“I hope the German brothers were gonna blow up US-German bases in their country. We should do that here in Canada as well. Kill as many western soldiers as well so that they think twice before entering foreign countries on behalf of their Jew masters. . .When do I get to shoot a few Jews down for attempting to blow up dozens of mosques in America right after 9-11 … why f—ing target the Americans when the Jews are better?. . .the Jews are literally the most treacherous nation on the face of the Earth”. . .I hate the Jews. . .the filthy Jews carried out 9-11.”

And from within Canada’s most prominent “progressive” eco-chamber, the apologists bash away their keyboards. It’s just the National Post trying to “incite hatred against Muslims.”

It may not be a consensus, but the collective view of the world’s climate scientists is that humans are responsible for the bulk of the change observed over the last century. And the scientists concerned have now firmed up their previous statements on the matter.

One of the professional organisations to which I belong is the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Despite its name, the AGU is a truly international body, and you would be hard-pressed to find an active geoscientist who isn’t a member. No longer working myself as an atmospheric physicist, I keep up my subscription as the AGU is a mine of useful information and networking possibilities.

Just over a week ago the AGU released a statement updating its 2003 position on climate change. You can read the document here, and I recommend that you do so. Free of hyperbole and political bias, the statement is well-written, and perfectly comprehensible by sentient humans of average intelligence and above.

Here is an extract:

“In the next 50 years, even the lower limit of impending climate change–an additional global mean warming of 1°C above the last decade—is far beyond the range of climate variability experienced during the past thousand years and poses global problems in planning for and adapting to it. Warming greater than 2°C above 19th century levels is projected to be disruptive, reducing global agricultural productivity, causing widespread loss of biodiversity, and—if sustained over centuries—melting much of the Greenland ice sheet with ensuing rise in sea level of several meters.”

The statement goes on to say that if this disruptive warming is to be avoided, then we will have to reduce our net carbon dioxide emissions by more than 50% this century. Note the use of the words “more than”. Fifty percent really is a best case scenario, and the chances are that the figure will have to be revised upwards as we learn more about ice dynamics and a number of other factors.

The statement goes on:

“Given the uncertainty in climate projections, there can be surprises that may cause more dramatic disruptions than anticipated from the most probable model projections.”

So now you know (if you didn’t already).

Nick Cohen on Martin Amis:

Amis is now fascinated by ideologues such as Eagleton and all those who have bayed along with him in the pages of the Guardian and Independent. Journalists have made knowing remarks about how the professor had a book out, and a controversy would do its sales no harm. Amis finds their explanation too shallow.
‘That’s just ordinary the cynical calculation. It’s a drag being a cynic, it’s like being a snob or a racist, you’re always on duty finding reasons for being cynical, but I can understand how that type of cynicism works, These kind of attacks are something more than “I’ve got a book coming out and I want a bit attention”. It’s a super-cynicism, the cynicism that says “sling the charges out there. It doesn’t matter if he didn’t really say it. It will stick them to him, and I will get the approval of my peer group.”
‘If you’re ideological you’ve got two people living with you the cheer-leader and the commissar, the frowning commissar. The cheerleader kisses you and the commissar pats on you on the back for doing what’s necessary to uphold the party line. To be ideological means to fear individuality. You must see safety in numbers, in the herd, so your vanity is always protected. The ideologue can’t live by himself; he needs the validation of the like-minded.’
If you know Amis’s world, you will also know that he’s right. Comedians who shriek ‘ohmigod he’s supporting Israel!’ expect only applause for defending the faithful against the heretic. They would be shocked if their own congregation doubted or cross-questioned them before concurring. Their condemnations are social, not intellectual.
I once asked Christopher Hitchens about the conformity of modern liberal life; why it was that when you talked to them you wouldn’t merely know their opinion on one thing but on everything. Hitchens thought the politically committed fear that if they stepped out of line on one issue, stopped believing that, say, that the comprehensive school system was a good idea they would indeed change their minds on everything; that their leftish political personality was like a rug which would unravel if one thread comes loose.

How. Much. Do. You. Despise. These people?

Personal note: I once spoke to Conway. He used to live in Sheriff Hill in Gateshead — I was canvassing before a general election that was due and knocked on his door — he was still a stupid posh cunt even then (just like every other fucker connected with his ‘party’/pressure group — vermin).

