James Delingpole's Blog, page 12

Leo DiCaprio wages war on Western Civilisation

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio has declared war on Western industrial civilisation by funding and narrating a series of short eco documentaries urging us all to leave fossil fuels in the ground, cripple our economies with carbon taxes and embrace bird-frying, bat-chomping renewable technologies such as solar and wind.

The first film in the series on Carbon – co-written by liberal activist cum talk radio host Thom Hartmann – is riddled with basic errors, extremely dubious propaganda claims, and flagrant politicking on behalf of the more left-wing elements in the Obama administration. But DiCaprio may well have been unable to afford a fact-checker, owing to the fact that he was paid just $10 million for his last movie The Wolf of Wall Street – a catastrophic drop in the income he received for earlier movies, like Inception, for which he received nearly $60 million.

Here are some of the simple mistakes DiCaprio would have spotted, if only he had been able to scrape together the money for an entry-level production team.

“Ancient life on earth. Over millions of years plants and animals lived and died; that decomposed life sunk deep into the ground and as a result an ancient menace was created: fossil fuels.”

Er, about that phrase “ancient menace”, Leo. You’re talking about the intense stored energy that made the Industrial Revolution possible; that freed people from the backbreaking toil of agrarianism and enabled the division of labour and technological advances that led, inter alia, to the invention of cinema and the birth of your career. Without fossil fuels your sorry ass would be nothing, DiCaprio – and all your cutesy pop fans would still be slaving as dairy maids and gleaners, their faces ravaged by cowpox. So a little more respect and perspective, please.

Read the rest at Breitbart London

Climate pseuds sail to Arctic, make wanky, Salon-praised movie, disappear up own bottoms

“Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great Climate War?”

“Well, son. I voyaged up to the Arctic Circle in a nice big boat with a bunch of installation artists, mime practitioners, YouTube cat short specialists and climate scientists on an all-expenses trip to make a documentary called The Earth Is Weeping: Feel Her Pain. My contribution was a Concerto for Gamelan and Nose Flute entitled Swan Song Of The Melting Polar Bear.”

“Gosh, Daddy, it sounds like you made a really important contribution to raising awareness of Climate Change!”

“Oh, I did, son. I did. But the competition was stiff. Let me tell you, by the mid-2010s you could barely move in the Antarctic or the Arctic for self-proclaimed artists and explorers and “climate” “scientists” making utter dicks of themselves in the name of saving the planet from the deadly threat of ManBearPig. There was the Ship Of Fools expedition of 2013. And sundry expeditions conducted under the name Cape Farewell Project, in which luminaries such as Martha Wainwright, Laurie Anderson, Jarvis Cocker, Cormac McCarthy, Feist and “comedian” Marcus Brigstocke sailed north in order to create meaningful art projects on the theme of climate doom.”

“Wow, Dad. How could your Concerto for Gamelan and Nose Flute possibly compete with such rampant pretentiousness and pseudery?”

“Son, it gets worse. There was a film – a Danish film called Expedition To The End Of The World. It got reviewed very favourably in Salon. That was the moment when I knew for me that the Great Climate War was over. Frankly it made me feel like a rank amateur.”

“Gosh. It sounds terrible.”

Read the rest at Breitbart London

UKIP’s new manifesto: are they playing the Lib Dem game?

Perhaps the most worrying aspect of the new manifesto from UKIP – Britain’s Tea Party – is the debt it owes to its most bitter ideological opponents, David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

From the simperingly centrist, faux-Tory Prime Minister, it has borrowed the technique of trying to wrong-foot its enemies on the left by trying to ape their language. Just as Cameron infamously urged Conservatives to “hug a hoodie”, panic about melting glaciers, and see the merit in the socialistic witterings of Guardian writer Polly Toynbee, so UKIP has shunned the right-wing press and chosen to soft-launch its avowedly “blue-collar” (ie working class) manifesto with an interview in the left-leaning Prospect magazine.

Furthermore, UKIP’s director of policy Tim Aker has made the dubious claim that the party has moved beyond the “left-right, libertarian-authoritarian” paradigm. No, it hasn’t. No party ever can or will: this is a statist fantasy akin to Tony Blair’s “Third Way”. Policies can only ever possibly be left or right, libertarian or authoritarian. The suggestion that there is some magical, sweetly reasonable parallel universe where none of these labels apply is the kind of cynical fudge one associates with the tired old, same old Westminster political class, not with crusading Tea Partiers determined to put an end to Big Government.

As for the Nick Clegg influence, this rotten smell can be detected in at least a couple of the new policies. One is in UKIP’s declared opposition to the “Bedroom Tax”; another is its insistence – despite deep concerns about the growing, indeed terrifying, pensions liability overhang – that UKIP has no plans to raise the retirement age.

