Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Anyone who thinks Extinction Rebellion is just about climate change should check out a banner they presented at a recent march.
The last government which flew the hammer and sickle banner presided over millions of premature deaths from preventable causes, and an infamous series of environmental and ecological catastrophes including the infamous Chernobyl reactor meltdown, which was largely caused by the Soviet government’s decision to conceal major reactor design flaws instead of addressing them.
Even hard left socialist groups like the Socialist Alliance admit the Soviet Union was an ecological disaster, with multiple radiological accidents, massive oil spills and large scale toxic heavy metal pollution.
…
I lived for close to two years in the Soviet Union, and for a further seven in post-Soviet Russia. Reporting on the local environmental movement was part of my brief as a GLW correspondent, and also a personal enthusiasm. I got to know the Moscow environmental scene well, and interviewed activists from numerous republics and provinces. I also travelled, and saw some of it for myself. The Moscow sociologist who has made Russian environmentalism his specialty remains a close friend, and I’ve translated several of his books.
On this basis, let me agree with Adam that the damage done to the environment by the Soviet regime and its successor doesn’t remotely bear comparison with that in the West. It was, and remains, catastrophically worse. Particular countries elsewhere, especially in the developing world, have suffered one or another ecological disaster, sometimes of mind-bending dimensions. The USSR managed something in just about every sector of heavy industry to match the worst of them.
The Niger delta? The development of the oil industry of Western Siberia was carried out from the 1970s with great haste, using pipes and welding equipment that were often defective. By the 1990s the wells and pipelines were leaking like sieves, a Niger delta every few hundred kilometres. The Bhopal disaster in India? It’s only through enormous good luck that in Dzerzhinsk, the city east of Moscow that remains a key centre of the chemical industry, thousands of residents haven’t been killed by a similar leak of toxic gas. An activist from the place once argued to me that in any case, the levels of dioxins and other lethal chemicals to which the population was exposed ensured a cumulative “Bhopal” every few years. What were the local morbidity rates? Either the information was purposely never collected, or effectively suppressed.
Heavy metals pollution? In the ore-smelting centre of Nizhny Tagil in the Urals, another environmentalist surmised to me only half-jokingly, the sandpits in the child care centres could have passed assays as a minerals resource. The Siberian coal industry? This I did see for myself. I remember the black snow outside the municipal offices in the mining city of Anzhero-Sudzhensk. Who knows what the local incidence of birth defects was?
…
Read more: https://socialist-alliance.org/alliance-voices/ecological-disaster-was-ussr-0
So it is not clear why the protestors believe that Soviet style socialism would somehow improve global environmental stewardship. At the very least the onus is on the protestors to explain why their hammer and sickle socialism would somehow be different from the previous attempt at hammer and sickle socialism.
If this is a big misunderstanding, and Extinction Rebellion are not actually advocating Soviet style socialism, or if the protest group is into extinction but not actually officially affiliated with XR, using the word “Extinction” and a hammer and sickle on their main protest banner is a very confusing attempt to communicate their ideals and goals.
Good! This should be an entertaining thread to read later as it fills with comments. See ya then.
Stay safe and healthy, everybody
Bob
The extinction cult used computer games to create a huge estimate of future species and then used another computer game to wild guess how many of the imaginary new species would die off due to climate change.
I looked for the list of Latin names for all the new species and no list was ever found. The extinction was created entirely in the virtual world using computer games programmed to predict whatever they wanted to predict. Their computer games almost make climate models look like real science, in comparison. Notice that I said almost.
I see the extinction rebellion as a secular religion for stupid people. I may be biased, being an atheist for 60 years, but that’s what I think.
….. and then of course, there’s this. Hopefully Paul Ehrlich will be extinct soon:
https://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/E6089
My God, there’s so much wrong with free-market consumerism as a model for the future, is the best they can do to try to reload 1960s flavour student idealised communism?
Does the last half century count for nothing?
God forbid people should be allowed to buy whatever they want.
There is no point of contact between free-market consumerism and communism of any kind, idealized or not.
Only to people who remember it.
Greg: “Does the last century count for nothing?”Well, economically and politically speaking, that’s pretty close to the mark, Greg: it counted for little.
It is a given that most commentators on WUWT will be of a conservative bent. But at times I find it striking how ideologically constrained some of the commentaries and positions can be – sometimes to the point of naivete. Just like the climate, human society and how Culture is expressed is a coupled, non-linear chaotic system that generates emergent phenomena, and often cyclically. Cultural “tides” such as Socialism (or Marxism, Liberalism and Capitalism) are, firstly, not simple concepts in and of themselves that can be dismissed out of hand, but contain within them layers of complexity coupled to many drivers – some observable and some not.
The point is this: to consider and/or reject the socialist/Marxist tides that are now sweeping the West, specifically, as “illogical, faulty thinking” that can somehow be “set right” with “reason and (better) facts” is, in turn, equally illogical and faulty; contributors to this thread are pushing on a very long string.
The underlying drivers of the socialist tide are closely linked to how Western society chose to organise itself intellectually, economically and socio-culturally since the end of WW2, and since the 1970’s specifically. While most citizens basked in post-war cultural glory, bought trinkets (on credit), watched TV and ate junk food, their elected officials and bankers quietly reorganized how capital is a) created b) distributed and c) flows through the body of the economic system – fundamentally altering its structural architecture. Recently, some people have tried to study this at the physical level. Example: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-inevitable/
While the middle classes and the “rational cognoscenti” were distracted by bread and circuses, it left a vacuum for other – perhaps more determined – ideologues to fill. Example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_long_march_through_the_institutions
Many other factors, including the barren philosophical wasteland we allowed to develop across the West and global “liberal order”, came into play of course. But the point is that anyone who thinks these (mostly young and utterly disillusioned – but legitimately frustrated and hopeless) people are simply impetuous, obtuse, stupid and/or illogical is making a big mistake.
