Har Donald Trump ikke ret om socialismen?

    I sin tale om nationens tilstand (the State of the Union) sagde Donald Trump, manden som er beskrevet i hele Europa som en værre – og farlig – tåbe, at »Vi må … beslutte os for, at Amerika aldrig bliver et socialistisk land«

    Den generale holdning i Vesteuropa, samt blandt USAs demokrater, er det kan kun være en dyd at oprette et velfærdssystem.

    Men er Venezuela ikke blot et eksempel (og kun, desværre, det allerseneste) på at det – tydeligt – er forkert?

    Efter 20 år af Hugo Chávez og Nicolás Maduros socialistiske Revolution, kan borgerne i hvad var engang Sydamerikas rigeste land nu nyde manglen på mad, medicin og toiletpapir, samt strømafbrydelser, hyperinflation, og generelt en økonomi i frit fald, mens millioner af folk søger at flygte til nabolandene (google BBC's "How Venezuela's crisis developed and drove out millions of people").

    Som så mange andre, både i USA og andetsteds i verden (ikke mindst Danmark), var Michael Moore fuld af begejstring og beundring over den Bolvarianske revolution da Hugo Chávez kom til magten for 20 år siden.  Så sent som i 2013 skrev filminstruktøren f.eks. at "Chavez har erklæret at olien tilhører folket.  Han brugte olie dollars til at eliminere 75% af ondartet fattigdom, og til at forsyne alle med et gratis sundhedssystem og uddannelse."

    Hvad er det, at en Michael Moore, en Oliver Stone, en Bernie Sanders, en Michael Tackett og en Dan Jørgensen, samt millioner af danskere, ikke forstår, at i Venezuela er socialismen ikke blot mislykket, det har bragt borgerne i Latinamerikas allerrigeste land til fattigdommens rand?

    I deres iver efter at vise hvor overlegen resten af verden – eller i hvert fald Europa – er i forhold til USA glemmer de at omtale de (mange) lande hvor det har vist sig at "tåberne" (udtrykket – som de fleste danskere er givetvis enige med – stammer fra Niels Jespersen i Berlingske vedrørende sådanne folk som Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin, og Donald Trump) som er skeptiske overfor indførelsen af et nationalt velfærdssamfund har utvivlsomt haft ret.

     Fordi det ikke har et sundhedssystem som "alle andre lande" bliver Kapitalismens hjemland regelmæssigt beskrevet som et "mareridt".  Skulle ordet ikke hellere anvendes om Venezuela, en nation med tomme supermarkedhylder der lider en 85% mangel på medicin og hvor millioner prøver at udvandre?

    Donald Trumps udtryk for sådan nogle lande skulle være "shitholes" (hvis det virkeligt passer at præsidenten har brugt det ord), et udtryk der er blevet ganske vist kritiseret over hele kloden.

    Nu taler vi om lande med tomme supermarkedhylder hvor man skal bruge flere timer hver dag til at købe et stykke brød eller en rulle toiletpapir (hvadenten det er i Leningrad – for en generation siden var det Sovjetunionen – eller Caracas) – hvis sådanne varer overhovedet kan findes.

    Er det virkelig taktløs at kalde sådan nogle lande for "shitholes"?

    Hvad ellers skal man kalde et land hvor en væsentlig del af befolkningen – hvadenten der er fra Latinamerika (i Venezuela er det en sjettedel) eller Syrien – er udvandret til udlandet i de sidste ti år?!

    Betyder det så ikke at emigranterne selv siger —  i så mange ord – at deres egne lande kan de facto beskrives som et shithole? 

"THE BLIND SPOT" I FOX NEWS KONTROVERSET

    I dette sammenhæng har der været meget humor over at en Fox News journalist har sammenlignet Venezuela med Danmark.  Der har utvivlsomt været overdrivelse i Trish Regans reportage, men kan det ikke virke lidt indskrænkende at den eneste lektie, som danskerne synes at have taget fra kontroverset er (igen) at de konservative amerikanere er ikke andet end nogle uvidende tumper som burde kende mere til verdenen?  (Samt selvfølgelig den stedsegrønne drøm om at USA burde efterligne Skandinavien og – endelig – få et socialistisk samfund.)

    Sig mig:  Passer det virkelig at danskerne bare kan lay back and relax?  Har danskerne ikke egentlig også en lektie at lære?  Som måske er vigtigere…  At når "tosserne" er betænkelige om lande (eller rettere om revolutionernes ledere) der har valgt socialismen, har de ofte haft… god grund til det?  Er Chavez's Venezuela (efter bl.a. Lenins USSR, Ceausescus Rumænien, og Maos Kina) ikke et godt bevis på det?

    Har alle lande (eller rettere, alle revolutionernes ledere) ikke lovet samme fremtid i skandinavisk stil?

    Hvem kan forudse med sikkerhed, om en venstreorienteret regime vil følge Denmarks eksempel eller Venezuelas?  Er der nogen (Michael Moore?  Bernie Sanders?  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?  Dan Jørgensen?), der har svar på det spørgsmål?

    Da Donald Trump gav sin første tale i FN i 2017, fokuserede medierne (det, som han kalder for "fake news") på det kontroversielle – hans kommentarer om Nordkorea og "Rocketman"; både i USA og i udlandet undlod de for det meste at berette om, hvad præsidenten havde at sige om socialismen.

    “The problem in Venezuela, is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented.  From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela, wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and devastation and failure.”  Følgende år sagde Trump at “Today, socialism has bankrupted the oil-rich nation and driven its people into abject poverty.”

    Vedrørende Trumps State of the Union: i Information griner en George Blecher af "talens gammeldags præg – og selv dens 1950'er-agtige udfald imod socialismens røde fare", men sandheden er, at socialismen synes at være den eneste ideologi som man skal bedømme på alene deres (sjældne) "succeser." Aldrig skal følgende lande nævnes: Albanien, Algeriet, Angola, Burma, Congo, Cuba, Ethiopien, Laos, Somalien, Vietnam, Yemen, osv osv osv…

    Næh, kun de skandinaviske lande og/eller Vesteuropa skal nævnes – selv om vi her i Skandinvien protesterer (med rette) at udtrykket Socialisme er langtfra en tilpassende beskrivelse om vore lande.

    I The Daily Signal forklarer David Harsanyi at "nutidens socialister [amerikanske såvel som udenlandske] klukker højt ved at lade som om kollektivistiske politik ikke fører til andet end uskadelige resultater som lokale biblioteker. Men i mange år priste de også diktatorerne i Cuba, Nicaragua og Venezuela" (for ikke at nævne Sovjetunionen og Kina).

