Jordan Peterson Generates Millions of YouTube Hits for Climate Crisis Deniers

Spread the love

Original article by Geoff Dembicki republished from DeSmog.

The conservative influencer has ‘become a central cog in the denial machine,’ says climate scientist Michael Mann.

ByGeoff Dembicki on 5 Sept, 2023 @ 09:46 PDT

Imag eof climate change denier Jordan Peterson.
‘Climate change is the idiot socialist get-out-of-jail-free card,’ Peterson recently tweeted. Image:  Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC.

Fringe climate crisis deniers who claim that the earth is “cooling” and greenhouse emissions are good for “biological productivity” are getting exposed to millions more people than they normally would on YouTube thanks to conservative influencer Jordan Peterson. 

That’s according to viewership data newly reviewed by DeSmog, which reveals a massive visibility boost for public figures who’ve been active in the climate denial movement for years but whose ideas — such as the claim that plants are growing much better due to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — are now rarely taken seriously by most legacy media outlets.  

They include climate crisis deniers like Judith CurrySteven KooninRichard LindzenAlex Epstein and Bjorn Lomborg. Despite having either a modest YouTube presence or none at all, these figures have collectively garnered nearly five million views after being interviewed on Peterson’s channel, which has 7.31 million subscribers. The New York Times, by comparison, has 4.33 million YouTube subscribers. 

This is especially worrying to climate scientists and disinformation experts because Peterson for years has been actively courting alienated males in their 20s and younger. Traditionally, people who are “doubtful” or “dismissive” of climate change have tended to skew older. Peterson is now planting doubt via his podcast and social media posts about the severity and urgency of global warming in the minds of younger generations.

“‘Climate change,’” he tweeted in June, is “the idiot socialist get-out-of-jail-free card.”

And he is now in the process of putting real political power behind the climate crisis denial movement. In late October and early November, a new group Peterson founded called the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) will hold in London, England, its first ever meetings. It has on its advisory board Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who during GOP debates in August said that “the climate change agenda is a hoax.”

Image of climate change denier Vivek Ramaswamy.
ARC advisor Ramaswamy: ‘the climate change agenda is a hoax.’ Image: Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC.

Advisors to the group include Lomborg, a Danish political scientist who earlier this year argued on Peterson’s podcast that “climate change is a real problem, but it’s not this catastrophic end of the world.” Lomborg didn’t respond to questions from DeSmog. Other advisors are Texas Republican congressmember Dan Crenshaw; Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee; former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott; and dozens of conservative policymakers, financiers, activists and journalists from the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia.  

The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship is being supported by founders and leaders of the Legatum Group, a Dubai-based investment firm behind The Legatum Institute, a pro-Brexit think tank in London with close ties to the U.K. Conservative Party. The Legatum Group is a leading investor in the rightwing British television network GB News. Read DeSmog’s in-depth report on ARC’s U.K. links here.

Experts argue this makes Peterson a key organizer at the global level for efforts to oppose and delay action on climate change. “I would say that Jordan Peterson has become a central cog in the denial machine,” Michael Mann, director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, told DeSmog. 

“It’s concerning that he’s poisoning the minds of so many influenceable people with his pseudo-intellectual and pseudoscientific drivel, drivel that is being weaponized in the right-wing assault on science and reason,” Mann added, referring to Peterson’s frequent downplaying of climate risks, including the conservative influencer’s insistence that rising levels of carbon dioxide are good for the planet.  

Spreading Denial, Making Money

Peterson’s influence depends to a significant degree on his gigantic YouTube following, which is larger than that of the liberal-leaning news network MSNBC. It also surpasses the following of The Daily Wire, a digital conservative outlet co-founded by Ben Shapiro that has a partnership with Peterson, which last year claimed a yearly revenue of $100 million.   

Google, which owns YouTube, announced a policy in October 2021 prohibiting advertisements on content that “contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change.” Elaborating on the policy in an email to DeSmog, a Google spokesperson wrote that “Debate or discussion of climate change topics is allowed, but when content crosses the line to climate change denial, we stop showing ads on those videos.” 

Yet a Peterson interview from this year entitled “The Great Climate Con,” during which he framed rising greenhouse gas emissions as a positive for making the planet “green in the driest areas,” was accompanied by ads for Birch Gold and Masterworks. Climate scientists say that is a misleading argument because it doesn’t take into account the massively negative effects that intensified droughts, wildfires and heatwaves due to global warming have on plants and ecosystems. 

