More nations are joining the exodus from the United Nations’ (UN) controversial compact on mass migration, with legal experts now standing up to raise concerns about the drafting of the document and what legal implications signing it might have for countries party to the pact.
President Donald Trump was the first to pull out of the UN pact on migration in December 2017, a move which prompted howls of disapproval from both the mainstream media and globalist leaders. Yet several nations from all over the world have outright withdrawn from the compact since initially ratifying it in July, or have signalled their intent to do so, as states gain confidence in opposing fashionable but dangerous deals that are not in their own interests.
In comments that cut across the grain of the usual business and practice of the United Nations, President Trump said at the body’s New York headquarters in September: “Migration should not be governed by an international body unaccountable to our own citizens. Ultimately, the only long-term solution to the migration crisis is to help people build more hopeful futures in their home countries. Make their countries great again.”
Australia, Israel, and Poland are among the latest to pull out, all citing national interest reasons.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morris remarked Wednesday that the agreement is “inconsistent” with his nation’s best interest, and that the document “fails to adequately distinguish between people who enter Australia illegally and those who come to Australia the right way”, noting the frequent observation that the paper does not differentiate between legal and illegal migration.
A member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee has defended the use of abortion to eliminate babies with Down syndrome and other disabilities as a “preventive measure” to “avoid the handicap.”
In a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Committee this month, Mr. Yadh Ben Achour, a Tunisian lawyer and committee member, argued that one can be an advocate for handicapped people while still encouraging abortion in the case of fetuses with permanent disabilities. Captured on videotape, the commissioner defended the inviolable right of women to an abortion, especially when her child has been diagnosed with Down syndrome or another disability.
Mr. Ben Achour said in French:
If you tell a woman, “Your child has Dow…” — what is it called? Down syndrome, Dawn syndrome — if you tell her that, or that he may have a handicap forever, for the rest of his life, you should make this woman… it should be possible for her to resort to abortion to avoid the handicap as a preventive measure:
While describing himself as “an ardent defender of the handicapped,” Ben Achour insisted that the State must do everything possible to protect the handicapped “and ensure they have a life, a possible living.”
“But that does not mean that we have to accept to let a disabled fetus live,” he said. “This is a preventive measure.”
Advocating the abortion of handicapped children “doesn’t mean that we are against the disabled or that we won’t help the disabled when born disabled,” Ben Achour said. The commissioner went on to contend that the key difference lies in catching the disability before the child is born so that it can be aborted because afterward society is obliged to defend the child’s right to live—even if the child has a genetic anomaly.
“So this is where we will find the difference between the birth of the human being. Once he is born, it is finished; with a handicap or without a handicap, he must live and we must protect absolutely, in an absolute manner, his right to life,” he said. “So us, we defend the right of the handicapped, but, but we can avoid the handicaps, and we must do everything we can to avoid them,” he added. “And it is not contradictory.”
In response to Mr. Ben Achour’s speech, a young woman with Down syndrome made her own YouTube video in response, suggesting that the commissioner apologize for his “horrible comments.”
“I’m a human being just like you,” said the woman, identified only as Charlotte. “Our only difference is an extra chromosome.”
“My extra chromosome makes me far more tolerant than you, sir,” she said. “If any other heritable traits, like skin color, were used to eradicate a group of people, the world would cry out. Why are you not crying out when people like me are being made extinct? What have we done to make you want us to disappear?”
“As far as I know, my community doesn’t hate, discriminate, or commit crimes,” Charlotte said. “What you are suggesting is eugenics. It’s disgusting and evil.”
“You need to apologize for your horrible comments,” the woman continued. “You should also be removed from the Human Rights Committee as an expert. You are not an expert about Down syndrome. You, sir, do not speak for my community.”
“I will fight for our right to exist for the rest of my life,” she said.
The text below illustrates what happens when a laser-like focus upon national defence gets perverted into imperialistic geo-political ambitions. Or, to put it another way, the text below--sent through by courtesy of one of our readers, which in turn originated from Canada--illustrates the inevitable rotten fruit of Progressive internationalism. It also helps explain why the United Nations resembles, and ever will be, nothing more than a Monty Python satire.
I HOPE THIS CLEARS UP ANY CONFUSION YOU MAY HAVE
A highly restricted briefing document on Syria....
President
Assad ( who is bad ) is a nasty guy who got so nasty his
people rebelled and the Rebels ( who are good ) started winning (hurrah!).
But
then some of the rebels turned a bit nasty and are now called Islamic
State ( who are definitely bad!) and some continued to support democracy
(who are still good.)
European nations have no sovereignty left. It's substantially been transferred to the European Union. And the European Union, for its part, has substantially transferred it to the UN.
The following paragraph in the Guardian about the proposed actions and policy with respect to the wave of people "migrating" to Europe via smugglers plying their evil trade of human trafficking says it all:
The EU is seeking UN approval to take military action in the
Mediterranean against people smugglers including the destruction of
boats used by gangs operating out of Libya. France and the UK are due to
formally propose the use of military action to the UN security council,
although the UN’s secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has already warned
against such a move. [Guardian]
Anyone care to speculate about how long it will take the UN to consider the matter and reach a decision? Anyone care to put a number on how many more lives of desperate, duped innocents will be lost in the Med over this deadly, misconceived monstrosity?
The climate change gig is a rigged game where the casino always wins. The casino is government: the casino wins when more and more control is asserted and exerted over the lives and activities of subjects.