    Det er ikke kun det danske system som danskernes yndlingspolitiker i USA, Bernie Sanders, har hyldet. "For ikke særlig længe siden," fortsætter David Harsanyi, roste Vermont Senatoren "Hugo Chavez som arkitekten af the American Dream, endnu mere end selveste USA." (!)

    Socialister i udlandet og i USA, som Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), "kan lide at bebrejde enhver ulighed, enhver glubsk forbryders handling, enhver nedtur og enhver social sygdom på kapitalismens uretfærdighed. Men ingen af dem indrømmer, at kapitalismen har været den mest effektive måde i historien til at afskaffe fattigdom."  Samt den mest effektive måde i historien til at financiere… det enkelte lands hele velfærdssystem.

NOGLE PINLIGE SPØRGSMÅL OM DET DANSKE VELFÆRDSSYSTEM

     Det siges at hvis socialismen har været en katastrofe i visse lande der fører til elendighed og fattigdom, så kan det ikke nægtes at det været en succes i en del andre lande.

    Det bringer os til adskillige pinlige spørgsmål:

    Passer det ikke, at de fleste lande hvor velfærdssamfundet blev oprettet nogenlunde godt efter Anden Verdenskrig – hovedsageligt Japan og Vesteuropa – er netop de lande som fik kæmpe injectioner af penge fra udlandet efter krigen; dvs milliarder af dollars fra – who else? – Amerika (i Europa, via Marshall-planen)?

    Udover det, har man lov til at sige at danskernes stolthed over deres sociale system nogengange undlader nogle betydningsfulde detaljer?

    To af de ting, man mest beskylder USA for er dels, at amerikanerne ikke bruger nok på det sociale og dels, at deres "krigsgale" generaler bruger (alt) for meget på militæret – mens de peger på deres egne landes fredelige, og gavmilde, brug af deres BNP (dvs af deres skatteyderes skattepenge).

    Men hov! passer det ikke, at hvis lande i Vesteuropa bruger lidet på deres egen militær medens de har penge til råde til at bruge penge på det sociale, er det ikke fordi – et det ikke netop fordi – Uncle Sam bruger så meget på Amerikas forsvar; som også fungerer som forsvar for hele Vesten?

    Forklarer det ikke samtidig amerikanske presidenters regelmæssige bønfald til Europa at bidrage mere til forsvaret, senest Donald Trumps vrede i Brussel over NATO i 2018?

    Det korte af det lange er følgende:  Europæerne kan gå rundt og prale over deres status som alhellige fredsstiftere i kontrast til de afskyelige amerikanske tumper præcis fordi deres regninger bliver betalt af og deres forsvar bliver garanteret af samme afskyelige amerikanske tumper.

    Hvorom alting er, så gentager vi danskere, hvor stolte vi er, at vi har dette sundhedssystem som vi allesammen har gavn af.

    Må nogle flere spørgsmål blive stillet?

    Var vi ikke lige så stolte af vores sundhedssystem for 10 år siden?  For 20 år siden?  For 40 år siden?  For dem som var i live dengang kan svaret næppe være andet end et helt sikkert ja.

    Ligeledes med andre emner, som vore kørefartøjer, eller vore telefoner.  Er vi ikke tilfredse med vore telefoner nu?  Var vi, eller vore forældre, ikke lige så tilfredse med vore telefoner for ti àr siden?  For 40 år siden?  Var vore forfædre ikke lige så tilfredse med vore telefoner for 100 år siden?  Med vore kommunikationsmidler i det 16. århundrede?  I det 11.?

    Men I dag ville vi ikke være tilfredse med vore kommunikationsmidler for 1000, eller 500, år siden.  Vi ville ikke være tilfredse med telefonerne fra 1930erne, eller fra 1970erne, eller fra 1990erne.  Faktisk ville vi den dag idag næppe være tilfredse med vore telefoner for blot 3-4 år siden.

    I mellemtiden er der nemlig kommet fremskridt.  Og hvor kommer den fremgang fra?  Kommer det ikke primært fra Nordamerika?

    Det er der ikke mange der tror på (fordi der ikke er mange der tænker over emnet?).  Find en liste på nobelpriserne i medecin (samt andre videnskabelige emner): Det er ikke altid amerikanere der vinder.  Men det er det oftest.  Og mange af de englændere og andre udlænginge der vinder har ofte arbejdet på… amerikanske instituter.

    For eksempel blev den franske presse stolt, da en franskmand var blandt Nobel vinderne i medecin i 2008 for forskninger om AIDS. Men dengang var Luc Montagnier ikke længere til at findes på l'Institut Pasteur; han var blevet tvunget ud af sit arbejde på grund af hans pensionsalder (social retfærdighed, forstås) og arbejdede i… USA.  (Den dag idag findes han forresten i Kina.)

    De seneste udviklinger der hjælper medicinens fremgang er personal computers og smartphones, opfindelser der var helt utænkelige da jeg blev født, og som ikke engang fandtes i science fiction historier.

    For et par år siden sad jeg ganske fredeligt på en café i Paris og nød en drink da jeg pludselig begyndte at se uhyggelige brune pletter der dansede foran det ene øje.  Jeg ringede til en venindes far som var pensioneret øjenlæge, og han sagde at jeg måtte øjeblikkeligt (hvis jeg må have lov til at bruge udtrykket) tage til l'Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts.  Det viste sig at være begyndelsen af en retinal løsrivelse.

    Næste gang vi mødtes, spurgte jeg ham hvordan det ville være gået da han var øjenlæge for 30 år siden.  Jo, jeg ville have fået en aftale med en specialist, og efter en tretimers operation ville jeg have overnattet i en hospitalsseng.  Men i 2016?  Der fik jeg laserbehandling fra en medicinsk pratikant, en pige 23 eller 24 år gammel, og efter 20 minutter var det slut og jeg fik lov til at gå hjem (givet, efter to-tre timer i ventesalen).

    Igen:  Ville danskerne (eller franskmændende) være tilfredse den dag idag for den velfærdssystem Danmark (eller Frankrig) havde for 50 år, eller 20 år, eller blot 5 år, siden?

    Nu ønsker man inderligt, at amerikanerne efterligner Europa — gid de der yankees kunne, ligesom os, bare ingen bekymringer have og fokusere på at have det sjovt og more sig — uden at det påvirker landets "can do" spirit.

    Da langt de fleste opfindelser der i de sidste 200 år – hvadenten det er i Nordamerika eller andetsteds i verden, hvadenten det er dampskibe eller jernbaner, hvadenten det er personal computers eller smartphones – er kommet fra eller er blevet forbedret i USA, burde alle forsøg på at ødelægge eller hæmme fornyelser (også kaldet: killing the goose that lays the golden eggs) ikke afværges?

