James Delingpole is a bestselling British author and blogger who helped expose the Climategate scandal back in 2009. Reason.tv caught up with Delingpole in Los Angeles recently to learn more about his entertaining and provocative new book Watermelons: The Green Movement’s True Colors. At its very roots, argues Delingpole, climate change is an ideological battle, not a scientific one. In other words, it’s green on the outside and red on the inside. At the end of the day, according to Delingpole, the “watermelons” of the modern environmental movement do not want to save the world. They want to rule it.
September 27, 2011
ReasonTV: ManBearPig, Climategate, and Watermelons
Comments Off on ReasonTV: ManBearPig, Climategate, and Watermelons
Reaping the (censorship) whirlwind
Mick Hume points out that the recent threat of police cracking down on the press — the Guardian in particular — was illiberal and unjustified, yet quite in line with what the Guardian had encouraged be done to Murdoch’s media empire.
It was, as all liberal-minded people (and Richard Littlejohn of the Daily Mail) agreed, an egregious assault on press freedom for the Metropolitan Police to threaten legal action to force the Guardian to reveal its sources. So there was much celebration and not a little smug satisfaction in media circles when the Met, under pressure from within and without the legal system, dropped the action last week.
Where, the Guardian editors and their outraged high-level supporters demanded, did the Met ever get the ‘ill-judged’, ‘misconceived’ and ‘perverse in the extreme’ idea that they could order the Guardian to tell them who leaked details of Operation Weeting, the phone-hacking investigation?
It’s a good question. Where on earth could Inspector Censor and PC Prodnose have got the notion that it was their business to investigate, arrest and prosecute journalists, or interfere with the operations of a free press? Step forward the moral crusaders at of the Guardian and its allies.
For years they have been demanding more police and legal action against the Murdoch press and those allegedly involved in phone-hacking, inviting the authorities to police the media more closely. Then these illiberal liberals throw their arms up in horror when the authorities try to take advantage of their invitation to investigate the high-minded ‘good guys’ at the Guardian as well as the lowlife at the defunct News of the World. Their naivety is only exceeded by their elitism. Give the state a licence to interfere with the press, and you should not be surprised if it tries to exploit it — even if today’s spineless state officials ultimately lacked the gumption to take on the Guardian.
Comments Off on Reaping the (censorship) whirlwind
Why even giving Saudi women a “token” vote is welcome
Saudi women will get the vote soon, which is a major development that is being greeted with jeers and yawns. Brendan O’Neill explains why it matters:
The granting of the right to vote to women in Saudi Arabia is a wonderful leap forward for democracy. Yet it has induced a weird concoction of cynicism and shoulder-shrugging indifference amongst the so-called sisterhood in the West, including in the upper echelons of human-rights groups who normally campaign for this kind of breakthrough. Amnesty International sniffily says “it is no great achievement to be one of the last countries in the world to grant women the vote”. Both Amnesty and the even more high-minded Human Rights Watch are serving up generous dollops of doom about this big shift in Saudi life, warning that having the vote is no “guarantee of rights” for Saudi women. Meanwhile, female members of the liberal commentariat pump out articles with headlines like “Why women in Saudi Arabia have a long way to go yet”.
Why are so many people so down on this development? Of course, the “democracy” which, from 2015, Saudi women will be allowed to take part in is far from perfect; like men, they will only get to vote in occasional municipal elections for advisers to the religious Shura Council. And yes, Saudi women’s lives will not magically transform overnight. In Britain in 1918, female suffrage was first only granted to women over the age of 30; it wasn’t until 1928 that women got the vote on equal terms with men. And it took many more years, decades in fact, for women to become full participants in society. Yet nobody, surely, would look back at the breakthroughs won by the Suffragettes in the 1910s and say, “Well, it was a big fat waste of time giving women the right to vote when many of them couldn’t aspire to anything more than housewifing drudgery”. Why do we say such things in relation to Saudi Arabia?
The reason the granting of the vote to Saudi women is a potentially brilliant development is because it implicitly recognises that these women are political beings, individuals with opinions and the right to express them (albeit in a limited fashion). Having recognised that fact, the Saudi authorities will now find it increasingly hard to justify and sustain the repression of women in other areas of social and political life. If Saudi rulers think they can grant women the right to vote and leave it at that — that there will be no further pressure for more reforms — then they must be even more insulated from reality and ignorant of history than we thought. History shows again and again that political concessions, even big ones, do not leave people satisfied, but rather fuel their aspirations for a better and freer life; they potentially make people angrier, in a good way, rather than happier.