“Debate or discussion of climate change topics is allowed, but when content crosses the line to climate change denial, we stop showing ads on those videos.”— Google spokesperson

“We’ve reviewed the videos,” the Google spokesperson wrote, “and did not take action on them.”

“What’s the point of having policies if you’re not going to enforce them?” Claire Atkin, co-founder of the anti-disinformation watchdog group Check My Ads, told DeSmog. “YouTube and its ecosystem of marketing tools allow Jordan Peterson to not only spread [misleading statements], but to make money off them.”

Peterson didn’t respond to questions from DeSmog about his current income nor his recent shift towards promoting climate crisis denial online. 

‘Twisted Symbiotic Relationship’

One example of Peterson’s amplifying effect is his interview with Judith Curry, a former Georgia Institute of Technology climatologist who now does consulting work for clients including petroleum companies and natural gas traders. In testimony to Congress in 2015 she claimed incorrectly that recent data “calls into question the conclusion that humans are the dominant cause of recent climate change.” 

While appearing on Peterson’s podcast earlier this year she argued that due to “natural variability” the planet could grow cooler over the next three decades rather than warmer, a position with no credible scientific basis, especially considering that July was the hottest month in recorded human history. Posted to YouTube, where Curry has no official channel, the interview garnered more than 960,000 views. She didn’t respond to questions from DeSmog.

Conservative author and fossil fuel activist Alex Epstein had a modest YouTube following of 15.2 thousand subscribers when he was interviewed by Peterson. “It’s out!” he tweeted after the video was posted. It now has over 1.04 million views, a significant boost considering that the vast majority of videos on his page have under 500 views.  

“I think Jordan Peterson has become more interested in humanistic thinking about fossil fuels,” Epstein wrote in an email to DeSmog. “He has become even more convinced, thanks to my work and others, that the popular movement to rapidly eliminate fossil fuel use is based on invalid thinking methods, false assumptions, and anti-human values.” 

Image of climate change denier Alex Epstein.
Most videos on Epstein’s YouTube page receive fewer than 500 views.  Image: Gage Skidmore, wikimwdia,  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

During his interview with Peterson, Epstein claimed that “It’s kind of obvious if you have a warmer world with more CO2, it’s a more tropical world with more life. It’s a more green world in the life sense of green. And yet the green movement hates it.” 

Peterson has echoed that statement frequently in his podcast, despite actual scientists saying that greening caused by rising greenhouse gases shouldn’t be celebrated. He claimed during his interview with Steven Koonin, author of a book on climate change science called Unsettled, that “since the year 2000 the world has greened by 15 percent … why the hell isn’t that good news?” That interview has since been viewed more than 1.1 million times. Koonin didn’t respond to a media request. 

“Peterson—who doesn’t appear to know much at all about the science or politics of global warming—has become an influential promoter of illogical ideas,” Benjamin Franta, a senior research fellow in climate litigation at the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme, told DeSmog.

During an interview in 2022 on Joe Rogan’s podcast, for instance, Peterson argued that the climate is too complex a system to be modeled accurately, “and that’s a huge problem when you’re trying to model over 100 years because the errors compound just like interest.” “He sounds intelligent, but he’s completely wrong,” one climate scientist told the Guardian

Though Peterson is among the most visible promoters of climate crisis denial, he’s also part of a wider digital network. Researchers with Climate Action Against Disinformation and the Center for Countering Digital Hate earlier this year found 200 videos on YouTube promoting delay or skepticism around measures to address the climate emergency, garnering nearly 74 million views altogether.    

“[There’s] a twisted symbiotic relationship between these platforms and climate denial content,” Erika Seiber, a climate disinformation spokesperson at the nonprofit Friends of the Earth who is part of the disinfo coalition, told DeSmog. “YouTube runs ads on the content, incentivizing the creation of yet more misleading content, which allows deniers like Peterson to flourish and for their networks to grow.” 

Enabled by Google and YouTube, climate crisis denial could be having real-world influence, disinformation experts say. A poll this summer suggested that 72 percent of U.S. Republican supporters think that the economy should be prioritized over addressing climate change, a 13 point increase from 2018, even as cities sweltered under record heat waves. Conservatives are opposing coastal wind turbines under the pretense of protecting whales. Republican Congressmembers in June passed bills protecting gas stoves in people’s homes. 

