Lord Chrisopher Monckton reports in near despair from the UN’s climate conference at Cancun, Mexico:

I usually add some gentle humor when I report. 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 bloody care.

He goes on to explain how –

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”.

Hundreds of these “new interlocking bureaucracies answerable to the world-government Secretariat will vastly extend its power and reach”. (And these will be in addition to multiple new bureaucracies in every one of the 193 states which are parties to the Convention.) Here are some of them:

• a Body to Clarify Assumptions 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
• a Body for the Process to Develop Modalities and Guidelines for the Compliance Process
• 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 to Conduct a Work Program for Development of Various Modalities and Guidelines
• 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 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 Network of National, Regional, Sectoral and International Technology Centers, Networks, Organization and Initiatives
• an Expert Workshop on the Operational Modalities of the Technology Mechanism
• 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
• a Body to Develop Modalities for the Operationalization of the Work Program on the Impact of the Implementation of Response Measures.

How do you develop a modality? How negotiate a level of ambition? How supervise a process for understanding? What are mitigation actions and how do you diversify them? What does a forum do with an impact? Why do you need a body to define the roles and functions of a body to assist in exercising its functions? A network of networks? A network of initiatives? A work program body for incentives on issues? A body to implement a work program on an impact? What is operationalization, and what might its modalities be, and why does it need a body to develop them?

It’s typical of the gobbledygook that substitutes for thought on the political left.

Somehow, amidst such dense clouds of unknowing, these minds are negotiating a level of ambition to supervise a process to launch another process that will function as a body controlling all the networks of networks to establish a supreme body that will govern the world, operationalize world-wide economic redistribution, and reduce all emissions except those from their own mouths in order to save the earth from the evil depredations that human existence inevitably wreaks on it. And they themselves, the Elect, will sit in the seats of power and command the weather and control every aspect of the lives of every living man woman and child to force them to keep compliant and healthy, if also rather cold and perhaps somewhat hungry, for as long as the Elect allow each of them to pollute the earth with his or her existence.

The Elect of the Elect constitute The Secretariat, which, Lord Monckton says, will have the power to compel nation states to “perform their obligations under the climate-change Convention”.

It may claim that power, but how will it enforce its will? If there plans for an international SS, it is still being kept secret.

Is there no opposition from any countries or groups to this plan for International Communism under a World Government?

Yes, there is some. Lord Monckton reports:

At the insistence of sensible nation states such as the United States [a surprise, considering the collectivist and warmist bent of the present administration], 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.

Some supranational organizations perceive a threat to their interests:

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.

This objection is dealt with by the Chairman  of the “Ad-Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Co-operative Action under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change” by simply recording, in the same “note” that names the new bodies, a “decision” that “the Secretariat’s policies are not restrictive of trade”.

So the Secretariat will decide, and reality will obey.

This note, Lord Monckton writes, “reflects what the Secretariat now confidently expects to get away with.”

He stresses that the agenda spells the doom of democracy.

Forget government of the people, by the people, for the people. Forget the principle of “no taxation without representation” that led to the very foundation of the United States. The provisions for the democratic election of the new, all-powerful, legislating, tax-raising world-government Secretariat by the peoples of the world may be summarized in a single word: None.

While we accept that everything he tells us is true, we feel less alarmed than Lord Monckton. We think the myth of manmade global warming is fading away since the Climategate papers proved the science to be a scam, and with that pretext for world government gone, it will be some time before the sinister Secretariat and its black-winged warmist minions conjure up another.

And the people are on to them now. Or so we hope.

Chorus: The United Nations must be destroyed!

The warmists attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference, starting tomorrow on Mexico’s resort island of Cancun, are going to have an anxious time of it, to judge by this report:

The response to the conference is lukewarm but no less than 15,000 delegates are expected to attend the deliberations. …

The Mexican government is committed to ensuring that participants’ mobilisation and energy consumption during the conference results in the smallest environmental impact …

Their lights may be dim –

The Mexican government is engaged in supplying energy through a system of photovoltaic cells with an estimated output of 130kW. The installation of a wind power generator with a 1.5-MW capacity will contribute to Cancun’s electric output through an additional renewable source.