Comments Off on Why even giving Saudi women a “token” vote is welcome
Britain (finally) admits it will “never again be among the global superpowers”
For something that’s been obvious to casual observers since 1945 (1956 if you’re generous), it’s taken a while to admit:
The warning comes from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) thinktank in a tough report which questions whether Britain’s defence crisis is really over.
Last year’s Strategic Defence and Security Review led to sweeping redundancies across all three services, and the early mothballing of, among others, the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, and the fleet of Harrier jets.
In a brutally frank assessment of the British military, the report states: “The UK will never again be a member of the select club of global superpowers. Indeed it has not been one for decades.
“But currently planned levels of defence spending should be enough for it to maintain its position as one of the world’s five second-rank military powers (with only the US in the first rank).”
Many in the military are likely to bridle at the analysis; last week the former head of the Royal Navy, Admiral Lord West, struck a completely different tone, causing a furore when he said the UK should not consider itself a second-tier power like “bloody Belgium or Denmark”.
Except for brief wartime surges, Britain’s military strength has rarely been the army: it’s been the Royal Navy that provided Britain with both military and economic clout. Gutting the striking power of the navy (HMS Ark Royal and the Harriers) was merely the final admission that the government had higher priorities domestically than internationally. As Admiral Cunningham once said, “It takes three years to build a ship; it takes three centuries to build a tradition. It’s remarkable how quickly one can destroy a tradition.
NFL week 3 results
Favourites are listed first, my picks are in bold.
- ∅ New England vs @Buffalo (8.5) Sun 1:00pm
- √ @Cincinnati vs San Francisco (2.5) Sun 1:00pm
- ∅ @Cleveland vs Miami (2.5) Sun 1:00pm
- √ @Tennessee vs Denver (6.5) Sun 1:00pm
- ∅ Detroit vs @Minnesota (3.5) Sun 1:00pm
- √ @New Orleans vs Houston (4.0) Sun 1:00pm
- ∅ @Philadelphia vs New York (NYG) (0) Sun 1:00pm
- √ @Carolina vs Jacksonville (3.5) Sun 1:00pm
- √ New York (NYJ) vs @Oakland (3.5) Sun 4:05pm
- √ Baltimore vs @St. Louis (4.0) Sun 4:05pm
- √ @San Diego vs Kansas City (14.5) Sun 4:05pm
- √ Green Bay vs @Chicago (3.5) Sun 4:15pm
- ∅ Arizona vs @Seattle (3.5) Sun 4:15pm
- ∅ @Tampa Bay vs Atlanta (1.5) Sun 4:15pm
- √ Pittsburgh vs @Indianapolis (10.5) Sun 8:20pm
- √ @Dallas vs Washington (0) Mon 8:30pm
This week 10-6 (9-7 against the spread)
Season to date 31-17
Comments Off on NFL week 3 results
September 26, 2011
Gorram purplebelly censors
A Mal Reynolds poster falls victim to academic censorship:
Dateline: Wisconsin. At the University of Wisconsin-Stout, theater professor James Miller put up a poster on his door with an image of Nathan Fillon in the character of Captain Malcolm Reynolds with one of Mal’s better lines: “You don’t know me, son, so let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake. You’ll be facing me. And you’ll be armed.”
In a better world, nothing would happen — except perhaps Firefly fans would geek out and people who roll their eyes at geek culture references would roll their eyes.
But this is modern America. In modern America, the Browncoats are people who like to use vigorous figurative language to speak their mind, and they are often outnumbered and outgunned by the Alliance, made up of silly, professionally frightened moral and intellectual weaklings who see expressions of dissent (particularly dissent rendered in vivid figurative terms) as upsetting and potentially all terroristy.
So naturally the campus police at University of Wisconsin-Stout went all Mrs.-Grundy-With-A-Gun-And-A-Badge on Professor Miller. They threatened Prof. Miller with criminal charges for disorderly conduct, taking a page from the cops at Sam Houston state. They also took the poster down. The redoubtable FIRE has the story and has sent the necessary letter asking the University to grow the fuck up and pull its shit together. (That might be kind of a paraphrase by me.)