“You can see how climate denial content from Peterson and others has informed policy discussions,” Seiber said. “It’s incredibly concerning.”

Original article by Geoff Dembicki republished from DeSmog.

Continue ReadingJordan Peterson Generates Millions of YouTube Hits for Climate Crisis Deniers

Civicus rates UK civil liberties and democracy alongside Serbia, Kyrgyzstan, Hungary and Burkina Faso in annual survey, amid government’s war on civil rights – but there will be no improvement under a Starmer government

Spread the love

Original article republished from the Skwawkbox for non-Commercial use.

The map of Civicus-rated countries

The UK’s democracy and civil life have been downgraded to ‘obstructed’ in the Civicus annual survey of almost two hundred countries, because of the Tories’ assault on rights of protest and strike. ‘Obstructed’ is just one level above the ‘repressed’ status of countries such as Kazakhstan, Guatemala or Jordan and puts the UK on a par with countries like Burkina Faso, Hungary and Kyrgyzstan.

In fact, the UK’s rating should arguably be worse, as the Civicus index does not appear to take into account the importance of functional political media to hold governments to account and the UK’s media structure is fundamentally broken, with most media acting as Establishment mouthpieces, apologists and cheerleaders on many issues, keeping the public in the dark and suppressing unrest.

Tragically for the people of this country, the situation is likely to get worse rather than better. ‘Opposition’ leader Keir Starmer, a ‘long-time servant of the security state’ has amply demonstrated that is fully on board with the government’s attacks on democratic and civil rights and on proper journalism.

Since the assault on Corbyn’s Labour succeeded, the UK continues to slide into fascism.

Original article republished from the Skwawkbox for non-Commercial use.

Continue ReadingCivicus rates UK civil liberties and democracy alongside Serbia, Kyrgyzstan, Hungary and Burkina Faso in annual survey, amid government’s war on civil rights – but there will be no improvement under a Starmer government

Carry on Blogging

Spread the love
Image by Lichty 1994 features – I think – Madonna wearing Micky Mouse ears.
There is a caption embedded in the image reading
‘Fascination is the extreme intensity of the neutral’.

There’s a lot to explain …

My first website / blog – from 1998/9 – is mostly archived at https://geocities.restorativland.org/Athens/Olympus/1833/index.htm. Warning: the link to the ctheory site from the New diary page links to a site concerned with ‘toto’. I had no idea what toto was either. The ctheory<dot>com address was originally the Ctheory site concerned with Frankfurt School philosophy.

There is a page missing, called ‘deep DT’s first statement on race’ or something similar. It was an argument against racism, claiming that races do not exists since genes are so mixed. It’s a snapshot too so that the New Diary page that I claimed changes often but actually only occasionally changed often is a snapshot. I regard it as amoung the earliest blogs (weblogs) because that New Diary page changed i.e. had it’s commentary updated which is the essential element of a blog.

Geocities provided a minimal interface. I would create pages editing HTML before uploading to geocities. There were simple wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) code editors to create webpages then but they were crude and limited. CTRL-U or a similar command (press the CTRL and U keys together in your browser) allows you to see the simple HTML code.

Geocities was a very early part of the web that allowed individuals to crate websites and I think that it was for free. The geocities websites were popular. You can see some of my neighbouring websites at geocities here. Fascinating.

The geocities webpages were purchased by – I think – yahoo and shut down. It is only within the past few years that the historical archives have appeared.

I campaigned against the USUK second Bush-Iraq war that started in early 2003 using the usenet nntp messaging system. It is very similar to the original arpanet system of the earliest internet used by universities and may be an evolution of it. It was very powerful being monitored by governments and big news sites. Many of my posts can be seen in this listing (the first few pages). [13/11/22 I didn’t realise that the ‘Highway’ post was there initially. Google has censored it now, WTF are they afraid of?]

I also campaigned against the Iraq war starting 2003 in person. One of Stop The War coalitions slogans at the time was “Not in my name” and I would often be carrying a poster with that phrase. I was getting harassed by former boss of the Metropolitan Police and Tony Blair’s butler Ian Blair during this time.

