The United Nations, Darfur & Global Warming

Now we know the REAL reason for the genocide in Darfur. It's global warming. Just ask UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that the slaughter in Darfur was triggered by global climate change and that more such conflicts may be on the horizon, in an article published Saturday.

“The Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change,” Ban said in a Washington Post opinion column. UN statistics showed that rainfall declined some 40 percent over the past two decades, he said, as a rise in Indian Ocean temperatures disrupted monsoons. “This suggests that the drying of sub-Saharan Africa derives, to some degree, from man-made global warming,” the South Korean diplomat wrote.

“It is no accident that the violence in Darfur erupted during the drought,” Ban said in the Washington daily. When Darfur’s land was rich, he said, black farmers welcomed Arab herders and shared their water, he said.

With the drought, however, farmers fenced in their land to prevent overgrazing. “For the first time in memory, there was no longer enough food and water for all. Fighting broke out,” he said.

...uh... ...wow...

While I should not be surprised, this should illustrate just how far left the UN has gone and how out of touch with reality the United Nations really is.

How incredibly naive.

Star Wars Has Nothing Over Vermont

Jonathan V. Last has an hilarious post over at the Weekly Standard about how the nutters of Vermont are lost in their own little world. Err... I should say a BIG world called Star Wars. Unless you've been in hyperspace for an extended trip to the Outer Rim, you know that the big discussion in Vermont this week has been of seceding from the Union. Go read the post for a great laugh.

Here's what cracked me up.

I've been called dorkofascist for pointing out that the complaints we hear in the Star Wars films about the Galactic Republic aren't particularly beyond the pale: Namely that the Republic had grown too big and sclerotic to be governable and responsive to the needs of individual planets.

Now here's a hippie Vermonster talking about why Vermont should secede from the United States: "The argument for secession is that the U.S. has become an empire that is essentially ungovernable--it's too big, it's too corrupt and it no longer serves the needs of its citizens."

Is this newly appointed Vermont storm trooper one of today's Green Mountain Boys? Notice the credentials from the Emperor's personal guard. Wow....

Jonathan closes his post with this nice little nugget.

It's a little hard to tell the fictional fascists from the real hippies.

Hilarious. Priceless.

UPDATE 6/07/07 11:30 PM: OOPS! A reader informed me that Jonathan V. Last posted the article in the Weekly Standard, not Michael Goldfarb. The correction has been noted and applied. Thanks! And sorry about that Jonathan and Michael.