In which the pond's committee for alarums dances from Prince Chuck joining the UN world government movement to an Orielian rant teaching all right-thinking people what to think ...

(Above: and more Pope here).

A splendid array of urgent matters has come before the pond's committee for alarums, worry and panic this Friday morning ...

First up the committee has decided to issue an urgent warning to royalists. It seems Prince Chuck has joined the UN's push for a world government ...

The Prince of Wales, for decades a campaigner for conservation and ecological causes, has emerged as a keen mediator on climate change in the lead-up to December's COP21 in Paris – the United Nations summit intended to draw up a new global climate change action plan. 
On Thursday in London he convened a high-level meeting on deforestation and climate change at Lancaster House, next door to the prince's home and office, Clarence House. 
He revealed he has accepted an invitation from French President Francois Hollande to deliver a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of COP21. He previously attended the 2009 COP talks in Copenhagen. 
"Paris will be an absolutely crucial milestone in the long overdue international effort to keep to a 2 degree world," Prince Charles told the meeting on Thursday, referring to the climate change "speed limit" set by scientists. 
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that an average temperature rise of 2 degrees by 2100 would come with increased risk of sea level rise and extreme weather events, but beyond 4 degrees the effects quickly become much more dangerous. 
The prince said a "4 degree" rise would be "impossible, I think, to adapt to". COP21 must "send an unequivocal, long-term signal to the international community, and to global markets, that the transition to a low carbon, sustainable, climate-compatible economy is firmly and irreversibly underway", Prince Charles said. 
"A 2 degree world is therefore still, just, if we stretch every sinew – by setting a proper price for carbon – within reach." (and more at Fairfax here).

No doubt royalists will flinch with fear, and what of loyal monarchist Prof Flint, scribbling in March this year how his leader passed the pub test with flying colours?

Australians will never install a government they fear will open the borders, run down our defences and incur massive debts for no apparent benefit. They will be reminded that just the interest on Labor's debt could be used to build a dozen new hospitals every year. Nor will they choose a government with ministers who believe those completely discredited IPCC computer projections. They certainly don't want to pay for that merchant bankers' dream, a CO2 trading scheme to stop the global warming which actually stopped 18 years ago. The voters will contrast Abbott with the Labor leader and most will conclude that he is above all authentic. His values and principles are those that at the heart and foundation of this nation, however unfashionable these may be among the elites. (The forward thinking prof predicting the future here and in the Spectator here, if you can be bothered, as the prescient Prof warned the wretched elites they were in for a surprise for daring to write off Tony).

Oh dear, perhaps we should postpone the knighting of Prince Chuck for a few more years ...

But speaking of The Spectator's band of intrepid, feartless brothers, the pond's committee was presented with news of another pressing issue ...

In all that joking, there was that fatal line, and right at the start: "our former colleague Nick Cater."

So the Caterists are on their own ... and Hedders will be reporting on the court action, and never mind that will distract him from reporting on Clive ...

As for "Stop the Picts", who could resist ...

But as ironic as eating an onion that this might be, there were other matters requiring urgent adjudication.

It seems that a few outraged souls had decided to question how the business of transferring government money from the public to the private sector was proceeding ...

Naturally the reptile editorialist had the right solution:

All this was excellent preparation for a most excellent rant that drew high praise from every member of the pond committee in attendance (it was noted that a few private colleges were regrettably absent):

Of course, of course, because everyone knows that neo-Marxists and the religion of Islam are in bed together ... and Saudi Arabia is no longer friends with George Bush ...

Now to be fair, the pond has to admit to not having had a second thought about Marcuse and Fanon for many a year, and it certainly never occurred to the pond that Australia might be indulging in a little post colonial adventurism by establishing its gulags in Nauru and Manus Island ... and paying handsomely for the pleasure.

Now there is, as it happens, much literature and thinking on the full to overflowing intertubes exploring the uneasy intersections of Fanon and religion, including this pdf here of a thesis which starts off with this astonishing assertion:

Naturally, we must keep in mind that Fanon himself was not Muslim, much less an Islamist, even though he operated in a Muslim country. The movement he was a part of, the Algerian Liberation Movement, for the most part did not have “Islamist” goals, unlike the contemporary Islamic militancy that we wish to examine, and so may not necessarily shed much light on certain aspects of contemporary thinking. Apart from symbolic references to religious vocabulary (i.e. jihad or mujahid) that proved helpful in waging an independence struggle, the Algerian movement against the French, unlike, say, the Libyan movement against the Italians, was devoid of the religious motivations that define contemporary Islamic militancy.

The committee paused only for a moment to fail this student, before turning back to the splendid Orelian rant:

Indeed, indeed, and it seems extremely clear what must happen.

The primary purpose of education should not be to teach students how to think, but instead should replace it with an activist education where students learn what to think.

In particular, students must learn to sing the national anthem together and promote the values that sustain a world in which gulags may be established in whatever nation state happens to be nearby and blessed with a ruling elite in urgent need of Australian cash in the paw ...

So that we are able to bequeath the bountiful legacy of western civilisation to future generations, including the right to maintain most excellent colonial adventures in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan ...

Devotees of Orielian rants will be pleased to head off to the Orielian heartland here, where they may admire the works of this tremendously logical and coherent thinker, and where any hint of grandiosity is scrupulously expunged:

Dr Jennifer Oriel is a political scientist and public commentator featured regularly in newspapers, on radio and television. Dr Oriel’s work has featured on the syllabi of many leading universities such as Harvard University, the University of London, the University of Toronto, Amherst College, the University of Wisconsin and Columbia University. She has been cited by a broad range of organisations including the World Health Organisation, the United Nations Economic Commission of Africa, Oxfam and Wikipedia. Dr Oriel is completing a book on how Western Civilisation is the cardinal counterforce to an increasingly totalitarian world.

Finally and happily, the committee was pleased to see that First Dog had addressed the question of western values and post colonial adventurism in a recent cartoon, featuring the post colonial adventurist's return to the heart of empire, and you can find the start of this Dog cartoon here:

And please ... stop the Picts!