The Bow and Lyre

Words for Easter perhaps

2009-04-10T14:42:00.005-04:00

"IV

My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.

While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessèd and could bless.

V

Although the summer Sunlight gild
Cloudy leafage of the sky,
Or wintry moonlight sink the field
In storm-scattered intricacy,
I cannot look thereon,
Responsibility so weighs me down.

Things said or done long years ago,
Or things I did not do or say
But thought that I might say or do,
Weigh me down, and not a day
But something is recalled,
My conscience or my vanity appalled.

VI

A rivery field spread out below,
An odour of the new-mown hay
In his nostrils, the great lord of Chou
Cried, casting off the mountain snow,
"Let all things pass away."

Wheels by milk-white asses drawn
Where Babylon or Nineveh
Rose; some conqueror drew rein
And cried to battle-weary men,
"Let all things pass away."

From man's blood-sodden heart are sprung
Those branches of the night and day
Where the gaudy moon is hung.
What's the meaning of all song?
"Let all things pass away."

(From "Vacillation", by W.B. Yeats)

Mr. Burns would be proud

2009-04-09T12:19:00.007-04:00

"Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun."

Perhaps it isn't purely coincidental that in the picture above Monty is making an "O" sign with his hands. The Obama administration is seriously considering seeding the earth's atmosphere with pollution in order to control the weather. The pretext, of course, is the global warming that has been on hold for the past ten years.

Whatever will they think of next? Perhaps Obama can use the American nuclear arsenal to try to knock the earth into a wider, cooler orbit?

The shape of things to come

2009-04-08T09:06:00.010-04:00

The first hundred days of Barack Obama's presidency are not yet fully elapsed, but even in this short space of time he has managed to drastically and perhaps even fatally weaken the standing of the United States in world affairs. Although there exists at the moment an emergent alliance of mutually cooperative nations such as Russia, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, North Korea and Cuba whose hostility is mainly driven by various anti- Western ideologies, Obama seems to imagine that the grievances of each of these countries have been provoked solely by the past mistakes of American foreign policy, and that everything can be smoothed over in the future with apologies and negotiations.

This is terribly naive. The Slavophile nationalism of Russia, the populist Marxism of Venezuela and Cuba, the fossilized Stalinism of North Korea and the anti- Zionist hatred of Syria and Iran are directly incompatible with American interests in every degree. The U.S. has nothing to offer these countries but its own acquiescence to their territorial and ideological ambitions, and this is exactly what has happened so far under Obama.

On Russia, it appears ever more likely that Hillary Clinton's famous "reset button" will entail the abandonment of America's nervous allies in Eastern Europe, many of whom are former vassal states of the Soviet empire; on Iran and North Korea, Obama will continue to pursue the futile U.N. route of strongly- worded letters and sanctions; on Venezuela and Cuba, the administration seems likely to seek a policy of rapprochement involving apologies for past U.S. imperialism in the Caribbean and South America.

It's notable that very little of Obama's would- be diplomacy so far has earned the respect of the targeted countries. Russia's Medvedev reproached him for "haggling" over the Polish missile defence shield, Hugo Chavez called him "a poor ignoramus" with a "stench" like that of George W. Bush, and Iran has so far snubbed Obama's attempts at outreach by setting impossible conditions for reconciliation. The reason is very simple: strong leaders despise weak ones. It is only the leaders of liberal Western countries who cling to the idea that an enemy is just a friend who hasn't yet been recognized.

What will be the likely consequences of this way of thinking? One may turn out to be the abandonment of Israel. Joe Biden has claimed that it would be "ill- advised" of Israel to attack Iran, even though it is obvious that diplomacy with the Iranians is getting nowhere. In the event that Israel understandably tries to cripple Iran's nuclear programme, it can probably expect only condemnation from the Obama administration, and this effectively means that Israel will lose its only faithful ally on the world stage -- leaving the way clear for another round of anti- Israeli hysteria at the United Nations, and possible international isolation of the Jewish state through sanctions.

And what about Eastern Europe? Ukraine is directly menaced by the revanchist ambitions of Russia, which has already invaded Georgia in the interests of defending alleged "Russian citizens", most of whom were not ethnic Russians at all. But millions of genuine ethnic Russians do live in Ukraine, and the Crimea is a point of vital strategic importance for the Russian navy's Black Sea fleet. It can safely be assumed that the U.S. would do nothing for Ukraine, and that Russia has a free hand in this matter if it chooses to act. Even this would only be a preliminary, however, to the reconstitution of a new Russian empire, brought about by the absorption of surrounding countries under the same pretext of defending the interests of Russian- speakers -- who are practically everywhere in the region, thanks to Soviet- era policies of resettlement.

North Korea will continue to defy the U.N. and test increasingly more powerful missiles capable of reaching not only South Korea and Japan, but Hawaii, Alaska, and the western states of the mainland U.S. Decades of negotiations on this matter have achieved precisely nothing, and will continue to achieve nothing -- so that increasingly lethal weaponry will continue to accumulate in the hands of an ailing Marxist fanatic who, presiding over a half- starved and enslaved population, may feel he has nothing to lose in starting a major regional war.

Cuba will likely continue to stagnate under its Communist regime after the death of Castro, without even the moderate incentive to change provided until now by American sanctions and travel restrictions. It appears that Obama will pursue a complete renormalization of relations between the two countries. But this may not prevent the Cubans from further military cooperation with Russia and Venezuela just 90 miles from the coast of Florida, even as Obama feels paradoxically obliged to defer to Russian interests in the latter's alleged "sphere of influence" in Europe.

Syria will continue to sponsor terrorism against Israel, while holding out to American negotiators the elusive possibility that it will cease to do so once it regains the Golan Heights. Although there is not the slightest possible reason to believe that Syria will ever turn its back on its ally Iran and become a purely peaceful neighbour to Israel, U.S. diplomats will eagerly pursue this chimera for at least the next four years. That the Israelis -- already stung by their surrender of Gaza and that territory's transformation into a Hamas military base -- may be unwilling to trade yet more land for the deceptive prospect of "peace" will be taken by world leaders as a sign of incorrigible Zionist intransigence.

The only country I haven't mentioned so far is the one that may have the most impact of all on the fortunes of the Western world: China. It is true that the Chinese and American economies are at the moment interdependent, making any open conflict between the two powers unlikely for the foreseeable future. But this may change with the seemingly inexorable decline of the U.S. economy. A China which feels itself freed of the constraints of dealing primarily with America may find itself with a freer hand to deal with its own territorial preoccupations, such as Taiwan. Already, of course, there is abundant evidence of Chinese hostility to the U.S. Most notably, there have been significant attacks on American technological networks by Chinese hackers, who are in all probability working with the collusion of the Chinese government. Recently it was revealed that a China- based spy network had seriously compromised the security of foreign embassies and intelligence networks; today it has also emerged that sophisticated efforts have been made to undermine the U.S. electricity grid by the means of malware programmes that can be remotely activated to disrupt service. It is difficult to draw any conclusion from this other than that the Chinese are preparing for a possible future war with the U.S.

The West is in serious trouble. Western countries are already plagued with internal divisions, whether political -- partisan politics has sharply divided populations -- or ethno- religious, in those societies where years of mass immigration and multiculturalism have militated against a sense of shared national identity and interest. Even the economic might of the West is now on the wane. It is unclear that Westerners still have the will or the ability to defend themselves against a concerted attack from without, should one arise -- and with the formation of the new anti- Western alliance (explicitly touted as such by Hugo Chavez, who calls it a "new world order"), one may well arise sooner than we think. History tells us that wars of aggression and expansion have been far more common than prolonged periods of peace such as the one we have enjoyed since the end of World War II. And history is also sadly littered with accounts of societies which, having lost their will to survive, were submerged by others more aggressive or opportunistic. It may well be that the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency has marked the moment when the decline of the U.S. became irreversible, and its eventual death inevitable.

Out of the mouths of fools

2009-04-02T23:52:00.003-04:00

Yesterday was April Fools' Day, and as in past years the British press expended great energies in creating fake stories that were just plausible enough to deceive the more gullible reader. The Guardian's contribution to this trend was to suggest that its newspaper was abandoning its traditional print format in favour of one consisting of stories delivered entirely by Twitter. Since the function of Twitter, a minimalistic blogging service, is to reduce every statement to an expression not exceeding 140 characters, the natural result was going to be "stories" such as "1832 Reform Act gives voting rights to one in five adult males yay!!!" and "JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?"

And that's pretty funny. But it's worth asking seriously what the popularity of Twitter (and other so- called Web 2.0 applications) tells us about contemporary culture. I'm already perplexed enough by the fact that, whenever I am using one of a bank of public computers, everyone sitting around me is looking at a picture of themselves on Facebook. Granted that other people are also sometimes in the same picture (and usually with the same idiotic expression on their face), how is this an improvement on simply seeing that other person in real life or -- if they are not available -- going home and staring at oneself in the mirror? It all seems so incredibly narcissistic.

Now, I'm willing to admit that I may just be too old to understand. (I'm two years shy of forty, which in modern technological terms is the new eighty.) The principal audience for this sort of thing is teenagers, and isn't the whole point of being a teenager that you think the world revolves around you, and that every little drama in your life is worth sharing with the world? But I see disturbing signs that over-25s -- and even over-40s! -- are getting into the act with this sort of thing, and enjoying trying (for example) to "poke" each other in some sort of boring, non- sexual way.

Which brings us to Twitter. Because whereas a normal blog has the natural disadvantage of allowing you to write an extended, complex, and well- reasoned entry that no- one will ever read, Twitter allows you to publish the online equivalent of a brain fart that no- one will ever read either. The maximum number of characters ensures that every observation is impossibly trivial and reductive. Still, isn't this what we've been working towards for the past forty or fifty years of Western civilization? Most of us by now feel that our lives are nothing more than journeys of personal self- discovery and self- fulfillment. Why on earth wouldn't we take this to its natural conclusion, and assume that every one of our random daily thoughts was worth being immortalized by being broadcast to a potential worldwide audience? "I ate a delicious pie today." "OMG pie is coming back as acid reflux." "WTF? Why does this always happen to me?"

There comes a time in everyone's life when, no matter how hard they've tried to keep up with new developments, they realize that they don't care anymore and that they may in fact even prefer the way things were in the past. And that is when they finally realize that they are old. Most people strive furiously to postpone this day of reckoning, but not me. I've had years to get used to it. After all, I don't have a cellphone either! So get off my goddamn lawn, you punks.

Why capitalism rules...

2009-03-29T10:00:00.004-04:00

There is an ill wind blowing Master Wu.

We are seeing articles like this piece in the Independent announcing the end of capitalism, neo-liberalism, or whatever it's called these days. The new socialists like to believe that capitalism has failed.
These arguments lack credibility because there is no evidence that capitalism has failed in any way. Quite the contrary, it is government intervention that has led to today's crisis.
Let's start by looking at Clinton's lobbying for more mortgages to low income families in 1999 described in this NY Times article.

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.
The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the automated underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the credit-worthiness of credit applicants.

The justification was that Hispanics and Blacks couldn't get on the property ladder. Unfortunately, this led to the very same group defaulting on their mortgages 10 years later. Who could have seen that one coming?
Next comes the fatuous claims by leading socialist leaders like Chavez that capitalist countries are on their way down. Tell that to the hundreds of millions of Indians and Chinese who have emerged from poverty as a result of their countries adopting free market policies. Contrast these to countries such as Venezuela and Iran that have adopted aggressively anti-capitalist measures while relying on high oil prices. As this excellent article by Aiyar points out, socialism has eroded their oil producing capability and has seriously eroded their capabilities to diversify. It is precisely these socialist havens that are seeing their fortunes impacted the most.
The US will recover, unless Obama tries the social democratic model that has failed in Europe. American capitalism is about hard work, innovation, and rewarding those who can do both. Thatcher famously said that the conceit of collectivism is "the illusion that government can be a universal provider, and yet society still stay free and prosperous.... The illusion that every loss can be covered by a subsidy. The illusion that we can break the link between reward and effort, and still get the effort." We should remember that before we try to attack the most successful model in history.

Dim bulbs

2009-03-28T08:41:00.003-04:00

It's Earth Hour tonight. Turn off your lights for a whole hour and you will be illuminated from within by the glow of your own sanctimony. And just think: if a billion people take part, the energy saved will be equivalent to six seconds' of China's consumption! --No, it's not going to make a bit of difference, but perhaps it's not intended to: instead it's about raising "awareness", which as the ever- incisive Christian Lander tells us, "is the process of making other people aware of problems, and then magically someone else like the government will fix it."

I once saw a reproduction of an old cartoon published at around the time London introduced gas lighting for its streets, in 1807. It had a caricature of a dour Scotsman gravely eyeing one of the lamps and saying, "Aye. But what is this, compared to the light within?" Poor Jock, he never lived to see Earth Hour.

If the van's a-rockin'...

2009-03-28T08:30:00.003-04:00

...because a Chinese prisoner is being executed and having his organs removed for resale, then don't come a-knockin'. Really. Just don't.

Still, this does make an improvement over shooting a criminal in the back of a head in front of a crowd of thousands at a soccer stadium, then scooping out the bullet and sending it to the victim's family along with a bill. When it comes to China, we always have to be grateful for the slightest example of progress.

Retro-cinema: "A Bucket of Blood" (1959)

2009-03-27T21:57:00.009-04:00

Despite the needlessly lurid title, Roger Corman's 1959 production is thankfully short on the red stuff and long on insightful social commentary. More of a late film noir than a true horror film, A Bucket of Blood explores the beatnik subculture of the late 1950s and satirizes both its pretensions and its assumptions. The story revolves around the downtrodden busboy Walter, who waits tables in a café patronized by snobbish hipster would- be artists and their hangers- on. Despised by the regulars, Walter longs to be recognized as artistic in his own right, but he lacks both the talent and the audacity to persuade anyone else that he is worth noticing. By accident, though, Walter does eventually hit upon a way to create unique works of art through the most macabre means imaginable; and even as he is subsequently feted by the cognoscenti he is able to justify his crimes to himself by appeal to the beatniks' own sub- Nietzschean credo that the artist is the ultimate lord of creation, one who is above all moral accountability.

Interestingly, this is all very reminiscent of the subject of Alfred Hitchcock's 1948 drama Rope, in which the professor -- played by Jimmy Stewart -- preaches the expendability of ordinary people in the interests of a higher "will to power", and so unwittingly inspires two of his students to engage in a pointless thrill- killing. Again, it is Nietzsche who is ultimately being targeted here, but more broadly the movie aims to say something about the darker side of a modern way of thinking that fuses elitism with nihilism in order to to come up with something that is truly horrible.

A Bucket of Blood is only 66 minutes long, so the plot moves very quickly through its development and resolution, and there is enough satirical humour in it to keep any real film enthusiast engaged -- at least until the film is over and he can pop the next DVD into the slot.

H.L. Mencken on death

2009-03-27T13:09:00.004-04:00

This is undoubtedly morbid, but I think it's funny enough to be worth repeating:

"Men upon whom we lavish our veneration reduce it to an absurdity at the end by dying of cystitis, or by choking on marshmallows or dill pickles. Women whom we place upon pedestals worthy of the holy saints come down at last with mastoid abscesses or die obscenely of female weakness. And we ourselves? Let us not have too much hope. The chances are that, if we go to war, eager to leap superbly at the cannon's mouth, we'll be finished on the way by being run over by an army truck driven by a former bus- boy and loaded with imitation Swiss cheeses made in Oneida, N.Y."

