"It is difficult to conceive a more retrograde idea ..."

Rex Murphy:

.... it is with more grief than anger that I caught the story of an Ottawa “vigil” this week, held after a Missouri grand jury said it would not charge police officer Darren Wilson in the death of Ferguson teenager Michael Brown. Organizers of the rally asked “white/non-black allies” to “refrain from taking up space” and “never be the centre of anything.” 

That last phase “never be at the centre of anything” is particularly troubling. It is so defiantly categorical and universally — “anything” — dismissive.

The phrase and the other gibberish attending it should serve as a motto for every meeting and seminar dedicated to diversity as the governing motto for how not to engage with social issues, how not to bridge the real differences that can exist between people. ...

Rex's column is a very thoughtful take on a good example of what our universities are churning out these days.  Humanities faculties at virtually every university, against all logic, embrace  hare-brained, radical, po-mo social theories as if they were established scientific fact.  It has become what most "progressives" accept unquestioningly as mainstream thought.  The damage done to students' brains, society at large and to tax payers' wallets is enormous.

Tarek Fatah hammers smug Liberal Senator

Liberal Senator Grant Mitchell, a smug, arrogant, self-righteous, finger-waving tool ("pr*ck" for short), met more than his match at a recent Senate hearing, when he tried to lecture Tarek Fatah on Islam:


[via]

It's good to see that this video is receiving such wide attention.

Here's Tarek with Michael Coren. And here's Tarek's Sun column on 'de-radicalization' of Islamic radicals.

Mitchell has a reputation for smug, self-righteous arrogance.  Here are two posts from three years ago when the topic was climate change.

Indians balking at transparency

Brian Lilley:

One of the biggest themes in politics right now is transparency, letting the taxpayers, the people who foot the bill, know where their money is being spent. Most politicians have accepted it but others continue to fight.

This week a group of Native leaders announced they would take the federal government to court to challenge the First Nations Financial Transparency Act.  ...

Here in BC the Legislative Assembly makes the law on financial accountability/transparency applicable to all municipalities, towns and cities in the province.  They are required to publicly account for every penny of taxpayers' money spent.  Also by law, they are required to publicly reveal the salaries of every public servant earning $75,000 or more (by name, alphabetically).  I'm sure this is also the case for every other municipality, town and city across the country.

As the provinces are for their municipalities, etc, the federal government is responsible for setting the rules for financial accounting on Indian Reserves. Chief Fox and others objecting to this (as "racist", no less) is absolutely asinine.  Their objections to financial transparency are beyond bizarre! (the only possible reason is that they have some very interesting things to hide).  What is also bizarre is that such laws haven't always been in place.

I doubt they have legal leg to stand on, but should their attempt to avoid accountability make it into court let's hope they don't draw some bone-head of a liberal judge who sympathizes with them.

The Trudeau Foundation

Peter Foster:

The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation last week held a conference titled “Weathering Change: Pathways to Sustainability in Canada.” It confirmed that the pathway to serfdom now makes its way through the thickets of climate hysteria, past social-mediated mobs, and via smokeless backrooms filled with radical NGOs. ...

... essentially a sleeper cell to promote the kind of big and pervasive government favoured by its eponymous hero, who died in 2000, and now by his son, Justin. It was endowed in 2002, by a Liberal government, with $125-million of taxpayers’ money....

One big strategic difference since the days of Trudeau pere is that much of the bogus conversation has been hijacked by radical environmental groups masquerading as “civil society.”

Who knew?

Obama - the guest from Hell

Mathew Fisher:

There are ominous parallels in how U.S. President Barack Obama deliberately humiliated Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott ... and how the American leader has kept Prime Minister Stephen Harper waiting at the altar for several years by withholding approval of the XL Keystone pipeline.

... Obama has cavalierly threatened close ties with two of the few countries the U.S. has always counted on when the world has gone berserk.

... Obama ignored the advice of his own embassy in Canberra that such a commentary would badly damage relations. Moreover, Obama failed to mention to Abbott his desire to deliver a speech in Australia during several long conversations that the two men had at the APEC leaders’ summit two weeks ago in Beijing.

