Loony Left Equals Loony Greens - And Vice Versa...

(As if we didn't know.)

Iain Dale spotted this extraordinarily vicious rant by left wing blogger and Labour stooge, Sunny Hundal, earlier this evening:

Look at the people who push global warming denialism: Fox News (enough said), The Telegraph (enough said), The Spectator (recently promoting AIDS denialism), Melanie Phillips (enough said), Christopher Booker (has anyone read his Wikipedia entry recently?), James Delingpole (enough said).

These are the kind of fuckwits (Delingpole, Richard North) who think there’s a conspiracy when their article doesn’t appear on Google News or use Google search hits as example of how big the story is.

Calling them ‘denialists’ is being too kind: they should be abused at every instance for the stupidity they churn out. They should be ridiculed, parodied, cussed, and constantly called out for the idiots they are because they deserve it.

Let the scientists do the science. But outside that world is a media full of bullshit artists who have vested interests in promoting ’scepticism’. The Spectator magazine’s hosting of the AIDS denialism film is just one small example. If we retreat on this war between ideologies by trying to be nice, while all they do is throw vitriol and propaganda, then we’ve already lost... There is no reason to take these people seriously or even off them an ounce of respect. If that means the political debate is charged – so be it.

Desperate.

It seems that this moron is calling on loony greens everywhere to be as "vitriolic" (to use his term), violently offensive and libelous/slanderous as possible wherever and whenever they detect any sign of criticism (or "scepticism" and "denialism" as they prefer to call it in their world of anti-debate) of the whole MMCC scam. But is he saying this in the name of the "Green" movement? Of course not, he's saying in the name of the socialist, labour movement to which he subscribes, which hijacked the Green agenda long ago and turned it into what it is today: a misanthropic, anti-capitalist, post-Soviet redux masquerading as an environmental crusade. It's therefore hardly surprising that the sickening slur "denier" is used so frequently. It deliberately associates critics of the warmist agenda with neo-nazis. (Marxists, socialists and communists always were very good at propaganda, after all. And nothing else.)

My point is that the next time anyone is smeared with the term "denier" in public, by dishonest socialists like Hundal, the answer is to sue for defamation. Immediately. It's that serious. Oh, and there I was wondering why the left has suddenly become so obsessed with the libel laws of Great Britain. Now I know: they want to make it impossible for people to protect themselves against mad watermelons like Hundal, who, once the libel laws of this country have been suitably twisted in their favour, would be able to call anyone anything he liked for any reason he chooses. For that reason, and many others, idiots like Hundal and his ilk, deaf as they are to criticism (mindless doctrinaire socialists always are) and blind as they are to the realities of climate change (it's got bugger all to do with people), can be considered a menace to democracy and a threat to freedom of speech and other inalienable human rights. And they should be treated as such; as loonies.

Unfortunately, they also happen to be calling the shots at the moment. So the peril is real. At least until a cure is found for the thought disease that is causing it.

Incidentally, if any doubt remains in your mind about the connection between post-soviet communists and the modern Green, AGW-pushing bandwagon, read this bizarre, pretty troubling article by "former" committed communist, Bea Campbell, from the Guardian (where else?) a few weeks ago. It's titled, rather unsurprisingly, "Why I turned from red to green."

Here's an extract if you can't face the whole thing:

The Green critique of modernity's Faustian recklessness helps to make sense not only of capitalism but also the tragedies of state socialisms. For progressives, whose politics hover between the centre and the far left, this is decisive.

The communist states of the 20th century did for socialism. I was a dynastic communist – my parents were British Bolsheviks, they were good citizens, and became better when Khrushchev gave permission to criticise Stalinism. All that crashed with the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. They could not relinquish the Soviet Union, and thereafter our family rows were on the terrain of Russia. The worst insult my father could hurl was: "You're just a social democrat!"

I remained a communist until 1989, when it was all over. I was part of the anti-Stalinist, Euro-communist wing. We were clever, caused trouble, caught the imagination, but we lost. Or maybe we failed.

Green ideology represents the reconciliation of production and reproduction – that is what yields sustainability.

See? Once a red loony, now a green loony - but still really a red loony, just daubed with lashings of green propaganda. There's no epiphany, just extreme vanity and extremism. In fact, this person and so many like her are just about as egomaniacal as it's possible for a human being to be without actually regressing fully into some form of narcissistic solipsism; a complete but ecstatic break from reality. But they cling on with their fingernails and the support of like-minded, wrongheaded individuals, who serve merely to service and reinforce their delusions.