Manufacturing a bogus-crisis is an ideal way for the casino to proceed. If the existence of the human race is supposedly at stake, governments need to go to an emergency, war-time footing which requires government command-and-control over everything necessary to ensure survival. That is why climate change has been seized upon with alacrity by western governments.
George Monbiot has been writing advocacy pieces for greenism in the Guardian for a long time now. He is an educated chap. He knows how to turn a phrase. He is passionately committed to the Great Cause of saving the world. To write such a phrase immediately conjures up comic book heroes of childhood days. George, regrettably, is apparently still reading comics with all the fascination and credulity of a seven year old. Worse, he is attempting to live them, earnestly believing the Caped Crusader actually exist, and Gotham City is as perverse as ever.
In his most recent piece, George mourns the ebbing of global greenism.
Ever since Copenhagen, we all knew that the UN Climate Change boondoggle was swamped in the Great Grimpen Mire. The latest conference in Durban attempted to maintain a charade of life and progress. Anyone with half a brain knows that the thing is gone. But when the salvation of mankind is at stake, the true believers have to keep marching on, telling themselves that progress is being made. They are all in denial.
We are not wound up about their lavish UN bro-fest. It's what the UN is.
Just a couple of years ago the UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was revered as the highest, best, most prestigious institute of science on the planet. Its processes were exacting. It followed the truth wherever it found it. Objective, hard scientific rigour were its watchwords.
Anyone--anyone--who disregarded its findings was immediately exposed as an ignorant Luddite.
If only . . .as the saying goes.
Donna Laframboise, a Canadian journalist (with all attendant biases intact) has published a book on the calibre and scientific rigour of the IPCC. Laframboise has not just smelt a rat--she found the IPCC infested with an entire colony. Tony Thomas reviews The Delinquent Teenager.
At this blog, as our readers know, we are anti-UN. It is a hopeless, thoroughly compromised institution--as any grand Babelesque edifice erected to the praise of Man will inevitably be--but every now and again we have to acknowledge, the UN shows some smarts, and gets things right. Praise where it is due, and all that.
Former Labour MP (and government minister) Chris Carter is off to Kabul, Afghanistan to fight corruption. This, from the NZ Herald:
OK, so we thought that you would want to hear it here first. Internationalism--the idea that nation states are subject to a higher "sovereignty"-- is dead. The corpse is rotting. The Libyan "adventure", called for by the UN, is growing madder than a March Hare. All the problems and faults of internationalism are now clearly displayed. We hear Joan Baez in the background, intoning "when will they ever learn?" Not in a hurry would be our bet.
Though internationalism may be dead, the foolishness that is bound up in the heart of unconverted man is likely to keep flogging that particular equine corpse for decades to come.
Consider the mess that the internationalists are now in. The UN has passed a resolution directing that a no-fly zone be established in Libya. The internationalist community has spoken. Man, the universal overlord of the globe, has determined that what was happening in Libya ought not to be; some kind of nebulous higher ethic was appealed to which mean that "humanity" or "the international community" had to step up and into Libya to sort things out.
The echoes in the UN Security Council chamber had not died away before they were drowned by arguments between those who voted over what the meaning and application of the resolution. This from Al Jazeera:
International criticism of the coalition enforcing the no-fly zone has continued to grow, with India joining China in publicly calling for an end to the airstrikes. Jiang Yu, a spokeswoman for China's foreign ministry, said on Tuesday that the government opposed "the wanton use of armed force leading to more civilian casualties and more humanitarian disasters". China had already called for a ceasefire.
S M Krishna, the Indian foreign minister, called for a "cessation of armed conflict". His office had previously issued a statement on Monday expressing "regret" for the military intervention. Pranab Mukherjee, the country's foreign minister, said in a speech to parliament that "no external powers" should interfere in Libya. "Nobody, not a couple of countries, can take that decision to change a particular regime," he said
The Sydney Morning Heraldreports that the Brits cannot even agree amongst themselves as to what the resolution means: can they take Gaddafi out or not? Some say yes; others nay-say. Neither can the French agree amongst themselves. Does the resolution mean that Gaddafi can legitimately stay in power. Yes. No. Maybe. All of the above. Meanwhile, Turkey a member of NATO has announced that it will not allow its airspace to be used in enforcing the no-fly zone, if it goes beyond the UN resolution--whatever it might mean, and no-one knows.
The announcement came after Turkey, a member of the NATO, warned on Tuesday that it could not agree to the military alliance taking over the enforcement of the no-fly zone if their mission went "outside the framework" of the UN decision.
Meanwhile in the US, President Obama, a committed internationalist, appeared deeply reluctant to get involved. But when the UN Security Council resolved, he had no choice. How could the Internationalist-in-Chief not support internationalism? Suddenly the humanitarian disaster was a siren summoning all good men to come to the aid of the rebels. He committed the US, but forgot to seek the approval of Congress. Internationalism overrides one's national constitution, don't you know. Now he is being hammered by both the left and the right in the US for his hasty oversight or arrogance--take your pick.
No-one knows what the "end-game" is. Regime change, or not? And the more the internationalist community pontificates upon the illegitimacy of the Gaddafi regime as a justification for his removal, the argument proves way too much. A list of equally pernicious regimes is published, with the damning interrogative: "well, if Gaddafi, what about these tyrants"? The deafening silence or the attempt to distinguish between cases on the list are so blatantly self-servingly tortuous that sceptics conclude that it must not about moral principles at all--it must be something else, like oil.