PS. Try getting a job of the like posh twat got from his dolt parent from this place — then find out what benefit having the correct upbringing and parental connections gives you. Scum — verily they are. Credentialism (which is another piece of crap in the job ‘market’ these days — even that isn’t going to get you started in this case — scumbags). They can fuck off as well.

Update: More evidence for the prosecution located here.

eg…hard at work — see the specimen …

and…

Liberal political scientist Atilla Yayla has been sentenced in absentia by a Turkish court to 15 months in prison, suspended for two years.

Professor Yayla was in 2006 charged with insulting the legacy of Kemal Atatürk. The academic’s ‘crime’ was to point out that the early years of the Turkish republic under the revered leader were not as progressive as the official history suggests.

“I want to emphasise again and again that Turkey’s most pressing problem is freedom of expression.” [Atilla Yayla]

So, for criticising Kemalist ideology as illiberal, Yayla has been threatened with prison. As they say, you couldn’t make it up.

Turkey in the EU? Not yet, thanks.

In a wretched display of southern me-tooism, there are proposals afoot to create an ‘Angel of the South‘ sculpture in Kent. The work is to be twice the size of (and half as good as) Antony Gormley’s iconic Angel of the North in Gateshead. When asked by Five News what form the new sculpture should take, Tyneside residents suggested:

• a pound sign
• a lager top

The House, CBC Radio’s program on Canadian politics and the occasional act of statesmanship, took a detailed look at the Manley Report last Saturday.

John Manley responded to questions on Afghanistan and performed a masterful put down of the petulant Michael Byers. The Afghan Ambassador to Canada, Omar Samad, discussed his country’s human rights deficit. And Liberal Foreign Affairs critic Bob Rae, aka the former NDP premier of Ontario, talked about what his party likes about the report, including delaying any parliamentary vote until the spring.

Best news was that the 3,200 US Marines heading to the South of Afghanistan next month will be under the Canadian Command in Kandahar. This might not satisfy the Manley panel’s demand for a thousand more NATO troops, since the Marines are not committed to staying beyond the current year. But it does raise hopes something will be worked out to extend the Canadian mission past February 2009.

A RealAudio webcast of the program is here and there is also an mp3 podcast on iTunes.

Also, see Glavin on a True Blue Tory who had had it with his Conservative Prime Minister undermining the Canadian military.

“He spoke with our local road crew union, and when he did that, he wore a hardhat just like we wear, so that we would not be frightened of him.”

He also “walked right among the people, listening to their stories and allowing them to touch his clothes and skin.”

Sorry. Couldn’t resist.

Hitchens — here

The criminal Suharto is lying in the ground - albeit fifty years too late, after a passing easier than those of his victims and without a reckoning for his crimes, let alone a final appearance hanging by his ankles in the forecourt of a petrol station in Timor, Aceh, or Irian. The racist, mass-murdering tyrant will not be missed by any of the peoples who have felt the Kopassus jackboot on their necks.

There is a statement by ETAN here.

Eric Hobsbawm has published short reminiscences of the Weimar Republic in the London Review of Books. I find aspects of his recent writings problematic and I have posted on them before here, here and here. In this piece, Hobsbawm reflects on whether Hitler’s rise to power could have been prevented and concludes that it was unlikely given the prevalence of anti-Weimar sentiment. As this essay is a memoir it would be hard not to conclude that this perception must have been coloured by his own anti-democratic views as a Communist Party youth activist. Whilst the spectre hanging over the whole argument is that of the disastrous Stalinist policy of “Social Fascism”, which argued that social democracy and Fascism were objectively the same, thereby splitting the left and undermining the opposition to Hitler, a line Hobsbawm may have adhered to at the time.

The heart of his argument is contained in this extraordinary passage,

This was the last time Germany was at the centre of modernity and Western thought. It might have held out better if the Weimar Republic had been followed not by Hitler’s wrecking crew but by a more traditional reactionary government. Yet in retrospect this option was as unreal as was the prospect of stopping Hitler’s rise by a comprehensive anti-Fascist union. The fact is that no one, right, left or centre, got the true measure of Hitler’s National Socialism, a movement of a kind that had not been seen before and whose aims were rationally unimaginable.