And people wonder why I'm doubtful that man made climate change is a real, measurable phenomenon, especially after the Climategate scandal (and the emerging, similar NASA story). Well, not people like the loony Hundal, actually. He just thinks I'm a nazi. Nice - and QED: the man is not sane.

One thing is certain, though, David Cameron might have gone green in the name of saving human beings from their tendency to like to keep warm, but he had better wake up to the fact pretty pronto that he's playing with political fire.

Blair's Millions

Excellent piece from the Renegade Economist today which traces some of Tony Blair's labyrinthine collection of funds, holding companies and legal entities that he's started since handing over his mandate to Gordon Brown. According to the Renegade, he's created a "complex web of structures involving 12 different legal entities handling the unprecedented millions he is receiving since he stepped down from office in 2007."

The article goes on:

So mystifying are the former prime minister’s financial structures – which involve highly specialised limited partnerships and parallel companies – that the Guardian today launches an open invitation to tax specialists and accountants to attempt to explain the motivation behind such structures. We have published the Companies House documents and other legal papers regarding the structure of the partnerships at guardian.co.uk and invite expert comment via our site at guardian.co.uk/politics/series/blair-mystery.

Thereis no suggestion Blair is doing anything illegal. But he refuses to explain the
purpose of the secretive partnerships.

Tax specialists say Blair could use these unusual arrangements at some point in the future to seek to transfer millions tax-free to his four children.
Blair denies, however, that the structures are such an inheritance tax avoidance scheme, known as a “family limited partnership”.

“Family limited partnerships” were being publicized to lawyers and accountants in November 2007 at the time Blair’s lawyers started to set up his structures.

Known in the trade as “Flips”, family limited partnerships are a way of getting round stricter inheritance tax rules in the 2006 budget, imposed by Gordon Brown while Blair was still prime minister.

'Flips', eh? Oh, the irony. Now, as yesterday evening's post on this blog shows, I'm not a little nervous about the Grauniad's journalistic standards, so I'm very pleased that an independent economics journal and blog has taken up the story. Indeed, the article then goes into far more detail than the Graun would ever dare about Blair's on-the-face-of-it legal but pretty irregular financial affairs, all designed (so the theory goes) to dodge inheritence tax, so little Leo will inherit all daddy's estimated, post-PM fortune of 14 million quid (and rising). "There, there. We won't let the beastly tax man have any of it." Perhaps Blair will be voting Tory in the next election (if he's actually registered to vote in the UK, that is).

Whichever way you choose to look at this, and the financial arrangements alone certainly seem worthy of the taxman's attention, it is worth remembering that Blair's pocket-lining at the expense of the British taxpayer, his early retirement (a breach of both a manifesto promise and of trust with 'the nation' - or 9 million suckers, rather- that gave New Labour under Blair, not Old Labour under Brown, a mandate to govern) and his subsequent ruthless exploitation of his ongoing popularity in the United States (if only they knew him as we do) are just the tip of the iceberg. They were (are?) all at it!

There can be no forgiveness for Blair for so many reasons, and he should be investigated for his dodgy businesses and questionable tax arrangements - just after he's been arrested over Iraq - but we must never forget that an awful lot more parliamentarians have been doing this under this Labour government for more than a decade and the worst, criminal offenders have been of the Labourist stripe. Now we know why. A management culture begins at the top. If the person at the top is a money-grubbing, ruthless exploiter of tax and expenses loopholes, the entire organisation's likely to follow suit. They're just copying the boss. Indeed, for the boss to feel OK about being so venal, he will positively (though quietly) encourage it. And that, folks, is called corruption.

And we've had 13 years of it. No wonder we're bankrupt: the country financially and parliament morally. Thank Brown for the former; Blair for the latter.

Guardian Declares War On Journalism

The Guardian's chief political correspondent, Nicholas Watts, has launched a ludicrous attack on Rupert Murdoch on behalf of Peter Mandelson (who else?) that'll appear in tomorrow's edition. There are some extraordinary claims that suggest a distinct and burgeoning paranoia on the part of the Labour Party - (you remember them, the ones that sucked-up to, erm, Rupert Murdoch for 12 years); a familiar, hypocritical stench surrounding Mandelson; and typically ovine support for any old nonsense from his pet newspaper, the good ol' Graun.

