What an excellent piece of writing.
Karlyn Borysenko didn’t like what she was seeing in the world of knitting — it’s hard to believe, but even there the Social Justice Warriors were mobbing people for innocuous offenses. Watching the anxiety and pain inspired her to get out of the echo chamber in an attempt to understand the deplorable Trump supporters. But in attending a Trump rally she discovered how toxic and out of touch the Democrats were.
These are just snippets — read the whole piece. This awakening and others like it could feed a deadly meme for Democrats. If the idea of attending both kinds of rallies catches on it’s a major breach in the wall. The idea of bridging the divide by listening to the unspeakables, by meeting them, threatens the whole freeloader elitist cult. Apostates face harsh punishments. Borysenko may need some support.
The parallels in the climate world are obvious. As I said ten years ago, it’s the overdone hate and namecalling that drives fencesitters to come seeking answers from skeptics…
As that hate invades every corner of life the Empty Left sows it’s own undoing.
h/t David E
After Attending a Trump Rally, I Realized Democrats Are Not Ready For 2020
Karlyn Borysenko:
I’m an organizational psychologist and mindfulness expert…
…I started to question everything. How many stories had I been sold that weren’t true? What if my perception of the other side is wrong? How is it possible that half the country is overtly racist? Is it possible that Trump derangement syndrome is a real thing, and had I been suffering from it for the past three years?
And the biggest question of all was this: Did I hate Trump so much that I wanted to see my country fail just to spite him and everyone who voted for him?
Fast-forward to the New Hampshire primary, and we have all the politicians running around the state making their case. I’ve seen almost every Democratic candidate in person and noticed that their messages were almost universally one of doom and gloom, not only focusing on the obvious disagreements with Donald Trump, but also making sure to emphasize that the country is a horribly racist place.
It took some bravery to visit the enemy territory. Everyone said it was risky…
I’m not going to say it didn’t get to me a bit. When everyone around you is nervous for your safety, it’s hard not to question if they have a point. But it also made me more determined to see it through, because it was a stark reminder that both sides view each other exactly the same way. They are both afraid of the other side and what they are capable of. I couldn’t help but think that if they could just see the world through the lens of the other for a moment or two, it would be a stark revelation that they don’t know as much as they think they do.
Waiting in lines with four hours to go:
As I waited, I chatted with the folks around me. And contrary to all the fears expressed, they were so nice. I was not harassed or intimidated, and I was never in fear of my safety even for a moment. These were average, everyday people. They were veterans, schoolteachers, and small business owners who had come from all over the place for the thrill of attending this rally. They were upbeat and excited. In chatting, I even let it slip that I was a Democrat. The reaction: “Good for you! Welcome!”
Democrats are full of doom and gloom. The Trump rally was full of jubilant excited people:
Once we got inside, the atmosphere was jubilant. It was more like attending a rock concert than a political rally.
I had attended an event with all the Democratic contenders just two days prior in exactly the same arena, and the contrast was stark. First, Trump completely filled the arena all the way up to the top. Even with every major Democratic candidate in attendance the other night, and the campaigns giving away free tickets, the Democrats did not do that. With Trump, every single person was unified around a singular goal. With the Democrats, the audience booed over candidates they didn’t like and got into literal shouting matches with each other. With Trump, there was a genuinely optimistic view of the future. With the Democrats, it was doom and gloom. With Trump, there was a genuine feeling of pride of being an American. With the Democrats, they emphasized that the country was a racist place from top to bottom.
People in cults don’t question their leader:
Some people say, “Well, obviously they’re having a great time. They’re in a cult.” I don’t think that’s true. The reality is that many people I spoke to do disagree with Trump on things. They don’t always like his attitude. They wish he wouldn’t tweet so much. People who are in cults don’t question their leaders. The people I spoke with did, but the pros in their eyes far outweighed the cons. They don’t love him because they think he’s perfect. They love him despite his flaws, because they believe he has their back.
As I left the rally—walking past thousands of people who were watching it on a giant monitor outside the arena because they couldn’t get in—I knew there was no way Trump would lose in November. Absolutely no way.
I refuse to be a part of the divisiveness any longer. I refuse to hate people I don’t know simply because they choose to vote for someone else…
What separates the political right from the left is that conservative economic policies actually work, so the right disparages policy they don’t agree with, while the left disparages people who don’t agree with their ineffective and counterproductive policies.
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There is a more subtle difference. Leftist movements are group think. They are told what to think and everyone agrees with everyone else. Conservatives think for themselves, like scientists. They collect facts, have their own opinions and disagree with each other. Like scientists. They are not simply the mirror image of the left of politics. Rational people who believe in Rational science.
Perhaps the greatest example of this is Climate Change. On the left of politics it is true because they believe without questioning. We have 10 years to live. For the fourth time in 32 years. Which is absurd.
On the conservative side the attitude is that CO2 control is incredibly costly, unproven, utterly useless and every prediction has been wrong, so why should people be made to suffer? That is not a political opinion. There is no Al Gore, Greta, Michael Mann. It is not a cult.
What supporters on the emotional left of politics cannot understand is that the other side is not a mirror image. And what surprises is that Climate Change is so clearly a mass manipulation only of Western democratic countries, principally engineered by the United Nations and EU for their own purposes, continued existence, income and the hope of a future world government. Run by them and preferably unelected.
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Oh, please. Anyone who self-identifies as either marks themselves out as a dill who wants to be told what to think… who prefers a different variety of Happy Meal.
Both sides of politics is where sociopathic charlatans organise, the better to grift a living from the gullible.
(R) vs (D), ‘Conservative’ vs ‘Progressive’… it’s like ‘Catholic’ vs ‘Protestant’, or ‘Christian’ vs ‘Muslim’. Two competing piles of drivel promulgated by crooks and charlatans, living in palaces by exploiting the stupid.
I’ll take ‘Carlton’ vs ‘Collingwood’ as a purer and more defensible form of self-identification (or ‘All Blacks’ vs ‘Wallabies’).
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That would be true if the real-world stakes were as meaningless as a football game.
Of course there is some truth in what you say. For example, those who supported Turnbull just because they were Liberal voters were not necessarily great thinkers. However, the suggestion that politics is as meaningless as a football game is utterly oblivious to reality. Just ask those trying to leave Venezuela.
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Group think in the political bubbles are a worry.
Exposing the hoax is not very difficult, like Paris Agreement focus only on CO2.
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Correct, and it’s too often neglected especially at the polls. Here we have a supposedly conservative leader PM Morrison following the Paris Agreement and contemplating even more emission reductions. Go figure.
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I presume you are excluding the not too insignificant number of scientists who “believe” in the man-made global warming catastrophe.
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I think they are ‘scientists’.
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In modern times a degree from a science department does not make you a scientist. Tim Flannery for example, whose first degree was in English at La Trobe. Then a huge number of soft science degrees with no mathematics, physics, chemistry.
And Climate Science is hardly science but more a great source of socially responsible employment in a PC world, say with the ANZ bank
Then it’s either support Climate Change or join the queues at Centre Link.
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Climate Science is more dependent on biology than physics and chemistry… pass me those chicken entrails – i have another computer model to run.
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there ya go..
I thought it was tea leaves. 🙁
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No, no, no, Andy, the tea leaves are for media releases.
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When I studied biology, botany, zoology, ecology and more I was continually reminded that it was not science. You drew what you were meant to see, not what you saw. I watched the others. They copied the diagrams from the text books. So much for my precision drawings. Biochemistry though was real science. So was biophysics.
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Climate science is an oxymoron
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Climate science is an oxymoron
The poor Sun does not get the recognition it so rightly deserves.
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Don’t forget personal well being, people can easily fall into perpetual negativity when everything that you believe in pushes them in that direction, if you long for negativity, hatred, misery, despair and confusion I give you Marxism.
Democracy will foster independence and self improvement in people leading to true progress, I’ve yet to see old Commies lament about not having starvation and gulags anymore…..
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Correct. Leftism appears to run on “hey thats not fair, lets steal what they worked hard to get”
So while the appeal of marxism may have originally been driven by workers being exploited by capitalists years ago, they seem to have forgotten that many victorian era companies set up schools and unions created the 8 hour day.
As such, Marxism now is really just a brutal power grab based on envy or outright lust for a personal feifdom /dictatorship…..
Those who push marxism choose to ignore the reality that the vast majority if people across all income ranges actually have it pretty good and ignore the reality at tif you overthrow a functional capitalist society, you go backwards.
I have heard anecdotally that ome people considred Leftism as a form of mental affliction for those having it….
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Marxism has always been brutal. It is based on class hatred and motivated by the idea that every interaction is a power struggle.
Your neighbour has two cows and you only have one? Forget the idea that he might be a better farmer than you are… the only acceptable explanation is that he got more than you by exploiting you. Therefore you are justified in killing him, raping his daughters and taking his cows. (Both cows… who needs to be fair to “exploiters”?)
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Aldous Huxley said that communism was the organization of hatred.