We are told that there are twelve tribes in Libya and tribalism is very strong. Like the Balkans, brute force alone can maintain an artificial unity. If Libya stays as a single nation it will only be because of an authoritarian government keeping tribal divisions suppressed by force. And in that case, why not Gaddafi? One tyrant is as good as another. Appeals to human rights by the internationalist community are fatuous at best, incoherent at worst.
Internationalism is rotting corpse; we in the West are just olfactorily dense and so are very, very slow learners. There is no such thing as abstract universal, international human rights. It is a pretentious fiction developed out of the French revolution, which in turn issued from Enlightenment gall. Human rights can only be spoken of meaningfully and helpfully if they are understood to be granted by the Living God, as Creator to His creatures. Attempts to abstract human rights out of this explicit covenantal Creator-creature nexus become bloody and destructive and hopelessly confused and compromised.
Human rights cannot hang suspended in mid-air. To be a blessing to man they have to be grounded in the truths revealed by the infinite, eternal, and unchangeable Creator, and they must be understood to be a gift to man, His creature, within the frame of His covenant. If not, then notions of universal human rights rapidly devolve into some (stronger) nations shedding blood in other (weaker) nations. Napoleon was a bloody revolutionary. His armies marched throughout Europe and the Near East. But it was OK. It was all for the establishment of liberty, equality and fraternity of Mankind. So the blood was well worth shedding, non?
Obama, Bush, Cameron, Sarkozy, and all the other internationalists, stand "together" at the UN in the name of universal human rights. They are little more than pretentious Corsicans, madder than the March Hare, pirouetting on a thousand contradictions, inconsistencies, and confusions. What did that resolution mean again? Whatever you want it to mean, my dear, whatever you want.
The UN body which summoned NZ government representatives to Geneva to account for our "care" of children has judged that the situation in New Zealand is appalling. According to the NZ Herald, "The United Nations has expressed concern over shortfalls in the rights of New Zealand children, including "staggering" infant and child mortality rates and a lack representation for children in legislation." That we pay money to this bizarre, corrupt organization and participate as a "good global citizen" is madness.
MacDoctor takes the UN's report apart. A few choice quotations:
The UN committee on the rights of the child are concerned that we have insufficient rights for children in New Zealand. They imply that this is the cause of our “staggeringly high” infant mortality statistics. This would be impressive if we actually had high infant mortality stats, but we don’t. New Zealand’s infant mortality rate (from CIA stats) is 4.85 deaths per 1000 live births. This is not an especially good statistic, but is only marginally worse than the UK’s (4.69) and Australia’s (4.67). It is quite a bit better than the European Union’s (5.61) and America (6.14) and massively better than Russia (10.32) and United Arab Emirates (12.30) – the latter being the best of the middle eastern countries except, of course, Israel (4.17).
And,
It would seem that all these concerns for child abuse, infant mortality and poverty are just a smoke-screen for the UN to get across its real agenda of child rights. While these “rights” are made out to be essential for combatting the ills besetting our children, there is no evidence that this is what they will achieve. After all, Singapore has no child rights at all and yet has the second lowest infant mortality in the world (2.32, right behind Monaco at 1.78), low rates of child abuse and fewer people in income poverty.
As MacDoctor suggests, the UN is driven by an evil ideology, viz: all the ills of mankind can be solved by government and its ministries.
In this particular case more government legislation, rules, interventions, committees, foundations, databases, and commissions superintended and intruding into family life will shore up and strengthen families. "NZ is bad because it does not have enough intrusive government is the basic refrain." One can think of nothing which is more devastating to family life. The more government asserts itself to become the uber-parent, the weaker family life becomes. Soon parents are living in perpetual infancy, looking to government as its wetnurse and nanny. We already have plenty of that in New Zealand--to where state dependence has become the heritage of generations. The UN wants to see more of it.
The UN is a morally bankrupt and wicked institution, existing solely for the glorification and deification of Man. It has no warrant in Scripture. As the world progressively Christianises, it will be gradually starved then dismembered. It is not something which we will likely live to see, but it will inevitably transpire. It, too, is an idol which will eventually "like broke in the temple of Baal".
In the meantime what we can rightfully expect is that our own Government would stand up and complete the kind of surgical dismembering of this UN report performed by MacDoctor. But our expectations, rightful or otherwise, will not be met. Why? Because New Zealand governments never criticise the UN, over anything. In overweening arrogance New Zealand diplomats, politicians, media, and other Beltway creatures see the UN as offering a way to increase New Zealand's influence in the world, opening up doors so that we can sit at the table with the Big Boys. Thus, never criticise, never resist. The powerbrokers at the UN may shut doors in our national face.
New Zealand has a very, very bad case of "short man's syndrome". Prattling on about "global governmental solutions to global problems", and glorying in the UN, is one way of compensating for our endemic cultural cringe.
Political Dualism - Mere Christendom Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
The attendance of Constantine at the Council of Nicea was striking, but more striking than that was the existence of such a subversive council in the first place, and with an emperor's knowledge and blessing. More about that in a moment.
It is often said that in his conversion Constantine was only seeking a unifying principle for his sprawling empire, and that his faith in Christ was not sincere. In some respects, whether or not his faith was sincere is beside the point, but I concur with Leithart that it was genuine. But what makes us think that the two motives are inconsistent? A man might come to Christ because he wants to save his marriage, but this does not make him a hypocrite.
So suppose for a moment that Constantine was not sincere. Why would such a man be tempted to turn to the Christians?
Another commonplace with regard to Constantine is that he was freaked out by the Arian controversy because it threatened to undo his realpolitik principle of unity right after he had adopted it. Right after he bet the imperial farm on the Christian horse, that horse got the staggers.