There are two elements to this. The first is Hobsbawm’s contention that Hitler could not have been stopped by a concerted anti-Nazi coalition. This is a strange view. It would have taken far less to prevent Hitler taking power constitutionally. All that was required was for parties to have continued to refuse to work with the Nazis. As the Nazis were a minority they required support of another party in the Reichstag. Denial of that would have led to their permanent exclusion, meaning that power could only have come from extra-constitutional action, a course of action that was far less likely to succeed. The decision of the traditionalist right to offer support to Hitler must count as the one of the worst mistakes in history, but we should not forget Stalin’s equally disastrous ideological assumptions. It seems that Hobsbawm, whilst not denying the mistake, is excusing the policies of his youth, suggesting that if Stalin had got it right and had instead supported a “popular front” against Fascism, the result would have been the same. Hitler could not have been stopped.

The second element is clearer. It simply says, “OK, we got it wrong, but we weren’t to know. How could we have guessed what they were like; no one else spotted it, did they”? Here he moves from interpretation to falsification. Obscene Desserts has also posted on this article and Will, in comments, demolishes the suggestion that “that no one … got the true measure of Hitler’s National Socialism”, quoting Sohn-Rethel, Neuman, Gramsci and Laski, whilst forgetting to mention Trotsky. Then there is the response of Ludendorff to Hitler’s accession to power. A firm rightist and an early collaborator with Hitler, he is reported to have written to President Hindenburg,

By appointing Hitler Chancellor of the Reich, you have handed over our sacred German Fatherland to one of the greatest demagogues of all time. I prophesy to you this evil man will plunge our Reich into the abyss and will inflict immeasurable woe on our nation. Future generations will curse you in your grave for this action.

The nature of fascism could hardly have come as a surprise. Mussolini had been in power since 1922, Japanese militarism was established and the invasion of Manchuria had taken place in 1931. The threat of a militant and murderous right was clearly apparent. Many chose to ignore, misinterpret or excuse that threat but others did not. The Communist Party got it very wrong indeed in 1933, repeated the mistake in 1939 and reaped the consequences when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.

This sounds harsh, but when I read Hobsbawm these days I get the sense of an old man who hasn’t come to terms with the fact that the follies of youth were indeed follies. An understandable trait I suppose, though perhaps not for an historian.

No, not Robert Mugabe, unfortunately. The heartwarming news is that Rackmanite ‘businessman’ Nicholas van Hoogstraten has been arrested in Harare and charged with breaking foreign exchange laws.

The bad news is that in relative terms only pocket money is involved, and the overblown barrow boy will no doubt buy his way out of trouble with some loose change from his self-declared £800 million fortune.

Either that or resort to tried and trusted methods. In 1999, van Hoogstraten had a business associate bumped off, and got away with no more than a civil damages award against him, which he repeatedly refused to pay.

Van Hoogstraten first attained notoriety in 1968, when he served time for hiring others to lob a grenade into the home of a Jewish clergyman and business associate who owed him money. The judge in that case described van Hoogstraten as an “emissary of Beelzebub”.

What I don’t understand is how van Hoogstraten has managed thus far to evade the hitman’s bullet or knife. At least, I cannot recall any reports of attempts on his life. Van Hoogstraten must have made many, many enemies over the past four decades. So how long will it be before this hubristic gobshite gets a dose of his own medicine?

The Manley report says what I hoped it would. Canada should stay in Kandahar, in both a military and development role. And our NATO allies should send another thousand soldiers too.

I’ve printed up a couple of copies and started circulating them to friends who still have doubts about Canada’s mission in Afghanistan. I’m going to add on the recent article by Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who is dismayed by calls to withdraw the UN mandated troops.

I must admit though, reading and listening to the critics of the report, I do think they have raised one interesting point: not about the substance, but the process. Oddly enough, the panel which Manley chaired implicitly made a similar complaint in the report itself, about the way our Conservative Prime Minister has treated the issue, as a political football.

It is clear from previous writings that John Manley, a former Liberal cabinet minister, went into the panel’s investigation with certain opinions about the just and necessary nature of the Afghan mission, and that those opinions were confirmed in the panel’s conclusions. That doesn’t bother me. The interviews the panel did in Afghanistan and Canada, and the submissions they requested and considered, indicate they did a reasonable job, as part of their larger task, of testing previously held convictions. Check out the panel’s website.

But the emphasis last Fall by Prime Minister Harper, on the need for an independent and non-partisan review, left many with the impression that a jury was being empaneled. This was reinforced by Harper putting the parliamentary debate on hold while the panel did its job, as if a trial were in progress.