However ridiculous the story, though, it's might (ought to) cause one hell of a row, not least with the Tories.

Here are a couple of the more extraordinary claims (supported by zero evidence in the article itself, as far as I can see):

Lord Mandelson declared war on the Murdoch empire today when he accused News Corporation of maintaining an "iron grip" on pay television and warned that the company wants to import rightwing Fox News-style journalism to Britain.

Um, what? I know News International's just announced that it no longer wants people like me nicking their stories (big deal - and fair enough, they don't belong to me, and they're usually naff anyway) but that hardly amounts to an 'iron grip'. As for wanting to 'import rightwing [sic] Fox News-style to Britain', well, no complaints here. It might at least break the monopoly of the biased BBC - and be interesting, to boot. Again, though, Watts doesn't feel the need to substantiate the claim.

In a sign that Murdoch also faces a fight in Britain, Mandelson turned his fire on a joint Tory-News Corp campaign to dismantle the broadcasting regulator, Ofcom.

Again, no substantiation or evidence, just a repetition of an increasingly shrill Mandelson slur about a joint Tory-News Corp 'campaign'. This is the Guardian at its very, very worst in terms of journalistic standards. Have they seen any documents that support Mandelson's bizarre, shrill charges? Of course not. Do they care? Well, if Watts was a genuine journalist he would. But he doesn't so he's not. He's just a mouthpiece for mad Mandy.

But wait, what's this - further into the article? Evidence?

Cameron pledged to dismantle Ofcom during a speech in July devoted to "cutting back the quango state". The Tory leader said: "With a Conservative government, Ofcom as we know it will cease to exist."

James Murdoch, the chief executive of News Corp in Europe and Asia, accused Ofcom in August of imposing an "astonishing" burden of regulation on Sky.

Sorry folks, 'fraid not. For one thing, Cameron made his speech (about quangos) a month before Murdoch Jnr's machinegun assault on anything not Sky (which is sort of his job, after all - to make daddy proud). But still no 'evidence' there. Just more half-baked accusations and the flimsiest of flimsy circumstantial claptrap bordering on a waking dream. And anyway, James Murdoch was right, too! The burden of regulation on broadcasting generally in Britain is outrageous. Oh, unless you're the Beeb of course. Then you can do whatever they like, editorially and financially, despite being funded by a legally enforced tax.

In the end, of course, this is all about Mandelson who, ably served by his tame Guardian journalist, is pushing his ultra-partisan 'Digital Britain' bill, which is actually designed to do just one thing, and its not to secure Britain's digital future (there's no 'we' in Labour). It's to secure the left's control of the BBC from now until doomsday. Well, Pete, doomsday for you could be coming sooner than you think, with or without Murdoch's (junior or senior) help.

As for the Guardian, well, we've long known that its standards of journalism are basically the lowest in the entire legacy press, at least in terms of giving two hoots about even the pretence of impartiality, but this joke article represents an outright declaration of war on the profession itself. No evidence, just mindlessly parroted Mandelsonian smears; no attempt to qualify those claims, just dutifully reinforced prejudices.

I mean, how can it hope to be taken seriously if it keeps on behaving like the BBC? Obviously, we can expect more of this kind of crap as the general election nears, and it should be criticised for precisely what it is: activism and cynicism, not journalism.

The Graun had better remember that the Tories will probably win that election...and that they have long memories.

Brown's Memory

At work, but heard PMQs on the internet an hour ago. I thought Cameron was good - pretty forensic and challenging - and hitting all the right notes about Brown, the Prime Minister with such a short memory that he can't remember making a guarantee two weeks ago to start withdrawing British troops 'sometime in 2010'. He can't remember that he didn't abolish Boom n' bust, or his claim that Britain was best placed to weather the storm of (his) bust and subsequent recession. He can't even remember his own party's legislation on inheritance tax. Extraordinary. However, I thought, unlike a number of other bloggers, that while Brown was fairly good, he in no way 'won' the exchange - as if that's what it's all about.

The main reason? Well, the even more extraordinary lapse of memory from this putative chairman of the G20 that meant he didn't even know who's in the group he's supposed to be chairing. He thinks Spain is a member. He's forgotten (maybe) that it isn't and the major bloggers are consequently having a bit of a field day, but only Guido saw it coming.

