As movies go, this is pretty good.
A bloodthirsty dictator, carrying out genocide? No problem ... "engagement" is the answer. An intellectual parasite who has contributed to the destruction of the British economy? No problem ... give him an honorary doctorate.
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A "must read" from Newsweek which tells us that: "Each year as much as $100 billion is spent by governments and consumers around the world on green subsidies designed to encourage wind, solar, and other renewable-energy markets" – to absolutely no effect when the objective is to achieve the Holy Grail of reducing "emissions".
There is something increasingly bizarre in the behaviour of Western politicians scrambling to pour our money down the drain in the pursuit of their global warning fantasies, draining our wealth and intellectual capital on such a fruitless exercise, while ignoring completely the real threats and challenges which assail our world.
It is almost as if we are seeing a collective failure of will. Confronted with real, difficult problems, our politicians have regressed into a form of second childhood. They have retreated from the real world, to cower in their playpens, there to deal with imagined threats, for want of being able to cope with reality.
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Having surrendered our foreign policy-making powers to the European Union, a process that is all but complete once the constitutional Lisbon treaty comes into force, little David Miliband goes for the obvious next stage – arguing that, in the corridors of Brussels, we should endeavour "to take a lead in developing a strong European foreign policy", thus confirming our vassal status.
For those lacking any understanding of history – which seems to include most of the MSM – a nation which no longer commands its own foreign policy is no longer an independent state.
Interestingly, it was precisely that issue which led to the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, after Britain had insisted on taking control of Afghanistan's foreign policy, leading to the Rawalpindi Agreement on 19 August 1919 when control was re-established, from which date Afghanistan celebrates its independence.
We will shortly be in the absurd position of fighting for the security of the independent state of Afghanistan, from the position of being a vassal state of the European Empire (aka EU) – our presence legitimised only by it being a "legacy" policy on which we embarked before the steel jaws of the constitutional Lisbon treaty snapped closed.
To little Dave Milliband, however, this is a Good Thing. Speaking at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London today, his idea of upholding British national interest is for the Empire to develop a strong foreign policy, warning that the UK would lose out internationally if it tried to oppose this process (not that we can) on the grounds of "hubris, nostalgia or xenophobia".
"The choice for Europe is simple – get our act together and make the European Union a leader on the world stage or become spectators in a G2 world shaped by the United States and China," he thus declares. And so it is that we "celebrate" our loss of independence, almost exactly 90 years after it was returned to a country for which our troops are now fighting and dying.
In the fullness of time, one wonders whether – when we have regained our independence – Afghanistan will be in a position to return the "favour" and send troops to the UK to help us beat off European jihadists, channeling international aid to us so that we can rebuild our churches and schools, destroyed after the decades of civil war.
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Forget nation-building says Diana West. We should be concentrating on nation-saving ... our own.
Like the doomed Soviets, the United States and its Western allies ignore the threat of jihad, a threat now on a global level unimagined in 1979 when Soviet tanks rolled into Kabul. "We miniaturize the challenge," writes Andrew C. McCarthy at National Review Online. "Thus, the war is said only to be in Afghanistan. The 'challenge' is framed as isolating a relative handful (of extremists) rather than confronting the fact that tens of millions of Muslims despise the West." And even worse, the fact that tens of millions of Muslims work to assuage their feelings by following and imposing Islamic law across the West.In other words, nation-building in the Islamic world is a distraction from nation-saving in the Western one.
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Most papers are running with it, but it isThe Times which has it as its lead item – the support of David Miliband for Tony Blair's as yet undeclared candidacy for the position of supreme leader of the European Union (European Council division).
According to Miliband, Blair should be made head of a stronger European Union "that would be able to compete with China and the United States on the world stage". The new EU president needed to be someone who "stopped the traffic" in Washington and Beijing and was guaranteed the highest access to world leaders.
An additional advantage of his appointment would be that it would seriously – to use the technical term – piss off the Tories, who are looking forward to having their own Boy take hold of the reins of power, only to see them slip away, to picked up by that leering face in Brussels, rubbing in to all and sundry that the constitutional Lisbon treaty is just as dangerous as we have maintained all along.
