Samizdata

Christopher Booker has a great article in the Telegraph titled Watch the web for climate change truths, which shows that The One True Faith of Anthropogenic Global Warming, having used the internet to preach their gospel, are going to have a hard time suppressing global warming non-conformists using the ‘net to do the same.

Last November, viewing photographs of a snowless Snowdon at an exhibition in Cardiff, the Welsh environment minister, Jane Davidson, said “we must act now to reduce the greenhouse gases that cause climate change”. Yet virtually no coverage has been given to the abnormally deep spring snow which prevented the completion of a new building on Snowdon’s summit for more than a month, and nearly made it miss the deadline for £4.2 million of EU funding.

[…]

On April 24 the World Wildife Fund (WWF), another body keen to keep the warmist flag flying, published a study warning that Arctic sea ice was melting so fast that it may soon reach a “tipping point” where “irreversible change” takes place. This was based on last September’s data, showing ice cover having shrunk over six months from 13 million square kilometres to just 3 million. What the WWF omitted to mention was that by March the ice had recovered to 14 million sq km (see the website Cryosphere Today), and that ice-cover around the Bering Strait and Alaska that month was at its highest level ever recorded

So not such a bad time to be a polar bear after all. It is also nice to see in-article out-linking to a source on a newspaper site.

Also Daniel Hannan has a Telegraph blog article called How bad does the UN have to get? which presents the difference between the ideals and reality of that vast organisation, mentioning ivory poaching, the Iraq food-for-oil scandal, the betrayal of Bosnian Muslims massacred in Srebrenica and the appalling UN role in the Rwanda genocide. However the most interesting part for me was in the comments, a defender of the UN replied thusly:

I don’t think you have bothered to give us enough information regarding the various allegations you have made about the UN.

There isn’t enough information on the Bosnian Muslims being betrayed for any of us, lefties or righties, to make a reasonable assessment. Where in the chain of command did this betrayal happen? What, exactly, was the UN betrayal of these Muslims? What else was the UN doing in Bosnia and in regard to Bosnia at the same time, so that we can come to some opinion as to whether what happened in Srebrenica was a small part or a large part of the total UN activities there in that region?

Was the oil-for-food scam [in Iraq] the activity of a small group of UN employees or was it what all UN staff were engaged in directly or indirectly? We don’t know because you haven’t told us! Was the UN institutionally guilty right through all its employees for the oil-for-food scam or was it down to a few individuals, whom the UN may have disciplined in some way by now? You didn’t tell us!

What were the UN reasons for not seizing the arms caches [in Rwanda]? We need to know! Did they make a mistake in not realising that the genocide would follow? A mistake is not corruption nor is it a failure to deliver overall.

So we need more information before rushing to judgement. That is a very representative defence of the UN of the sort I have heard for years. It is the equivalent of the time hallowed tactic of a UK minister responding to embarrassing questions by saying “we must hold an enquiry before rushing to judgement” in the knowledge that by the time the enquiry gets under way, said embarrassing news will be months or even years in the past and the the headlines have vanished down the memory hole, allowing harsh reality to be safely reinterpreted into something more ‘nuanced’ and the gravy trains will still keep running along their well polished rails undisturbed… except in the cases of Srebrenica, Food-for-Oil and Rwanda, the nasty truths are very well documented and understood. All this is only ten seconds of typing and click of the Google button away.

The internet really does change almost everything.

I came across a couple articles that puzzled me. Advocates of all beliefs, be they religious, political or philosophical, generally try to argue their position and convince other people their view of the world is the best one. Of course some religions (and pretty much all political systems) are evangelical, whereas some, like Judaism for example, are not. Nevertheless even Jews will argue their corner on why their beliefs are sensible and it is far from unheard of for people to convert to Judaism, something most Jews would probably regard as A Good Thing.

Yet strangely as of late, some Jews and Muslims seem a bit bent out of shape when another religion, the Roman Catholic Church, either lands a high profile convert or prays openly for non-believers to convert.

Being God free myself, I have no dog in this fight but this all strikes me rather like shop owners protesting that some other shop is advertising and therefore ‘stealing’ their customers. Guys, like everything else, religion is a market… why are you shocked that the Boys in Rome engage in marketing?

Some people are their own worst enemies. Take, for example, the rather eccentric-looking chap in the photograph below. He appears to have rather clumsily allowed himself to be portrayed as a depraved menace when he is but a makeover away from becoming a card-carrying member of The Great and The Good.

A network of “suicide gurus” who use the internet to advise people how to kill themselves has been exposed…

One of the most notorious figures on the internet suicide scene is Nagasiva Yronwode, a self-confessed Satanist who runs a shop selling occult books and charms in the small Californian town of Forestville, north of San Francisco.

Yronwode, 46, describes himself as the “outreach director” for an extremist cult called the Church of Euthanasia, which advocates suicide as a means of saving the world from the effects of overpopulation.

Does this self-defeating fool not appreciate just how seductive his central message would be to the bien pensant? Indeed, they are treading water just waiting for someone like him (only a plausible, marketable version) to come along. All he needs to do is to make himself a bit more presentable. → Continue reading: Image is everything

Bobby Fischer, chess genius and generally unpleasant wacko, has died in Iceland. Perhaps he will play Beelzebub for his soul?

Update: noted by commenter Walter Boswell: “I just realised he died at the age of 64. The same number of squares on the chess board. Bobby, spooky moves right up until the end.”

Hundreds hacked or burned to death in Kenya, in response to and election that may well have been rigged. Shootings and suicide bombing by Islamic radicals in many parts of the world. And news of record prison suicides and savage violence here in Britain. And, of course, the centralization and growth of government. Less wildly violent than the preceding, but hardly welcome and based on the same principle – the threat of violence.

Yesterday Cyprus and Malta became part of the Euro Zone. Thus further centralizing power in the hands of the EU and the magic circle of politically connected banks and other business enterprises that depend on the credit money which, in the end, comes from the European Union Central Bank. In this way competition between government currencies, and the possibility, that some might expand the credit/supply less than others, is reduced.

The smoking ban in France is also coming into force, although I hope the French resist. Although other Europeans seem in a passive mood – in “Belgium” the Flemish Liberal party leader is back as Prime Minister although he lost the General Election way back in June – but there is no resistance. And in Switzerland the Swiss People’;s Party got the highest vote of any party for many decades yet its leader is out of office and the Social Democrats, who got only 20% of the vote, remain in office – but there is not resistance. In both cases “Parliament had a vote” is the defence, and it is true it did.

And, of course, it is yet another year of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Things have come to a strange pass when President George Walker Bush is what pro-freedom people have to rely on – the wild spender facing even wilder spenders, the regulator facing more fanatical regulators.

In Britain also we have regulations being presented as freedom. Prime Minister Brown promises more regulations and calls them a “Constitution for the National Health Service” and there are yet more bans and regulations in other areas.

One can only hope that 2008 does not carry on as it has started.

I remember having a discussion some years back about what was the oldest pub in the world. I still do not have the answer to that, but I recently came across the list of contenders in Britain.

The oldest ones in Belfast are from the 1640 era, White’s Tavern and Kelly’s, the latter of which actually looks the part as the floor is enough below street level now that there are small ramps at the entryways.

Are there older pub’s in Europe, perhaps in Rome? Some little wine establishment tucked away near the ruins of the forum? Or perhaps in China. where one could imagine some spice road inn from Biblical times.

Could there perhaps be some ancient establishment in India with a sign saying: “Buddha Got Pissed Here?”