(from "Exeunt Omnes", 1920)

Brazil nut

2009-03-26T21:05:00.003-04:00

The UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown was apparently embarrassed when, while on a recent trip to Brazil to discuss economic matters, he was treated to the Brazilian President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva's impromptu attempt to interpret the global financial crisis in explicitly racial terms. According to Lula, "this was a crisis that was fostered and boosted by irrational behaviour of people that are white, blue-eyed..."

Even among white people (and even bankers!) blue eyes are comparatively rare; but leaving that aside, it can just as easily be argued that the crisis was largely precipitated within the U.S. by those disproportionately minority and poor homebuyers who, in taking advantage of civil- rights stipulations that they receive the same credit as anyone else, found themselves vastly overextended in mortgage debt at the time of the collapse of the housing bubble. If it is offensive to note that many of these people were non- white and had non- blue eyes, why is it any different to focus on the physical characteristics of the bankers as a clue to their behaviour? But Lula's remarks serve as another reminder of how strongly racial theories -- ones that are usually hostile to people of European descent-- continue to taint the political discourse of South American countries. Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez, I'm looking at you...

Dyslocation

2009-03-25T23:47:00.003-04:00

There have only been a few occasions in my life where I've felt the advance of technological change so keenly that I can honestly say I've been overwhelmed by it, and on each of those occasions computers have been involved in some way. I remember back in 1994 my first exposure to the Internet, and my discovery that I could read newspapers from the UK on the day they were published, and for free! That seems ridiculous now, of course, but during the 1980s my family used to make a twenty- mile trek downtown every week to buy outdated British newspapers at an inflated cost; we were otherwise mostly at a loss for news from the old country. When I first loaded up the website for the Times of London, I knew that all of that was at an end, and there was a curious feeling that went along with it: a kind of dizziness at the thought that the world was shrinking and being brought more easily within our grasp.

I experienced that same feeling again this week, thanks to Google's Street View UK. One of the 22 British cities to be faithfully photographed in every detail was Belfast, where I once lived as a boy and where I still have numerous relatives. My grandparents had a house on an estate in East Belfast until their death in 2007, and thanks to Google -- whose camera car stopped about four feet from the back gate -- I could see that the new owners of the house were renovating it from top to bottom. I was also easily able to track other changes to the neighbourhood: I noticed that the kind of grants given by various official bodies to the community tended to result in the creation of ostentatious signs and memorials, for example, even while the main street continued to wither away and die for lack of entrepreneurial activity. I remember the Newtownards Road of only twenty years ago as being a hub of thriving small businesses such as groceries, chemists, and newsagents, but unsurprisingly the extinction of the major local industry of shipbuilding resulted in a terrible blight that is evident from the numerous boarded- up and burnt- out storefronts.

There was one small sign of hope, which was that an actual office building was being constructed in the area at the time Google took its pictures. The neighbourhood is located only about a half- mile or so away from downtown Belfast, so from an economic perspective it isn't surprising that firms are beginning to consider moving there, but to someone like me who knows the local people and their ways it almost seemed as if an advanced alien civilization was constructing a distant and beleaguered outpost on a primitive planet. While the development is promising, it's not likely that many local people would yet have the professional or even social skills necessary to work in such a place.

The oddest thing about the Street View journey was the sensation of being able to move at will through my old neighbourhood while remaining stationary, and at a distance of thousands of miles. It was one of the first times that the endlessly over- hyped phrase "virtual reality" began to have any meaning for me at all. This is a truly revolutionary thing, to be able to travel and to explore a place from far away -- and after any session with Street View, I came away feeling as if I had actually been somewhere else for that time; all the while I felt the sensation, familiar to travellers, of having to adjust to new surroundings! Thanks to Google, the world has just become that much smaller again.

State of nature

2009-03-20T21:01:00.005-04:00

Environmentalism being the dominant secular ideology of our age, its prejudices and preconceptions are always worth challenging wherever they are found. One of the ideas frequently put forth by Green thinkers -- and recently repeated by an in- house philosopher on Canada's CBC Radio -- is that Western societies are somehow unique in being responsible for environmental degradation because of Christianity's views about nature. We can assume from its mainstream exposure that this isn't a very controversial idea; but what does it really mean?

It's true that, according to the Biblical account, God commanded that man have "dominion" over all the earth in the book of Genesis, and that subsequent Christian thinkers saw nature as having fallen at the same time as Adam and Eve, who were supposed to have inhabited a perfect Creation. Environmentalists conclude from this that Christians have never had any reason either to respect nature or to have refrained from exploiting it mercilessly.

There are numerous problems with this. Most glaring is the historical fact that the two states in which pollution and the destruction of the environment have been most marked have not been Christian at all. The Soviet Union was officially atheist, and it gave us (among many other things) the disgraceful legacy of Chernobyl and the disappearing Aral Sea; while today China -- which is either Communist or Confucian in its values, depending on who you believe -- is happily blighting its landscape to an almost unimaginable degree. Neither of these societies have taken their inspiration from the Book of Genesis. But both have manifested to an extreme the desire to act on an impulse that is not Christian but simply human, which is the desire to make the best of living in what is essentially a cruel world.

It's naturally true that Nature is not "fallen" in some theological sense; Christians were always wrong to say this, not only because it was unclear how or why the Fall of Man would have altered the rest of God's creation beyond recognition, but also because that Creation itself was always so plainly hostile to man in the way it was designed. Even if the lion were destined to one day lie down with the lamb, there was no reason for the lion to be so swift on his haunches and powerful in his jaw unless he had been created to eat smaller, slower animals. Where the Christians were right, however, was in believing that nature was irredeemably hostile to mankind now, and that this would always be the case until the end of the world. It is difficult for affluent modern Westerners -- who unsurprisingly make up the vast majority of environmentalists -- to appreciate this simple fact, since they are insulated by advances in medicine and technology, or even by simple geography, against the crueller ravages of what the natural world has to offer: volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, infectious diseases, large predatory animals, and so on. Our ancestors knew all of these dangers well, and so do many of the world's poor today.

The rejection of the Christian idea of dominion of nature is supposed to lead us to the opposite conclusion, which is that man is just one animal out of many and that we have no more right to exist than any other. But this is inconsistent with scientific perspective. Environmentalists may oppose the building of a subdivision on the grounds that it will disturb the habitat of (say) a particular rodent or bird. But to deny the human being his habitat in favour of that of the animal is to give the priority to the animal, which is not the same as treating the human and the animal equally. And besides, it is a uniquely human trait to assign an objective value to another species and to worry about its continued existence. God knows that the antelope isn't concerned about the continued existence of the cheetah, and anyway if the antelope could express an opinion on the matter at all we can easily guess what it would say.

In practice all of us, whether allegedly eco- conscious or not, behave much less sentimentally when it comes to the matter of our own personal survival: we have almost entirely eradicated the smallpox virus, for example, in the selfish interests of guaranteeing our own longevity, and many of us also have no qualms about eradicating unborn human beings if they pose the slightest threat to our peace of mind. Even in our daily interaction with others, the vast majority of us have no problem with the idea of ruthless competition with other people. One can only conclude that in the vast majority of cases our alleged humanitarianism is a sham, and that our sentimentality about nature is only a flimsy cover for our contempt for human beings. --Even Hitler, they say, was very fond of his dog.

No Love

2009-03-20T10:28:00.006-04:00

The saddest thing about this story is that so few people are going to be surprised or concerned by it. A citizen of a modern Western democracy is facing his fourth arrest simply for speaking his mind, and the fact that he is a probable white supremacist with a fondness for ugly shirts doesn't make it any less alarming. Canadians are apparently only permitted to express their opinions at the sufferance of the government: say something unkind or unpopular enough and you will be punished for it by the State. Well, this is no more than we deserve. Censorship is an inevitable outgrowth of self- righteousness, and self- righteousness is the defining Canadian sin. Most of us are quite happy to point our fingers at other people and characterize them as intolerant, which is how we justify our refusal to tolerate them. The idea that anyone could say the same thing about us has never even crossed our minds. But the prosecution of so- called hate speech is now increasingly moving beyond fringe targets like Brad Love, and setting its sights on more mainstream figures. Once you normalize punishing people for "hate", you only have to expand the definition of "hate" in order to silence all inconvenient dissent.

Incidentally, it would have been nice for Canada's paper of record to have told us just what it was in Brad Love's speech that warranted his being dragged away in handcuffs by eight (!) officers. The article said vaguely that Love spoke of "black crime", but what exactly does this mean? If he were only making the observation that young black men commit a disproportionate share of urban crimes, he'd only be referring to an unfortunate statistical fact -- a fact which is incidentally often repeated by leaders in the black community who want to see that situation improve. Or did Love perhaps baselessly speculate that black people are genetically disposed to commit crime? It'd be at least some small consolation to know that Love was arrested for a falsehood rather than for a fact, but the Globe and Mail didn't seem to think that distinction worth mentioning at all. (And note that they disabled comments for the story as well! O delicious irony...)

Unnatural selection

2009-03-20T07:32:00.007-04:00

The endless petty controversies in Canadian politics remind me of the old joke about student politics being so bitter because absolutely nothing real is at stake. Ours is still a small country whose importance on the world stage is minimal, but you'd never know it from the degree of partisan rancour found in the House of Commons every day, and in other fever swamps such as the Comments section of the Globe and Mail.

The latest storm in a teapot concerns whether or not the Conservative Minister of Science, Gary Goodyear, believes in evolution or not. Now, making fun of Christians is like shooting fish in a barrel for the mainstream Canadian media, whose sympathies almost always lie with the opposition Liberals anyway. This particular inquiry would be justified if Goodyear's beliefs were at all relevant to his ability to do his job, but there is no evidence to suggest this is the case. Goodyear is more likely being targetted for political reasons because of his preference for funding for applied rather than "pure" research.

I can't help but sympathize with creationists, for two reasons. One is that most of them are victims of poor science education in our schools. In most cases, they haven't been presented with enough information to reach an informed conclusion, so they've reverted by default to whatever they were taught at home. The other reason is that they are unfairly and selectively criticized for doing something which the vast majority of Canadians indulge in, which is holding irrational beliefs. If you were to add together all the believing Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, New Age- enthusiasts, Native spirituality adherents, Gaia devotees, and Toronto Maple Leaf fans, you'd have very few people in this country left over who could consider themselves to be perfect rationalists -- especially if those people had ever done something so foolish and ultimately unexplicable in their life as to fall in love or attach special significance to a material object such as a wedding ring or family heirloom. It is simply impossible for human beings to be logical and reasonable all the time. This doesn't mean that we ought to excuse superstition and sloppy thinking - quite the opposite; we should go after them with all of our energies, especially when they have dangerous consequences for others, but at the same time we should recognize that most beliefs don't have dangerous consequences, and we should also have the humility to remember that we ourselves are not perfect.

Solar System Climate Change?

2008-03-05T05:08:00.003-04:00

The polar ice caps are shrinking. That would sound like a headline on Earth but it would also appear to hold true on Mars.
In a recent article on the National Geographic website, it would appear that Mars is also undergoing a general warming episode as well - the polar ice caps are shrinking on Mars, suggesting that it is warming up. Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia has observed this effect but has been attacked by the mainstream saying that he is discounting Martian orbital perturbations etc. If only these same scientists would be so diligent in discounting other effects on Earth as well.
Another interesting note from an article from a few years ago on the Space.com website points out that Pluto is also warming up - in spite of the fact that it is currently moving further away from the Sun.
In other climate news, Jupiter is developing a second red spot, which implies climate change on Jupiter.
And finally there is evidence that Triton, a moon of distant Neptune also appears to be warming up.
Now I am not a climatologist but when 1 body undergoes climate change, you look for a local effect, when 2 bodies simultaneously undergo climate change, this could be a coincidence, when 3 bodies in the same solar system undergo climate change, we are stretching the coincidence but when 4 bodies simultaneously undergo climate change (that we are aware of), then coincidence seems more than a little contrived. Now I'm willing to believe that there could be some weird statistical effect occurring here but Occam's razor implies that we look at what all these bodies have in common. And the simplest answer is that the Sun is getting hotter.

Must be all those damn SUVs on the surface of the Sun.

In the Balance

2007-12-23T07:50:00.000-04:00

A superb article in the Economist magazine, which can be found here, demolishes the argument that inequality is rising.

The article argues that although income inequality has risen, what we can buy with a dollar has increased. True, someone earning $1 million/year can afford to buy the upcoming $100,000 Mercedes S Class with a sushi bar but is the overall experience of owning an S-Class that much greater than owning a Fiat Punto? After all, driving a Fiat Punto is considerably better than walking or taking a bus.

[The point] is that, over time, the everyday experience of consumption among the less fortunate has become in many ways more similar to that of their wealthier compatriots. A widescreen plasma television is lovely, but you do not need one to laugh at “Shrek”.

The article goes on to remind us that:

today's Gilded Age income gaps do not imply Gilded Age lifestyle gaps. On the contrary, those intrepid souls who make vast fortunes turning out ever higher-quality goods at ever lower prices widen the income gap while reducing the differences that matter most.

Wise words indeed.

A Canadian's view of Ron Paul

2007-12-21T06:26:00.000-04:00

An interesting article from the Financial Post about what a Ron Paul administration might be like can be found here. Though the chances of him getting elected are slim, he would certainly demonstrate whether or not the Austrian school was correct.

Radioactive Coal Ash

2007-12-14T05:28:00.000-04:00

In this article from Scientific American, it appears that the ash from coal has higher radioactivity than nuclear waste - Eeek!

I've always been a fan of nuclear power. Done right and without some of the hysteria connected with it, nuclear energy can be the solution for a whole lot of problems. Best thing about it is that we don't have to depend on dodgy governments and cartels. Most of the world's uranium comes from Canada and Australia.

What can I say when even die hard former anti-nuke protesters are coming around?

Bali-hoo

2007-12-14T04:59:00.000-04:00

Bali talks end in acrimony. What a surprise. Asking the "wealthy" countries to reduce CO2 emissions by 45% while China and India are exempt is a recipe for disaster.
If climate change is happening then the way "to do something about it" is not to impoverish ourselves to reduce it's impact. CO2 is linked to energy use, which is linked to the wealth of our countries. If we were all a whole lot poorer then our CO2 emissions would probably drop but I'm not sure I want that. A much more realistic approach is to mitigate climate change "catastrophes" when they happen. As I like to remind people - if Bangladesh were a rich country, they would be able to build dikes and levies against rising sea levels (if they are rising).

A sign of times to come

2007-12-07T05:30:00.000-04:00

Food prices are rising as this article from the Economist describes. Two notable things can be gleaned from the article. The first is that the rising affluence of the world creates a demand for meat, which involves more grain per calorie than consuming grain alone. The second is that the production of biofuels is taking an enormous amount of maize off the world's food markets. Ethanol is a government subsidised activity and not driven by the market. Joule per joule, ethanol is uneconomical, which is why the market doesn't produce it without substantial artificial incentives.
The rising affluence of the world is a good thing and the market will adjust by producing more food - higher prices will attract more farmers, will improve agricultural technology and will encourage more "efficient" uses of food. The second factor - government subsidies to produce biofuels - is wrong-headed because those subsidies come from tax-payers who end up paying as much or even more per liter of fuel (through taxes and higher food prices).
Biofuels are being pushed because they are seen by the lesser politician and his hanger-ons as solving both the climate change issue and the high oil price issue.
Let's examine these, shall we? High oil prices are temporary. The history of economics suggests that the solution to high prices is high prices and requires no government intervention. Higher oil prices do two things - firstly they encourage efficiency and secondly they encourage alternatives (for example, how many people use whale blubber for lamps these days) - the market should be the judge and not the government.
The climate change issue is another boondoggle. We can pour trillions into preventing a catastrophe but those trillions are not worth it. Look at it this way. If we spend $6 trillion to prevent a global catastrophe and no catastrophe happens then can we really say that the $6 trillion spent prevented it (politicians will claim it did because they're the ones spending our money and will have to justify it somehow)? On the other hand if we spend $6 trillion and the catastrophe happens then we have $6 trillion less to deal with its consequences. This is not like an insurance policy where we spend a small amount of money today to hedge our bets for tomorrow - this is all or nothing. How much should we spend to avert this mythical catastrophe? $6 trillion, $10 trillion? How much is enough?
Paying for climate change is a little bit like paying penance to avoid purgatory. No clearer example can be found than the useless subsides for biofuels.

