The Biden Administration’s appeal for OPEC to pump more oil to keep gasoline affordable has drawn rare criticism from The Guardian.

Are you in denial? Because it’s not just anti-vaxxers and climate sceptics

Jonathan Freedland
Sat 14 Aug 2021 01.55 AEST

To accept the facts about climate science without changing the way we live is also to deny reality

…

t’s easy to laugh at the anti-vaccine movement, and this week they made it easier still. Hundreds of protesters tried to storm Television Centre in west London, apparently unaware that they were not at the headquarters of the BBC or its news operation – which they blame for brainwashing the British public – but at a building vacated by the corporation eight years ago and which now consists of luxury flats and daytime TV studios. If only they’d done their own research.

…

On the same day that Piers and the placard wavers were out in force in White City, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change delivered its report on the state of our planet. It was its starkest warning yet. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, called it a “code red for humanity”, adding that the “alarm bells are deafening”. The IPCC found that sea level is rising, the polar ice is melting, there are floods, droughts and heatwaves and that human activity is “unequivocally” the cause.

Now, there are some who still deny this plain truth, the same way that some insist coronavirus is a “plandemic” hatched by Bill Gates or caused by 5G phone masts or aliens. Both those groups are guilty of cognitive denial, failing to update their beliefs in the light of the evidence.

But there is another form of denial, what the philosopher Quassim Cassam calls “behavioural or practical denialism”. This is the mindset that accepts the science marshalled by the IPCC – it hears the alarm bell ringing – but still does not change its behaviour. It can operate at the level of governments: note the White House official who on Wednesday urged global oil producers to open up the taps and increase production, so that hard-pressed US motorists can buy gasoline more cheaply. And it lives in individuals, too, in the fatalism that says one person can do nothing to halt a planetary emergency, so you might as well shrug and move on. Which is “to act in the same way as if you were a climate change denier,” says Cassam. “The practical upshot is the same.”

…

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/13/denial-anti-vaxxers-climate-sceptics

It is nice The Guardian has noticed the rank hypocrisy of establishment activists, but they should have been there from day one. In my opinion, The Guardian, in their desperation to achieve their cherished social goals, has given an easy ride to hypocrites who say what the Guardian wants to hear, but has ignored or discounted actions which in my opinion demonstrate utter contempt for the values and beliefs Guardian authors publicly promote.

People like million air mile John Kerry, Obama’s alleged super spreader maskless birthday party, Biden’s luxury private jet use, Fauci going maskless, while pushing mask mandates, California Governor Gavin Newsom’s French Laundry hypocrisy, Nancy Pelosi’s rule busting hair appointment, or British Government ministers showing contempt for their own Covid quarantine rules, our woke leaders have been getting away far too long with granting themselves exceptions or just plain ignoring the rules the rest of us are expected to follow, with minimal criticism from mainstream media outlets like The Guardian.

Note The Guardian article mentioned a recent sting video in which anti-vaccine mandate protestor Piers Corbyn appears to accept a £10,000 bribe from what he thought was an Astra-Zeneca investor to exclude their product from his campaign. Corbyn claims the video is misleading. My opinion – the clip where Corbyn appears to accept the bribe is suspiciously brief. I strongly suspect the footage the sting orchestrators clipped from this crucial moment in their video was Corbyn re-iterating his condition of acceptance, that the donation would not influence how he conducts his campaign.

via Watts Up With That?

https://ift.tt/3AzYo5Q

August 14, 2021