RUTHFULLY YOURS

France’s plan to use its position at the UN Security Council to bring about the deployment of international monitors to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem has been condemned by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers as biased, unhelpful and detached from reality.

Certainly it is all those things. But France’s decision to use its diplomatic position to advance a plan which if implemented would end Israeli sovereignty over Judaism’s holiest site is first and foremost a French act of aggression against the Jewish state.

Contrary to what the French government would have us believe, France’s Temple Mount gambit is not an effort to quell the violence. French protestations of concern over the loss of life in the current tempest of Palestinian terrorism ring hollow.

France doesn’t really oppose Palestinian terrorism.

If the world is lucky, nothing of greater substance than delegates’ hotel bills will emerge from the upcoming catastropharian confab in the City of Light. And if things go badly for common sense? Well, Malcolm Turnbull will be tickled even pinker and the rest of us left poorer
This December’s annual UN Conference of the Parties in Paris — known as COP 21 — takes place in the context of 18-plus years of global temperature stability. Many scathing remarks have been made about previous meetings, especially the 2009 Copenhagen gathering which Kevin Rudd attended with a 114-strong delegation, expecting to forge an agreement that would deliver the greenhouse gas abatement commitments he and others had promoted.

Since then, five subsequent annual meetings also have failed to bring agreements on binding commitments. This has been much to the relief of those who consider that human-induced climate change is non-existent or trivial and that to counter it would cripple national economies and, indeed, the world economy.

The ghost of the “pause” in temperature increases is, however, hardly haunting the upcoming meeting. The impetus for action this year is particularly strong. President Obama has made an agreement into a “signature” policy that will define the success of his Presidency, saying, “My definition of leadership would be leading on climate change, an international accord that potentially we’ll get in Paris.”[1]. The President also has argued that climate change has contributed to the rise of ISIS and Boko Haram[2], and his national security adviser, Susan Rice, swears that the world faces disaster unless we stop climate change [3].

United Nations Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon has jetted into Jerusalem on a fool’s errand – with tensions continuing to escalate between Arabs and Jews as their conflict spanning almost 100 years remains unresolved.

The Secretary-General observed:

“Beyond the immediate tensions, what is missing is the resolve to restore a political horizon for talks, and a political process that delivers real results and hope … We must, for the future of our children, turn back from this dangerous abyss, safeguard the two-state solution and lead people back onto the road towards peace”

Safeguarding this “two-state solution” – code words for creating a second Arab State in Mandatory Palestine in addition to Jordan – is a lost cause. Restoring talks on this failed political process after twenty years of fruitless negotiations is meaningless United Nations babble speak.

This story is almost unbelievable.

The elite and pricey Williams College has a speaker series called “Uncomfortable Learning.” The idea is to bring to campus people whose thinking is unconventional and who will spark thought and debate. One speaker who was invited is Suzanne Venker. She dissents from most of the feminist orthodoxy and sent in the text of her talk ahead of time. As she explains in this piece, she wanted the students to hear her view that feminism fails “because it denies the existence of biology and teaches that equality means sameness, which is a losing proposition when it comes to planning a life….”

You can guess the rest. When students found out that a speaker who’d make them THAT uncomfortable was going to be on campus, they did just what so many of our brilliant young minds enrolled at elite colleges do — they demanded that Venker be kept from speaking.

What is the endgame of the contemporary green movement? It’s a critical question since environmentalism arguably has become the leading ideological influence in both California government and within the Obama administration. In their public pronouncements, environmental activists have been adept at portraying the green movement as reasonable, science-based and even welcoming of economic growth, often citing the much-exaggerated promise of green jobs.

The green movement’s real agenda, however, is far more radical than generally presumed, and one that former Sierra Club President Adam Werbach said is defined by a form of “misanthropic nostalgia.” This notion extends to an essential dislike for mankind and its creations. In his book “Enough,” green icon Bill McKibben claims that “meaning has been in decline for a long time, almost since the start of civilization.”

And you may have thought the Romans and ancient Chinese were onto something!