Their transport will be politically correct –

Regarding transportation, delegations of participating countries will be provided with hybrid vehicles for their transfers during the conference.

Their ablutions minimal –

The Mexican government has implemented a special hotel assessment programme here, aimed at enhancing sustainable operation. Through the programme … hotels will set eco-efficiency projects to reduce the use of raw materials, energy and water during the conference. It is expected to avoid the consumption of approximately 2,00,000 m {+3} of water …

They’ll be constantly and compulsively checking their carbon footprints –

Participants attending COP16/CMP6 will be able to access online and through the booths located at the conference venue a carbon footprint calculator to measure emissions associated to their air and ground transportation, lodging and meals.  …

And watching over their waste products –

A residual waste management programme will operate during the conference. It is aimed at enhancing the processing of different waste materials and their incorporation to productive cycles avoiding their final disposal.

And attending meticulously to recycling –

The programme includes the placing of recycle bins in the official meeting areas of COP16/CMP6 events, other locations within Cancun.

It’s as if Climategate never happened!

Except that some of the delegates now frankly admit that what really concerns them is not so much climate change itself, but the establishment of world government. They burn to enforce global economic redistribution – in other words, world-wide totalitarian communism under their rule. It’s not the planet that’s getting hotter but the would-be controllers of our lives, like IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer:

Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. …  One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.

George Soros works to destroy the free market liberalism which allowed him to make the colossal fortune he uses to work for its destruction. He does it through a string of organizations, chiefly his Open Society Institute, whose name is Orwellian: it aims to close the open society and establish totalitarian state control.

He has done, and continues to do, much harm in and to America.

He has also done, and continues to do, much harm in and to Europe.

His ambition stretches further yet.

“His goal is a new global imperium … that will be truly totalitarian,”  Srdja Trifkovic said in an address he gave to the H. L. Mencken Club in Baltimore on October 23, 2010.

Trifkovic deplored Soros’s lavish funding for campaigns to legalize cannabis, promote euthanasia, further abortion rights, impose gun control, and abolish the death penalty; and his support for radical feminism, gay activism, and same-sex marriage.

We agree with Trifkovic that Soros has had “an enormous and hideously destructive impact” on the societies he has targeted.

But we strongly disagree with him on how Western civilization could and should be defended.

Trifkovic said:

Soros’s vision is hostile even to the most benign understanding of national or ethnic coherence. … His hatred of religion is the key. He promotes an education system that will neutralize any lingering spiritual yearnings of the young, and promote the loss of a sense of place and history already experienced by millions of Westerners, whether they are aware of that loss or not. Estranged from their parents, ignorant of their culture, ashamed of their history, millions of Westerners are already on the path of alienation that demands every imaginable form of self-indulgence, or else leads to drugs, or suicide, or conversion to Islam or some other cult.

To understand Soros it is necessary to understand globalization as a revolutionary, radical project. In the triumph of liberal capitalism, the enemies of civilization such as Soros have found the seeds of future victory for their paradigm that seeks to eradicate all traditional structures capable of resistance. The revolutionary character of the Open Society project is revealed in its relentless adherence to the mantra of Race, Gender and Sexuality. …

Religion itself is no longer, if it ever was, a “traditional structure capable of resistance” to the post-national totalitarian nightmare envisioned by Soros and the left. The left despises Western religion but promotes Islam in its human-and-civil-rights guise because it helps undermine Western freedoms born of free market liberalism. If Trifkovic believes traditional religion can defend civilization, he is wrong.

Christianity or Judaism offer nothing to counter the zeitgeist of ever-loosening social constraints. “Spirituality” is a commodity marketed variously even within the traditional religions. The last bastion of civilization – of voluntary collective polities, democracies of free people in pursuit of happiness under law – is the nation-state, constitutionally protecting the individual, regardless of his identity with any race, gender, or sexuality, against being subsumed by collective (“human”) rights and privileges.

It might be that: the legalization of pot means greater numbers of children and adults will be stuck on stupid more often than they currently are; the legalization of homosexual marriage means greater numbers have (non-procreative) sex; the legalization of abortion may result in many more dead babies, but fewer dead women. All that may disgust the very traditionally faithful, but restoring the social stigma attached to it, let alone the legal proscription, is not going to happen.