I was still using usenet at the G8 protests in Scotland in July 2005. The London tube explosions of 7 July 2005 happened at the end of the G8 events in Scotland. I have produced an analysis of these explosions called the UNOFFICIAL NARRATIVE and there’s a link to the July 7 truth campaign on my blogroll. I concluded that they were dust explosions and that there were no terrrists.

to be continued

12 Nov 2022

So far: First website / blog archived at https://geocities.restorativland.org/Athens/Olympus/1833/index.htm, Then Usenet (NNTP, Network News Transfer Protocol) messages e.g. this listing (the first few pages).

EFF image reads "Liberty waits on your fingers" and "keep on blogging".

I started using a blogging service provided by the Canadian host host cjb in January 2006. The url was blogs<dot>cjb<dot>net/dissident and some archives are available on the Wayback machine. cjb blog hosting was free again worked quite well except that there was a small limit to the size of posts (1kb ?) which I often hit. We’re getting closer to a conventional blog with that classic blog layout which I really like – a sidebar on the right with links to earlier posts. Results from a search on the wayback machine (some of them are quite poor with missing elements).

The very first post of 6 January 2006 is missing from the Wayback machine. It was “It’s an honour to join the dissident bloggers” mostly referring to Craig Murray’s blog.

Some posts disappeared from this blog – I suspect forcibly removed by the UK government or Metropolitan Police under Ian Blair. It’s a political blog attacking Blair’s and Cameron’s later Libservative governments and doing original investigative research into the London explosions and the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes. I appear to have established that Jean Charles de Menezes was murdered. I posted elsewhere and the server was snatched by British Transport Police shortly after my posting. It appears that the posting has resurfaced and accepted by many as proving that JCdM was murdered.

I moved away from this blog to the paid host tsohosts after the pages disappeared and cjb claimed to know nothing about it and no backups. With a paid host I got the domain name onaquietday<dot>org.

I started with this current host in March 2022 because I was disappointed with the service at my previous host. They were bought by a bigger player and suffered with poorer performance and service. I am very pleased with my current host – speed, support and value are excellent.

I moved the content of my previous blog to this one when I moved so please feel free to look about. There’s a search box and categories on the right hand side.

Suppose that I should provide some blogging instruction …

to be continued

14/11/22 One from the archives

EFF image reads "Liberty waits on your fingers" and "keep on blogging".

August 14, 2006 – THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE: Reality is negotiated


A while ago I promised “the truth is out there” series of articles to promote conspiracy theories. Here’s a start.

Everyone has their own truth and their truth will be largely dictated by their perspective and disposition. Individuals with hugely different lifestyles, experiences and motivations will have hugely different ‘truths’ or pattern of beliefs, values, attitudes, prejudices, etc.

Reality is negotiated between different actors. New Labour seem to have incorporated this processs of negotiation into its policy-making and this was explicitly stated in the early New Labour period. This probably applies only to New Labour policies that are not not negotiable e.g. rabid Neo-Conservatism / Neo-Liberalism and Crypto-Fascism. New Labour know fully well that certain outcomes are favourable to themselves, their interests and purposes and they engage using lies and deception. We know that they lie – they have been caught out endless times.

The difference with Blair, Reid & Co is that they’re shameless and so don’t care – or perhaps don’t need to care – when they are caught out lying since they have never been held to account for their actions. This is deliberate – they actively evade accountability and responsibility for their actions.

My approach to reality is that there is one ‘real’ reality that is perceived and interpreted differently by different actors. When things happen, those things really happened but then the process of negotiation starts.

New Labour do not share this approach. They believe that reality can be negotiated, remoulded, renegotiated, reinterpreted or even censored long after the event. Their approach is remarkably similar to Orwell’s concept of ‘doublethink’ and betrays their shallowness and absence of any real values. For Blair, since reality is infinitely renegotiable, lying and deception is just a part of achieving what He wants.

“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. … To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.” Orwell, George (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Much of this derives from narcissist Blair. Blair has certainty in the total absence of any supporting evidence – even when there is plenty of evidence supporting contrary positions. How is this possible? Does it mean that He has special insight denied the rest of us common mortals? Does it mean that He can ‘feel’ the truth? Does He have powers denied to us mere mortals? Or perhaps He’s simply a sad, pathetic nutjob?

