James Delingpole talks to Professor Ian Plimer, the Australian geologist, whose new book shows that ‘anthropogenic global warming’ is a dangerous, ruinously expensive fiction, a ‘first-world luxury’ with no basis in scientific fact. Shame on the publishers who rejected the book.

….read full article HERE.

“The fantasy of a democratic revolution overthrowing the Islamic Republic — and thus solving everyone’s foreign policy problems a la the 1991 Soviet collapse — has passed.”

Speaking of the situation in Iran, U.S. President Barack Obama said June 26, “We don’t yet know how any potential dialogue will have been affected until we see what has happened inside of Iran.” On the surface that is a strange statement, since we know that with minor exceptions, the demonstrations in Tehran lost steam after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for them to end and security forces asserted themselves. By the conventional wisdom, events in Iran represent an oppressive regime crushing a popular rising. If so, it is odd that the U.S. president would raise the question of what has happened in Iran.

In reality, Obama’s point is well taken. This is because the real struggle in Iran has not yet been settled, nor was it ever about the liberalization of the regime. Rather, it has been about the role of the clergy — particularly the old-guard clergy — in Iranian life, and the future of particular personalities among this clergy.

Ahmadinejad Against the Clerical Elite
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ran his re-election campaign against the old clerical elite, charging them with corruption, luxurious living and running the state for their own benefit rather than that of the people. He particularly targeted Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, an extremely senior leader, and his family. Indeed, during the demonstrations, Rafsanjani’s daughter and four other relatives were arrested, held and then released a day later.

Rafsanjani represents the class of clergy that came to power in 1979. He served as president from 1989-1997, but Ahmadinejad defeated him in 2005. Rafsanjani carries enormous clout within the system as head of the regime’s two most powerful institutions — the Expediency Council, which arbitrates between the Guardian Council and parliament, and the Assembly of Experts, whose powers include oversight of the supreme leader. Forbes has called him one of the wealthiest men in the world. Rafsanjani, in other words, remains at the heart of the post-1979 Iranian establishment.

Ahmadinejad expressly ran his recent presidential campaign against Rafsanjani, using the latter’s family’s vast wealth to discredit Rafsanjani along with many of the senior clerics who dominate the Iranian political scene. It was not the regime as such that he opposed, but the individuals who currently dominate it. Ahmadinejad wants to retain the regime, but he wants to repopulate the leadership councils with clerics who share his populist values and want to revive the ascetic foundations of the regime. The Iranian president constantly contrasts his own modest lifestyle with the opulence of the current religious leadership.

Recognizing the threat Ahmadinejad represented to him personally and to the clerical class he belongs to, Rafsanjani fired back at Ahmadinejad, accusing him of having wrecked the economy. At his side were other powerful members of the regime, including Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani, who has made no secret of his antipathy toward Ahmadinejad and whose family links to the Shiite holy city of Qom give him substantial leverage. The underlying issue was about the kind of people who ought to be leading the clerical establishment. The battlefield was economic: Ahmadinejad’s charges of financial corruption versus charges of economic mismanagement leveled by Rafsanjani and others.

When Ahmadinejad defeated Mir Hossein Mousavi on the night of the election, the clerical elite saw themselves in serious danger. The margin of victory Ahmadinejad claimed might have given him the political clout to challenge their position. Mousavi immediately claimed fraud, and Rafsanjani backed him up. Whatever the motives of those in the streets, the real action was a knife fight between Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani. By the end of the week, Khamenei decided to end the situation. In essence, he tried to hold things together by ordering the demonstrations to halt while throwing a bone to Rafsanjani and Mousavi by extending a probe into the election irregularities and postponing a partial recount by five days.

The Struggle Within the Regime
The key to understanding the situation in Iran is realizing that the past weeks have seen not an uprising against the regime, but a struggle within the regime. Ahmadinejad is not part of the establishment, but rather has been struggling against it, accusing it of having betrayed the principles of the Islamic Revolution. The post-election unrest in Iran therefore was not a matter of a repressive regime suppressing liberals (as in Prague in 1989), but a struggle between two Islamist factions that are each committed to the regime, but opposed to each other.

The demonstrators certainly included Western-style liberalizing elements, but they also included adherents of senior clerics who wanted to block Ahmadinejad’s re-election. And while Ahmadinejad undoubtedly committed electoral fraud to bulk up his numbers, his ability to commit unlimited fraud was blocked, because very powerful people looking for a chance to bring him down were arrayed against him.