All those are individual decisions. They do not jeopardize civilization. What will bring civilization down are the post-national leftist choice architects, the people who decide carbon dioxide is a pollutant, that you must have government health care, but forfeit it if you’re fat, that international human rights preempt justice and self-defense, that governments own everything and must distribute proportionally to collectives’ demands.

The globalization of welfare government – that is the dream of the left and Soros. Insofar as traditional religions preserve the ideas of the morality of institutionalized compassion and the compulsion of individual conduct they are easily coopted by the forces of darkness. In the coming Universal State, Muslims will be allowed to continue honor-killings as a collective right, but the right of an individual – to kill in self-defense, to expect justice, to start and mind his own business, to allocate his resources as he pleases, to provide for himself and his family, to have children and to raise them, and to say what he likes to whomever he wishes – will be regulated out of existence. “Civilization” will have been redefined as “acceptable choices”. Enlightened self-interest will be knowing the difference between private (cholesterol levels) and public (carbon usage) virtue. Religion can do nothing whatsoever to stop this, only a resurgence of belief in individual liberty and the free market can. Good luck with that.

C. Gee  October 28, 2010

Obama’s America is begging for approval by the UNHRC.

What is the UNHRC (United Nations Human Rights Council)? What does it do? What has it done? What is its record?

The appallingly misnamed UNHRC is the principal subcommittee driving the anti- Israel campaign, with more than 80 percent of its condemnatory resolutions directed against the Jewish state. Whereas the Bush administration boycotted the UNHRC, one of President Barack Obama’s first foreign policy initiatives was to join it. …

Democracies comprise only 40% of UNHRC membership. Last month, seven additional authoritarian regimes were elected – unopposed – joining other “human rights devotees” such as Saudi Arabia, China, Cuba and Russia.

The most notorious, Libya is a dictatorship which sanctions torture and lethal amputations, executes women for violating moral codes and criminalizes homosexuality is . Currently, the Libyan envoy, notorious for his anti-Semitic outbursts, is president of the UN General Assembly. …

The brutal Iranian regime … withdrew its nomination for UNHRC membership in return for a backroom deal to obtain a seat on the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women. To enable Iran, which probably holds the world’s worst record of abuse of women, to participate in an organization purportedly advancing women’s rights transforms the UN into a total farce. …

Sudan, the site of the Darfur genocide, was cited [by the UNHRC] in 2009 for its “progress” in human rights. …

It refuses to take action against human rights abuses in Iran.

The UNHRC has created a number of subcommissions exclusively for the purpose of bashing Israel. There is also an advisory committee chaired by Halima Warzazi, who shielded Saddam Hussein from UN censure after the 1988 gassing of Kurds. The deputy chair is Jean Ziegler who, following the Libyan bombing of the Pan Am airliner, recommended Gaddafi for a human-rights award.

The UNHRC Durban II Conference, purportedly launched to combat racism, was transformed into an anti-Israel hate-fest.

To this body Obama has now submitted a report on human rights in America.

What does the president say about human rights in his country that he submits to such a collection of tyrannies for approval?

These are a few things we have pulled out of it, dipping in with one hand while holding our editorial nose with the other:

It deplores (implying apology) the new Arizona law on illegal immigration. It regrets (implying apology) that Guantanamo is still open and detaining terrorists. It insists (Obama being world-government minded) that the US is a “cornerstone in an international system of cooperation to preserve global security, support the growth of global prosperity, and progress toward world peace.” It boasts of being the world’s largest donor of development aid, and of it’s “commitment to using ‘smart power’ in our foreign policy” (as if it is working really well for America with regard, say, to Russia and Iran).  It half apologizes for pursuing the war in Afghanistan – proudly quoting Obama’s Nobel Lecture on how the use of force is sometimes sadly necessary. It declares how much the Administration wants to find solutions to homelessness – through the subprime lending method (yes, the method that brought the US and most of the world to the brink of bankruptcy).  It applauds the Affordable [Health] Care Act (that most Americans want repealed). It solemnly praises the freedom of political participation in America (without of course mentioning intimidation at the polls by the New Black Panthers or voter fraud by ACORN, two  groups which enjoy special protection by Obama and his Justice Department).