NDP advisor Michael Byers told the radio program As it Happens (Jan 23, part 2) that not only was the process unfair because Manley was biased, but that Byers himself would have been unqualified to serve on the panel, because he supported his party’s call for immediate withdrawal. He thought the chairman and panel members should have been impartial, and initially without opinion on the matters before them.

Now what Harper actually did was call for expert advice from several former politicians and diplomats. Experts are supposed to have opinions, as well as the ability to modify them as more information becomes available. Experts may testify at trials, but they don’t get to play judge or jury.

It is the opinion of Harper’s experts that he is failing to provide the leadership needed for the success of the mission. He asked, and he was told. It is not enough to go through the motions of setting up an non-partisan panel. The Prime Minister has to stop playing partisan politics with Afghanistan. And he has to personally take charge of explaining the mission to Canadians.

The panel found no reason or justification for ending the mission by February 2009. This is embarrassing to Liberal Party leader Stéphane Dion, who has adopted that date as a line in the sand. But it was Harper who effectively set this arbitrary cutoff point, in May of 2006, through a parliamentary resolution “extending” the mission, a motion clearly intended to divide the Liberal caucus.

Deadlines notwithstanding, there is broad agreement between the Liberals and Conservatives on the goals of the Afghan mission. The Prime Minister should admit that, in hindsight, February 2009 was a mistake, and ask Dion to reconsider his own position, proposing a united front on this one issue. Dion, after stumbling in his initial reaction to the report, (he hadn’t read it) has indicated that he might be open to a new approach.

If Harper can go to a Liberal like John Manley for advice, why can’t he ask a Liberal to serve in his cabinet at Defence or Foreign Affairs, or a least on the cabinet level committee that the panel recommends take over coordination of the mission? This is after all a minority parliament, and likely to remain one after the next election.

As much as I applaud the panel’s report I think it would have been better if the Prime Minister had kept it confidential and simply acted on its recommendations. He should be the one making the case John Manley has so ably expressed.

Of course if Harper knew how to rise above politics he wouldn’t have needed the panel’s advice in the first place.

Just wanted to highlight some news about this book’s reception in Poland (“Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz: An Essay in Historical Interpretation” — reviewed here) The Polish State Prosecution might bring charges against its author for the ridiculous ‘crime’ of “insulting the Polish nation.” On which, and the controversy surrounding see here and here.

(Thanks to Rob for pointing to the review).

A few more reasons to like him, up over at Norm’s place.

Pop in regularly. It will do you good.

Here’s a new You Tube channel, which looks decent (all meanings of the word - including the one which annoys you), Democratiya TV.

To my knowledge, this is unprecedented.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, in an essay about Afghanistan written for the Toronto Globe and Mail, has quite properly called the bring-the-troops-home position as “almost more dismaying” than the opportunism of the fascist thugs preying upon on the people of Afghanistan. The troops-out position is a “misjudgment of historic proportions,” he writes.

Read it all here. Every sentence is right. Every single sentence.

It’s all about this.

If I die, or rather when I die, as the last ten seconds of consciousness slip away as the blood slows, I could reflect that while I would be taking leave of this wondrous world, I would be taking nothing with me. This isn’t the case with Marie Smith Jones, who is taking a language with her.

Marie Smith Jones, who worked to preserve her heritage as the last full-blooded member of Alaska’s Eyak Indians and the last fluent speaker of their native language, has died. She was 89.
{…]
As the last fluent speaker, she worked to preserve the Eyak language, a branch of the Athabaskan Indian family of languages, said Michael Krauss, a linguist and professor emeritus at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who collaborated with her.
[…]
“With her death, the Eyak language becomes extinct,” Krauss said. In all, he said, nearly 20 native Alaskan languages are at risk of the same fate. He called them “the intellectual heritage of this part of the world. It is unique to us and if we lose them, we lose what is unique to Alaska.”

There is something poignant about being the last person to die who can speak a language, rather like a beautiful species of butterfly becoming extinct. Neither may be seen or heard by many people before they disappear, nor will there be a substantial effect on the world once they have left it, but their loss somehow seems important. As Steven Levinson, of the Max Planck institute for psycholinguists in the Netherlands, said:

“When a language dies, a whole world dies. It takes millennia to develop, and is an artefact that contains within it a whole culture. This is a tragedy.”