Another reason not to vote for Hillary (or why globalization must continue)

2007-12-03T16:28:00.001-04:00

One does not need to go very far to find a reason not to vote for Hillary. The latest reason - her stand on the Doha round of trade talks. Ms. Clinton has said that she will take "a hard look" at whether or not the Doha rounds were worth it. You can read more here.
There is a mountain of literature on why free trade is good for everyone and so I won't go into a lot of detail here (I'm sorely tempted to write an entry on economics 101 and the law of comparative advantage) but I will, instead, recommend that people read a couple of books:

Why Globalization Works by Martin Wolf. It is a superb overview of the economics of globalization and why it is so important that we do not go back to the protectionist past that contributed to the severity of the Great Depression.
In Defense of Globalization by Jagdish Bhagwati. Bhagwati presents an impressive argument on how free trade has improved the lot of people both in the third world and in the first.

Both books serve to dismantle many of the myths of globalization such as jobs being stolen from rich countries etc. and they present a powerful argument about why without globalization we would all be poorer.

Be afraid be very afraid...

2007-12-03T09:28:00.000-04:00

Interesting quotation from Stanford University climatologist Stephen Schneider.

We need to get some broad-based support to capture the public's imagination. That of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.

Hmmm...scientific honesty? Makes you think.

Leaping backwards

2007-12-03T09:22:00.000-04:00

(Original post: Sunday, December 2)
Today two countries are poised to turn back their clocks and regress to the bad old days of the 20th century. Putin and United Russia have won a landslide victory in Russia, cementing Czar Putin's hold on power. This is bad news for Russia and really bad news for the West that may, after all, be faced with totalitarian opponent again and a new cold war. We shall see.
Venezuela also stands on the edge and the outcome is still not certain. The polling stations have opened and Venezuelans are voting on whether or not to adopt a new constitution that, among other things, grants Chavez pretty much a presidency for life. So long freedom, so long prosperity, hello Comandante.
There is an excellent review of this slip back in time to be found at Reason magazine.
Another analysis to be found at American.com.

Update (Monday, December 3):
Chavez lost the referendum - unfortunately, the margin was narrow, which might mean that he will try again.

Climate change madness

2007-12-02T13:27:00.001-04:00

Why people take celebrities so seriously, I have no idea. Case in point is Prince Charles and the Bali Communiqué that 150 major companies have signed to limit greenhouse gases.
An interesting feature of the communiqué is the statement that emissions reduction "must be guided primarily by science" (as opposed to economics). Excuse Me? Economics is about costs and benefits. If it is more costly to prevent climate change than to mitigate it, then surely mitigating climate change is the better deal. Unfortunately, much of the economics behind the communiqué stems from the Stern Report, which has some significant flaws.
This could mean that we are using a completely wrong-headed approach to deal with a crisis that may or may not materialize. Think of all the trillions we could be wasting, trillions that could go into anti-malaria initiatives, schooling for poor children, prevention of many childhood diseases and prevention of an AIDS epidemic in many parts of the world still at risk. Sadly none of these causes have a globe trotting hypocrite or two to champion them.
There is evidence for climate change (although there are still some important voices that are skeptical) and it could turn out that the most economic solution could be to prevent it from getting worse but I would think twice and do some more analysis before forsaking or committing trillions to deal with it. And sometimes, as this article at American.com points out, the cure could be worse than the disease.

Ron Paul

2007-12-02T13:15:00.000-04:00

I've kept quiet about Ron Paul for a long time because I was curious to see how he would develop as a candidate and I have to say that I'm not disappointed. While I do not find everything he says convincing, I find him light-years ahead of the other candidates running for either the GOP or the Democrats. He is a breath of fresh air and a return to Goldwater Republicanism from whence Ronald Reagan came.
He is a strong supporter of laissez-faire capitalism, free markets, and state rights. He is everything that I would have thought the Republican party should be instead of the bloated elephant that it has become - a party of big government, irresponsible finances, and over-intrusiveness in private lives.
Ron Paul is a follower of the Austrian school of economics that includes such luminaries as Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. Whether he wins or not, he has demonstrated that libertarianism in the US is strong and, dare I say it, growing.

Schroedinger's universe

2007-11-30T09:20:00.000-04:00

Quantum physics is not for the weak hearted. Sure the mathematics is simple - I mean what is as simple as |psi> = 1/sqrt(2)(|0> + |1>)? Well it turns out that this equation is the heart of the troubles. You see this equation says that a quantum state can exist as a superposition of one or more states until it is observed after which it is reduced to either one or the other (|0> or |1> in the equation above). This, in a nutshell, is Schroedinger's favourite cat.

A paper by Lawrence M. Krauss, which can be found here, implies that an act of observation on the age of the universe from inside the universe reduces the universe into one of many possible destinies. Here's my take on it: Bollocks. The universe is a closed system - an act of observation or even the ability to make an observation from inside the universe should have no effect whatsoever on the destiny of the universe. It's a bit like the electron being the observer of it's path through a double slit and thus preventing it from interfering with itself. Obviously it doesn't happen.

I should clarify that Lawrence M. Krauss did stipulate that there is no causal relationship ie. our observation of the supernova that resulted in the conclusion that the universe's expansion is accelerating has no effect whatsoever on the age or destiny of the universe but that the mere possibility of our being able to make that measurement does imply something about which of the many quantum destinies the universe will follow. While we didn't cause the universe to become unstable, Krauss suggests that just by being able to make an internal observation can have some implication on the outcome. Going back to the electron, can the electron somehow be able to measure which of the slits it will travel through? I suspect that the answer is no.

If there is something observing the universe from outside, that's a different story entirely but I'm not sure that there is an "outside" to the universe. Lesson learned - quantum physics is a weird thing and it is hard to get our puny brains around it. Physicists have been struggling for almost a century to interpret the weirdness of quantum physics. I guess we will be struggling for some time longer.

Peter Woit discusses the paper in more detail here.

Stupidity...

2007-11-30T09:04:00.000-04:00

The religion of peace consistently outdoes itself in acts of stupidity. First there were the Mohammed cartoons and now Mohammed the Teddy Bear.
Demonstrators are out in full force in Khartoum demanding the execution of Gillian Gibbon s that evil mastermind who was planning to destroy Islam by naming a teddy bear Mohammed. Never mind that Sudan is one of the world's poorest nations - obviously teddy bears named after their prophet are more threatening than poverty.

One can learn many things from this:

Don't go to a country that is carrying out a genocidal campaign.
There is something wrong with Islam that makes such fools of people.
Teddy bears are diabolical creatures.
Never listen to children.
Religion is truly for the imbecile and one is better served by abandoning the whole dirty thing.

The Long(er) arm of the law

2007-11-20T12:53:00.000-04:00

In a chilling reminder of how liberalism is dying in the West, the law in the UK requiring that people hand over the decryption keys for encrypted data in their possession has been enforced as reported here by the BBC.

Even more frightening is:

...the authorities can also issue a Section 54 notice that prevents a person revealing that they are subject to this part of RIPA.

While I do understand the need to fight terrorism etc., we cannot compromise our core values in doing so otherwise what is the point? This is a grave step backwards.

In another alarming piece of news, Germany has recently brought into law the Data Retention Directive voted in by the EU parliament. Was Orwell just a little to early?

Contrition

2007-11-12T04:17:00.000-04:00

Apologies to our (small?) audience for our infrequent updates to this blog. At the moment, both Neil and I are currently swamped with work, which stops us from writing as much as we would like.

Anyway, I came across an interesting blog from a gay conservative from Canada. I happen to agree with a lot of what he says and so I'll include the link to his blog for good measure. He had a link to a good op ed piece from the Guardian, a normally leftist newspaper from the UK, that points out that Islamic terrorism against Western targets was happening way before Iraq or Afghanistan and so its roots cannot be laid at the feet of Messrs Bush and Blair.

Another article from the Economist looks at the relentless push to totalitarianism in Russia. Now they are targeting children's textbooks with the claim (among other things) that maybe Stalin wasn't so bad. Apparently murdering about 20 million of your own citizens and winning the dubious title of this century's worst mass murderer doesn't count as "being bad" in Putin's Russia.

Next year's Ig Nobel Prize for Medicine?

2007-10-25T03:19:00.000-04:00

It is a wonder that researchers get away with such twaddle as this gem from Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics (I thought that the LSE was supposed to be reputable???).
What is even more remarkable is that the BBC chose to report on it. Dr. Curry claims that the human race will split into two - one part will be tall handsome and intelligent the other squat and dumb. Especially interesting is his observation that:

Women, on the other hand, will develop lighter, smooth, hairless skin, large clear eyes, pert breasts, glossy hair, and even features, he adds.

Sounds like the kind of fantasies I used to have when I was 14. ANYWAY...
The article goes on to say that:

Dr Curry warns, in 10,000 years time humans may have paid a genetic price for relying on technology.

This is the key. The BBC is part of the anti-technology Gucci Socialist/Environmentalist clique and anything that suggests that:

Technology and innovation is leading to our downfall

We should return to a simpler state (read living in jungles, praying to stone idols and dying of preventable diseases)

will get some airing on the BBC. Sad thing is that this sort of rubbish isn't even original.

And the winner is...

2007-10-17T03:17:00.000-04:00

The winner of the 2007 Man Booker Prize is Anne Enright for The Gathering. Congratulations Ms. Enright.

Now I must be off to write my magnum opus. It will be a bleak story about a heroin addict from a dysfunctional family who joins a fundamentalist faction and is prompted to write about her sad past when her father and mother, two brothers and dog commit suicide. Unfortunately her writing is interrupted by her abusive husband and she is then confined to a wheelchair. Then an evil capitalist bastard comes and buys the apartment block in East London where she lives and she becomes homeless as well. Things come to a head when she straps some explosives to herself and kills herself and the evil capitalist bastard. Of course this work abounds with religious allusions and symbolism. She is the modern Christ struggling against the hegemonic twin powers of capitalism and modernity and...

Dostoyevsky, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

La Passionata

2007-10-16T10:14:00.000-04:00

In a passionate defense of capitalism in the form of Howard Roark (the hero from Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead), columnist Joseph Kellard contrasts the anti-life ethics of religion against the pro-life ethics of capitalism. You can read it here.

Adam Smith wrote:

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.

It is from self-love that we can afford to be pro-life. If one lives for others then there can be no love of life because one does not live for the most important life of all - one's own. Capitalism's miracle is that through self interest, society as a whole progresses.

Booker Prize Short-list announced

2007-10-16T08:03:00.000-04:00

The Man Booker Prize shortlist has been announced. The key contenders this year are:

Darkmans by Nicola Barker (Fourth Estate)

A depressing story about a dysfunctional family haunted by Edward IV's court jester.

The Gathering by Anne Enright (Jonathan Cape)

A depressing story about a dysfunctional family from the eyes of a woman whose brother just committed suicide.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (Hamish Hamilton)

A depressing story about a "well adjusted" Muslim who is drawn to fundamentalist Islam after 9/11. Basically an anti-American diatribe.

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones (John Murray)

A depressing story about a girl on a war-torn Island who escapes by reading Dicken's Great Expectations

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan (Jonathan Cape)

A depressing story about a couple's first time after getting married.

Animal’s People by Indra Sinha (Simon & Schuster)

I haven't read this one. Don't plan to. But reading the plot synopsis, it also sounds like "A depressing story about...".

Aside from Animal's People of which I know little, the other books are bleak and, quite honestly, dull. I don't mind bleakness in a book but it seems that literary merit in today's fiction equates to bleakness at least as far as the Man Booker prize is concerned. Absent from all of these novels is a sense of the wonder that it is to be human.

The triumph of folly

2007-10-13T02:34:00.000-04:00

Al Gore wins the Nobel Peace prize. Well he joins such luminaries as Wangari Maathai who believes that HIV/AIDS is a part of an evil Western conspiracy to kill blacks, the late Yasser Arafat, the ethically challenged former leader of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Le Duc Tho (who in fairness turned down the prize) the unpleasant former leader of Vietnam. Aside from the obvious question about what the making of a movie has to do with peace, there are also the questions about the validity of the claims of anthropogenic climate change and whether we should even do anything about it.

Al Gore winning an Academy Award is more appropriate as it is given by an institution more at home with fiction and certainly Al Gore is not above the use of fiction to further his agenda.

Congratulations Mr. Gore, you have proven once again what a hollow shell the Nobel Peace Prize is.

Saturn's Hex

2007-09-24T17:17:00.000-04:00

Weird rotating hexagon formation on the North Pole of Saturn. Remembering Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, which took place around Saturn, it's a bit spooky. But like most things, this also has a "prosaic" explanation - a weird result of fluid dynamics.

In an experiment carried out in Denmark, Thomas Bohr, grandson of Neils Bohr, rotated a fluid in a bucket at varying speeds. At high speeds, the cavity formed in the middle started to take polygonal shapes and at really high speeds, hexagons appeared. It doesn't take much to imagine that something like this must be going on at the north pole of Saturn.

Still, it does remind one of the strangeness, power and beauty of nature and that what comes from simple physical principles transcends the wildest imaginings of fairies, goblins, gods and goddesses.

Daily nonsense from the Religion of Peace

2007-09-19T05:15:00.000-04:00

A Malaysian woman who wanted to convert to Hinduism from Islam was arrested and taken to an Islamic rehabilitation centre where she was made to pray, wear a headscarf and eat beef. This in a "moderate" Muslim state. More can be read here.

Sometimes I think that that the reason why we have not received any signals from extraterrestrial intelligence is that they are too busy laughing at us.

The Freedom Lovin' Democrats

2007-09-18T03:51:00.001-04:00

A student was tasered during a talk given by John Kerry. The student was asking him whether he was part of Skull and Bones, the same secret society of which George Bush is a member. The video says it all.

So much for the Democrats defending free speech.

Iran beware...

2007-09-17T08:16:00.001-04:00

For some time, Iran has been hiding behind the lack of cohesion in the West's opposition to its program of enriching uranium (probably for nuclear weapons). Recent comments by Nicolas Sarkozy and his foreign minister Bernard Kouchner suggest that Iran now has fewer places to hide. Increasingly Washington and Europe are becoming united in their stances against Iran.
While out-and-out hostilities with Iran would not be pleasant, the alternative - a nuclear armed Iran - is far worse.

Let's hope Iran gets the message and steps back but with their current leadership, that's doubtful.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster and other things of note...

2007-09-17T07:29:00.001-04:00

Every once in a while, I come across something that makes me think that the human race is not so stupid after all or at least elements of it are not. Anyway, I came across this relationship between global warming and piracy. Apparently, there is an inverse relationship between the number of pirates and the average temperature of the world - so they are obviously related. I've always contended that we needed more pirates to roam the open seas with Jolly Rogers and swords. Their decline is obviously an egregious assault on the natural order of things.

In an open letter to the Kansas School Board, who believes that intelligent design should be taught at school, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has petitioned them to add the Flying Spaghetti Monster to the curriculum and mention that He goes around in a pirate costume. Obviously, the slow decline in piracy offends Him greatly and He's planning to boil the world as a result.