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Replace “left” with lay or materialist socialist, and replace “right” with religious or national socialist. Do you notice any change other than perhaps one of degree? Both of those believe freedom and rights are divisible, whereas libertarians and totalitarians labor under no such illusion.
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Except that a Conservative is NOT a socialist of any stripe.
Otherwise, both Socialist and National Socialist believe in government control of production, distribution and exchange – justified by the threat from “enemies”.
Only the slogans and the identity groups change.
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The other major difference is that the LEFT judge people according to their identity-group, whereas Conservatives judge according to individual actions.
That is why the Left are convinced that the non-left are guilty. They don’t have to define what you are guilty of, you belong to the “wrong” group, so you are guilty by definition.
The corollary is that they have no compunction in lying about you because you are guilty anyway. If you aren’t guilty of the exact crime they claim, you are guilty of something (being an oppressor?)
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Yes, people in cults do not question their leader. Rather, the cult requires knee-jerk reactions when the leader prompts the audience. To understand this behaviour you could read the two books by Yale University professor Jason Stanley [Refs 1, 2], especially the one on fascism as it is more concise.
References.
1. Jason Stanley, “How Propaganda Works”, Princeton, 2015.
2. Jason Stanley, “How Fascism Works”, Random House, 2018.
Regards,
John Cullen.
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Then most Australians belong to a cult of man-made global warming given we have both major parties believing we must keep reducing our emissions.
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Yes the race to crash the country.
I suspect when the dust clears, the reckoning will be terrible for those who have perpetrated it….on that day, no amount of spin will save them I suspect.
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Fossil fuels keep the lights on and the supermarket shelves stocked.
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Australians will find something else to collectively blame – there will be no reckoning. Even after the destruction is complete, if it still looks/sounds/feels fashionable they will still support it and blame Donald Trump/the US/Tony Abbott or somebody for what happened.
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Agreed. Decades of anti Trump press have given way to total hysteria. Pink Floyd musician Ross Waters says Trump is a mass murder*r and his supporters have turned America into hell. His views are mainstream in Hollywood and the entertainment business. The fact that this is an ins*ne opinion does not seem to bother anyone.
Consider this. If Donald Trump had done anything wrong, even farted in an elevator, it would be world news. And the Climate Change people would have denounced him for the Australian bushfires caused directly by a single fart. And Mitt Romney and Nancy Pelosi would agree.
Even in this article, there is no recognition of the incredible good he has done for years. And the attacks he has had to endure on himself, his wife and his children are endless. The article also recognizes that Trump supporters are not evil, violent people, so unlike the AntiFA movement which is a duplicate of Hitler’s fascist movement, his brown shirts and Mussolini’s Black shirts. Fascists are socialists, but apparently the 20th century did not happen and socialism is a good thing. Which is why universities want to bury history and no one talks about the glories of socialism in Cuba and Venezuela. Except Trump did have the elected President of Venezuela in the audience during his address.
The real change will come when the main stream media start to accept that people who vote Republican are not violent, evil, ignorant, deplorable hicks. We could be waiting a long time.
And Trump Derangement Syndrome, political correctness and Climate Change could be with us a long time. As one Spectator writer said, Political Correctness is a virus which affects two center of the brain, logic and humour. TDS is even more serious.
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Indeed, especially here in Australia given we have both major parties hell bent on reducing our emissions.
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Correction TdeF it’s Roger Waters, and while I’m a big fan of their music we’re politically polar opposites, perhaps TDS has a similar effect to LSD and they’ll all go the way of Syd Barrett.
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It’s amazing how people who were school dropouts, most musicians, actors and performers on stage, television, radio and Hollywood expect the world to listen to their opinions on politics and society. Cher, Better Middler, Barbara Streisand and thousands of others who all hate Donald Trump and all his family with a visceral passion while decrying ‘hate speech’ and blaming Trump for all violence.
The one recent statement I really enjoyed was from very sensible and very good British actor Anthony Hopkins
“People ask me questions about present situations in life, and I say, ‘I don’t know, I’m just an actor. I don’t have any opinions. Actors are pretty stupid. My opinion is not worth anything. There’s no controversy for me, so don’t engage me in it, because I’m not going to participate.'”
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Roger Waters was a fine bass player and singer/song writer but should have left politics out of music. His songs were authentic and penetrating but ultimately resonated with chronic depression, isolation, bitterness and sadness. It’s not something you want to hear a lot of. Whereas David Gilmour’s musical presence made Waters songs something worth listening to. I found the band’s music much more interesting than Waters lyrics, so I wrote off the angry political messages as part of the entertainment value – but it turns out he actually meant it.
David Gilmour was the more balanced musician and lyricist within Pink Floyd. He avoided political angst and turned Water’s bitter words into the sounds from a beautiful heart. Gilmour’s lyrics and guitar playing was like someone hoping for the best in people but realistically expecting disappointment as well. So when Pink Floyd made albums and toured without Roger Waters from the mid-1980s the resulting band improved out of sight. This demonstrated that the Pink Floyd’s sound and its popularity had much more to do with David Gilmour. Then Water’s lack-luster later attempts to reclaim the Pink Floyd brand also confirmed it, without Gilmour involved the resulting band lacked any sparkle or redeeming emotion.
The following song below is from David Gilmour’s first (self-titled) solo album, released in May 1978. It’s purely instrumental and was recorded immediately prior to the recording of Roger Waters, “The Wall”, which was released almost exactly 1 year later. You can hear in this song the soul-rendering and soaring sound of the best songs on the ‘The Wall’. To this day I can only listen to Water’s songs because of the spark Gilmour implanted.
Raise My Rent – by David Gilmore (1978)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVdJCGUHL4A
When you listen to Gilmour’s songs from the same album, which do have lyrics, it’s clear who the musical and lyrical genius was within Pink Floyd, and why he wanted to make a solo album. That first solo album was unmistakably the sound of ‘Pink Floyd’ itself.
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“Democrats are full of doom and gloom. The Trump rally was full of jubilant excited people”
I have a great moto for Trump “Hope and Change!” … Oh that was just used by the doom and gloom Democrats?
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“Hope is not a plan.”
I don’t know who said that first.
Here’s the plan. The Donald makes a crazy tweet.
Media and Democrats go nuts (TDS).
Unreported is a new conservative judge appointment,
or a regulation cancelled, or a previously stalled
project approved, . . .
The Donald makes a crazy tweet.
…repeat…
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You do recall who else’s campaign was full of jubilant, excited people, right?
22
The Wiggles?
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I emailed President Trump suggesting a follow up to his 2016 Presidential slogan: Make America Great Again (MAGA).
Mission Accomplished, Keep America Great (MAKAG)
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The much “dreaded” tipping point is coming. It is not in climate change or global warming and the like. It is in politics. Denying the greatness that the American Idea is, is not sustainable. The abundant emotional, economic, social, and political wealth of the American Idea shines in stark contrast with the rest of human history. Eventually, those who want to live and thrive will choose it as opposed to the vast wasteland of so called “normal” human history. Which is wide spread despair, poverty, destruction and death caused specifically by heavy handed, top down brutal power and control from a centralized authority (aka government).
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Possibly a second Trump Presidency will force many to reevaluate, even Hollywood and the media. They are burning their own customers.
In the last three years, so much good has been done, so many problems addressed if not solved, none of it by the Democratic Congress. They have wasted their time on Russia and Ukraine and impeachment and denying they lost the election in 2016. Lose again, especially lose the Congress and a lot of people will not remember why Trump and the Republicans were the deplorables. And the Never Trumpers will have left the Republicans as united. No more Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney and friends.
And if Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttergig are the best the Democrats can offer, they do not have a hope. Many Democrats will refuse to vote for either.
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“I think we are dealing with an octopus … Advertising as news. It’s very skilfully done. The methods of seducing the media, the ingenuity of the spin has reached the point where we, as a general public, have never been lied to by such sophisticated means as now.”
John le Carre.
“Lies, fabrications, character assassinations, reputational rapes, point scoring, axe grinding, sneering, smearing and generalised weaselling have become standard fare in the media.”
The Electronic Whorehouse
Paul Sheehan
He is also the author of Among The Barbarians covering Australian politics during the thirteen Labor years ended 1996. For example, how small almost insignificant lobby groups achieve their goals via politicians.
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Among The Barbarians: The Dividing Of Australia
by Paul Sheehan
3.25 · Rating details · 20 ratings · 4 reviews
This is the story the media will not tell.Among the Barbarians exposes one of the greatest political frauds in Australian history. Australia has achieved the most brilliant social transformation, yet is now on the brink of being damaged and divided. Why?
“The clash between France and Australia, observes the Australian writer Paul Sheehan, is the first real confrontation between a traditonal superpower and an ecological superpower”. (The New York Times).
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Remember the Dixie Chicks who (IIRC) were booed and some in the audience turned their backs on them. The Dixie Chicks were really upset and said that they were just expressing their freedom of speech when mocking George Bush, and those that booed them said “and so were we“.
