their inventiveness to developing countries without payment of royalties. This is nowhere explicitly stated in the Chairman’s note, but the transfer of technology is mentioned about 20 times in the draft, suggesting that the intention is still to carry out the explicit provision in the defunct Copenhagen Treaty draft of 15 September 2009 to this effect.
Insurance: The Secretariat proposes, in effect, to interfere so greatly in the operation of the worldwide insurance market that it will cease to be a free market, with the usual severely adverse consequences to everyone in that market.
The free market: The failed Copenhagen Treaty draft stipulated that the “government” that would be established would have the power to set the rules of all formerly free markets. There would be no such thing as free markets any more. In Cancun, the Chairman’s note merely says that various “market mechanisms” may be exploited by the Secretariat and by the parties to the Convention: but references to these “market mechanisms” are frequent enough to suggest that the intention remains to stamp out free markets worldwide.
Knowledge is power: The Chairman’s note contains numerous references to a multitude of new as well as existing obligations on nation states to provide information to the Secretariat, in a form and manner which it will dictate. The hand of the EU is very visible here.
It grabbed power from the member-states in four stages: first, acting merely as a secretariat to ensure stable supplies of coal and steel to rebuild Europe after the Second World War; then as a registry requiring member states to supply it with ever more information; then as a review body determining on the basis of the information supplied by the member states whether they were complying with their obligations on the ever-lengthier and more complex body of European treaties; and finally as the ultimate law-making authority, to which all elected parliaments, explicitly including the European “Parliament”, were and are subject. Under the Cancun propsoals, the Secretariat is following the path that the plague of EU officials here have no doubt eagerly advised it to follow. It is now taking numerous powers not merely to require information from nation states but to hold them to account for their supposed international obligations under the climate-change Convention on the basis of the information the nations are now to be compelled to supply.
Propaganda: The Chairman’s note contains several mentions of the notion that the peoples of the world need to be told more about climate change. Here, too, there is a parallel with the EU, which administers a propaganda fund of some $250 million a year purely to advertise its own wonderfulness to an increasingly sceptical population. The IPCC already spends millions every year with PR agencies, asking them to find new ways of making its blood-curdling message more widely understood and feared among ordinary people. The Secretariat already has the advantage of an uncritical, acquiescent, scientifically illiterate, economically innumerate and just plain dumb news media: now it will have a propaganda fund to play with as well.
Damage caused by The Process: At the insistence of sensible nation states such as the United States, the Czech Republic, Japan, Canada, and Italy, the Cancun outcome acknowledges that The Process is causing, and will cause, considerable economic damage, delicately described in the Chairman’s note as “unintended side-effects of implementing climate-change response measures”. The solution? Consideration of the catastrophic economic consequences of the Secretariat’s heroically lunatic decisions will fall under the control of – yup – the Secretariat. Admire its sheer gall.
Damage to world trade: As the power, wealth and reach of the Secretariat grow, it finds itself rubbing uncomfortably up against other supranational organizations. In particular, the World Trade Organization has been getting antsy about the numerous aspects of the Secretariat’s proposals that constitute restrictions on international trade. At several points, the Chairman’s note expresses the “decision” – in fact, no more than an opinion and a questionable one at that – that the Secretariat’s policies are not restrictive of trade.
The Canute provision: The conference will reaffirm the decision of its predecessor in Copenhagen this time last year “to hold the increase in global average temperature below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels”, just like that. In fact, temperature in central England, and by implication globally, rose 2.2 Celsius in the 40 years 1695-1735, as the Sun began to recover from its 11,400-year activity minimum, and rose again by 0.74 C in the 20th century. There has been no warming in the 21st century, but we are already well over 2 Celsius degrees above pre-industrial levels. The Canute provision, as some delegates have dubbed it (after the Danish king of early England who famously taught his courtiers the limitations of his power and, a fortiori, theirs when he set up his throne on the beach and commanded sea level not to rise, whereupon the tide came in as usual and wet the royal feet), shows the disconnect between The Process and reality.
Omissions: There are several highly-significant omissions, which jointly and severally establish that the central intent of The Process no longer has anything to do with the climate, if it ever had. The objective is greatly to empower and still more greatly to enrich the international classe politique at the expense of the peoples of the West, using the climate as a pretext, so as to copy the European Union by installing in perpetuity what some delegates here are calling “transnational perma-Socialism” beyond the reach or recall of any electorate. Here are the key omissions:
How did this monstrous transfer of power from once-proud, once-sovereign, once-democratic nations to the corrupt, unelected Secretariat come about? The story begins with Sir Maurice Strong, an immensely wealthy UN bureaucrat from Canada who, a quarter of a century ago, established the IPCC as an intergovernmental, political body rather than as a scientific body precisely so that it could be maneuvered into assisting in the UN’s long-term aim, reiterated at a summit of senior UN officials this May by Ban Ki-Moon himself, of extinguishing national sovereignty and establishing a world government.
