Last week a number of people were in shock about the news that James Delingpole had his last column at the Telegraph. It was all rather abrupt. As to why, I have the inside scoop.
I asked James directly, and in a nutshell it was three things.
1. They paid him poorly, ’nuff said.
2. They never seemed to appreciate the kind of traffic and exposure he’d brought. Remember, Delingpole was the first MSM columnist to break Climategate, and I’m pleased to say he got the scoop from WUWT. But, they didn’t really recognize the asset, even though he won an award for his Climategate coverage. When Delingpole’s column won the Bloggie award for “Best Weblog About Politics“, they didn’t even mention it in the print edition or in the online main page. Usually when a columnist or writer wins such an award, the paper crows about it.
3. Often, they didn’t like the content. As we know, James skewers the left and in particular greens. He reports he was getting increasing pressure over his environmental essays.
Usually when people are the most angry at someone for something they’ve said or written, it’s because what they’ve said or written has some truth in it. While Delingpole pulled no punches when it came to describing (with great flourish) the defective nature of some aspects of the environmental movement, some ‘proper’ folks found it hard to stomach.
Of course, then we have this, which I find even harder to stomach:
Andrew Montford cited this as an example of Delingpole’s prescience.
So, now, the Telegraph’s loss is Breitbart’s gain, and just three days later, James has come out swinging:
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/02/16/Lefty-Lies-UK-Floods
All in all, quite an exit mirrored by a grand entrance.
Finally, all this leads me to something I’ve been remiss at doing simply because the day to day business of running WUWT often gets in the way, and that’s to recommend James most recent book. He kindly sent me a copy, and while the title admittedly made me cringe, once I started reading it, I found it lighthearted and hilarious. It reads a bit like a dictionary, except every definition has a punch line. Highly recommended, click the cover to have a look.
Also, be sure to add Breitbart London to your bookmarks. Delingpole’s latest is: Whose Life Is More Important? Yours, Or A Shark’s?
Oh, and what essay on Delingpole by yours truly would be complete without this photo courtesy of our friends at “Skeptical Science”?
richardscourtney says: “Joseph Goebbels as authoritative evidence of what you think to be truth speaks for itself.”
Goebbels Quote: “The difference between communism and the Hitler faith was very slight.”
Yes, Goebbels was trying to influence communist (at the time) to believing that statement was true.
In an attempt to unite the two. That is why Goebbels was as head of propaganda. It doesn’t mean he was wrong or lying. He obviously failed at trying to unite them.
The term propaganda is synonyms with influence not with lying. It is another Orwellian word.
I would love to see how this world would operate if our words were not so twisted.
Here is a thought. Say we traveled ahead in time 1000 years. We wouldn’t be able to communicate with the people in the future. It would be some strange English dialect.
I thought we ‘done’ been over this before; some paradigms or memes die slowly, eh? Those who simply seek to control and thirst for power don’t conveniently fit into textbook-standard, narrowly defined ‘categorical’ political definitions … even ‘Communism’ isn’t/wasn’t ” commune – ism “.
Maybe richard needs to approach this from (as we have learned later) the warped psycho-$exual perspective H!tler had, vs a straight political-orientation standpoint (as perhaps learned in grade school?); the man was mentally -er- ‘jacked-around’ (according to intel released from records released well after the war) to put it politely.
A Psychological Analysis of Adolph … His Life and Legend
Report by Walter C. Langer, Office of Strategic Services, Washington, D.C.
With the collaboration of-
Prof. Henry A. Murr, Harvard Psychological Clinic
Dr. Ernst Kris, New School for Social Research
Dr. Bertram D. Lawin, New York Psychoanalytic Institute
Report, by Walter C. Langer, Office of Strategic Services, Washington, D.C.
.
M Courtney says:
“Accepting as inevitable (and maybe as good) that society with be stratified is right-wing.”
No, definitely not right wing.
I honestly believe you have a very large miss conceptions of who we are.
Would you like for me to point you too some videos on Milton Freedmen?
He really was the best spokes person for our way of thinking.
Some great video’s on youtube. Just look it up.
richardscourtney says: “It seems you cannot desist from disrupting the thread from its subject.”
You asked a question and I answered it. Not liking my answer doesn’t mean I was disrupting.
