Barrel Strength

For revealing what an intolerant leftist snob you are. 

That was redundant. Not all snobs are leftists but all leftists are snobs, and intolerance goes hand in glove with both. (Not that intolerance of the intolerable is a virtue). But back to our silly Mr. Rock, President of Ottawa University and former Liberal Minister of Justice, founder of the now defunct gun registry, and representative specimen of Canada’s former ruling class.

The Windsor Star says:

In fact, the released documents show that it was Rock — not Houle — who asked that the email be sent. Rock even dictated some of the wording.

“Ann Coulter is a mean-spirited, small-minded, foul-mouthed poltroon,” Rock wrote to Houle in a March 18 email. “She is ‘the loud mouth that bespeaks the vacant mind’.”

“She is an ill-informed and deeply offensive shill for a profoundly shallow and ignorant view of the world. She is a malignancy on the body politic. She is a disgrace to the broadcasting industry and a leading example of the dramatic decline in the quality of public discourse in recent times.”

At the same time, he argued, “we should not take any steps to interfere with her plans to speak next week on our campus.”

Instead, Rock advised Houle he should write to Coulter informing her of the different rules surrounding free speech in Canada compared with those in the United States.

“You, Francois, as Provost, should write immediately to Coulter informing her of our domestic laws. … You should urge her to respect that Canadian tradition as she enjoys the privilege of her visit.”

After seeing a copy of the final email to Coulter, Rock praised Houle: “Quel excellent message! Merci et felicitations. I am sure she has never been dressed down so elegantly in her life!”

O gosh golly, Allan, are we ever kicking butt today!

Her books sell more than yours, she makes tons of money more than you do, she influences public policy much more effectively than you ever did, even as fons et origo of the hated and useless gun registry, she eats meat (which you do not) and she is welcome at the best parties, whereas you are not, since your reputation as a prating killjoy precedes you. So if you want ad hominem (or ad feminam) attack, check your face in the mirror. Realize what  you are in store for. You stepped into this, and the smell is all over you.

The paralyzing influence of the Leftist mind set is discussed in today’s article in the National Post by Shelby Steele. 

One reason for this is that the entire Western world has suffered from a deficit of moral authority for decades now. Today, we in the West are reluctant to use our full military might in war lest we seem imperialistic; we hesitate to enforce our borders lest we seem racist; we are reluctant to ask for assimilation from new immigrants lest we seem xenophobic; and we are pained to give Western Civilization primacy in our educational curricula lest we seem supremacist. Today, the West lives on the defensive, the very legitimacy of our modern societies requiring constant dissociation from the sins of the Western past–racism, economic exploitation, imperialism and so on.

This philosophy is not for me, not for us at Barrelstrength, but you can smell the prevailing wind, can’t you? And what a fine ally this miasma of leftism has in militant know-nothing Islam! As AIDS is to HIV, so is the spreading blight of Islam to the immuno-depressant effect of political correctness. We are the best (civilization and culture) and they can go fuck off.  Say it repeatedly. You will feel better and you will be right.

The throngs in the streets over the G20 summit may pride themselves for their post-modern sensibility, yet they are oblivious to their own fetish for a largely — and deservedly — extinct mode of political action. Mobilization of the masses is an input that modern democratic social systems do not recognize and genuinely repressive ones have little fear in crushing. What many thought was “direct action” merely turned the Toronto of 2010 into an abortive pathetic LARP of Petrograd in 1917 or Paris in 1968.

For all of the hype that internet technology has brought forth phenomena like flash mobs, there is the countervailing truth that online community building has produced a vast number of “boutique” interest groups with wildly varying degrees of impact. A Facebook campaign can help get Betty White as the host of Saturday Night Live; a piece of performance art on University Avenue will have zero possibility of affecting any decision by the likes of Dimitri Medvedyev or Angela Merkel, the YouTube video of it equally so.

Popular direct action is the dreadnought of political communications. When media were closed systems, it took a critical mass to propel a message past conventional boundaries. So it is only the devotees of Noam Chomsky and Robert Fisk who refuse to acknowledge the futility of the classic “streets of outrage” demonstration.

I invoke the term “Ostalgie” in the title because it strikes me that many of our domestic activists pine for the sort of popular upheavals witnessed in the disintegration of the Soviet Union and more recently the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine. But those occurred in nations whose ease with democratic culture ranged from slim to none. For we who dwell in the realm of the sane, Stephen Harper is not a latter-day Erich Honecker nor Maude Barlow a distaff Lech Walesa.