All the cults du jour: Climate; Extinction; Gaia; Veganism; Equality; BLM etc, etc are proximate to the rising revolutionary tide. Existential and economic meaninglessness are ultimate. Having no skin in the game, and little chance of ever getting any, they’ll push and fight to the bitter end. No defusing this bomb. It is simply our turn to bear what must be borne.
Peter, I am glad all that schooling is being put to good use writing whimsical pieces like this one. If you could make it rhyme I think that you might have a hit on your hands.
Quod Erat Demonstrandum Mr Miller!
“Having no skin in the game,” – How the left wants it.
“little chance of ever getting any” – what the left wants them to believe.
Few on the left realize that more than half of Americans are high income by a global standard, or that only 12% of millionaires were born that way. They are most certainly not legitimately frustrated and hopeless, just indoctrinated.
Wealth inequality is the most meaningless of measures, any rational person would rather be at the median income in the U.S., far away from the top 10%, than median income in North Korea, where the top 10% level is much closer.
Ted: “little chance of ever getting any” – what the left wants them to believe.
Unfortunately not correct Ted. See for example: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/24/opinion/income-inequality-upper-middle-class.html
Not that the NYT stands anywhere neutral these days, but the linked data is well established and more importantly, the TREND is the issue. Anyone with a cursory understanding of the underlying dynamics will tell you that social upheaval is driven by relative, rather than absolute, perceptions.
Point is, if you want to live in the real world, and apply real analysis to reach useful solutions, ideology and dated/incoherent perceptions are not going to be helpful. Period.
For the record, I’m an entrepreneur with business interests across several continents, and have been a part of 9 start-up ventures with more in the pipeline. I’m as Capitalist as they come, and I like my decision-making and investment risk to be rooted in proper analysis. But there hasn’t been “capitalism” in the West…in the world…for a very long time. And now we reap the whirlwind.
Peter -The TREND shown is MEANINGLESS, as I already explained. In addition, the data shown says absolutely nothing about the ability to change from one class to another, (i.e. the actual ability to get skin in the game), which is still much easier in our crony capitalist system than in any of the systems proposed.
You posted a graph based on ideology designed to give an incoherent perception, I agree that it was not helpful.
Link to NYSlimes, Peter Buchan? ROFLMAO. You’ve doubled-down on exposing your ignorance.
In socialist societies, there is always a high wealth inequality. As the US has become more socialist, those who’s only skill is kissing political butt have become wealthy.
Capitalism distributes wealth, government concentrates wealth.
A great deal of comments in WUWT in the recent couple of years have had a conservative tone. This has been a change. A decade ago, it was very different. I wold say mostly it was fairly normal intellectuals, the type of people who studied a hard science in college and or might prefer to read “scientific american” or “popular mechanics.” I would say most commenters were reasonable and rational, and were socially liberal – live and let live.
In this mix, many were “science” oriented, and not particularly religious. I, as a devout Christian, have always been tolerated for my comments which strongly differ fro the Big Bang creation-believing, and the Evolution-believing crowd, which may be where the majority still hold.
As noted in other comments, the Communists have for a century been pushing a false narrative of angst and nothingness. Godlessness sure helps this along.
I am getting up there in years, but I know many young adults who are living wonderful, meaningful lives. Especially those who value God and Family. If you don’t fine, but you are missing out on what is real in life…Along with the people I know in my private life, I have conducted interviews as part of research projects with hundreds of people – literally – from all walks of life as they say, since we have had prjects where we have wanted good sampling across racial/ethnic groups – in these interviews, we ask people about the things they value in life, that serves to motivate them in goals and behaviors. The LEADING, strongest motivator is a personal interest in offspring: kids, grandkids. True across white, black, rich, poor, etc.
Freud said something like ‘everyone wants to be successful at love and work.’ I find this to be true. Add in offspring, and you pretty much have the things that put meaning and vcalues into life.
Diminish those, and you chop the legs out from under humanity. Which is the goal of Communism. The “kibbutz,” with a commune raising kids, not parents, was not an Israeli idea, but a Communist idea. Go look it up. S ex disconnected from reproduction is a “modern” invention. We used to care about who we might “bring home to mom.” Now, we don’t even care about mom. Or the person we are sleeping with today. Swipe for another tomorrow. And let Planned Parenthood clean up the venereal diseases and the “unwanted” babies.
This world of meaninglessness has been created. So has The Enemy: “Capitalism.” With its unholy trinity: Judeo-Christianity (why don’t the commies rant against Islam? hmm?), The Nukular Family, and Free-Will Commerce Between Agreeable Parties.
“Anyone who thinks these (mostly young and utterly disillusioned – but legitimately frustrated and hopeless) people are simply impetuous, obtuse, stupid and/or illogical is making a big mistake.”
“Existential and economic meaninglessness are ultimate. Having no skin in the game, and little chance of ever getting any, they’ll push and fight to the bitter end.”
God knows you. God loves you. God os offering you the chance to live in a close loving relationship with him. You just have to overcome your foolish pride and figure out that God is in control. Best of luck to you, PB
Bob, not sure if ‘entertaining’ is the right word to use if you listen to what the XR founder is stating they should do to the UK government and business owners:
https://order-order.com/2020/09/02/exclusive-extinction-rebellion-founder-says-government-and-business-owners-should-have-a-bullet-put-through-their-head/
And here a secret XR training video shows how XR members should accuse the police of excessive force if law enforcement try to arrest or remove them:
https://order-order.com/page/4/
Sorry, the direct link to the secret XR training video:
https://order-order.com/2020/09/01/exclusive-extinction-rebellion-tells-activists-to-not-film-arrests-as-they-will-incriminate-protesters/
Well as long as no one is discussing a peaceful anti-lockdown protest then there is no reason for the police to be involved.
Well as long as no one is discussing a peaceful anti-lockdown protest
Well those are just too dangerous to allow. Not at all like those “mostly peaceful” protests that result in building burning, objects being hurled, and people being killed. Those are just fine and dandy.
