So many new developments: which story do we pick? Maybe best to summarize, instead. After all, it's not like you're going to find much of this reported in the MSM.

1. Australia's Senate rejects Emissions Trading Scheme for a second time. Or: so turkeys don't vote Christmas. Expect to see a lot more of this: politicians starting to become aware their party's position on AGW is completely out of kilter with the public mood and economic reality. Kevin Rudd's Emissions Trading Scheme – what Andrew Bolt calls "a $114 billion green tax on everything" – would have wreaked havoc on the coal-dependent Australian economy. That's why several opposition Liberal frontbenchers resigned rather than vote with the Government on ETS; why Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull lost his job; and why the Senate voted down the ETS.

2. Danes caught fiddling their carbon credits. (Hat tip: Philip Stott) Carbon trading is the Emperor's New Clothes of international finance. It was invented by none other than Ken Lay, whose Enron would currently be one of the prime beneficiaries in the global alternative energy market, if it hadn't been shown to be (nearly) as fraudulent as the current AGW scam. It is a licence to fleece, cheat and rob. Still, jolly embarrassing for the Danes to get caught red handed, what with their hosting a conference shortly in which the world's leaders will try, straight-faced, to persuade us that carbon emissions trading is the only viable way of defeating ManBearPig.

3. Hats off to The Daily Express – the first British newspaper to make the AGW scam its front page story. The piece was inspired by another bravura performance by Professor Ian Plimer, the Aussie geologist who argues that climate change has been going on quite naturally, oblivious of human activity, for the last 4,567 million years. – UK Telegraph

Dominant Social Theme: What a pity.

Free-Market Analysis: Yes, we think the UK Telegraph has got it right. Global warming, once one of the power elite's most successful promotions, is on the way out. It has lost credibility with the average joe, and when a promotion fails at that significant level it is fairly kaput. It may limp along, but we can't see it having the impact – creating the kind of wealth and control – that the power elite may have hoped it would generate even a few short years ago.

Yes, as Daily Bell readers know, we believe that such dominant social themes are indeed promotions of a power elite. We put our model to the test every day and we don't see it failing so far. The power elite, a relative handful of generationally wealthy families and individuals, creates global promotions that are intended to scare people into calling for more governmental control. The power elite conveniently provides more and more of these national and international authorities for people to pick and choose among.

The other half of our model concerns the Internet. We are pleased to see, as we have predicted on numerous occasions, the Internet itself (and the information it provides to sensible common folk) continues to unravel dominant social themes. We are not so simplistic as to believe that each and every promotion put forth by the power elite is going to collapse. Life is complex. No one model of the world yields absolutely predictable results. But the collision between free-market thinking (enabled by the Internet) and the power elite does seem to be offering, as we thought, interesting results.

NOTED: Here's a post from one of our favorite, non-mainstream health-care professionals, Dr. Mercola. He writes the following:

Swine Flu Alert — Shocking Vaccine Miscarriage Horror Stories: U.S. health authorities have made pregnant women one of the highest priority groups for getting the H1N1 swine flu vaccine, but is it actually safe for pregnant women and their babies? In fact, the package inserts for the swine flu vaccines actually say that the safety of these vaccines for pregnant women has not been established. And miscarriage reports from pregnant women who have taken the H1N1 swine flu vaccine are starting to pour in from all over the nation.

We think the swine flu "epidemic" is just another dominant social theme, designed to scare people and condition them to look for cures from Big Pharma. But like global warming, swine flu has proven to be something of a bust. People go on the Internet and read what's really going on. There's generally a lot of suspicion about vaccines these days. In our humble opinion, there should be.

Again, we are not suggesting that the Internet will have an effect of this sort on every single promotion with this magnitude. (Or even that this meme won't stagger along.) Wars, epidemics, meteor showers, alien invasions – the power elite has dozens of themes to choose from and dozens of ways to frighten people, and the means to do it. But the Gutenberg press, hundreds of years ago, changed the way that people related to the power elite of that time period. The modern variant of the Gutenberg press – the Internet – continues to bite, and bite ever more deeply. And we will continue to follow this conversation – the greatest conversation on earth – the collision of dominant social themes with the Internet. Every day, you can read about it right here on the Bell.