The situation is even more complex because it is not simply a fight between Ahmadinejad and the clerics, but also a fight among the clerical elite regarding perks and privileges — and Ahmadinejad is himself being used within this infighting. The Iranian president’s populism suits the interests of clerics who oppose Rafsanjani; Ahmadinejad is their battering ram. But as Ahmadinejad increases his power, he could turn on his patrons very quickly. In short, the political situation in Iran is extremely volatile, just not for the reason that the media portrayed.

Rafsanjani is an extraordinarily powerful figure in the establishment who clearly sees Ahmadinejad and his faction as a mortal threat. Ahmadinejad’s ability to survive the unified opposition of the clergy, election or not, is not at all certain. But the problem is that there is no unified clergy. The supreme leader is clearly trying to find a new political balance while making it clear that public unrest will not be tolerated. Removing “public unrest” (i.e., demonstrations) from the tool kits of both sides may take away one of Rafsanjani’s more effective tools. But ultimately, it actually could benefit him. Should the internal politics move against the Iranian president, it would be Ahmadinejad — who has a substantial public following — who would not be able to have his supporters take to the streets.

The View From the West
The question for the rest of the world is simple: Does it matter who wins this fight? We would argue that the policy differences between Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani are minimal and probably would not affect Iran’s foreign relations. This fight simply isn’t about foreign policy.

Rafsanjani has frequently been held up in the West as a pragmatist who opposes Ahmadinejad’s radicalism. Rafsanjani certainly opposes Ahmadinejad and is happy to portray the Iranian president as harmful to Iran, but it is hard to imagine significant shifts in foreign policy if Rafsanjani’s faction came out on top. Khamenei has approved Iran’s foreign policy under Ahmadinejad, and Khamenei works to maintain broad consensus on policies. Ahmadinejad’s policies were vetted by Khamenei and the system that Rafsanjani is part of. It is possible that Rafsanjani secretly harbors different views, but if he does, anyone predicting what these might be is guessing.

Rafsanjani is a pragmatist in the sense that he systematically has accumulated power and wealth. He seems concerned about the Iranian economy, which is reasonable because he owns a lot of it. Ahmadinejad’s entire charge against him is that Rafsanjani is only interested in his own economic well-being. These political charges notwithstanding, Rafsanjani was part of the 1979 revolution, as were Ahmadinejad and the rest of the political and clerical elite. It would be a massive mistake to think that any leadership elements have abandoned those principles.

When the West looks at Iran, two concerns are expressed. The first relates to the Iranian nuclear program, and the second relates to Iran’s support for terrorists, particularly Hezbollah. Neither Iranian faction is liable to abandon either, because both make geopolitical sense for Iran and give it regional leverage.

Tehran’s primary concern is regime survival, and this has two elements. The first is deterring an attack on Iran, while the second is extending Iran’s reach so that such an attack could be countered. There are U.S. troops on both sides of the Islamic Republic, and the United States has expressed hostility to the regime. The Iranians are envisioning a worst-case scenario, assuming the worst possible U.S. intentions, and this will remain true no matter who runs the government.

We do not believe that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, a point we have made frequently. Iran understands that the actual acquisition of a nuclear weapon would lead to immediate U.S. or Israeli attacks. Accordingly, Iran’s ideal position is to be seen as developing nuclear weapons, but not close to having them. This gives Tehran a platform for bargaining without triggering Iran’s destruction, a task at which it has proved sure-footed.

In addition, Iran has maintained capabilities in Iraq and Lebanon. Should the United States or Israel attack, Iran would thus be able to counter by doing everything possible destabilize Iraq — bogging down U.S. forces there — while simultaneously using Hezbollah’s global reach to carry out terror attacks. After all, Hezbollah is today’s al Qaeda on steroids. The radical Shiite group’s ability, coupled with that of Iranian intelligence, is substantial.

We see no likelihood that any Iranian government would abandon this two-pronged strategy without substantial guarantees and concessions from the West. Those would have to include guarantees of noninterference in Iranian affairs. Obama, of course, has been aware of this bedrock condition, which is why he went out of his way before the election to assure Khamenei in a letter that the United States had no intention of interfering.

Though Iran did not hesitate to lash out at CNN’s coverage of the protests, the Iranians know that the U.S. government doesn’t control CNN’s coverage. But Tehran takes a slightly different view of the BBC. The Iranians saw the depiction of the demonstrations as a democratic uprising against a repressive regime as a deliberate attempt by British state-run media to inflame the situation. This allowed the Iranians to vigorously blame some foreigner for the unrest without making the United States the primary villain.

But these minor atmospherics aside, we would make three points. First, there was no democratic uprising of any significance in Iran. Second, there is a major political crisis within the Iranian political elite, the outcome of which probably tilts toward Ahmadinejad but remains uncertain. Third, there will be no change in the substance of Iran’s foreign policy, regardless of the outcome of this fight. The fantasy of a democratic revolution overthrowing the Islamic Republic — and thus solving everyone’s foreign policy problems a la the 1991 Soviet collapse — has passed.