One of the issues that has diminished the efficiency of the cleanup is the reluctance on part of Obama to suspend the Jones Act,  which Bush did after Hurricane Katrina and Rita.   This reluctance is obviously in deference to his union base.  This week we will find how closely he is bonded to his union base as this foreign ship makes its way to Gulf of Mexico.

With no assurances it will be allowed to join the Gulf of Mexico oil spill cleanup, a Taiwanese-owned ship billed as the world’s largest skimming vessel was preparing to sail Friday evening to the scene of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The ship — the length of 3 1/2 football fields and 10 stories high — is designed to collect up to 500,000 barrels of oily water a day through 12 vents on either side of its bow. It docked in Norfolk en route to the Gulf from Portugal, where it was retrofitted to skim the seas. The ship and its crew of 32 were to leave Virginia waters Friday evening…

Its owners claim the ship could gulp oily water at a daily rate that nearly matches the skimming total to date in the Gulf.

Everyone of conservative persuasion, meaning those who are concerned with the abuse of state power,  ought to be pleased with Conrad Black’s victory, however partial, in the US Supreme Court yesterday. He spent several millions of his own money to prove a fundamental legal and constitutional issue: there is no such thing as a common-law crime.

Let me explain.

Take the law of negligence for example, which is the basis of all those suits in damages you hear of. It is of a civil nature, and not criminal. It evolves with time, according to judge-made decisions.  What constitutes the standard of care may vary, what constitutes negligence varies with the circumstances, and the standard concerning foreseeability of the accident may vary with time. But no  prosecutor is going to imprison you for an “evolving” understanding of what negligence consists of.  There is no such thing as penal law which evolves unpredictably according to judge-made law. It takes a legislature to make a crime, and the law confines the ambit the crime strictly, through definitions, rules of evidence and procedure, which have the effect of tightly defining what is at stake.

What they nailed Conrad Black with – on most of his counts – was a statute whose actual content was never quite defined: denying the corporation your “honest services”. It was a short paragraph of ill-defined meaning through which American prosecutors drove a wide and unpredictable set of prosecutions, against which no defence could be effectively mounted, because the exact crime could “evolve” to fit the new standard, the one established by the prosecution.

Sensible people ought to be pleased that US prosecutors have lost this one; they have plenty more tools in their arsenal.

I find myself in total agreement with the decision of  Judge Gerard Dugre in the case of  Loyola High School in Montreal versus the Quebec government, which appears to be engaging in a clear-cut attack on the right of Catholics to be Catholics, and in so doing, for parents to educate their children with any religious conception of existence whatever. However ironic it is to find Jesuits on the side of religious freedom, nonetheless the clear and present danger comes from the overmighty and pretentious State, not the Roman branch of the Christian church.

Reading the case judgment is a revelation of the intolerance of the new secular humanist establishment. In the words of the expert witness for Loyola High School, Douglas Farrow:

« … first, that the Ethics and Religious Culture (ERC) program represents a significant transfer of power from civil society to the state; second, that its ambitious goals belie any claim to neutrality; third, that the ERC program is intended to provide formation (i.e., to cultivate a world view and a way of thinking and acting consistent with that world view) and not merely information, and that the formation it hopes to provide is at points incompatible with a Catholic formation; fourth, that the imposition of this curriculum (with its mandatory pedagogy) on Catholic schools constitutes, from the perspective of the Catholic Church, a breach of fundamental rights as well as a defeat for certain of the program’s own objectives in recognizing diversity. »

The case concerned whether Loyola could teach its students about other cultures and religions from a Roman Catholic point of view. Specifically, the objection of Loyola to the government’s approach was based on the idea that the government was calling for the acceptance of all practices without any reference to the underlying beliefs that gave them meaning. Loyola wrote:

“Nous avons conçu un programme qui affirme la valeur des religions du monde et qui enseigne leurs coutumes et croyances d’une manière bien plus approfondie que le nouveau programme d’éthique et de culture religieuse.  Notre programme examine non seulement les coutumes externes des autres religions mais aussi leurs croyances fondamentales.  En effet, nous sommes convaincus qu’une simple explication de pratiques externes accomplira bien peu en termes de promouvoir la tolérance et l’acceptation des autres sans une compréhension plus complète des autres fois, comme il est proposé dans notre programme

“We have developed a program which affirms the value of the world’s religions and which teaches  about their customs and beliefs from a much deeper viewpoint than the new program of ethics and religious culture. Our program examines not only the external customs  of other religions but also their fundamental beliefs. In effect, we are convinced that a simple explanation of external practices will accomplish much less in terms of promoting tolerance and the acceptance of others without a more complete understanding  of other religions, as it is proposed in our program.