Comments Off on Gorram purplebelly censors
Why are gold and silver down in this market?
It’s a question I’ve been asking too (my miniscule portfolio is taking a beating in both equities and in precious metals). Mike “Mish” Shedlock offers some likely answers:
1. Fed Did Far Less than Expected
The Fed did not do what everyone thought, which is to say something far more than “Operation Twist”. [. . .] In short, the Fed did not print, or even threaten to print. Moreover the Fed committed to a strategy not through the end of this year, but all the way through June of 2012. Perhaps the Fed does more in the interim, perhaps not. [. . .]2. Mutual Fund Redemptions
Mutual fund cash levels are at or near record lows. In general, mutual funds were not prepared for the market selloff and sell orders came in. Rather than sell garbage like Bank of America at $6, mutual funds unloaded stuff like gold, taking profits.3. Margin Calls at Hedge Funds
Hedge funds unloaded gold and silver for the same reasons as mutual funds, but also because they mistimed the play and what Bernanke would do. Leverage works both ways.4. China Growth Story Fading
Commodities in general have been clobbered along with currencies of commodity producing countries because the global economy is slowing rapidly.
Comments Off on Why are gold and silver down in this market?
Mark Steyn: It really is the end of the world as we know it
Feeling too optimistic? Mark Steyn has a solution for that:
Headline from CNBC: “Global Meltdown: Investors Are Dumping Nearly Everything.” I assumed “Nearly Everything” was the cute name of a bankrupt, worthless, planet-saving green-jobs start-up backed by Obama bundlers and funded with a gazillion dollars of stimulus payback. But apparently it’s “Nearly Everything” in the sense of the entire global economy. Headline from the Daily Telegraph of London: “David Cameron: Euro Debt ‘Threatens World Stability.’” But, if you’re not in the general vicinity of the world, you should be okay. Headline from the Wall Street Journal: “World Bank’s Zoellick: World In ‘Danger Zone.’” But, if you’re not in the general vicinity of . . . no, wait, I did that gag with the last headline.
I mentioned in this space a few weeks ago the IMF’s calculation that China will become the planet’s leading economic power by the year 2016. And I added that, if that proves correct, it means the fellow elected next November will be the last president of the United States to preside over the world’s dominant economy. I thought that line might catch on. After all, we’re always told that every election is the most critical consequential watershed election of all time, but this one actually would be: For the first time since Grover Cleveland’s first term, America would be electing a global also-ran. But there’s not a lot of sense of America’s looming date with destiny in these presidential debates. I don’t mean so much from the candidates as from their media interrogators — which is more revealing of where the meter on our political conversation is likely to be during the general election. On Thursday night, there was a question on gays in the military but none on the accelerating European debt crisis. It is certainly important to establish whether a would-be president is sufficiently non-homophobic to authorize a crack team of lesbian paratroopers to rappel into the Chinese treasury, break the safe, and burn all our IOUs. But the curious complacency about the bigger questions is disturbing.
Comments Off on Mark Steyn: It really is the end of the world as we know it
Vikings blow big halftime lead: this is not a repeat of the last two weeks
Oh, wait. No, it actually is a repeat of the last two weeks. This time the team had a 20-point lead to fritter away, and the Detroit Lions had to go to overtime to win.
Christopher Gates sums it up nicely:
The Vikings took a team that had been averaging 37.5 points per game over the first two weeks of the year and won by 45 points the week before, and held them off of the scoreboard in the first half. In the first thirty minutes of play, they held that offense to 50 total yards.
And then, in the second half, it all happened again. . .Stafford tore apart a soft zone again. Adrian Peterson got hardly any touches in the second half again. Percy Harvin, like many of us, spent a great deal of the second half throwing up. Donovan McNabb did very little in the second half.
Jim Souhan renews his call from yesterday to bench Donovan McNabb and give Christian Ponder his first NFL start:
This is what a football apocalypse looks like: Fans jeering, players screaming on the sideline, coaches making irrational decisions, players committing destructive penalties, and a proud group of veterans collapsing in the second half for the third consecutive week while their owners beg for a new stadium.
The meaningful portion of the Vikings’ 2011 schedule concluded on Sept. 25 at the Metrodome, as they blew a 20-point halftime lead and lost in overtime, falling to 0-3. Only three teams since 1990 have made the playoffs after starting 0-3, and none of them was outscored 67-6 after halftime in their first three games, as the Vikings have been.