Although much of this derives with Blair, the Labour party cannot escape its responsibilities and blame.

more on conspiracy theories, Blair, New Labour and Fascism soon

EFF image reads "Liberty waits on your fingers" and "keep on blogging".

14/11/22 Another one from the archives. John Reid is saying that suspected terrorists should be killed and Keir Starmer’s current Labour Party has been saying the same recently. So here’s the reality: if John Reid or Keir Starmer want somebody killed … they assign the status of (call them) a suspected terrorist and kill them. [15/11/22 Actually and as in the case of the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes, they murder them and then lie profusely including calling them a suspected terrorist to justify the murder. ]

Angela Rayner: police should ‘shoot terrorists and ask questions second’

September 29, 2006 – Evil Fascist John Reid is just plain wrong

Blair’s speech “The first rule of politics: there are no rules.”

Of course there are rules – they’re called laws. What Blair means is that they have ruled as though there were no laws.

Reid must stand for PM to protect himself and the Blairites from the cells.


Evil Fascist John Reid’s speech

“It cannot be right that the rights of an individual suspected terrorist be placed above the rights, life and limb of the British people.It’s wrong. Full stop.
No ifs. No buts. It’s just plain wrong.”
Even if that suspected terrorist is a suspected terrorist only for his legitimate political activities that should be protected in a tolerant society?
But what about the suspected terrorists you have already killed or shot evil Dr. Reid? They were innocent. Do you undertand what is meant by innocent evil Dr. Reid? That’s one of our values but obviously not one of New Labour’s values.

It’s just plain wrong that evil Dr. Reid put right-wing death squads on the streets of London.
to be continued
EFF image reads "Liberty waits on your fingers" and "keep on blogging".

16 November 2022. Let’s crack on with this. So far we’ve established that I am an experienced blogger. Today I’ll deal with the practicalities of setting up a blog and hopefully tomorrow we’ll discuss this blog post that I did recently. So the rest of this blog post is technical at a below novice blogger level about how to blog. Please avoid if not interested.

What you need to blog

Firstly, you need some sort of computer. You’re reading this so you’ve got access to something.

I have difficulties using a smartphone for blogging but know that some of you are wizards on them. If it’s all you’ve got it will do and you’ll improve with practice.

A tablet will work fairly well. My preference is a laptop or desktop puter running debian Linux. Shared puters are available at libraries, schools and universities, expect that you can find something.

Secondly, you need blog hosting. This is where your blog is kept and served to the internet. While you are able to do this yourself by installing a webserver, I would not recommend it because it will be slow with extremely limited bandwidth and very complex to set up and administer.

Speed, Support, Security

Hosting is free, cheap or more expensive. I would and do go for cheap but there are other considerations. You want a fast host because you lose viewers if your site is slow to load. You want a host with good support because you’re likely to need it. Free 24 hour support is the one to go for. You want a host that has some concern for and regular security practices including backups. More expensive is simply more expensive without any advantages over cheap and good.

I much prefer Linux based hosting because that’s what I’m familiar with. You will eventually need to execute commands on the server host so it helps if you’re familiar with the host system.

The best way to select a blog host is to read reviews and compare and contrast. Make sure it provides everything that you need. Shared hosting is fine. I recommend my current host (and they’ve got a very good offer on atm) – it’s for you to find out who that is ;) Free is probably slow and limited in some ways e.g. no domain name, I suppose acceptable if you just wanted to try at first.

Many web hosts attract new bloggers with a free domain name offer. It’s worth spending some time choosing a name. Onaquietday is not ideal because it clashes with Arundhati Roy’s statement that it pays tribute to — ‘Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.’ You get stuck with a name so give it some thought and decide what extension you want.

Watch out for extras that are sold with webhosting e.g. SSL certificates. You often don’t need those extras and they can be confusing. Try asking the host before signing up: Do I need that? What does it do? and do your own online research.

Costs

Hosting will cost a few $/E/£s a month, year or some other period. You will need to buy a domain name if it’s not included – up to $/E/£20 or so and up to $/E/£20 every 2 years to renew (keep) the domain name. I always used to get charged every 2 years to renew, looks like some hosts are charging every year.

Don’t worry about different currencies – just pay and it will get converted. You will need a credit or debit card and expect that a prepaid debit card will work. If not try elsewhere.