    Som Stanford "policy expert" Lanhee Chen fortæller i en Prager University video (What's Wrong with Government-Run Healthcare?), "systemer hvor regeringen kontrollerer sundhedsvæsenet, nedtrykker på søgen efter nye botemidler og innovation … [og] medicinske gennembrud kommer sjældent fra sådanne lande. De kommer fra USA, hvor regeringen holder sig fra. … Biomedicinske forskningsudgifter i USA overstiger langt fra ethvert land med nationaliseret sundhedspleje … Løvens andel af de biomedicinske forsknings- og udviklingsudgifter i USA – over 70 milliarder dollar i 2012 – kommer fra den private sektor."  Dermed får amerikanerne innovation, som alle andre folkeslag eventuelt får nytte fra.

    (Men i det hele taget må det siges at danskerne burde holde sig bort fra de circa 200 korte Prager University videoer på internettet; det ville jo være forfærdeligt hvis den almindelige dansker ikke længere kunne overbevises om, hvor tumpet den almindelige yankee var.)

DEN SANDE GRUND HVORFOR USAs DEMOKRATER HYLDER SKANDINAVIEN
(OG HVORFOR EUROPÆERNE HYLDER USAs DEMOKRATER)

    Men lad os droppe Danmark som eksempel, så den almindelige læser ikke bliver forarget.  Lad os tale i stedet for om et af nabolandene.

    I sin bog om de nordiske lande (“The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia”, på dansk “Det er et lykkeligt land”), skriver Michael Booth at i "størstedelen af det 20. århundrede har Sverige de facto været en etpartistat, og partiet hed Socialdemokraterna.  De regulerede alle aspekter af deres pligtopfyldende, føjelige borgeres liv og gjorde deres yderste for at sørge for, at alle overholdt deres moderne, progressive samfundsnormer."

    Når forfatteren (som iøvrigt er venstreorienteret) beskriver Sverige som "en totalitær stat", er det selvfølgelig ikke i samme grad som f.eks. Sovjetunionen, men fordi der "var ikke ret mange aspekter af svenskernes liv, som staten ikke bestræbte sig at kontrollere – fra lønninger til børneopdragelse, drikkevaner, tv-vaner, længden af deres ferier og deres syn på Vietnam-krigen" (cf. Uncle Sams påståede forfærdelige undenrigspolitik).

    Men danskerne, og resten af de nordiske lande (hvis ikke hele verdenen), er overbevist om at intet kunne blive bedre for USA, og for verden selv, end hvis USA blev "fundamentally transformed" (Barack Obamas ord) og endelig fik lige så ekstensiv en administrativ formynderstat (på engelsk: a nanny state) som de europeiske lande har.

    Hvis det er rigtigt at Barack Obama var den vidunderligste amerikanske præsident i verdenshistorien (ligesom, i deres tid, Lenin og Che Guevara, for ikke at glemme Mao og Chávez, etc etc etc…), bliver den eneste logiske konklusion så ikke at det ville være vidunderligt for landet hvis sådan et pragtfuld Übermensch blev livsvarig Leder?

    Hvis det er rigtigt at demokraternes modstandere er så væmmelige som de beskyldes for ("deplorables", kalder Hillary Clinton republikanerne jo), er den logiske konklusion så ikke at disse umenneskelige barbarer burde miste flere rettigeheder, deriblandt deres free speech (ytringsfrihed) samt deres valgrettigeheder?

    Og er den logiske konklusion så ikke at republikanerne faktisk er folkefjender, som burde straffes — hvadenten det er med tab af valgrettigheder, høje(re) skatter og beslaglæggelse af adskillige egendomme?

    Eller måske burde Republikanerne faktisk sættes i genopdragelseslejre, for at blive omskolet?  Så kunne de endelig anerkende hvor vidunderligt det er for et folk at have venstreorienterede politikere, professionnelle funktionærer, og utallige love til dannelse af en nanny state der regerer ethvert aspekt af deres daglige liv?

    Det er jo ganske ufatteligt at amerikanerne ikke kan indse, hvor heldige de ville være, hvis blot Hillary eller Bernie eller AOC (eller Barack, stadig) var i det Hvide Hus.  Det er også ubegribeligt at amerikanerne ikke kan forstå hvor lykkelige de ville være hvis blot de havde lige så høje skatter som i Danmark, hvis blot de havde lige så mange funktionærer som i Danmark, og hvis blot de havde lige så meget bureaukrati som i Danmark.  (Og hermed lukker vi for sarkasmehanen.)

    Husk Booths beskrivelser om Sveriges etpartistat:  er den logiske konklusion ikke at drømmen om USA under demokraterne (hvadenten det er i selveste USA eller i udlandet) bliver et spejlbillede af Sverige under Socialdemokraterna?

    Bliver den logiske konklusion så ikke af den almindelige kritik af USA lyder temmelig meget som et spejlbillede af socialismens/kommunismens drømme?

    (Og forresten, forstår vi nu ikke lidt bedre hvorfor amerikanerne ønsker at skulle holde fast til deres våben og til deres Second Amendment?)

We "will commentate on current events with all the psychotic calm and serenity of a Palestinian father who explains that he can't wait for his 2 surviving sons to become martyrs": No Pasarán Celebrates 15th Anniversary

Fifteen years ago, after enduring months of unceasing tirades of criticism and venom from Europe (and especially France) linked to George W Bush's 2003 invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, a handful of independent bloggers (Douglas, Jonathan, and Liminal aka U*2) made good on their vow to unite their efforts and create a single, common weblog, one by the name of No Pasarán! (I would join five weeks later, and N Joe a year or two later.)

Of the more than 13,000 posts that have been written since 2004, I consider the following couple of posts to be two of the most important:

• The Era of the Drama Queens: Every Crisis Is a Triumph

• The Leftist Worldview in a Nutshell: A world of Deserving Dreamers Vs. Despicable Deplorables

Below are the first two days of No Pasarán!

Friday, February 20, 2004

Let's cool off	Il faut décompresser
Being a tad worried about my reputation [over at the blog Merde in France] I have decided to not write any controversial posts on this blog. Therefore, I will commentate on France's current events with all the psychotic calm and serenity of a Palestinian father who explains that he can't wait for his two surviving sons to become martyrs. How's that?	Etant un tant soit peu soucieux de ma réputation, je tâcherai de me limiter à des postes qui ne provoquent point de polémiques sur ce blog. Donc, je vous relaterai la situation en Fwance avec tout le calme et toute la sérenité psychotiques normalement employés par un père palestinien qui vous explique qu'il a hâte de voir ses deux fils survivants se transformer en martyres. Ça vous va?

United States

Le Monde's website is advertising a "lexicon for better understanding the United States" on the right-hand side of its front page. Although you have to pay in order to access the dictionary that contains over 400 "words of America," the advertisement is telling. If you click on the ad, a slide show opens with the following definitions:

(1) Sex: Sodomy remains illegal in a number of American states, and Bush promotes abstinence.
(2) Botox: 7.4 million Americans spent 7.7 billion euros on plastic surgery in 2000.
(3) Televangelists: The successors of nineteenth century traveling preachers, televangelists are television stars.