But why would Constantine have seen the Church as a principle of unity in the first place? The unity displayed by the Church, in the simple fact of such councils, was something that the ancient church had not really seen before. It was a new thing in the world. Rome had its Senate, but that was local, for the Romans. The Romans in turn ruled the world, but they did so in true top down fashion. The traffic flow of authority went outward from Rome. In the church councils, you see the development of a recognizable, universal representative form of decision making. It dealt with the things of God, true enough, but this was a senate gathered from over a huge geographical area.
So the Christians were not supplying something that the pagan religions had previously supplied, back before their sacrificial fires became impotent. The Christians brought something new. That idea was a visible demonstration of what true representative unity might look like. There is something enormously attractive to everyone in this. We see a secularist (and grotesque) parody of the idea in the United Nations. Whenever worldlings try to produce the fruit of faith on their own, without Jesus, the result is that Iran gets a seat on the body safeguarding women's rights, and the Chicoms get to weigh in on the importance of human rights. The result, in short, is a sort of globo-joke. In other words, without Jesus, fuhgedaboudit.
The fact remains that the thing that Constantine saw was altogether lovely. "My righteousness is near; my salvation is gone forth, and mine arms shall judge the people; the isles shall wait upon me, and on mine arm shall they trust" (Is. 51:5). But in fact, it was the kind of loveliness that cannot be sustained for more than five minutes without Jesus Christ.
What Constantine saw was just a glimpse, a foretaste. It was a cloud the size of a man's fist. The prophet's words are being fulfilled, but they are not entirely fulfilled yet. We still await the latter rains -- which are coming.
A local speech on a local issue is likely to be more intelligible than one addressed to a whole nation, and we observe that the greatest muster of ambiguities and obscure generalities is usually to be found in speeches which are addressed to the whole world
T. S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture (New York: Harcourt, Inc, 1948), p.163.
And that, dear friends, explains a good deal about the United Nations.
On the 31st of March 2009, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark was appointed head of the UN Development Programme. She was made responsible for an annual budget of billions of dollars to spread around the world to help poor countries develop.
Along the way she has hit a few unfortunate speed bumps. One was in an impoverished Caribbean nation called Haiti. It came in the form of a devastating earthquake. Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world, yet is shares a border with the Dominican Republic which is considerably better off. Same location. Same natural resources. Same climate. Only the one, however, is listed as one of the world's poorest nation.
What many may not be aware of is Haiti has already been the recipient of billions of dollars of international aid for over twenty years. Things have just got worse. How could this be?
Clark's PR machine has always framed her as fiercely intelligent, clever, smarter than the average bear. In other words her PR coterie and the Lame Stream Media saw a mirror image of themselves when they gazed upon her.
Now that Clark's legendary fierce intelligence would be put at the helm of the UN Development Programme which had already wasted billions in Haiti, maybe things would change. Or, not. The "nots" have it.
According to a recent report, two-thirds of peace-keeping aid in Haiti is going to UN personnel.
The United Nations has quietly upped this year's peacekeeping budget for earthquake-shattered Haiti to $732.4 million, with two-thirds of that amount going for the salary, perks and upkeep of its own personnel, not residents of the devastated island.
The world organization plans to spend the money on an expanded force of some 12,675 soldiers and police, plus some 479 international staffers, 669 international contract personnel, and 1,300 local workers, just for the 12 months ending June 30, 2010.
Some $495.8 million goes for salaries, benefits, hazard pay, mandatory R&R allowances and upkeep for the peacekeepers and their international staff support. Only about $33.9 million, or 4.6 percent, of that salary total is going to what the U.N. calls "national staff" attached to the peacekeeping effort.
Amongst the expenditure is a very necessary piece of equipment dubbed the Loveboat.
Presumably, the budget also includes at least part of some $10 million that the U.N. has spent on renting two passenger vessels, the Sea Voyager (known to some U.N. staffers as the "Love Boat") and the Ola Esmeralda, for a minimum of 90 days each, as highly subsidized housing for some of its peacekeepers and humanitarian staff. The tab for the two vessels, which offer catered food, linen service and comfortable staterooms and lounges, is about $112,500 per day.
Now, last time we checked Haiti had not been at war. Why a peacekeeping budget?
The Haitian peacekeeping budget is relatively unique among U.N. efforts, because there was no civil war or widespread bloodletting to inspire the original peacekeeping force, which arrived in 2004. Instead, the mission has mainly been intended to bolster political order in a society crushed by hurricanes, political turbulence, and grinding misery.
And just so we get the complete picture. The "peacekeeping" budget, most of which is circulating straight back to UN personnel, is only the tip of the iceberg of aid which is supposedly floating Haiti's way.
The revised peacekeeping tab is over and above the roughly $15 billion in short- and long-term aid that the international community — led by the U.S. and European Union — pledged to Haiti at an international donor's conference last month.
Our expectation is that when all this money has been "dumped" on Haiti, it will be left worse off than it is now. Most of the money, which represents exaction of taxes upon ordinary human beings by their soft-despotic governments, will have been expended upon UN elites. The "beneficent" iceberg will have melted away.
Sitting astride it all will be the fearsomely intelligent Helen Clark. But at least we can acknowledge her consistency. All her life Clark has held the peculiar view that the ultimate and most profound solution to any human problem is more government and more government money. She will no doubt be convinced that wonderful and great things are being done in Haiti. There are no limits to the fearsome stupidity of Clark and her ilk.