Altogether it implies that the US still has a way to go to measure up to the standards of the other members. But it’s trying.

To check it out and see if you agree with our account and opinion of it, find the full report here.

Now who, we wonder, helped write it? Who contributed to it?

Doug Hagmann at Canada Free Press explains:

This is the first time in the history of the United Nations that the U.S. has submitted a report to the United Nation’s Human Rights Council, which is the first step in submitting the United States to international review by some of the most repressive and abusive nations in the world. …

The report is the product of about a dozen conferences held across the U.S. between January and April 2010. The participants of these conferences featured such luminaries as Stephen Rickard and Wendy Patten, from George Soros’ Open Society Institute; Devon Chaffee, Human Rights First; Andrea Prasow, Human Rights Watch; Imad Hamad (a suspected member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organization), American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee; Dawud Walid, Council American Islamic Relations; Nabih Ayad, Michigan Civil Rights Commission; Ron Scott, Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality; Osama Siblani, Arab American News …

According to its authors, the report to the United Nations “gives a partial snapshot of the current human rights situation in the United States, including some of the areas where problems persist in our society.” Obviously, one of the “problems” identified with the report is illegal immigration and Arizona’s own initiate to solve the problem through state legislation. SB 1070 has been a particularly thorny issue to the Obama administration, which has now been moved to an international venue and potential international oversight by the United Nations. The stakes for our national sovereignty have been just raised by the submission of this document, which is the first step of “voluntary compliance” to the provisions of the United Nations’ Human Rights Council. …

What happens next, now that the report has been submitted?

Ben Johnson at ExposeObama writes:

As the process continues, a “troika” of three nations will review our report, other international reports, and the testimony of NGOs, then make a series of recommendations to implement these goals. Every four years, it will grade our “progress.” And this world body reserves the right to “decide on the measures it would need to take in case of persistent non-cooperation.”

That means if future administrations object to the plan the UN draws up along with the most anti-American administration in history, it could conceivably be deemed guilty of “persistent non-cooperation.” If it were sufficiently strong — and we were sufficiently weak — it could impose this agenda on the American people against their will. At a minimum, he’s reduced our standing in the eyes of the world if we reject any piece of his far-Left agenda. This report guarantees we will endure decades of international propaganda that the United States is “not meeting its human rights commitments to the United Nations” …

The Obama administration has made its entire platform the internationally recognized standard of conduct for future generations.

What is the remedy?

The United Nations and all its agencies, councils, commissions, and programs MUST BE DESTROYED.

What is socialism?

Never mind dictionary definitions. Rather ask, what does a socialist state do?

It controls the resources of a nation and allocates them as it chooses.

More fully: In a socialist state, resources are controlled by an all-powerful central agency, the government, and distributed according to the arbitrary decision of the most powerful person or persons in that government.

Widely, “socialism” is thought of as a creed of equality, as is “communism”.  It is to achieve their high ideal of equality that socialists and communists favor the forced collection and allocation of resources.  If they achieve a kind of equality, it is only and always an equality of misery. For this they have many explanations and excuses, but no remedy.

The difference between socialism and communism is often said to be a difference of degree, or manner of enforcement. In common parlance, at least in the West, “socialism” refers to a similar but milder, less oppressive, system of collectivization.  West European states were happy to call themselves “socialist’, and saw the self-described “communist” states, chiefly the Soviet Union, as their enemies.

In the Soviet Union, however, “socialism” and “communism” were commonly used interchangeably, as synonyms. In Marxist theory, “communism” is an ideal that will be realized when the state – ie government – has “withered away”.  But withering away is not on the agenda of any existing socialist government, nor is likely to be.

In fact, most forms of collectivism can  justifiably be called “socialist”.  (An exception is Islam.) The collectivist idea is that the society, not the individual, is important, so the citizenry must be organized. The organization must be enforced, whether harshly or temperately.  Most self-described “socialist” states consider their rule not only temperate but positively beneficent, while they see “communist” states as cruel and oppressive.

But the word “socialism” cannot bear a connotation of beneficence. Nor does it always imply equality.

