As IF Times

link Hertz to fight Muslim workers suit over prayer breaks | Reuters.

When you read the article, you will notice a standard legal line which we see on a regular basis but which we mostly accept as background noise.

As restitution for the despicable and unreasonable demands of the Hertz company, the aggrieved workers want as part of their settlement, back pay plus damages for emotional pain and suffering.  This little phrase has worked its way into western culture over the past few generations as one of the standard reparation demands in any grievance lawsuit.  In doing some cursory research, there is no definitive record of how this standard restitution came to become part of most damages actions today.  If anyone out there knows, by all means please enlighten me.

Being an evolved and sophisticated society, we no longer practice the eye for an eye stuff stipulated in the Bible and which practice is still adhered to even to this day in numerous Muslim cultures.  The closest western cultures come to retributive justice is the death penalty for certain heinous crimes, but because of the lengthy appeals process, is actually more like the possibility of an eye for an eye, but first,  30 years on death row while we talk about it.

Instead, we substitute the notion that to alleviate whatever mental anguish was suffered by party A as a result of actions by party B, that a transfer of money from the aggriever to the aggrieved would be satisfactory compensation for the insult.  It’s easy to see how this makes sense at some level and in fact every year,  grotesque amounts of money changes hands in furtherance of this principle via tort lawyers, insurance companies, aided by all and sundry types of experts in damages lawsuits.

In many cases, such as the one referred to in the article, the ability to place a dollar value on the extent of the insult is iffy at best.  If the folks described in the article are wanting compensation for the time they were not allowed to pray, divide the hourly rate of pay by the minutes lost to praying and voila, it’s done.  I’d hazard $10 tops.  Any more than that and a case could be made that there was more time spent praying than driving cars around…in which case, Hertz should really hire legitimate workers.

In many other cases, the notion of making someone pay as compensation for some aggrievance, real or imagined has become an end in of itself.  The spectre of having to battle lawyers in both the courts of public opinion as well as the legal courts that are staffed with learned but misguided jurists has contributed mightily to the costs of mostly everything that people consume today from aspirins to x-boxes.

One of the more transparently greedy schemes to extort money in the guise of compensation came recently in a headline from the Durban climate talks.  There was a proposal that the U.N. was to be granted the power to tax or fine nations that exceeded some fanciful metric of climate transgression.  This body is to be named (in an orotund voice) The International Climate Court of Justice, not to be confused with the old Justice League of America. This body would have the power to enforce nations to pay ‘climate debt’.

The lack of logic of this proposal is stupefyingly obvious.  If the climate transgressions are as imminently fatal to the earth as they all claim, what good will transferring money to the U.N. do?  Presumably, this money will go towards alleviating emotional pain and suffering for…well, someone.   If we’re all gonna die because of flatulent cows and aerosol hairspray, why bother moving money around from one pocket to another?  How is having some extra cash going to help you if the seas rise and the atmosphere turns into a solid?  If on the other hand, there were some guarantee that this proposed pool of fine money were to be spent on spaceships to send Global Warming alarmists off to another planet, then I’d be all in favour of the idea.

However, like the Hertz employees, the end game for the Global Warming crowd is the same; it’s just extortion at a larger scale. At the moment at least, the chances of such an outcome are low.  At least I pray it is.

link Climate change: vulnerable countries consider occupying Durban talks | Environment | The Guardian.

Again for amusement, note the new moniker now widely used in place of the Global Warming label when the hysteria was first fabricated.  Climate Change is officially version 2.0.  This was of course necessary in the face of historically cold conditions afflicting the planet over the past 5 years.  As a protester, it was somewhat problematic to be holding a global warming sign while wearing mittens and a toque selling the notion that the world was minutes away from a perma heat wave.  A branding company was hired, and voila, Climate Change was adopted.  That way, everything was covered.  Freak snow in July?  AHA! Climate Change!  Rain in the Sahara? The end must be near.  Fewer bees in the backyard? Again, climate change.  They began claiming links between people’s mood swings and soaring crime rates to the effects of climate change; the opportunities  for expensive academic studies in this field  are endless.  One thing could be tracked for sure, the correlation of stupidity and the cacophony of Climate Change bleaters.

Now the gang are adopting a tactic from the Occupy crowd and apparently diplomats are going to stage sit-ins at this year’s conference site of choice, Durban.  As I’ve wondered before, why don’t they ever hold these conferences in less expensive places, Siberia for instance? This kind of event would do wonders for the local economy.   Of course having diplomats doing sit-ins rather than the rag tag hippies that usually populate these things may not sell as well since they’ll likely have assistants bringing them canapes and mixed drinks.

Numerous spokesmen have earnestly decried the lack of ‘tangible’ solutions.  This guy, Jorge Arguello who is the august chair of the powerful “G77 coalition of 131 countries and China” (is there anyone left out?) states the following:

“…[We] trust to see in Durban a fair and equal treatment of all issues that are important to all parties. A serious imbalance in the progress of issues can clearly not be conducive to a successful, comprehensive and balanced outcome…”

The only thing clear is that he does not have a command of English.  This statement is the usual political gibberish which in itself is a contributor to noxious hot air.

Of course, the usual warnings are pushed out again, since they seemed to arouse so much passion before.  The expected ‘imminent and catastrophic’ warnings are used again.  That kind of stuff didn’t work for the crazed Preacher Harold Camping this past May, see http://asiftimes.com/2011/05/22/mass-delusion/ when he was predicting the end of the world this year.  Actually, wouldn’t that be more urgent than a bit of extra sunshine?

And finally, the conclusive proof that a humanitarian disaster is just around the corner; according to a credible person quoted for this article,

“…Sheik Hasina, the prime minister of Bangladesh, said: “Climate change caused over 300,000 additional deaths last year. We the vulnerable countries suffer the most for our limited coping capacities. Bangladesh and other vulnerable countries cannot wait for international response to climate causes … we are implementing 134 climate change adaptation and mitigation action plans…”

How this is determined is very interesting.  So they are telling the public that in a part of the world where non dirt floors would put you in the middle class, where water has to be sourced by buckets and where washroom facilities are wherever you can find an empty hole, that climate change has been a contributor to deaths.  Is there a tick box on the death certificates under a list of possible causes such as cholera, infection, dysentery, crushed by an ox, which specifically categorizes Climate Change as a cause?  Holy cow!  Is it contagious?  If so, I wonder if you catch it from standing around in an Occupy protest?  Up to now, you could only catch ringworm or herpes from them.

So as usual, the hysteria and hyperbole machines are in high gear again, trying to convince people to fund laughable schemes of ‘sustainability’ but which actually means money transfers from the U.S. to the rest of the world…much like the financing model for the U.N.  The cause would be aided greatly if these earnest charlatans  got from place to place in rowboats and bicycles instead of planes, trains and automobiles.  Until then, it’s like Occupiers texting on iPhones to find the next protest site.