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With apologies to all for whom this is stale news, I want to report on Ezra Levant’s latest book. Remember Ezra Levant? Yes, the guy who put his head way above the parapet to defend freedom of speech against the ridiculous ‘Alberta Human Rights Commission’, which had been busy trying to stamp it out.
I have not been paying much attention to Ezra Levant lately, but last night I happened to re-visit his blog, and I soon struck gold. Or rather: black gold. Oil. Shale oil, to be more precise.
A commenter on this later posting by me here about Levant mentioned Canadian shale oil, and now Levant has written a whole book about this.
Canadian shale oil is taking a huge bite out of the market share of those Middle Eastern terror paymasters who have been such pestilential opponents of free speech in the West in general and of Ezra Levant’s free speech in particular, which could just be how Levant got interested. The Greenies hate Canadian shale oil, probably for that same reason. The Mainstream Media … well, that bit’s obvious. What’s not to love about a book saying hurrah for Canadian shale oil?
As I say, lots of Samizdata readers will have seen these bits of video, of Levant talking about this book, Ethical Oil (brilliant title, yes?), at least a week ago. I’ve only had time to watch and hear half of the first bit of video, but already I know that any Samizdata readers who do not yet know about this book will likely be very glad to hear about it now.
Many bad things have happened during the last decade. One of the best things to have happened during that same time is that books like this one of Ezra Levant’s – thanks to all of, you know, this – can now become as widely read as they deserve to be.
This just in from a Jane’s newsletter:
Nation state may be behind computer worm attack on Iranian nuclear plant. The first known example of a computer worm designed to target major infrastructure facilities has infected the personal computers of employees in Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power station. The malware, known as Stuxnet, is capable of taking control of an industrial plant by targeting weaknesses in systems designed by German company Siemens that are used to manage water supplies, oil rigs, power plants and other utilities.
I pretty much thought this had to be the case. The problem is, this is a double edged sword. Stuxnet has been seen in the wild enough to be picked up and reported on by Symantec. That means it has also been picked up by white and black hats alike and will be reverse engineered and used for other ‘payloads’. This is the inherent problem with the viral software attack. Once you use it, you might as well have posted the source code with a Gnu Public License on it.
So, now that we have proof by example that embedded process control systems can be hijacked by a virus, we had better start worrying who else is going to get targeted by slightly modified versions.
Geert Wilders is on trial today for telling it like it is with his film ‘Fitna’.
If you are a blogger, read up on the subject and get out the support. Europe may not have Freedom of Speech with teeth in it, but perhaps you can provide that poor benighted continent with implants.
Reading this item over at National Review’s Corner blog, which relates to recent attempts by Al-Quaeda types to attack targets in Western Europe – apparently foiled for now – got me thinking. One of the possible targets, judging by the comment, was the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It makes me wonder when the “blame-the-West-First” crowd are going to understand that it was always idiotic to claim that 9/11, or the Madrid atrocities, or the London bombings/etc could ever be described as the West getting some sort of “blowback” for its allegedly dastardly deeds against Muslim lands. Whenever this argument is made, the implication, explicit or not, is that the appropriate policy to adopt is the equivalent of hiding under the bed.
France, let’s not forget, has more than its fair share of bad relations with some Muslim lands – Algeria in the 1950s being a case in point – but in recent years, the country’s government has been at pains to distance itself from the supposedly “cowboy” policies of Bush/Blair, although possibly things might have hardened a bit under Sarkozy.
But it makes no difference. Whether you are an isolationist, multilaterialist, or neocon interventionist, the outcome is the same: the Islamists will try and kill you and your fellow citizens without discrimination. We can try and placate the crocodile, but it is ultimately a futile strategy. It is occasionally necessary to remind people of this grim fact.
I must admit to being a bit gobsmacked by this:
Israel and the Jewish people found an unlikely defender in Fidel Castro, the retired dictator of Cuba, on Tuesday, when he came out strongly against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s denial of the Holocaust and supported Israel’s right to exist.
In the intifada that began in 2000, Palestinian terrorism killed more than 1,000 Israelis. As a portion of U.S. population, that would be 42,000, approaching the toll of America’s eight years in Vietnam. During the onslaught, which began 10 Septembers ago, Israeli parents sending two children to a school would put them on separate buses to decrease the chance that neither would return for dinner. Surely most Americans can imagine, even if their tone-deaf leaders cannot, how grating it is when those leaders lecture Israel on the need to take “risks for peace.”
– George Will.
As someone who has consistently been in favor of in-your-face attempts to offend Muslims (e.g., “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day”), I can’t very well advocate any governmental effort (or any violent effort by other parties) to prevent the building of this in-your-face attempt to offend non-Muslim Americans. But to suggest that this center is not provocative, and that Americans should not see it as such, insults my intelligence. There is no right to NOT be offended, but we have every right to be offended, and to protest loudly to that effect.
– Commenter Gene
This comment by Tim Sandefur pretty much captures my own view on the row over the “Mosque” at Ground Zero (or whatever this building is meant to be called).
In a separate forum, I got into quite a heated debate with folks over the fact that I said that while I defend the rights of owners of property to do what they want with said property, that does not mean I cannot be angry at the gesture of say, building a Islamic centre right next to the scene of an act of mass-murder by Islamic fanatics. My anger, apparently, has led to a few folk calling me out as a sort of bigot. Not so: I can see both sides of the argument here: the families of 9/11 victims feel, with cause, that the location of this building is a fairly crass and provocative gesture and are concerned at the possible choice of name – the Cordoba Center, and about the possible sources of funding for it.