In the name of Climate Change...

2007-09-13T03:20:00.000-04:00

Now that the new religion of climate change is in full swing, we should expect to see things like an inquisition. Questions asked like:
"Have you been showering for longer than 5 minutes?...Answer me heretic"
"Do you turn off all the lights, when you leave the house?...Answer me or I will stick this flaming, recyclable rod up your a***"

Of course, I wouldn't have expected these developments to emerge for at least a few years more but this story about military planes flying over houses in the UK to spot thermal emissions does at least make me wonder. It's quite a simple idea really - well thought out but just *wrong*.

NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again.
Monty Python

More from the Religion of Peace

2007-09-12T11:18:00.000-04:00

Stories from the S. Koreans taken hostage by the Taleban:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6990811.stm

Frightening stuff.

Global Warming

2007-09-01T04:25:00.000-04:00

Two interesting recent developments in the Global Warming debate:

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies has recently revised their data to say that the hottest year on record was not 1998 but 1934.

Canadian and amateur climate researcher Stephen McIntyre discovered that NASA has made a mistake in standardizing the air temperature data post-2000 resulting in a temperature correction of nearly 0.15 degrees. This may not sound like much until one realizes that climate researchers allege that the world's temperature has increased by 0.21 degrees since the 1930s - which means that around 3/4 of the change is attributable to an error!

An interesting Op-ed piece from the Wall Street Journal about this can be found here.

Auntie Beeb misses the point, as ever

2007-08-26T13:25:00.000-04:00

The award for the silliest media statement of the week has to go the BBC, which today reported on the new tests that the Australian government will be imposing upon prospective immigrants to that country. Naturally, the BBC is incapable of delivering anything like an objective report on the matter without sneaking in its own opinion: "critics believe the requirement of an English language exam discriminates against non-English speakers." That's the fucking point, you wankers. You don't test people's knowledge of English unless you intend to screen out those who don't know English! Presumably people emigrate for the purpose of making for themselves a better life than the one they left behind; how can they even begin to prosper in a new land without being able to communicate in the most basic way with their neighbours? (And will the BBC, in the interests of consistency, determine next that calculus examinations are biased against the innumerate?)

Also telling is the article's treatment of the concept of "mateship". I'm not Australian, so I can only guess at what the full cultural resonance of this word might be. According to the Beeb's report, Aussie PM John Howard says that "mateship" is about people helping each other out in times of adversity. Sounds like a blameless enough idea, you'd think, but the article goes on to say that a previous attempt to include it in the constitution was dismissed because it was "sexist" (even though "mateship" doesn't specify any sex) and because it was also deemed to be -- gasp! -- "inappropriate for a formal document."

Surely, if that "document" was intended to be one which reflected the way of life that a majority of people in Australia held dear, how or why on earth could it possibly have been made so "formal" as to have excluded a basic concept that ordinary Australians felt to be at the core of their national identity? I'm reminded of Bertolt Brecht's sarcastic remark that if the people proves itself to be unsatisfactory, the government should dissolve it and form another -- but since we don't live in a Marxist police state as Brecht did, perhaps the modern liberal democratic equivalent is that our betters should feel free to dismiss out of hand the people's opinions on the most important issues of the day.

We should never deceive ourselves into thinking that the BBC is merely reporting contrary opinions in a spirit of fairness. Whenever you see the words "critics say...", "it was criticized...", or variations thereof in one of their news items, you can be pretty sure that what is to follow is in accordance with the views of most of its journalists. The veteran BBC producer Antony Jay recently revealed the innermost workings of the corporation in an article in the Times of London, and his confirmation of the political bias warping even the most basic coverage of the world and its affairs should give the lie to the Beeb's pretence of journalistic objectivity once and for all.

Dispatches from the future caliphate

2007-08-21T11:07:00.000-04:00

The ever- incisive Theodore Dalrymple brings us his analysis of recent capitulations to Islam in Italy and Scotland, of all places. The example of pro- Muslim sycophancy in Scotland is so jaw- droppingly craven that it reinforces my determination to walk up and down the street during Ramadan eating a foot- long submarine sandwich with all the trimmings -- after all, what's the point of a Muslim's having to fast if he isn't going to suffer a little for the sake of his faith? By stuffing my face in front of his, I will only increase his virtue in the eyes of Allah.

Update: In my round- up of European spinelessness towards the Religion of Peace, I forgot to mention the item about the Catholic Bishop of Breda in the Netherlands, the improbably- named Tiny Muskens, who has suggested that the faithful ought to pray to "Allah" rather than to "God" -- since it's really the same thing in the end and, you know, it would serve as a gesture of goodwill towards those notoriously touchy Mohammedans. Needless to say, these futile and extravagant "gestures" only ever go in one direction. In much of the Muslim world it isn't safe to worship as a Christian at all, whatever name you choose to call God; and yet it is always the Christian West that feels the need to make concessions in the name of religious tolerance. Our muskens are tiny indeed.

Bordering on insanity

2007-08-21T10:39:00.000-04:00

The US Border Patrol announces that it can no longer be held responsible for... patrolling the border. Perhaps a name change is now in order? --Note the specious rationalization that the group's resources must be entirely devoted to fighting terrorism instead: if you can't prevent unwanted individuals from entering your country, you can't stop terrorism at all -- it's as simple as that.

In another interesting snippet of news from "El Norte", environmentalists are apparently concerned that a proposed border fence between the US and Mexico (which will likely never be built in any case) would have an adverse effect on "migrating species". I doubt Americans would very much mind if it deterred one migrating species in particular.

Their dark materials

2007-08-21T09:07:00.000-04:00

A recent article by David Owen in The New Yorker about the dark- sky movement in the US got me to thinking about the kinds of impositions socio- economically elite people feel they should be free to impose upon everyone else. The International Dark- Sky Association lobbies for darker night skies in towns and cities, not only as an aid to astronomers but also for the gratification of those romantics who pine for the days when the Milky Way was not only visible, but cast its own shadow.

At least one part of the IDA's agenda is quite reasonable: energy- efficient lighting should be installed by municipalities wherever possible, if only because of the savings to the taxpayer that are involved. But the writer, whose sympathies lie with the IDA, goes so far as to endorse government restrictions on certain kinds of lighting on private property as well. He even enthusiastically relates an anecdote about a town which "periodically" shuts off all its electricity -- not just its lighting -- for a few hours just so that the astronomers can have a fun night out. And in what progressive country does this happen, you ask? Why, in Iran. Living in a theocratic police state apparently has some advantages, one of which being that you can get everyone else's lives to grind to a screeching halt so that you can better indulge your favourite hobby. It's a geek's fantasy come to life.

Any kind of progress or technological development in our society involves the concomitant loss of something; this fact has been known and deplored ever since Socrates complained that the invention of writing was likely to dilute the use of memory and the dialectical method. Emerson (or possibly Thoreau, I forget) put it well enough when he said that progress was about taking two steps forward and one step backward; there is a net gain, but inevitably we have to sacrifice something. I live in a comparatively remote part of North America and am pleased to be able to see the Milky Way on a cloudless, moonless night, but if it were a choice between having that and having electricity, I'd opt for the latter anytime. Nighttime lighting is both a feature and a symbol of a civilized society, i.e. one which is not governed by the rhythms of nature... and if any more proof of that is needed, you can see it for yourself here.

RIP: William Deedes

2007-08-18T11:52:00.000-04:00

The British journalist (and sometime MP and Cabinet member) Bill Deedes has died at the age of 94. He was the original for the character of William Boot in Evelyn Waugh's 1936 novel "Scoop"; Waugh had accompanied the young and apparently somewhat naive Deedes to Abyssinia to cover the Italian attack on that country the previous year. Deedes wrote for various newspapers throughout his life, beginning his career in 1932 and continuing it up until last week, when he wrote what proved to be his final weekly column for the Daily Telegraph.

For the past couple of years I'd enjoyed his work in the international version of the Telegraph, and was impressed both by his self- effacing good nature -- something that always struck me as being quintessentially English -- and by his old- fashioned civility: two qualities sadly lacking in so much political commentary nowadays.

Nothing to see here, folks

2007-08-18T11:03:00.000-04:00

The always refreshingly forthright Chinese government is preventing media coverage of a bridge collapse in the southern city of Fenghuang, with some officials even attacking and chasing away reporters trying to cover the accident. --In other news from the Middle Kingdom, it has been reported that over one million people in Beijing have been evicted from their homes in the run-up to next year's Olympics.

Believe it not, I'm not one of those spoilsports who feels that China shouldn't be allowed to play host to the Olympics until it cleans up its human rights record. China is perfect for the Games, when you consider what the Olympics have come to symbolize over the past few decades: fake bonhomie towards other nations; empty political grandstanding and posturing; and internal corruption on a massive scale. Just like everyday life in the People's Republic, in other words.

Poles apart

2007-08-17T08:44:00.000-04:00

Three Polish Members of the European Parliament have announced that they will not be taking part in an upcoming UN conference, to be held at EU facilities later this month, aimed exclusively at criticizing Israel and its policies. The name of the agency organizing the conference says it all: the "Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People." Needless to say, there is no parallel UN committee on the inalienable right of the Israeli people to defend their state from external aggression.

Here is the forthright and courageous assessment of MEP Bronislaw Geremek: "I will not take part in this conference. I saw the materials prepared by the organizers... although there is no official statement that Israel must be pushed down to the sea there, the choice of subjects and the attitude towards the problems shows that it will be a biased, conflict generating conference. Actually we can call it anti-Israeli."

Since Poland's accession to the EU in 2004, the Poles have proven very reluctant to go along with the mildly coercive attempts of that body to force a liberal consensus of opinion on its members -- hardly surprising when you consider that they live in what is still an overwhelmingly religious country, and one with many painful memories of ideological bullying by its neighbours. The stance of the Polish MEPs against the EU's uncritically worshipful attitude towards the Palestinians is especially gratifying when one remembers the dark history of anti- Semitic violence in Poland. Na zdrowie!

Vandals in high places

2007-08-15T18:10:00.000-04:00

This week's hero in cyberspace is Virgil Griffith, an American academic who, using basic research tools, has put together a webpage to show which established institutions are modifying Wikipedia entries, and what changes those institutions are making. Mainstream media outlets such as the BBC which have picked up this story have highlighted the role of the CIA in making alterations to their own liking, but really: we expect the CIA to be evil; that's what they're there for, to act as the scapegoat for all of our fears about unchecked American power.

What is of far more interest, at least to an evil right- winger like me, are the changes made to Wikipedia entries by respected media organizations such as -- to take one totally random example -- the BBC itself. The most egregious example of vandalism committed by the CIA that the BBC could come up with involved the baffling insertion of the exclamation "Wahhhhhh!" into an entry concerning Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; but unnamed employees of the BBC changed the name of "George Walker Bush" to that of "George Wanker Bush" (hilarious that, and so sophisticated), and also substituted the words "freedom fighter" for that of "terrorist" in a context where only the latter designation could be justified.

Another heroic guardian of our liberty from the oppressive Bush- Cheney- Zionist axis which succumbed to the temptation to alter entries was the New York Times, whose minions apparently thought that any article on President Bush would be incomplete without the word "jerk" being added to it ten times in a row, and that Condoleezza Rice could more accurately be described as a "concert penis" rather than a "concert pianist". Pure comedy gold -- or is it meant to be trenchant political analysis? Who can decide?

Now, it's true that Virgil Griffith's page only logs the IP addresses originating within a given organization; no-one should assume that the viewpoint expressed through the changes is necessarily representative of that of the organization itself. But of course this is as much true for the CIA as it is for the BBC and the New York Times. Apparently the media only feels that this sort of petty chicanery is alarming enough to report upon when it is being undertaken (in even the most rudimentary fashion) by US government agencies. When they themselves do it, of course, it's a different story. They are always looking out for your interests, after all, and are thoughtful enough to perform extra services on your behalf that you don't even have to pay for along with your subscription or television licence fee... because that's just the kind of great guys that they are.

(Update: a comprehensive look at Wiki edits can be found here.)

Don't you just love the religion of peace...

2007-08-15T11:52:00.000-04:00

Another day, another mass killing in Iraq courtesy of the ROP.

And in entertainment news, Hamas TV child actor is ready for martyrdom.

And finally in tech news, Texas based alhesbah.org offers tips on kidnapping Americans.

Creative writing

2007-08-14T17:15:00.000-04:00

One of the more interesting scandals being discussed in the blogging world these days concerns a certain Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a US soldier currently serving in Iraq. Until a few weeks ago, Beauchamp was known to the world by his first and middle names alone, which he somewhat unimaginatively employed as a pseudonym while writing first-hand accounts of the war for The New Republic, a centre-left political magazine based in Washington.

Beauchamp's accounts were both entertaining and shocking: they depicted American troops running over stray dogs in Baghdad in their Bradley fighting vehicles, donning the skulls of dead Iraqi children for humorous effect, and mocking the disfigurement of those wounded in insurgent explosions. The accounts were meant to suggest the dehumanizing effects that the war was having on otherwise decent and sensitive people -- bread and butter for the anti-war readership of TNR.

Sadly, and perhaps inevitably, little of Beauchamp's writings seem to have been based in reality. Beauchamp himself, after his true identity was exposed by persistent bloggers, turned out to be an aspiring author whose voluntary enlistment in Iraq was by his own admission aimed at accumulating personal experiences that he could use for a novel that would launch his career. His avowedly fictional writings about the horrors of war date back to a time when he hadn't yet been deployed in Iraq, but still use some of the same elements that he later transposed to Baghdad and presented as fact. What he really saw in Iraq during his tour of duty was apparently lacking enough in dramatic intensity that he felt entitled to embellish it: as the Italians say, si non é vero, é molto ben trovato -- even if it isn't true, it's very well invented.

The whole sorry episode tells us once again that the establishment media is instinctively agenda- seeking and not to be trusted automatically. (The New Republic, even though it has a low circulation nationally, is still influential enough with Washington insiders to be considered part of the "establishment", and it has a loyal following among American- politics junkies everywhere: I used to read it faithfully myself when I was in university and had access to free copies at the library.) --The rise of the bloggers has been necessary and beneficial if only because they have once and for all exposed the myth of media transparency. TNR, looking for an anti- war angle, saw one in the fictions of Beauchamp and eagerly embraced them without making even the slightest attempt to verify that they were true. Such oversights and overt fabrications happen almost every week at The New York Times, the Washington Post, the BBC, and other pillars of respectable public opinion, and probably they have been taking place for years, but only in the past few years has it become possible to disseminate knowledge of these errors to a wide audience via the Internet.

On a purely aesthetic level, it also saddens me to recognize in Beauchamp the spectre of the typical North American liberal- arts graduate: educated badly enough to have turned out to be a pretentious and sub- standard writer (you can check out specimens of his dismal output here); indoctrinated well enough to have actively pursued a political agenda even at the cost of his own personal integrity; and under- employed enough that he would have even considered enlisting as a soldier not out of a sense of duty or vocation, but merely for the experience -- and only then because he thought he'd become famous if he wrote about it.

The last word on this subject has to rest with the esteemed short story writer Flannery O'Connor: "Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them."

Sorry for all that

2007-08-14T17:05:00.000-04:00

My apologies for the long silence. Blogging will resume in 3... 2... 1...

News from the U.S.

2007-07-28T01:07:00.000-04:00

Two recent news items make it clear why Americans should never take their freedoms for granted: in one, a North Carolina couple were harassed and arrested by a policeman for flying a flag upside down outside their house as a protest against President Bush; in another, a Florida man was sentenced to 25 years in prison for possessing a quantity of prescription drugs for which he did, in fact, have a prescription. (He has since been released.) As the famous saying has it: "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance." In other words, we grow complacent at our peril.