I always thought that it was more than just coincidence the climate change movement really picked up steam with the fall of the Iron Curtain. Now there is absolutely no doubt it was not coincidental in any way, shape, or form.
And when they say socialism, they really mean Marxism. That’s what the BLM organization is all about as well.
After reading the book Factfullness I am convinced that there is little facts being used by people. As a former Science teacher I soon learned that people get ideas that are so wrong. Much of my time was spent getting the basics correct before we could proceed.
I have been having a discussion on another forum about the process for electing the President should no one get 270 electoral votes on Jan 6 (that is the official day of counting the electoral votes). The process is clearly defined in the 12th Amendment. All one has to do is read it. But no, people would rather argue their misconceptions than just take 2 minutes to read it. Perhaps it is simply that these types of people don’t want to find out they were wrong about something.
I been wrong about lots of things, the outcome of this Presidential election ain’t gonna be one of’em.
It sure ain’t, if you don’t make any verifiable predictions !
#4more MAGA. Take that shit to the bank.
#2hotel9 … around the world we are in support … I could not begin to imagine the fate of the Freeworld should Biden be elected.
Horizontal Harris already has a record of prosecuting people who uncover criminal activities of Democrat/Leftist organizations and individuals, not to mention the thousands of first time marijuana offenders she merrily put in prison, all while laughing about her own ganja smoking. And Pluggs was the lead author of several “tough on crime” bills which focused minorities in jail over whites. Yea, they would definitely accelerate the downward spiral we are currently being forced into.
The day for counting electoral votes is in mid-December, first Wednesday after the second Tuesday if I remember correctly.
That is the day the Electors meet in their states to cast their votes, Dec 14th this year. The votes are then sealed and sent to the President of the Senate who opens them and reads the count to a joint session of Congress on Jan 6.
The new Congress is seated on Jan 3, so if the election would go to the House it would be the new makeup of the House. But keep in mind that each state gets one vote, it is not a vote of the members of the House.
Which means if the smaller states stick together Trump would probably be re-elected. Just like in his 2016 election.
All the states will stick together, it is the Democrat Party that will lie and cheat as they always do. Those states controlled by Democrat Party will be the ones vote harvesting and lying, as they always do.
That is the day the Electors meet in their states to cast their votes, Dec 14th this year. The votes are then sealed and sent to the President of the Senate who opens them and reads the count to a joint session of Congress on Jan 6.
Well they ain’t schrodinger’s votes. Once they’re cast (Dec 14th) they are what they are regardless of when the envelopes are unsealed. The important date is the electoral vote date (as you say, dec 14th this year). You aren’t going to get any candidate to 270 if over half the electoral votes can’t be cast on that date because they’re still counting the election ballots in those states. Hopefully that won’t be the case, but any state with universal mail-in voting that is very close could possibly end up in that situation (think Florida 2000 only with *all* the votes having come in by mail) and that’s only one of the many scenarios that could fubar this election, which seems to be the Democrats goal this year (they’re already talking about “Trump might win on election day but lose when all the mail-ins are counted” scenarios).
The remedies for electing a new President and Vice President set forth in the Constitution assumes a NEW Congress has been elected. If there is a mail-in ballot problem that leads to no clear Presidential winner, then there may be no new Congress, either. Those ballots also include the votes for every Representative, and one-third of the Senators.
We would have a real problem to deal. with.
in fact reason and objectivity are actively shunned as tools of white oppression, as crazy as that seems.
i can’t think of a more oppressive white philosophy than communism yet that one seems OK in the radical left wing ideological book.
Hard work apparently is a bad now too!
Communism promises lots of free stuff. Who cares if it doesn’t work.
Karl Marx was ethnically jewish. Are Jews “white” or rather semitic? Maybe communism should be regarded as “semitic oppression”. Mao was worse than Stalin, not too “white” ( or is that White ) either. None of this looks much like “white oppression”.
If making applying logic and making sensible, fact based arguments is just part of white oppression, I guess I just have to admit to being a straight white male and thus fair game for any hate filled attacks.
If I get too much heat, I’ll just “identify” as being a black transgender homo and claim level 3 victim status.
Are Jews “white” or rather semitic?
You see, that’s one of the many things I never understood about racism. Ethnic Jews look as white skinned as any other “white” people like Greeks, Italians, Irish, etc to my eyes. Yet for some reason they get singled out as somehow not being white. Just don’t get it.
If I get too much heat, I’ll just “identify” as being a black transgender homo and claim level 3 victim status.
You can move up the “Victim” hierarchy if you include “disabled” in you “identification”. Double points if you claim to be both gender-nonbinary and transgender.
As a former Science teacher, never learnt how and when to use capital letters.
Little “s” in science.
Nope, SCIENCE! is spelt SCIENCE!
All caps and exclamation.
If you don’t know how it is pronounced then ask Brian Blessed. 😀
And for you the word is “spelled” not “spelt”.
It’s BRIAN BLESSED. (as I recall, there’s a Doctor Who forum that I use to frequent that automatically renders the name in ALL CAPS whenever someone types Brian Blessed in a post).
Tom in Florida- now you are not recognizing the diversity here. “spelt” is a perfectly acceptable British usage instead of the peasant “spelled” spelling.
Just because this site was started by a White American doesn’t mean he can’t tolerate some latitude in spelling. After all. America is “the melting pot of the world”.
Yes, spelt is a perfectly cromulant word.
You seemed to forget the word is “learned” not “learnt”.
That is just amazing that they would be so brazen about, and actually rub it in our faces. Vote this nonsense from a minority of vocal activists who support this out the window. And then put these people on No Fly lists and on a crime watch if not domestic terrorist lists as we see them engaged with other domestic terror organizations like Antifa who openly fly their protestors around the USA to riot, burn and loot. Even BLM is a full on Marxist organization as they fully admit. How they manage to get corporate support is stunning. We should be boycotting any corporation who publicly backs these socialist/marxist movements. I quit watching some professional sports already because of this, and I think many others have or will as well. Anyone who bends their knee to this evil has a whole in their head.