Remember that the Nazis were self-described socialists: national socialists. Nazi is the short name for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.  And of course the Nazis saw themselves as beneficent – to those they counted as worthy of existence, the “Aryan” Germans. They had a tender care for their citizens. In the Third Reich official collections were taken up for the poor to keep them warm in winter (the annual “Winterhilfe” charity drive).  But nobody thinks of the Third Reich as a kindly state, or one that did humankind any good. And its rulers scorned the notion of equality, either between persons or between nations.

So one clear distinction that does exist among socialist states is that some are ideologically egalitarian – eg Soviet Russia, Maoist China, Castroite Cuba – and some are non-egalitarian – eg Nazi Germany.

The Soviet communists considered themselves international socialists – even when Stalin declared his policy to be for a time  “socialism in one country” (the one country being the USSR). The Marxist ideological vision was and remains a world government controlling the world’s resources – a vision now justified in the name of environmentalism.

The biggest political divide comes between collectivism and freedom. Or rather, since a totally free country does not exist, between those who hold collectivism as an ideal, and those who want every individual to be free.

While it is true that a totally free country is nowhere to be found, such a thing could exist. It would not be an anarchy, because freedom is a product of civil order, and  is only possible under the rule of law. Everyone’s freedom should be limited only by everyone else’s, but the protection of every individual, his person, property, and freedom, requires the rule of law.

The USA was as free as any country has ever been, more so than any other large nation. (Small areas have been freer, such as Hong Kong, which was legally under British rule and could rely on the protection of law, but was free of taxes and all the harm that ensues from taxation – such as regulation of trade, and welfare.)

Now Americans are losing their freedom rapidly, since they voted Democratic socialists into power in Congress, and a Marxist-trained “community organizer” to the presidency. He has packed fellow socialists into his administration. Some declare themselves to be “Maoists” or “communists”.  All of them are collectivists.

It will take a hard fight to recover the liberty that has been lost, but for those who want to be free, it’s a battle that must be won.

Jillian Becker    August 13, 2010

Is it possible to doubt that Obama is passionately devoted to Islam when he has made it glaringly obvious in his speeches and his deep obeisance to the “King” of Saudi Arabia; has deliberately alienated the US government from Israel; and has given an instruction to NASA administrator Charles Bolden to find – as a priority, rather than space exploration which has been all but totally abandoned – “a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution [in fact, non-historic and almost entirely mythical – JB] to science and math and engineering”?

Here’s further confirmation of his profound concern for, and involvement with, Islam in news from Creeping Sharia:

The U.S. ambassador to Kenya has publicly urged Kenyans to vote in favor of the proposed constitution, including the kadhis [sharia] courts, arguing that passage is key to keeping Kenya stable. …

The Obama admin may have spent up to $10 million tax payer dollars supporting the proposed Kenyan constitution that includes provisions for sharia courts.

Kenya is also where Obama’s cousin Raul [Raila] Odinga promised sharia law during his Kenyan campaign, and then waged violent attacks leading to hundreds of deaths to steal a position after a failed election.

For background to the issue of sharia courts in Obama’s ancestral home Kenya, and more on Obama’s support  for his terrorist cousin Odinga, see this January 6, 2008 article at Atlas Shrugs:

Obama’s ties to Kenya run deep. He knows the political landscape. Why would he back such a violent, dangerous man who made a pact with the Muslims to institute sharia? Obama’s bias for his fellow Luo [Raila Oginga Odinga] was so blatant that a Kenya government spokesman denounced Obama during his visit as Raila’s “stooge.” …

Raila Oginga Odinga has … a scheme to carry out a second coup attempt in Kenya (his first attempt in 1982 failed) …

Those who have an interest in Kenya witnessed the post-party-nomination violence a couple of weeks ago in Oginga’s strongholds. People who chose to vote against anyone his party chose were killed.

For a few days both Nairobi and Kisumu were literally ablaze. Candidates who escaped the violence and who chose to run on parties other than the party Oginga was running on had to publicly step down when Oginga attended their rallies and publicly asked them to step down and support his party. …

[In 2003] Muslim leaders in Kenya [were] threatening armed conflict if the new Kenyan constitution [did] not enshrine Islamic courts (known in Kenya as Kadhi courts).