Think locally, eat globally

2007-07-28T00:24:00.000-04:00

Tonight while shopping at my local supermarket I noticed that the American- made Doritos brand of nacho chips boasts a new flavour called "Tandoori Sizzler". (Despite being well aware that any variety of Doritos represents a nutritional dead- end, I bought a bag, and found it to quite yummy too, at least when taken with beer -- courageously spicy, in fact.) In other aisles I also noticed freshly made naan bread, as well as a variety of chutneys and tinned Indian sauces. All this was is in a store serving a catchment area of perhaps ten thousand rural people, of whom only a couple dozen, at most, are from the Indian subcontinent.

I've said or at least suggested in the past that globalization should never get a free pass just because it is the buzzword of the moment, and to be accepted uncritically as inevitable or desirable whatever its effects. But it is fair to say that in gastronomical terms, at least, the importation of foreign ideas and items has been an unmixed blessing. I was born and at least partly raised in Scotland and, while I believe there are underestimated glories in Scottish and British cuisine, for the most part I look back on the food of my childhood and wonder how I managed to keep most of it down. I can just about get away with claiming Italian cooking as part of my family heritage thanks to my wife, whose mother hails from the region between Rome and Naples, but apart from that if I were going to try to be a purist and reject foreign influences in my cuisine I'd probably never eat again at all. (The staple dish of the Scottish Gaels -- a small but great people distinguished for their magnificent tradition of poetry and song, not to mention their martial valour -- is a mixture of smoked herring with potato.) --I've been told by local old- timers in Cape Breton that when broccoli first appeared in stores here a few decades ago it languished on the shelves unbought, since nobody knew what it was or what was to be done with it.

And so, if ever we find that the world is changing far more quickly than we would like, we can at least always find consolation for that fact in stuffing ourselves silly with the latest imported treat to hit our shelves.

Explosion at Spaceport

2007-07-27T04:31:00.000-04:00

An explosion occurred at the Mojave Air and Space Port at 2:34 pm PDT. This is the location where Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan's space venture firm was testing out a new rocket.
Lesson learned? Space travel is dangerous. However, the proper response of government should be to do nothing. Risky ventures can open up new frontiers literally and the people involved know what they are getting themselves into. Innovation is dangerous.

Societies that are totally risk averse, however, do not progress and lack of progression is equivalent to decay. Anyone who doubts this need look no further than the Ming Dynasty. After centuries of progress, they declined when they shut their borders to the outside world, hoping that a wall would keep out dangerous innovations. This stagnation continued through to the Qing dynasty and ended when the British sailed up the Yangtze river technologically and militarily superior. The source of the divergence between East and West was the risk tolerance of the two societies.

Friends like these...

2007-07-26T08:25:00.000-04:00

Pakistan has just tested a nuclear capable missile. Considering the fact that Pakistan is one of the biggest exporters of terrorism alongside Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran, this piece of news is hardly one for comfort.

Don't forget that Abdul Khan, the creator of Pakistan's nuclear program, ran an illicit network (probably with the help of the Pakistani intelligence services (ISI)) selling nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea and that the terrorists behind the 7/7 bombings were trained in Pakistani Madrassas. Pakistan should be punished for this latest provocation. It's time that the US Congress and the current US President faced up to facts that Pakistan is no ally. Phrasing it a little differently - with friends like this who needs enemies?

How to become Europe's friend

2007-07-24T04:04:00.000-04:00

The six Bulgarian medics accused of deliberately infecting children in Libya with the HIV virus have been released. The BBC has reported more details of the release and it comes as little surprise that if someone wants something from Europe, the best way to do so is to hold European citizens hostage. The charges were obviously trumped up but was a convenient way for Libya to get trading and other concessions out of Europe. Nice work if you can get it.

What does this signal to Iran and North Korea? Threaten, kidnap and bully and you get everything you want.

Biased BBC

2007-07-20T11:08:00.000-04:00

Discovered this website that documents BBC bias. Now that it is coming close to election time again, the BBC is very carefully avoiding criticism of Ken Livingstone (Red Ken), the current mayor of London, whom they have consistently supported in the past, who is also a friend of Hugo Chavez and who has welcomed Sheikh Al Qaradawi, a known extremist who supports suicide bombings. Instead, they have gone on the offensive by attacking Red Ken's opponents.

It's time to end the BBC's monopoly, end the TV license in the UK, and let people decide with their wallets whether they want this sort of blatant left-wing propaganda coming out from their TVs and radios.

The unbearable lightness of being

2007-07-18T07:05:00.000-04:00

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article on Norman Borlaug. If you're scratching your head and wondering who that is then join the club. I didn't know about the man who had quietly saved a billion lives either. You see, Norman Borlaug was the architect of the Green Revolution. In 1944 Mexico was teetering on the brink of a famine. Norman Borlaug arrived when a fungus was destroying the native crops and leaving acres of land dry and dying. Norman Borlaug left in 1964 by which time, Mexico was growing an engineered strain of wheat that was durable and resistant to the fungus. In fact, Mexico grew so much that it became a net exporter of wheat. This was the genesis of the green revolution that prevented nearly a billion people from dying of hunger.

What I found interesting was that Greenpeace opposed Borlaug because when people weren't starving to death they would start producing and creating and establishing, horror of horrors, industry. Greenpeace even managed to convince the Ford and Rockefeller institute not to fund Borlaug.

This makes my blood boil. I've had conversations with die-hard environmentalists who have said things like "if they reproduce like cockroaches then they deserve to die." If they only could understand the fundamental immorality of their position. They are willing to kill off people so that a small minority can go camping and enjoy virgin nature. They would put the lives of spotted tree frogs above that of a human being.

The less cynical environmentalists talk about an us vs. them situation - that they will take away our food. Thank goodness that economics is not a zero sum game. An increase in the demand for food leads to increased prices, which means that suppliers have higher profits, which attracts new suppliers or makes existing suppliers more productive who want to produce more to take advantage of higher prices. This leads to increased supply, which leads to a drop in prices. New suppliers means new people attracted to farming because of the higher prices or better technology such as genetically engineered crops. In other words, the markets prevent starvation. Face it guys, Malthus was wrong. (Cases of famine are largely due to other factors than any natural shortage - such as politics and wars).

Today, many African countries refuse to grow genetically modified crops because they are afraid that they can't export to Europe, which has imposed huge restrictions on their sale (thanks to the Greens). Genetically modified crops require less maintenance such as sophisticated irrigation systems and can grow faster and are more resistant to disease. The obvious side effect is that if people aren't starving then they can concentrate on other things such as producing goods to sell that we may actually want.

The radical greens, however, aren't interested in them selling things. It's better that they starve, that taxpayers of rich countries give handouts to them, and that we buy bead bracelets and hemp Mao handbags made by refugee children from Sierra Leone to alleviate our collective guilt.

Pleasure island

2007-07-18T01:08:00.000-04:00

According to the BBC, police in a majority- Muslim city in Nigeria are attempting to impose Sharia law even on the non- Muslim minorities within their jurisdiction. The enclave of Sabon Gari within the city of Kano has been dubbed a "pleasure island" by some for its offerings of alcohol, dancing, cannabis, and sex.

I know you are all reading this description of Sabon Gari and thinking, "damn! what's not to like?" Well, I agree. But the Islamic puritans don't, and the reason why we should care about this is that Nigeria is not even an officially Muslim country; instead, it's a nation almost evenly split between Christianity and Islam, but with areas where local governments have attempted to implement and enforce Islamic law. It's not inconceivable that such a future awaits those regions of Europe where in fifty or a hundred years' time Islam will predominate by the same force of demographics. As the Dutch Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner recently stated, "if two thirds of all Netherlanders tomorrow would want to introduce Sharia, then this possibility must exist." In other words, if you want to visit those hash cafés in Amsterdam, do it now. They won't be there forever.

Mind the gap

2007-07-18T00:24:00.001-04:00

I've never understood the problem that some politicians and pundits have with there being a widening gap between the richest and the poorest people in society. It often turns out that the poor are at worst staying their ground or (more usually) gaining somewhat while the rich are vaulting ahead much more quickly. While this does indeed widen the "gap", it doesn't leave anybody economically worse off. Whether the head of your company makes five or ten or one hundred times as much as you do is really a matter of academic interest, the only important point being that he makes more.

An opinion to the contrary is expressed by Max Hastings in the Daily Mail, who feels that the Labour party in the UK has sold out its traditional working- class constituency in allowing disparities in wealth to become greater under its rule. To his credit, Hastings does not put his faith in higher taxation for the rich as a solution, noting correctly that it would only drive more wealth offshore. Instead, he proposes more education for the people trapped in "inner-city housing estates in an apparently hopeless spiral of debt, drugs and unemployability."

Hastings's commitment to education is commendable, but it has to be said that education by itself will not stop the wealth gap from widening. If you have a basic education you are only basically employable. Beyond that, if you have some kind of post- secondary education which teaches you a marketable skill -- bearing in mind that this would exclude many university graduates in the humanities -- you will be more employable, and you will receive more remuneration for your services. Either way, though, as an employee you will still find yourself earning far less than the executives in your company, or other successful entrepreneurs elsewhere. In that case, knowing that you are smart (and possibly even smarter than your employer who skipped further education altogether in favour of an early entry into the job market) will prove to be of little consolation.

The old wisdom is still the best: since there will always be those who are richer, or stronger, or more intelligent than we are, we can either torment ourselves with that fact and condemn ourselves to a lifetime of unhappiness, or we can accept it and move on. Rather than obsessing over pay differentials, a working class man will always find his greatest fulfillment in knowing that he is doing the best job he can every day for a reasonable wage that allows him to support his family. Anything more than that is -- or ought to be -- beyond his care or concern.

Art, apparently

2007-07-17T00:08:00.000-04:00

These childish daubings of anti- American and anti- Israel sentiment on display at the current Venice Biennale art exhibition are almost indistinguishable from bathroom graffiti -- or is that the point? As leftist intellectuals feel their political influence weakening year by year, the "art" that they produce becomes ever more desperate in its attempts to shock and denounce, and even the pretense of working in an artistic medium is increasingly cast aside. Walter Pater claimed that all art aspires to the condition of music, but nowadays it seems as if all left- wing art aspires to the condition of agitprop.

Total surprise of the day

2007-07-15T18:29:00.000-04:00

The Communist terrorist and mass murderer known as Carlos the Jackal, currently imprisoned in France, claims to have once been a faithful reader of The Guardian. He further explains that he only stopped reading The Guardian, in fact, because they were the ones who came up with his silly nickname. His revelation is interesting but hardly surprising, as the London lefty broadsheet is still pimping for terrorism even now, decades later.

Abolish the CBC

2007-07-12T00:35:00.005-04:00

Canada's allegedly public broadcaster continues to lurch from bad to worse, what with its recent makeover to appeal to a younger demographic. Despite the perennially hostile and delusional bent of the CBC's political coverage -- one typical recent example was allowing the deranged anti- Israel fantasist Robert Fisk to rant unchallenged on a Maritime Noon phone- in show, with every one of the callers turning out to be members of his fan club -- one could at least count on solid mainstays such as the excellent classical music programming on Radio 2 or the majority of decent regional shows to justify Mother Corpse's continuing existence. Alas, no longer. Driving home tonight after midnight and frantically twiddling the dial I discovered that, in place of its usual low-key overnight classical and jazz programme, CBC Radio 2 was offering experimental music that sounded like a cross between grinding industrial machinery and the weeping and gnashing of teeth ascribed to the damned in the Gospels. Radio 1, meanwhile, in place of the highlights of public broadcasting throughout the world that used to occupy its overnight slot, boasted an achingly unfunny show aimed at being self- referential and hip and... it's difficult to determine what it was about, precisely, other than the fact that despite it being on the radio you just knew that the host was wearing a soul patch and suitably ironic trucker hat, and felt himself to be far above the obligation to provide actual entertainment to his audience. --Yeah, I know I'm not the target demographic. I've been listening to classical music since I was sixteen: I was born old. But I also know that actual young people are going to be as bored to death by all of this as I am. They know when they are being merely pandered to, and they resent it like hell.

Public broadcasting is always going to be an unjust imposition on the people who don't listen to it but have to pay for it regardless. There is no possible justification for injuring taxpayers by pissing away still more of their hard- earned money and then adding insult to that injury by broadcasting pretentious and boring bullshit that the majority of them won't ever enjoy or (in the case of political programming) agree with. Don't get me wrong -- I do sympathize with the motive for robbing the average Canadian of his money to provide a forum for unhinged or marginal views: how else is the Left going to guarantee itself a platform? Nevertheless, as much as I sympathize, I also believe that the time has come to stop supporting our CBC welfare bums. End it now, scrape them off the public tit and let's have done with it.

Das Leben der Anderen

2007-07-11T12:06:00.000-04:00

For anyone who doubts the viciousness and brutality of communism or excuses its "excesses", the film Das Leben der Anderen by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck should quickly dispell any illusions.

It won the Oscar for best foreign film in 2006 and it well deserved it. A gloomy film about a Stasi officer ordered to spy on a playwright and his girlfriend, it is both powerful and moving as well as being highly engaging. I finally got to see it and I was most impressed. I have been increasingly worried about the rise of "Ostalgie" in Germany - a weird nostalgia for all things East German - and I'm relieved to see that the Germans haven't completely lost it. This film serves as a healthy antidote.
Perhaps this new hotel opening in Berlin should play this film in the hotel rooms to remind people of the nightmare of the DDR. Better yet, to get the true immersive experience, they should keep hidden cameras in each hotel room, employ large men in polyester suits watching guests surreptitiously behind plants, and keep a special "Ostalgie Tour" in the basement where guests, for a price of 50 euros (donated to Hugo Chavez) get to be interrogated for 50 hours in a row and occasionally prodded with cattle rods if they do not reveal the most sensitive details of their sex lives. For an extra 15 euros, a good beating in a soundproof room can be included.

The true face of environmentalism

2007-07-11T08:50:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I'm impressed by how brazen the environmental left can be. Just ran into this quotation from the former Canadian Environment Minister Christine Stewart

No matter if the science is phony (sic), there are collateral environmental benefits... Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.

Aside from the cynical implication that government policy should be based on fraud if the ends are "justified", I am also wondering what her vision of justice and equality means? That we in the West start to scrounge for our meals, live at the mercy of nature and start praying in front of stone idols for the next monsoon like our brethren living in other parts of the world?

Frightening...

A pox on both your churches

2007-07-11T00:45:00.000-04:00

Nothing new here: the Pope has reiterated in a recent statement the traditional Catholic belief that the Protestant denominations, having broken with the mythical "apostolic succession", cannot possibly be considered as true churches in their own right. Despite being a Catholic church- goer myself, I can't help at this point (thanks to my east Belfast heritage) hearing in my mind an Ian Paisley-ish sort of voice intoning : "Yon Paypust church is the hoare of Babylon, aye, thay abomination named in Revelaytions..."

And I find that I can only resolve this cultural and ancestral conflict by realizing that both the Catholics and the Protestants are drunk on power and the hatred of each other -- and by concluding that Jesus himself would have had nothing whatever to do with either of them.

Symbiosis

2007-07-03T13:16:00.000-04:00

For those of you who are fans of the BBC's classical music broadcasts (and especially if you're not among those poor souls who live in the UK and have to pay through their noses for the TV and radio licence fees that make these things possible): yesterday evening there was a concert broadcast on Radio 3 of an entire programme featuring songs that Franz Schubert set to the poetry of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It should remain available in the audio archive for another six days or so.