It's comforting to know that Le Monde is doing its part to break down misunderstandings and stereotypes between French and Americans. Now we just need Conan O'Brien to come up with a dictionary for Americans to understand France.

International Law:

Last month, the ship, Bugaled Breizh, sunk off of southern England. Five Frenchmen died. The culprit was allegedly a Philippine-registered vessel called the Seattle Trader, which may have collided with the Bugaled Breizh. Although the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea indicates that vessels are under the jurisdiction of the country in which they are registered and therefore any action with respect to the Seattle Trader should be authorized by the Philippine government, France is bringing justice to the alleged culprits and is hunting them down. Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has denounced France's actions as "gun-boat diplomacy."

International Law:

Three years after the Convention was created, France has ratified the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, which restricts production of certain pesticides, industrial chemicals and unintended byproducts of combustion such as DDT, PCBs and dioxin. France was the fiftieth country to ratify the Convention, and "fifty" was the number required for the Convention to enter into force.

The United States is a signatory to the treaty, and President Bush submitted the Convention for ratification to the Senate back in 2002.

Posted by Jonathan at 14:37

And here is the second day of the blog: 

Saturday, February 21, 2004

We have no bananas to-day!

Let's check in on our friend Dieudonné. Where do we find his career?



The stunt he pulled seems to be costing him dearly, according to Le Monde. The paper writes that the show he was supposed to have yesterday at L'Olympia was canceled. The venue's directors issued a press release stating that, after receiving anonymous threats, they were canceling the show due to the "climate of extreme tension we have observed over several days." They say that Olympia would "not have the means to guarantee the security of its audience and employees." Indeed, Olympia claim that on Tuesday they received a letter from police headquarters that "reminded [the director] of his responsibilities" and pointed out "that the staff in private establishments are responsible for safety and security on their premises." Contacted by the AFP, Dieudo's agent said the "funny man" didn't want to "react in anger."

So much for that. Dieudonné decided to hold his show in the street outside the theater.

They came by the hundred to chant the slogan "freedom of speech" and to support Dieudonné, who decided to have his show on a platform erected on the sidewalk opposite Olympia, the venue where he was supposed to have performed on Friday and which canceled this.

The humorist raised his arms, greeted his fans, the "descendants of slaves," the "Arabs," the "blacks" and also the whites of all ages who had massed on the boulevard des Capucines in Paris, surrounded by anti-riot police. "We love you," shouted young girls, waving their cameras.

Libération is writing derisively that now Diedonné "takes himself for a defender of the black cause" and reports that the "comedian" said "400 years of slavery and we don't have the right to speak!"

Alain Finkielkraut is criticizing those who leveled threats against l'Olympia (causing the venue to fear for its safety), as he thinks they are "transforming [Dieudonné] into a martyr for human rights and freedom of speech."

Dieudonné is now claiming that he's been banned from French public television. "I've been banned from the TV... just like Coluche and Bedos once were." This was categorically denied however by France 2. Do you imagine they have any interest in seeing him ever again? Do you think many other venues will want to book him now? Can we now ask, as W. once did, "Dis donc Dieudo, les recettes de ton dernier spectacle, ça achète beaucoup de bananes?"

reconnaissance

Le Monde is also offering a slide show of reconnaissance photos (note that in French reconnaissance means "gratitude") from World War II. Some are from the Imperial War Museum, some from the Aerial Reconnaissance Achives and some from the Public Record Office. They include that now famous photo of Auschwitz-Birkenau ("at its criminal apex") and of Omaha Beach (on D-day).

On décompresse...

Ça se fait comme ça... con nosotros

Posted by Douglas at 20:32

Strings attached: Chinese authorities, censors, and consumers influence nearly every aspect of American moviemaking in China

Hollywood has become so entangled with China that the movie industry can’t run without it

writes Erich Schwartzel in the Wall Street Journal.

Chinese investors and more than a billion potential moviegoers have made China indispensable to the film business. The country’s box-office total last year, at $6.6 billion, was the world’s second-largest compared with the first-place U.S., $11.4 billion. In a few years, analysts predict, China will be No. 1.

While the U.S. movie-ticket sales have remained relatively flat, China’s have more than tripled since 2011.

 … Private and state-backed Chinese companies have invested tens of billions of dollars in U.S. film ventures over the past decade. The relationship comes with strings attached. Chinese authorities, censors and consumers influence nearly every aspect of American moviemaking in China, from scripts to casting to greenlighting sequels.

… “We’re in a moment of significant disruption,” said Richard Lovett, president of Creative Artists Agency, which represents such clients as Sandra Bullock and J.J. Abrams. The firm announced Monday it was expanding its footprint in the country with a division called CAA China.

China’s ambition befits the big screen—to compete with the U.S. as a global storyteller and spread its perspective in the same fashion American filmmakers have for a century.

 … Chinese investors bring the support of a Communist Party that under China’s leader, President Xi Jinping, has made cultural influence an important piece of its long-term growth plans.

“We must make patriotism into the main melody of literature and art creation, guide the people to establish and uphold correct views of history, views of the nation, views of the country and views of culture, and strengthen their fortitude and resolve to be Chinese,” said Mr. Xi at the Beijing Forum on Literature and Art in October 2014.

Tensions between China and the White House have accelerated since the presidential election. Mr. Xi is seeking to strike a contrast with President Donald Trump as a champion of globalism, and he appears eager to advance China’s narrative—both by pressuring Hollywood studios to portray the nation favorably and, in the long term, by adopting Western filmmaking techniques for China’s own movie industry.

 … That desire got a push from a Hollywood panda named Po. The animated star of “Kung Fu Panda” was created by DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., the Glendale, Calif., studio then run by Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Mr. Katzenberg didn’t cook up “Panda” to win over Chinese audiences. He and the DreamWorks team conceived of the movie in 2004, when China sales were barely an afterthought. At its 2008 release, China’s market was small but growing.

Yet “Kung Fu Panda” was a hit in China, grossing $26 million, a surprise to everyone. Members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee—a top political advisory body—debated how a U.S. company could understand Chinese culture well enough to make the movie.

 … Hollywood executives can rattle off the rules for getting a movie approved by Chinese censors: no sex (too unseemly); no ghosts (too spiritual). Among 10 prohibited plot elements are “disrupts the social order” and “jeopardizes social morality.” Time travel is frowned upon because of its premise that individuals can change history.

 … No company has been more aggressive in pursuing Hollywood partnerships than Wanda, a conglomerate run by Wang Jianlin, China’s richest man, that made its name building shopping malls across China in the 1990s.

