As IF Times

Source: David Attenborough Tells UN ‘Collapse of Civilisation’ Imminent

One of the more amusing characters of the first Iraq war was the official state propogandist for the Saddam Hussein regime named Muhammed Saeed El-Sahhaf, affectionately known as “Baghdad Bob” by the western media.  His notoriety came from his blatantly false assertions which were humorously laid bare by observable fact.  This propaganda minister’s job was to broadcast statements proving Iraq’s military superiority even as American bombers could be seen shelling the buildings right behind him on TV broadcasts.  Here are some of the more famous pronouncements of El-Sahhaf, collected by the website thoughtco:

“There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!”

“My feelings, as usual, we will slaughter them all.”

“Our initial assessment is that they will all die.”

“No I am not scared and neither should you be!”

“We will welcome them with bullets and shoes.”

“They’re not even [within] 100 miles [of Baghdad]. They are not in any place. They hold no place in Iraq. This is an illusion … they are trying to sell to the others an illusion.”

and,

“Faltering forces of infidels cannot just enter a country of 26 million people and lay besiege to them! They are the ones who will find themselves under siege. Therefore, in reality, whatever this miserable Rumsfeld has been saying, he was talking about his own forces. Now even the American command is under siege.”

“Washington has thrown their soldiers on the fire.”

“They fled. The American louts fled. Indeed, concerning the fighting waged by the heroes of the Arab Socialist Baath Party yesterday, one amazing thing really is the cowardice of the American soldiers. we had not anticipated this.”

Of course this was all amusing then and even more so two decades later. We can forgive El-Sahhaf for his utterances because he was convinced to do so, either by money or the point of a gun.

In his place, the modern Bagdad Bobs are the comical nutters preaching  the Global warming charade. El-Sahhaf’s utterances stopped when the US soldiers finally zip tied him and sent him off to Gitmo.  Unfortunately, there is no such merciful end in sight to the constant barrage of bleats from the  Albert Gore and Richard Attenborough types as shown in the linked article.

No amount of cold winters, record snows, flat sea levels and exploding penguin numbers can dislodge them from their ideological and irrational pedestal.  As some have noted, when Al Gore first sounded the alarm on Global Warming’s effects on the world’s polar bear population, there were 6000 of them left.  Now, 20 years later, there’s only 30,000.

Attenborough, for his part, is prescient enough to predict the very end of man, of civilization and the earth itself if we don’t move some tax money around to some poor nations. He knows this because as the voice of BBC documentaries, he’s an expert on this stuff.  In this same vein, we wait for Dr. McDreamy to find a cure for cancer and male pattern baldness.  Such Chicken Littles as Gore and Attenborough say that the end is ‘imminent’ which is about as useful as predicting the Cleveland Brown’s Super Bowl appearance.

The spurious logic of their arguments are so blatant, they could have been uttered by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. While it may sound like an elegantly simple solution, ie: just throw money at it, the fact is, there is little historical record of money ever successfully solving the problems of poor nations.  We recall from the ’60’s and ’70’s the plaintive pleas for money to help starving kids in Africa.  Who knows how many hundreds of millions of dollars went to humanitarian aid there over the decades?  Here we are, decades later, they are still starving.  The only difference is that some government officials of these poor nations became awfully rich.

Now, they’ve changed the strategy.  Instead of playing on people’s sense of charity, which admittedly can be unpredictable, the new gig is to play on people’s fears by invoking certain Armageddon or worse.  It’s now a better idea to force the money from them.  By transferring 100 billion dollars a year from western nations to poor nations, assuming it gets out of the hands of the dictators running them, this would save the earth.  The leap of logic there is so great, you’d need plane tickets to cover the gap.

Even as the passage of time has uncovered more and more reputable science people backpeddling on the entire fraud of climate change, there remains a vocal contingent doing what Baghdad Bob did for Iraq during the war of 1991.  Oddly, the most vocal people still peddling the snake oil of Global warming are….entertainers and lawyers.  Bagdad Bob must be doing consulting these days.

Source: News from The Associated Press

In the matter of what is proper Catholic doctrine and what isn’t, there is probably no higher authority than the Pope.  Whomever occupies that role has spent their entire life at being a scholar of the history of the teachings of the Church.  If you were on a TV show and a god question was posed of you, it’s likely that the Pope would be one of your lifeline calls.

I cast serious doubts as to whether the topic of global warming ever came up in the scholarly studies that all Catholic priests are required to master.  If it has, then all Popes before this one have been negligent by never having discussed it during their reigns.  While Pope Francis tries to link global warming to the suffering of people in poorer countries, I can think of at least one other cause of mass suffering that he can address; that of the stupidity of the products that come out of the entertainment business.

There’s plenty to address in the matter of human frailties in the world including the classic ones of greed, corruption and general evilness.  Whatever happened to the classic pleas on behalf of global poverty, starving kids and world peace? There’s no shortage of affronts to humanity that he can target with his critical words. The nebulous claims of the global warming crowd should be well down the list of issues facing mankind.  In a quote from his interview, he says,

“Those who deny this must go to the scientists and ask them. They speak very clearly,” he said, referring to experts who blame global warming on man-made activities…”

Which scientists?  When you read that “scientists have all agreed on the science”, it should give pause to anyone, since unlike the god business, science is not about agreement, it’s about empirical evidence that can be measured. In fact, there are plenty of dissenting scientific views on global warming, but somehow, the ‘consensus’ is already in.  Well, I think many will want a recount on that consensus.  As far as speaking clearly, the only common solution that ever arises from the sage scientists are more taxes on western economies.

Imagine if football broadcasters Al Michaels and Chris Collinsworth were to comment on the policies of the Catholic Church.  Interesting perhaps, but they don’t have any more credibility than the next guy.  We look to them for football opinions, not for topics clearly out of their lane.

When a figure with the gravitas of The Pope makes a pronouncement on a topic, people pay attention.  It’s not like Jennifer Lawrence or Bill Maher making inane and obtuse comments.  The Pope should be speaking from a position of knowledge and perspective.  Clearly, his expertise is in the saving of souls business, not in the saving the planet racket.  That’s for non god fearing lawyers and politicians.