Bad causes attract bad people

This might be more in William Teach’s wheelhouse than mine, but when this article came up in my feeds, I couldn’t resist. From London’s The Telegraph:

Gen Z’s hypocrisy on climate change has made Greta Thunberg look a fool

If her generation are so worried about the ‘climate emergency’, explain the findings of this new poll

by Michael Deacon | Tuesday, February 18, 2025 | 7:00 AM GMT

At the UN Climate Action Summit of 2019, a 16-year-old Greta Thunberg gave the most famous speech of her young life. I’m sure we all remember. It was the one in which she indignantly squeaked “How DARE you!” at older generations for ruining their grandchildren’s future.

“You are failing us!” she hissed. “But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: we will never forgive you!”

If you are stymied by The Telegraph’s paywall, you can access it here for free.

Chastening stuff. In hindsight, however, I can’t help feeling that Greta’s ire may have been somewhat misplaced. Because it turns out that the young are wrecking the planet, too. In fact, they may be doing even more to wreck it than their grandparents.

Just look at the results of a new poll by the Civil Aviation Authority. It found that those aged 18-34 fly a lot more frequently than those aged 55 and over. In the past year, almost three quarters of the former group travelled by plane, compared with only half of the latter group.

That seems kind of odd, given that those of us in our senior years normally have more money than younger people.

This may seem unexpected, given that members of Greta’s generation are always telling pollsters – and everyone else who will listen – how terrified they are about climate change. But then, perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised. In 2023, a poll by YouGov found that young adults did less recycling than Baby Boomers. They were also less likely to save water, wash their clothes at low temperatures, and switch off electric lights when leaving a room.

Yeah, that one gets me, since I’m the only one who ever turns out the light in the pantry! But perhaps you can guess who pays the electricity bill here?

Greta Thunberg at yet another pro-Hamas demonstration.

And that might be the reason the young whippersnappers — I’m just a couple of months shy of my 72nd birthday, so “young whippersnappers” is a perfectly acceptable description for me to use — don’t turn out the lights. How many of them actually pay their own sparktricity bills? CNBC reported, on November 17, 2024 — after the election, but while Joe Biden was still President, “Approximately 1 in 3 U.S. adults ages 18 to 34 live in their parents’ home, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.” If mom and dad are still paying the electric bill, why would their kids be all that concerned with turning off the lights when the room is empty?

Much of the opposition to the activists’ proposals to fight global warming climate change is not due to disbelief in that change, but due to the tremendous costs those proposals would impose on taxpayers.

Mr Deacon does point out that the lovely Miss Thunberg has seemed more interested these days in wearing a ‘Palestinian’ keffiyeh and attending anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas demonstrations. But, as has been said by many other people in the past, bad causes attract bad people.

You might not think that supporting efforts to fight climate change is a bad cause, but, if you support Hamas, if you wear a ‘Palestinian’ keffiyeh, you might as well be wearing a Nazi armband or Ku Klux Klan robes.

World War III Watch: Warmongers gotta warmonger, Trudy Rubin edition

It was just Thursday that we noted former National Security Advisor and former Ambassador John Bolton and his criticism of President Donald Trump’s phone call to Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, concerning Russia’s war in Ukraine. That seems to be a constant theme among the ‘neocons.’ They think it’s horrible, just horrible, that Ukraine might lose the war to Russia, and I agree, it’s horrible.

But you know what they don’t tell us? They don’t tell us, they never tell us, how Ukraine can actually win. Continue reading

Beware the Ides of March!

Happy St Valentine’s Day!

I awoke this morning to a tweet from Libs of TikTok, noting that yet another federal judge has tried to block President Trump’s ‘pause’ in foreign aid spending.

Judge orders Trump administration to temporarily allow funds for foreign aid

by the Associated Press | Thursday, February 13, 2025 | 11:53 PM EST

WASHINGTON — A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to temporarily lift a three-week funding freeze that has shut down U.S. aid and development programs worldwide.

Judge Amir Ali issued the order Thursday in U.S. district court in Washington in a lawsuit brought by two health organizations that receive U.S. funding for programs abroad.

Newsweek noted that Judge Ali was one of President Joe Biden’s last judicial appointees, confirmed by the then Democrat-controlled Senate after the election. Continue reading

World War III Watch: Warmongers gotta warmonger!