The Hammer and Sickle says it all. There is nothing left to be said except volumes of evidence that it was and will be a very dark time of history if ever repeated. Never again.
“Earthling2 September 2, 2020 at 10:20 am
That is just amazing that they would be so brazen about, and actually rub it in our faces”
Anti capitalism, eco wackoism, and climate-ism appear to be connected. A package deal.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/04/16/theend/
The Horror. The Horror. The End.
Earthling2:
Looks like both of us are fans of “Apocalypse Now.” Critics seem to have high praise for the movie today.
Thinking of what might happen if the Green New Deal is implemented in response to the climate alarmist narrative leaves me looking back on the film with fear. The horror of it all….
Theres mines over there and mines over there too, and watch out those goddamned monkeys will bite ya, I tell you!
Who did not know they were a bunch of socialist/anarchists from the start? Have to be fairly dense to not know that all along.
XR never was interested in climate or its change as a lot of Climate Scientists aren’t.
Their target was and is the Great Transformation of the society, as f.e. Schellnhuber Ex boss of PIK and Edehofer in Potsdam represent in publications.
PS
One source for Edenhofer and the redistribution
Socialism has always failed.
However, this time is going to be different.
Fail.
Repeat.
Should the banner read “SOCIALISM AND EXTINCTION”?
Yes, I suspect XR has decided to promote socialism after studying up on the death toll of socialism. This will be the best way to cause massive starvation an die-backs in accordance with the XR socialist agenda.
When I did some work in Cuba a coupe decades ago there were these big murals on the walls
“Socialimo or Muerto” something like that
Socialism or Death
I always thought it wasn’t either or, one leads inevitably to the other
Yeah but its fun while it lasts so long as you are the elite. Who do you think they are proposing be the elite in this new brave new world 🙂
Look closely at the photo. Then recall that the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, nearly three decades ago. The people in the photo probably hadn’t been born yet and certainly have no living memory of Soviet communism. And if they have been the victims of educational malpractice systematically designed to make each successive generation less aware of the murderous evil of socialism, they have no idea what they’re advocating. This is the price of defaulting control of educational systems to the political Left for, oh, say 60 years.
I was trying to work out which one was Griff .. I was looking for the guy with the laptop posting on WUWT but the photo might be when he was off to get some water.
I think Griff and Loy-doh are the two holding up the banner. I could be wrong, however.
You absolutely got that right David Hoopman.
Father forgive them for they know not what they do.
They remind me of a bunch of 1970 college kids when I was one too who astonished me by walking about campus yelling “Mao Mao Mao Mao’ while holding Mao’s red book between thumb and index finger and wagging it in the air with a wrist movement repeated in time with the chant.
These were not kids from Chinese families but newly indoctrinated caucasian students freshly churned out of the radical left poli-sci department.
They had no idea of the horrors perpetrated in the name of the Cultural Revolution in China.
Never mind the tens of millions in both China and Russia that were killed in the name of Communism, and the greater number worldwide that died at the hands of other totalitarian regimes.
I don’t know these idiots think that Socialism can be done better. It’s a fundamentally oppressive ideology and the only way to maintain it is with repression. This aspect of it can not be ‘fixed’.
It’s unbelievable that so many Democratic voters have been misled into believing that Socialist/Marxist policies are somehow consistent with a liberal ideology. To me, liberal infers freedom and liberty, not oppression and repression.
Classical Liberalism has been dead for along time in the democratic party. Unfortunately most democrats don’t know it. The only place you find its remnants is in the libertarian party.
What do you think JFK would have said to all the American bashing progressives out there now or even FDR?
“With all due respect, it’s time to start asking what your country can do for you,” the senator (Markey) … ” and he won.
Socialism promotes their freedom to do whatever they want, since they no longer have to worry about working.
Free stuff for all.
Yes, they turned freedom into free stuff.
In fairytale socialism, yes.
In real socialism, it soon progresses to ‘no work, no eat’.
Look at AlexB for a classic example of someone who actually believes that the only reason why socialism hasn’t worked in the past is because it wasn’t actually socialism.
This time it’s gonna work.
I am a believer now can I get my free stuff?
” To me, liberal infers freedom and liberty, not oppression and repression.”
I suppose from that, that you also think the Democrat Party has something to do with democracy.
Maybe you also think that progessive , from progess meaning moving forward, means getting better rather than moving forwards towards a tyrannical, dystopian future.
Classical liberals did believe in freedom and liberty. It’s the modern liberals who kept the title but reversed the goal.
The early Liberty farmers promoted the concept of Individual. Individual, even then, did not Allow – Trespassing.
Yes, the left often misuses language to infer positive attributes on something very bad and negative attributes on something that’s otherwise good. Whenever I hear these far left politicians speak about what their policy agenda will achieve, its like they think its opposite day. Truth no longer matters to them and that will be their downfall, lets just hope it’s sooner than later.
Indeed. Pretty much whatever label a leftist uses, assume the meaning is the exact opposite of what the words normally mean. Most times you’ll be spot on.
Sounds like you have been tricked as well.
The ‘Left’ like to believe they are for freedom, but freedom is actually a Right construct.
The fault is that most people fail to realise that ‘fair’ and ‘freedom’ are opposing concepts.
Freedom is the ability to do ANYTHING you want. You answer to no one because you are free.
Fair is the concept that no one gains an advantage. We are all equal, etc etc.
However what is ‘fair’?
To define ‘fair’ you need rules and regulations. If you have rules and regulations you need to enforce them or they are meaningless. So someone needs to be organised and appointed to ensure the rules are enforced and suitable punishment is given to those who refuse to obey the rules. Which are fair. For the Greater Good.
Simply put a ‘fair’ society is an oppressed society.
A ‘free’ society allows people to do ANYTHING. Eat all the pizza. Go out without a mask. Drive on both sides of the road at the same time. Take anything that isn’t nailed down.