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I find it hard to see the US as a glowing beacon of humanity. They are certainly successful as are many other countries. Their economy is a house of cards built on an incomprehensible mountain of debt and they have a long history of overseas political interference and military aggression. Like every country there are two sides to the ledger.
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The only country where national debt and current account imbalance do not matter is the USA. They are the banker to the world and just create as much USD as needed. The years of quantitative easing is proof of that.
The US net international position to GDP is minus 57%. For comparison, Australia is minus 74%.
The US national debt is simply a book entry to balance the savings held by US citizens and national and private interests in other countries. By contrast, Australia’s net position should be cause for some concern particularly as 45% of the debt is denominated in foreign currency. Most of the foreign currency it hedged but hedging is only as good as the viability of the counterpart and the GFC shows how that can go wrong.
Private debt and foreclosures in the US can be destabilising but not particularly threatening if the government and reserve bank take the necessary action.
The only way this situation would change is if the USD was no longer the default world currency. The UN has proposed a Global Currency but it has not gained traction. Currency needs military might to support it.
Trump has not achieved his stated objective of bringing troops home but he has certainly been friendlier to some of the US traditional “enemies”, namely North Korea and Russia. Although not much has changed.
This comment will come to you via the internet. I use Google and YouTube almost every day. I have a Mac desktop and a Lenovo (not sure if IBM get return from this) portable with Windows loaded as well as Microsoft Office. I have a Facebook account. I occasionally use Ebay and Amazon for online purchases using PayPal as the means of exchange. My sole paid on-demand streaming is Netflix. My use of all these things provide income to
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….. USA!
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Seems to me that the strategy of improving the economy first (by helping businesses grow with confidence and reducing expensive regulations, resulting in lower unemployment and higher wages for even the lowest paid for example, or reducing the numbers of people on food stamps because they have a job) enables a country to tackle debt. More comprehensible that most countries’ economic “plans”.
30
The US was built on the backs of slaves in the south and English prison slave labour in the north, which came to an end with the American war of Independence. This singular act meant that Australia became the new prison.
In the modern era, looking at the US as our cousin, there are obvious flaws in capitalism. For over a century all the stock market hiccups seem to have come out of Wall Street, which negatively effects the rest of the world.
China is going to uplift the Third World and they won’t lose their democracies.
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el Gordo – Do you really believe that?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohrrE1rjzLo
This is repeated in much of sub Saharan Africa.
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Keep your hat on, the cavalry has arrived.
http://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/africa-us-plays-catch-china
Free enterprise is a wonderful thing.
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Funny how the North, without slaves and without English prison labour for generations, was the economic powerhouse of theUS, while the slave-retaining south was an industrial backwater by comparison.
Claiming that slaves were the economic backbone of America is a useful myth for some parties, but the reality is so contrary that you have to be gullible to accept it.
At the same time, the English were building the Industrial Revolution after banning slavery. Like I said….. gullible.
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Slave labour in the south distorted the market and cheap Irish labour in the north wasn’t enough to counteract the imbalance, so a bloody civil war erupted.
The freed slaves came north and were cheaper than the Irish immigrants, there was a revolt. Its the ugly face of capitalism.
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Gordo…. wrong.
By the mid 1800s, both pro and anti-slavery advocates were agreed that slavery was an inefficient and low-profit method of powering industry. Despite its status as one of the world’s most important cash crops, the southern cotton industry was lagging far behind the improvements in machine-powered industry. Equally, it did not have the concurrent benefit of decreased costs. The South was an industrial backwater.
It was not “distorting” the labour market. It was inefficient in its own right. The slaves were poorly educated and less productive and less innovative than those motivated by personal interest.
Your claim is based on the classic leftist dictum that productivity comes entirely from labour and has little or nothing to do with innovation, risk and resources. It fails for the same reason that socialist labour-theory fails to predict the success of free-market economies and the failure of theirown.
To borrow some old Russian black humour “The Commisars pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.” They knew the facts of command-labour. You obviously do not.
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Cotton exports were booming and the price of slaves kept rising.
‘A major finding of the research into the economic dynamics of the slave system was to demonstrate that the rise in the value of slaves was not based upon unfounded speculation. Slave labor was the foundation of a prosperous economic system in the South.
‘To illustrate just how important slaves were to that prosperity, Gerald Gunderson (1974) estimated what fraction of the income of a white person living in the South of 1860 was derived from the earnings of slaves. Gunderson’s estimates. In the seven states where most of the cotton was grown, almost one-half the population were slaves, and they accounted for 31 percent of white people’s income; for all 11 Confederate States, slaves represented 38 percent of the population and contributed 23 percent of whites’ income.
‘Small wonder that Southerners — even those who did not own slaves — viewed any attempt by the federal government to limit the rights of slaveowners over their property as a potentially catastrophic threat to their entire economic system.’
R L Ransom (EH.net)
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“For over a century all the stock market hiccups seem to have come out of Wall Street,”
Except the 1931 failure of the Austrian CreditAnstaldt (sp?) bank, which crashed Europe’s financial system.
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A couple of years after the Wall Street crash, there may have been a knock on effect.
http://www.globalfinancialdata.com/the-collapse-of-the-creditanstalt-bank/
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Thee is this wonderful moment in the movie “Men In Black” where the main character, a street smart young cop, goes up against 4 hughly trained military guys forxa role in the MIB unit.
He uses his wits to think outside the box , and looks at the soldiers and says “you are the best govt training can provide?”
His point was simple but powerful and also illustrates the mental constraints of a closed attitudinal socialist-style system.
Just to be clear, this is not a criticism by myself of those in the military or decent govt that serves the country and well and those in it per se, but illustrative of the risks of big govt.
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Ironic that this comes from Hollywood, where the answer to every problem seems to be “more government”.
Not Trump’s government, of course, but more of theirs
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Both the Republican and Democratic parties have been absorbed by purveyors of hatred and the initiation of force. To anyone unaccustomed to blending into all manner of competing crowds, a Trump rally must indeed have the look and feel of the Nuremberg rally filmed by Lili Riefenstahl as “Triumph des Willens.” Desperate in the realization that voters hate economy-destroying prohibitionists, Republicans hired an outside billionaire to make them look good, and it worked. The Don is moderate compared to the ku-klux fanatics on a mission from God to stamp out race suicide by banning contraceptives. But he still pushes the Republican platform he was hired to endorse. Trump is a likable guy compared to the looter opposition, but the platforms and politicians of both geriatric parties can easily be changed by voting Libertarian. A Libertarian Party spoiler vote is the “tug from below” George Orwell tried to explain. Third party spoiler votes cannot be ignored, and for that reason shape policy.
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It’s the problem with Libertarians…. you are often as willing to despise those who disagree with you, as any Democrat.
Pots and kettles, pots and kettles…
You don’t make your case well by doing that, or assuming that all the “Deplorables” who voted for Trump were anything other than dupes. Great way to build support.
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It all sounds a lityle too much like attending a charismatic church event to me…. people do succumb to stories, hype and excitement.. and these guys know just how to bring it.
Trump tells his version of everthing his way, you can choose whether to believe it or not:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-canada-38663043
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LOL, article dated January 2019.
And the rest is all the junk-facts that the TDS of the BBC can muster.
Remember, the BBC are a far-left propaganda unit, heavily infected in promoting the farce of climate change and many other fascist/marxist causes.
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Yes it sounded like a church extravaganza.
The point is that it wasn’t an ugly church of neonazis and Russian bots as she’d been taught. It was a welcoming attractive church. And her church suddenly looked a whole lot less attractive in comparison.
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To which group are you referring? The Trump rallies that attract huge crowds? Also note the charismatic and evangelical churches support Trump far more than any Democrat candidate.
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So your response is to assume that you – who weren’t there – are smarter than everyone who was?
00
WTF is an “organizational psychologist and mindfulness expert”?
50
A very tidy Freudian that remembers your Mothers name……
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That’s the point at which anyone with an IQ above ‘educable’ ought ti have dismissed the rest, on the basis that the author of the quoted piece was a gullible idiot. About the only way to more-completely disqualify herself from consideration, would have been to mention “The Secret” and thereby identify herself as a charlatanry tripke-threat.
I can’t recall where I heard it (might’ve been a Stewart Lee standup), but this applies…
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As someone who has had two three week stints as an inpatient at a chronic pain clinic I’m fully aware of what she does , I was extremely skeptical of mindfulness thinking it to be hocus pocus type stuff but it certainly can make a difference in my example .
The take out I get from from Jo’s article that I get knowing that most of these professional type people are left leaning and for one of them to suddenly realise the left are filled with hate and anger makes you wonder how many are seeing the light .
This can only be a good thing as more and more from the left become aware of exactly what is going on in the world outside their safe space .
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“makes you wonder how many are seeing the light”
There is actually a “movement” of disaffected Democrats / progressives with a hashtag I forget and about 500,000 followers / contributors on Twitter.
30
#walkaway
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Krato, here, wants us to reject something because of who said it, not what they observed…
Riiiight……..