...  Ignoring diplomatic protocol when visiting a friendly country, the White House refused to give its hosts a copy of the president’s speech or even a summary of what was in it.

... What Obama did at the University of Queensland was intervene in this country’s often intense internal debate about climate change.

... the Abbott government was left fuming about their visitor’s insults. 

... Obama’s comments in Brisbane made a total nonsense of the White House’s stated intention ...

... the preaching and disloyalty ... is immensely unhelpful at a time when China and India are ascendant, the Russian bear is marauding through Ukraine and threatening Georgia, Moldova, the Baltic states and Poland, and the Middle East is becoming an increasingly unpredictable cauldron of dysfunctional states.

Talk about guests from Hell!  Let's face it, the man is a complete a**h*le, and a dangerous one at that.  Two more years is a long time to have a rogue American president on the loose.

Why the Burnaby Mountain protesters will make no difference to the Kinder Morgan project

Brent Stafford in Vancouver's "24 Hours" :

These Kinder Morgan protesters have a lot of nerve. Who elected them to speak for the “people?” No one. They only speak for a small hyper-ideological fringe that is radically hell bent on upending our entire economic system. ...

...  the protests have nothing to do with an impending danger to the local environment. It’s all about fighting capitalism and the primary target is the fossil fuel industry. ... 

... It is for this very reason the people protesting Kinder Morgan will make no difference. Their demands are unreasonable and entirely unfeasible. And I suspect they know that. ...

Good for Mr. Stafford.  News and opinion on this subject much more often than not foolishly sympathizes with the protesters, lending them undeserved attention and legitimacy.

How a "green" journalist came to hate radical environmentalists

Elizabeth Nickson explains how she came to write her book "Eco-Fascists: How Radical Conservationists Are Destroying Our Natural Heritage":



It's an excellent book, by the way.  She has, in the process of researching it, become a great advocate for property rights.

See also, Agenda 21.

The push for taxes on "carbon"

Progressives have been ramping up the rhetoric for a "tax on carbon" or, euphemistically, "pricing carbon".  The usual suspects  have been doing so for some time and more recently it came from a less predicable quarter, Preston Manning.

It's worth reminding ourselves of the reasons to push back:

Finance Minister Joe Oliver: the "multibillion-dollar tax on everything"
Lorne Gunter: "Heaven help us ..."

BC, the first jurisdiction in North America to impose such a tax, is frequently held up by carbon tax pushers as a shining success.  Aldyen Donnelly points out why that and related claims are a myth:

... BC Ministry of Finance budget documents show, clearly, that total demand for the B.C. carbon-taxed products grew faster after the carbon-tax was introduced than over almost every other similar timeframe between 1992 and 2008.

Time to audit Elizabeth May

Elizabeth Nickson:

There are many things May seems to dislike about Canada and she has a catastrophic view of our future if we don't do what she recommends. The free market is seen as a disaster writ large; she holds strongly the views of ... economist Thomas Pilketty, who recommends massive income redistribution. Her list is long: we are a petro state and are threatened by oil, pipelines, frakking, fish farming, carbon, the “tar” sands, industrial farming, meat eating, population growth, biodiversity collapse, the stock market, banks, ozone, development, and especially, the rich. ...

... Seductive as she may seem, Elizabeth May’s Canadian dream is a luxury we cannot afford. [Actually, May's "dream" would lead to the opposite of "luxury" as in poverty for all.]

Obama's climate surrender to China

Rex Murphy:

Much is being made of Barack Obama’s “deal” with China ...

... For those who still retain their enthusiasm for the lame-duck... the announcement was a milestone in the fight against our ecological doom, an historical commitment.  ... the deal “shames” Canada, “isolates” us, puts us in the overcrowded villains gallery ...

Mr. Obama ... has told China that the U.S., which even now is on a downward slope in CO2 emissions, is willing to bind itself to continuing that downward slope for the next 16 years. ...

