Free Republic

The original moonbat, GeorgeMonbiot, columnist for the left wing UK Guardian, now admits that he was bamboozled by fearmongers whipping up anti-nuclear fears. Over the last fortnight I've made a deeply troubling discovery. The anti-nuclear movement to which I once belonged has misled the world about the impacts of radiation on human health. The claims we have made are ungrounded in science, unsupportable when challenged, and wildly wrong. We have done other people, and ourselves, a terrible disservice. I began to see the extent of the problem after a debate last week with Helen Caldicott. Dr Caldicott is the...

Just when you think there is no hope for some, and that catastrophic events will *always* be used by activists to promote an agenda, we find we can be pleasantly surprised. Case in point, English environmental activist and ArrestBlair website founder, George Monbiot, may have raised more than a few eyebrows when he penned an article, delineating a complete turn around on nuclear power plants in UK's The Guardian today. One has to give some thumbs up to an adversary who is willing to do a major, public mea culpa, telling the world in a succinct bold headline, "Why...

The invasion of Afghanistan is certainly a campaign against terrorism, but it may also be a late colonial adventure....[ snip ] Afghanistan has some oil and gas of its own, but not enough to qualify as a major strategic concern. Its northern neighbours, by contrast, contain reserves which could be critical to future global supply. [ former US Vice President Remarked ]: "I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian." But the oil and gas there is worthless until it is moved. The only route...

When you survey the trail of wreckage left by the climate emails crisis, three things become clear. The first is the tendency of those who claim to be the champions of climate science to minimise their importance. Those who have most to lose if the science is wrong have perversely sought to justify the secretive and chummy ethos that some of the emails reveal. If science is not transparent and accountable, it's not science. I believe that all supporting data, codes and programmes should be made available as soon as an article is published in a peer-reviewed journal. That anyone...

On Tuesday night about 1,100 people participated in a sold-out global warming debate that, in the end, turned downtown Toronto's new concert hall at the Royal Conservatory of Music into a microcosm of a larger tranformation that is sweeping the world. The debate pitted two well known global warming activists of international repute against two well-known skeptics. The skeptics won, shifting the audience's support away from the drastic global warming action demanded by activists and toward the moderate reponse of the skeptics, a move that is rapidly becoming a trend everywhere. If global warming is a problem -- and many...

When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world's peacekeeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again. This country's government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee's tea party. So amazingly destructive has Canada become, and so insistent have my Canadian friends been that I weigh into this fight, that I've broken my self-imposed ban on flying and come to Toronto.

How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind's closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama was a Muslim and a terrorist? Like most people on my side of the Atlantic, I have for many years been mystified by American politics. The US...

I realise now that I didn't have a hope. I had almost reached the stage when two of the biggest gorillas I have ever seen swept me up and carried me out of the tent. It was humiliating, but it could have been worse. The guard on the other side of the stage, half hidden in the curtains, had spent the lecture touching something under his left armpit. Perhaps he had bubos. I had no intention of arresting John Bolton, the former under-secretary of state at the US state department, when I arrived at the Hay festival. But during a...

Brushing aside Mr Monbiot’s attempted citizen’s arrest, he said: “I think in my own individual case it’s kind of comic.” But he added: “I think there’s a larger issue here. You have a democratically elected parliament and its government assessed the war as legal and proper.” When individuals took actions outside the law, in their eyes to bring those responsible for the war to justice, “that is the point you move towards lawlessness and fascism,” he said. And when one’s views do match those of the democratically elected government, “you have to accept that”, he added. Dismissing Mr Monbiot’s attempted...

John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, has escaped an attempted citizen's arrest as he appeared at the Hay Festival. The former ambassador - a key advisor to President George W Bush who argued strongly in favour of invading Iraq - had been giving a talk on international relations to more than 600 people at the literary festival. Mr Monbiot was blocked by two heavily-built security guards at the end of the one-and-a-half hour appearance, before he could serve a "charge sheet" on him. After being released by the guards the columnist - a fierce critic of...