The government of Quebec wrote to the high school saying that:

“Les deux grandes finalités du programme Éthique et culture religieuse sont la reconnaissance de l’autre et la poursuite du bien commun.  L’approche et la conception du bien commun développées dans le programme Éthique et culture religieuse et celles proposées par Loyola High School sont très différentes.  L’approche préconisée dans le programme Éthique et culture religieuse est culturelle et non fondée sur la foi.  Or, suivant le sommaire du programme proposé par Loyola High School et soumis au Ministère pour évaluation, il appert que le programme de Loyola High School est fondé sur la foi catholique et a pour principale finalité la transmission des croyances et convictions catholiques.  Il englobe une conception de l’autre, mais toujours par rapport à la perspective chrétienne catholique.

“The two great goals of the ethics and religious culture program are the recognition of the other and the pursuit of the common good. The approach and conception of the common good  developed in the ethics and religious culture program  and the one proposed by Loyola are very different. The approach extolled in the ethics and religious culture program is cultural and is not founded on faith. Now, according to the summary of the program proposed by Loyola High School and submitted to the Minister for evaluation, it appears that the program of Loyola High school is founded on the Catholic faith and has for its principal goal the transmission of Catholic beliefs and convictions. It encompasses a conception of the other, always in relation to the Christian Catholic perspective.

and further:

“…il appert que, contrairement au programme Éthique et culture religieuse, le programme de Loyola High School n’amène pas l’élève à réfléchir sur le bien commun, ni sur des questions d’éthique, mais l’amène plutôt à adopter la perspective jésuite du service chrétien.

“It appears that, contrary to the ethics and religious culture program, the program of Loyola High school does not lead the student to reflect on the common good, nor on questions of ethics, but leads him rather to adopt a Jesuit perspective on Christian service.

The Quebec government’s guidelines for teaching the Ethics and religious culture program were another triumph of compulsory ethical relativism.

« De plus, elle [la formation] ne propose pas à l’élève un univers particulier de croyances et de repères moraux. »

Dans ce contexte, il lui [l’enseignant] faut comprendre l’importance de conserver une distance critique à l’égard de sa propre vision du monde, notamment de ses convictions, de ses valeurs et de ses croyances.

Posture professionnelle

Pour favoriser chez les élèves une réflexion sur des questions éthiques ou une compréhension du phénomène religieux, l’enseignant fait preuve d’un jugement professionnel empreint d’objectivité et d’impartialité.  Ainsi, pour ne pas influencer les élèves dans l’élaboration de leur point de vue, il s’abstient de donner le sien. »

Moreover, the course does not propose to the student a particular universe of beliefs and moral benchmarks.

In this context, the student must understand the importance of keeping a critical distance in regard to his own view of the world, notably his convictions, his values and his beliefs.

Professional approach

To encourage a reflection by the students on questions of ethics or an understanding of the religious phenomenon, the teacher demonstrates a professional judgment characterized by objectivity and impartiality. Moreover, so as not to influence his students in the development of their point of view, he abstains from giving his own.

 I would characterize this approach by saying that Quebec allows teachers to expose students to religion as long as it is done in such a way that they deal with the outer behaviour and not the beliefs which inform them, and requires the student to refrain from any kind of critical judgment of others’ beliefs, convictions, and world views, ultimately with the effect of rendering him incapable of moral judgment – including judgment of his own beliefs, convictions and world view. Belief is all absurd, religious and ethical questions become a “whatever”, a zone from which critical thinking is excluded.

Hence the welcome decion of Judge Dugre  when he said:

“…l’obligation imposée à Loyola d’enseigner la matière ÉCR de façon laïque revêt un caractère totalitaire qui équivaut, essentiellement, à l’ordre donné à Galilée par l’Inquisition de renier la cosmologie de Copernic.”