Catching Kate Hoey and Ken Livingstone on the radio this morning was an interesting experience. I kept thinking Ken was sounding more and more like a Mafia godfather.

Q: So Al, you got a thing against Lemmy, right?

A: Yeh, right. That Lemmy’s gone right off the rails, I’m telling you. I gotta do what’s right for the city, you understand. Lemmy is one bad guy.

Q: You don’t like him, is that right? You tell your boys to go wipe him.

A: Look, liking don’t come into it. If I wiped everyone I didn’t like there’d be far fewer peoples around, got me? It ain’t Lemmy. It’s what Lemmy does. What Lemmy says. So I say to the boys: Guys, we do one devastating critique on Lemmy. Then we drive him into the ground. You understand metaphor, right?

Q: They’re your boys but it’s the city that’s paying for them.

A: Sure the city pays. Yeh, but I’m the city. I’m looking after the city’s interests. The city’s interests is my interests, ain’t that so, Spider?

Spider: So right, Al.

A: Besides it ain’t my system. Do you think I like the way I have to operate. Nah, I wanted it fair and square, all above board. But you gotta take what you’re given. And it ain’t so bad. The city’s got protection now. The boys see to that. And if there’s a problem, it soon disappears.

Q: So, do the boys work for you or the city?

A: They work for me, sure, but that means working for the city. Take the case of Lemmy. When I tell them to go out and wipe Lemmy, they do it for the city, but on their own time. They do it out of love. They love me so much that when I say to them: If anyone asks whether I told you to wipe Lemmy on city time you tell them I didn’t say that, right? And they answer straight away: You didn’t say that, Al. If you’re gonna wipe him, I say to them, you do it out of hours, in your hours, at your place. Not in City Hall. That’s if you do it. Which I didn’t say, right?

Q: Your boys work long hours for you, Al.

A: They do 37 hours for the city. But for me they do 70, 80 even. That’s love. That’s family. You gotta understand love. You gotta understand family. You know what the trouble is with the world? No family values. But we got them. So it’s easy. What they do for me they do for the city in the city’s time. What they do regarding Lemmy, that’s outside the city. That’s family time. A guy’s gotta have clean hands. Look at these hands. Do they look dirty to you? You want a good manicurist?

Q: They must be real keen, Al, to put in that extra work for you, wiping out guys, above and beyond the long hours.

A: I told you. Loyalty. Love. Family. My boys are loyal. They love me. We’re one big family here.

Q: And the creaming off of cash and the cosy deals that people talk about?

A: Look, everyone has a bad deal some time. So money disappears. But we’ll find the bills. The boys are looking into it, right now. They’ll do a good job, don’t worry about that. That’s once they’ve fixed Lemmy.

Q: And the broad that took the holiday on money from City Hall. What did you make of that?

A: I was devastated. Big Pete was devastated. Spider here was devastated. We was all devastated. Were you or were you not devastated, Spider?

Spider: I was devastated.

A: See, he’s devastated. But not as devastated as Lemmy will be.

I think it went a little like that.

Here am I, struggling to work at home in what is universally recognised to be the most miserable week of the year, and wishing I were somewhere completely different. So I turn on the radio for a spot of light relief, and my ears are immediately assaulted by the mindless drivel that is today’s BBC Radio 4 afternoon play (a cultural institution beloved of George Szirtes).

The Nearside, by Jeff Young:

“On an apparently normal day in Tenby, the domestic and the universal collide when a small part of the planet is temporary changed by cosmic events. Local loser Martin Lockheed must juggle calls from NASA, demands from his girlfriend and the sticky subject of paddling-pool party etiquette as he tries to save the planet from being plunged into eternal darkness.”

Actually, it’s not nearly as involved as the blurb above would have us believe. The plot is little more than the “local losers” of Welsh seaside town Dinbych-y-Pysgod (Little town of the fishes) shagging each other with wild abandon. Well, I suppose there’s little else to do in Tenby, but I do wish these South Walians would keep their lewd behaviour to themselves, lest it frighten the animals. The resident feline here is currently displaying a look of abject horror.

Glossary: cnuchio – v. to copulate; fuck

Chavez has another thing in common with the anti-democrat Castro. He’s caused a surge in immigration to Florida. That’s bad news for the Venezuelans left behind.

Giving out here.

Pootergeek — here’s a link