Blogging Platform

Blogging platforms are often a CMS – Content Management System – tweaked to be a blogging platform and this is a further consideration when selecting a blogging host. The most popular and the platform I use is WordPress. Other blogging platforms are available e.g. Joomla, Drupal or Ghost. It’s probably worth searching for a simple blogging platform and see what’s out there.

How to Create a Blog With Joomla

WordPress comes with a default theme – the theme being an interface between WordPress and the creator and between WordPress and how it appears to users. I updated from the default theme to the free (no cost) OceanWP theme because I needed better performance on mobile devices especially phones. I particularly needed reactive text (text that wraps to the screen size as it is resized).

Use a ‘staging website’ before making any changes.The staging website is a copy of your blog that is not publicly accessible. Test changes on it until you learn how to apply those changes to achieve what you want. You then need to apply those changes without any mistakes to the live blog or restore the staging website to the live blog if it’s all there with only the changes you want. You then need to delete the staging website and reload the cache.

Worpress uses plugins to alter it’s fuctionality. I use Akismet – an anti-spam comments filter, a lazy-load plugin that prevents loading of images until the user approaches them, a few extras for the OceanWP theme that I use, Yoast SEO which I tend to ignore and a 2-factor authentication plugin for extra security. I don’t use a caching plugin because I think that caching is already incorporated into the host server. It all seems to work well.

Posts are categorised and possibly tagged to help people search through posts. It essentially just groups similar posts together.

It’s worth watching a few vids and maybe read a few articles to learn how your blogging platform works. Search when you run into a problem – it’s very likely that many people have had that exact problem before. Your blogging platform will take some learning but just publish and get it out there, you’ll improve with experience.

Copyrighted and other content

This is a rough guide, not to be relied on as an authoritative statement of law.

You own the copyright on your own original work. Content on the web is usually owned by the publishing organisation and you’re only permitted to quote short, selected excerpts while providing a clear link to the original source. There is an exception for derived works but it needs to be more than trivial changes.

Content published under Creative Commons licences needs to be copied exactly, clearly attributed with details of the creative commons licence used. You are able to alter CC content to produce derived works, check the details for yourself.

Content published as press releases can be used as you like without attribution although I often do. I suggest that you respect any embargo requested.

As a less experienced blogger I used to quote newspaper articles at length. I got pulled up on it once by the Independent newspaper. As a rule of thumb I quote 3 paragraphs of a newspaper article. I sometimes quote more, especially two sections from different parts of a long article. The source are unlikely to be that concerned – you’re sending traffic to them through a clear link after all and news gets stale. I try to avoid linking to content that is restricted in some way e.g. a paywall or registration needed.

I never used to be concerned about images and just used them. There are many copyrighted images on this blog used without attribution. Image search engines often have an option to search for images under a creative commons licence so I do try to find them.

In the final analysis I am a not-for-profit blogger so that I am not profiteering through using others’ content and don’t have any money. You won’t get sued if you don’t have any money or other assets.

EFF image reads "Liberty waits on your fingers" and "keep on blogging".

16 November 2022

To finish this Carry on Blogging post, we’ll take a look at a recent post of mine Mayor of London Sadiq Khan condems Just Stop Oil, presents a climate change speech in Buenos Aires and claims credit for dispatching Liz Truss. I quite enjoyed doing that one.

First off, it’s a pretty good title don’t you think?

The post starts with Mayor of London Sadiq Khan condemning Just Stop Oil. In the video calls the protests unlawful and unsafe and says:

“I think – you know – stopping ambulances getting to an emergency, stopping fire engines getting to a fire, stopping police cars going to prevent crime isn’t the way to make your case …”

Khan is parroting earlier comments made by UK Labout party leader Keith Starmer on LBC. He said

“I particularly think about the images we’ve seen of ambulances coming down the road, not being able to get through because people have glued themselves to the road.”

“I think it’s arrogant of those glueing themselves to the road to think they’re the only people that have got the answer to this. They haven’t got the answer.”

So I looked for those “images of ambulances coming down the road” and found this one where – despite the title – Just Stop Oil clear out of the way to let an ambulance pass

This one’s more confusing but at the end of the video there’s a claim that Just Stop Oil did let the fire engine pass. There’s certainly not much evidence of Just Stop Oil blocking emergency vehicles.

There are huge traffic jams in London – twice a day actually – so would it be fair to say that London traffic blocks fire engines and ambulances?