As you might agree, there is a practical limit on how ‘free’ a society can truly be. Complete freedom is anarchy because there are no rules, but anarchy only exists if people do not make a single agreement. The moment you make an agreement, even if it is as simple as ‘hey, keep an eye on this for a moment’ you are making a rule and you no longer have complete freedom.
Society exists in a balance between having enough rules to live by, but still having enough freedom to live.
“Fair is the concept that no one gains an advantage. We are all equal, etc etc.”
We are not all equal. Genetics makes sure of that, but is too politically incorrect for the left to acknowledge. Giving everyone an A just to be ‘fair’ is wrong as it conveys an inflated sense of accomplishment on those who didn’t earn it. The idea that everyone gets an A has led to a lot of what’s wrong with our society.
If one works hard to gain an advantage, that should be rewarded, not penalized. Otherwise, it will undermine a most important benefit of free market capitalism.
The only rule required to avoid anarchy is that freedom applies equally to everyone. In other words, you are free do to whatever you want as long as it doesn’t interfere with the freedom of anyone else. This is oppressive only if your goal is to interfere with the freedom of another.
Extinction and Socialism – go to socialism go extinct.
Yes, I read that banner as, “Extinction or Extinction.” I was hoping there would be another choice.
When Griff turns up perhaps he can tell us if he supports XR as their aims seem to be his aims. Come on griff, what are your thoughts?
Tonyb
I was looking for Griff in the photo, the keyboard warrior with google open and making his next post on WUWT. Then I noticed the grassy knoll which is a much better place to snipe your google links from.
Good catch with the photo, Eric. This is a tale of two cultures: in Canada the Sudbury Cu-Ni-PGE complex utilized a smelter without much environmental control, other than a short smokestack to spare the workers directly below, for nearly a hundred years. The countryside for many miles was devoid of vegetation and everything stained black. Then realization sunk in and the demand for scrubbers and other features in the smelter produced a discharge no longer toxic. In Russia, the pollution was finally realized as being dangerous and huge bribes were paid to authorities to allow them to continue. That is the phony aspect of socialism summarized: Say whatever and convert the benefit to the leaders. Extinction Rebellion? Those rebels need to be extinct.
Ron Long
September 2, 2020 at 10:51 am
Yes, you’re quite right about Sudbury…they just kept building higher smoke stacks.
However on a visit there about 10 years ago I was astounded by the recovery of the vegetation in probably not much more than a decade once proper pollution controls were in place.
The mineral deposits sit around the edge of the second oldest meteor crater in the world and produce a significant proportion of the world’s nickel and there’s also life after death for some of the mines as one hosts a solar neutrino detector deep underground.
“second oldest meteor crater in the world”
Considering the fact that the earth was created by colliding meteorites and has continuously bombarded by them ever since, I rather doubt that this one is the second oldest.
Kind of like saying the Arctic is at its lowest point ever, meaning last 40 years
“Say whatever and convert the benefit to the leaders.”
Like Nancy claiming it was the salon owners fault she wandered into the salon and violated SanFran covid regulations and mask discipline?
Ron “the countryside for many miles was devoid of vegetation ” not because of the emissions from the smelters but because the early smelting was done using wood in “roasting yards” and so they needed to cut everything that could be burnt for the smelting process.
http://activehistory.ca/2013/06/11360/#:~:text=In%201888%20the%20first%20roast%20yard%20and%20smelter,area%20to%20provide%20fuel%20for%20the%20roasting%20yard.
Thank you stewartpid,
In the 1970s in Australia my wife, two sons under 8 and I were relocated for work purposes to a home about 200 metres from the short chimney of a copper smelter that produced unscrubbed SO2 in volumes that made the eyes water. (The mine next to it had operated since the 1880s, so wood had been harvested there also.)
Everyone knew that it would be better to stop the SO2. Many studies were done to cost this. Every one showed it was rather costly, leading to a choice: do we stop the SO2 at a cost that could cripple the operation and throw hundreds out of work, or do we put up and shut up about the discomfort, while providing society with resources it demands?
There was no hint that managers were stupid, uncaring, deliberately harmful or whatever. The “pollution” was part of the cost of helping an emerging industrial society accumulate the wealth that funded more and more pollution reduction. In many countries the main pollution has now been controlled, so there is no further need for ignorant young eco warriors or other do-gooders to push for more pollution reduction. Laws of diminishing returns apply.
Hindsight criticism and misunderstanding of history is not helpful. There is too much of it.
Geoff S
Soviet and CCP methods are superior…..at suppressing the truth, from Chernobyl to COVID19.
What’s the going rate for a banner walk? This is the new paid protest group after all.
The Marxists will dump the climate change nutters and the climate scam the minute it is no longer useful to them.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xlbOFZOI035P529OeBptdtYORqSlYneN/view?usp=sharing
The watermelons are Marxists. They’ll dump the CAGW meme when it’s no longer useful to them.
Same way they rounded up the bolsheviks and killed them.
perfect example of the term “useful idiots”
That’s what AH did to the Brown Shirts.
Interesting that you guys don’t get it. SOCIALISM in LONDON, at the group that is “protesting” in London?
As in British Petroleum London and London Banksters London?
Classical misdirection, “Russia bad”.
Just reminder.
* Communist Revolution in 1917 in Russia was another colored revolution – foreign forces, foreign ideas, foreign people.
* Marx actually wrote his books in London.
* IV Communist International building still exists and you can visit it , it is a museum. It is in Vienna, Austria.
* CCP, Chinese Communist Party, was created in it’s current form of near-slave labor for the West in 1970-ies by London Bankers. Look it up, there are still Youtube videos of these discussions.
London Bankers and alphabet agencies keep financing this old and failed divide and conquer strategy.
Now. What London Bankers mean under this Socialism is Corporate Fascism – all power to the banks and it’s trans-national corporations. Not socialism as in good for the people.
This has been high jacked.
Anyone who thinks that socialism has ever been good for the people is seriously deluded.
The nut jobs are always trying to find someone to blame when each glorious rebellion ends up killing millions and making the leaders rich. Again.