To Clark, whose god is government, and who believes its worship requires never-ending illicit exactions of property from citizens, intelligence is indeed the stuff of myth and legend. She will go down in history as one of the human races most notorious wastrels.
Good news! We are now being told that the Himalayan Glaciers are not about to disappear. Just as well. We have been inundated (if you would pardon the expression) with docuphobias about the terrible floods that are going to afflict India as a result of the melting of the Himalayan glaciers. Apparently it was just a "Memphis meltdown" all along. (A "Memphis meltdown", for those of you unlucky enough not to know, is mere figment of a creative advertiser's febrile imagination.)
The reputation of global warmist climate "science" is in tatters. The tears and rips get bigger every day. Now we hear that the BBC is thinking of dumping the UK Met Office as its forecaster, since it has failed so abysmally over the past few years. It has routinely predicted warmer summers and warmer winters, when the actual temperatures have gone in the other direction. Their "barbecue summers" prediction went up in smoke (well, actually were doused with rain) and their most recent "mild winter" forecast has just shattered in ice shards. A BBC weatherman has accused the Met Office of having a computer with a warm-bias. Hmmmm.
But back to the Himalayas. The Times Online reports that when questions were raised recently about the scientific credibility of the claim that the Himalayan glaciers were melting, Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, dismissed criticism of the Himalayas claim as "voodoo science". I suppose this kind of reactionary ideological burp is to be expected, since it was the IPCC which published the claim the claim in the first place, and as we know, the IPCC deals only in credible scientific stuff--which has been peer reviewed, and which is the acme of scientific knowledge on climate change, yada, yada, yada.
Here is what has now come to light:
Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.
In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.
It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.
Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.
Two years ago, full of alarmist enviro-indignation, the IPCC solemnly intoned:
The report read: "Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate."
But glaciologists know that the Himalayan glaciers are so thick and vast that this claim had to be nonsense--even if they were melting at the rate the IPCC claimed. But, as we would expect, that actual shrinkage is far, far less than what the IPCC asserted it to be. As always, never let the facts get in the way of a good story, especially one that promises a big pot of money at the end of the tale.
Don't expect any headlines or even minor corrections in the the organs of our MSM. After all, everybody now knows that the IPCC has got stuff wrong all over the show--so it's hardly news any more, right?
We posted yesterday on how Copenhagen demonstrated the rising independence and geo-political power of China. Now a "fly on the wall" article in the Guardian by Mark Lynas has been published--demonstrating just how disdainful and dismissive China actually has been of the US and the West.
Now some of the this probably reflects hyped up conspiracy theorising. Moreover, as we read this it will pay to keep in mind the ferociously tribal commitment of Lynas and the Guardian to Warmist propaganda. Nonetheless we do not doubt the general thrust of his description of the matter.
Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful "deal" so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? Because I was in the room and saw it happen.
Clearly, Lynas believes that China had a strategy to rort the conflab before it actually took place. This is a damning indictment of China acting not in good faith, but with a degree of duplicity.
He goes on to whack environmental groups who swallowed the Chinese perspective and drone-like blamed the West for the talks' failures.
China's strategy was simple: block the open negotiations for two weeks, and then ensure that the closed-door deal made it look as if the west had failed the world's poor once again. And sure enough, the aid agencies, civil society movements and environmental groups all took the bait. The failure was "the inevitable result of rich countries refusing adequately and fairly to shoulder their overwhelming responsibility", said Christian Aid. "Rich countries have bullied developing nations," fumed Friends of the Earth International.
We think this is a bit over the top and too byzantine to be credible. The environmental groups did not swallow China's line: they already are deeply imprisoned in a Marxist world view which wants redistribution by fiat actions of a world government, period. If the talks in Copenhagen were to fail, the environmental groups had already predetermined decades ago that they would regard it as the fault of exploitative rich nations.
But, it is the sub-text of Lynsas's article that is much more credible. China was a "law unto itself" at the talks. Obama's "new" approach to US foreign policy--multi-lateralism--was brushed aside like a pesky fruit fly.
Here's what actually went on late last Friday night, as heads of state from two dozen countries met behind closed doors. Obama was at the table for several hours, sitting between Gordon Brown and the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi. The Danish prime minister chaired, and on his right sat Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of the UN. Probably only about 50 or 60 people, including the heads of state, were in the room. I was attached to one of the delegations, whose head of state was also present for most of the time.
What I saw was profoundly shocking. The Chinese premier, Wen Jinbao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country's foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama himself. The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world's most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his "superiors".
China was clearly telling the rest of the world to go take a running jump--ever so politely, ever so subtly, of course. But a running jump nonetheless.
China, backed at times by India, then proceeded to take out all the numbers that mattered. A 2020 peaking year in global emissions, essential to restrain temperatures to 2C, was removed and replaced by woolly language suggesting that emissions should peak "as soon as possible". The long-term target, of global 50% cuts by 2050, was also excised. No one else, perhaps with the exceptions of India and Saudi Arabia, wanted this to happen. I am certain that had the Chinese not been in the room, we would have left Copenhagen with a deal that had environmentalists popping champagne corks popping in every corner of the world.
How has China been able to put itself in such a strong position? It is not in debt to the rest of the world; rather the rest of the developed world is indebted to China. That matters--far more profoundly than most in the West would ever understand. To the average pollie and man-in-the-street in the West, debt is just a pen-stroke, nothing less, nothing more. Money and wealth is free. A rude awakening draws nigh!
Moreover, most Western leaders had eviscerated themselves into positions of weakness because they had foolishly refused to be responsibly sceptical about global warming propaganda. They had to a man virtually become true believers thinking that the situation for the globe was desperate. The desperate do not make good negotiators--ever. They are easily manipulable.