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Hi there TdeF I agree with what you have said here about the lefts hate syndrome eg the unbridled hate for Abbott -they would probably accuse him of staritng the recent
bushfires because of his position on climate change even though (he unlike any on the left-that I know of anyway) as an RFS volunteer he was actually out there fighting the fires. Again sorry to be Picky Tdef but it is Roger Waters not Ross Waters.I actually like Pink Floyd and there music.However I and my wife did attend Roger’s Pink Floyd
show in Sydney about 2 years ago and it was good accept for Waters obvious hate for Trump through his use of graphics-oh man talk about Groupthink and Trump
Derangement Syndrome at that point because of the childishness of this display I felt like saying grow up you elitist pompous dickhead however Ididn’t because I would
have been yelled at by the other followers of the “New Faith”at the concert.
Cheers Mike Reed
50
It was such a shame when Australia lost its most qualified politician, a real man of the people and incredibly popular, all to the Black Hand of Malcolm Turnbull, Christopher Pyne, Julie Bishop and the other conspirators. Turnbull and Shorten both pulled down popular visionary leaders whatever your politics. Tony Abbott remains a real hero to most, but like Trump the personal attacks are endless, both on his name and his family.
And these appalling villains lecture on ‘hate speech’ and safe spaces and fascists? They are the haters and the fascists.
Climate Change is so obviously a leftist political weapon which has no basis in any science. The late David Bellamy, Botanist, never worked again in television after he called Climate Change poppycock. And Richard Attenborough cannot push Climate Change enough. He even thinks it is real science. Possibly.
80
David Attenborough…his brother was an actor, must run in the family.
70
Ideology is sometimes an excuse for economics.
For all the issues the left may have with Trump, a root cause of their distress is economics.
If you are the party of big government, and you aren’t in power, then you don’t eat as well.
I am not asserting graft, corruption, kickbacks, etc. even those are omnipresent at low levels on both sides.
But, once again, follow the money.
Consider the agency that, under Obama, decided Carbon Dioxide was poisoning the air. He many rants, studies, reports,
surveys, and conferences were funded to climate change adherants? How many cooperative lawfirms got litigation assignments on the agency’s
budget? How many thousands of bureaucrats were funded? How many fellow travelers in the commercial world were made indispensable doing unnecessary
work o comply with the agency’s mandates and “dear colleague” letters. The Obama EPA shoveled, literally, billions into the left leaning climateshpere.
It was the same with other agencies, from the State Department’s Inernational Development slush funds the HUD’s endless messing with the housing market
to the labor department redefining what employment means.
Under Trump there is less. Maybe not much less, unfortunately for taxpayers, but some of the goodies now go to right leaning folks as well.
It’s all to easy to hate and demonize people if you see them going after your rice bowl.
70
As Martin Armstrong says something has changed since Trump won the last election, and it’s getting worse. IMHO the Democrats are turning into a group of anarchists. It appears after the next election things will get worse…
The 2020 Elections & the Coming Violence
70
And Trump is fighting the entire public service, which is socialist/communist, the worst being in Washington, DC.
How can you tell? They all work for the government, in departments which are chronically understaffed, they believe there is no problem the government cannot solve with more laws and much higher taxation and in 2016 an amazing 98.4% voted for Hillary including all illegal aliens. And 1.6% are dyslexic.
121
The only government agency part that is understaffed is the office of inspector general (and maybe the department of common sense, which is usually vacant).
120
Sorry, that was a big vague. All government departments are understaffed by definition. Theirs.
In the public service only way to increase importance and salary is to increase taxation or get more people, pushing up the budget. Our ABC has achieved nirvana. Paid out of the public purse without accountability or responsibility, three people to do one job and never enough people or money. This is because they can threaten govenment with bad press or the execution of BBC import Peppa Pig. The ABC would be in violation of many laws which controlled the media reach, if they were not quasi public service. The best of both worlds.
Many of these quangoes are out of control. CSIRO, BOM and Their ABC. Sell the lot. Why should the government be in the weather business? People will and do pay handsomely to know the weather. In Australia that costs the public $12Million a week.
90
Could describe Australia.
70
It would if we has a Trump, which we don’t and most likely never will. So it’s worse here since we have the silly situation a supposedly conservative government here is financially supporting a socialist propaganda broadcaster – the ABC. If we had a Trump here as the PM there would be no doubt he would have defunded the ABC on day one.
70
Which is the big difference between Trump and Morrison, Trump goes out of his way to upset the MSM and pays little attention to their opinions.
Where as Morrison is looking to the likes of the ABC for policy ideas and to be liked .
The MSM hate Trump and Morrison but only one of them have worked that out and knows how to play them like a piano .
90
Morrison does not have the swagger of Trump. Trump has the confidence that personal wealth brings. Morrison is a simple politician who was in the right place at the right time then helped along by dingbat Shorten and his mistreatment of a large slice of Queensland voters.
30
Public service towns of Canberra, Hobart, Adelaide, Darwin. Also centres of Green climate madness along with the inner city of Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane. And the greatest per capita recipients of Federal largesse. Adelaide gets the GST of Perth, despite being half the population. That was the old Sales tax, now funding Adelaide. And they all get Green senators to represent 10% of Australia’s population. Generally they equate socialism with the public service, a fantasy of benign communism. Like Bernie Sanders power base in the Universities.
100
And Bernie Sanders is America’s Jeremy Corbyn. No, I’m not a commmunist, despite what I say and do and promise. I am a democratic socialist and they have elections in Russia and China and Venezuela. 98.4% vote for the wonderful job done by the dear leaders. The others will be found and reeducated.
60
Both sides have their own pet beliefs and “group think” to some degree.
I am in the middle in many ways (though closer to the right) and clash with both sides and I see both sides of it.
The biggest difference I encounter is what the author speaks about – the absolute intolerance of dissent within the left. I have been banned from posting on whirlpool, Guardian, SMH, skeptical science etc for refusing to toe the line, or as they put it for “violating the terms and conditions”. Likewise Facebook friends unfriend you if you step out of line in their eyes.
The right/conservative side appears far less inclined to do that in my opinion. They will still disagree with you and fight you, but they don’t immediately go for deplatforming. At least not nearly as often.
90
Be reasonable, see it my way.
lol
50
They are aggressive because the world is coming to an end and they think its our fault. In historical perspective, this is the age of Mass Delusion.
50
The Left is based on identity-group conflict, and the groups are divided into “Oppressed” and “Oppressors”.
This has two consequences.
1. You judge people according to the group they belong to, not according to what they have actually done.
2. Having decreed that the “other” group are “Oppressors”, you are completely justified in anything you do to them, because Marxist theory says that this is an inter-group war.
So no, it’s not because the world is threatened, any more that Germany was threatened by the Jews or Rusdia was threatened by land-owning peasants.
This is also why the Left tends to view those disagreeing with them as “Evil”, while the non-Left tends to view a Leftists as “stupid”. Leftists assume that success is based on exploitation (again, basic Marxist doctrine) while Conservatives think it is based on competency.
So to claim that Left and Conservative are opposite sides of the same coin is a lie.
30
“The Left is based on identity-group conflict, and the groups are divided into “Oppressed” and “Oppressors”.”
Here’s a more elegant version:
“This was in keeping with a more general vision on the Left that people were essentially divided into three categories – the heartless, the helpless, and wonderful people like themselves, who would rescue the helpless by playing Lady Bountiful with the taxpayers’ money.” —Thomas Sowell
20
Yep. Oppressor vs oppressed. With the oppressed holding the highest moral virtue and greatest legitimate claim on true power. Hence why they all want to be the biggest victims and the most easily injured. Because to them it’s real status. It’s like the princess and the pea. They’re all trying to prove themselves with their sensitivity to injury.
20
Banned from Whirlpool? You animal!!! LOL. 🙂
What the hell did you say?
40
Whirlpool has high levels of thought policing and the moderators are quick to send people packing. Thousands of people have been banned from the site.
10
Banned from Whirlpool? You animal!!! LOL. 🙂
What the heck did you say?
20
The neo-Marxist NPC SJW virtue signalling Left have been, are and will always be a social, biological and economic dead end, exploited this time around by the ‘woke’ corporatist globalist power brokers.
They unfailingly eat and devour their own, that is unless they are murdered beforehand in utero, or late term or euthanased or wind up with an low social credit score, and end up in some re-education camp or gulag, where they undergo the murderous experience of division, inequality and exclusion for wrong think.
As Michael Savage explained so eloquently, Liberalism is a Mental Disorder.
Most graced with sufficient insight eventually see and feel the insanity, #WalkAway.
40
Would add jest one word to yr succinct summary, Latus Dextro. ‘Radical’ Liberalism is a Mental Disorder.
… maybe as Michael Savage says, ‘radical mad-dog liberalism.’ That says it fer serfs.
20
The really interesting bit that underlines the polarisation of America and indeed the hatred within many Democrats was not the article but the comments and the comments to the comments.
30
“Karlyn Borysenko:
I’m an organizational psychologist and mindfulness expert…”
Two dangerous mind controlling qualifications which need to be given up in order to be truly open minded and discerning.