... And in return, what does the deal promise from China’s side? ... China has a 16-year holiday to keep accelerating its development, building a coal-powered plant every 8 to 10 days.  ... Why cannot Canada take the offer the U.S. made to China? [Because Canadian eco-freaks, egged on by a gullible leftist media, would go nuts].


... So this great historic deal is really nothing more than ... a last gasp for Mr. Obama, a placation to the always fierce warming constituency, and for the Chinese, a little chuckle or two at how easy it is to charm the eagerly gullible.

Charles Krauthammer:

Climate enthusiasts will say that I refuse to take yes for an answer. Of course I would take yes for an answer. But the Obama-Xi agreement is not yes. It is “check back with me in 16 years.” Aren’t the people advocating this deal the same garment-rending climate apocalypticists who’ve been warning of irreversible planetary changes beginning now, and the supreme imperative of acting immediately?

Except, you see, for China, the world’s No. 1 carbon polluter. It gets a 16-year pass.

Preston Manning - a traitor to his former conservative self

It would be interesting to know what has caused Preston's about face on conservative principles he so clearly championed as Reform leader. Advocating the use of weasel words to dupe the public into accepting a carbon tax does not sound like the Preston Manning I once voted for. Though we have to acknowledge that he has been spouting the sustainability mantra for several years.

Something happened to bring about his apparently new-found enthusiasms for more taxes, bigger government and Orwellian propaganda. It can't be evidence for the threat of man-made global warming - that has become nothing but weaker over the past two decades. Though since it figures in his push for a disguised carbon tax he's using it exactly as eco and far-left radicals do - as a tool to sell the public on an agenda they wouldn't otherwise support.

So what is it that motivates Preston's uncharacteristic, anti-conservative new stance? Why has he turned traitor to his former principles? "Green" seems to figure strongly. Maybe we should follow the money. Where does the Manning Centre get its green? Maybe it's from Big Green - eg. gigabuck foreign foundations like Tides, Rockefeller, Hewlett, etc.
[Update: Ezra notes that Manning is a member of the Pembina Institute Advisory Council. You can't get much more progressive and radically environmental than Pembina which has links to Tides and the Suzuki Foundation. See also.]

Whatever it is, it's sad.

Sign Ezra's petition.

Aussie Foreign Minister chides Obama

From Radio Australia:

... Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has criticised US president Barack Obama for a speech in Brisbane last weekend in which he claimed climate change threatened the Great Barrier Reef.

... Ms Bishop is not the only Coalition politician to voice criticism of Mr Obama, with frontbenchers Joe Hockey[Treasurer] and Jamie Briggs [Infr & Reg Dev] making comments in the wake of the Brisbane speech.

How Obama dishonored the latest American victim of the Islamic State

Mark Steyn - A Death in Syria

... I would like also to note another example of presidential brazenness this week - Barack Obama's reaction to the latest beheading of a US citizen by the head hackers of the Islamic State. Peter Kassig's death video was not as the others ...

... In his response to the beheading of Peter Kassig, Obama chose to turn a man who may have died heroically into just another Muslim victim:

Abdul-Rahman was taken from us in an act of pure evil by a terrorist group that the world rightly associates with inhumanity... ISIL's actions represent no faith, least of all the Muslim faith which Abdul-Rahman adopted as his own.

 "Abdul-Rahman"? Why, yes. Mr Kassig supposedly converted to Islam while imprisoned by the Islamic State. That's to say, his submission to Islam was at the point of a sword.

... In the same video in which "Jihadi John" appears with Mr Kassig's head, the Islamic State are seen decapitating 13 fellow Muslims from the Syrian army. If you're a Muslim, you get the group beheading with the crowd-scene extras. If you're an American or Briton, you get the star role, the solo act. The Islamic State knew which group Peter Kassig belonged to even if the President didn't.

More BS about polar bears

This week the media have been dutifully spreading more alarmist misinformation about declining polar bear numbers.  WUWT, via a Canadian expert,  supplies the true story:

Dr Susan Crockford, a Canadian zoologist and professor with more than 35 years experience, has been highly critical of these stories, claiming that they are misleading the public.