And so it happened. The Western leaders had so wound up their political constituencies on the urgent and real dangers facing mankind--so as to justify the extraordinary imposts of rules, regulations, and taxes upon a gullible electorate--that when it came to negotiation they were totally enervated. If they went back home with nothing, they would have to tell their constituencies that they had effectively destroyed mankind. Such monumental failure would be political suicide. Or, they would have to spin the failure a different way, suggesting that climate change is not such a problem after all. That too would represent political suicide. The upshot is that China was able easily to control the complete panoply of Western leaders and their governments.
This does not mean China is not serious about global warming. It is strong in both the wind and solar industries. But China's growth, and growing global political and economic dominance, is based largely on cheap coal. China knows it is becoming an uncontested superpower; indeed its newfound muscular confidence was on striking display in Copenhagen. Its coal-based economy doubles every decade, and its power increases commensurately. Its leadership will not alter this magic formula unless they absolutely have to.
This may come as a bit of a shock to the elites in the West. China is not western. Imagine that! It is resolutely focused upon one thing above all else--its own economic development. It is the only way it can stop the Chinese people revolting against their government. It is in a chute, going faster and faster. It cannot stop. It cannot get off. Develop or the nation will be consumed in a furious conflagration of internal revolution. Ever realistic, ever pragmatic the Chinese government views the West with its fanaticism over global warming as either mad or puerile. Either way, it is going to have nothing to do with it.
Copenhagen was much worse than just another bad deal, because it illustrated a profound shift in global geopolitics. This is fast becoming China's century, yet its leadership has displayed that multilateral environmental governance is not only not a priority, but is viewed as a hindrance to the new superpower's freedom of action. I left Copenhagen more despondent than I have felt in a long time. After all the hope and all the hype, the mobilisation of thousands, a wave of optimism crashed against the rock of global power politics, fell back, and drained away.
Better get used to it, you silly billy. China is not going to be swayed in the same way as a Gordon Brown, or an Obama, or a Kevin Rudd or an Angela Merkel can be so easily manipulated--by fatuous appeals to guilt and pity. Such things are only (temporarily) effective in a culture which has elevated demand rights into a religion. For our money, China's real-politick is a refreshing and salutary change.
We suspect that in time it will be so far reaching globally that it will see the end of the United Nations. Now that would be something worth celebrating. The world would be a much safer place if nations and governments stopped trying to poke their noses into the affairs of other countries, but instead concentrated upon their duties and responsibilities toward those whom they govern. Like China, for instance.
It is safe to say that the overwhelming view of Copenhagen is that it was distinctly underwhelming. From the Climate Change zealots to the opportunistic conspiratorial capitalists, the consensus is that it was a failure. In the end, it was much ado about nothing. Jonah Hull, blogging in Al Jazeeragives us a sense of this:
Mid-afternoon on Saturday December 19 and Yvo de Boer, the UN's chief climate negotiator, has just uttered the words that perhaps best describe the nature of the deal here.
Asked what it means that the Copenhagen Accord has been 'taken note' of by the parties, he replied: "'Taken note' means that it has been recognised by the parties without anyone actually having to subscribe to it."
That is the shape of success at Copenhagen.
Hailed as an "essential beginning" by UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon, the accord is little more than a guideline for future talks. It commits no single party to any single firm action. There are no precise targets, no accountable promises, no deadlines.
Certainly, it is success clawed from the jaws of defeat. But it is an expedient success that will be trumpeted by a few as far more than it is.
In reality, this conference simply could not afford to be deemed a failure. The global momentum to recognise and act against climate change - however long that action may be in coming - stood to be lost or irretrievably damaged.
Copenhagen could not be allowed to fail. Therefore, the political spinmeisters would have called it a significant step forward if all the delegates had stood on their heads for twenty minutes, chanting Kumbaya. But the reality is that its declarations were nothing more than a gesture, and a hollow one at that.
Nevertheless, substantial change occurred--changes that will shape the world for decades, even centuries to come. No, we are not referring to the delicious divine irony which saw He who sits in the heavens laugh at the conspiracies of kings and rulers to re-establish the Tower of Babel and a united, one-world government. (Psalm 2:1--4) All Christians understood the significance of a massive snow storm unleashed upon the West--that is, Europe and North America--just when Copenhagen had reached the zenith of its gaseous windbagging.
Yes, it is true that we had to smile seeing the mighty President of the United States, who had strutted forth on to the stage at Copenhagen, assuring the world (with a unfortunate turn of phrase) that he had come to Copenhagen "to act", only to beat a hasty retreat, fearing that he might not be able to return to Washington if he did not arrive before the worst of the snowstorm hit.
And, yes, the inconvenience and frustration of Eurostar commuters notwithstanding, we had to smile at seeing the mighty trains using the Chunnel grind to a halt in that blizzard, because it appears they had been engineered inadequately for such cold weather--the coldest, we are told, in living memory--at least the living memory of the design engineers, even as President Martinet Sarkosy was irritably stamping his feet at the failure of the world to listen to his hectoring jeremiads about global warming.
These things were ironic and deliciously so. Christians joined with the Lord of heaven and earth in laughing at the arrogant hubris of the men of straw, the hollow men. But Copenhagen was also a harbinger of things to come. The global balances of power are shifting to the east and the south of the globe and Copenhagen proved a demonstration of the case.