Threads ALWAYS get diverted from topic. It is the way human conversations work.
Just your question along proves that.
Ox AO, I’ve read the works of Milton Friedman.
I’ve also read other works on politics, like Marx.
Seriously, “right-wing” requires acceptance of inequality. That is what the words mean.
As a person who strives for equality, I won’t be right-wing. Although I concede that the argument for the inevitability of inequality is worth respecting.
And I do not believe that left-wing or right-wing political views require or prevent authoritarianism.
Ox AO:
At February 19, 2014 at 3:37 pm you write
I see. Your post says you were deliberately trolling to divert the thread from its subject.
My “question” was to rhetorically respond to your rude and offensive post with the same conclusion as you put to me; i.e. “What is the point?”
Your response was to cite the words of Joseph Goebbels as authoritative evidence of what you think to be truth. I DID like that reply because I thought it was hilariously funny!
And, no, threads don’t “ALWAYS get diverted from topic”. They get diverted when trolls divert them because the trolls don’t like the subject of the thread to be considered.
This thread is not about you, not about your unpleasant political views, and not about your ego. This thread is about Delingpole moving from the Telegraph to his new employer.
Richard
said, ““right-wing” requires acceptance of inequality. ”
That is the leftest version of they think is right wing or what they label us.
But that isn’t who we are. Not in the slightest.
Rich or poor it doesn’t matter we are all born equal.
That is what we strive to create.
Once they are born I have a strong feeling you will miss the concept of “more equal” from Animal farm. Which again isn’t right wing
You read Milton Friedman maybe you missed something then? I don’t know?
richardscourtney says: “..you were deliberately trolling to divert the thread..”
I am sorry, I tried to answer your question.
I will refrain from doing that in the future.
Right wing politics accepts as inevitable (and sometimes as good) that social strata will always exist.
The combination of the two concepts leads to a right-wing justification of authoritarian elites.
******
Seriously, “right-wing” requires acceptance of inequality. That is what the words mean.
*****
The quotes above are pure bullsh*t.
Ring wing politics believes that all men are created equally before the law.
Left wing politics believes that some men are more equal than other, that they are above the law and their laws justify a means to its end. In the end for a leftist it is wealth for me and poverty for thee.
_Jim says: @ur momisugly February 19, 2014 at 9:42 am
Does little good when the misinformation appears here; owed to someone who sees ‘corporatists’ and specific, planned, intentional mal-intent ‘perched’ and ready to spring from behind every rock (close to how the saying used to go …)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
_Jim after several years of you inane factless sniping I can only conclude that I am hitting very close to the bone and someone is upset.
M Courtney: “Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes describes the need for a strong central power to control the brutal impulses of the individual.”
Hobbes was a supporter of the lawless State (the despotic tyranny and outrageous lie of “Divine Right”, where “The Law is what ‘we’ say it is”).
To be fair, he published Leviathan in 1651, before the lie was categorically proven to be so by John Locke, who proved the truth of the Rule of Law (“If the Law makes the King, then the King is subject to the Law”).
Unfortunately, psychopaths of whatever area of the spectrum, love the lawless State, and hate the Rule of Law. It’s really the same as the Satanist Aleister Crowley’s “Do what thou wilt be the whole of the Law”, and the attraction for psychopaths should be pretty obvious (as should the consequences).
It doesn’t matter if it is a Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Mussolini, Hitler, a Military Junta, the Party, the Mob, the Technocrats, Napoleon Bonaparte, etc., or one of the three possible forms of Government (Democracy, Aristocracy, and Monarchy/Dictatorship), if power is available to be grabbed, it gets grabbed, nobody can be trusted with it, and you get the very worst of the worst rapidly floating to the top, and the outcomes are the same for everybody – worse than bad. Everywhere you look today, you see it in action, with Nations at different stages of the lethal cycle, and constantly proving how right John Locke was all those years ago, and you can compare the constant internal strife of Britain pre-1688. with the pretty much continual internal peace since (exceptions are largely down to criminal changes to the Law made on the quiet by enemies foreign and domestic).