The article I quoted in my earlier post Just Stop Oil didn’t delay us getting to M20 crash, says ambulance service refute specific accusations made by The Sun and the Daily Mail that JSO delayed ambulances.

I think that it’s fair to accuse Labour politicians Sadiq Khan and Keith Starmer of supporting the right wing press in unfounded allegations. What Khan and Starmer are also doing is attempting to benefit politically from Just Stop Oil’s actions which have forced the debate.

The next part of the post quotes Sadiq Khan insists world leaders ‘meet words with deeds’ at climate change speech in Buenos Aires… after he and his team racked up 361,146 air miles lecturing the world on going GREEN.

The article and by extension me, are accusing Sadiq Khan of being a hypocrite, travelling all over the World to lecture people to be more green.

The article claims that Khan then proceeds to claim credit for getting rid of Liz Truss. We can’t really trust the Daily Mail and so don’t know whether he did this without making more enquiries.

But still a pretty good blog post, no?

Continue ReadingCarry on Blogging

State of the UK Labour Party

Spread the love

Two articles about the UK Labour Party, Craig Murray discusses the pointless Keir Starmer:

Starmer’s role has been simply to emasculate the Labour Party, and to purge it of any elements that might seek to pose a threat to rampant neo-liberalism and wealth inequality. His efforts to ban Labour MPs from supporting striking railway workers must be anathema to anybody who has the slightest feel for the history and traditions of that party and indeed the most basic understanding of its very raison d’etre.

This Tony Benn quote from the 1980’s has come into vogue because it is prophetic, and the process appears now complete:

If the Labour Party could be bullied or persuaded to denounce its Marxists, the media – having tasted blood – would demand next that it expelled all its Socialists and reunited the remaining Labour Party with the SDP to form a harmless alternative to the Conservatives, which could then be allowed to take office now and then when the Conservatives fell out of favour with the public. Thus British Capitalism, it is argued, will be made safe forever, and socialism would be squeezed off the National agenda. But if such a strategy were to succeed… it would in fact profoundly endanger British society. For it would open up the danger of a swing to the far-right, as we have seen in Europe over the last 50 years.

Starmer is in one sense the apotheosis of this process. Not only has he acted to purge the Labour Party of socialism, he also offers so very little of a meaningful alternative to the Tories that there is very little danger of the Tories being voted out of office. Not only is he a safe right-wing backstop, he is a self-redundant safe right-wing backstop.

Jeremy Corbyn Sophie BrownCC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

and Jeremy Corbyn openly discusses the many parties that obstructed him. The article also discusses Julian Assange.

The Guardian has long been viewed as the voice of the liberal-left in Britain, so it surprised many during the Corbyn leadership to see it act as one of the main media vehicles through which the campaign to bring him down was fought. 

The paper was a key part of the “anti-semitism crisis” that engulfed Corbyn’s leadership. From 2016-19, the Guardian published 1,215 stories mentioning Labour and anti-semitism, an average of around one per day, according to a search on Factiva, the database of newspaper articles. 

In the same period, the Guardian published just 194 articles mentioning the Conservative Party’s much more serious problem with Islamophobia. A YouGov poll in 2019, for example, found that nearly half of the Tory party membership would prefer not to have a Muslim prime minister. 

The Guardian’s coverage of anti-semitism in Labour was suspiciously extensive, compared to the known extent of the problem in the party, and its focus on Corbyn personally suggested that the issue was being used politically.

The late Jewish anthropologist David Graeber commented after the 2019 election: “As for the Guardian, we will never forget that during the ‘Labour antisemitism controversy’, they beat even the Daily Mail to include the largest percentage of false statements, pretty much every one, mysteriously, an accidental error to Labour’s disadvantage”.

Keir Starmer says he is scrapping Labour’s manifesto and ‘starting from scratch’ on policy

Continue ReadingState of the UK Labour Party

Why US/UK/EU politicians are unfairly accusing Russia

Spread the love

Successful i.e. elected, Neo-Con politicians are unfairly accusing Russia of targetted murders, subverting democracy by interfering in elections using fake news and cyber espionage.