[. . .]
So it’s time for the Vikings to start thinking of “Ponder” as a noun, not a verb.
The decision to sign veteran quarterback Donovan McNabb made sense. If he played well, he could guide an ambitious team into the playoffs. If he didn’t, he could buy time for rookie quarterback Christian Ponder to develop.
Having failed at the former, McNabb has already accomplished the latter. Ponder has had a full training camp and three game weeks to learn the Vikings offense.
[. . .]
McNabb is not solely responsible for the Vikings’ woes, but he is the only member of the organization whose demotion could prove beneficial. You can’t fire a head coach or coordinator three games into their tenures, and changing left tackles has never inspired a team or changed the direction of a franchise.
The Vikings will play at Kansas City on Sunday. Giving Ponder his first NFL start there would make sense. The Chiefs are 0-3, and Ponder, having played at Florida State, may think that all of the Indian symbolism was put in place to welcome him.
Eric J. Thompson tries to put it in perspective:
Yep folks, that’s what the 2011 season has come to already. Bad attempts at humor to deflect pain from the worst 0-3 start imaginable. And when I say “imaginable”, I mean it — because you couldn’t make this sh*t up. Seriously: outscoring your opponents 54-7 in the first half only to be outscored 67-6 after halftime?! And all of that incredible ineptitude without committing a single second half turnover? You couldn’t even lose like that on purpose if you were playing Madden. We’d all be amazed if we weren’t all so damn depressed.
But fear not, fellow Vikings fans. I’m giving you an out. I’m saying right here and now, before the calendar even turns to October, that it’s OK to emotionally check out from expecting anything for the 2011 season.
Now before you jump all over me in the comments section calling me a sell out or a fair weather bandwagon jumper, let me explain. I’m still going to watch all 13 Vikings games that remain on the 2011 schedule, and I’m still going to vehemently root for them every step of the way. I’ll still be extremely pissed when they lose and I’ll still be overjoyed when they win. It’s in my DNA, whether I like it or not. But I am officially done believing that this season will result in anything else but watching other NFC North team(s) in the playoffs after Week 17 is completed. It’s awful to admit, but them’s the facts, folks.
Ontario election mechanics: how to decline your ballot
If you have as uninspiring a selection of candidates running in your riding as I do, you may feel like there’s no point in voting. You do, however, have an alternative: you can effectively vote for “None of the above” if you decline your ballot:
53. An elector who has received a ballot and returns it to the deputy returning officer declining to vote, forfeits the right to vote and the deputy returning officer shall immediately write the word “declined” upon the back of the ballot and preserve it to be returned to the returning officer and shall cause an entry to be made in the poll record that the elector declined to vote. R.S.O. 1990, c. E.6, s. 53.
A recent article in the Ottawa Citizen explains why it may matter to publicize the number of declined ballots rather than just lumping declined ballots in with blank or spoiled ones:
Ontario’s Chief Electoral Officer is neglecting to tell voters about a crucial right to choose “none of the above” in the upcoming election, says a third-party watchdog.
The right to decline a ballot is enshrined in Ontario’s election act, says Democracy Watch spokesman Duff Conacher, but is unpublicized by the agency and its head, Greg Essensa.
Whereas spoiled ballots are rejected and considered cast by “stupid” people who “don’t know how to mark an ‘X’ in the box,” says Conacher, declined ballots are interpreted much more clearly.
They are the product of active, but dissatisfied, voters.
“Let’s assume five per cent of voters are not turning up now because they don’t support the current parties and their platform,” Conacher said in an interview. “If they did turn out and that was reported on election night, you’re going to see parties fall over themselves to find out what those five per cent want. Right now they don’t because those people stay at home.”
H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord, for providing the links.
September 25, 2011
Police “told her she had to stay tied up until they could document the scene, which she said took five hours”
A new lawsuit has been filed in the Russell Williams case:
Laurie Massicotte was a neighbour of Williams in Tweed, Ontario, and was bound, stripped and sexually assaulted in September 2009.
The Toronto Star reported, the more than $7-million law suit filed on Friday claims police failed to provide her with any information about the identity of her assailant while he remained her neighbour for five months following the assault.
Massicottee told the Star, it was only after her assault that she heard another woman who lived on the street had been sexually assaulted twelve days before she was attacked.