The Process began in earnest in 1988, when the IPCC was established. Shortly thereafter, on a June day in Washington DC deliberately chosen by Al Gore because it was unusually hot, his political ally and financial benefactor James Hansen appeared before a Congressional committee and put before it a wildly-exaggerated graph predicting global warming over the coming 20 or 30 years. Yet June 2008, the 20th anniversary of his testimony, was cooler globally than June 1988, and worldwide warming has happened at less than half the rate he predicted.
The Rio Earth Summit in 1992 allowed environmental groups and world “leaders” to grandstand together. From that summit emerged the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which began holding annual conferences on “global warming”.
The Kyoto Protocol in 1997 committed its signatories to cut back their national CO2 emissions to 1990 levels by 2012. Most are not going to make it. The US Senate, with Al Gore as its president, voted 95-0 to reject any treaty such as Kyoto, which bound only the West while leaving developing nations such as China to emit carbon dioxide without constraint.
Very little progress had been made by the time of the Bali conference in 2007: but at that conference a “road-map” was constructed that was to lead to a binding international treaty in Copenhagen in 2009.
Just one problem with that. The US Constitution provides that, even if the President has signed a treaty, his signature is meaningless unless the treaty has been debated in the Senate, which must ratify it by the votes of at least 67 of the 100 Senators. It became clear to everyone, after the Obama administration failed to cajole or bully even 60 Senators into passing the Waxman/Markey cap-and-tax Bill, that no climate treaty would pass the Senate.
Worse, the Secretariat grossly overreached itself. Believing its own propaganda to the effect that none but a few vexatious, fossil-funded sceptics believed that “global warming” would be small enough to be harmless, it drafted and posted up on its website a 186-page draft Treaty of Copenhagen, proposing to turn itself into an unelected world government with unlimited powers to impose direct taxation on member nations without representation, recourse or recall, to interfere directly in the environmental policies of individual nations, and to sweep away all free markets worldwide, replacing them with itself as the sole rulemaker in every marketplace (treaty draft, annex 1, articles 36-38). Some quotations from the draft reveal the sheer ambition of the UN:
“The scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention will be based on three basic pillars: government; facilitative mechanism; and financial mechanism. … The government will be ruled by the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change with the support of a new subsidiary body on adaptation, and of an Executive Board responsible for the management of the new funds and the related facilitative processes and bodies.” (Copenhagen Treaty draft of September 15, 2009, para. 38).
The three central powers that the UN had hoped to grant itself under the guise of Saving The Planet from alleged climate catastrophe were as follows:
“Government”: This use of the word “government” is the first use of the term to describe a world government in any international treaty draft.
“Financial mechanism”: The “financial mechanism” was a delicate phrase to describe a new power of the UN to levy unlimited taxation directly on the peoples of its member states: taxation without representation, and on a global scale.
“Facilitative mechanism”: This mechanism would, for the first time, have given the UN he power directly to coerce and compel compliance on the part of its member states, by force if necessary. The Treaty draft describes it as –
“… a facilitative mechanism drawn up to facilitate the design, adoption and carrying out of public policies, as the prevailing instrument, to which the market rules and related dynamics should be subordinate.”
In short, there was to be a New World Order, with a “government” having at its command a “financial mechanism” in the form of unlimited rights to tax the world’s citizen’s directly, and a “facilitative mechanism” that would bring the rules of all formerly free markets under the direct control of the new UN “government”, aided by an already-expanding series of bureaucracies.
At no point anywhere in the 186 pages of the Treaty draft do the words “democracy”, “election”, “ballot”, or “vote” appear. As the EU has already demonstrated, the transfer of powers from sovereign democracies to supranational entities brings those democracies to an end. At the supranational level, in the UN, in the EU and in the proposed world government, decisions are not made by anyone whom we, the voters, have elected to make such decisions.
The exposure of the draft treaty in major international news media panicked the UN into abandoning the draft before the Copenhagen conference even began. Instead, the UN is now legislating crabwise, as the European Union does, with a series of successive annual agreements, the last of which was the Copenhagen Accord, each transferring more power and wealth from individual nations to its supranational bureaucracy. The latest of these agreements is being finalized here in Cancun.
The European Union, which has stealthily stamped out democracy over the past half-century by a series of treaties each transferring a little more power and wealth from elected hands in the member states to unelected hands in Brussels, has been advising the Secretariat on how to do the same on a global scale.