On the other, let’s not forget – and this is a point that needs to be made regularly – that Muslims going about their lawful business were murdered on that terrible day, and their families might want to have that fact acknowledged in some sort of way by having a place to worship in a place that gives meaning to their grief.
But it would help things if those who are concerned about the motives of this centre would not automatically be dubbed as stooges of Sarah Palin or some sort of great right wing conspiracy. Part of the annoyance that folk feel about this is that there is a sense of injustice that while Islam benefits in the West from the broad protections of freedom of expression, that that tolerance is not reciprocated in the countries where this religion holds sway. Try building a Catholic church in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, after all, is a country that has funded dozens of mosques and other places, including those encouraging some of the most extreme forms of Islam. Saudi funding is akin to a government grant rather than a donation from a private individual.
I was about to stick this up as a(n) SQotD, but I see that there already is one. Never mind, here it is anyway:
Belief in magic and faith in spells runs strong in political Washington. The New Republic’s print edition describes the reaction of the Administration on “April 14, 2009 as Barack Obama’s standing in the polls was beginning to slip”. Obama was looking for a phrase to bring back the love, “something that would evoke comparisons to Theodore Roosevelt’s Square Deal, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.”
Obama had hit on the phrase the New Foundation. He tried it out with Presidential historians at a private dinner in the White House. Doris Kearns Goodwin nixed it. She said it sounded “like a woman’s girdle”. Goodwin was right. But it underscores the complete vacuity of a public policy built on wordsmithing. The administration was trying on words like a courtier at Versailles might try on a hat or a dress thinking it would make a difference.
Not that there is anything wrong with hats or dresses or deckchairs. The only thing wrong is imagining that rearranging these articles on the deck of the Titanic will keep it afloat. There’s something crazy about that, something pathetically crazy.
That’s Richard Fernandez reflecting on the declining esteem in which President Obama is now held, abroad and at home.
Two thoughts. First, I’d have put a comma where it says “hats or dresses or deckchairs”, to make it “hats or dresses, or deckchairs”. There is a slight change of gear there, which, I would say, needs a bit of punctuational acknowledgement.
But second, more seriously, is Obama’s present nosedive in esteem, well described by Fernandez, irreversible? Having just watched our own former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, damn near levelling out from what looked like a nosedive towards total catastrophe for himself and for his party, and achieving a very decent, under the circumstances, crash landing that nearly saved both. Brown only lost by an extraordinarily narrow margin, given how things had looked only a few months earlier, and his main opponent, from having looked a winner by a mile, had to make do with leading a mere coalition. Seemingly doomed politicians – inevitable losers, to use the word that Fernandez also uses – can make comebacks. Can Obama? Can this Titanic yet be kept afloat?
One thing that might improve matters for President Obama is that just now (or so it looks to me from over here) even the one party media who got Obama elected are now criticising him, a bit, partly for real, but partly in order that their next burst of slavish support for him will look honest instead of slavish.
On the other hand, if what happened here with Gordon Brown is anything to go by, Obama’s saviours will not be his media cheerleaders, or for that matter his own speechwriters, but his leading opponents, who will somehow contrive to look as clueless as he now looks.
The blogger, David Thompson, who seems to have the knack of unearthing all matter of weird and wonderful stuff for his Friday postings, also has a posting about a far less amusing subject: the cringeing of certain Western, post-modernist types when confronted with a direct, brutal example of violence by the Taliban.
This is what I meant in my previous post about the fact while radical Islam poses a threat that should not be underestimated, there is nothing inevitable about that threat succeeding. What is necessary is for the heirs of our great institutions to start growing a pair, so to speak.
Thoughtful, long article here by Alex Massie at the Spectator on the real and presumed issues surrounding Islam and the UK, and whether some commentators on the subject are seeing phantom menaces:
“To my commenters and the others worried by the “Islamification of Britain” I would ask only this: why are you so afraid and why do you lack such confidence in this country and its people’s ability to solve these problems? Perhaps my confidence is misplaced but I think we can probably do it. This is, in many ways, a better, more tolerant place to live than it has been in the past and, unless we blunder, it should remain so. The annoyances of idiotic council regulations about Christmas trees and crucifixes or inflammatory articles in the press ought not to distract us from that fact. The open society is an achievement to be proud of – for conservatives and liberals alike – but the most likely way it can be defeated is if we allow ourselves to be defeated by our fears and, thus, in the end by ourselves.”
“Diversity need not be a threat, though diversity cannot work unless all are equal under the law. But Britain is changing and doing so in often interesting ways. It is, in general, a comfortable, tolerant place made up of people with complex identities that make it a more, not less, interesting and decent place. Yeats’ famous lines do not quite apply here. On all sides, the worst may indeed be full of passionate intensity but the best do not lack conviction even if we don’t shout about it. Perhaps we should do so more often.”
Definitely worth reading the whole article. I think one point to make straight away is this: if we have more confidence in the resilience of Western civilisation and the virtues of a post-Enlightenment, pro-reason culture, and encourage support for such things in our places of higher learning and in the opinion-forming world, that in itself might encourage more moderate-minded Muslims in the West realise that the long-term trend was not on the side of the Islamists. Showing a confident front to the world is not bravado – it helps us to win.
It seems that the Saudis and the UAE have got upset about the use of Blackberrys for such evil purposes as enabling young men and women to get a date. Various so-called “national security” issues are also cited.
Sheesh.
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