Tudoring the Ivies; Pearl Clutching at COP; & the Covid/Climate Permacrisis.

In his weekly Editor’s Column, Michael Walsh wondered if what America needs right now is a new, doubtless very different, Henry VIII.

Make Like Henry: Dissolve the Ivy League

As part of his private war against the Pope in Rome, during the years 1536-41 Henry VIII -- he of six wives fame -- ordered the dissolution of the monasteries of Britain and Ireland, stripping these longstanding institutions of their property, income, money, and destroying the priceless Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman cultural heritage of the British Isles in a fit of priapic pique. Churchmen were executed, and monastic libraries were torched. How bad was it? 

Monastic land and buildings were confiscated and sold off to families who sympathised with Henry’s break from Rome. By 1540 monasteries were being dismantled at a rate of fifty a month. After the disposal of their monastic lands and buildings, the majority of monks, friars and nuns were given money or pensions. However, there were some abbots and religious house leaders who refused to comply. They were executed and their monasteries destroyed. Thousands of monastic servants suddenly found themselves without employment. One of the saddest legacies of the Dissolution was the loss and destruction of monastic libraries and their precious illuminated manuscripts.

Ah well, as another psychopathic monster, Uncle Joe Stalin, was reputed to have said some 400 years later: "You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs." Britain and its renegade church, now on its last legs with the remains of the "Windsors" as its titular head, has been culturally much the poorer for it ever since.

But what if Henry was in part right, and that what Britain needed was the abolition of the institutional hotbeds of sedition and moral inversion that he considered Catholic monasteries to be? England and the United Kingdom went on to have some of their best innings as a nation after his reign, a winning streak that started in earnest with Good Queen Bess ended in the disaster of World War I, when German princelings resident in London fought German princelings resident in Berlin, who were fighting German princelings resident in St. Petersburg, and everybody lost.

What if we follow his lead, then, and abolish not the monasteries -- the current incarnation of the post-Vatican II Catholic Church is taking care of that all by itself -- but the Ivy League and a few other "elite" universities, the nests of "progressive" saboteurs who have inflicted incalculable damage on the United States since the arrival of the Frankfurt School on these shores just before World War II.

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Peter Smith contributed a piece about the desire of the public health industry, which got used to the spotlight during Covid, trying to pivot to the climate business.

If Covid Didn’t Get You, 'Climate' Will

The state of South Australia was fortunate when Covid hit to have just elevated Nicola Spurrier, a thirty-year veteran of the department of health, to chief public health officer. She spent every waking moment hectoring the good people of South Australia – for their own good, of course. True, there were a couple of bloopers. Identifying a takeaway pizza box as the likely conduit of the virus and warning South Australians not to touch footballs in the event they landed inadvertently into the crowd, were not edifying moments. However, she took the ensuing ridicule like a woman. Being made a figure of fun is a small price to pay to whip the Wuhan flu.

Anyway, I shouldn’t single out Professor Spurrier. Covid brought out the overwrought hysteria and inner martinet of public health officials around the world. Few embraced the opportunity to exercise restraint and common sense. From years in the backroom to centre stage went to their heads. Sadly for them, they are now back in the backroom. Here and there, they try desperately to rekindle alarm. Unsuccessfully, except among the cohort of the perpetually alarmed, who I still see wearing masks in Sydney streets and buses. What to do? Silly question. Replace Covid with "climate change."

Thus Spurrier and her fellow public health gurus around the world are grasping a second opportunity. As per her recently released biennial report, which averred that “climate change is the most significant global threat to human health… and we need to respond to this threat today, not tomorrow or in the distant future.”

We face a deadlier foe than a virus, she said, we face a climate-change “permacrisis.” You have to see the advantage of a permanent health crisis if you’re a public health official in want of attention. Though not everyone is convinced. By “not everyone,” I mean sane people. Sky News (Australia) commentator Chris Kenny called her comments “alarmist, hysterical and unscientific.” Imagine, talking like that about a woman. That’s typical of these sexist "climate deniers."

In the meantime to COP28; which turned its collective mind to having its first COP “Health Day.” A day which pledged one billion dollars to some lucky recipient countries and their wheeler-dealers in high places.

Today the COP28 Presidency joined with the World Health Organization to announce a new ‘COP28 UAE Declaration on Climate and Health’ to accelerate actions to protect people’s health from growing climate impacts. Signed by 123 countries, the Declaration…marks a world first in acknowledging the need for governments to protect communities and prepare healthcare systems to cope with climate-related health impacts such as extreme heat, air pollution and infectious diseases.

And the hard data on the climate-health crisis? Obviously that’s a typical denialist question; and, to boot, a racist one when you consider the countries most "at risk."