In 2012, Wanda bought AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., a Leawood, Kan., exhibitor that is now the largest movie-theater operator in the world. The company’s other entertainment holdings include Legendary Entertainment, the production company behind “Kong: Skull Island.” It recently built Wanda Studios in the coastal city of Qingdao, which houses 50 soundstages, the largest stretching to more than 100,000 square feet.

Check out the ending of Ridley Scott's “The Martian”, to see how a Chinese rocket is instrumental in saving the life of (again) astronaut Matt Damon. Or check out the ending of Roland Emmerich's “2012”, where the first nations to show compassion and allow thousands of commoners on the Arks — built in China, natch — prove to be China, Russia, and Japan; quickly followed — to the American commander-in-chief's dismay — by a handful of nations from Europe…

Related:
• Hollywood's Offerings Promise Only to Get More Anti-American

• In an effort to placate China's cultural sensitivities, Hollywood is willing to make all manner of changes to their films

• Hollywood alters film content to satisfy the communist gatekeepers in Beijing

• Is Kung Fu Panda 2 "a Metaphor for the China-US Struggle"?

• Further Inroads into Hollywood for China's Communist Party and Its Censors

• Chinese Film Studios Are the Planet's Largest, Mass-Producing Films Designed to Build a Positive Image of the Country

In a separate Wall Street Journal article five months earlier, Erich Schwartzel wrote that

Once a blip on studios’ radar, the Chinese box office grew nearly sixty-fold from 2003 to 2015, when its revenue passed $7 billion, and is expected to become the biggest in the world in 2019.

But those sweetened terms come at a cost, beginning with rules that can feel like creative straitjackets and on-set safety requirements that can be looser than in the U.S.

 … Filming [the $150 million historical fantasy “The Great Wall”] in China posed inherent problems, like Beijing’s infamous pollution. “How do I look Matt Damon in the face when he’s the only one not wearing a mask?” one producer asked in a meeting.

Clearer skies and more space were found when the crew started filming in Qingdao, a coastal city 400 miles southeast of the capital where Wanda is constructing a sprawling real-estate development known as Wanda Studios Qingdao. Wanda bought Legendary for $3.5 billion in early 2016.

"Republicans Pounce!" Department: The "Far Right" Sees "Opportunity in Tragedy" and Uses a Muslim Refugee's Murder of a 14-Year-Old Girl as "a Political Weapon"

In the “Republicans Pounce!” School of Journalism (conservatives pouncing, leaping, seizing, etc), we get this German gem from the New Yorker's Yascha Mounk:

How a Teen’s Death Has Become a Political Weapon
When a refugee killed a fourteen-year-old girl,
Germany’s far right saw opportunity in tragedy.

Offhand, before reading the story, one obviously doesn't know much about it, one way or another. For all I know, there may be some, if not a lot of, truth in Mounk's New Yorker piece. But: we still get the narrative that people on the right are hypocritical and treacherous, while their aims are nefarious and their (phony) positions are nothing more than political weapons. (Danke schön für the Instalink.)

Having said that, what are the chances in a piece like this that the murderer's name is Mohammed, Abdul, or Ali?

Incidentally, doesn't the description of towns like Mainz in Germany sounds a bit like the UK's Rotherham?

The eleven-year-old girl allegedly raped by Ali Basha [yes, there is another victim] … had repeatedly hung out with a group of much older refugees, many of them grown men. Far from being an aberration, [Wolfgang Werner of Wiesbaden's department of social affairs] casually acknowledged, the phenomenon of older refugees pursuing an attention-starved young local is part of a wider trend.

Furthermore, when you read about other similar crimes (and the murderers' equally light sentences) and about the ensuing outrage being used by liberals like Yascha Mounk to bewail rightists' propaganda and "fearmongering"(!), you can't help wondering what drugs they are on. Such as the murder of

fifteen-year-old Mia Valentin, from Kandel, a town of ten thousand inhabitants in southwestern Germany, close to the French border. [Mia had] begun a romantic relationship with an Afghan refugee, Abdul Mobin Dawodzai, who had been placed in her class at school. After they broke up, Dawodzai (who had claimed to be a minor but was at least twenty years old, according to authorities) allegedly began to stalk and threaten her. On December 27, 2017, he repeatedly stabbed her with a bread knife in front of a drugstore in the city’s center. She died a few hours later.

Dawodzai was tried for murder at the district court in nearby Landau, and, at the beginning of September, he was sentenced to eight years and six months in prison. Far-right agitators used the shocking details of Mia’s death for full propagandistic effect, just as they did with Der Fall Susanna.

But back to the subject of this post, the “Republicans Pounce!” School of Journalism. Back in the United States, the (cough) impartial and (cough) unbiased Snopes website — given the content of the concluding paragraph, San Francisco's David Emery has never read a book by Jonah Goldberg or seen a video by Dinesh D'Souza — also chooses to depict Republicans as moody, childish, and impulsive (not to mention "leaping").

None of [the media attention garnered by dozens of white-clad women in the House chamber where Trump delivered his address] went down well with Trump’s base of supporters, who leapt to social media to share memes likening the white-clothed Democrats to reviled, oppressive movements such as the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis. 

Put another way, the “Republicans Pounce!” School of Journalism is symbolic of the leftists' basic worldview in a nutshell, which comes down to Republicans being despicable deplorables while Democrats being deserving dreamers.

Another example is the Washington Post's Republicans seize on liberal positions to paint Democrats as radical. Which leads Stephen Green to line his comment with a touch of irony:

Legalized infanticide, outlawing private insurance, a wealth tax, drastically increasing the income tax, taking control of the entire economy in order to micromanage the climate… nothing radical to see here, nope.

In that perspective, Ed Driscoll links to Charles C W Cooke story in National Review on how the mainstream media operates.

  … the “press” and “the First Amendment” are held to be synonymous when they are no such thing and cannot logically be so.

 … Sometimes consciously, but most often unwittingly, journalists treat Democrats as normal and Republicans as abnormal and proceed accordingly in their coverage. Once one understands the rules, the whole setup becomes rather amusing. When a headline reads “Lawmaker Involved in Scandal,” one can immediately deduce that the lawmaker is a Democrat. Why? Because if he were a Republican, the story would make that clear in the headline. Without fail, stories that begin with “Republicans pounce” are actually about bad things that Democrats have done or said, while stories about bad things that Republicans have done or said begin with “Republican does or says a bad thing” and proceed to a dry recitation of the facts. A variation on this rule is “Republicans say,” which is used when a Republican says something that is so self-evidently true that, had a Democrat said it, it would have been reported straight. For a neat illustration of how farcical things have become, take a look at the Washington Post’s most recent “fact check,” which helpfully informs its readers that the claimed “one thousand burgers” President Trump bought for the Clemson football team were not, in fact, “piled up a mile high” because, “at two inches each, a thousand burgers would not reach one mile high.”