By then, of course, it will be too late, when Boy Dave discovers that the Brown administration was the last government of Britain and the "colleagues" get down to running the show, without the encumbrance of democratically elected politicians throwing their toys out of the pram in the European Council, every time they are faced with something they don't like.
Strangely though, it seems as if the likes of Angela Merkel are warming to the idea of Emperor Blair, precisely because of the anticipated Tory reaction, believing – quite wrongly – that a Cameron administration will be "eurosceptic". His appointment would, says The Times balance a British eurosceptic government in the event of a Tory victory.
One struggles to believe that Merkel could be so naïve as to believe it would actually mattered who took over the local government in Britain, and that she could tolerate the leering face of Blair across the table every time she descended on Brussels. But, the idea has a power of its own, sufficient possibly to sustain the Blair Bandwagon.
More worrying, perhaps – as if the prospect of Emperor Blair wasn't worrying enough – is the Miliband's rationale for his appointment, this stale, outdated paradigm that it would help the EU "compete with China and the United States on the world stage".
Far be it for me to sound alarmist, but as there are signs that the Taleban could be breaking out of its localised tribal base, to become part of the global jihad, far from looking to "compete" – with the United States, in particular – we should be urging the closest possible co-operation to deal with the emerging and ever-more serious threat of militant Islam.
With the threat developing both at home and abroad, the EU's role has – to be as temperate as possible – been dangerously myopic. If with the aid of Blair it continues to expend its energies on play acting on the "world stage" instead of mobilising our resources to deal with a threat to the very fabric of our civilisation (what is left of it), we will have the dubious pleasure of seeing a man who has fatally weakened the UK go on to repeat his fiasco on a global scale.
But then, if Caligua could appoint his horse as a Senator of ancient Rome, it seems appropriate that we should see a horse's arse appointed as Emperor of the new Rome. If we really want failure, it may as well be spectacular.
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In a startling new book, Christopher Booker reveals how a handful of scientists, who have pushed flawed theories on global warming for decades, now threaten to take us back to the Dark Ages. He writes:
Next Thursday marks the first anniversary of one of the most remarkable events ever to take place in the House of Commons. For six hours MPs debated what was far and away the most expensive piece of legislation ever put before Parliament.Read the full article on The Sunday Telegraph site.
The Climate Change Bill laid down that, by 2050, the British people must cut their emissions of carbon dioxide by well over 80 per cent. Short of some unimaginable technological revolution, such a target could not possibly be achieved without shutting down almost the whole of our industrialised economy, changing our way of life out of recognition.
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"The complexity of all this is hard enough for experts to understand," says Paul R. Pillar, a former CIA analyst. "It's not surprising if it baffles a lot of ordinary people."
And, from there, it goes downhill. I started yesterday on what I thought would be a relatively quick piece and, eight hours later, was still writing it. If you are not interested in Afghanistan, don't bother, but if you are, then you can read the result on Defence of the Realm.
Too tired for anything else, so I'll post some more general pieces later today.
That "climate change" ad revisited ... here and here.
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Charles Moore writes this: "When establishment figures say that the attitudes of the BNP help prepare the ground for violence, they are right. But they do not apply this logic to their engagement with Islamism – the only form of extremism which nowadays kills large numbers of our fellow citizens."
Threads begin to merge ... we write: the problem is Islam and largely illiterate tribal populations, prey to "miserable superstitions", exposed to "the rapacity and tyranny of a numerous priesthood."
More on Defence of the Realm.
At current rate of spending, General Sir David Richards has effectively committed us to an additional £20 billion in public expenditure – this being about the least we can get away with for the five more years he is expecting British troop numbers to remain at current levels in Afghanistan.
With the Labour administration expected to fall in the forthcoming general election, this of course is a sum that Mr Cameron's "modern" Conservatives are going to have to find, on top of the replacements they are going to have to fund as equipment wears out and is destroyed.
More on Defence of the Realm.
A new word entered my vocabulary.