Putting the boot in

2007-07-03T12:06:00.001-04:00

In my last posting I discussed conspiracy theories surrounding the recent failed terror attacks in the UK, but I forgot to mention that although these are prevalent about the incident in London they're rather less so about the one in Glasgow. Perhaps it strains credulity too much to believe that agents of the British government would volunteer to crash a burning car into an airport, set themselves on fire, and earn a beating from passing Scotsmen.

Speaking of which, I was very pleased to hear of the aggressive reaction that the would-be attackers met with. It looks as if the Scots still have some fight left in them; at any rate, the ones at the scene didn't fall victim to the blind panic and passivity so many civilized people react with when they are confronted by violence. Here are a few choice eyewitness accounts from the event:

"Well, aye, I saw him running for the polisman, and I thought, 'hoo no ye don't' so then I ran over and tackled this Asian chap."

"It's a good job I wis ther! This gentleman was on fire, so I tackled him with a jab o' my airm, then these other guys got intae 'im."

"Aye, I knew there was gas in the car, it was making these popping sounds, you know like when you chuck a can of deodorant on a bonfire, like"."

Robert Burns had it right: "what a parcel of rogues in a nation!"

The Grand Unified Theory of Oppression

2007-07-03T09:07:00.000-04:00

No-one who has even a passing acquaintance with the Islamist mindset can be surprised by the choice of a nightclub for the location of last week's failed car bombing in Piccadilly. The freedom to live one's life as one chooses, rather than in accordance with the dictates of religion, is naturally going to lead to a degree of hedonism that some fanatics will find infuriating. There has already been another plot against a large London club, the Ministry of Sound, which was thwarted last year when the conspirators were taped by the authorities saying things like "no-one could turn round and say 'oh, they were innocent', those slags dancing around". Such charming fellows; and great with the ladies too, I'll bet.

Perhaps even more distressing than the inept bomb plots in the UK have been the responses recorded on online forums and discussion groups claiming that it was all staged by the British government, as a pretext for ushering in a new Fourth Reich (or whatever). I say that the comments are more distressing, because if successful the nightclub bomb would have killed perhaps a few dozen people; but if it turns out that large numbers of people in the West lack the basic will to correctly identify their enemies and resist them accordingly, our civilization as a whole is going to disappear, and many more people will die as a result. So where does this blind denial masquerading as smart cynicism come from? It doesn't help that in Britain, as in most Western countries, young people (especially university students) are educated to believe that the world's geopolitical situation and much of its history as well can be explained using something I call the Grand Unified Theory of Oppression.

The GUTO, in its simplest form, states that everything bad that happens on the planet is the fault of the West, or more specifically of the white man (who is taken as the West's standard- bearer). The world was an Edenic paradise until the advent of Western colonialism, after which warfare, poverty, and disease became as prevalent elsewhere as they had originally been in Europe; and to this day, the United States, Israel, and (to a varying extent) the European and anglophone democracies enjoy wealth solely on the basis of their ability to plunder the nations of the Third World, which are thrown into turmoil as a result. Don't believe me? Try thinking of any conflict or massacre or man- made disaster in the world over the past fifty years that has received wide coverage, and I guarantee you there is a popular explanation for it that faults the West and implicitly absolves the people who were actually involved -- and that this explanation is a mainstay of the public and post- secondary education systems in your country. Here are just a few of the most popular examples:

The Atomic Bomb on Japan. A pure act of racist American aggression, having nothing whatever to do with forcing the surrender of an intransigent power which had brutally subjugated half of Asia before dragging the US into war with an unprovoked attack on its territory. (Bonus: the US "knew" that the bomb was unnecessary, but dropped it anyway to scare the Soviets and wipe out a few more gooks.)

Vietnam. French and, later, American aggression against a people merely struggling for "self- determination". --Luckily in this case the Westerners were defeated, so that Vietnam was in the end able to determine for itself a decades- long Communist dictatorship and the expulsion of about a million refugees.

Khmer Rouge Genocide. America's fault for chasing the Viet Cong into Cambodia (if indeed the genocide happened at all -- the Chomskyites beg to differ.)

The Iranian theocracy. America's fault for propping up the Shah. Consequently the Iranians had no choice but to start stoning rape victims for adultery, to sponsor terrorism throughout the world, and to begin work on a nuclear programme aimed at the elimination of a neighbouring state.

Taliban rule in Afghanistan. America's fault, because the US armed the insurgents against the Soviets (whose invasion of Afghanistan was also the West's fault, because we had set a bad precedent in Vietnam or something.) Resisting the Taliban is a violation of Afghan sovereignty, and even if they did sponsor Al-Qaeda and the attacks of 9/11, who can blame them? It's all just payback for those redcoats on the Khyber Pass during the reign of Queen Victoria.

The Rwandan Genocide. Belgium's fault for having favoured one ethnic group over the other about a hundred years ago. Why, it's as if the Belgians wielded the machetes themselves...

Anything China Does is our fault because made them "lose face" during the Opium War. If they want to grab Tibet or Taiwan, it's only because we made them so touchy.

The Balkan War. Germany's fault for recognizing Croatia too early. Also the West's fault as a whole for hastening the fall of Communism and, later, for taking sides with the Muslims (!) over the downtrodden, innocent Serbs.

Iraq. Sectarian violence there is America's fault. Muslim- on- Muslim murders are counted as "deaths caused by the US invasion." (After all, any other country invaded by Americans would experience the same degree of bloody fratricidal strife, right? If the US invaded Canada, I'm sure the anglophones and francophones would start tearing each other apart in exactly the same manner.) As for Saddam Hussein, America is to blame both for supporting him and for removing him from power.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A no-brainer. Israel is a "colony" (though not of any country in particular) made up of "settlers" (half of whom, curiously, are indigeneous to the area) fleeing a genocide that took place in the West (or perhaps didn't, allowing for the tendency of Jews to exaggerate to their own advantage.) Having stolen "Palestine" (itself a colonial fabrication) the Israelis can be faulted for wishing to use actual force to defend their state from destruction; this defence is also the cause of Islamic terror attacks on the West, or at least the ones we admit to be genuine and not "inside jobs" perpetrated by the government.

As you can see, it's laughably easy to explain everything that happens on Earth using the Grand Unified Theory of Oppression. And remember that the GUTO has a corollary: if the West has the ultimate moral responsibility for everything bad that happens, non- Westerners (or non- whites living in the West) bear none of that responsibility. So when bad things happen that appear to be the fault of non- Westerners, such as terrorist attacks in New York and London, they are really the work of the governments in those countries; but even if they could be proven to be the work of Islamic extremists, that too would be the fault of the West for making the Muslims upset. The Grand Unified Theory of Oppression is nothing if not perfectly airtight.

All this, and she's Catholic too

2007-07-03T08:40:00.000-04:00

Now that Tony Blair has left office, one of the retrospectives being offered by the British press details the fads, quackeries, and delusions embraced by his wife Cherie over the past ten years. It looks very much as if no New Age nostrum to come down the pike was too absurd to escape her. Bear in mind that Cherie Blair is a highly trained lawyer and judge, which only goes to show that education and skill in a particular field are not always correlated with a high level of intelligence or critical insight. (Needless to say, Tony doesn't get off lightly here either; the thought of the leader of a major democratic power smearing mud and papaya over himself after being "rebirthed" in the jungle makes me very nervous for the future of the West, although I can't say it's all that much worse than his reading the Koran every night before bed).

There seem to be few surer ways of making money than playing on the credulousness of affluent, semi-educated, middlebrow women going through what New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast calls "the goddess years".

A drug to delete bad memories?

2007-07-02T17:03:00.000-04:00

If so, I'd like to buy a caseload of it right away, because all that malt liquor just isn't doing the trick.

The accompanying article is well worth a read for its excursions into sci- fi history and pop- culture geekdom. I only wish that more reporting was done on a cross- disciplinary basis like this, with references to literature, history, and art -- the cult of professional neutrality and (supposed) objectivity has conspired to make most journalism in North America stultifyingly boring. If the mainstream media really wants to increase its younger readership, which is increasingly getting its news from more colourful sources online, this is the way.

Good news from the Great Satan

2007-06-29T22:01:00.000-04:00

Both the amnesty (in "immigration reform" clothing) bill and the attempt to revive the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" have been defeated this week by the legislative branch in the US. Rare victories for sane politics south of the border.

Getting warmer

2007-06-26T19:19:00.000-04:00

Some contrarian analyses of "global warming" here, here, and here.

Divine attribution

2007-06-26T18:04:00.000-04:00

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have recently discovered a direct link between oral sex and cancers of the mouth and throat. Apparently, if you've been on the receiving end of more than five oral- sex partners during your lifetime, you increase your risk of developing such cancers by 250%. Needless to say, this got me thinking -- no, not about that, but about the idea of natural law and whether or not such a thing really exists.

For the past month or two I've been engaged in correspondence with an intelligent Catholic friend who believes that there is a "natural law" ordained by God which rewards or (more usually) punishes us for our behaviour. The original basis for our discussion was homosexuality: she is against it, in accordance with her faith, while I have no problem with it, seeing it as merely a natural variation. In support of her position, she has pointed to higher rates of depression and suicide among gays and especially to their higher incidences of infectious disease, up to and including AIDS. I've countered that self-destructive activity is a natural response to exclusion and prejudice from one's friends and community, but more importantly still that while there are very many patterns of behaviour that are proven to be hazardous to your health, few Christians seem to believe that God frowns upon the ones that don't involve sex. Athletic activity of any kind, for example, is more hazardous than sitting on your duff at home. Runners drop dead during marathons; skiers slam headfirst into trees. But I can't imagine that the Almighty has a particular moral problem with those who are doing their best to keep in shape. Good, rich food can clog your arteries, even if you don't eat to excess: all you need is an unfortunate genetic disposition towards the production of cholesterol and boom, you're dead of a heart attack at 45 through absolutely no fault of your own. And so on. Casual observation suggests that life is unfair, and that the good die young while the unjust live full and pleasurable lives -- even the Bible concurs on that, and isn't it supposed to be the ultimate authority?

Any supposed moral law derived from the recounting of personal disasters is going to be tainted by a tendentious selection of the facts. My friend has informed me that certain parts of the body are not meant to be used in the manner entailed by most homosexual activity, and I don't disagree that they are ill-suited to it. But consider the female anatomy during the act of childbirth. The infant's head is larger than the birth canal and turns 180 degrees during its descent; the disproportion between its dimensions and the mother's body almost guarantee that its birth will be a painful and hazardous process. Historical records confirm, in fact, that until comparatively recently maternal mortality was high. And yet, according to the proponents of natural law, the propagation of children is the fulfillment of God's will; its very absence is what is said to blight homosexual relationships. If we were creating our morality anew, from nothing, and were observing all of this dispassionately, wouldn't we conclude that there was something intrinsically immoral in a woman subjecting herself to the risks of childbirth?

Like "creation science", "natural law" is only a way of putting a more plausible, empirical gloss on ideas which one has already arrived at through faith alone.

Scotland the craven

2007-06-24T17:37:00.000-04:00

The Scottish Executive has found itself following in the illustrious footsteps of the Hanoverians in an attempt to regulate traditional dress: licences are soon to be required for sporrans, in order to prove that they were not made from endangered animals.

As a former Scot it breaks my heart to see the country of my birth using its new- found autonomy to turn itself into such a ridiculous nanny state.

Muzzling the masses

2007-06-24T16:37:00.000-04:00

As a followup to a post I wrote last weekend, here's a Fox News transcript of US senators Trent Lott (Republican) and Dianne Feinstein (Democrat) expressing their support for measures to fix the "problem" of talk radio. The "Fairness Doctrine" Feinstein refers to was a previous attempt by the Federal Communications Commission to ensure equal time for opposing political opinions; begun in 1949 when there were only three major broadcasting networks, it was discontinued in 1987 as being incompatible with the spirit of the First Amendment. In addition to being a violation of freedom of speech, the Doctrine allows unelected regulators a large degree of control over the airwaves to enforce their subjective notion of what constitutes a "fair" balance. Since the vast majority of talk-radio in the US is conservative in orientation (especially since the demise of the left- of- centre and low- rated Air America), the proposal to revive the Doctrine amounts to a partisan desire to capture a listening audience by any means necessary. (This at least is the motivation for Democrats. For Republicans like Lott, the measure is more a way to exact revenge against a medium which has rallied widespread support against his immigration- amnesty bill.)

For a real nightmare, just imagine how this sort of thing would apply to the Internet. Proponents of "fairness" have suggested that political advocacy websites be forced to link to sites promoting opposing points of view. But there are more than seventy million blogs in the world, the majority of them based in the United States and a fair number of which concern themselves with political issues. To police these sites would require a vast expansion of FCC authority, so that the US could end up with a degree of internet regulation rivalling that of China. (Not that the FCC would mind, of course -- more jobs for the boys.)

If this kind of insanity can seriously be considered in the United States -- traditionally the nation which has been most committed to freedom of speech and property rights -- the rest of us who live in countries with even more government regulation have lots to worry about.

Fashion victims

2007-06-23T18:21:00.000-04:00

How many people do you have to murder to finally go out of style? If you're Mao Tse-Tung and only killed 40 million people or so, you can still inspire a Hollywood airhead to tote around a bag emblazoned with your wisdom.

Some Peruvians are upset that actress Cameron Diaz, who is visiting Machu Picchu, has chosen to bring along an olive- green bag sporting a red star and the slogan "Serve the People" written in Chinese. The article helpfully explains to its readers that Peru suffered for decades from the ravages of a Maoist insurgency which claimed 70,000 lives, but it makes no mention of the casualties that Mao himself was responsible for in China, which were about a thousand times greater. Since no Chinese person was reported to have been offended by Diaz's bag, a reference to the greatest mass murder in human history wasn't included even as background to the story: like, whatever.

It's shocking to realize the extent to which the political allegiances of most people are not held deeply and sincerely but are instead worn as accessories, whether literally or figuratively. To take the most well-known current example, it's obvious that nobody who travels constantly by air or lives in an enormous house can be honestly be said to be committed to the environment: what motivates celebrities to claim that they are ecologically sensitive, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, is the desire to wear an elegant opinion. Green politics can be as flattering to the appearance as an expensive outfit, and no actual change in one's lifestyle is required.

Communism is another flattering accessory. Some dim idea that the communists were tough guys has filtered down to the consumer of the Che Guevara poster or Little Red Book or Mao bag; consequently a whiff of danger accompanies these items and supposedly rubs off on the person who buys them. As a bonus, they also carry an implied disdain of Western capitalism, which as all progressive people know is the real evil. (The latest variation on chic power- worship is the expression of sympathy with radical Islamists, which can go so far as the wearing of kaffiyehs or marching in support of terrorist groups.)

The greatest thing about using politics as a fashion statement is that you don't have to think deeply about what you believe; you simply go along with the other members of your peer group. Dubious opinions and erroneous assumptions always go unchallenged when everyone else around you believes in them (or claims to). And if that means lending your tacit support even to ideas which are directly responsible for the deaths of thousands or millions of people -- well, you know what your priorities are. History is in the past, but fashion is forever.

In their own words

2007-06-23T09:34:00.000-04:00

The latest BBC whitewashing of Hamas comes from their reporter Paul Adams, who in the course of an astonishingly worshipful paean to the group makes the following claim:

The international community shunned Hamas because of its association with terrorism, despite being advised by many on the ground that constructive engagement might be a more profitable course of action.

It's worth having a look at the Hamas charter to see what that group really thinks of "constructive engagement":

"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" ([Quote from] The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).

The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up.

The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"...

