Samizdata

British academic John Gray, based at the London School of Economics, is well-known in Samizdata circles as the former ‘Thatcherite’ professor, author of interesting books about FA Hayek and John Stuart Mill who in the late 1980s turned sharply away from classical liberalism and embraced the doom-and-gloom agenda with the fervour of the convert. His depressing prose can be occasionally seen in such idiotarian enclaves as the New Statesman and the Guardian. OK, it’s a shame to lose a potentially good guy to the Forces of Lunacy, but such is life.

But even I did not realise that the chap has pretty much decided that the planet would be better off if we all dropped dead. Really. His pessimism has attained heroic proportions. Check out this superb piece of Fisking of the guy by leftist writer Helene Guldberg. It surely points to something pretty chilling about what some folk who use the Green banner really believe in.

Update: link and attribution now corrected

Since curbing pollution seems to rank high among the aims of the delegates in Johannesburg they could start by dissolving back into their relatively harmless constituent parts and thereby avoid releasing into the atmosphere the several thousand tons of toxic gases that will result from the mixture of bureaucratic ambition, junk science and high-octane idiocy that is currently being manifested. Just let them mingle long enough to gobble down their ostrich canapes, give them their complimentary set of South African Airways in-flight cabin slippers and let them bugger off back to Absurdistan (or ‘Europe’ as its more commonly known) or wherever else it was they came from in the first place.

This Grand Conference for Solving All The Problems In The World should, on the fact of it, at least, prove to be a heaven-sent gift for bloggers. Over the next two weeks it will produce more Fiskable material than the Daily Wanker could produce in several lifespans.

Again, on the face of it, eye-watering, snot-inducing hilarity is just about all that will actually materialise from Johannesburg. The sheer scale of the ambitions leads me to believe that it is a project that almost seems destined to fail. However, since most people believe that the way to abolish poverty and all other problems is to gather together vast numbers of Well-Meaning People together in one big room to make grand pronouncements and write lots of impressive things on lots of bits of paper, there will be months of outrage, anguish, recriminations and accusations. Angry media pundits will turn their cynical (for the wrong reasons) indignation on caught-in-the-headlight politicians who will squirm off the hook by blaming their failure on those greedy Americans who ‘steal all the world’s resources’.

Sane people, however, will look around them and note that they still have their cars, washing machines, supermarkets and flushing toilets and breathe a sigh a relief that danger has passed.

That would be wrong.

Like all such conferences there is a primary public agenda and secondary real agenda. The real agenda is to be found among the brightest and best of Tranzi talent that is among the 65,000 or so delegates and for whom ‘Sustainable Development’ is a euphamism for a Global Economic Plan. These are the direct descendants of the people who once provided the intellectual tools for the Bolsheviks and, over the next two weeks, they will formulate their plans, cement their relationships, hammer out their various protocols and generally quicken each other. By the time the other delegates have applauded the final conference condemnation of US unilaterlism, the Tranzis will have welded together the skeleton of World Government.

At just about the same time as the rest of us are watching Baghdad light up like a Christmas Tree, various innocuous-sounding International Agreements will start materialising; this is the flesh on the bones. The process will continue step by stealthy step, away from the limelight and at a safe distance from anyone anywhere who might want to vote on any of it.

The first task in defeating an enemy is identifying the enemy and the second step is knowing how they operate. So warn your family, your friends and your neighbours and ring the village bell to warn the townsfolk. Tell them that the enemy is coming and be prepared to repel all borders.