“…The obligation imposed on Loyola to teach the ECR course in a secular fashion reveals a totalitarian character which is equivalent essentially, to the order given to Galileo by the Inquisition to deny the Copernican cosmology.”

It would seem so and she is already engaged in preemptive planning.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is asking supporters for contributions to help prevent the “subpoenas and investigations” that would result from a GOP majority.

If you ever want to experience rock-solid political correctness, try criticizing Quebec’s “Quiet Revolution”. The howls of outrage! In today’s Le Devoir, Eric Bedard, a profesor of history at the Universite de Quebec, suggests that it is permitted now to think about the Quiet Revolution, not as a block, but as a variety of moves, not all of which have been fully successful, or which, if once successful, may no longer be so. [About time!]

Bedard points to the appalling statistics of Quebec in 1961.

“En 1961, les Canadiens français âgés de 25 à 29 ans avaient effectué en moyenne une année de scolarité de moins que les Noirs américains du même groupe d’âge; le salaire moyen des Canadiens français équivalait à 52 % du salaire moyen du groupe dominant, 2 % de moins que les noirs américains.”

In 1961 French Canadains between 25 and 29 had one year less schooling than American blacks and earned 52%of the money earned by their English speaking neighbours. Nowadays Quebec’s French language population earns 2% more per capita than its English-language neighbours, largely because 250,00 members of Quebec’s English-language population has fled for better economic climates, leaving behnd the old, the rural, and the immigrants claiming English as their mother tongue.

As Brian Lee Crowley writes in Freaful Symmetry, based on census research,

The total net out-migration of non-French speakers in the last forty years has been on the order of 425,00. That net loss represented roughly 7 percent of Quebec’s population as it was in 1970…. (p.207)

 Bedard goes further:

La grandeur de la Révolution tranquille, c’est d’avoir mis fin à cette infériorité économique. Grâce à la Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, à la Société générale de financement et au rôle-clef d’Hydro-Québec dans l’exploitation de nos ressources naturelles, on peut dire que le pari a été gagné. Cet «État français» pouvait aussi être un instrument d’affranchissement collectif.

Je pose cependant la question: ce succès absolument incontestable n’a-t-il pas créé chez nous un rapport fétichiste à l’État? Il m’arrive de penser que, pour certains Québécois, toutes les solutions à nos problèmes collectifs passent par une intervention accrue de l’État. Plusieurs s’en remettent à l’État comme autrefois on s’en remettait à l’Église. Hors de l’État, point de Québec!

My  translation goes as follows:

The greatness of the Quiet Revolution consisted in putting an end to this economic inferiority. Thanks to the Caisse de depot, the Societe Generale de financement (state investment vehicles) and the key role of Hydro Quebec (the monopoly power utility) in the exploitation of our natural resources, one can say that the bet has been won. This “French state” could act as an instrument of collective enfranchisement as well.

Nevertheless I ask the question: has this absolutely uncontestable success not created a fetishistic relationship to the State? It strikes me that for certain Quebecois, all the solutions to our collective pr0blems are found in increased state intervention. Several reposae in the State what they used to repose in the Church. Outside of the State, there would be no Quebec!

The purpose of Bedard’s editorial is to liberate people to criticize the obnoxious aspects of Quebec’s overdependence on labour unions, and professional corporations which monopolize certain sectors to the exclusion of immigrants and sensible solutions, its bad educational system, its overcrowded state-run hospitals, and its reliance on statism.

But he does not go far enough. Bedard is still trying to rescue the notion that the State is the central player in the evolution of society.

Si nous voulons continuer à faire des affaires en français, si nous souhaitons que de grandes entreprises québécoises continuent d’être concurrentielles sur la scène du monde, il nous faudra toujours compter sur un État fort. Un État capable d’incarner les plus hautes aspirations du peuple québécois dans tous les secteurs névralgiques de la vie collective (ex. richesses naturelles, culture et identité, justice).

If we want to continue to do business in French, and if we want large Quebec corporations to continue to be competitive on the world stage, we shall always have to count on a strong state. A State capable of embodying the highest aspirations of the Quebec people in the neural sectors of collective life, such as natural resources, culture and identity, and justice.

I have never been persuaded that iron mining is a central preoccupation of the state. I can see a case for subsidizing French-language  music and theatre, and  the administration of justice is a core function of the state which would never be privatized. But the idea that the Quebec’s large corporations function in the French-language  when communicating outside the province is delusional. And the largest delusion may be  that French-language companies in Quebec are competitive without state subsidies.

