In an article in The Daily Beast, Nigerian activist and Nobel laureate for Literature Wole Soyinka is quoted as saying that England’s openness to other cultures allowed Muslim extremism to flourish in Britain, and that this openness, a direct result of England’s colonial history, evolved naturally into something resembling an insane tractability:

“England is a cesspit. England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it. Remember, that country was the breeding ground for communism, too. Karl Marx did all his work in libraries there.”

“This is part of the character of Great Britain,” Mr. Soyinka declares. “Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness.” And so it is, he says, that Britain lets everyone preach whatever they want: It confirms a self-image of greatness.

Denmark’s Torben Hansen sees France’s importation of a large Muslim population as being similarly rooted in a notion of national greatness, albeit the French policy was borne not of a desire to confirm greatness but an insecure need to assert it:

French foreign policy, among other things, lies at the roots of our problems with the aggressive Islamic ideology. Charles de Gaulle had this idea that France should be a bridge between the West and the Arab world. This had to do with a French inferiority complex. They had been humiliated in WW 2, first by Hitler, and then by the US and the Brits who liberated them. So he cooked up this plan for a French-Muslim alliance…. The apparatus of the EU is in many ways a French construction.

Of all the consequences to European politicians’ lack of foresight on immigration, national greatness isn’t one of them. Sovereignty itself is being gnawed away at, most notably in France: in 2006 there were 751 Zones Urbaines Sensibles – or less euphemistically, “places…that the French state does not control.” Europeans’ right to speech is under assault: a Dutch filmmaker was shot and had his throat slit for making a film critical of Islam’s treatment of women, and the Somali-born woman who provided the voiceover for the film was forced into hiding; in Denmark, a one million dollar bounty was placed on the head of a mild-mannered cartoonist.
Similar smaller instances happen on a daily basis. Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian, asserts that this empowered prerogative of Islamists, not just in Europe but worldwide, can be traced directly back to one single event that happened in England:

“It all began when (Ayatollah Khomeini) assumed the power of life and death over the life of a writer. This was a watershed between doctrinaire aggression and physical aggression. There was an escalation. The assumption of power over life and death then passed to every single inconsequential Muslim in the world—as if someone had given them a new stature. Al Qaeda is the descendent of this phenomenon. The proselytization of Islam became vigorous after this. People went to Saudi Arabia. Madrassas were established everywhere.”

The effectiveness of the fatwa (Rushdie was forced into hiding, and briefly “converted” to Islam), the later success of Islamists in causing newspapers to self-censor in the case of the cartoons, the myriad attempts by Islamists since then to assert the predominance of their own laws on European soil — all of these things are inarguably a direct consequence of European immigration policy in the past few decades. The historic, pivotal fatwa had such big teeth not because of the pronouncement of some foreign religious leader , but because his fellow soldiers in faith had Rushdie physically surrounded, on Rushdie’s own soil. The West’s putative generosity backfired, and it continues to do so.
Theodore Dalrymple, referring to an opinion piece in Le Monde that called for the abolition of prisons, coined a phrase that’s stuck with me ever since I read it:

“There is in the article a moral exhibitionism, which is generosity of spirit at other people’s expense. This, I think, is one of the sicknesses of our age, the desire to appear more-compassionate-than-thou.”

Salman Rushdie, Kurt Westergaard, the families and friends of Pym Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh, European commoners and editors and journalists who censor their public expressions for the sake of their own safety and comfort, civic police forces who don’t dare enter “microstates” in the middle of what were, for many hundreds of years, their ancestors’ own cities – these people surely understand better than most of the rest of us that the West’s smug, self-satisfying “generosity of spirit” and openness – “accommodativeness“, as Soyinka put it – can indeed come “at other people’s expense.”
Now, if we could just admit it, that would be great.

