The end of "progressive" soft power

A modified version of this column by Kelly McParland appeared in today's Post as an editorial entiled "The end of 'soft power'":

U.S. President Barack Obama’s sudden about-face on the Middle East has exacerbated the difficulty that self-styled progressives face in sorting out how to deal with the world’s many emerging threats. Mr. Obama came to office preaching a highly progressive approach to confronting rogue, terror-supporting states: dialogue, diplomacy, co-operation and brotherhood, along with a pronounced reluctance to commit U.S. military forces on any fresh foreign entanglement. But it didn’t work. Now he’s trying bombs. He has come to realize that the most problematic actors on the world stage don’t share his enthusiasm for reason, negotiation and peace....

Having contributed military advisors to the effort against ISIS, Canada has a direct stake in this battle. The campaign should be of interest to Canadians for another reason, too. With Mr. Obama’s renunciation of his touchy-feely approach to international relations, it makes it difficult to argue that “soft power” and “honest brokerage,” two of our own foreign-policy establishment’s favourite catchphrases during the Liberal years, ever had much value on the world stage.  

Since Stephen Harper came to power, his opponents have crafted the notion that Canada once was a widely respect middle power that now has squandered its reputation thanks to the Conservatives’ renunciation of soft-power shibboleths. ...

... People who cut off aid workers’ heads don’t call out for “honest brokers.” They call out for bombs and bullets.

In the comments behind the Post pay-wall, Stephen Boyling wrote:

 This Editorial, although significantly watered down from what most of us have been saying for years, will do, especially after the immoral mea culpa Obama splashed us with during his UN pirouette.  The prime minister of Israel gave the speech the president of the United States of America should have given.  That, tied to the speech of prime minister Harper and his focus on what it takes, what is needed to suffocate the madness that is born in backwater dictatorships and 5-star sand lots made for a more than compelling argument when it comes to standing up to Islamic madness.

Next year in Canada, God save us from Obama-lite.  A man trying to run a race without first learning how to walk.

Amen.

Google - sanctimonious, hypocritical, rent-seeking BIRD KILLER

In the Wall Street Journal, headlined "Google Kills Birds":

Our headline has the virtue of being true—as we will explain—unlike Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt's assertion this week that people who oppose government subsidies for green energy are liars. The real charlatans are businesses like Google that use climate change as a pretext for corporate welfare.

Google, whose motto is "Don't Be Evil," announced on Monday that it is quitting the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) because of the conservative outfit's putative denial of climate change.  "Everyone understands climate change is occurring," said Mr. Schmidt. "And the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. And so we should not be aligned with such people—they're just, they're just literally lying."

In fact, ALEC takes no position on the substance of climate change.  ...

 Consider Google's pledge to fund over $1.5 billion in non fossil-fuel energy. Yet Google derives most of its energy from non-renewables on the grid... It's no coincidence that Google's server in Iowa is located near one of the cheapest sources of coal-fired power in the Midwest. 

Also not a coincidence is that nearly all of Google's solar and wind farms are located in states with renewable-energy mandates, which create opportunities for politically mediated profit-making ... 

Google has invested about $600 million in California's solar plants such as the Ivanpah system in California's Mojave Desert. ... Ivanpah's "power towers"—which burn natural gas—incinerate about 28,000 birds annually.  ...

The $2.2 billion bird fryer was funded with a $1.6 billion federal loan, which Google and its business partners plan to repay by applying for a federal grant. ...

... Mr. Schmidt shouldn't disguise his company's mercenary motives behind false and trendy appeals to green political virtue.

... etc, etc, etc ...

Eric Schmidt - holier-than-thou, hypocritical, rent seeking bird killer.  No doubt about it.  It's what we might expect from any knee-jerk progressive crony capitalist.

 

Obama's "moderate Muslim" of the week

Roger Kimball:

Just yesterday, the president of the United States — that would be Barack Hussein Obama — stood before the United Nations and heaped praise on Sheikh Abdallah Bin Bayyah, a Muslim cleric who has endorsed a fatwa calling for the murder of U.S. soldiers. Yep, Bin Bayyah is Obama’s candidate of the week for the prize of being a “moderate Muslim.”

  [Via David Thompson referring to "that pernicious little tool in the White House" ]

Bill Maher on Islam

Bill Maher may hold an ugly, profane, intolerant disrespect for Christianity (and most other religions except maybe atheism, socialism and climate change) but at least he gets it right when he calls out his fellow "liberals" for their hypocritical defense of Islamism and their ideological (and cowardly) refusal to honestly condemn Islamist atrocities:



[h/t: The Blaze]

"Climate Science is not Settled" - former Obama science official

Physicist Dr. Steven Koonin, undersecretary for science in the Energy Department during President Barack Obama's first term, writes in an article in the Wall Street Journal:

We are very far from the knowledge needed to make good climate policy ...

 Dr. Koonin covers all the key issues, what we know and most importantly what we don't know:

...  the crucial, unsettled scientific question for policy is, "How will the climate change over the next century under both natural and human influences?" Answers to that question at the global and regional levels, as well as to equally complex questions of how ecosystems and human activities will be affected, should inform our choices about energy and infrastructure.

But—here's the catch—those questions are the hardest ones to answer. They challenge, in a fundamental way, what science can tell us about future climates. ...

Koonin's article should be compulsory reading for all climate policy makers, especially the government ones.

[via FOS

Wind industry - "one of the most corrupt enterprises on earth"

James Delingpole on an interview with Mexican ecology professor Patricia Mora:

... Though Professor Mora is talking specifically about Mexico, what she says applies equally well to supposedly more transparent democracies such as Britain, Australia, the US, Canada and Denmark. The wind industry is necessarily one of the most corrupt enterprises on earth because it depends for its entire existence on government favours, backhanders, dishonest environmental impact assessments and on regulators turning a blind eye to the known health problems caused by wind turbine noise. Without crony capitalism, the wind industry simply would not exist. ...

Vancouver's little "People's March" against climate change

Purely by accident (I swear) I saw the noisy, Big Green sponsored mob go by on W Georgia St.  Appropriately, it began at the CBC building.

The turnout was small.










Veronica Alice (pictured) expressed an opinion to the Vancouver Sun:
“It’s the system that got us in the mess,” said Alice. “It’s the system that needs to change. ..."

A sentiment straight out of the "Occupy" protest.  Mess? What mess?  These highly privileged ingrates protest the system that brought them (and billions more around the world) whatever wealth, freedom and and life expectancy they enjoy.  It is the best it has been in the history of mankind, and getting better.  They should be celebrating that system, not protesting it and advocating its demise.  If these foolish dupes and useful idiots have their way, their (and our) children's futures will be very, very bleak indeed.