Responding to the claims in the media, Dr Crockford said:

“The main story of this study is the remarkable recovery of the polar bear population by 2010 which has likely continued since then. To suggest that polar bear populations have been declining is hugely misleading.
“The authors have also acknowledged that the cause of the 2004-2006 decline was heavy spring ice conditions. They found no correlation for the decline with summer sea ice conditions.”

 Would it be too much to ask the so-called "professional" journalists of the mainstream media to do some basic fact checking before reporting these stories?  Probably, they're more interested in promoting climate alarmism than in science.

Australia is reminded that with friends like Obama, who needs enemies?

In that speech of Obama's at the University of Queensland, Aussie Greg Sheridan, writing in the Wall Street Journal, notes a mystifying attack on Australia:

President Obama over the weekend made a bizarre decision to attack and damage his closest ally in Asia, and one of the most committed supporters of U.S. foreign policy.

.... the longest passage was an extraordinary riff on climate change that contained astonishing criticism—implied, but unmistakable—of the government led by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

... As some congressional Democrats recently learned, the only thing fraught with more danger than being Mr. Obama’s enemy is being his friend.

Obama, ever the traitor to the West, puts his radical leftist ideology and what he thinks is good for his legacy ahead of everything.  As Israel learned long ago, he's intensely divisive not only at home, but abroad as well.  The man's a menace.  For the good of the entire civilized world, 2016 can't come too soon.

Global warming causes global cooling

[h/t WUWT]

Conservatives win two by-elections, Trudeau takes a victory lap

By-elections in Whitby-Oshawa (Cons margin +8.5%) and Yellowhead (Cons margin +42.6%).  For Justin Trudeau, that means it's time for a victory speech:



Bryn Weiss points out that the turnout for both byelections was crappy - for Whitby Oshawa 32% and for Yellowhead a miserable 16%.  The tiny Yellowhead turnout says to me that conservative voters stayed away in droves (liberal voters not so much) and that in 2015 when the turnout doubles, triples or quadruples that margin in favour of Conservatives will rise accordingly.  Whitby-Oshawa - who knows?

How climate alarmism relates to Obamacare

Both are "sold" to a "stupid" public through a "campaign of exaggeration and outright lies" now known as "Grubering".

Climate alarmist cult misinformation on CO2

Physicist Will Happer on the benefits of CO2 ... a view he says brings him regular hate mail:

Latest poll shows a continuing travesty

A Nanos poll released Nov 12th ...

... has Stephen Harper taking the lead as Canada's preference for PM. 

Well, that's good one supposes, but that Trudeau's numbers remain anywhere near Harper's is a continuing travesty that reflects very poorly on Canadians' sensibilities, seriousness and maturity.

American Lameduck Goofball-in-Chief wows Aussie students

At the University of Queensland:

U.S. President Barack Obama gave a landmark speech ... where his call for immediate action to protect the Great Barrier Reef was met with rousing applause.

... In a pot shot at Russian President Vladimir Putin's administration, Mr Obama said the United States was 'leading in opposing Russia's aggression, which is a threat to the world - which we saw in the appalling shoot down of MH17'. [So, he admits that what Russia is getting away with in Ukraine is thanks to US "leadership".  That's why Putin is shaking in his boots.]

It's easy to see why he picked a university to deliver his feckless bullcrap.

[via]

Harper to Putin: "Get out of Ukraine"

At the G20 summit:

Reluctantly accepting Putin’s hand, Harper was said to have told him: “I’ll shake your hand, but I only have one thing to say to you: Get out of Ukraine.”...

Putin’s terse rejoinder was “that’s impossible because we are not there,” the Russian leader’s spokesman later told Canadian journalists. ... This is total nonsense. ...

More at Metanoodle.

Confusing and contradictory results from Health Canada wind turbine noise study

Health Canada recently released a summary of results from its study of Wind Turbine Noise and Health.  Findings were confusing and apparently contradictory.  From the Health Canada report:

The following were not found to be associated with WTN exposure:

• self-reported sleep (e.g., general disturbance, use of sleep medication, diagnosed sleep disorders);
• self-reported illnesses (e.g., dizziness, tinnitus, prevalence of frequent migraines and headaches) and chronic health conditions (e.g., heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes); and
• self-reported perceived stress and quality of life.