Like so many of the neoconservatives, former Ambassador John Bolton loves seeing the rivers of blood flow. He tweeted, on Wednesday, February 12th:

It is unconscionable to allow Russia to assault Ukraine’s sovereignty, recruit enemies like North Korea to aid in their fight, and then sell out the Ukrainians by conceding the loss of their territory and NATO security guarantees or membership. By making these and others concessions before negotiations even started, Trump has effectively surrendered to Putin on Ukraine. 1/3 Continue reading

President Trump finally catches up to what we’ve been saying for years Gaza should be emptied out and cleaned up, the President said. I agree, but cleaned up by the Israelis, and settled by them.

I have been saying for years now that the Israelis should have expelled every last ‘Palestinian’ from Judea, Samaria, and Gaza following the 1967 conquest of the territory. It would have been a humanitarian disaster, but it would have been over 57½ years ago, leaving the Arabs with a chance to build their lives again without being under Israeli occupation, and Israel with shortened, more defensible borders.

Now it seems that President Donald Trump has caught up with me! From The Wall Street Journal: Continue reading

World War III Watch: Joe Biden sends more aid, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants us to send ground troops

We have said it before: it doesn’t matter how much money and military aid we send to Ukraine, they cannot defeat Russia absent the US and NATO sending actual ground troops to fight Russia, and fighter aircraft and pilots to gain air superiority. Now Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants just that:

U.S. announces more Ukraine aid as Zelenskyy calls for NATO to deploy troops to “force Russia into peace”

CBS News | Thursday, January 9, 2024 | 10:00 AM EST

Ramstein Air Base, Germany — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday said Donald Trump’s return to the White House would open “a new chapter” and reiterated a call for Western allies to send troops to help “force Russia to peace.” He made the plea as the Biden administration announced what will likely be its last major military aid package for Ukraine — a promise of weapons and other support worth $500 million. Continue reading

Everybody has lost

As Lord Eddard Stark said in Game of Thrones, “Winter is coming.” Winter across the forests and steppes of Ukraine is bitterly cold and brutal.

Our good friends at The Washington Post have spent the last 1,437 days being wholly supportive of President Joe Biden and every move he has ever made, so when they tell readers that “Russian forces have continued to make gains and maintain the offensive initiative” in Ukraine, you know that it’s serious.

As Ukraine marks Christmas, exhausted soldiers wonder if Trump can end the war

Asked for their thoughts about a potential ceasefire in 2025, Ukrainian soldiers said they’d welcome a reprieve but were skeptical one was coming soon

By Isabelle Khurshudyan and Serhii Korolchuk | Thursday, December 26, 2024 | 2:01 PM EST

DNIPROPETROVSK REGION, Ukraine — Christmas on Ukraine’s front line started, fittingly, in an old barn filled with hay. Soldiers filed in as Lt. Mykola Bagirov, the brigade’s chaplain, began chanting prayers in a setting straight out of a Nativity scene — never mind the M113 armored personnel carriers parked beside him.

Bagirov spent the rest of the day dressed in a colorful jacket and carrying a painted spinning star while merrily singing traditional Ukrainian carols and banging a tambourine against his thigh.

His audience, though thankful for the attempt at holiday cheer, was noticeably less enthused. Continue reading

Is Bill Kristol running our foreign policy?

There was a no-win question asked on the fourth-grade playground at Mt Sterling Elementary School when I attended, back in the days of quill pens and inkwells: If you were up to your neck in [insert vulgar term for feces here], and someone threw a bucket of [insert slang term for urine here] at your head, would you duck? That’s of what President Joe Biden’s latest foreign policy move reminds me:

US asks Israel to approve military aid to Palestinian security forces

By Jewish News Syndicate | Boston Tea Party Day, December 16, 2024 | 2:55 PM EST

The Biden administration has privately asked Israel to approve an urgent request for U.S. military aid to Palestinian Authority forces, Palestinian, American, and Israeli officials told Axios on Sunday night. Continue reading

Let’s tell the truth: we have been bamboozled before

It wasn’t that long ago that the United States fled evacuated Afghanistan, leaving it to the Taliban, and the Taliban promised that they’d be, if not all sweetness and light, more tolerant than they had been during their previous reign. I do not know whether then-President Donald Trump actually believed the Taliban’s claims as he negotiated the withdrawal, or was simply looking for a fig leaf of cover for the withdrawal — which wasn’t completed until President Joe Biden too office — as President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger did during the peace talks in Paris, but the Taliban have been not-so-slowly returning to the restrictions on the public, especially on women, that they had imposed previously.

Syrian rebel leader’s victory speech holds a message for Iran – and for Trump and Israel too

Continue reading