Barrel Strength

I had the pleasure of dining with Lord Hugh of Auchentoshan the other night. Lord Hugh is an English Catholic, what they used to call a recusant; his family never saw the benefits of the Reformation and so, unlike many Irish or Scottish Catholics, their attachment to the Roman religion was to them an intensely familial tradition rather than a tribal identification. You all know dozens of Catholics; you may be one yourself. My experience has been that Catholics have a hard time accepting parts of their religious upbringing, and if I may venture this observation, the difficulty seems to arise mostly from their strong aversion to the conflation of the institution of the Church with the message of Christianity. For a protestant, these things are separate; for a Catholic, these are nearly unitary. So among my many Catholic friends maybe two or three attend Mass and take it seriously enough to argue about it, favourably or unfavourably. The proportion of protestant friends who are believers is not much higher, but they are a lot less angry with their native churches.

Since we have known each other for decades, Lord Hugh and I do not have to pretend about anything. He arrived with a couple of bottles of wine and some cheese, which is always a good sign in a guest. It means they intend to stay and have a good time. Over steak and good red wine we discussed Lord Hugh’s favourite topic, Roman Catholicism.

Read the rest…

The MSM is focusing on SocGen trading fiasco and asking questions about why this fiasco wasn’t interrupted sooner. We here at Barrel Strength don’t know the answer to that question but as the Latin Scholar, Sen. Edward Kennedy, is fond of saying when stumped, “that is a good question, but a better question is” how was this information disseminated to the central banks?

Our informed banking sources tell us that all banks have historically had to disclose material risk positions to the central bank and regulators on a daily basis. Under Basle I there was some discretion as to how the reporting occurred and what was disclosed. Under Basle II this is not an option. Reality has to be reported.

Given that, it is obvious that Monsieur Jean-Claude Trichet, must have been rudely interrupted by one of his colleagues, as he toasted Martin Luther King Day, to inform him of this. How is it then that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was unaware of this? Are the haughty French still treating the uncivilized and uncouth Yankees with disdain?

Lake Superior State University maintains a registry of what they call “Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness. ” I have a distinctly Canadian contribution for the next round of updates: “detainees”.

This word has caused a cycle of media feeding frenzies over the Canadian mission in Afghanistan. And how appropriate that the Canadian mainstream media embrace a term that is genuinely Orwellian. For me, “detainees” evokes images of helpless victims of ruthless governments of the sort one would see in a Costa Gravas political thriller. It would never occur to me to associate the term with ragtag fanatical pillagers, bombers and extortionists. Even the Merriam-Webster Dictionary supports the former conclusion.

The Taliban irregulars captured in battle by Canadian troops are not being “detained” for political reasons. These are individuals who have used deadly force against our soldiers and innocent civilians, period. That they have embraced the authority of medievally-minded tyrants is secondary to the fact that they meet the legal definition of pirates:

Until 1856, international law recognized only two legal entities: people and states. People were subject to the laws of their own governments; states were subject to the laws made amongst themselves. The Declaration of Paris created a third entity: people who lacked both the individual rights and protections of law for citizens and the legitimacy and sovereignty of states. This understanding of pirates as a legally distinct category of international criminals persists to the present day, and was echoed in the 1958 and 1982 U.N. Conventions on the Law of the Sea. The latter defines the crime of piracy as “any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for private ends.” This definition of piracy as private war for private ends may hold the crux of a new legal definition of international terrorists.

The rights of captured Taliban irregulars would in a strict sense amount to roughly zero. But sensible military commanders recognize the wisdom in the words of Prince Faisal in “Lawrence of Arabia”: 

With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me, it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable. 

Letting your enemy know that he may be treated with some modicum of dignity in captivity makes it far more likely that waverers will surrender rather than fight to the death. The goal is to save Canadian lives, and not to attribute rights to lawless brigands.

When Canadian society is allowing fundamental rights like freedom of speech to be snatched away quietly by witless agents of the state, we need not waste our time creating an artificial set of rights for irregular criminals. Start by letting LSSU have its way with the word “detainees” in their next list: we have pirates to capture.

Update: The Torch outlines just how far the current government has to go in mastering honest communications about the Afghanistan mission