Barrel Strength

Watching the Globe work its way towards a true understanding of current events is like waiting for a slowly developing child to form a complete sentence. Today’s leader, ‘The call of jihad rings far and wide’, is a look at the recent arrests of suspected terrorists. Unfortunately (and I suspect you were waiting for that qualification) the very last sentence betrays a dangerous depth of intellectual immaturity. “But that trust is what makes Canada work, and a few accused terrorists should not be able to ruin it for everyone else.” In other words, if only the student who wrote the saucy word on the blackboard would come forward, everyone else could go for recess.

I know what the problem is. We have seen what happens when terrorists succeed and do ‘ruin it for everyone else’.  I know the solution. I think the Globe does, too.

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.

“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.

A 60-year-old lawyer ripped a Muslim woman’s Islamic veil off in a row in a clothing shop in what police say is France’s first case of “burka rage”.

It is no surprise to me that the assailant was female…western women spent a century breaking out of the kitchen and off the chaise longue to participate as fully in society as they choose to and it is infuriating to see this retrograde cultural phenomenon of veiled women taking hold on the specious grounds of religious freedom…my own sister said she felt like ripping off veils when she saw them…and she is over 65 and a middle-of-the-road feminist.

Cool. That logic makes me a Martian.

For years you railed against the CBC’s anti-conservative bias, and for as long people would tell you you were dreaming:  that the CBC is objective, unbiassed, and fair. Bullshit! Then comes Frank Graves, CBC pollster, telling the Liberals to wage jihad against those homo-phobic, xeno-phobic western-based Conservatives, those Christians!

In his advice, Mr. Graves could hardly have been more blunt. “I told them that they should invoke a culture war. Cosmopolitanism versus parochialism, secularism versus moralism, Obama versus Palin, tolerance versus racism and homophobia, democracy versus autocracy. If the cranky old men in Alberta don’t like it, too bad. Go south and vote for Palin.”

The Grits haven’t told him whether they favour this approach or not. But they are keen on projecting a more activist agenda for the party.

• opposing the end of the long-gun registry;
• supporting the requirement to make  Supreme Court appointees fully capable of hearing a French-language brief, without translation, thus limiting the Supreme Court to some 10% of the Canadian population or less, most of whom would be French-Canadian.

Ezra Levant is doing an excellent job of showing how many millions Frank Graves has taken out of the Liberal government Hey! for $61 million I can be bought and stay bought, too.

But the CBC! Now you know how they are advised and whom they hire. Like advises like. I know the senior management, personally, and I can assure you they are exactly as you imagine them, true to the values of the organization: statist, elitist, privilege-seeking, and feeding at the taxpayers’ trough. And believe me, to them you are just little people. Little people don’t count, and their values count for less.

… but can you keep Chicago from bringing the President under impeachment?  I always thought turning his back on Rod Blagojevich was a stupidly bad idea.  Who’s more connected downtown?  Bill Ayers got your back?  This is Obama versus a Chicago politician who wants to stay out of jail.  Stay tuned. Estimates that put Obama out of office next summer might be optimistic.

Ujjal Dosanjh blames excessive tolerance of Canadians for multi-cultural diversity for turning a blind eye to terrorism and thuggish behaviour.

“Meanwhile, Mr. Dosanjh blamed what he described as Canada’s polite brand of multiculturalism for giving extremists the space to nurture old grudges brought from their homelands. At the same time, Canada has failed to instill its own values on new immigrants.

“I think what we are doing to this country is that this idea of multiculturalism has been completely distorted, turned on its head to essentially claim that anything anyone believes – no matter how ridiculous and outrageous it might be – is okay and acceptable in the name of diversity.

“Where we have gone wrong in this pursuit of multiculturalism is that there is no adherence to core values, the core Canadian values, which [are]: That you don’t threaten people who differ with you; you don’t go attack them personally; you don’t terrorize the populace.”

Dosanjh has been both a Member of Parliament as federal Liberal and member of the provincial legislature of  British Columbia for the NDP. Can I ask which parties have been responsible for relentlessly pushing  this “polite brand of multiculturalism”, and which have relentlessly slandered any person or party who did not mindlessly sing  its praises? Who constricted debate? Enoch Powell indeed.

The cat is all right. The BC environment minister probably never will be.

The sad news of the death of 12-term Democrat congressman, Charlie Wilson, reached me yesterday. He organized the American funding of the Afghan resistance during the First Afghan War, the Soviet one, in the 1970s and 80s. The near incredible tale is related in Charlie Wilson’s War, a book I recommend highly. Ony in America.

Wilson got himself into more trouble, and out of it, in fashion reminiscent of a 19th century riverboat gambler.