Democracy dies in darkness, indeed.

Selective political interest is disastrous in its own right. But when combined with the catastrophic historical illiteracy that is rife among the journalistic class, its result is what might best be described as the everything-happening-now-is-new fallacy, which leads almost everybody on cable news and the opinion pages to deem every moment of national irritation unprecedented, to cast all political fights as novel crises, and, provided it is being run by Republicans, to determine that the present Congress is “the worst ever.” Turn on the television and you will learn that our language is the “least civil,” our politics is “the most divided,” and our environment is the “most dangerous.” When a Democrat is president, he is “facing opposition of the kind that no president has had to suffer”; when a Republican is president, he is held to be badly unlike the previous ones, who were, in turn, regarded as a departure from their predecessors. Continually, we are held to be on the verge of descending into anarchy or reinstituting Jim Crow or murdering the marginalized or, a particular favorite of mine, establishing the regime outlined in The Handmaid’s Tale. Past is prologue, context, and balm. Without it, all is panic.

 

Northam at 24 and Kavanaugh at 17: What's the Difference?

Three or four months after Brett Kavanaugh was raked over the coals in the Fall of 2018 for allegedly reprehensible behavior at the age of 17, it emerged that a page dedicated to Ralph Northam in his 1984 yearbook shows two men posing in blackface and in a Ku Klux Klan robe when the medical student was 24 or 25, or about halfway to the age of 30.

Immediately rising to defend the newly-elected governor of Old Dominion — Northam (who had an interesting nickname in college) would eventually break silence to say that he was"deeply sorry" for appearing in the photo — was his fellow Democrat, Virginia state senate minority leader Richard Saslaw:

Northam's “whole life has been about exactly the opposite" said the Democrat from Fairfax, “and that’s what you need to examine, not something that occurred 30 years ago. While it’s in very poor taste, I would think there is [probably] no one in the General Assembly who would like their college conduct examined. I would hate to have to go back and examine my two years in the Army. trust me. I was 18 years old and I was a handful, OK? His life since then has been anything but. It’s been a life of helping people, and many times for free.”

Two comments:

1) Had photos of a Republican posing in blackface or a KKK hood surfaced, there would be nothing but the deepest outrage, followed by demands that he or she resign immediately. In that perspective, notes Ed Driscoll,

Northam appears to be a man of indeterminate party, based on the missing D-word in WTVR article.

2) Beyond that, Richard Saslaw's comments happen to be entirely reasonable.  Of course, in view of the inanity of going after someone in college in his mid-20s for "something that occurred 30 years ago," you wonder why — other than double standards — sensible-sounding Democrats would do the exact same to someone who was a teenager in high school. (Oh, that's right, my bad: in the second case, we are talking about a Republican, i.e., a deplorable.)

This should be easier work than parsing every word and semicolon in the Kavanaugh yearbook. https://t.co/3VA6Ct1NIn

— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) February 1, 2019

But here comes the kicker: if it is true that no one would want their college (or high school) conduct examined too closely, owing to the fact that most people at that age had "poor taste" and were (to say the least) "a handful", why on earth do we allow all these dunderheads go to the voting booth?

The voting age of 18 is so universally accepted, at least in the Western world, that to question it sounds irredeemably passé and unfashionable.

It is likewise held that the systematic lowering of the voting age (it often used to be 25 or so and later 21) is nothing if not concrete proof of the march forward towards an ever-purer state of a democratic society.

And yet, one of the better quotes attributed to Winston Churchill is

If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart;
If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain

The question arises:  Why on Earth would a society — any civilized society — want people "without brains" to be part of the voting process to determine the laws under which we (and they) live and the type of politicians and issues that affect us all.

(Unless, of course, they are the drama queens, the chicken littles, the prima donnas, the crybabies, the crybullies, and the other spoiled brats thriving on passion and emotion — here's looking at you, Donkey Party.)

As Michael Walsh ponders repeal of "the first of the so-called 'Progressive Era' amendments" i.e., the 16th Amendment, has it occurred to anybody that there may be plenty of good reasons to have the 26th Amendment revoked as well? 

The Covington story was just too good to check: churning out garbage stories and contrived media creations with disturbing regularity

Dan Levin of the New York Times doesn’t like the suggestion that he’s got an ax to grind with Christian schools

notes Benny Huang wryly.

Levin, who covers the youth beat for the Newspaper of Record™, recently tweeted:

“I’m a New York Times reporter writing about #exposechristianschools. Are you in your 20s or younger who went to a Christian school? I’d like to hear about your experience and its impact on your life. Please DM me.”

Solicitation of this kind is one clue that a reporter has already allowed his agenda to write the story. When a reporter asks his readers to send in material for an upcoming article, you can bet that the article’s tone, slant, and message have already been determined. This is especially true when the journalist doing the solicitation writes for an outlet like the Times. He knows what type of people will respond just as his readers know what kind of material he wants to receive.

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro translated the tweet well when he tweeted back:

“I’m a reporter seeking lapsed religious people to rip on their religious upbringing. Please contact me!”

 … The #exposechristianschools hashtag [Dan Levin] spoke of recently proliferated when the Washington Post discovered that the Second Lady, Karen Pence, works as a part-time art teacher at a Christian school in Virginia that maintains a code of conduct prohibiting homosexual behavior or homosexual advocacy. Somehow this became a scandal for two or three days until Covingtongate eclipsed it.
This just in — Christian schools have Christian rules!

There’s absolutely nothing scandalous about a Christian school having a code of conduct, nor is there anything scandalous about Mrs. Pence, who is a Christian, choosing to work there. If reporters wanted to write about a real scandal, they might want to cover the youth-targeted homosexual recruitment and indoctrination efforts that are sweeping the nation. For more on that, see drag queen story hour or the Harvey Milk state holiday that California public school students are forced to suffer through, named of course for the homosexual pederast city councilman who supported and defended Reverend Jim “Kool-Aid” Jones and his People’s Temple.

The Covington Catholic media firestorm that displaced “art-teachergate” seemed to be tinged with the same anti-Christian bigotry that had been directed at Karen Pence. We soon learned that Covington Catholic was just brimming with — gasp! — “homophobia.” Whatever that is.

 … It’s therefore quite understandable that media critics would be skeptical of a New York Times reporter who wants to write a story about Christian schools. It smells like a hatchet job. Dan Levin quickly explained that it was not his intention to “expose” Christian schools himself, but merely to write about #exposechristianschools as a trending hashtag.
No agenda here! Just trying to cover a story.