So, to summarize: Hamas believes that no part of Palestine must be surrendered, and that Israel must be destroyed; it finds inspiration in a brutal anti-Semitic forgery like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and looks forward to the day when, with Allah's blessing, all of the Jews will be massacred by Muslims. And just imagine: the Israelis believe that this group is somehow dangerous to them! Where on earth could they have gotten that idea from?

Thought for the day

2007-06-21T17:36:00.000-04:00

"You must either hate or imitate [the way of the world]. But both courses are to be avoided." (Seneca, from Epistulae Morales 7).

I like the paradox contained in this: you have only two choices, neither of which you can whole- heartedly opt for if you want to retain your integrity. So what do you do? You can only try to chart a tortuous (and tortured) course between the two, using both as a guide while surrendering to neither, only to end up being condemned in any case -- whether by yourself, or by others -- as a hopeless waverer! It only makes one feel slightly better to realize that the Romans had the same concerns...

Mind out of balance

2007-06-21T09:32:00.000-04:00

Like a number of other rural people and/or antisocial shut-in types I belong to one of those DVD- by- mail services that deliver movies to the house two or three times a week. It's a simple concept: for a flat rate, you get to watch a certain number of DVDs at a time, and keep them for as long as you like. Instead of getting exactly what you want when you want it, though, you have to go to the company's website and assemble a list of things you'd like to see someday, and they'll send along to you whichever of those is available at the moment. Being a voracious cinephile my own list has gone wildly out of control and is now approaching 800 titles. Consequently I often get the surprise, sometimes pleasant and sometimes not, of receiving a movie in the mail whose title I don't recognize, and in which I can't remember ever having expressed an interest. Still, it's somehow strangely comforting to know that if I were to drop dead of a heart attack tomorrow these DVDs would continue arriving at the house for another three or four years.

I didn't recall having requested Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance when it arrived a few days ago, but I was at least familiar with the title, having seen it about twenty years ago on TV. At that time it just seemed like a random collection of hypnotic images depicting various aspects of urban civilization, speeded up using time-lapse photography and set to the bleak, repetitive music of Philip Glass; the kind of movie you'd ideally want to watch in college while smoking a bowl in the dorm room. Watching it the second time, though, left me with an entirely different impression.

It's not very often that a film leaves me feeling physically tainted, as if I needed to right away jump in the shower and wash it off somehow, but that's exactly the reaction I had after seeing Koyaanisqatsi. A film that demonized a particular group of people such as Jews or blacks would not even have been so repulsive as one that, like this, demonizes humanity as a whole. The rapid- motion shots of people commuting, eating, playing games -- engaging in normal human activity, in other words -- are intended to make them look like teeming insects, infesting the face of an earth which (as the movie clearly implies) would be much better off without them.

The title is a Hopi word meaning "life out of balance", and we get to hear noble savages chanting their prophecies at various intervals. The sort of people who would scoff at a Biblical prophecy as the purest form of ignorance are apparently meant to be awed by the same sort of inspired guesswork when it emerges from the mouth of an exotic brown person. The prophecies themselves are conveniently of a sort to flatter the deepest anxieties of a white liberal audience: that Mother Earth is screaming when we dig stuff out of her and will eventually give us our comeuppance; and that burning ash will fall from the sky and scorch the earth (the film was made in 1983, at the height of the hysteria over nuclear winter). There's a further, third prophecy included, something about "cobwebs" being spun on "the day of purification", but it makes little sense either on its own or in relation to the film; presumably its hidden wisdom is lost on palefaces like me.

The cinematographic technique is pure agitprop: by showing one thing and then another, apparently different thing, you prove that those two things are connected. Brilliant! So a shot of Wall Street leads us right to a panorama of what looks to be the devastated South Bronx, proving that it is callous bond-traders who burn down impoverished neighbourhoods (rather than, say, local arsonists and vandals.) Masses of cars arrayed in a parking lot are juxtaposed with masses of tanks in formation, proving that war is the ultimate expression of industralized society. People shown moving quickly up escalators (once again using time-lapse) are followed by rows of wieners moving quickly down conveyor belts, proving that people (at least the non-Hopi ones) are really just mass-produced, undifferentiated tubes of meat. And so on. This is adolescent emotionalism at its best, a kind of political posturing no more sophisticated than that you would expect from, say, a whiny, self-pitying Goth kid in the suburbs.

And like most such posturing it is not only shallow but hypocritical, too. Spectators are shown swilling popcorn in a movie theatre; OK, so where was Koyaanisqatsi shown? Against a cliff-face or adobe wall in New Mexico? Cars are portrayed as choking the planet, but Philip Glass owns a summer home in Cape Breton; does he use teleportation to get there? Environmentalists may well have a hatred of humanity -- that much is evident from the film, and especially from the close-up shots of ordinary people (often visibly reluctant to be filmed) whom we are meant to find repulsive and inauthentic -- but they don't hate themselves, and they certainly don't expect to have to live up to the same standards they would like to set for everyone else. In our own day we have Al Gore telling us to reduce our "carbon footprint" while using twenty times the normal amount of electricity to run his own home, Prince Charles chartering a private flight across the Atlantic to pick up an award for his green sensibilities, and celebrities with private jets and multiple homes -- whose film and TV appearances use untold amounts of energy to produce -- hectoring us on the need to use less toilet paper or take the bus to work. This is a modern-day religion in which faith is an adequate substitute for works, and as in any other religion there is a priestly class which is happy to preach to the laity in return for special exemptions and amenities of its own.

Civilization as we know it would be inconceivable without industrialization. There is a terrible amount of waste in our society, but since a perfect balance between over- abundance and scarcity is nearly impossible to achieve, we should be grateful if we are erring on the side of the former rather than the latter. If we were to go back to living as the Hopi did before the arrival of Europeans in North America, we would find ourselves returning to a time of high infant mortality and low life expectancy, alternating periods of sufficiency and famine, and constant vulnerability to attacks from other tribes. Life would be a constant and unremitting struggle against hardship, want, and oppression. If this is what we want then we should at least have the decency to say so openly. Self- righteous preening, easy and agreeable as it might be, makes no difference to the planet at all.

"Superior skills and discipline"

2007-06-21T08:11:00.000-04:00

Jimmy Carter, being both a devout Christian and a fan of Hamas, must be baffled by the news that a Christian church has been desecrated in Gaza. (Hamas for its part denies involvement, despite the presence of its members and some suspiciously heavy weaponry at the scene.) Needless to say, there is no mention of any of this at the BBC; like yesterday's story about the unarmed demonstrators being killed, it has apparently been deemed unworthy of your attention.

Perhaps it's a cui bono thing. Nobody benefits by Hamas being made to look bad; it ruins the narrative of Israeli culpability for each and every problem in the Middle East and casts serious doubt on the viability of Palestinian "statehood". Rather than casting gloom on everything, the BBC prefers to make a real difference in the Middle East, which is why for a couple of hours yesterday it asked its readers if they had observed any US troop movements in Iraq -- and if so, could they please publish them? Now that is news that you can use: or if not you, then at the very least that bearded guy over there with the rocket launcher.

The mainstream media has a curious selectivity when it comes to reporting incidents of sectarian hatred. A couple of years back Newsweek made a big very fuss about copies of the Koran being flushed down the toilet by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay. Alas, it turned out that this never actually happened, although Newsweek didn't retract the story until rioting by angry Muslims in Afghanistan left 16 dead. The lesson is clear: a fake Koran is much more newsworthy than a real church. Perhaps they should start teaching that at journalism school.

Another buried story

2007-06-20T11:06:00.000-04:00

Hamas opens fire on unarmed peace demonstrators, killing two and also killing two UN aid workers. This story was also reported in the Arab American News, so presumably it's not an Israeli fabrication -- why then can't it be found at major news outlets such as the BBC or the New York Times? Would the underwhelming reaction have been comparable had it been the Israel government shooting the peaceniks instead?

In related news, Jimmy Carter has called for increased support of Hamas, and is even upset that the brutal coup in Gaza has somehow failed to endear the organization to the rest of the world -- after all, he points out, Hamas's victory over Fatah highlighted their "superior skills and discipline"! And who could fail to admire superior skills when it comes to executing prisoners without trial? With every year that goes by it becomes more and more difficult to believe that this class-A idiot was ever leader of the free world.

Nursing their wrath

2007-06-19T06:37:00.000-04:00

As an ex-British, ex-working-class guttersnipe I've never had any time for the idea of giving people titles. Robert Burns had it right when he said that "the rank is but the guinea's stamp", and even though he was referring to the hereditary styles used by the nobility in his day (as in ours), the modern honours given out by the Queen are still largely predicated on fame and financial success. The annual parade of rock stars, footballers, and actors lining up for their increasingly debased knighthoods is dispiriting proof that the British establishment continues to feel the need to define itself as a select class of people by exalting its members in rank above the common herd.

So in itself, the fact that Salman Rushdie has been made a Sir is of no interest to me; I stopped keeping track of knighthoods after Elton John's (or was it Mick Jagger's?) But the predictably incensed reaction among Muslims will prove to be of greater importance in the long run. It's been eighteen years since the controversy over Rushdie's The Satanic Verses gave us our first intimation that the West might have a serious problem on its hands with its sizeable and apparently radicalized Muslim population. That Ayatollah Khomenei had put a bounty on Rushdie's head could be construed as a belligerent act by a foreign power against a British national, but at least in this respect the mad mullahs in Iran were only living up to their fanatical reputations. What proved to be the real shock was the support given to the Iranian fatwa by many Muslims in the West. For years our political classes had promoted mass immigration while dismissing the concerns of the host population about cultural incompatibilities as paranoid race-baiting; now multiculturalism had arrived at its logical conclusion in the spectacle of a minority group espousing values that were not only different from those of the majority but actively hostile to them. Ever since then, the rifts between Muslims and non-Muslims in Britain (as well as in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Norway, Sweden etc. etc.) have only gotten deeper, and their consequences more far-reaching.

Things today would not be as bad as they are had our political and cultural elites unanimously hastened to defend Rushdie when he was first threatened. Whatever one thought of the literary merits of his book, the principle of freedom of speech was much too important to forsake in the face of intimidation. Western artists had struggled for centuries against censorship from Christian authorities; having largely won that struggle, why should they have wanted to once again be subject to the dictates of clerics -- this time Islamic? Unfortunately, there was no unanimity on the issue, and in fact too many influential figures -- among them Germaine Greer, Roald Dahl, and Hugh Trevor- Roper -- expressed sympathy with the radicals, to their everlasting disgrace. Some of those who had spent years promoting multiculturalism were too heavily invested in the idea to admit that they had made a mistake in supposing every culture's values to be of equal validity; others made a great fuss about the need for "sensitivity" -- without ever admitting that this need was driven by fear of fanaticism -- or for "respect" -- without facing up to the fact that some beliefs are not worth respecting at all.

Since we have apparently learned nothing since 1989 we are condemned to repeat this whole sorry business again. Foreign protesters will burn the British flag and make gruesome threats; murderous Muslim governments such as that of Iran will express their outrage; and eventually, after a certain number of people die in violent demonstrations, there will come the inevitable apologies and recriminations as the West tries once again to appease the unappeasable. We should make no mistake about this: today it is Salman Rushdie, or Danish cartoonists, or the Pope; tomorrow it will be anyone who dares to express a contrary opinion of Islam at all.

Pod professors

2007-06-18T11:51:00.000-04:00

Over the past week or so I've been listening to the public-access lectures offered by the University of California at Berkeley, and I'd highly recommend them for anyone in search of stimulating MP3s to listen to while working or exercising. Courses currently available include computer science, chemistry, physics, biology, and economics. --At the beginning I downloaded a smattering of lectures from three or four different courses, just to get the feel for each lecturer's style and the suitability of each subject to the audio format. If you're many years out of university as I am, listening to these webcasts will bring back memories of awkward, socially inept professors making bad jokes to dead air, patronizing their students, and spending inordinate amounts of time on administrative matters ("did everyone get the handout? okay, if you did get it, please sign the sheet that's going around", etc.). But, if you're lucky, it should also remind you -- however distantly -- of the excitement that attended upon the first serious educational experience of your life, and of that liminal time when you felt you'd be happy to sacrifice what remained of your youth for the sake of the wisdom offered by maturity.

True or not, it's "hate"

2007-06-18T11:07:00.000-04:00

The Local, an English-language newspaper out of Sweden, reports that a Swedish politician has been fined for remarking that 95 percent of the heroin in his country has come in from Kosovo. The punchline, according to former newspaper editor Svante Nycander: "when a member of the council asked the police whether Dahn Pettersson's claims were true, he was told simply that the claims constituted Agitation Against a National or Ethnic Group."

It should be apparent by now that so- called "anti-hate" laws can just as easily be used to suppress unpopular but factual opinions -- and in the future this may well come to be their primary function. Slandering someone as a racist (or xenophobe, nativist, Islamophobe, Nazi etc. etc.) is in most cases the most convenient way to shut them up and to silence debate on contentious issues. It is a kind of bullying that has to be resisted wherever possible.

Picture of the day

2007-06-17T10:41:00.000-04:00

This AP photo shows Arabs fleeing the violence in the Gaza Strip by heading into... what, Israel? The Zionist apartheid entity? Don't they know that the Israelis are basically Nazis who will turn them all into soap? Dear me, how confusing reality can be sometimes...

Strictly for economists

2007-06-16T11:59:00.000-04:00

A map of the United States, with each state renamed for a country with comparable GDP.

Want to go to Dickens World?

2007-06-16T10:57:00.000-04:00

True, there is the theme park in Kent, but if you want something a little more realistic you could always try here.

Respect your betters

2007-06-16T09:46:00.000-04:00

The conservative blogs in the US are abuzz at the moment about an ominous-sounding comment made by Trent Lott, the Republican's minority whip in the Senate, who told the New York Times that "talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.” The background to this is Lott's endorsement of the immigration reform bill currently being considered in the Senate, a bill which is widely unpopular with the general public for aiming to provide a massive amnesty to illegal immigrants without at the same time making an equal provision to secure the southern border. Despite the prevalent and very vocal opposition to the bill, there is a strong bipartisan effort in the Senate to push it through regardless of public opinion. Supporters of the Republican Party have already found themselves in the uncomfortable position of being dismissed by their own representatives as ignorant nativists who hate Hispanics. And now one prominent GOPer seems to be suggesting that the very media promoting opposition to the bill ought to be silenced as well.

I can't say I'm surprised by any of this. Politics, even in the democratic countries of the West, tends to nurture the type of person whose deepest desire is to remake society in his own image, whether society likes it or not. Although politicians are happy to claim popular vindication when their own views enjoy public approval, they are just as happy to ignore the wishes of the majority when they feel that they themselves know better. What democracy amounts to as a result is really a sort of plutocratic aristocracy whose members condescend to run for election every four or five years but, having once gotten past that tiresome formality, pretty much do as they like until the next election year rolls around. The problem is further compounded when there is a powerful judiciary -- normally comprised of unelected former lawyers -- who have the authority to approve or reject legislation based on their own (often very subjective) interpretation of their country's constitutional documents.

This is why, to take one example, you will never see the return of capital punishment in Western Europe or Canada: however popular it may be among the voters at any given time, politicians in the main are part of that more educated and affluent segment of society which regards executions as a barbarous relic. It's no different with immigration: polls in many countries suggest that native or host populations want tighter controls on it, but the superstition remains among the elite classes that their electorates are mostly made up of ignorant racists whose wishes on the matter they ought to ignore. (If the elites did not believe in the widespread racism of the public, they would have no need of the elaborate "anti-racism" bureaucracies which have sprouted up everywhere in the West.)