Mark W
You called it
Alex B
The problem is always that socialism needs to allocate people into niches, and so they see the world as an endless array of round pegs and holes
But people are not round pegs, they are infinitely different and so it devolves into jamming people into roles they are unsuited for.
Socialists always discount human nature and so it always fails.
Always.
Even the Germans couldn’t make it work
Same as with crap “green energy”
Fail and fail endlessly
…London Banksters …London Bankers …London Bankers
Bonbon is that you? 😉
These people must be completely clueless. They aren’t supposed to openly reveal the socialist agenda, they’re supposed to hide behind the banner of environmental stewardship at all times.
Wow, who hired this bunch?
That is a professional banner for a rag tag group. My bet is the Chinese fund some of their work.
If they really cared about the environment, and do so from a purely Marxist political world view, then why aren’t they stopping their comrades in the streets for the last 98 consecutive nights from burning buildings, cars, dumpsters, and anything else that releases toxic smoke and carbon when lit ablaze? HOW DARE THEY!
I’m not a socialist, nor am I a fan of ER. However, I don’t actually believe that true Marxist Socialism has ever really been tested anywhere. People are quick to point to the USSR as a failure but they forget their history. Lenin died and his successor, Trotsky was murdered by Stalin, who was a power hungry dictator. True socialism, as expressed by Karl Marx, was therefore contaminated in it’s infancy – at the birth and of the Soviet Union. All subsequent leaders simply followed suit until Gorbachev, who finally saw the folly and at least had the spine to embark on reforms.
Plenty of failed communes out there, you want communism find a bunch of like minded people and start a commune (can even be done virtually these days) You can easily do that inside a free market economy but the reverse is not possible and that should tell you all you need to know, but I am sure it doesn’t.
There in lies the problem. True Socialism will never be tried because it’s pre-conditions are impossible to meet in the real world.
There is no way to implement it without going through totalitarianism. Once totalitarianism is in place, it will always be taken over by those who are only interested in using power for their own benefit.
If you able to be honest with yourself, you would know that the Soviet Union is not the only instance of failed Marxist socialism.
Russia failed.
China failed.
Cuba failed.
Cambodia failed.
Bulgaria failed.
Venezuea failed.
The list of failed Marxist Socialist states goes on and on and on.
Dozens of failures, zero successes and over 100 million dead.
How many more times do you want to try and experiment that is so opposed to basic human nature that it can’t possibly work?
True socialism, … was therefore contaminated in it’s infancy
Funny how that always happens. Every single time. Almost like it’s a feature instead of a bug.
Wow! How timely! Corcoran has some comments about climate change, collectivism, and evil capitalism.
————————-
Terence Corcoran: You are not you, and other truths of the new world
The effort to sideline individualism and associated economic ideas is being propelled by journalists, academics and political forces in the name of fighting racism and other isms
https://financialpost.com/opinion/terence-corcoran-you-are-not-you-and-other-truths-of-the-new-world/wcm/e8eb5c34-243c-4a82-b7e8-ccbcf5e8e37d/
Such as nine grams of lead applied rapidly to the back of the skull, whilst the subject was sequestered in the basement of the Lubiyanka.
Otherwise known as instantaneous lead poisoning. I am sure these people would advocate that again if they were to ever gain power. While many of us recall the horror of Communism and Marxism, some of whom I personally know that escaped it, the youngsters today seem to think this is some of kind of solution, while many of their ancestors fought and died for their right of freedom of thought/speech. It defies belief that anyone who had an eduction of any sort could think like this. But of course, this is exactly where this is coming from, which is indoctrination via education from the long march of the Marxists through our institutions. My great uncles from the Great War over 100 years ago, and my many uncles from both sides of my family, including my father and mother that served in WW2, are turning in their graves.
Just listen to these people, their utter hatred towards anyone who gets between them and their imagined glorious world of free stuff is more than apparent.
Far, far more of them got that cranial application alongside ditches, pits, shallow graves they had been forced to dig, or their children had been forced to dig as they were being tortured, etc etc.
Whose extinction?
If it is theirs, it is OK.
If it is mine, it is not OK
Rent-seeking commies looking for a home….correction, looking for someone else to pay for their home.
“the hammer and sickle banner presided over millions of premature deaths from preventable causes”
The hammer and sickle presided over about 120 million murders in the Soviet Union and Red China alone. And about a billion or so ruined lives. All preventable.
The reason the EX touts the hammer and sickle is because, consciously, they think that this time, with them in charge, utopia is inevitable. Utter hubris.
The deeper reason the EX touts the hammer and sickle is because, unconsciously, they lust for power. They are psychologically built to yearn for a totalitarian existence, and are uneasy living in freedom.
The only people who have ever benefited from communism/socialism, are the few who run it.
A billion lives ruined is low, by a factor of at least 5. (I’m counting everyone who has ever lived in a communist/socialist country, both now and in the past.
The “hammer and sickle” have been replaced with the “mallet and scalpel”.
Consolidation of capital, control, and resdistributive change under often unaccountable minority auspices. That said a religious/moral philosophy (i.e. universal behavioral protocol) to check the divergence of self-moderating people, and competing interesting to mitigate the progress of others running amuck.
Do you know how many years I’ve listened to progressives tell me their agenda wasn’t socialism?
Yes. Yes, it was. All along.
Blatantly obvious from the outset of XR’s creation, and indeed many ecological groups have a long historical link to Socialism/Marxism. Look up Eco-Socialism on wikipedia.
In France we call them “pastèque”(water melon), green on the outside, red on the inside.
Americans here may be aware of John Bellamy Foster, an American professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, who has written many books on the subject; Marx’s Ecology, The Ecological Revolution, Marx and the Earth, and surprise surprise he has a new one out…..The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology.
It’s socialism’s revenge on capitalism. Socialists never wanted to admit that their ideology was one of the worst that humans had ever thought of, there was no “mea culpa” from the left after the collapse of communism. No Nurenburg trials, no films of the Gulag, they just fell quietly into the shadows seething at the health, wealth and happiness that was being produced by capitalism…….. until now.