Since Climategate, Wall Street predators have been taking their lumps along with corrupt scientists … the difference between the two is that scientists deal in reputation and modest fortunes … Wall Street deals in great heaps of Goldman Sachs size USD:

Touted by its supporters as the best and cheapest way to fight global warming, carbon trading is losing momentum amid the uncertainty created by the failure of the Copenhagen summit meeting and President Barack Obama’s political troubles in the United States.
Investors are steering clear of energy-saving projects meant to generate carbon credits, and traders in Europe are hunkering down through a period of consolidation that is disappointing to those who had hoped carbon markets would grow quickly into a $2 trillion-a-year business.

… somehow I don’t think that Paulson, Gore, Condi Rice, and all the other Climate Exchange investors are going to take this lying down.
… meanwhile, back at the ranch, Canada puts its plan in place.

…. or a Van Beirendonck:
ht

… it must have killed her to write this piece:

Palin-mania easily surpassed Danica-mania at Daytona International Speedway on Sunday.
While Patrick got all the headlines for the better part of two weeks, she had no stake in the Daytona 500. Palin did, and as a VIP guest for the race, she ate up all the attention.
When she arrived for the drivers meeting, Palin was immediately mobbed. She briefly chatted with Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, shook hands with supporters and smiled big.
She took a seat up front next to Harry Connick Jr., who sang the national anthem for the race. When NASCAR president Mike Helton acknowledged her as a special guest, she got the largest ovation from the room, packed from the front to the back with drivers, team members, support personnel and onlookers.
After sitting through the meeting, Palin could not get out the door. Fans mobbed her, asking for pictures and autographs. Her 12-person entourage, comprised of track security, a policeman, friends and spokespeople, tried to get her to the door and to her next appearance. But Palin could not help herself, and kept signing and posing for pictures.

… Far East:

Canada, faced with growing political pressure over the extraction of oil from its highly polluting tar sands, has begun courting China and other Asian countries to exploit the resource.
The move comes as American firms are turning away from tar sands because of its heavy carbon footprint and damage to the landscape.
Whole Foods, the high-end organic grocery chain, and retailer Bed Bath & Beyond last week both signed up to a campaign by ForestEthics to stop US firms using oil from Canadian tar sands. The Pentagon is also scaling down its use of tar sands oil to meet a 2007 law requiring the US government to source fuels with lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Major oil companies such as Shell are also coming under shareholder pressure to pull out of the Canadian projects. Earlier this year, Shell announced it was scaling back its expansion plans for the tar sands after a revolt by shareholders. Producing oil from the Alberta tar sands causes up to five times more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional crude oil, according to the campaign group Greenpeace.

(content warning: Source is the ultra-warmist Guardian)
… interestingly, “world pressure” has some of our politicos quaking in their pants.

Canada risks becoming the international poster child of unsound resource development if it doesn’t do a better job of developing the oilsands, says federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice.
He told a Calgary business audience Monday that the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper supports continued expansion of the oilsands, but that large energy companies need to do more as Canada seeks to reach its targets under the Copenhagen climate change accord.

Alex Bilodeau! Mens Moguls!

For Valentine’s Day … just because:

We gather here today to mourn the passing of my size 34-34 Levi’s Dockers Wrinkle Free Classic Fit pants.
Levi Docker the 34th, or less formally ‘Slacks’, as I fondly referred to her, was as stout and conforming as any pair of pants I have owned. Born in a Bangladesh sweat shop in 1998, I first met Slacks at a two for one sale at The Gap. It was the turbulent year of ‘99. Bill Clinton had finally gotten around to putting on his own slacks, and, pants firmly in place, he commenced with the bombing of the Balkans. Y2K threatened to destroy every microwave this side of Timbuktu. Pokemon swept the globe in an attempt at world domination. Ricky Martin pushed the boundaries of high-tensile leg wear. And “The Blair Witch Project” scared the pants off of about 5 people(the rest showed emotions ranging from mild irritation to blinding fury at the stupidity of it all).
It always weighed heavily upon my heart that Slacks was the free half of the two-for-one deal on that fateful day in June. I walked out of the store carrying a pair of Cabin Creek® Double Knit 5 Pocket Stretch Cords, and Slacks was relegated to a ‘bonus’ status. I lament also the fact that I didn’t recognize Slacks wonderful simplistic beauty immediately. Instead I was mesmerized by the cheap, flashy, whorish good looks of the Stretch Cords. Sure, we had some good times together, but she never fit oh so perfectly the way Slacks did, she never loved me the way Slacks loved me.