The US Ambassador to Kenya is Michael E. Ranneberger. In a recent speech in honor of International Women’s Day, he said:

I want to emphasize that the United States is strongly committed to promoting the rights of Kenyan women and their increased participation in all aspects of social, political, and economic life. This is a highly important dimension of the strong and growing partnership between the U.S. and Kenya.

Under unalterable sharia law, a woman’s testimony is half as valuable as a man’s; a woman may inherit only half as much as male heirs; a woman can be divorced at the whim of her husband and she does not have a right to keep her children; if a woman is raped she can be convicted of immorality and the punishment may be stoning to death. These are just some of the ways in which sharia law subjugates and victimizes women.

Apparently Mr Ranneberger sees no need to square his “commitment to promoting the rights of Kenyan women” with his urging Kenyans to adopt a constitution that would establish sharia law.

Such is US diplomacy in the era of Obama.

We have written quite often about the myth of man-made global warming. Now we can confidently declare that the myth is fading.

The collectivists who tried to frighten us into accepting poorer lives and “world governance” in order to “save the planet”, are disappointed. They’ll have to search for some other excuse to control us, and they’ll find one of course.

To the general public, the most persuasive argument against believing the myth is probably the economic crisis, the scientific arguments on both sides being hard for the non-scientist to follow.

Whatever the reason, the folks are no longer buying the scare.

Summing up the change in the climate of opinion on climate change, Cal Thomas writes at Townhall:

The myth of “global warming,” or climate change … is sinking with greater force than melting icebergs, if they were melting, which many believe they are not.

After spending years promoting “global warming,” the media are beginning to turn in the face of growing evidence that they have been wrong. The London Times recently reported: “Britain’s premier scientific institution [The Royal Society] is being forced to review its statements on climate change after a rebellion by members who question mankind’s contribution to rising temperatures.” …

In Canada, the polar bear — which has been used by global warming promoters to put a cuddly face on the issue — is in danger of not being endangered any longer. CBC News reported that the polar bear’s designation as a “species of special concern” has been suspended …

The New York Times recently lamented “global warmism’s loss of credibility” in a story about hundreds of “environmental activists who met to ponder this question: “if the scientific consensus on climate change has not changed, why have so many people turned away from the idea that human activity is warming the planet?” The “consensus” never was a consensus. Most of us may not have gotten an “A” in science, but we can sense when we are being bamboozled. …

Meteorologists, like Joe D’Aleo of The Weather Channel, are publicly distancing themselves from the false doctrine of global warming. D’Aleo says, “We’ll have La Nina conditions before the summer is over, and it will intensify further through the fall and winter. Thus we’ll have cooler temperatures for the next couple of years.”

Remember the scare ignited in 2007 by supposed melting Arctic ice caps? The Star Canada says a new analysis shows that the apparent change was the result of “shifting winds,” while an expedition last year to the North Pole discovered the ice “100 percent thicker than expected.” …

Watch for the hardcore “global warming” cultists to continue clinging to their beliefs; but also watch increasing numbers of scientists and eventually politicians to abandon this once “certain” faith and to look for other ways to control our lives. In that pursuit, the left never quits. Rather than acknowledge their error, they will go on to make new mistakes, knowing they will never be held accountable.

Obama delivered a commencement speech at the US Military Academy at West Point which was studded with ironies.

From the Washington Post:

Obama pledged to shape a new “international order” based on diplomacy and engagement.

His presidency has been notable for diplomatic failures and not a single success. As for “engagement”, his obstinate persistence in trying to “engage” Iran has given it all the time it needed to develop nuclear bombs and build the ballistic missiles to deliver them. But a record of failure does not prompt Obama to reconsider his policy.

“Yes, we are clear-eyed about the shortfalls of our international system. But America has not succeeded by stepping outside the currents of international cooperation,” he said. “We have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice — so nations thrive by meeting their responsibilities, and face consequences when they don’t.”

Just where has he “steered currents in the direction of liberty and justice”? Where has he got nations that do not “meet their responsibilities” to “face consequences”? Russia invaded Georgia, took and occupied two of its provinces, and Obama has not done a thing about it. What international cooperation has there been to make Russia withdraw?