The following was found to be statistically associated with increasing levels of WTN:

• annoyance towards several wind turbine features (i.e. noise, shadow flicker, blinking lights, vibrations, and visual impacts).

Further down in the report:

5.3 Annoyance and Health

• WTN annoyance was found to be statistically related to several self-reported health effects including, but not limited to, blood pressure, migraines, tinnitus, dizziness, scores on the PSQI, and perceived stress.
• WTN annoyance was found to be statistically related to measured hair cortisol, systolic and diastolic blood pressure.

Huh? WTN exposure IS NOT associated with a bunch of bad health effects but WTN annoyance (caused by WTN exposure) IS associated with the same bunch of bad health effects and then some.

Any guesses how this will be received by the wind industry and its media supporters and by the people who have to live near wind turbines?

Here's the angry reaction from North American Platform Against Wind Power (NA-PAW).

Lest we forget

    

... but, sadly, there are some, such as the disgraceful Greater Essex County School Board, who are enabling disloyalty to Canadians who died for our freedoms:

TOP 5 Conservative Principles

Bill Whittle's, that is... contrasted with progressives' ...

Trudeau's ideas on ISIS and Iraq "idotic", "a bad joke"

Justin ("Neville") Trudeau:

"Idiotic." That's how ... Jason Kenney put the idea to offer "cold winter" advice to the victims of ISIS.

Justin Trudeau now thinks the responsibility to protect doesn't mean eliminating genocidal jihadi maniacs, but rather giving people brochures on how to get through the winter. This is just a bad joke," said Kenney​.

Media Party group-think on global warming

The lede in Ezra's segment is a medley of Media Party reactions to the latest IPCC report.  An excellent example of the prevailing media group-think (or, rather, useful idiot group-non-think) :

How Canada gains from Obama's loss

Lawrence Solomon counts the ways:

Number One on the Obama Can’t-Do list involves carbon taxes or other global warming measures that could set back Canada’s economy ... a prescient Prime Minister Harper tied Canada’s global warming policies to those of the United States. ... Harper — thought to be a closet climate skeptic — took a calculated risk that paid off in spades. ...

Number Two on the Obama Can’t-Do List is trade protectionism, a favourite among many Democrats including Obama ...

Number Three: Canada can also breathe a big sigh of relief that free spending Democrats are now reined in. ...Obama’s exploding of the national debt — by the time he’s done, it may have doubled to $20-trillion

Pundits are betting that Obama will finally approve Keystone ... But the pundits could be wrong. Obama has betrayed most of his constituents through broken promises ... But even chucking Keystone could now be too late for Obama. He has become such a liability to his party that few Democratic politicians have a strong allegiance to him ...

See also Peter Foster: Mr. Obama, pull down that anti-Keystone XL wall
 

Republicans win big, Obama shrugs

Obama: Midterms? What midterms?

The UN IPCC's synthetic climate alarmism

Peter Foster: Dedicated to promoting synthetic climate alarmism

 The latest synthesis report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the “capstone” of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report — contains no surprises. 

However, it is intriguing for ... the identity of the man to whom it is dedicated — the late Stephen Schneider, a Stanford professor and proponent of bending science in pursuit of a “better world.”  ... famous for his recommendation in 1989 that in order to get “loads of media coverage,” scientists had to “offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.” ... For the IPCC to honour him tells us a great deal about its own orientation which, fortunately, is becoming less relevant by the day.

Also,

... It is filled with what eminent Canadian mathematician Christopher Essex has called “hilarious bamboozling parascientific probability language."

The "new" UN report has driven local and national media climate alarmism for going on a week now -  exactly what Prof Schneider advocated and the IPCC sought.  So, by dedicating it to Schneider maybe the IPCC was, in its own weird, sneaky way, being honest for a change.

See also:IPCC focus on stopping global warming and extreme weather is unscientific and immoral

Breaking! IPCC demands ransom

[h/t WUWT]