Now they see an opportunity to evangelise their catastrophic world view to a scared younger generation with little historic perspective, and for those that have already been to university, pre-programmed with level 1 indoctrination.
They have come to save us, rejoice.
Never let a crisis go to waste — AND — if there’s no crisis, let’s make one up — be it the climate, covid, BLM, orange man, etc., etc.
Perhaps their banners should be Civilisation Extinction.
Chinese Communism has also resulted in pretty poor environmental outcomes.
Socialists and Communists always bleat that failed Socialist states were not real Socialists or this time it will be better. This current crop of Socialists are so brain dead and contradictory they will have no hope in hell of “getting it right.” Their Third Way will almost immediately result in a total fascist state control over everything.
As most readers of WUWT would know, their Utopia is based on fantasy, not fact. Foundations not of bricks, but of BS.
Could the Pied Piper please take these terminally brainwashed youth and their equally brainwashed teachers off to some cave?
Or better still, to a cliff.
The reason why Marx is so attractive is because it promises justice to a large class that is marginalized. During Marx’s time, he espoused the injustice of “surplus value”: Bob makes a widget for Acme Corp and is paid $1 per widget manufactured, but David his boss sells each widget for $4 and keeps the remaining $3 per widget sold for himself or the enterprise. Replace “surplus value” with anything and Marxism fits the bill.
Ain’t nothing stopping dear Bob from building his own factory and selling those widgets for $3.50. Then Bob will discover that his profit is not what he thought it would be once he has paid for the raw materials required to make those widgets, the electricity to run his factory, interest on his loans, wages and benefits to his employees, taxes on his property, taxes on his profits, taxes on his net income,new equipment and machinery costs. But, knowing Bob, he’ll just complain he is a victim of some stripe and still not grow up.
The reason Marx is so attractive is that ignorant and envious people don’t want to feel bad about themselves. So Uncle Karl tells them a story about how it’s all the rich guy’s fault that they suck so hard at life. These people are not “marginalized;” like Marx, they’re just losers who are mad at God. And in Marx-speak “justice” means, “Stuff I want.”
If every penny of wealth were to be seized by some almighty power and distributed equally to every person on the planet. Within 10 years, those who are wealthy now, would be wealthy again. And those who are poor now would be poor again.
People who are wealthy, for the most part, are wealthy because they have made smart decisions.
People who are poor now, for the most part, because they have made poor decisions.
Before some wise acre starts going on about Kardashians or what not, note, I said FOR THE MOST PART. Obviously there are exceptions to every rule.
A lot of people who know nothing about economics whine about how that $3/widget has been stolen from Bob.
Of course David used his own money to build that factory and fill it with the tools that Bob is using.
In all probability, Bob was trained in how to make widgets, either by David or by someone hired by David.
David provided the raw materials, without which Bob would have nothing to make.
David is paying for the utilities needed to keep the plant operating so that Bod can make those widgets.
David is paying for the support staff who do all the other things needed so that Bob can concentrate on making that widget.
The know nothings actually believe that David shouldn’t be compensated for anything he has done, without which Bob wouldn’t be able to make anything and would be unemployed.
They don’t want to own the Capital (Marx), because they know they are useless, they just want to consume it.
Marx was a parasite who thought other people should pay his living simply because they had money – THAT’s the attraction.
Yep now in a communist system everyone gets paid $.50 an hour and it’s a fair.
Of course the people that run everything still get the easy life.
@Bob boder
That’s what happened in Lenin and Stalin’s USSR. The supervisors, bosses, and manager of factories received additional payment because of bribing or preferential treatment. It was rife with corruption.
That’s what happened in every instance of Marxist economies.
Thomas Sowell wrote an interesting paper in which he supported the notion that capitalism promotes cooperation between people, while socialism promotes competition and corruption.
I witnessed the collapse of Communism across Eastern Europe in 1989.
Having been brought up as an RAF child, I lived in what was then West Germany for half of my life until the age of 18. We lived not on RAF bases, but amongst the Germans that my father and his colleagues were defending against the Soviet threat. My father had been a forecaster for Bomber Command for most of the WW2, and in the early 1960’s was working on joint British/German station near Cologne.
His senior colleague was an elderly German with a doctorate in Meteorology.
Our neighbour was a heavily decorated former German fighter pilot, who had managed survive service on the Easter Front. His family was split across the Iron Curtain, a fact that caused much distress.
Despite former enmities, they were all united in efforts to counter the Soviet menace.
Seeing the collapse of the Berlin Wall on televison was a very emotional event for me, as it meant, quite simply, liberation for that family.
When I see young impressionable people like those from Extinction Rebellion or any of these other anarcho-lefty-socialist groups I despair. Their ignorance is troubling, and I wonder just how much history they have bothered to read.
I confess, I wasn’t a great student of history when I was 18, but having by then seen Dachau (my parents took me) , and read Orwell and Solzhenitsyn (school curriculum), I at least had a sense of what was simply terrible, and to be avoided at all costs.
Even when I was a student in the late 1970’s we could tell that the Socialist Workers Party activists were F.I.T.H. (you work it out). How is it that derangement like that hasn’t gone away?
It’s weird to me that now, approaching retirement, I’m more politcally angry and therefore likely to go out campaigning than I ever have been. Perhaps it’s because I have assets that I’ve spent 40 years working for and want to protect them, whereas young (or old) fools who have little or nothing think that destroying (other people’s) things doesn’t matter as they have naff-all anyway?
I do have a decent life here in the UK , but if things get worse , Idaho looks attractive.
Recently I read an interview with one young rioter. He proclaimed that the store owners weren’t really being hurt when their stuff was being stolen and their stores burned. According to the rioter, the insurance companies are going to pay for it anyway.
Even if the insurance covered 100% the cost of rebuilding and restocking (they don’t, there are deductibles and limits in every insurance policy), the insurance rates would go up from here on out.