30
I wonder how you reach expert status in the field of mindfulness?
20
One could say a good Butler or Concierge is an expert in the field of mindfulness.
30
For anyone not too sure what mindfulness is about I’ll give you one example of how it’s used at the pain clinic I was at .
Trying to get people to go for a walk who are in pain can be pretty hard especially if the walking increases the pain .
We were coached that when we walked we had to count three strides leading with left foot then three with right foot while breathing in and holding for three strides then breathing out and holding the breath in for three strides .
They would also add extra things to concentrate on depending on the person , because your mind is so busy concentrating on steps and breathing in a particular order most people are so pre occupied with that they forget about the pain and just walk .
And can I say that actually works on most people try it for yourself , of course if you were in utter agony when walking it probably won’t work but I’m sure most here would get the idea .
10
TDS has been cultivated by the MSM, so-called “celebrities” – who rely on the MSM, stop-Trump, coup-plotting Dems and Never Trumpers who colluded with the MSM.
anyone hear the following stories on the nightly news?
CHECK HIS PIC: 13 Feb: GatewayPundit: Violent Leftist Arrested For Slapping 15-Year-Old Trump Supporter in the Face and Fracturing Another Man’s Jaw – For Wearing MAGA Hats at NH Polling Site
by Cristina Laila
Patrick Bradley, 34, was arrested and charged with simple assault and disorderly conduct for slapping a high school student in the face because he was wearing a red MAGA hat…
Another man wearing a MAGA hat came in to intervene when Patrick Bradley assaulted him and left him with a fractured jaw…
A violent leftist recently drove a van through a GOP tent, narrowly missing volunteers yet the media refuses to report on violence against Trump supporters.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/02/violent-leftist-arrested-for-slapping-15-year-old-trump-supporter-in-the-face-and-fracturing-another-mans-jaw-for-wearing-maga-hats-at-nh-polling-site/
13 Feb: GatewayPundit: Bernie Bro Arrested On Burglary, Vandalism, Attempted Arson Charges After Attacking GOP Office In Northern California
by Brock Simmons
Unhinged leftist activist Michael Vall was arrested in Eureka, California after vandalizing and apparently trying to burn down the Humboldt County Republican party office. To no one’s surprise, it turns out dude is a Bernie supporter
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/02/bernie-bro-arrested-on-burglary-vandalism-attempted-arson-charges-after-attacking-gop-office-in-northern-california/
dated Jul 2018, but list goes to Nov 2018. Nolte seems to have given up at that point. very depressing:
2018: Breitbart: Rap Sheet: ***639*** Acts of Media-Approved Violence and Harassment Against Trump Supporters
It is open season on Trump supporters, and the media is only fomenting, encouraging, excusing, and hoping for more… The media are now openly calling Trump supporters “Nazis” and are blaming Trump for a mass murder he had nothing to do with. This, of course, is a form of harassment because it incites and justifies mob violence.
Here is the list, so far, and remember that if any one of these things happened to a Democrat, the media would use the story to blot out the sun for weeks…
https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2018/07/05/rap-sheet-acts-of-media-approved-violence-and-harassment-against-trump-supporters/
as Nigel Farage has said a number of times:
“For a civilised democracy to work, you need the losers’ consent”
that is missing re Trump, Brexit and, in Australia, the lost climate election.
60
TDS , climate alarmists etc , they seem to hope for the worse to happen so they can justify their thinking and say ‘See ,I told you so ‘.
30
Let’s not forget Al Gore’s father was a close associate of billionaire US businessman Armand Hammer of Occidental Petroleum. At one point Occidental was the 16th biggest company in the US. Hammer was of Russian-Jewish ancestry, and spent 9 years early on in the new USSR where he became good friends with a certain chap known as Lenin. Lenin called Hammer ” Comrade.” He maintained strong contacts with the Soviets throughout his career… although Hammer said he was a Republican. He died in 1990 in Los Angeles. Meanwhile Al Gore Junior failed at pretty much everything – chemistry, Harvard, divinity school – so all that was left was following his father into politics. He represented Tennessee in congress and as a senator, then became VP under Bill Clinton. He almost made President in 2000. Environmental activism proved more profitable with his film ” An Inconvenient Truth ” broadcasting to a new religious cult… The greens.
And here we are. Incidentally, back in the day Armand Hammer made a lot of money from his coal interests…
60
” … while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
10
I have to quote Cabaret
“What good’s sitting all alone in a room,
Come, hear the music play,
Life is a cabaret, old chum,
and I LOVE a cabaret!”
Live life to the full, and give a finger gesture, (your choice of cultures) to those people pitching hate. . .
(I wish we could ship a spare Trump for Australia, but unfortunately the supply is limited…)
20
doubt if MSM reported on as much as 1% of the IG Report:
14 Feb: ConservativeTreehouse: Two-Tiered Justice – DOJ Informs Andrew McCabe He Will Not Be Prosecuted for Lying to FBI Investigators (3 Times, Under Oath)…
by sundance
The DOJ inspector general had previously sent a criminal referral based on the OIG investigation of Mr. McCabe leaking to the media and then lying to FBI investigators four times, three times under oath in 2017, about his activity. [OIG Report HERE]…
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/02/14/two-tiered-justice-doj-informs-andrew-mccabe-he-will-not-be-prosecuted-for-lying-to-fbi-investigators-3-times-under-oath/
TWEET: John Cardillo 14 Feb 2020
They’ve only dropped the investigation arising from Horowitz’s 2018 referral.
This has nothing to do with Durham’s investigation which is still ongoing.
https://twitter.com/johncardillo/status/1228369145110188039
12 Jan: Breitbart: Revealed: McCabe Pushed to Highlight Trump ‘Golden Shower’ Rumor in Public Russia Report — and Comey Approved
by Aaron Klein
The Comey email, which has not received media attention until now, was revealed inside the Justice Department’s recently released 476-page Inspector General report on the FBI’s Russia collusion investigation…
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/12/revealed-mccabe-pushed-to-highlight-trump-golden-shower-rumor-in-public-russia-report-and-comey-approved/
Tweet & replies on McCabe: Jack Posobiec 14 Feb 2020
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1228378423330050048
30
Comey is in big trouble. No one is going to take the fall for him. It is surprising that the fake assurance to the FISA court has not yet been acted upon by the responsible judge.
You are not supposed to lie repeatedly on oath and not be prosecuted, especially if the lie comes directly supported by the head of the FBI. This whole episode makes Watergate seem like a misdemeanor and 42 people went to jail over that. This time the list is longer and the money trail goes right to Hillary Clinton and the DNC. Quite apart from the subsequent and illegal FBI spying on Trump’s campaign which was legitimized by a fake FISA application. You are supposed to be protected from this by the Constitution, but not Donald Trump. Hillary was supposed to win and it would all be forgotten.
The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC, also called the FISA Court) is a U.S. federal court established and authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law. So this was secret court approved breaking of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. The legal brake on illegal spying is the FISA application, which were all demonstrably lies. It is one of the reason Trump had to be alleged to conspire with another country and Russia was the chosen one.
A lot of people will go to jail. Comey is just one of the many in the FBI. Trump supporter Roger Stone was facing 7-9 years just for lying. The Clinton financed Steele dossier will send a lot of people away for a long time.
70
13 Feb: ConservativeTreehouse: The FBI Corruption is Far Worse Than We Currently Imagine – President Trump Authorized His Own Surveillance…
by sundance
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/02/13/the-fbi-corruption-is-far-worse-than-we-currently-imagine-president-trump-authorized-his-own-surveillance/
20
Yes, as in my comment above. It is outrageous that no one has been charged, so the Deep State is protecting them and especially the Clintons who have done nothing wrong. Or the Bidens. They close ranks when one of their leaders is threatened by the law. Weiner’s lap computer was seized by the FBI because the NYPD wanted to charge the Clintons, so the evidence was removed. Weiner is Hillary’s assistant’s alleged husband.
20
as published by the second-largest newspaper in Indiana:
13 Feb: Northwest Indiana Times: NWI Democrat threatens to arm himself against ‘tyranny’ if Trump is reelected
by Dan Carden
A Northwest Indiana congressional candidate is insisting that he was not threatening anybody when he tweeted Thursday that he’s planning to become “one of those Second Amendment people” if President Donald Trump is elected to a second term.
Ryan Farrar, of DeMotte — one of 14 candidates vying for the Democratic nomination in Indiana’s 1st U.S. House District — said far from threatening the Republican president, or anyone else, his tweet is a recommendation that liberals begin preparing to combat tyranny…
Farrar said at this point he doesn’t see any need for guns to be used in American politics: “I just think it’s something to be prepared for.”
“I believe the Second Amendment actually was written so the people would have the ability to stand against tyranny if it ever resurfaced in America,” Farrar said.
“I do think, right now, under this president, we’ve probably gotten closer to tyranny than we’ve been in a very, very long time.”…
Specifically, Farrar cited Trump pressuring the Justice Department to seek a shorter prison term for Trump’s longtime adviser, Roger Stone, who last year was convicted of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing a congressional investigation.