As a friend once said, the fastest way for Quebec to get real on language policy, statism and a host of social policies it pursues (at our expense) would be for it to separate. Once the federal transfersdry up, reality will set in with a vengeance.

I expect Quebec to separate within my lifetime because, in essence, it already has and, when the next sovereignist campaign wins a referendum, it will push against an open door. Here’s your hat,  what’s your hurry?

In his short reign as the US president Obama has been compared to Lincoln, Kennedy and Roosevelt.   Lofty heights indeed and all this when he was just sworn in.  At that time Obama very proudly pontificated how he was going to have a “Team of Rivals” in his cabinet, in a manner analogous to Lincoln’s wartime cabinet.  How is that working out O?  In the aftermath of the Rolling Stone interview by Gen. McChrystal, The Corner notes this.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal should not lose his job because of the article about him in Rolling Stone magazine. If anyone deserves blame for the latest airing of the administration’s internal feuds over Afghanistan, it is President Obama.

For months Obama has tolerated deep divisions between his military and civilian aides over how to implement the counterinsurgency strategy he announced last December. The divide has made it practically impossible to fashion a coherent politico-military plan, led to frequent disputes over tactics and contributed to a sharp deterioration in the administration’s relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The virtue of the Rolling Stone article is that Obama may finally have to confront the trouble. But the dismissal of McChrystal would be the wrong outcome. It could spell disaster for the military campaign he is now overseeing in southern Afghanistan, and it would reward those in the administration who have been trying to undermine him, including through media leaks of their own.

“Tunes of Glory” (1960) is one of the greatest films ever made, and I was glad to learn that its author, Ronald Neame, director, writer and cinematographer, thought it his best work. he was also responsible for “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and many other significant films. Happily for him, he made a fortune on “The Poseidon Adventure”, of which he took a 5% cut for rescuing it from a failing producer.

I shall not ruin the plot of Tunes of Glory for you; just make every effort to watch it. I place up there with Blade Runner as among the greatest films ever made. The performances of Alec Guinness and John Mills are outstanding. The plot concerns the reaction of the regiment to the new colonel, who has been sent up from London to take over what had been his father’s regiment at some previous time, and the profound rejection the new graft endures when he cannot accommodate to the actual working style and values of the organization.

Tunes of Glory is an accurate depiction of a Scottish Highland regiment, but it is more: it is the exact expression of Jane Jacobs’ ideas about guardian institutions. The guardian institutions are those non-market institutions: the courts, the regiments, the churches, the professional associations, the schools and universities, that form the cultural, legal and military backbone in which the market society works. Corruption, said Jacobs, occurs when the morality appropriate to the market invades a guardian institution (bribing the cops or the judge) as well as when guardian values infect market institutions, such as when values such as resort to force, obedience, violence, hierarchy, secrecy, closedness and prodigious display pervade a market institution.

You do not need to read Jane Jacobs to understand what Ronald Neame was depicting in Tunes of Glory: so great an artist needs no further explanation. But if you will look at the list of contrasting values that Jacobs developed, comparing “guardian” to “market” values, you will obtain a deeper insight into this great movie.

A link to Daimnation goes into the Jane Jacobs’ thinking on this more deeply.

An interesting new post in Newsweek, of all places, on the ongoing issue of the inheritance of acquired characteristics.

Lest the assembled hosts of Darwinians descend on me for heresy, let me assure them that my allegiance to the party line is questionable: Darwin is largely correct. His theory on the unity of life, the variation of species by random mutations, and the emergence of new species from gradual changes is almost certainly correct. Is his theory complete? Does it cover all possible circumstances? I doubt it, and so do many other biologists more eminently qualified than I.

The absurd overspending: come on, fellow Conservatives! This bill for the G20 is not defensible; this is a boonbdoggle.

And it is only going to get worse. Wait until Toronto is occupied by security forces, rioters and tear gas. Wait until the massive commuter disruption forces home on everyone what is meant by “security overstretch”. Feel like you are under foreign occupation? Feel like you are under martial law? You might as well be.

As far as I can see, the whole thing will consolidate Liberal Toronto in the hands of the Parti Torontois. What it does to the Conservative vote across Canada can only be guessed at, but it cannot be good.