Both are classic cases of what is known in the trade as “playing the Lib Dem” game. That is, saying whatever is necessary to get you the most votes, regardless of how badly it betrays your ideological principles. (The Liberal Democrats are notorious for this: if it’s a Muslim constituency, their candidate will tend to drape himself in the black flag of the Islamic State and demand the restoration of the Caliphate; if it’s in a seaside constituency full of pensioners, he’ll demand massive public subsidies for tea dances, bridge evenings and zimmer frames).

Read the rest at Breitbart London

Dear Philip Hammond, what exactly is a ‘Moderate Jihadist’?

What exactly is a “moderate jihadist”? Is it someone who tweets photographs of severed heads but fights shy of getting his hands bloody? Someone who inclines towards enslaving captured women and children rather than burying them alive? One who only executes Yazidis but not Christians?

Whatever, we can probably agree that UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond made a serious error when applying that unfortunate phrase on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme this morning to members of the organisation – Islamic State – which had just murdered, in cold blood, an American journalist.

Yes it was probably a misspeak. But it’s not the kind of mistake you can ever imagine being made by a more competent, higher-calibre, more quick-witted MP, like, say, the man who would have made an infinitely superior Foreign Secretary but who is currently languishing as Chief Whip – Michael Gove.

How did it happen? Well I’m guessing that David Cameron’s MPs have had it drummed into them till their ears bleed that they are always and forever and at every possible opportunity to stress the vast gulf that exists between “moderate” Islam and “extremist” Islam.

Moderate Islam, as we know, having been repeatedly told so by the likes of the Prince of Wales, the BBC, the Guardian and most MPs, is an adorable heartwarming thing with the most marvellous tradition of hospitality, and a very real sense of the numinous, and an admirable dedication to charity, exquisitely woven carpets, sweet hot tea poured with great dexterity from a high-up tea pot into a tiny glass, and a religion of peace which has always afforded great hospitality to Christians and Jews, why just look at Granada, and you do realise that it was those splendid Muslim scholars, don’t you, who kept the intellectual traditions of classicism alive through the Dark Ages, etc.

Extremist Islam, meanwhile, is horrid, just horrid….

Read the rest at Breitbart London

No one cares about Julian Assange any more. Good.

Maybe it was Wikileaks, the evil blond rat in South Park, that did it – but suddenly no one seems to care about the fate of Julian Assange.

I remember when I first broached the subject in 2010 feeling rather as I do when writing now about Gaza: “I’m about to alienate at least 50 per cent of my readership.” That’s because back then, even intelligent, informed, libertarian types couldn’t quite make up their minds what to think about the weird Australian. Was he liberating us all from the tyranny of the surveillance state? Or was he just a grubby, manipulative egoist, traitor and alleged rapist?

Now though, no one seems to have been even slightly moved by Assange’s revelations over the weekend that two years stranded under effective house arrest in the Ecuadorian embassy in London has given him a heart condition and caused his skin to go even more vampire-pale. (Personally, I was more concerned about the fact that the Ecuadorians seem neither to have a sun roof nor a garden.)

Read the rest at Breitbart London

Britain is the fattest country in Europe: here’s the real reason why

Britain’s “obesity epidemic” is mainly caused by the fact that its population are lazy slobs and not because they eat too much, a shock new study called The Fat Lie has found.

The only reason the study - produced by Christopher Snowdon of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) – is shocking is because it contradicts one of the great received ideas of our politically correct times: that fatties are the hapless victims of the rapacious and bullying food and drink industry which pressures them into eating and drinking far too much fat and sugar.

What Snowdon’s research clearly shows that this claim is nonsense. Yes, it is indeed true that British people are getting porkier. Since 2002 the average body weight of English adults has increased by two kilograms, contributing to Britain’s unenviable status as the fattest country in Europe.

But what is rarely mentioned by health campaigners is that this rise in obesity over three decades has coincided with a steady fall in average sugar and fat consumption.

 

Read more at Breitbart London

Greg ‘Hideously White’ Dyke makes the FA more PC

Do you care as little as I do about the paucity of Asian players at high levels in English football? I care about this issue even less than I care about what happens to my nose hairs after I’ve trimmed them and sent them down the plughole; even less than I care about the family relations of the slugs in my strawberry patch; even less than I care about what the temperature is going to be in Bogota at 3am next Tuesday.

Why do I care so little that there hardly any Asians – none, really – at high levels in English football? Because it doesn’t matter a damn, is why. No more am I bothered by it than I am by, say, the absence of white women in sumo wrestling, or the domination of Mah Jong by Chinese, or the woeful lack West Indians on the professional darts circuit.

For any number of cultural, historical and social reasons, certain sports just happen to attract particular racial groups. No one is being “discriminated” against. (No one’s stopping white people competing against East Africans in long distance running; or Nigerians from competing against Orientals at ping-pong). It’s simply a question of people making choices, based on tradition and culture and differing physical characteristics, as people are wont to do in a free society. What it definitely is not is any kind of problem.