After the spectacular bloody nose the Secretariat got in Copenhagen, it was most anxious not to endure a second failure in Cancun. To this end, it obtained the agreement of the German government to host a monthly series of conferences in Bonn in the early part of 2010, some of which were open to outside observers and some were behind closed doors in a comfortable suburban palace, where the new way of legislating for the world – in secret – first came into use.
The Chinese regime, anxious to get a piece of the action, agreed to host an additional session in Tientsin a few weeks ago. The purpose of this near-perpetual international junketing – which the national delegates have greatly enjoyed at our expense – was to make sure that nearly all of the elements in the Cancun agreement were firmly in draft and agreed well before Cancun, so as to avoid what too many journalists have tediously and obviously described as a “Mexican stand-off”.
It is precisely because of all this massive and expensive preparation that the note by the Chairman, whose main points are summarized above, may well reflect what is finally decided and announced here in a couple of days’ time. The Chairman is not simply guessing: this Note reflects what the Secretariat now confidently expects to get away with.
However, following the Copenhagen disaster, our grim future New Masters are taking no chances. They persuaded their friends in the mainstream news media, who cannot now easily back out of their original declarations of blind faith in the Church of “Global Warming” and are as anxious not to lose face as the Secretariat is, to put it about that at Cancun this year and even at Durban next year very little of substance will occur.
The intention is that, after not one but two international climate conferences, the second of them in Rio in 2012 on the 20th anniversary of the Earth Summit that began it all, the Secretariat will have become so wealthy and will have accreted so much power to itself that no one – not even the US Senate – will dare to resist ratifying the Treaty of Rio that brings democracy to an end worldwide and fulfils Lord Mandelson’s recent statement that “we are now living in a post-democratic age.”
Over my dead body. The people know best what is best for the people. The governing class no doubt knows what is best for the governing class, but does not necessarily know what is best for the people, and must always be kept in check by the ballot-box.
If we are to have a world government at all (and, as the science of “global warming” alarm continues to collapse, the current pretext for world domination by a privileged few is wearing more than a little thin), then it is essential that the world government should be an elected government, and that, as Article 1, Section 1 of the US Constitution makes plain when it grants “All legislative power” to the elected Congress and to the now-elected Senate, none shall make laws for the world or impose taxes upon the world except those whom the people of the world have elected by universal secret ballot.
How can we, the people, defeat the Secretariat and keep the democracy we love? Simply by informing our elected representatives of the scope, ambition, and detail of what is in the Cancun agreement. The agreement will not be called a “Treaty”, because the Senate, particularly after the mid-term elections, will not pass it. But it can still be imposed upon us by the heavily Left-leaning Supreme Court, which no longer makes any pretense at judicial impartiality and may well decide, even if Congress does not, that the Cancun agreement shall stand part of US law on the ground that it is “customary international law”.
What to do? Send this blog posting to your legislators. It is their power, as well as yours, that is being taken away; their democracy, as well as yours, that will perish from the Earth unless this burgeoning nonsense is stopped.
*******************************************************************************
Until the next time.
Like many, I have noticed gathering clouds around the European Single Currency, the Euro, with pressure building owing to the colossal debts of both banks and indeed, states.'Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has told the BBC he fears the euro will face a "high noon" moment of reckoning early in the New Year.'
'"I sense that in the first few months of 2011 we [will] have a major crisis in the euro area," he told the BBC's business editor, Robert Peston.'
Yes, this IS the Gordon Brown who sold £15 billion worth of Britain's gold, which would probably now be worth £40 billion or perhaps even more...
So despite all the evidence to the contrary, I am now convinced that the Euro will soar in 2011!
Until the next time.
Aaaaah! Look at this lovely picture of a polar bear cub riding on its mother’s back. It appeared in a number of papers this week with stories – inspired by the lobbying group WWF – suggesting that this was a new development, caused by global warming.Tobacco Free Hernando, partnering with the Hernando County Community Anti-Drug Coalition, its youth group Chill Smart and Hernando County Students Working Against Tobacco (SWAT), is asking the Hernando County School Board to revise its tobacco-free school campus policy and pass a comprehensive 100 percent tobacco-free policy designed to ensure a safe learning and work environment.
What is the definition of a 100 percent tobacco-free school district? A school district that prohibits tobacco use at all times, by anyone, on school grounds and at school events. This includes students, teachers, school staff, and visitors. This policy should create a culture at our schools that we are 100 percent tobacco-free and an expectation that other drugs are also not tolerated. Over 50 percent of a student’s day is spent at school, and their attitudes towards tobacco use are influenced by their peers and educators at school.