That means that Obama, as the primary player in Iranian foreign affairs, must now define an Iran policy — particularly given Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s meeting in Washington with U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell this Monday. Obama has said that nothing that has happened in Iran makes dialogue impossible, but opening dialogue is easier said than done. The Republicans consistently have opposed an opening to Iran; now they are joined by Democrats, who oppose dialogue with nations they regard as human rights violators. Obama still has room for maneuver, but it is not clear where he thinks he is maneuvering. The Iranians have consistently rejected dialogue if it involves any preconditions. But given the events of the past weeks, and the perceptions about them that have now been locked into the public mind, Obama isn’t going to be able to make many concessions.

It would appear to us that in this, as in many other things, Obama will be following the Bush strategy — namely, criticizing Iran without actually doing anything about it. And so he goes to Moscow more aware than ever that Russia could cause the United States a great deal of pain if it proceeded with weapons transfers to Iran, a country locked in a political crisis and unlikely to emerge from it in a pleasant state of mind.

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Craig Venter, the controversial American scientist who helped decode the human genome, has announced the discovery of ancient bacteria that can turn coal into methane, suggesting they may help to solve the world’s energy crisis.

The bugs, discovered a mile underground by one of Venter’s microbial prospecting teams, are said to have unique enzymes that can break down coal. Venter said he was already working with BP on how to exploit the find.

He said: “We have found a huge number of microbes a mile or so deep in the earth. In fact, there is more diversity under the surface of the earth than in the ocean. It is absolutely stunning.

“Some of these underground water sources have been isolated for 50m to 135m years and we have found totally unique organisms.”

…full article HERE.

“One of the most remarkable changes occurred on April 13, when leading global warming hysteric Paul Sheehan—who writes for the main Sydney newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, which has done as much to hype the threat of global warming as any Australian newspaper—reviewed Plimer’s book and admitted he was taken aback. He describes Plimer, correctly, as “one of Australia’s foremost Earth scientists,” and praised the book as “brilliantly argued” and “the product of 40 years’ research and breadth of scholarship.”

What does Plimer’s book say? Here is Sheehan’s summary:

Much of what we have read about climate change, [Plimer] argues, is rubbish, especially the computer modeling on which much current scientific opinion is based, which he describes as “primitive.”…

The Earth’s climate is driven by the receipt and redistribution of solar energy. Despite this crucial relationship, the sun tends to be brushed aside as the most important driver of climate. Calculations on supercomputers are primitive compared with the complex dynamism of the Earth’s climate and ignore the crucial relationship between climate and solar energy.

To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable—human-induced CO2—is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly.

…. read full article HERE.

Speaking to the House of Commons committee hearings on Canada’s “human rights” commissions, Professor Martin of the University of Western Ontario gave a remarkable presentation on what he calls their “horrifying record”. You can listen to the audio here – it’s apparently too strong meat to let the citizenry see the video. You won’t want to miss it.

Among its other notable features, it marks the latest stage in the denormalization of Richard Warman, former Canadian “Human Rights” Commission employee, victorious plaintiff on every Section 13 prosecution since 2002 and the country’s most prominent Internet Nazi. Professor Martin calls him “the utterly odious Richard Warman” – and even brings up the Anne Cools post, as Senator Cools happens to be a friend of the professor.

Section 13, the CHRC and its Chief Commissar shame Canada, and they will not endure. In his previous incarnation as BBC late-night host twittering with leftie novelists into the small hours about freedom of expression, Michael Ignatieff would have been the first to say so. I’m confident his old pals Rushdie, Hitchens and Amis will eventually remind him of what he knows to be true.

[UPDATE: I like this line in response to a Liberal questioner: “Life in a democracy requires robust citizens.” The Grit questions are as one might expect: tendentious, emotive, and boasting of their PC bona fides.]

[UPDATE 2: Gotta love this question from Mr Hiebert: “In the example of Senator Cools, I have to ask: Do you believe that she should have access to some form of legislation or prosecutorial avenue to prevent people like Mr Warman from making the comments that he did about her on the Internet?”

And there it is, folks: In Hansard, in the official Parliamentary record, for all eternity.

Professor Martin’s response: “She does not want to soil herself by getting into a tussle with vermin like this [Mr Warman].” On the other hand, he is in favour of “a public hanging of Richard Warman”.]

[UPDATE 3: The committee chairman: “I assume it’s a reference to her race that begins with the letter ‘n’.” Mr Warman came this close to getting it read into the record.]