Unless, of course, you’re former BBC Director General Greg Dyke who took over last year as chairman of the Football Association and appears to be on a holy mission to make it as politically correct as he did the BBC.

Read more at Breitbart London

Mann v Steyn: if this trial ever goes ahead, global warming is toast

Mark Steyn has published his latest brief in his protracted court case with discredited climate scientist Michael Mann (who is suing him for libel) and it’s a corker.

Here’s a sample:

The audacity of the falsehoods in Mann’s court pleadings is breathtaking. For example, on page 19 of his brief below dated January 18, 2013, he cites the international panel chaired by the eminent scientist Lord Oxburgh, FRS as one of the bodies that “exonerated” him, whereas on page 235 of Mann’s own book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, he states explicitly that “our own work did not fall within the remit of the committee and the hockey stick was not mentioned in the report.” It is deeply disturbing that a plaintiff should make such fraudulent claims in his legal pleadings. It is even more disturbing that the first such fraudulent claim – to be a Nobel Laureate and thus in the same pantheon as Banting, Einstein, and the Curies – should have led to the amended complaint and the procedural delays that then followed. It would be even more profoundly damaging were his other transparently false claims to be entertained for another two years before trial.

It is clear from the ease with which Mann lies about things that would not withstand ten minutes of scrutiny in a courtroom that he has no intention of proceeding to trial.”

For the full background to the case, read this. But all you really need to know is that Michael Mann is exploiting the flaws in the US legal system to try to draw out proceedings as long as possible in order to exhaust – or bankrupt – Steyn into submission.

Unfortunately for Mann he picked the wrong victim. Steyn is a fighter who knows his way round the courts having battled a similarly vexatious and vindictive case in Canada when he was accused of Islamophobia – or some similar nonsense – by something called the Ontario Human Rights Committee. Plus, Steyn is astute enough to appreciate exactly what’s at stake here.

Read the rest at Breitbart London

Islamic State jihadists: once you’ve beheaded someone for fun where do you stop?

While President Obama works on his golf swing, British Prime Minister David Cameron has cut his summer holiday short to preside over an emergency crisis meeting about the Islamic State in Iraq. Perhaps Cameron’s mind has been concentrated by stories like this one – a transcript of an interview with a British-born jihadist on the popular teenage chat-room Ask.fm.

Here are some of the questions British kids were dying to ask of this exciting role model – together with his somewhat terrifying answers.

 

Q: Are there gun stores there? A: Yep, u can buy loads of stuff.

Q: Are bulletproof vests hard to get where you are? Would a person be better buying it in Turkey and then crossing over with it? A: You can buy it here easily, like any random military store in Raqqah u’ll find it.. they’re like $100.

Q: Do you use night vision goggles? A: Of course, we even have spy planes.

Q: Are Nikes sufficient footwear? A: I brought one pair of Adidas high-tops. You’ll get what you need here. You won’t enter the battlefield unless ur kitted up and you have ammo etc.

Q: Are there a lot of bugs there? Like if I’m sleeping, are they gonna crawl on me? Sorry if this is a weird question. May Allah reward you. A: Nope inshallah, you’ll be fine. Even if there was bugs, there’s those bug eliminators. It’s not bad, only thing is mosquitoes really.

Q: Is there internet at your homes? A: Sometimes your house can be near an internet cafe so you can use internet from there.

Q: Are there jobs to be an executioner, like when you capture kuffar [non-believers]? A: Yep.

I’m sure we’ll all be able to sleep much more comfortably in our beds at night now that we know the young British recruits out fighting for the Caliphate are not being unduly troubled by unpleasant insect life and that when they go about their holy business of chopping innocent villagers’ heads off that they’re all protected by very-reasonably-priced bullet proof vests.

Read more at Breitbart London

The world needs Caroline Criado-Perez’s airheaded feminism like a fish needs a bicycle

Did you know that domestic abuse is the most common cause of morbidity [sickness] in women aged 19 to 44, more than war, cancer or motor vehicle accidents?

No, very probably, you didn’t because it’s just not true. Rather it’s one of those urban myths which has been doing the rounds on the internet since the 1990s and which has been exploded on numerous occasions, including by the BBC Radio 4 statistics show More Or Less as long ago as 2009.

But obviously that wasn’t going to stop feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez employing it to prove her ‘point’ in a recent article for the New Statesman. The piece – called something like “The Moon is a Rapist” or “If trees are a phallocentric symbol of male aggression (and they are) why don’t we kill all the forests now?” – purported to tell us about an “epidemic” of sexual violence which has apparently gone unreported in the phallocentric, sexist media.

Problem is, apart from the fabricated and antique statisticoid, there wasn’t exactly a superabundance of factual evidence to support Ms Criado-Perez’s thesis.

Read more at Breitbart London