Outcomes are worse than bad because lawless States always inevitably fail, factions rotate and eliminate each other, collapse is usually catastrophic, and that collapse is usually accompanied by great bloodshed. Time and again around the World over millenia, this same insane blueprint has been followed, and each time the outcome is expected to be different, because the psychopaths think they are immortal, and that what will be, will be whatever they say it is. Then reality falls on their head, poisons their food, or protrudes up their toilet, ripping their guts out
This is what life was like everywhere before John Locke enabled the creation of the balanced Republic (combining all three forms of Government together, to take advantage of their indispensable and unique strengths, and to avoid their fatally self-destructive flaws) which was long acknowledged as the ideal, but thought to be unachievable due to the inability to sweep power off the table, so the best hope for an insoluble situation was reluctantly considered to be a benevolent Dictator – hence Hobbes viewpoint – but unfortunately, the life span of even benevolent Dictators doesn’t seem to be any longer than the tyrannical ones, because power is there to be grabbed, and killing a Dictator to grab it has never been an obstacle.
All around the World today we are again witnessing a return of the lawless State, and unfortunately, everybody here is likely to witness the unpleasant consequences. Forget the lessons of history, and we will assuredly be forced to re-learn them the hard way.
The only thing that works is the Rule of Law, we will have to go back to it, and to do that, we have to ditch the stupid labels that camouflage what’s being done to us all, stop excluding each other with this left/right baloney, and accept that each and every one of us have our Rights, Liberties, and Freedoms, which everybody else deserves to have respected JUST LIKE YOU DO!.
It’s a simple choice, the Rule of Law vs the lawless State.
Choose wisely, there’s a hell of a price to pay for getting it wrong, and NOBODY, no matter their means, no matter their station in Society, is unaffected by a bad choice. The lawless State is literally like playing Russian Roulette with all chambers loaded, and somehow, we again have to empty all of the carefully crafted ammunition that has been placed in each chamber to be used against us.
The rights of every citizen in our country are enumerated in the Bill of Rights. These rights include, but are not limited to, the freedom of conscience and the free exercise of religion, the freedom of speech, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to speedy, local trial with a jury of one’s peers, the right to peaceably assemble, the right not to be deprived of personal property, etc..Those rights not listed are retained to the states and to the people.
This is what is referred to as equality – that is, equality before law. In pre-war Germany these rights were stripped systematically.
Inequality of outcomes for efforts and labor is a separate matter and has nothing to do with inequality before law. That is why the term “right wing” as used in this context has turned out to be meaningless, and has taken up much of the thread through its use and defense by one person. Now we learn the term “right wing” refers to “inequality,” but this may refer to the fact that not all efforts or life choices obtain good results; failure and success are always a possibility in a truly free and open society. Self-motivation and hard work, along with genuine effort and energetic focus will bring better results than laziness, in a just and upright culture. Equality before the law does not remove risk from human endeavor.
M Courtney says:
February 19, 2014 at 2:04 pm
Your European idea of what “Right Wing” means is not the same as American conservatism. Hayek said he was not a conservative because in Europe he wasn’t.
In America, conservatism is the opposite of authoritarianism, which is a Left Wing affliction. Likewise in much of Latin America, as with Left Wing Argentine, Peruvian & Brazilian military regimes of the past & Venezuela & Bolivia now.
US conservatives are libertarian, not authoritarian. Social & economic wings of the belief system differ as to the role of the state, but both agree on the primacy of individual liberty & responsibility under law.
Meanwhile, back in the aftermath of World Wars I & II, as per my comment above re Poland & the Ukraine, even moderate Democrats concur on the present neo-Yalta:
“Barack Obama and the foreign policy of this administration are responsible for this. It’s very simple,” veteran Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf told Steve Malzberg today. “He did not protect our relationship sufficiently with Ukraine and Poland, both the entries for the Russians, historically, into Europe. He sat back and he watched and he let the Russians do whatever they want.”
Note that ex-KGB officer Putin is an authoritarian, as is Red Diaper Baby, Alinsky disciple, ex-community organizer, corrupt socialist Obama, who daily shows contempt for liberty & the rule of law.
What is funny or sad M Courtney well keep telling us what we believe.
Ox AO says:
February 19, 2014 at 4:58 pm
Sounds authoritarian to me!
M Courtney says: @ur momisugly February 19, 2014 at 2:04 pm
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That is why I describe myself as a civilize being and side step the left and right wing totalitarian fanatics. (It is also useful for driving _Jim crazy, my favorite past time.)