It emerged soon after the debacle that the West regarded China as the bete noire of the summit. It destroyed the vaunted hopes of West, leaving them in tatters. Ed Miliband fulminated against China, accusing it of destroying any possibility of an agreement. Jonathan Pearlman, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, reckons that at Copenhagen, China took a "great political leap forward". He says that the older international doctrine of Deng Xiaoping has been superseded by a new willingness to "go it alone".
Deng Xiaoping set forth a so-called 24-Character Plan for securing China's place in the world. ''Hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership," the then Chinese leader espoused early last decade.
But this year will be remembered, say analysts, as the year China abandoned its diplomatic quietism and Beijing displayed a clout on the international stage to match its global economic weight; the year Deng's maxims were renounced.
The lesson for Australia and the United States, as China's audacious diplomatic manoeuvring at Copenhagen demonstrated, is that they will increasingly have to accept a world in which China is willing - and able - to assert interests at odds with those of the West.
''Until now it has been possible to say that China's economy has been growing but its political power has been lagging behind,'' says Hugh White, a professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University and a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute.
''Not any more - 2009 has been the year in which China's growing political power has become an inescapable fact of international politics … The idea that we can dictate to China its position on issues is an anachronistic fancy. Copenhagen has been a demonstration of that.''
The recent global credit crunch probably proved the death knell of the old Deng Xiaoping doctrine. China has had to face up to the risks and consequences of being the major owner of US debt: it inevitably has realised that the borrower (the US) is the slave of the lender (China). Consequently, although the West hailed China's moves to support the West in what was essentially a Western problem, it has become more and more clear that it was doing so for its own reasons, not out of deference or respect for the West. Copenhagen confirmed the point.
A dramatic show of China's willingness to exercise global leadership occurred during the financial crisis, says Professor White, when its role was largely welcomed and encouraged by the West.
But Copenhagen has demonstrated - to Western eyes - a less agreeable side to Chinese assertiveness.
Across the developed world, China's brazen stonewalling of efforts to reach a legally binding treaty on climate change was greeted by a stunned, angry and almost visceral response.
Australian officials, led by the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, were understood to be irate.
The US President, Barack Obama, was reportedly stood up by Wen Jiabao and barged in on a meeting that the Chinese Premier was holding with other leaders.
The British climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, showed even less restraint, accusing China of ''hijacking'' the summit.
''The last two weeks at times have presented a farcical picture to the public,'' he wrote in The Guardian. ''This was a chaotic process dogged by procedural games … We cannot again allow negotiations on real points of substance to be hijacked in this way.''
Malcolm Cook, the Lowy Institute's program director for East Asia, says that for the first time the world is experiencing the emergence of global powers - China and India - that are also developing nations.
As if to underline the point, the Indian Environment Minister has openly acknowledged that his country worked with China to scuttle the West's self-righteous, vaunted hubris.
India says it worked with China and others to thwart pressure from the developed world to agree to binding emission targets at the Copenhagen climate conference last week.
Environment minister Jairam Ramesh says all of Delhi's concerns were safeguarded, including resisting calls for global reductions in carbon emissions.
He says the BASIC group of countries comprising China, India, South Africa and Brazil, have emerged as a powerful force in climate change negotiations, in the face of what he called relentless pressure from richer countries.
Geopolitical power is moving relentlessly to the south and the east. This will carry its own threats and challenges, but one thing is to be celebrated: at least the self-loathing of the Western elites, the hatred of their own historical roots, and the deep guilt over their inherited blessings, will no longer hold the globe in their thrall.
Far more enlightened national self-interest will likely return and that has got to be a much better outcome than the vacuous pretensions holding sway in the West which seek to make all countries follow the West's dubious example. The West is a paper tiger. Its Babel-like attempts to build a brave new world upon the foundations of human rights are not just empty vainglory--they have proved dangerous and deadly. Beware when an arrogant nation tries to tell other peoples what they ought to be doing.
Yahoo News gives a glimpse into the peace and calm which pervades the Copenhagen summit. You won't read this in your local daily. One suspects that the Tower of Babel is being channelled.
On Tuesday, Hedegaard made an emotional appeal for countries to put aside their differences to finalize a deal — after the G-77 bloc of developing nations accused her of trying to ram through an agreement amenable to the U.S. and other big industrialized nations.
But no sooner had Rasmussen assumed the presidency than those tensions burst out in the open again, with China, India, Bolivia, South Africa and Sudan saying they would block attempts by the Danish delegation to produce a draft text favored by most Western countries.
Minutes after taking the gavel, Rasmussen angrily denounced developing countries for seeking to delay consideration of the text, accusing them of focusing on "procedure, procedure, procedure."
He was immediately rebuked by a representative of China, a member of the G-77 bloc, who said moving forward too quickly was tantamount to "obstructionism" and a bullying attempt by the West.
"I think the matter isn't ‘procedure, procedure, procedure.’... You can't just put forth some text from the sky," the representative said.
Peter Hartcher is the International Editor for the Sydney Morning Herald. In this piece he tells us exactly how he expects the UN global summit in Copenhagen to combat Global Warming will play out. It will go precisely nowhere, but with great fanfare of trumpets and timpanis. He explains how we have seen all this before. For our part we hope that what he says is accurate. We are comforted by his prognostications. We have believed for some weeks that Copenhagen is a dead rubber.
Disagreeable truth about the coming Copenhagen charade
Peter Hartcher November 24, 2009 - 12:02AM
We are about to see an advanced case of ''agreementism'' between world leaders at the Copenhagen climate change meeting. It is a painful and embarrassing disorder with familiar results.