All of this being said, of course, I'd still much rather live in a democratic country, whatever its flaws may be. Politicians may be by and large a pack of hypocrites, but hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, and God knows there are many other countries in the world where the rulers don't even pretend to have the people's best interests at heart. As Churchill (himself an imperfect democrat) once famously remarked, "democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried." With some vigilance, we can at least keep our governments from becoming worse than they already are.

Doctoral candidate, heal thyself

2007-06-14T08:14:00.000-04:00

Today's pointless exercise in sociology comes to you from researcher Francine Watkins at Liverpool University, who went "undercover" in an English village for three months only to discover -- wait for it! -- that rural life was marred by gossip, prejudice, and sexual tension. Academic life being almost entirely free of such things, one can only pity the thought of the innocent Watkins trying in vain to navigate the Machiavellian rat-trap of rustic living.

What Watkins discovered, in fact, was that rural communities were populated by fallible human beings no better or worse than those in the cities. Urban would-be sophisticates love to play this game of "stripping away the pretty veneer" of country living to expose the seething, churning ugliness underneath, but to me it all seems a little redolent of sour grapes: sure, the rural folks have the scenery, the peace and the quiet, low housing prices, clean air, safe streets and actually know their neighbours -- but they're inbred, racist troglodytes, so it's all wasted on them. No right- thinking person should live in the country anyway, of course, because the far- flung roads and scattered amenities are contributing to global warming; better both for our principles and for the planet for us to stick to our tiny, overpriced flats in 20-storey blocks on crime-ridden estates and enjoy the vibrant cooking smells in the hallway.

As a former resident of Toronto now living in a small village I can assure nervous urbanites that there are no social problems in the country that are not found on a much greater scale in the cities, especially prejudice. Francine Watkins comes from Liverpool, which ever since the Toxteth riots in 1981 has been a cauldron of racial tension; just two years ago, for example, a black honours student minding his own business was murdered by a racist thug with an axe. If that's the alternative, I think I can handle being gossiped about.

Simulation of the 9/11 attack

2007-06-13T14:38:00.000-04:00

Researchers at Perdue University have created one of the most realistic simulations of the 9/11 attacks. The simulations that we saw on TV of the disintegrating buildings were not realistic enough apparently. The new simulations took almost 80 hours of high performance computing to calculate and represent the best engineering understanding of what happened that day.

6 years after the fact, civil engineers are still trying to understand completely the collapse of the two towers and there are still unanswered questions. Understanding what happened will help structural engineers design buildings to withstand or survive catastrophic failures.

Whatever the reasons given, it's chilling to watch. While conspiracy theorists will always cling onto their silly ideas, this should make it clear to any reasonable person as to what led the two towers to fall.

You can see the full 122MB animation of the simulation here.

A shorter version (9MB) can be found here.

The full press release can be found here.

Trudeau: idiocy unto the second generation

2007-06-13T13:39:00.000-04:00

An appalling article in the Canadian Press offers us the sorry sight of yet another Trudeau whelp looking for his fifteen minutes of fame: this time it is Alexandre, who is currently busy in print with defending his father's absymal record of sucking up to dictators and whitewashing gross human rights violations, especially when they took place in China. Trudeau Sr. praised Mao, the killer of millions, for bringing "a wonderful system to his people", and wrote a fulsome book of praise for the Communist regime in 1960. Trudeau fils, writing a preface for the new edition, not only makes no apologies for his old man's moral blindness but actually attempts to justify it using the most weaselly of evasions:

His attitude was, Canadian society is a great society. But that doesn't give it a right to impose its values on any other society... He had this revelation (in 1960) that the West is not only just a part of the world, it's maybe only a small part of the world, and we have this outlandish sense of righteousness.

Apparently, this is why Trudeau Sr. refused to condemn the massacre at Tiananmen Square: because who is to say that, like, killing unarmed protesters is wrong, y'know? Funny thing, though: for a moral relativist who believed that every society has its own set of values, Trudeau Sr. seemed very down on the West for its "righteousness". By his own standards, who was he to impose his values on the West? --Then again, how else except through such rationalizations was he to justify to himself his support for murderous tyrants such as Mao, Ceausescu, and Castro? Perhaps his relativism was not so much a matter of sincere conviction as it was a psychological defence mechanism to allow him to sleep at night.

Pierre Trudeau, whose humanitarian and economic records in office were both equally disgraceful, is not only not reviled for these things but is in fact revered to such an extent that Canadians are willing to give an audience to his sons on the basis of their surname alone. What a parcel of fools in a nation.

Justifying the ways of government to man

2007-06-13T09:36:00.000-04:00

"Ein' feste Burg ist unser Getränk"

As much as I love living in Canada, the prim and priggish nature of other Canadians is a constant source of annoyance to me. One of the trials of living in this country of wowsers is getting used to the puritanism surrounding the sale and consumption of alcohol. Most provinces(*) have a central agency which both monopolizes the retailing of booze and determines what will and will not be made available. I suppose the theory behind this is that private liquor stores, or even just the sale of beer and wine in corner shops and groceries, would lead to drunken riotousness and social breakdown on a grand scale; it's difficult to imagine what any other rationale could be, other than the desire to preserve jobs in the public sector.

The all-too-Canadian paternalism in this is very real, and can be taken to ridiculous extremes. I'm just old enough to remember a time when liquor stores in Ontario didn't allow you to peruse the shelves on your own; instead, you'd pick the brand you wanted out of a catalogue, write its serial number on a piece of paper, and hand that to a clerk who would fetch the item from a warehouse in the back. Presumably the sight of all the bottles at once would have incited the prospective customer into a frenzy. This has now thankfully been changed but, despite their having been made more user-friendly, liquor stores in Ontario remain thin on the ground. The city of Mississauga for example has eight locations serving a population of 700,000 people, making it very unlikely that the market is being adequately served -- especially when one takes into account the large numbers of immigrants who find they cannot import and sell their own favourite drinks from back home.

Here in Nova Scotia there is a much less diverse and/or adventurous customer base, so the selection is even narrower than in Ontario. Some major global brands are simply unavailable, or will suddenly appear only to be discontinued later on. In theory, you can make a request by phone for a certain brand to be picked up by the agency, but if you attempt to do so you may be asked to pay for enormous import costs -- this at least is what happened to me after I had the temerity to ask the NSLC (our provincial liquor commission) to stock a brand of German beer I found readily available at several private stores in the northeastern U.S.

And then, of course, there is the matter of prices. Since a monopoly has no competition, the NSLC uses something called a "social reference" to determine its prices -- "to discourage", in the provincial government's sanctimonious words, "the excessive consumption of alcohol." Of course this is merely the glib rationale for a tax grab, but even taken at their face value these words make no sense. A price increase merely punishes the moderate, lower- income drinker, while those who are more affluent (such as politicians themselves, or the brass of the NSLC) will hardly notice the increase. At the same time, no real alcoholic -- whatever his social status -- is going to be put off from committing slow suicide by a fifty-cent price hike.

You would never guess from listening to these words of the government that most people actually liked to drink -- to relax with a couple of beers after work or a bottle of wine over dinner -- rather than being driven to it by an addiction beyond their control; instead, you could only imagine that drinking is a highly unpleasant fact of life, and one only to be tolerated with the greatest reluctance and supervision. Such is the wisdom of the State.

Next time you are holding a glass, please raise a toast to privatization. Slàinte!

(* It has to be said that Quebec is at least a partial exception to this, for cultural and historical reasons of its own. Not only are the prices for beer, wine, cider, liqueurs, and aperitifs far more reasonable in la belle province, these items are also sold alongside food at corner and grocery stores (though the sale of spirits is still reserved to the government.) Quebec breweries such as Unibroue and micro-breweries such as Breughel in Kamouraska also produce world-class beers which, predictably, are unavailable for purchase in other provinces.)

Best of bloggers

2007-06-13T08:46:00.000-04:00

A few of my favourites:

Language Hat. Exploring the quirks of the world's languages in a wonderfully dilettantish way.

100 Years Ago Today. News accounts from 1907 proving that there is, after all, not a damn thing new under the sun.

James Lileks. This man explores his (fairly average, suburban) life in exhaustive, mind- numbing detail every day, and yet somehow manages to call up enough wit and good sense to make it a compelling read.

Mindless in Gaza

2007-06-12T11:38:00.000-04:00

As the civil war in the Gaza strip heats up, with Hamas and Fatah members assassinating each other in hospitals and flinging each other off rooftops -- or at least when they aren't busy firing off rockets into neighbouring Israel instead -- it's salutary to take a look back and remember how strongly Israel was encouraged before 2005 to vacate Gaza in the name of regional "peace". It's especially worth remembering it now that the hapless Ehud Olmert seems about to enter into talks with Syria aimed at giving back the Golan Heights. Let's see: ceding a strategic height on its border to an enemy state which has attacked Israel twice before and which to this day funds a terrorist army aimed at Israel's destruction -- what could possibly go wrong with that?

Senseless as it is, though, Olmert will continue to pursue the chimera of land- for- peace in the Middle East at the behest both of his idealistic American sponsors and of the baying anti- Zionists in the EU and the UN -- and all because of the antiquated and schoolmarmish notion that all you need to do to solve any conflict is to sit all the parties down and tie their shoelaces together until they reach an agreement. Not only is there no recognition of the assymetrical balance of aggression of this situation, i.e. of the fact that Israel is only entity in the region whose very existence is threatened on a daily basis, there always remains the fixed and unalterable prejudice amongst much of the so-called international community in favour of the Arabs. Against such a hopeless backdrop no real progress is ever going to be made, and it will be up to Israel to continue to find its own way forward as it has already done for the past sixty years.

Adam Smith's Invisible Hand

2007-06-12T05:35:00.000-04:00

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.
As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual value of society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.
Adam Smith
The Wealth of Nations

One of the common misconceptions with regard to economics is that it is a man-made construct that we have created to serve us. One of the insights I had when studying economics is that nothing could be further from the truth. The law of supply and demand, of diminishing returns, and of comparative advantage are as fundamental as Newton's 3 laws. The reason is quite simply that the human race is faced with fundamental constraints - the most important being of time and of resources.

As both time and resources are limited, they have value. We use resources or we use time to maximize our benefit. How and with what efficacy we use these is what the study of economics is about. And like any really elegant scientific theory, from very simple principles come some impressive implications.

This is not to say that there is universal consensus. There are many economists, such as Jeffry Sachs and now Alan Bender who believe that some limits to globalization should exist. But these are all arguments of degree not of fundamentals. There are almost no economists worth anything who would question the fundamentals of economics.

So pervasive are these laws that even when every effort is made to suppress them such as in communism, they come back to bite. It wasn't the West that bankrupted the Soviet Union, it was the market. I personally have seen the destruction of an African country because they attempted to put a brake on free markets. The only thing that happened is that a flourishing black market opened up, prices shot through the roof, corruption became rampant.

There are those who believe that violence and corruption are endemic to the free market system. After all without any "guiding hand" from government, who would check on people's honesty? In fact, the opposite is true. Anyone who has lived in India at the time of the licence Raj can attest to the corruption of government officials. Even the US, which has one of the most open systems in the world, politicians routinely earmark massive budgets to pork-barrel projects. Give a politician or bureaucrat too much power and that power will be abused. In a market system, it is much harder to acquire such power because there are some natural checks and balances in place.

Markets rule. Businesses answer to their customers. Businesses need capital to invest in new projects and so they answer to shareholders or to banks. You can fool the markets for some of the time but you can't fool the markets all of the time. Cases such as Enron are more a confirmation of this idea than a refutation because the markets did catch up with them (and a few other companies) and hurt them badly. Shareholders soon caught onto the fact that the company was sitting on a house of cards. The Asian financial crisis of the 90s was the result of inadequate checks on loans to businesses, which precipitated a massive flight of investor capital. The markets keep people honest not because people are honest or well meaning but because if they weren't, after some time, they will be discovered and will find that either they lose their customers or that investors will shun them, leaving them without funding. Studies (Antunovich et al (2000)) have shown that companies with very strong corporate governance and oversight grow 50% faster than their less well governed competitors over a 5 year period.

Markets thrive on transparency. They wilt when there is too much corruption. This is a clear pattern around the world. As one Nigerian politician said - "In Indonesia, politicians pocket 10% and return 90%, whereas in Nigeria, they pocket 90% and return 10%". There is a strong correlation between the degree of a country's well being and the amount of corruption there is. Corruption eats up capital that could otherwise be put to good use. If you pay $100 to some corrupt official, that is $100 that could have been used to invest in useful machinery for a factory, which would have had a greater rate of return than what the politician would have used it on (such as luxury cars which actually depreciate over time).

Going a little further, there is also a correlation between the level of contentment and freedom in a country and the strength of its markets. A free and open market generates jobs which keeps people occupied, it destroys privilege by rewarding the talented and punishing the lazy. In India, the very system that was meant to help the poor hurt them instead because only the well off could afford the bribes and favours needed to get things done. The collapse of European aristocracy and the rise of the middle class was due to the growing strength of the businessman in Europe. The rise of the middle class could have been one of the early motivators for modern democracy.

On the other hand, suppression or distortion of markets leads to stagnation, decadence and social instability. Nowhere is this more clear than in the Arab World. Saudi Arabia has one of the most restrictive market systems in the world. They have benefited hugely from their oil wealth (and American investment) but Saudi Arabia has no free market and the consequences are clear. There is a 20% unemployment rate in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest welfare states in the world because they thought they could premise a successful system on patronage. A high unemployment rate for young men is one of the leading sources of social instability. Witness the burgeoning neo-Nazi movement in the states of former East Germany, or the rise of islamo-fascism in Saudi Arabia. As Benjamin Netanyahu said in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal:

I think that one element that should be expedited as rapidly as possible is the democratization of markets. I think that expanding economic freedom is just as important--in some cases more important--in moderating societies than accelerated moves to political freedoms without the proper democratic institutions.

Trading is natural to human nature. We start trading from the youngest age. We constantly trade with our partners, our children and our friends. Relationships could not survive without the sense that we are getting something in exchange for us giving something. Our ideas of fairness, stemming from our trading instinct, are so fundamental that even the criminal world exacts harsh penalties for cheating. We cannot get away from the market, tame it or do anything else to control it, any more than we could pacify Newton's Three Laws. This is why Adam Smith's invisible hand will never lose it's potency.

Thought for the day

2007-06-11T10:41:00.000-04:00

"To love unsatisfied the world is a mystery, a mystery which satisfied love appears to understand."

(F.H. Bradley)

Welsh to me

2007-06-11T09:06:00.000-04:00

As a student and proponent of Scottish Gaelic -- a language approximately equal in its global importance to (say) Police Motu, or Klingon -- I can't help but be sympathetic to the needs of all minority languages as they struggle for survival. Even so, I thought that this story out of Wales was more than a little overinflated. The travel agency Thomas Cook is happy to employ Welsh speakers at its Bangor office, and to provide service to its customers in Welsh. What it does not allow are business-related conversations in that tongue between members of staff, presumably so that everyone can be aware of what is going on in the office at any given time.

Since the vast majority of Welsh- speakers also speak English, but conversely few English- speakers know Welsh, it makes practical sense to let English be the default language; and in any case the company ought to have the final say in how its own internal operations are conducted. Dragging in the parasitic Commission for Racial Equality to adjudicate this dispute is not going to make things any better for speakers of Welsh. If a "right" to speak Welsh at work is fabricated out of thin air by the CRE -- or even if it is discovered lurking in the depths of absurd legislation such as the Race Relations Act -- companies will think twice about opening offices in north Wales, and the perception of minority-language speakers as grievance- mongering atavists will be reinforced.