It turns out that the fires raging in Australia are climate-related. They’re caused by a climate of hate, irresponsibility, and incompetence manifesting itself in arson, feckless fire handling, and environmentalist policies creating forest tinderboxes. What’s more, that two Muslim teens have just been charged with lighting a fire is a reminder that jihadists have prescribed such action as a terror method.
As The New American reported yesterday:
Australian authorities have arrested nearly 200 people for setting fires in the states of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania. News agency AAP reports that nearly 85 percent of the fires now burning in Australia have been started, either accidentally or on purpose, by humans.
7News Sydney reports: “Police are now working on the premise arson is to blame for much of the devastation caused this bushfire season. A strike force will investigate whether blazes were deliberately lit and bring those responsible to justice.”
…Police in New South Wales have already arrested 24 alleged arsonists in the state. In Queensland, police report that at least 103 of the fires currently burning in the state were lit deliberately. Authorities in Queensland have identified 98 people, 67 of them juveniles, as the arsonists. Police are investigating many other fires and the arrest count may rise.
In fact, one man-caused fire incident is raising eyebrows. “Western Sydney teen Fadi Zraika — one of the two teens accused of lighting a grass fire at a Guildford park while bushfires ravaged NSW — laughed outside court today after appearing on multiple charges,” reports the Daily Telegraph.
“Police allege Fadi and Abraham Zreika, both 18, set off fireworks that sparked a grass fire at Bright Park, Guildford, on December 22,” the paper continues.
To be clear, the teens’ blaze was successfully extinguished, and they may just have been what many suppose: two irresponsible adolescents playing with fire.
Nonetheless, the incident has reminded some that “jihadis have identified setting fires as a tool of jihad,” as Jihad Watch proprietor Robert Spencer points out, reprinting two headlines supporting his case:
“‘Unleash Hell’: New Al Qaeda magazine describes in detail how to start huge forest fires across the U.S. with instructions on how to make ‘ember bombs.’” — Daily Mail, May 3, 2012
“ISIS-linked media: California fires are retribution for Syria,” Preston Business Review, November 15, 2018
But while the teens’ motive remains unclear (though I suspect garden variety irresponsibility), crystal clear is that leftist policy has enabled the arsonists.
After all, “Australia has long had hot, dry summers,” writes American Thinker. “What’s exceptional about Australian summer heat lately is that, on average, the trend is down from the highs more than 100 years ago,” the site continues, providing a graph:
Moreover, “Average rainfall is also up over the same time period,” the site continues, providing another graph:
American Thinker then explains that when there’s “increased rain in a generally dry climate, plant life grows like crazy. Then, during the dry season, that plant life turns to tinder.”
Wise forest policy prescribes this flammable material’s removal via controlled burning — and the thinning of vegetation in certain areas to create fire breaks — so wilderness doesn’t become a tinderbox. As University of Melbourne Forestry professor Rod Keenan explains, former fire chiefs have recently pointed out that “of all factors driving a fire’s severity — temperature, wind speed, topography, fuel moisture and fuel load — fuel load is the only one humans can influence.”
But not when humans are influenced by environmentalists, who in Australia have stymied forest management. “[Writer] Jo Nova has a damning story about locals in East Gippsland in the state of Victoria who successfully stopped a planned controlled burn at Nowa Nowa,” Breitbart tells us, providing an example. “Two of them were pictured holding signs saying, ‘Spring burns kill baby birds alive’ and ‘Stop burning nesting birds’.”
How many baby birds and other animals (not to mention the 25 people killed thus far) have been burned alive by the fires the environmentalists have enabled?
So call it death by red tape. As Australian parliamentarian Barnaby Joyce lamented, “We haven’t had the capacity to easily access (hazard) reduction burns because of all of the paperwork that is part of green policy.”
Note also that the same irresponsible policies are said to have caused the last two years’ devastating California fires.
Despite this, “climate activists, celebrities, and leftist politicians want to blame anthropogenic climate change for the number and severity of this year’s fires,” The New American (TNA) also informs. “Last week, Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders blamed those who are ‘delaying action on climate change’ for ‘the blood-red sky and unbreathable air in Australia because of raging forest fires.’” If Sanders’ and other demagogues’ words are heeded, it will be a good example of lies’ power, of how the wrong diagnosis yields the wrong prescription — and no cure.
TNA also wondered yesterday if some of our green “physicians” are actually exhibiting Munchausen syndrome by proxy. “Is there a possibility that some of the fires currently laying waste to large portions of Australia were set by climate alarmists themselves in an attempt to prove their point that climate change is leading to more and more terrible fires?” TNA asked.
While there’s currently no evidence of this, such false flags are par for leftists’ course. Just consider the hate crime hoaxes they continually perpetrate.
There’s also as yet no reported evidence of jihadist activity. Yet with almost 200 people accused of setting Australia’s fires, astute observers will wonder about both motives.
What they won’t wonder about is whether the authorities and media would want such cases reported. Western pseudo-elites are notorious for suppressing jihadist motives (e.g., the Obama administration calling the Fort Hood shooting “workplace violence”), and in this case any such reality would be a double whammy. After all, it would be devastating to both the climate change and multiculturalist/immigrationist agendas. That’s what really matters, too, isn’t it?
As former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel once put it, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”
Image: PamWalker68 via iStock / Getty Images Plus
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.