British Journalist to Try to Make Citizen's Arrest of John Bolton During U.K. Trip Wednesday, May 28, 2008 John Bolton may need some additional protection at his speech Wednesday evening in Wales, United Kingdom, as a journalist from the Guardian newspaper plans on making a citizen's arrest of the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton is appearing at the Hay Literary Festival in Wales to promote his new book, "Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations." The Telegraph newspaper reports that George Monbiot wants to arrest Bolton for war crimes as the ambassador prepares...

Never mind the economic crisis. Focus for a moment on a more urgent threat: the great food recession that is sweeping the world faster than the credit crunch. You have probably seen the figures by now: the price of rice has risen by three-quarters over the past year, that of wheat by 130%. There are food crises in 37 countries. One hundred million people, according to the World Bank, could be pushed into deeper poverty by the high prices. But I bet that you have missed the most telling statistic. At 2.1bn tonnes, the global grain harvest broke all records...

America will keep on wrecking climate talks as long as those with vested interests in oil and gas fund its political system 'After 11 days of negotiations, governments have come up with a compromise deal that could even lead to emission increases. The highly compromised political deal is largely attributable to the position of the United States, which was heavily influenced by fossil fuel and automobile industry interests. The failure to reach agreement led to the talks spilling over into an all-night session." These are extracts from a press release by Friends of the Earth. So what? Well it was...

A gentleman named George Monbiot has accused the leading industrial nations of the world of condemning millions to die. Perhaps, if he were criticizing their unwillingness to take stronger military action against Islamic Fundamentalists, the gentleman would have a point. He isn’t. He instead is accusing these nations of using phony science to deny the inevitable reality of anthropogenic global warming. Monbiot drags forth all the AGW bogeymen. The Ice Caps on Greenland will melt, just like they did in the Middle Ages, when the Vikings settled the vast island and appropriately named it Greenland. The Amazon Rain Forest would...

Whatever we think of Israel's assault on Lebanon, all of us seem to agree about one fact: that it was a response, however disproportionate, to an unprovoked attack by Hizbullah. I repeated this "fact" in my last column, when I wrote that "Hizbullah fired the first shots". This being so, the Israeli government's supporters ask peaceniks like me, what would you have done? It's an important question. But its premise, I have now discovered, is flawed.

Did US troops use chemical weapons in Falluja? The answer is yes. The proof is not to be found in the documentary broadcast on Italian TV last week, which has generated gigabytes of hype on the internet. It's a turkey, whose evidence that white phosphorus was fired at Iraqi troops is flimsy and circumstantial. But the bloggers debating it found the smoking gun. The first account they unearthed in a magazine published by the US army. In the March 2005 edition of Field Artillery, officers from the 2nd Infantry's fire support element boast about their role in the attack on...

Fraud and Corruption George Monbiot: Forget the UN. The US occupation regime helped itself to $8.8 bn of mostly Iraqi money in just 14 months. By Guardian Newspapers, 2/7/2005 The Republican senators who have devoted their careers to mauling the United Nations are seldom accused of shyness. But they went strangely quiet on Thursday. Henry Hyde became Henry Jekyll. Norm Coleman's mustard turned to honey. Convinced that the UN is a conspiracy against the sovereignty of the United States, they had been ready to launch the attack which would have toppled the hated Kofi Annan and destroyed his organisation. A...

America is a religion US leaders now see themselves as priests of a divine mission to rid the world of its demons George Monbiot Tuesday July 29, 2003 The Guardian "The death of Uday and Qusay," the commander of the ground forces in Iraq told reporters on Wednesday, "is definitely going to be a turning point for the resistance." Well, it was a turning point, but unfortunately not of the kind he envisaged. On the day he made his announcement, Iraqi insurgents killed one US soldier and wounded six others. On the following day, they killed another three; over the...

CommentIt will end in disasterThe US and British governments have dragged us into a mess that will last for yearsGeorge MonbiotTuesday April 1, 2003The GuardianSo far, the liberators have succeeded only in freeing the souls of the Iraqis from their bodies. Saddam Hussein's troops have proved less inclined to surrender than they had anticipated, and the civilians less prepared to revolt. But while no one can now ignore the immediate problems this illegal war has met, we are beginning, too, to understand what should have been obvious all along: that, however this conflict is resolved, the outcome will be a...