Farrar said that kind of politicization of the judicial process “feels like something that you would see in Russia, or in, quite frankly, Nazi Germany.”…
The Times reached out to the Indiana Democratic Party, the Indiana Republican Party and the Trump campaign seeking their responses to Farrar’s remarks. All declined to comment…
Meanwhile, Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr., who also is running for the Democratic U.S. House nomination, said he believes it is “incredibly dangerous” for Farrar “to stoke the fires of violence.”
“It’s the kind of stuff that President Trump does. And it’s scary,” McDermott said…
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/elections/nwi-democrat-threatens-to-arm-himself-against-tyranny-if-trump/article_6eca2ddb-7e26-57c0-86f0-67ce78d395fe.html
wow.
20
Please desist from Trump politics. There is no nexus with “global warning”, apart from his views on this individual topic. Other than that, there is NO connection.
04
Jo’s blog.
If you don’t like it, don’t read it.
70
When Donald first became President I hoped he would say global warming is a hoax and the science supporting this big lie is badly flawed. He didn’t do that and never will, but he did smash the backs of the Establishment and deserves a second term.
There are other threads for global warming if you want to make a particular point.
30
lengthy, detailed:
14 Feb: RealClearInvestigations: Buried in IG Report: How an FBI Team in Rome Gave Steele Highly Guarded Secrets
By Eric Felten
A month before the 2016 presidential election, the FBI met Christopher Steele in Rome and apparently unlawfully shared with the foreign opposition researcher some of the bureau’s most closely held secrets, according to unpublicized disclosures in the recent Justice Department Inspector General report on abuses of federal surveillance powers.
What’s more, Steele, the former British spy who compiled the “dossier” of conspiracy theories for the Hillary Clinton campaign, was promised $15,000 to attend the briefing by FBI agents eager to maintain his cooperation in their Trump-Russia collusion investigation codenamed Crossfire Hurricane.
That investigation was so closely guarded that only a handful of top officials and agents at the FBI were allowed to know about it.
The report by Inspector General Michael Horowitz details how a team of FBI agents in early October 2016 shared with Steele extensive classified materials, just weeks before the bureau cut off ties with him for leaking his own research to the media.
The secrets included foreign intelligence information still considered so sensitive that the IG’s report refers to it even now only as coming from a “Friendly Foreign Government.” In fact, this is a reference to Australia…
The IG report also discloses that FBI agents knew Steele worked for Glenn Simpson, whose opposition research firm Fusion GPS was paying Steele to dig up dirt on Trump for the Clinton campaign, and that Steele informed the FBI that the “candidate” – Clinton herself – knew about Steele’s work…
Shortly after the Rome meeting, Steele briefed Simpson on what the FBI had disclosed to him…
The FBI’s disclosures to Steele — described on pages 114-115 and in footnote 513, and supported on pages 386-390 and footnotes 252 and 513, deep in Horowitz’s report – were violations of laws governing the handling of classified material, according to the Inspector General and experts in national security law who spoke with RealClearInvestigations…READ ON
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/02/13/buried_in_ig_report_fbi_gave_steele_highly_protected_secrets_122394.html
20
FakeNewsMSM shamelessly promotes the CAGW hoax; Trump keeps getting in the way:
14 Feb: Politico: Global Translations: Climate glitterati gather in Washington for tense meeting
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse tore into green-tinged companies at the residence of French Ambassador Philippe Etienne.
by Ryan Heath
The Sustainability Spotlight is an extension of the Global Translations newsletter, which tracks major issues facing the globe.
Washington’s climate glitterati gathered at the Kalorama residence of French Ambassador Philippe Etienne on Tuesday night to be chided and nudged by Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and drafter of the Paris Climate Agreement. Global Translations joined the political and NGO heavy-hitters, as Tubiana pitched climate action as an act of “reclaiming sovereignty” (rather than giving into activists and global government). She called for a global climate self-help movement: “Don’t rely on others” to do the heavy lifting, which she accused the Australian and Brazilian governments of having done.
U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) tore into green-tinged companies insisting that “there is no company that shows up in Congress on climate, except maybe Patagonia. Tech associations barely mention it.” He said that after a decade of turbo-charged fossil fuel lobbying, “I am involved in a number of secret climate conversations with some of my Republican colleagues but they can’t find a single corporation that will come out and say ‘I’ve got your back.’ It should not be too much to ask corporate America to align their lobbying with their stated values.”
Libetarian view: One green-minded Republican bemoaned the “small tent” created by well-informed climate advocates, saying they have been more focused on adopting specific ideas and identities than outcomes. A point of contention in the evening’s group discussion was whether climate action supporters should focus on making it cheap and practical to invest in green solutions rather than channeling efforts toward creating taxes and other penalties for non-green behavior…
REALITY CHECK — EU COUNTRIES UNDERMINE BLOC’S GREEN PLANS: Europe talks a good climate game, but one-third of EU countries have not yet given the European Commission their national energy and climate plans. Brussels is getting impatient with France, Germany and Spain, as well as the smaller, Bulgaria, Ireland, Romania and Slovenia. The Commission came up with this handy table (LNK) to shame them.
US 2020 ELECTION SEASON GOES (LIGHT) GREEN: Latinx voters are set to push climate change in the Democratic Nevada caucuses next week. House Republicans are building a climate legislative plan (with an eye on covering their electoral backs) based on three tenets: carbon sequestration, clean energy and conservation.
***Reality check: President Donald Trump wants a 75 percent cut in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy budget…
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/14/rise-of-sustainability-as-self-help-115038
40
posted stuff last nite on Jo’s “unprecedented panic” thread – see comments 49,50 – re Boris Johnson appointing Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Alok Sharma, as President for COP26 in Glasgow (or elsehwhere).
including:
13 Fen: DeSmogUK: Alok Sharma: The Minister with Nine Months to Prepare UK for Global Climate Talks
By Zak Derler
excerpt: (Alok) Sharma has also been accused of having ties with the Kremlin. In 2017, an article by Carole Cadwalladr, the journalist who exposed the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal, discussed how Sharma had several confirmed meetings with ***Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese academic embroiled in the controversy over the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. Mifsud’s current whereabouts are unknown…
30 May 2018: RealClearInvestigations: The Maltese Phantom of Russiagate
by Lee Smith
In the shifting narratives of the Trump-Russia probe, a Maltese academic named Joseph Mifsud has remained a linchpin regarding claims of collusion. He is the professor who allegedly told Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos that the Russians had emails related to the Clinton campaign. The FBI says it opened its investigation in late July 2016 after Papadopoulos relayed that information to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, and the Australians tipped off U.S. authorities…
While some news accounts describe Mifsud as an accomplice to Russian clandestine operations or a “cut-out” (intermediary), others contend he is a full-fledged Russian spy…
No one in the American intelligence community has publicly challenged this description…
Although Mifsud has traveled many times to Russia and has contacts with Russian academics, his closest public ties are to Western governments, politicians, and institutions, including the CIA, FBI and British intelligence services.
One of Mifsud’s jobs has been to train diplomats, police officers, and intelligence officers at schools in London and Rome, where he lived and worked over the last dozen years…
There has been no public effort to arrest him…
While most media accounts have simply repeated official claims that Mifsud is a sketchy character whose visits to Russia and academic contacts suggest he is working for Russian intelligence, a look at the available evidence challenges that narrative. It also raises the possibility that Mifsud, whose circles are tied to the Clintons, may, like another professor recently in the news, Stefan Halper, have actually been working for Western intelligence agencies…
In interviews with RealClearInvestigations, Roh and Pastor said Mifsud is anything but a Russian spy. Rather, he is more likely a Western intelligence asset.
According to the two authors, it was a former Italian intelligence official, Vincenzo Scotti, a colleague of Mifsud’s and onetime interior minister, who told the professor to go into hiding. “I don’t know who was hiding him,” said Roh, “but I’m sure it was organized by someone. And I am sure it will be difficult to get to the bottom of it.”…
Pastor and Roh, who hired Mifsud as a business development consultant in 2015, write that far from being a Russian spy, Mifsud “had only one master: the Western Political, Diplomatic and Intelligence World, his only home, of which he is still deeply dependent.”
There is plenty of open source material that supports their thesis…
Mifsud met ***Alok Sharma, then a Foreign Office minister for Asia/Pacific, and now minister of state for employment, “a couple of times” at least, including at a fundraiser Oct. 19, two weeks after Papadopoulos’ Oct. 5 guilty plea.