The Pro Children Act of 1994, reinforced by the Pro Children Act of 2001, states “No person shall permit smoking within any indoor facility owned or leased or contracted for and utilized by such person for provision of routine or regular kindergarten, elementary, or secondary education or library service to children.” The Tobacco Free Hernando Partnership believes that the current school district policy, which was adopted in February 2000 and consists of only two sentences, is not comprehensive enough and does not address all that this law directs.
Chill Smart and SWAT members have worked hard to collect hundreds of signatures, students and adults alike, on a petition that states “We the undersigned ask our local board of education to mandate a policy requiring all public school buildings, grounds, and events to be 100 percent tobacco free.”
They have also conducted a survey of Hernando County youth, and plan on presenting all of the facts they’ve obtained at a Hernando County School Board workshop in the near future.
They, along with the Health Department, had a table at Anderson Snow Park for the Great American Smoke-Out Nov. 18. They gave out bags with literature, information and items to help anyone that wanted to quit smoking. They also acquired signatures on the petitions, gave out other anti-tobacco items and picked up many cigarette butts from the park grounds.
Tobacco Free Hernando is a group of local individuals and community agencies who are committed to a Tobacco Free Hernando County. It is a community initiative targeting youth attitudes, behaviors and tobacco access, to mobilize and address tobacco policy and system changes in Hernando. The group consists of a wide array of adults from both the public and private sector, local youth leaders, and members of the general public. Tobacco Free Hernando is supported by a Community-Based Tobacco Prevention Grant through the Florida Department of Health, Bureau of Tobacco Prevention Programs.
Shari Noriega, Hernando County Community Anti-Drug Coalition
Celebrate state’s natural wonders
In this season of celebration and giving thanks, we should celebrate the natural wonders of our public lands. Florida’s rich natural heritage is woven through the wild places that all of us own together, and that are managed for us in trust by our local, state, and federal governments. These amazing natural places, places that define what it means to be a Floridian, are the birthright of every Floridian and belong to future generations as they belong to us.
My wife and I recently adopted two children and one of the most incredible and enjoyable things our new family has shared together is time spent exploring and enjoying our public lands. We have hiked through Cypress Lakes Preserve, paddled down the Withlacoochee River, snorkeled in the Gulf of Mexico at Pine Island, looked for wildlife at Chinsegut Nature Center, and swam in the cool clear waters of Juniper Springs. These places helped our new family bond, and helped introduce our children to their natural heritage.
My kids and I have explored the Withlacoochee River in the big old red canoe that my father bought when I was a kid. The first time we went paddling together on a cool fall day, my children got to see the same places and wildlife that I saw in the canoe on that river decades ago.
The legacy being passed to them was passed to me by my parents and grandparents. I want my children to see a Florida black bear in the wild as I have been so blessed to have seen. I want them to fish clean waters, hike through longleaf pines, hear birds and frogs calling, and pass those experiences on to their children.
We should all work to ensure that our public lands are valued and protected, and that our grandchildren know the Florida our grandparents knew. Each generation must protect the right of the next generation to know and love natural Florida.
Anyone who hunts, fishes, paddles, sails, snorkels, birds, rides horses, hikes, or otherwise recreates on our public lands understands what an incredible resource they are and how valuable they are. We must continue the work to acquire new public lands and manage our current public lands for their highest conservation value.
Our public lands provide tremendous public benefits at little cost to Floridians. They help filter our water, protect our communities from flooding, provide critical habitat for wildlife that we love, and create economic activity through recreation and ecotourism.
In the Nature Coast they provide some of the best and most sustainable economic development opportunities we have. People come here to explore and enjoy nature and the amazing mosaic of wetlands, uplands and sandhills, rivers, and coastlines we are blessed with. Our public lands nourish our spirits, and our economy.
As we begin to formulate our resolutions for 2011, let us resolve to spend more time outside under the sun or the moon and in and on the waters, trails, and back roads of our public lands. Let’s take our kids out into the woods and share with them all the wonders of nature. Our public lands are our children’s public lands, and they bind generations together in a shared love of nature. All of us have the responsibility to be good stewards of our public lands, and future generations will thank us for protecting their natural heritage.
WikiLeaks has already been forced to change its domain name and hop-scotch to servers around the globe after successive companies and countries have responded to American pressure attacking its disclosures over the past week as illegal.
It has also come under repeated cyber-attack, through a tactic known as distributed denial of service in which thousands of computers connect to its servers in a concerted attempt to knock them off-line.
“What we are seeing here are dangerous moves towards a digital McCarthyism,” wrote the group’s founder Julian Assange in a statement on its website.