And of course if the store owner manages to rebuild, when he has to increase the prices that he charges, the same young rioters will no doubt declare that these hire prices are proof of racism.
The following interview of Peter Hitchens – who once was a keen Bolshevik – is particularly revealing:
The authoritarian left never rests
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbfKBXpHNUU
Of course the leaders of Extinction Rebellion will not discuss “The Gulag Archipelago” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Abridged ed 2018 Vintage Classics) or engage in a conversation with people like Peter Hitchens.
The three failed social, economic, and political systems worldwide are feudalism, socialism, and communism. What is amazing is the number of people that still cling to these field systems.
Interestingly enough, those 3 systems are more similar than they are dissimilar.
Exactly. They all favor minority regimes, single/central solutions, expert rule. The worst of them combined authoritarian character with diversity dogma (i.e. color judgment), not limited to racism, sexism, ageism, and other class-based taxonomies. Also, wicked solutions (e.g. one-child, selective-child) to what they classified as hard problems (e.g. social progress, social justice, social excess).
You could include fascism in that list, though the argument can be made that fascism is just a variation on socialism.
This is well known and has been for quite some time, yet nothing happens; they get media attention and the ‘good guys’ get banned from the media; what do we do to make a change?
The existential threat is a fringe group becoming a majority without sufficient inspections. Climate is only a tool in that test of a generation.
XR began as “A campaign by RisingUP!” but has taken on an existence of it’s own. The RisingUp! website is here:
https://risingup.org.uk/
although they no longer acknowledge being the parent of XR. Warning: there are lots of trackers on this website – use TOR and NoScript to view.
The draft manifesto is worth a look:
https://risingup.org.uk/draft-manifesto
as is the “About us” page: ” We seek a better more beautiful world we recognise is both necessary and possible”
The whole thing is run by “Technically Compassionate Revolution Limited”, the directors of which are George William Blackmore Barda and Gail Marie Bradbrook. There’s lots of stuff about these two on line. Gail is or has been a director of 6 other companies.
Evidently a champagne socialist.
What’s disturbing about the Covid response – lockdowns and much free money – is that a large segment of the population is seeing how good free stuff is, and apparently without any downsides. It looks as if Trudeau is planning an election before the free stuff runs out. I am sincerely hoping that the bulk of the free money recipients are the sort that don’t come out to vote.
The solution is very simple. Send them all to Venezuela.
Even they don’t want more useless idiots.
We have lots of Venezuelan engineers in calgary who Nash their teeth are what is happening in North America and say that we are the stupidest people ever born.
We have so many real life examples to observe and still the crazies think they can make this work.
Assuming they think at all
Socialism and dodo dynasties. The disposition of minority regimes to run amuck, especially in a heterogenous society, is well established. That said, Extinction Rebellion has already been identified as a Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic sect of what is ostensibly a “secular” church with mortal gods and goddesses directing their herd.
Individual dignity. Intrinsic value. Inordinate worth. Natural imperatives (e.g. reproductive rights, not rites). Go forth and reconcile.
What’s the difference between XR and Antifa?
XR Founder Calls for Government and Business Owners to be Shot
Yet he owns no guns. And is an avowed pacifist. Wonder how that will work out?
So, he is a gun owner, and is an avowed militant, or likes to keep his hands clean and shares responsibility.
Really? Where has he publicly admitted to owning guns, not being a pacifist and washing his hands regularly? All I see from him is death to humans(except for him, he is important).
Eric,
Please try to avoid the knee-jerk coupling of “toxic” with “heavy metals” and more broadly with chemicals in general.
AFAIK, heavy metals poison very few people each year. There are more pressing issues.
Be guided by the wisdom of Paracelsus who around 1540 wrote what is translated as “All things are poison, and nothing is without poison, the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison.” Geoff S
Correct
Water will kill you
Vitamin a
Zinc
Arsenic
Etc
All things essential to life
Food, just look at the people in walmart
It is the duty of every parent to punish their socialist snowflake offspring by spending their ‘inheritance’. Let them earn it for themselves !
So when they have taken the UK to a socialist state does it become SUK (Socialist UK) or USUK (Union of Socialist UK).
“What do we want?”
“A proletarian Marxist-socialist workers climate change revolution!!”
“When do we want it?”
“Now!!” /sarc
How are the Indian tigers going after being ”managed” by the Chinese?
What about Pangolins? Are they doing ok in China?
Some people wonder why Socialism and Marxism keeps coming back despite it being indisputably an utter failure.
Simple – Being a Socialist only asks OTHER people to change. If it goes wrong you are still an unemployable loser with a hobby degree* and a massive student loan, but if it goes right then you get to be the ruling class for a generation or so.
Remember the basic principle of Marxism is that the people who own the methods of production (the Old White Men) needs to be overthrown by those who actually do the production (the workers). Remember in the Marx world view the small business owners of the world no longer exist, having been consumed without replacement by the Old White Men… I mean production owners. So in the Marx Expanded Universe we have the Owners, The Workers and… Karl.
Karl was not an Owner or a Worker. He was effectively an unemployed loser standing on the outside trying to upset the structure of society so that people like him could be in change and wouldn’t have to live in share houses. His plan had very little actual risk for himself – remember, not a worker, not an owner – so if it went wrong it was simply back to sharing a room somewhere in Paris.
This is why Socialism is always popular. People with no actual risk in the game want other people to change so that society will be ‘fairer’ to THEM.
*Hobby Degree – One that will never help you make money. Also one that provides learning you could have gotten elsewhere for free.
Socialism is a good way of making people poor.
Poor people cant buy anything else than necessities.
Poor people has to work more and harder with less machines.
Piketty showed that equality is a goal , but failed to show examples like Cuba and Romania.
Keep on the future is grim!
Each of those people holding that “Socialism or Extinction” banner, and those following in support should be made to read a copy of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s book: The Gulag Archipelago to find out what Socialism was really like.
Socialism/communism is a mental disorder!