That might be a little more convincing if “art-teachergate,” “Covingtongate,” “valedictoriangate,” and the hashtag in question hadn’t been contrived media creations. Here was a media figure intending to produce yet more media coverage about this month’s media creations. And we’re supposed to believe that he’s merely reporting on a cultural trend from a distance.

My suspicion is that Dan Levin had already written the story in his mind, he just needed quotes to fill in the blanks. “Teachers told me only Christians can go to heaven!” “Someone measured my skirt!” Etc., etc.

Now that Levin has been called out for his agenda, he is working to counteract the impression that he is part of the #exposechristianschools movement he intends to write about.

 … Dan Levin strikes me as a very typical reporter. He seems to have an agenda but is unwilling to admit it even to himself. But who would? The “A” word sounds so sinister.

This is where cognitive dissonance kicks into high gear. Reporters who know darned well that they have agendas must rationalize to themselves why they should be allowed to cover stories that they clearly cannot distance themselves from emotionally. The process of rationalization begins with the assumption that a good agenda shouldn’t really be called an agenda because agendas are, by definition, bad. So, a reporter who merely wants to advance “civil rights” or protect our air and water cannot be guilty of pushing an agenda … can he?

Yes, he can.

The first problem with this rationalization is that agendas are not bad by definition; they are bad by connotation. Good or bad, an agenda is still an agenda and it should still be checked at the newsroom door. Agendas spawn biases, and biases warp stories.

See the Covington Catholic kerfuffle for a good example of that. The story was just too good to check. Young white men from Kentucky, who attend an all-boys Catholic school, wearing MAGA hats, attending a pro-life rally, encounter an American Indian who at least claimed to be a Vietnam veteran. There are just so many reasons for liberal reporters to despise these kids that the story practically writes itself.

Of course the Covington boys acted like louts — and racists too! Reporters who had been conditioned to see American Indians as the ultimate victim group took all of Nathan Phillips’s lies at face value. They checked nothing and they did no legwork to track down other videos that might have provided some much-needed context. If they had, they would have seen that the boys themselves were accosted by not one but two racist groups.

The second problem with this rationalization is that everyone thinks his own agenda is good. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have adopted it as his own. If only bad agendas can truly be called agendas, then only the other guy can possibly have one.

Consider for a moment the now disgraced Mary Mapes. She is the former “60 Minutes” producer who lost her job over forged National Guard memos that she intended to foist on the American people in the heat of the 2004 election campaign. According to Mapes’s father, Don Mapes, she “went into journalism with an ax to grind, that is, to promote feminism — radical feminism, I might say — and liberalism.”

The way Don Mapes talks about it, “radical feminism” sounds like a very bad thing. I happen to agree. But would Mary Mapes and her journalistic colleagues agree? They might prefer the term women’s rights or choice but I doubt that they would shy away from pushing their agenda under a name of their choosing.

And what about liberalism? To most liberals I’ve ever met, liberalism isn’t a bias or even a political orientation — it’s just common decency. Is that really an “agenda?”

Why yes, it is. And it’s this agenda that got Mary Mapes in so much trouble. Memogate was the crazy but true story of a network news department gone mad with confirmation bias. Mapes & Co. knew in their heart of hearts that Bush had gone AWOL and nothing could change their minds. This was particularly important during the 2004 election campaign when the foremost issue was the Iraq War. They wanted so badly to get the word out, to sway public opinion, and to turn an election, that they didn’t seem to notice that military memoranda that were supposedly written in 1973 were clearly composed using Microsoft Word!

 … Did Mary Mapes have an agenda? Of course she did! She was practically working as an adjunct to the Democratic Party, hence her unscrupulous coordination with John Kerry’s campaign manager, Joe Lockhart. But her agenda was, in her mind at least, the very best that a person could have. So why sully it by calling it an agenda?
The media in this country are basically incorrigible. The root of their problem is their incessant pushing of personal agendas, which they would be loath to admit even having if called by their proper name. So, they churn out garbage stories with disturbing regularity. Rather than informing the public with dispassionate professionalism, they crusade for causes that they hold dear. Until the journalism profession starts upholding some professional standards, I don’t see anything changing.

Brexit Solution: Let Britain Become a Province of Canada (then it could have its kayak and heat it too)

Looking through a couple of old Economist issues, I cam upon a pair of articles called Is Brexit unavoidable? and the Special report on the future of the European Union, to which readers (some of them witty) responded as follows:

On Brexit and the European Union

* Surely the solution to the Brexit negotiations is very simple. My squash club has a membership fee of £25 ($31) per month for unlimited access, but non-members have to pay £10 per hour to play, which is good value for people who only want to play once a month. Britain will save £10bn by giving up membership of the EU, but it wants to continue to use some of the facilities. Why should the EU not welcome Britain to whatever facilities it wishes to be part of, at, say, £1bn per shot, for example: £1bn to be in the open-skies agreement; £1bn for visa-free travel; £1bn for Interpol? This could even form the basis of the multi-tier Europe so eloquently laid out in your special report. If non-members were willing to cough up to access the good parts of the EU, there would be more money available to improve the less good parts.

PAUL SAUNDERSON
Greenville, South Carolina

There is a simple solution to the Brexit conundrum, one that will allow Britain to have its trade cake and eat it too: the UK need only become the 11th province of Canada. Canada and the EU recently concluded a trade agreement and the UK would accede to it as a Canadian province. It would also join NAFTA and enjoy liberal trade terms with the United States.

Adjustments would be few and easy. Canada’s provinces have wide powers and by treaty the UK’s could be even broader. The queen would remain head of state. As a provincial flag, the Union flag would still be flown, with the Canadian flag a discreet presence on government buildings. As Hong Kong and Macau kept the dollar and pataca, so Britain could keep the pound. English would be an official language (though so would French). Such a move wouldn’t be unprecedented. Newfoundland left the UK and joined Canada in 1949. Time to think outside the box.

TED STROLL
San Jose, California

Britain left out in the cold

Ted Stroll suggested that Britain should become a new province of Canada after Brexit (Letters, April 6th). There are additional benefits to doing this. Britain would have access both to the boat-building technology of the Inuits and to the oil sands in Alberta. In this way it could have its kayak and heat it.
TOM MURPHY
Montivilliers, France

Do Not Mock AOC's Global Warming Predictions; After All, Scores of VIPs, from Al Gore to UN Officials through MSM Outlets, Agree with Her Whole-Heartedly

Less than a year after frigid temperatures in Europe made parts of the continent colder than the North Pole, brutal Arctic cold is to send temperatures plunging in parts of America's Midwest, with wind chills at "life-threatening" levels (as low as -40 degrees in many locations).