At that same fundraiser, Mifsud was photographed next to Boris Johnson, the UK foreign secretary, the most senior intelligence official responsible for running MI6, the UK’s foreign intelligence service, and Government Communications Headquarters, the UK equivalent of America’s National Security Agency…
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2018/05/26/the_maltese_phantom_of_russiagate_.html
30
3 Oct 2019: Daily Mail: Australia REJECTS Bill Barr’s attempt to get secret diplomatic cables to help his effort to find ‘truth’ about claims Russia aided Donald Trump – as global scale of AG’s personal crusade revealed
•Attorney General Bill Barr traveled to Rome where he met with top officials
•He was accompanied by U.S. Attorney John Durham of Connecticut, who is heading the investigation of alleged FBI misconduct
•Australian prime minister said providing information would be an ‘unusual thing to do’
•President Donald Trump pressed heads of Australia, Britain, and Ukraine for assistance in investigation in origins of the Russia probe
•An Italian source told the Daily Beast they heard a taped deposition by Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud
•Mifsud told former Trump advisor George Papadopoulos the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign
•During Robert Mueller’s testimony Rep. Jim Jordan said it was a good idea to ‘go back and actually figure out why Joseph Mifsud was lying to the FBI’
By Geoff Earle
Secondly, there is interest on what British intelligence knew about Joseph Mifsud…
Mifsud was also director of the ‘London Academy of Diplomacy,’ which appears to have been essentially his own enterprise, and having a teaching fellowship at the University of Stirling in Scotland…
Mifsud was questioned by the FBI in 2017, but it is unclear where that took place. He has since vanished – of which more later…
Mifsud, the shadowy academic, is closely tied to Italy.
He worked for the Link University of Rome, a for-profit college which was initially a branch of the University of Malta, and which has close intelligence links. The CIA and Link once jointly organized a conference…
After he vanished in late summer 2018, Mifsud may have surfaced in April 2019 , and Papadpoulos wife Simone Mangiante Papadopoulos tweeted an account that he had been ‘hiding in Rome’ for months.
Public records show that he asked for Italian police protection around the time he vanished – leaving a taped deposition which apparently explains who he said might want to harm him. Its contents are so far uknown.
When Mueller testified before the House this summer, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio grilled the special counsel on Mifsud, who he called ‘the mysterious professor who lives in Rome and London.’
He called him ‘the guy who starts it all,’ and grilled Mueller for failing to charge him, despite making false statements – and asked if he was Russian or western intelligence. ‘Can’t get into that,’ replied Mueller…
The Daily Beast reported that Barr heard the tape made by Italian officials of Mifsud’s deposition and ‘other evidence’ they held on Mifsud…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7527093/Bill-Barr-secretly-flew-Italy-listen-tape-vanished-spy.html
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[SNIP unsourced plagarized list]
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Peter when you appropriately repost, in a limited form, that cut and pasted, possibly copyright list, with attribution and a link — please also estimate (with some links or calculation) what percentage all these tiny fringe groups you can find are of the 60 million who voted for Trump.
This post is about the average Trump voter not about the 0.1%ers. Blog clogging …?
– Jo
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12 Feb: Daily Caller: Oil Production On Federal Land Topped 1 Billion Barrels, Reducing Impact OPEC Has On Markets
by Chris White
Oil production on federal lands topped 1 billion barrels in 2019, marking a 29% increase from the Obama administration, Department of the Interior officials announced Tuesday.
Technological advancements over the last decade in hydraulic fracturing helped drive the increase, as did President Donald Trump’s rollback of his Democratic predecessor’s environmental regulations. Production was up 122 million barrels from 2018, The Associated Press reported…
The increase does give the U.S. a significant geopolitical advantage over the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, according to one analyst…ETC
https://dailycaller.com/2020/02/12/interior-department-donald-trump-obama/
12 Feb:Financial Post: Attack of the green carbon counters as business world reduced to tallying emissions
Grim green calculations warp decisions on Alberta’s oilsands and pipelines, Ontario’s electricity market and a New Brunswick iron project
by Terence Corcoran
Canadians who previously marvelled at their ability to work the land, build enterprise, lay rail and produce industrial and commercial wealth are now being told that the only measure that matters is whether their work and enterprise add or subtract from the nation’s carbon count and improve or jeopardize Canada’s ability to meet its international carbon emissions targets.
From pipeline to electricity production to industrial development in Atlantic Canada, the business world has been reduced to counting carbon emissions. Forget revenue estimates, profit projections, innovation, market breakthroughs, lower cost structures, new technologies, better jobs, future economic growth prospects and a richer country.
Put all that corporate rubbish aside because nothing matters in today’s economy except the associated carbon emissions…READ ON
https://business.financialpost.com/opinion/terence-corcoran-attack-of-the-green-carbon-counters-as-business-world-reduced-to-tallying-emissions
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14 Feb: ConservativeTreehouse: U.S. and U.K. Intelligence Agencies Worry About John Durham – Scrutiny of CIA Draws Media Apoplexy…
by sundance
There was once a time, not that long ago, when the mainstream left was highly critical of the CIA, and scrutiny of dubious claims by U.S. intelligence was a common occurrence. Of course all of that changed when those same intelligence agencies were weaponized to target a political enemy that was also the enemy of the left, namely Donald Trump.
Now, in the era of modern political narratives, no intelligence claim against the Trump administration is too outlandish…
By now people are familiar with the construct of CIA operations involving Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese professor now generally admitted/identified as some kind of a western intelligence operative who was tasked to run an operation against Trump campaign official George Papadopoulos in both Italy (Rome) and London. {Go Deep}
In a similar fashion the CIA tasked U.S. intelligence asset Stefan Halper to target another Trump campaign official, Carter Page. Under the auspices of being a Cambridge Professor Stefan Halper also targeted General Michael Flynn. Additionally, using assistance from a female FBI agent under the false name Azra Turk, Mr. Halper also targeted Papadopoulos.
The initial operations to target Flynn, Papadopoulos and Page were all based overseas…
In their text messages Strzok has a working relationship with what he called their “sister agency”, the CIA. Additionally, CIA Director Brennan has admitted Strzok helped write the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which outlines the Russia narrative…READ ON
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/02/14/u-s-and-u-k-intelligence-agencies-worry-about-john-durham-scrutiny-of-cia-draws-media-apoplexy/
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The Democrat are crazy. They’ve cheated against their most popular candidate at Iowa. The media has sidelined two of their really excellent candidates and discriminated against them. That is to say Yang and Gabbard. Yang has pulled out already. This is how you lose elections. You figure out who the people like and you block them. Just the same as they did to Ron Paul and Patrick Buchanan. Always blocking their most electable candidates and usually on the grounds of their alleged lack of electability. But what a loony-toon show it is when they try to put Roger Stone away for nine years. The context being this gigantic nothing burger where everyone lied all the time. Crazy leftist hysteria. They cannot be reasoned with. Trumps got plenty of real things he could be attacked on and they’ll never do it. I hope Trump just comes in an pardons Stone. Put one aspect of this hate-fest to an abrupt end. People really have to catch themselves. These Democrats are like this gigantic lynch-mob.
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Graeme Bird –
14 Feb: Townhall: Some Yang Supporters Now Plan to Vote For…Trump?
by Leah Barkoukis
According to The Hill’s Saager Enjeti, some Yang Gang members now plan to vote for President Trump.
He shared a couple of their messages on Twitter.
TWEET: Hearing from some members of the Yang Gang who now say they will vote Trump 2020 because they want to support a working class candidate but don’t like Bernie’s culturally woke element. Interesting phenomenon
— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) February 13, 2020
A 28-year-old father of two was inspired by Yang because of his message of unity. The man said he was turned off by Democrats’ demonization of anyone in the middle or leaning right.
“I share both liberal and conservative views, and I am not a huge fan of Donald trump,” he said, adding that he can’t imagine supporting any of the other Democratic candidates. “Trump keeps things real I may not like what he says all the time, but who we see is who he is.”…
A recent Stanford University/Reality Check survey of Yang supporters shows President Trump is the second most popular alternative to the tech entrepreneur.
“Of the 200 Yang supporters surveyed in the hours after the businessman threw in the towel at Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, 11 percent of people said they would now support re-electing Trump,” the New York Post reports…
Sanders was the most popular alternative to Yang, with 33 percent support.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2020/02/14/some-yang-gang-voters-go-to-trump-n2561328
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And you have a Sanders staffer who is fine with gulags……
The Dems are fielding a red ragger for Prez it seems….
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Why are we supposed to give a damn about these Americans? Whoever they elect will be a disaster, and our spineless government – whatever party it is – will suck up to him/her, support his/her crazy and destructive foreign policy, and join in the idiotic wars s/he starts.
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I like America and the Americans (generally) too. Very kind and friendly people who could help you with your, er, attitude, if you ever took the trouble to meet some.
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They say whatever happens in America usually happens here but we have no chance of being lucky enough to have a leader like Trump .
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The US is a military industrial complex and we are allies standing up against the Communist peril, our biggest trading partner. The US military should quit the South Pacific, apart from casual visits, and Beijing the same.
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The truth is Trump comes across as a bit of a dick, but then that’s almost every human being we’ve all got little foibles and little ways of doing things.
What do I find more importantly from the outside looking in is that he also comes across as someone who genuinely loves and believes in his country.
Both Australia and the UK could do with someone like that. And that love and believe is more important than being a bit of a dick.