I wish that, when the United States occasionally purges itself of Republican rule, as it must, that more Democrats of Charlie Wilson’s ilk could be found fighting America’s enemies effectively, in between shagging the beauties and snorting cocaine while drunk at the wheel. My kind of Democrat. What  P.J. O’Rourke would be if he had not  turned into an author and  conservative satirist.

The kind of guy who organizes National Handgun Week, where officers of the police have to certify you drunk be fore you are allowed on the firing line.

My kind of Democrat. Now where the hell is that Kalashnikov?

The authors of the Bell Curve , Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, were right. Intelligence corelates most effectively with  a wide range of apparently unrelated behaviours and outcomes, and more effectively than all other supposed explanations.

From Reuters:

The MRC study, which analysed data from 1,145 men and women aged around 55 and followed up for 20 years, rated the top five heart disease risk factors as cigarette smoking, IQ, low income, high blood pressure, and low physical activity.

If you have not yet read Charles Murray’s Human Accomplishment, you must.  It is that simple. You should not be allowed to talk about human accomplishments without having done so.

It shows what you would expect it to show, that of the world’s great accomplishments, most of them, in fact, by far the largest proportion of them, the ones that change not merely their own culture but the world’s possibilities, were accomplished by white men. Repeat: white….men. It will drive any politically correct person to writhing agony.

This is the trial of the century. The increasingly popular Dutch politician, Geert Wilders is on trial for saying offensive things about Islam, and truth, apparently, is not going to be a defence.

The Dutch Prosecution Office replied to Wilders’ attempts to call witnesses thus:

“In response to Wilders’s request to bring in witnesses to establish the veracity of the opinions that got him in trouble with the law, that body issued this statement on January 17: “It is irrelevant whether Wilders’s witnesses might prove Wilders’s observations to be correct, what’s relevant is that his observations are illegal.””

And what does our National Post do? Show Wilders snubbing his own nose with a pencil. The letter about Wilders which the Post printed was favourable, but the picture makes him look repellent, and thse things do not happen by accident.

Where are our conservative and libertarian bloggers? Asleep? And what’s up with the National Post? You came to the defence of Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn with our own thought control commissions. Why is Wilders the exception?

And while we are on the topic of Mr Wilders, the following are important:

• Atlas Shrugs shows trial has been postponed, to resume at an unknown time at the whim of the Dutch government.
• National Review Online started to cover the trial.

Wake up, people! This is your issue!

When the climategate emails started to come out last fall, I wrote to a warmist colleague of mine for whom I have a high regard.  He deals in such matters as user-owned networks and other net-headed concerns. We have been on the same side in several carrier versus net-head issues. He is also obsessed with AGW and what the information technology  industry can do to help. Okay, so no one is perfect. But making energy use more efficient is the goal of all rational people, and if you can just leave aside the AGW thing, there is much that can and should be done.

I suggested that in the light of the HadleyCRU leaked emails that he might wish to back off a bit. I received in turn a tongue lashing for my impertinence and the crude imputation of stupidity and unworthiness for my position. I replied that this was no fair, and that one of the most odious  attrtributes of the AGW true believer was that no rational discussion would be tolerated. People might not be persuaded of AGW but they were convinced that believers in it were fanatics, and of the two phenomena, political fanaticism was more to be feared.

So now it is payback time. Actually it is just beginning to be payback time. Matt Ridley, who is a highly-successful and serious science writer, has just come out with this in the Spectator.

He makes several points:

• the complete failure and connivance of the mainstream media in this fraud
• the power of the Internet, and the amateur, to foil this plot.

The amateur has been the hero of this story: Anthony Watts, Steve McIntyre, Andrew Montford,

“Notice that all of these sceptic bloggers are self-employed businessmen. Their strengths are networks and feedback: mistakes get quickly corrected; new leads are opened up; expertise is shared; links are made. Prejudice and ignorance abound too, but the good blogs get rewarded with scoops and guest essays so they tap into rich seams of knowledge.”

And the response of the MSM has been late, but they are starting to get there.

“When Climategate broke, the mainstream media, like knights facing archers at Crécy, mostly ran dismissive pieces reflecting the official position of the Consensus. For example, they dutifully repeated the line that the University of East Anglia’s global temperature record was vindicated by two other ‘entirely independent’ records (from Nasa and NOAA), which was bunk: all three records draw from the same network of weather stations. Editors then found — by reading and counting the responses on their blog pages — that there was huge and educated interest in Climategate among their readers. One by one they took notice and unleashed their sniffing newshounds at last: the Daily Express went first, then the Mail and the Sunday Times, last week the Times and this week even the Guardian.”

And now perhaps even the Globe and Mail.

I am waiting for Geoffrey Simpson, master of the Glebe Consensus on Everything Important, and ridiculous shill for AGW, to confess to error. Also for hell to freeze over.

Pat Condell’s matchless outrage has to be seen. Bravo!

I have just learned from Lawrence Auster’s site that Wilders’ trial has been postponed for many months.