The problem is that it is these Neo-Con shits that are subverting democracy and attempting a distraction by blaming Russia. We know who the real perpetrators are – it’s Cambridge Analytica and it’s parent company SCL Group – Neo-Cons who subvert elections globally using Psychological Operations (Psyops or Psychological Warfare). We know that these nasty bastards were involved in subverting the 2016 Presidential election. We know that they subvert democracy internationally so that elections are effectively bought.

Salisbury Consultant Stephen Davies says no nerve agent

Craig Murray has comprehensively demolished the fake news promoted by the UK govrenment that Russia poisoned British spy Sergei Skripol and his daughter Yulia in the UK town of Salisbury. There is no way that imaginary Novichok nerve agent can be reasonably blamed on Russia: They don’t have any and it can be produced elsewhere.

US and EU politicians have been supporting UK despite the Russian nerve agent fake news being exposed for the bullshit it is over a week ago.

 

 

Continue ReadingWhy US/UK/EU politicians are unfairly accusing Russia

Spread the love

Been thinking about the Soapoperafication of UK politics. Lets have these poor actors playing shallow plots, eh?’

Try this one. It’s your fault that I killed those two people. You were the first owner of the car. It doesn’t matter that there were sixty or however many in between. You’re obviously responsible and that’s it. Nah, Nah, Nah.

[There’s also a more serious analysis involving Neo-Con shits but who’s doing rational rather than soap-opera bullshit?

10 mins later: minor spelling and grammar.

17/03/18  https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

Continue Reading

Sunday comment

Spread the love

John McDonnell spoke at the gathering of the global elite known as the World Economic Forum at Davos. It’s no surprise that he was there, he’s expected to be UK’s next Chancellor with an agenda that is Socialist instead of the usual pro-Capitalist.

The privatisation of our public services has been national failure- it’s time to take back control

Labour vows to nationalise railways, water, energy and Royal Mail ‘We’re taking them back’, vows Shadow Chancellor

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/26/john-mcdonnell-davos-uk-business-wef-voters

The shadow chancellor said he came in order to tell a few home truths on the “avalanche of discontent and resentment out there”.

“Why did I come? Firstly, I got an invitation and I thought this was the time to check just what the discussions were, what the assessments being made by individuals were and what the feelings were about the future. Secondly, to deliver a message that people need to look at things like the result of Brexit and address the issues that caused it,” he said.

“Davos is what I expected. It embodies the criticisms I have made of it in the past. I don’t think the people here have any comprehension of the contempt in which they are held.”

McDonnell said the corporations represented at Davos had been getting away with “industrial-scale tax avoidance” while ordinary people struggled. “They just don’t get it. It’s the system and it needs to be changed,” he said. He said the big auditing companies should have the equivalent of a doctor’s Hippocratic oath so that they did not encourage firms to avoid tax.

“Ten years after the crash, after 10 years of austerity and 10 years of paying their taxes and seeing public services cut, people have had enough.”

Looks like he’s simply telling it like it is.

Theresa May has a long history of attacking online privacy and censoring the internet. It’s usually about so-called extremist content or terrorism with them being conflated.

It’s a little different this time – along with Brazil and Macron’s France, May is seeking to censor so-called “fake news”. I was surprised at this one – ‘fake news’ is the rock-like polymath genius-in-chief’s wonderfully genius method of dismissing competing narratives. The Colossal Intellect simply dismisses irritating truths and anything that would portray His vast intellect’s policies or behaviour in a poor light as fake news. Surely people recognise Rigid Deep Thought’s simple rejection of any criticism as fake news is a transparent – though brilliant of course as He is – simple I’m not going to talk about that because it makes me look stupid ploy. It’s a We’ll just ignore that because it’s not worth bothering my Vast Intellect with sort-of-thing.

It can’t be about anything other than censorship and by calling it fake news they’re being totally transparent about it. The government proposes to decide for you which competing narratives you have access to in the style of Trump. What’s not censorship about that? We already have huge censorship thanks to NeoCon scum like May. I think that the way it works is that Tech Giants get to avoid vast amounts in tax if they support the government.

Competing narratives from alternative media from particularly Socialist websites like World Socialist Website and even David Icke are getting hit hard. I’m not keen on David Icke but he has a right to be heard. Then there are Holocaust Deniers who actually don’t normally deny the holocaust and instead mostly argue that it’s scale is exaggerated. They have a right to be heard.

I’m hoping to post more often. Environmental Health later

x

Continue ReadingSunday comment