But still, we must beware of global warming of climate change. Indeed, thanks to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), we now know that

we’re like, the world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change

Quoting a "landmark" report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) at a Martin Luther King forum in New York City ("Urgent changes needed to cut risk of extreme heat, drought, floods and poverty," is the The Guardian's subhead), the New York Democrat went on to speak of "that fierce urgency of now" and compare the Social Justice Warriors' gallant calling and the SJWs' valient fight to the most murderous conflict in world history:

like this is the war, this is our World War II

In case you don't get it: the whiny Social Justice Warrior deserves as much respect and as much deference as the GI who landed on Omaha Beach and as the Marine who stormed Iwo Jima. 

That was before explaining why teen-agers and college students are in the possession of more wisdom than those clueless parents of theirs:

… it’s … a generational difference. Young people understand that climate change is an existential threat

Doesn't AOC's bitterness sound like she can barely stand to be around old(er) Republicans? It's true that Mark Twain is alleged (ages vary) to have said that

When I was a boy of 17, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 24, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years

It is true that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is now 29. Still, do not be too harsh on any of our younger citizens, in view of the fact that the leftist culture has been pushing childhood ever forward (remember Obamacare's age 27 for "kids" being on their parents' health insurance?) and, indeed, its seeming desire to extend it to a person's entire lifetime.

In any case, please refrain from making fun of AOC. (Here's looking at you, Ed Driscoll!)  ;)

After all, there are many important people, many of our betters, many VIPs, not least in the above-mentioned United Nation, who happen to agree with AOC.

• Al Gore, for one, has made the call for AOC's "fierce urgency of now", predicting that the Earth's ice caps will have melted within five years. (When did the former vice president make that prediction? That would be, uh, in the year… 2008…)

• ABC has predicted that within seven years, climate change would lead to the flooding of New York City. (When did they say that?  That was also in… 2008…)

• NASA's climate change guru, Jim Hansen, has also made the call for AOC's "fierce urgency of now", warning that the President of the United States has only four years to save the earth. (When did Hansen say that, and to whom? That would be, er, to… Barack Obama in… 2009…)

• United Nations scientists and other climatistas have also made the call for AOC's "fierce urgency of now", warning that "There could be as little as eight years left to avoid a dangerous global average rise of 2C or more." (When did they issue this warning? That would, uh, be in… 2007…)

• The New York Times and the Independent have also made the call for AOC's "fierce urgency of now", predicting that global warming is so serious that very soon, snowfalls will be nothing but a thing of the past (see also the Washington Post). (When did that prediction come? Uh, that would be in the year… 2000…; while Le Monde predicted in 2016 that soon cinema will be the only thing left to perpetuate the memory of snow, CNN reported that NYC hasn't seen snow like [that of March 2018] in 130 years, marking "the fifth consecutive season that at least 30 inches of snow have fallen in New York City.")

Meanwhile, year after year after year, Britain's winters have proven to be among the coldest in a century.

• Time and again, the United Nations has made the call for AOC's "fierce urgency of now", issuing a dire warning that within 10 years, "entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels." (When did a senior environmental official of the UN tell us that an "exodus of 'Eco-refugees'" would threaten political chaos? Noel Brown made the comment in… 1989… "if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000"…)

• Awareness of the dreadful calamity that awaits humanity led to the annual Earth Day event, where the call for AOC's "fierce urgency of now" has been echoed year after year since 1970. (What exactly did the drama queens warning us about during the very first Earth Day? It was global cooling, with the very first Earth Day devoted to… the coming… ice age!)

Related: 13 Most Ridiculous Predictions Made on Earth Day, 1970 and
18 spectacularly wrong predictions made around the time of first Earth Day
in 1970, expect more this year (via Sarah Hoyt and Ed Driscoll, who asks:
How can you continually believe the world is coming to end for a half century?)

As for the rising sea levels that we keep being warned about, I addressed that in a post a few years ago:

think of New York City, of Miami, of Galveston, of San Francisco, of Tokyo, of Sydney, of Goa, of Alexandria, of Saint Tropez, of Copenhagen.

Correct me if I am wrong, but [in the past 5 weeks, in the past 5 months,] in the past 5 years, in the past 50 years, even offhand in the past 500 years (?), has the sea level in any of those places risen by even one inch, by even one centimeter?

Stories of California's unending drought, along with the above examples, may help explain distrust of the government and the establishment of such theories as Betteridge's Law of Headlines along with the reason why conservatives are wont to pen columns with titles such as 5 Reasons It's Dumb To Panic Over Global Warming.

(Related: Secret Science Vs. the Devil's Work: According to environmentalists, if members of the EPA can’t hide their data and refuse to show their calculations they’ll be “crippled”)

A common (a deliberate?) misconception on the left is that rightists are dogmatic (and greedy) extremists who fly in the face of reality by cherry-picking their date to advance false and, indeed, deceitful and harmful narratives.

But ain't it true that conservatives are anything but activists, let alone extremists? They are simply regular folks who don't want to pressure any of their neighbors into doing anything but simply want to be left alone and who, on the contrary, keep their eyes, their ears, and indeed their brains, open? (Such as remembering that climate change used to be called global warming…)

It is a fair bet that many conservatives have good reason to predict that 2030 will bring just as little corroboration to AOC's forecasts as did the years 2015, 2013, 2000, etc, etc, etc, to those of her predecessors…

Let Larry Kummer have the last word:

Remember all those predictions of a “permanent drought” in California? Those were examples of why three decades of climate alarmism has not convinced the American people to take severe measures to fight anthropogenic climate change: alarmists exaggerate the science, and are proven wrong — repeatedly. 

Update: Understanding climate means understanding maths, physics, and statistics:
Those who ascribe the word ‘denier’ to people not in agreement with consensus
climate science are trivializing the suffering and deaths of millions of people 

Update 2: Fox News:

President Donald Trump on Monday mocked climate scientists as he jokingly pleaded for global warming to “come back fast, we need you!” while warning the Midwest of impending freezing temperatures.

“In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder,” Trump tweeted on January 2019. “People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!”

In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2019

Update 3: Is “climate change” going to follow “global warming” out the window? asks Benjamin Arie:

 … Scientists are supposed to be apolitical, unbiased, and soberly committed to facts over agendas. But to almost nobody’s surprise, they seem to have been purposely manipulating the language used to talk about the climate — and as Politico reported, that’s happening again right now.

“Scientists and meteorologists on the front lines of the climate wars are testing a new strategy to get through to the skeptics and outright deniers,” 

declared the subtitle of journalist Bryan Bender’s latest piece for [Politico Magazine].

 … Nobody knows for sure what the next “narrative” in the climate debate will be, but reporter P.J. Gladnick has a hunch. The next phrase to be rolled out, he suggested for the Media Research Center, is one you might have already heard on television: “Extreme Weather.”

 So there you have it, kids: from “the coming ice age” to “global warming” to “climate change” to “Extreme Weather.” It's been quite a ride…