Cameron's Rubicon

Jame's Forsyth puts it rather well:

The opinion polls are continuing to feed the story that the Tories are in trouble. Tonight’s Politics Home data which shows Cameron’s personal ratings dropping 15 points in the last 10 weeks follows a string of polls where the Tories have failed to break through the forty percent mark. Tory morale has been a bit shaken by these polls; Cameron could do with a decisive win at PMQs tomorrow to gee up the Parliamentary party. But turning these numbers around is, I suspect, going to require some policies that show us what David Cameron’s irreducible core is. Oddly enough, I don’t think these policies have to be particularly popular but they have to show the electorate that Cameron stands for something, that he isn’t just another say anything to win politician. Picking a fight on offering substantial recognition to marriage in the tax system might actually be a good strategy for Cameron in these circumstances. It would show that there are some things he will stand up for whatever the risks.

Cameron already has my vote, not because I've been especially impressed by him recently, but because base camp for climbing the Everest of hope - hope of a possible recovery economically and socially in the UK after the damage mercilessly wrought for 13 years by the worst government it has ever had inflicted upon it - is to vote them out by voting him in.

That's a no brainer (isn't it?).

However, Forsyth is right. Cameron must re-find his voice. He has to stop squabbling (potentially - apparently - possibly - corrupt Islamic schools in Haringey, serious though that might have been, is nonetheless mere squabbling - of the schoolboy variety. There are bigger fish to fry. Didn't they know that?!), and start fighting - preferably for what he believes in. Pre-Brown-Bust, I heard him talk about those things. And he convinced me then that he was the man. New face, fresh ideas, and sound. But time has passed and he has very definitely lost some of that focus - possibly, even, some of that initial hunger. I, for one, would sympathise were that the case, given what he's been through personally and given what now confronts him potentially, as a prospective PM (thanks to Brown).

But the whole, dynamic mechanism in a hardened old democracy like ours is the vital relationship between the politician, who wants the vote, and the voter, who wants to vote. And so the former must convince the latter that what she/he believes in precisely coincides with what you/you(?) believe in.

If David Cameron really wants to be Prime Minister, then that's where he needs to begin. As Forsythe suggests, he has to dare to bare his soul to the nation, at least in terms of his political philosophy (I know he has one), and then, by the baring, go on to win the debate that would inevitably be sparked with the electorate he seems so ambitious to lead.

It troubles me, however, because I suspect that that understanding, and confronting this political (and psephological) reality, will be like facing a personal Rubicon for an erstwhile (possibly) focus group, PR man like Cameron. It might simply be too difficult for him to cross. But let's hope he does cross it and then march on with a view, a vision and the confidence that those bring, because we, the electorate, are up the proverbial creak without a paddle if he doesn't.

If he's up to it, he'll do it. If he's not, he won't. Simple as.

God help everyone in this country if it's the latter.

We're All Gonna Drown!

Boy, that didn't take long, did it? The warmist propaganda machine is now going into overdrive to try somehow to repair the damage of Climategate on the eve of the Copenhagen summit waste of everyone's time and our money.

This article will be splashed (ho ho) all over tomorrow's Times newspaper with its IPCC lala land "warning" that sea levels are going to rise by a thousand feet in six months unless we all commit suicide tomorrow (actually, it's only 60m according to arch AGW loon, James Hansen but let's not split hairs here, right?). All over the world, search engines have been doctored and large sections of the MSM has done all it can to bury the biggest scientific scandal of the modern era. Now they're moving into the next phase - Operation: Scare the Shit Out of Everyone. Lo and behold, here's their first offering, complete with tame German professor and a peer reviewed analysis (peer reviewed using the CRU, "have you hidden the decline?" approach, naturally) revealing new, devastating results of - well what, exactly? Something that might happen if a whole bunch of other stuff happens, based on models that tell them what should be happening - but isn't. Top research. Stop press. Cue banner headline. It's a scoop!

Read it and weep, folks. (Oh, and then, of course, "think of the children!")

Sea levels will rise by twice as much as previously predicted as a result of global warming, an important international study has concluded.

The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) calculated that if temperatures continued to increase at the present rate, by 2100 the sea level would rise by up to 1.4 metres — twice that predicted two years ago.

