Maybe Some Inconvenient Similarities

A recent commenter (the only one to date concerning Uncle Joe and the Watermelons) seemed to have trouble making the link between the posting concerning Stalin’s reign and the antics of the AGW + Green crowd. In the previous posting I didn’t realize the need to be so explicit concerning what I thought to be the obvious.  In the following I have tried to make these inconvenient similarities a little more explicit. Each point could be the basis of a lengthy essay but responses here are kept much shorter.


I should make one point clear here. I am not a raving skeptic. I am not at all in favour of raping and plundering the planet on which we live for the sake of short term gains. But I am in favour of informed rational thought and rational action. I guess I have a rather moderate view concerning climate change. But if once in a while the parties involved would step out of the box and put the climate change issue (and all that surrounds it) into the perspective of a political philosophy (as opposed to a plitico-scientific issue) they might see things a little differently.


1. To begin, Koba’s reign of tyranny, was a reign that was indulged by Western intellectuals.

Climate change, particularly its remediation, is a point of contention. It is, however, indulged by Western intellectuals as if there only facts and no assumptions . (See statement by professional/scientific organization)

2. The Cheka - The Extraordinary Commission - (a soviet state security organization) operated by instilling fear in people. People needed to know they were never safe for the Cheka to operate successfully.

The IPCC and Co. tend to let people know they are never safe and people need to be kept this way if the IPCC and Co is to maintain its existence. (Although recently, the IPCC has been accused of understating the potential dangers of global warming and the public are beginning to have their doubts.)

3. Stalin, history books will tell us, waged war on the truth. Torture and fear were used to force people to collude in a fiction.

Well, we don’t have torture yet, but we do have some healthy doses of fear instilled in the public,  (although, it is beginning to subside, at least according to recent polls). The extent of the fear even gave rise to new forms of therapy for those individual no longer able to deal with the daily bombardment of environmental threat (at least in the USA).   And, according to the fall out of climategate there is definitely an attempt to wage war on the truth.

4. Bendy, the poet, was evicted from the Writer’s Union for writing a satirical opera (Bogatyrs).

While no one, to my knowledge, has been evicted from any scientific institute yet (for being a skeptic) they have certainly been penalized in pal review system.

5. Stalin was noted as saying ‘There is a man, there is a problem. No man, no problem.’

Much to do with global warming often comes back to issues of over population and the evils of humanity.

6. Tsipko, a noted Russian philosopher characterized the Bolsheviks as having a desire to astonish the world.

Some of the alleged global warming impacts certainly seem astonishing.

7. In December 1930 Stalin told the Institute of Red Professors ‘We have to turn upside down and turn over the whole pile of shit that has accumulated in questions of philosophy and natural science.’ According to Volkogonov, ‘... philosophy dried up ...’ and ...‘ no one had the courage to write anything more on the subject.’

See Climategate

8. Kolakowski: ‘Half starved people, lacking the bare necessities of life, attended meetings at which they repeated the government’s lies about how well off they were, and in a bizarre way they half believed what they were saying ... Truth, they knew, was a Party matter, and therefore lies became true even if they contradicted the plain facts of the experience.’ According to Kolakowski, means define the ends and means, in the USSR, were all you were ever going to get.

Half starved populations of developing countires are continually told to act on behalf of the greater good.  Closer to home, there WAS a large public majority that believed in AGW. Experience so far seems to be contradicting facts (as far as I know I still don’t need to go by ferry to visit the Cologne Cathedral). Measures taken to combat AGW are always decried as being not enough - i.e. while the means are being implicated there never seems to be an end in sight. Witness the perpetuation of talk-fests.

9. Santayanas description of Stalin the fanatic: He redoubles his efforts while forgetting his aims. He doesn’t want to think to know. He just wants to believe.

We just know there is AGW and we just know it will lead to Armageddon.  Some time.
10. Malia, talking on the ubiquitous unreality of Soviet socialism tells us: In short, there is no such thing as socialism, and the Soviet Union built it.’

Maybe: There is no such thing as global warming to the extent it is professed - silicon created it.