Every case begins the same way. Leaders gather in summits. They confer. They reach earnest consensus that they need to solve a common problem. They commission studies and agree to meet again. Next time, they tell reporters, they will make real decisions.
This looks terrifically statesmanlike and carries lots of photo opportunities. But then they realise it will be unpopular and difficult to implement necessary reforms. Troubled, the weaker among the leaders gaze into their quivering souls and choose self-preservation over problem-solving. At this instant, the fire of activism departs.
But their huffing and puffing self-promotion has built a peak of expectation. They can't just walk away and admit failure. The conditions are now ripe - the next time the leaders gather, agreementism sets in.
In a mild case, leaders simply draw up high-sounding communiques. In numbered paragraphs, they give a strong impression of firm agreement and resolute action, but without actually binding themselves to any.
But in an advanced case, leaders know that this simple ruse is unconvincing. The problem is too big, and the leaders have talked too much, to hope that they can get away this easily. They need more than a mere communique. In this stage of the disease, the symptoms deteriorate markedly. Leaders display a disturbing symptom known as ''concerted unilateralism''.
This is a sophisticated way of saying that countries can do whatever the hell they like, but they will write something pompous about it first. And they will all do it together. This is precisely the symptom that world leaders are now displaying ahead of the Copenhagen climate change summit - the so-called COP15 - in two weeks.
This was supposed to be the meeting that sealed a legally binding treaty on all 191 nations of the world. Successor to the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, it would be the pact to save the planet from the devastating effects of global warming.
But you could pick the acute onset of advanced agreementism the moment the meeting's chairman, Lars Rasmussen, the Danish Prime Minister, uttered the following words at a breakfast meeting of Asia-Pacific leaders in Singapore on November 15: ''The Copenhagen Agreement should be global, comprehensive and substantial, yet flexible enough to accommodate countries with very different national circumstances.''
Allow me to interpret: ''To frightened leaders everywhere, do not panic! Each of you will write down on a piece of paper what you want to do about global warming. There is nothing compulsory. Make it sound impressive. We are supposed to be saving the entire planet, remember? Whatever.
''Next, we will collect your papers. We will staple them together. We will call it the Copenhagen Agreement. We will declare victory. We will all have our pictures taken. And we will tell reporters that, next time, we will make real decisions. You know the drill.''
How can we be so certain of this outcome? We have two ways to be sure. First, Rasmussen went on to spell it out in unmistakeable terms.
''Will it be binding? Yes, it will be binding. Even if we may not hammer out the last dots of a legally binding instrument, I do believe a political binding agreement with specific commitment to mitigation and finance provides a strong basis for immediate action in the years to come.''
Take special note of the all-important distinction between a ''legally binding instrument'' and a ''political binding agreement''. A politician's binding agreement? That's in the same category as a campaign promise.
And celebrate the wonderful non-sequitur of ''immediate action in the years to come''.
In a masterstroke, Rasmussen called the format ''one agreement - two purposes''. The first purpose, he says, is to state political intent, and the second is to keep talking about a legal treaty for later. The media shorthand for this has become a ''two-step'' agreement.
Second, we know how this will end because we've seen it twice before in recent history. We've seen precisely the same format of ''concerted unilateralism'' on different continents and in different fields, and each time with the same result.
One was the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation forum's ''Bogor Declaration'' of 1994. In that much-ballyhooed agreement, the APEC leaders at their summit in Indonesia said ''we announce our commitment to complete the achievement of our goal of free and open trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific''.
For developed countries this would be ''no later than the year 2010 and developing economies no later than the year 2020''. But there was no binding agreement. It was a political deal which allowed each country to do what it pleased.
What happened?' ''The Bogor commitments have been all but ignored,'' summarised the Lowy Institute's Allan Gyngell and Malcolm Cook in a 2005 paper. Some APEC leaders still fantasise about a free-trade zone.
The other was the European Union's ''Lisbon Strategy'' of 2000. This was supposed to make Europe the world's most dynamic economy by 2010. But individual governments ignored the deal and continued to pander to unions and bureaucracies.
The director of the International Centre for Money and Banking Studies in Geneva, Charles Wyplosz, wrote: ''The strategy rests on peer pressure - the naming and shaming of governments that fail to make progress. In practice, however, peer pressure has become peer collusion.''
The result, in the words of the director of the European Policy Centre, Antonio Missiroli, was ''shameful''. The European economy remains sclerotic.
Bogor and Lisbon are clear precedents for Copenhagen's ''concerted unilateralism''. Nothing in any such agreement carries any real force. Only the countries that already wanted to act will act, and the rest will just sit around and watch. But there will certainly be agreement.
Peter Hartcher is the Herald's international editor.
The Herald recently carried a piece on the Maersk Alabama which had warded off an attack by pirates. You may recall that this is the second time the Alabama has been attacked by pirates. The first time it had to be rescued by Navy Seals. This time it was carrying armed guards who showed the pirates the business end of a few assault rifles.
All well and good, and unremarkable. Except for this. Apparently the UN does not like the idea of merchant ships defending themselves against pirates.
The UN's Maritime Safety Committee says members should "strongly discourage the carrying and use of firearms by seafarers for personal protection or for the protection of a ship." The concern is that bringing guns aboard ship will encourage violence.
Why is the left so pacifist? Why do they hate the fundamental human right of self-defence? Why does a Safety Committee reject the very thing which would make sailing through dangerous waters far safer?
The UN is long passed its "use by" date. It's time New Zealand came to its senses and withdrew.