She also said after she called the police, they told her she had to stay tied up until they could document the scene, which she said took five hours.
The police left a rape victim tied up for five hours? No wonder she’s suing the Ontario Provincial Police!
Comments Off on Police “told her she had to stay tied up until they could document the scene, which she said took five hours”
The new TV show will have to be highly imaginative to match the real Pan Am
Scott Van Wynsberghe looks at the fascinating history of the real-world Pan American:
To say the least, it was a peculiar charter flight. At some point in the first half of the 1960s, Pan American World Airways put one of its planes at the disposal of Indonesian president Sukarno. However, Pan Am was also working with the CIA, and the plane was wired for surveillance. As well, Pan Am vice-president Samuel Pryor — who was the airline’s liaison with the CIA — staffed the flight with “stewardesses” who were actually German hookers. Pryor would later reveal all this to co-authors Marilyn Bender and Selig Altschul for their 1982 book on Pan Am CEO Juan Trippe, The Chosen Instrument. Referring to Sukarno, a known womanizer, Pryor commented, “I was afraid to expose our Pan Am girls to him. Our girls were nice girls.”
The new ABC television series Pan Am, which premiered on Sept. 25, will have to go a ways to beat that image of intrigue and sexism. Still, the creators of the series deserve credit just for reviving interest in a company notorious for combining flying and spying.
[. . .]
Amid the profits in Latin America, however, were the roots of shadowy affairs to come. As early as 1930, Pan Am quietly acquired SCADTA, a Colombian-based German aviation firm, but the existing management was allowed to remain. That caused trouble later in the 1930s, as war threatened in Europe and Washington fretted over the proximity of so many German fliers to the Panama Canal. In early 1939, the U.S. military — well aware of the true ownership of SCADTA — simply ordered Trippe to purge the Germans from the company. When American replacement crews arrived, they discovered that someone had been modifying SCADTA planes to permit the mounting of bombs and machine guns.
Over a year after the SCADTA affair, in mid-1940, U.S. authorities were so worried over a possible spread of the Second World War to the Western Hemisphere that they decided to create a chain of installations across the Caribbean and the coast of Brazil. The problem was that all this would require complex military treaties, for which there was no time. Airfields and radio stations could, however, be built by a private company pretending that all the activity was just routine business. If war did reach the hemisphere, panicky local governments could then permit the U.S. military to take over the sites. Pan Am was chosen for the job, and a secret deal was finalized in November. According to historian Stanley Hilton, German military intelligence attempted to monitor the ensuing construction.
Comments Off on The new TV show will have to be highly imaginative to match the real Pan Am
View some Scottish scenery, with Danny MacAskill riding all over it
H/T to Roger Henry for the link.
Comments Off on View some Scottish scenery, with Danny MacAskill riding all over it
Mecca is becoming a “playground for the rich”
Jerome Taylor looks at the vast changes being wrought in Mecca and Medina:
Over the past 10 years the holiest site in Islam has undergone a huge transformation, one that has divided opinion among Muslims all over the world.
Once a dusty desert town struggling to cope with the ever-increasing number of pilgrims arriving for the annual Hajj, the city now soars above its surroundings with a glittering array of skyscrapers, shopping malls and luxury hotels.
To the al-Saud monarchy, Mecca is their vision of the future — a steel and concrete metropolis built on the proceeds of enormous oil wealth that showcases their national pride.
Yet growing numbers of citizens, particularly those living in the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, have looked on aghast as the nation’s archaeological heritage is trampled under a construction mania backed by hardline clerics who preach against the preservation of their own heritage. Mecca, once a place where the Prophet Mohamed insisted all Muslims would be equal, has become a playground for the rich, critics say, where naked capitalism has usurped spirituality as the city’s raison d’être.
Few are willing to discuss their fears openly because of the risks associated with criticising official policy in the authoritarian kingdom. And, with the exceptions of Turkey and Iran, fellow Muslim nations have largely held their tongues for fear of of a diplomatic fallout and restrictions on their citizens’ pilgrimage visas. Western archaeologists are silent out of fear that the few sites they are allowed access to will be closed to them.
But a number of prominent Saudi archaeologists and historians are speaking up in the belief that the opportunity to save Saudi Arabia’s remaining historical sites is closing fast.
Comments Off on Mecca is becoming a “playground for the rich”