Wake up, Blogging Tories! Get on this issue. It is staring us in the face and we are talking about anything but – valid as those other concerns are; we should not be putting our heads in the sand over this imperial folly.

Was this interview with George Stephanopoulos a Freudian slip?

Sen. Barack Obama’s foes seized Sunday upon a brief slip of the tongue, when the Democratic presidential nominee was outlining his Christianity but accidentally said, “my Muslim faith.”

The three words — immediately corrected — were during an exchange with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “This Week,” when he was trying to criticize the quiet smear campaign suggesting he is a Muslim.

This report would certainly seem to confirm that.

“The American President told me in confidence that he is a Muslim.”

That was the claim of Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, as reported in the May 2010 issue of Israel Today. According to journalist Avi Lipkin, Gheit appeared on Nile TV’s “Round Table Show” in January, on which he said that “he had had a one-on-one meeting with Obama who swore to him that he was a Moslem, the son of a Moslem father and step-son of Moslem step-father, that his half-brothers in Kenya were Moslems, and that he was loyal to the Moslem agenda.”

Obama allegedly said this in the context of reassuring Gheit that he would soon deal with Israel:

He asked that the Moslem world show patience. Obama promised that once he overcame some domestic American problems (Healthcare) [sic], that he would show the Moslem world what he would do with Israel.

Could this be true? Even if Gheit’s claim isn’t true, or was misreported, every country in the free world must be cognizant of the catastrophic sea change that has taken place in the leadership of the free world — as witnessed by events over the past year. Barack Obama took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, and yet whether he is a Muslim or not, he has undeniably gone around the world promoting Islam and Sharia (Islamic law).

It seems so!

Democracy could ‘collapse’ in Greece, Spain and Portugal unless urgent action is taken to tackle the debt crisis, the head of the European Commission has warned.

In an extraordinary briefing to trade union chiefs last week, Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso set out an ‘apocalyptic’ vision in which crisis-hit countries in southern Europe could fall victim to military coups or popular uprisings as interest rates soar and public services collapse because their governments run out of money.

The stark warning came as it emerged that EU chiefs have begun work on an emergency bailout package for Spain which is likely to run into hundreds of billions of pounds.

Daniel Suarez’ “Daemon” marks a cunning sci-fi police procedural which turns into, simultaneously, a thrilling page-turner and a profound critique of capitalist society in its current computer-dependent state. What if I could get across an important techno-political treatise in the guise of a thriller? What if I could get across a chapter in Philip Bobbitt’s The Shield of Achilles, or Machiavelli’s The Prince, both of which are brilliant essays on of western warfare and political evolution, as a high-tech police procedural? What if Hobbes wrote Leviathan not as learned discourse on the nature of the state in Renaissance Europe, but as a high-tech science fiction thriller?

Several important writers have tried to tell us that the modern state is finished. But what do we mean by the word “state”? Bobbitt told us that the nation-state was passing into the market-state, which is where we are now. Basically this transition from nation-state to market-state signifies the withdrawal of the state from attempting to equalize outcomes, to one which tries to maximize your opportunities. Bobitt writes brilliantly. I recommend him. Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age also dealt with the nature of the world where nanotechnology has destroyed the basis of the nation-state, and I recommend him, too.

But Suarez is at an entirely more effective level of discourse because you are going to find him in the front of the airport book store before you get on your plane. You are going to be absorbed by the detective story that constitutes the beginning of the novel, and you are going to be increasingly impressed by how good it gets: how much more complex the implications, and how very cleverly he conveys his ideas about the obsolescence of our current governmental-economic structures. Why are they obsolescent? Because the uniformity of the machine-level at which all data is stored, configured, and manipulated has left us essentially as vulnerable as a wheat monoculture to rust, or a potato monoculture to blight.

The blight in question is the “daemon”. The genius inventor of multi-player immersive computer games, Mathew Sobol, has died, and his death causes a number of events to spring forth.  Essentially the daemon, a sophisticated program, takes over the IT departments of many large corporations as a parasite, and threatens the total evaporation of their records unless they comply with Mathew Sobol’s requirements. Sobol speaks through videos recorded before his death. He (in the form of computer-generated videos) asserts that he is the first man fully to realize the implications of computer insecurity and to exploit them in a comprehensive way. His daemon has become a parasite upon computer-dependent civilization, just as it was designed to be.

Don’t be put off by my praise: this is a fascinating book. Daniel Suarez has written something worth your attention.