“The international order we seek is one that can resolve the challenges of our times,” he said in prepared remarks. “Countering violent extremism and insurgency; stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and securing nuclear materials; combating a changing climate and sustaining global growth; helping countries feed themselves and care for their sick; preventing conflict and healing its wounds.”

He may be seeking such an international order, but he’s done nothing to bring it about. Far from “countering violent extremism and insurgency” he refuses even to name the perpetrators of it (Muslims) and the cause they serve (Islam). If he hoped his audience would assume he meant Iraq and Afghanistan, it should be remembered that he was always against the war in Iraq, has shown reluctance to win decisive victory in Afghanistan, and has told the enemy the dates when he’ll withdraw American troops from both battlefields regardless of whether anything that could be called victory has by then been achieved.

On “securing nuclear materials” he held a useless international conference, when Canada and one or two other non-belligerent states promised not to give fissile material to terrorists, but no real danger was eliminated.

And then he comes on to the tired and stupid mantra “combating climate change”. Combating climate? It’s a primitive and ignorant notion. Call in the rainmakers, or cool makers, or warm makers, and let them start their chants!

“Sustaining global growth”? How he feeds the buzz-words (such as “sustaining”) to his far left constituency and at the same time tries to give the impression that he is on the side of prosperity (“global growth”). But his flowery phrasing cannot conceal his lack of understanding.

In Iraq, he said, the United States is “poised” to end its combat operations this summer, leaving behind “an Iraq that provides no safe haven to terrorists; a democratic Iraq that is sovereign, stable and self-reliant.”

Since Obama came to office, there has been far less reporting of terrorist activity in Iraq by the anti-Bush and pro-Obama media. But in fact terrorism in that arrondissement of hell has not stopped. Lately it has intensified. The chances of Iraq becoming stable, “giving no haven to terrorists”, and evolving in this century into a truly democratic state are not worth betting on.

To address the military at all must, he knew, offend the far left constituency to which he long ago sold his soul. Much of his message was aimed at propitiating that radical left rather than reinforcing the morale of American soldiers.

Civilians, he added, must answer the call of service as well, by securing America’s economic future, educating its children and confronting the challenges of poverty and climate change.

His far left critics would understand that when he spoke of “securing America’s economic future” and “confronting the challenges of poverty and climate change” he meant with “green jobs” and redistribution. As for the education of children, they will take it to mean indoctrinating hapless kids with leftist ideology – a cause Obama served actively years ago in Chicago.

Here’s a dry summary of the speech by Arthur Herman in the National Review Online:

On Saturday, Pres. Barack Obama gave a commencement speech … which in effect told the thousand or so soon-to-be second lieutenants that, if he has his way, they’ll soon be out of a job.

Obama outlined for the cadets his vision of a new international order organized around bodies such as the United Nations. In Obama’s future, American military force will give way to American diplomacy joined together with new multilateral partnerships, while “stronger international standards and institutions” will replace unilateral assertion of national interests — including our own. Obama told West Point’s Class of 2010 that he sees them not battling our enemies but “combating a changing climate and sustaining global growth, [and] helping countries feed themselves” even as their citizens achieve their “universal rights.”

He’s still dreaming the dreams of his father.

Michael Mann’s “hockey stick graph” was constructed with computers (“garbage in, garbage out”) to “prove” that a wonderfully steady climate prevailed over the world for nearly a thousand years and then suddenly, in the twentieth century, Modern Industrial Man with his disgraceful appetite for material things that make his life longer, pleasanter and easier, started polluting the air and water and  earth with disgusting “emissions” that heated the planet, which is now set to become so hot that … Oh, all sorts of dire consequences will follow. And drastic, impoverishing remedies must be hastily applied world-wide by diktat. The population of the world must shrink, so have no children and die early. If you insist on surviving, go back to living hand to mouth like your primitive ancestors.

We may be exaggerating a little, but not diverging from the broad  truth.