DirkH says: February 19, 2014 at 6:03 am
The Brits surely did “help to start the fire”.
Dirk, that is pretty weird logic.
It was more of a case of seeing violent character acting up and saying, “Gee, some one is going to have to do something about that one day … unless he stops doing that of his own accord..”
I had a look at reviews of “The Little Green Book of Eco-Fascism” by Mr Delingpole, and found this in the reviews:
“There’s plenty to criticize about the environmental movement – for example, the author is correct in that wind turbines are dangerous to bats and birds. However, a balanced entry would have mentioned the benefits of wind turbines, and discussed ways of making them safer – for example, by tethering them like kites and flying them above bat flight levels. By placing turbines in the jet stream, they will also be more reliable as the jet stream is always blowing, unlike winds on land. You’re not going to find analysis on this level, but if you want to know how big Al Gore’s house is, or how many miles per year he flies to promote his fake global warming agenda, that’s in here.”
Put up the wind turbines in the Jet Stream? Now there is a suggestion out of left field (I think that Yanks use this term to describe an idea which we would call “Off the planet”).
But Richardscourtney keeps on whinging about people disrupting the thread. Perhaps he did not notice the title of Mr Delingpole’s book. “Eco-Fascism” is a part of Fascism. It should not really be necessary to go into the history, BUT…
Socialism was supposedly about levelling society – Marx was hoping that by putting the control of everything in the hands of the all-knowing, all-wise State all would be levelled upwards. Unfortunately he was not good on logic – it created two classes, those in power and those without – see “The New Class” by Milovan Djilas for a description of this. Stalin was of the branch of the Socialism that believed in control of everything by the State, using forceful takeover (“theft”) to get it in the Party Hands. Mussolini was more practical and invented Fascism – the formation of Groups which would work together to control the people. The Russian term for these is Soviets, hence the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. We know them in the west as Trades Unions, Trades Associations, the TUC, AFL/CIO, Confederation of British Industry/Business, ACTU, etc. Hitler was in comparison a Johnny come lately who took a look at Soviet Russia, and Fascist Italy, and saw where they had gone wrong. The State did not need forcible expropriation of property to have control. It did not need supportive Soviets/Fasces to have control. All it needed was the force of law – and he would be the law. He well understood what Mao later said “Every Communist must grasp the truth, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” All Hitler needed was the threat of “do what I want or die”.
You can argue as long as you like whether Hitler was right wing or left wing – it doesn’t matter, he was a socialist.
Liberals should believe, as someone on this thread more or less put it : “We should all be equal under the law.” Note that people are NOT born equal. It would be difficult to find out of the 7 billion of us, any two persons who are totally equal. What is needed is equal opportunity. Liberals should strive for this – unfortunately it appears that the term has been perverted in the USA and it is now taken to mean ‘covert socialist’.
James Delingpole throws light on the problems of a society where science is perverted in the name of progress, where so-called leaders say “Believe what we tell you or else”. That is Eco-fascism.
Back to Delingpole, I tip my hat to a man who points out the origins of the green movement in the corporate/governing elite: And by calling them both commies and fascists illustrates for what it is….a simple grab for power and control.
Richard S. Courtney is correct that this thread has been hopelessly diverted off-topic, but I have to admit the diversion has been interesting.
More relevant, however is this from Bob B:
‘Climate Parasites’. I like it. An apt name for the fear-mongering Climate Alarmists and their army of Useful Idiots in the media and academia who promulgate a deliberate hoax to enrich themselves and deprive millions of cheap energy and prosperity.
Let’s use it!
/Mr Lynn
Nice article he wrote.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/02/19/The-One-Percent-Capitalism
greenfry should be – http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/about/
Thanks, A. I changed the URL for my links to James Delingpole’s comment, columns and opinion to Breitbart London, at http://www.breitbart.com/Columnists/James-Delingpole
Mr Lynn and Bob B ‘Climate Parasites’
We can call them what we want on this site. But never in history our side been able to control the narrative.
DirkH says:
February 19, 2014 at 6:03 am
“The Brits surely did “help to start the fire”.”
Not exactly Molotov-Ribbentrop though, is it?