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Surminski/Grantham is on Aljazeera’s “Counting the Cost” at the moment. just caught a few minutes. sea level rise threatening hundreds of millions – pretty much the CAGW meme of the week. Trump, Trump. people like him are running out of arguments. talks of “how we want society to operate”. looks like another half-hour comprising of various CAGW segments; not online as yet.
LSE/Grantham: Swenja Surminski, Head of Adaptation Research
◾PI of the LSE IGA/Rockefeller project ‘ Evaluating the Resilience Impact of Climate Insurance (ERICI) – investigating insurance as a tool for financial and climate resilience…
She has published widely on these topics and is a contributing author to the IPCC and the EU Science for Disaster Risk Management Report. She is co-founder of the ‘Loss and Damage Network’–bringing together academics and practitioners working on the UNFCCC’s L&D work program. She works closely with industry and policy makers and was appointed Visiting Academic at the Bank of England in 2015 to work on the regulator’s first report on climate change (PDF) (PDF). Swenja was selected lead author for the business and industry chapter of the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment in 2017 and Lead Academic for a World Bank project on the benefits of Disaster Risk Management (DRM), working with the Overseas Development Institute to explore how the co-benefits of DRM measures can strengthen the economic case for investment (PDF) (PDF)…
Background
Prior to joining LSE in 2010 Swenja spent more than ten years in the insurance industry working on climate and risks management, including roles at Munich Re, Marsh Mc Lennon and the Association of British Insurers. Swenja was a Fulbright Scholar in the US, studying Ecological Economics and International Relations at the University of New Hampshire and received a PhD in Political Science from Hamburg University for her work on ‘Climate Change and the Insurance Industry’ in 2002…
http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/profile/swenja-surminski/
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Jo, thanks for posting this, and providing a link to the full essay.
It was refreshing and a nice way to start the day.
Regards,
Bob
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Of course this mirrors exactly what has happened in the UK, albeit manifesting in a slightly different manner. Here the chasm is between Brexit Leave and Remain, which is and was by no means along party lines. However, it is the Labour Party that is the victim of its own inability to accept that other do not see the world as they do, and more of a problem, that many such were once life long Labour voters, who last December threw up their hands in the air, and threw away family habit by voting Tory for the first time ever, and turning old mining constituencies Conservative.
Add to that, like thew Democrats, they cannot see the mote in their own eye, instead are blaming everyone else. Stupid and ignorant voters. Biased media. The two reasons they lost so badly – Their leader, the hideous and odious terrorist loving little goblin Corbyn, and their endless vacillation over Brexit, such that nobody had a clue what their policy was on Brexit, if indeed they had one.
The times they are a’ changing, as some bloke once said.
Full analysis of how voting changed her for those interested
https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2020/02/diagnosis-of-defeat-labours-turn-to-smell-the-coffee/
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heard Geraldine promo-ing the IOD segment, which she said was responsible for Australia’s drought which led to the bushfires and then the floods. ends with Ben saying there’s interesting work going on linking CAGW to a positive IOD, which causes Geraldine to laugh!
AUDIO: 8m58s: 15 Feb: ABC: Indian Ocean Dipole
By Geraldine Doogue
The Indian Ocean Dipole is a term we need to know more about.
The dipole is now being seen by scientists as a key cause of Australia’s recent drought, which of course led to the fires…
Guest: Ben Deacon, journalist covering weather for the ABC’s National Regional Reporting Team
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/saturdayextra/indian-ocean-dipole/11967452
13 Feb: ABC: Indian Ocean Dipole linked to global warming in new research by Australian scientists
ABC Weather By Ben Deacon
Professor Nerilie Abram from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences said the changes were occurring in the Indian Ocean Dipole’s (IOD) behaviour.
“That is going to increase the risk that we will have these very dry and hot years and those are the years where we precondition our landscape to burn,” she said.
The 2019 drought occurred at a time where the Indian Ocean Dipole was at a record positive level.
Extreme positive IOD events have been strongly linked to drought in Australia…
Professor Andy Pitman, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes said quantifying how likely potential changes to the IOD could be and understanding the consequences for Australia were urgent national priorities.
The discoveries recently reported by Abram and Cai are exciting and if correct could have profound consequences for Australia’s future climate,” Professor Pitman said.
Professor Abram said positive IOD events had become stronger and more frequent, particularly since the 1960s.
“Paleoclimate data confirms that, yes, that recent increase that we’ve seen since the 1960s is unusual”, she said.
“And then if we look at climate models, they produce this increasing frequency and intensity of positive Indian Ocean Dipole events and project that, as the climate continues to warm, we will see those trends continuing.
“When we put all those three forms of evidence together, we do start to get a much clearer picture as to how the Indian Ocean [Dipole] is changing because of climate change.”…
Warmer sea temperatures
Professor Wenju Cai, the director of the Centre for Southern Hemisphere Oceans Research at the CSIRO, said one of the main reasons this was happening was because the western Indian Ocean — off the coast of Africa — was warming faster than the eastern Indian Ocean, off the coast of Australia…
At the height of last year’s drought in Australia, the east coast of Africa was hit by terrible floods, driven by warmer sea temperatures. And now the African deluge has led to locust plagues there of biblical proportions.
Professor Cai has used computer models to project these changes into the future. He forecasts Australia will experience twice as many drought-causing extreme positive IOD events if temperatures warm by 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“In the future, we will be seeing quite a lot of these kinds of extremes that we are seeing in 2019,” Professor Cai said…
BOM yet to use research
The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has not yet incorporated Wenju Cai and Nerilie Abram’s IOD research into its official climate change position.
“There has been a decline in cool season rainfall over southern Australia in recent decades, with the strongest signals over the south-west and south-east of the country,” BOM said in a statement.
“These declines are associated with changes in atmospheric circulation, consistent with global warming.
“There is a high degree of confidence that southern Australia will spend more time in drought in future years, consistent with projected declines in rainfall
“There is a medium or low level of confidence that other regions around the country will spend more time in drought.”
The statement reflects the broad scientific agreement that southern Australia is getting less winter rain, and that this is driven by climate change.
There is also a broad scientific agreement that Australia is getting hotter due to climate change…
But the Bureau of Meteorology’s senior principal research scientist, Scott Power, said there was still work to be done refining the way climate models represent the IOD before long-term predictions could be taken with the highest level of confidence.
“Climate models are fantastic tools. They’re one of the great achievements of humankind based on centuries of advances in maths, science and technology. But they’re not perfect,” Dr Power said.
He said there was higher confidence when it came to understanding sea level rise, warming, and lower rainfall over southern Australia during winter and spring.
“Whereas when it comes to how might the positive phase of the IOD change, I think the confidence wouldn’t be as high,” he said…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-13/indian-ocean-dipole-linked-to-global-warming-in-new-research/11943178
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14 Feb: Fox Chicago: Chicago records coldest Valentine’s Day temp in nearly half a century
Sun-Times Media Wire
CHICAGO – Chicago residents woke up Friday to subzero temperatures on Valentine’s Day that were the coldest in 47 years.
The city recorded minus 2 degrees shortly before sunrise at O’Hare International Airport, according to the National Weather Service
That’s one degree cooler than the city experienced in 1943 — and was also the coldest day so far this season.
But it’s still well above the coldest recorded Valentine’s Day on record in 1905, when the city saw temperatures of minus 11…
The City of Chicago has warming centers for those in need…
https://www.fox32chicago.com/weather/chicago-records-coldest-valentines-day-temp-in-nearly-half-a-century
14 Feb: NYT: AP: Freezing Weather Compounds Crisis for Displaced in Syria
Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report
The weather has contributed to at least 10 deaths, including four who suffered hypothermia, a family of four that died of suffocation in their tent and two who burned to death when their tent caught fire, according to Mohammed Hallaj, a coordinator for the area’s Response Coordination Group…
“It was God’s destiny that it was really cold. The temperatures was no less then -8 or -9 (degrees Celsius, 15 degrees Fahrenheit) and this is rare in Syria,” he said, speaking to The Associated Press from the Idlib town of Binnish…
“For the whole night, the heater was sucking out all the oxygen in the tent,” Hamadi said.
When the son sleeping in another tent woke up and came to their tent, he found them all dead…
“It’s cold, it’s snowing and our life is terrible, we can’t take this cold and neither can the kids,” said a woman, who identified herself by her nickname Um Muhammad, who recently fled and was staying at a tent camp near the Turkish border.
“This life, what can I say? We are broken now. I am an old woman with kids, no one is taking care of us,” she said, her face wrapped up in big black scarf against the cold…
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/02/14/world/middleeast/ap-ml-syria.html
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This guy claims to be an ‘organizational psychologist and mindfulness expert’, and he suffered from Trump Derangement Syndrome. He’s genuinely surprised when people at a Republican rally are friendly to him when he says he’s a Democrat. But it’s common sense in a democracy to be nice to people from the other aisle – unless you’re a Democrat. Trump supporters aren’t mostly racist! What a discovery. But surely the mass of Dems can’t attain ‘mindfulness’ in time for the election. They’ve learned nothing. The deplorables will win again.
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