A report by The Science and Environmental Policy Project points out:

The first two assessment reports of the UN IPCC included charts showing temperature change for the last 1000 years that included the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. The Summary for Policymakers of the 2001 Third Assessment Report eliminated these temperature changes and substituted Mann’s now infamous “hockey stick” graph produced by statistical techniques that purport to show that temperatures were relatively stable for about 900 years then shot up in the 20th Century. The results of a computer model trumps physical evidence. The research was “peer reviewed” but not available for independent review. …

If Mr. Mann had been open with his research data and methods, and permitted their review by independent scientists, his errors may have been appropriately corrected in a scientific setting rather than in a political one. Instead, he chose to withhold the information. It is imperative to understand the full extent to which Mann’s now discredited study distorted the climate and energy policies of the US government – at great cost to the taxpayer and energy consumer.

Commenting on this, John Hinderaker writes at PowerLine:

It is a remarkable fact that warmists claim the right to keep their data secret and avoid any critical assessment of their work, while at the same time demanding that every country in the world fashion its energy policies on the basis of their alleged findings. No doubt there is a precedent, somewhere, for such arrogance. But I am not sure there is any precedent, anywhere, for governments being stupid enough to accede to such unreasonable demands.

Yes, it would be a far better, though probably harder, aim for the citizens of democracies to lower the level of stupidity in their governments, rather than the temperature of the earth.

Great news!

Traders in air are being arrested on the charge of fraud. Not (yet?) for their big hoax about man-made global warming, but for dishonesty anyway.

The carbon trading system being pushed here has spawned crime and fraud across the pond. Cap-and-trade is not about saving the planet. It’s about money and power, and absolute power corrupting absolutely.

All across Europe authorities have been conducting raids, rounding up individuals involved in a new version of Climate-gate. This time the data aren’t corrupted. Europe’s Emissions Trading System is. The system is so sick, it’s turned out to be a scam built upon a scam.

Twenty-five people have been arrested in raids by British and German authorities as part of a pan-European crackdown on carbon credit VAT [value added tax] tax fraud.

U.K. officials announced raids on 81 offices and homes, nabbing 13 people in England and eight in Scotland. The operation involved 450 investigators from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs office.

German authorities raided 230 locations, including the headquarters of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt and the offices of RWE, one of the largest energy firms in Europe. The German operation involved 1,000 investigators targeting 50 companies and 150 suspects.

The amount of money involved in carbon trading is huge and the temptations vast. While our Congress demagogues about banks and their “complex financial instruments,” they are simple compared to cap-and-trade, which as we have noted involves essentially the buying and selling of air. Throw in an oppressive value-added tax and you have a recipe for corruption and fraud.

Last December, Europol, the European criminal intelligence agency, announced that Emissions Trading System fraud had resulted in about 5 billion euros in lost revenues as Europe’s carbon traders schemed to avoid paying Europe’s VAT and pocket the difference. In announcing the raids, the agency said that as much as 90% of Europe’s carbon trades were the result of fraudulent activity.

“Carbon markets are highly susceptible to fraud, given their complexity and the fact that it’s not always clear what is being traded,” says Oscar Reyes of Carbon Trade Watch.

Climate change has been found to be a fraud. Now the system to fight it has been. Yet it’s that system the administration and others want to establish here through cap-and-trade legislation such as Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer.

As we also have noted, the mechanism for such phantom carbon trading here has already been established in the form of the Chicago Climate Exchange. The Joyce Foundation in 2000 and 2001 provided the seed money to start CCX when Barack Obama sat on its board.

CCX founder Richard Sandor estimates the climate trading market could be “a $10 trillion dollar market.” It is an invitation to fraud that would make Europe’s ETS scandal seem like petty theft.

In 2000, according to Joyce Foundation records, $347,600 was allocated to Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management, where Sandor was a research professor, “to design a Midwestern pilot program for the voluntary trading of carbon dioxide and other emissions that cause climate change.”

Now President Obama would make such carbon trading mandatory, limit total emissions and make carbon as valuable a commodity as booze during Prohibition.

The Joyce Foundation’s two grants totaled just over $1 million. CCX has proved very lucrative for Sandor, whose 8 million shares in the exchange has grown to more than $260 million even before a national cap-and-trade system like Europe’s is established.

Al Gore … is co-founder of Generation Investment Management LLP, the fifth largest shareholder in CCX.

The largest shareholder is, uh, Goldman Sachs. …

What has happened in Europe is going to happen here and may already have begun. We, too, can save the earth for fun and profit.