[IN SUMMARY: I yield to no one in my contempt for Richard Warman, and I’m all for getting his activities into Hansard, but I think the Professor’s friendship with Senator Cools led him slightly off-track at times. It was a good presentation on overall philosophy and the law and in response to Liberal questions, but he got muddled up on some of the specifics of the HRC cases. Very good on the “odious” Taylor – the first Canadian to be imprisoned for his opinions since the 1930s.]

[UPDATE TO THE “IN SUMMARY” UPDATE: Mark Bourrie, whom I met at the Prime Minister’s garden party last year, writes:

You might want to change that last line in your Thursday piece, the one that says Taylor was the last person imprisoned in Canada for their beliefs since the 1930s. I’d move the date to the summer of 1940, when the odiuos mayor of Montreal, Camillien Houde, was carted off to Petawawa under the War Measures Act for telling a press conference that he would not allow the feds to use Montreal City Hall or any other city property for manpower/draft registration. Cops came for Houde the next day and he spent four years locked up.

There were a few other small Commie and Nazi-wannabe fish picked up during the war, but you’re most likely to hear about Houde. While corpulent, corrupt, disloyal and stupid, Houde was almost certainly not an agent of an enemy power. (The War Measures Act contained provisions for punishing people who discouraged recruitment, which was Houde’s offence.)

BTW, Montreal voters put him back in office as quickly as they could. He was re-elected in 1944.

Actually, the line about “the first Canadian to be imprisoned for his opinions since the 1930s” came from Professor Martin’s testimony, but Mr Bourrie has done extensive research into this subject, so I’m inclined to let him have the last word. I would add, however, that there is clearly a difference between the senior executive of a major city refusing the national government in wartime and an obscure private citizen running a recorded telephone message service out of his basement to a miniscule number of nobodies. In fact, if you look at who the CHRC chooses to torment and those from whom it backs away, it becomes clearer that it’s a exercise in pure state power rather than anything to do with human rights – which should, of course, be a protection against arbitrary and whimsical state power.] 

Lynch the context          
Steynposts
THURSDAY, 18 JUNE 2009
It looks like the quickest way to destroy Canada’s “human rights” regime would be to have Jennifer Lynch, QC (Queen of Comedy) give a speech defending it once a week. Adding to the Mount Logan of ridicule is Tyranny Of Nice author Pete Vere:

Jennifer, if Canadians have a poor perception of Canada’s human rights racket, it’s because the commissions’ white overlords like you are disconnected from the context of the discussion, as well as from average Canadians and what they value.

His co-writer Kathy Shaidle on Commissar Lynch’s complaint that we’re chilling her free speech:

Lynch reveals that the bullies on her staff are, like all bullies, really just cowards — and completely unable to detect irony…

Dr Roy:

She can’t even accept the recommendations of the hrc friendly Moon report. She reverts to calling her critics “far right”… The people who run these organizations are way too dangerous to give them power over the lives of ordinary Canadians.

The incendiary feline:

Newspapers across the country, both major and minor have written numerous editorials explaining the need to abolish Section 13 (1)… Two successful books have been penned calling for an end to the rule of the HRC’s soft-fascists…

Civil rights icons such as Alan Borovoy have come out against the odious Section 13(1). Senator Jerry Grafstein again an early proponent of the HRC concept is on record as stating that these public institutions have been hijacked by extremists.

The CHRC’s own hand picked man, Richard Moon has told Jennifer Lynch to get out of the censorship business. Yet Queen Jennifer dismisses her critics with a wave of her Imperial Hand.

From our leftie chums at (gulp) the Daily Kos:

The thinking of Lynch is almost beyond my ability to mock.

Indeed. There are no defenders of this racket except those who, directly or indirectly, are living high off the “human rights” hog. Finally, birthday gal Deborah Gyapong:

The “scare quotes” around “shared values” is what this crew thinks of our Western heritage folks, the same heritage that brought us freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience. It is a heritage that is mindful of the dangers of tyranny and sought to limit the powers of the state. The relativistic, multicult mindset, reeking of identity politics, is a cancer eating away at real civil rights. AND WE’RE PAYING FOR THIS WITH OUR TAX DOLLARS.

Jennifer Lynch is an impeccably respectable person garlanded with the Queen’s Jubilee Medal and every other bauble the Canadian state can confer. Why? In her public utterances and in the work of her commission, she embodies a direct assault on Canada’s liberty and inheritance. There are all kinds of totalitarian impulses abroad today – in the Middle East, in Europe and elsewhere – but, even by these grim standards, can’t Canada come up with something better than a totalitarianism of halfwits?