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With COP28 going on in Dubai at the moment, David Cavena couldn’t help but compare the feasting the tens of thousands of attendees are partaking it to the meager fare they intend for the rest of us.

You'll Eat It and Like It

COP28 is ongoing as this is being written. The movers and shakers of the WEF, having traveled to the heart of the world of oil on private jets, are grazing on fabulous foods from across the planet and planning our future in feedlots. But such delicacies are for them, not for you.

The availability of food sources is the sine qua non of civilizational advancement. For pre-historical and indigenous peoples the nourishment of the human body required protein -- animal protein in particular -- to develop brain and muscle tissue. This protein was utterly dependent upon the vagaries of the weather. Our lack of control over our food supply often resulted in extended periods of famine and starvation until the agricultural revolution and the rise of animal husbandry created stable supplies of cereal grains and meat, enabling the development of communities, towns, cities, and eventually nations. On an individual level, freedom from the constant struggle to satiate our own hunger also allowed for the development of leisure time, the basis for all elevated culture.

The availability of animal protein gave rise to various conquerors able to defeat the vegetarians around them as it helped build men both stronger and with greater stamina, and to consolidate populations into cities in which education and specialization could occur. The evolution of husbandry techniques and the pressures on grazing land due to the expansion of our cities and suburbs gave rise to feedlots and controlled feeding and medication for cattle, pork and poultry, and selective breeding for all livestock.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the modern world was built on animal protein. But globalism and Big “Climate Change” are preparing to turn this millennia of progress on its ear.

Without a trace of irony, the same folks who demand at their tables "free range chicken" and "grass-fed beef" and loudly condemn "processed food" which “may boost cognitive decline,” in the same breath insist that we eat ultra-processed fake meat, which we should be hesitant to call "food" at all. Even some branches of the wider environmentalist movement are reluctant to jump on board. Here's what the organization FoodPrint has to say on the topic:

So far, all they have demonstrated is that they [fake meats] are better on GHG emissions than their industrial meat counterparts, but they have not demonstrated that they are better than regeneratively raised livestock or a diet of whole grains and legumes — and they rely on the same system of monocultured GMO crops that have proven to be bad for our soils and waterways.

Look on the bright side, though. It could be worse. It could be bugs.

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Cavena also blogged about John Kerry’s poor grasp of agriculture.

Schooling the Cop28 'Climate Czar'

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Remaining on this topic, Brandon Weichert wrote about some unanticipated honesty blowing around that desert.

Who Wants to Live in Caves?

To the total dismay of the latest gathering of world "climate" grifters, Sultan Al Jaber, the host of Cop 28, has declared there is "no science" behind radical "environmentalist" calls to ban fossil fuels. Further angering his Green colleagues at the COP28, the dignitary from the United Arab Emirates argued that the organization's proposed phase-out of fossil fuels would only work if "unless you want to take the world back into caves."

Amidst much merriment from sane people everywhere, caterwauling from the Global Left immediately ensued. “The science is clear: The 1.5 centigrade limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels. Not reduce, not abate. Phase out, with a clear timeframe," scolded U.N. General Secretary António Guterres. Another prominent environmentalist, Bill Hare, the CEO of Climate Analytics, described Jaber's comments as "verging on climate denial.”  Sir David King of the Climate Advisory Group said, "It is undeniable that to limit global warming to 1.5C we must all rapidly reduce carbon emissions and phase-out the use of fossil fuels by 2035 at the latest. The alternative is an unmanageable future for humanity.”

Really? Jaber, the UAE's minister of industry and advanced technology, heads its state-owned oil conglomerate. His country owes its entire existence to oil. He of all people knows the importance fossil fuels play in modern human society. His assertion that there is "no science" behind the climate "alarmism" of the U.N. crowd is true. There are only theories, embellished by years of fear mongering. Virtually every prediction since the 1970s has been proven wrong or grossly exaggerated, including former vice president Al Gore's well-chronicled, utterly fallacious, and personally enriching hysteria.

Jaber, an insider speaking out, noted he's not seen any proposal for reducing mankind's carbon footprint in the next few decades by an arbitrary 1.5 degrees centigrade that wasn't alarmist. Fear has fueled the climate cult since its inception. Ideological movements that lack scientific basis for their beliefs need to employ such tactics to get otherwise rational people to abandon reason and embrace ideology. Thus his conclusion that the global elite's ultimate goal of "phasing out" fossil fuels will only work if we "want to live in caves" is more than supposition on his part. It's the truth.

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And, finally, our very own acclimatised beauty Jenny Kennedy, took a trip to Dubai herself.

Diary of an Acclimatised Beauty: Copping Out

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That’s all for this week, but keep a look out for our upcoming pieces at The Pipeline!