Such a rise in sea levels would engulf island nations such as the Maldives in the Indian Ocean and Tuvalu in the Pacific, devastate coastal cities such as Calcutta and Dhaka and force London, New York and Shanghai to spend billions on flood defences.

Even if the average global temperature increases by only 2C — the target set for next week’s Copenhagen summit — sea levels could still rise by 50cm, double previous forecasts, according to the report.

SCAR, a partnership of 35 of the world’s leading climate research institutions, made the prediction in the report Antarctic Climate Change and Climate. It far exceeds the 0.59 metre rise by the end of the century quoted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007. This was based on a “business as usual” approach by governments that allowed temperatures to rise by 4 degrees. It will underpin the negotiations in Copenhagen.

SCAR scientists said that the IPCC underestimated grossly how much the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets would contribute to total sea-level rises.

Well at least the authors of this report had the sense to use the suitably hedging conditional "would" instead of the usual, hysterical 'will' of AGW fanatics. (And if the sun exploded, we'd all get pretty warm very quickly, right?) Mind you, they had little choice on that one, as this comment on a Telegraph blog (well known climate change activist's, Will Heaven...erm) points out:

The satellite measurement of the arctic ice coverage for yesterday (28th Nov) was 10,362,813 sq kms. On the same day in 2006 it was 9,597,969 sq kms. That represents a growth of 8%.

Source: http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm

Quite aside from that is the fact that all those millions of square miles of frozen Arctic water is floating on - um - more water, which, as everyone knows (don't they?), kindergarten physics tells us would not cause sea levels to rise millimeter-one if it was all boiled into the sea by a really quite humongous blowtorch tomorrow. But, you know what? Little things like demonstrable, reproducable scientific knowledge really doesn't matter any more. Climategate has demonstrated that we're not really dealing with science here at all, be it kindergarten or otherwise. We're dealing with a ruthless and ongoing deception.

This Times article, with its now all-too familiar end-of-days, alarmist propaganda mixed in with suspiciously timed, dodgy science reports and interviews with the usual suspects from the IPCC (Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, is a former railway engineer for God's sake) merely serves further to demonstrate that while the blogosphere remains free (for now), the increasingly schitzoid MSM is basically in thrall to the prophets (yes, I agree, that should read "profits") of doom. In point of fact, the manner in which the report ends seems to prove my point (about the schitzoid nature of the legacy press).

Sceptics seized upon his figures as further evidence of the unreliability of climate change predictions.

“It’s 50cm, 60cm, 100cm — 60m if you ask James Hansen from Nasa,” said Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation . “The predictions come in thick and fast, but we take them all with a pinch of salt. We look out of the window and it’s very cold, it doesn’t seem to be warming. We’re very concerned that 100-year policies are being made on the basis of these predictions”

I suppose they would call that balance, but the use of the warmist term of abuse "sceptics," (euphemistic codespeak for the vicious slur "denier" and/or the debate-killing "crank"), instead of the usual (and balanced) "critics" suggests to me that at the very least - and this is a generous conclusion - post-Climategate they simply don't know how to frame this issue any more.

They don't know, I don't (really) know - and neither does the IPCC or SCAR or the rest of the AGW industry.

But the difference is, one of us isn't being honest, and Climategate has shown us all who that is.

==Update==
Past my bedtime, but I've just seen this hilarious comment by somebody calling herself (I presume) "Auntie Mavis" under the Times scare story in question:

jim king wrote:
"1. Put a large ice cube in a glass.
2.fill it to the brim with water.
3.The ice cube will protrude above the surface.
4.Wait till the ice cube melts
5. In the doomsday theory the scare mongers would have you believe the protruding ice that has now melted will over flow.
6.It never will because ice displaces it's own volume.
7. When water freezes it expands.
8. So the reverse happen's when it melts
9. Simple school boy facts."

Now do it with the ice on top of a column of concrete with the water level up to the top. Watch the water flow over the top when the ice melts.

You what? This uber-hoon really seems to believe that someone - or something, perhaps - dropped a trillion trillion tons of ice on top of the sea at the polar ice caps. Mind you, she's probably an A-level Physics teacher (though fairly new to the profession - and the subject - it would seem) given that she appears to know more about all powerful space aliens that like to drop huge lumps of ice on unsuspecting, mostly harmless, planets, than Archimedes' principle.

Very, very stupid. That's what we're up against folks.