… the rest.
… admit it, you’ve all had a pair.

Dr. Phil Jones:

An initial point to make is that in the responses to these questions I’ve assumed that when you talk about the global temperature record, you mean the record that combines the estimates from land regions with those from the marine regions of the world. CRU produces the land component, with the Met Office Hadley Centre producing the marine component.
Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below).
[This indicates that the recent warming is not exceptional. Moreover, even if it had been “exceptional,” that would not prove it is due to greenhouse gas emissions?]
[…]
It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well. …

… be sure to read the whole thing … and as you do, recall the hubris and tisk tisking as they lectured us about “consensus”.

This post is a friendly counter-point to Cjunk’s earlier post here. I’ll start with an excerpt from a column by a Conservative Senator Michael MacDonald:

With only one previous prorogation in almost four years in office (when Prime Minister Stephen Harper rightly stopped the Liberal-NDP-Bloc “coalition” from subverting the will of the electorate), it’s not unreasonable that the PM ask for Parliament to be prorogued — as all previous prime ministers have done — to write a throne speech, shuffle the cabinet and prepare a budget.

Pierre Trudeau prorogued 11 times in 16 years; Jean Chretien four times in 10 years, including a four-month delay after Paul Martin became PM, to give Martin time to get his government ready. Newly elected governments take over within a few weeks, yet we’re asked to believe a sitting cabinet minister needed four months to set up shop!

Of course, Mr. Chretien’s true agenda was distancing himself from the auditor general’s report on the sponsorship scandal and dropping the mess into Paul Martin’s lap. I don’t recall manufactured outrage at the time by either the press or the opposition — certainly nothing resembling the contrived performance Canadians have been subjected to of late. Senator Moore was in that Liberal caucus and ignores their conduct, yet now expresses concern about an “affront to our democratic process.”

I suggest that the Canadian broadcast media’s decision to elide, during their coverage of the prorogation “outrage”, such factual context as MacDonald provides is professional malfeasance of the highest order, and that such a double standard, writ large, has an effect on poll numbers, and therefore on public policy.
The fact that one single group of highly influential players on the political scene are uniquely exempt from ever having to account for their actions isn’t a “media issue”, it’s a spanner in the works of our democracy. Producers and anchors and reporters at broadcast networks know full well that they will never be cornered on camera and forced to answer, on the public record, questions about the nature of their campaigning, which is viewed as a private, priestly prerogative. You can see the effects of this special dispensation in the Father Christmas mannerisms of people like Peter Mansbridge, who float above the political scene they affect as they compile and dole out, for private reasons, such partisan spin as they wish to provide to Canadians, all the while pretending to be trusted, impartial observers who are merely providing facts and impartial analysis.
The bottom line is that Mansbridge and the producers at the CBC wouldn’t survive a one-hour, on-the-record grilling at the hands of Conservatives like MacDonald: “In light of the fact that you didn’t make any kind of an issue at all of the Liberals’ far more frequent prorogations – and it’s on the public record – what was the basis, how can you possibly justify as a journalist, your decision to treat what was only the second prorogation in four years by the Conservatives as an outrage and an assault on democracy?”
Fortunately for them they’ll never be in such a position, and if they did find themselves in such a position, they would, unlike all other political figures, be entitled to sneer and walk away without any consequence.

The CDN’s are taking the boots to the Slovakians.
Jenn Heil in 2nd, Kristi Richards in 3rd after the final qualifying heat for Womens Moguls.
And speaking of Canadians taking the boots to people…maybe the RC’s should start with the anarchists in Vancouver.
Charles Hamelin (heat 1) and Oliver Jean (heat 2) are going for it in the Mens 1500 semi-finals in a couple of minutes….and it looks like Hamelin’s out. Jean is down and out…No, Jean made it in because he was fouled…or something. So, Jean is in the final in an hour and a bit.
As an aside, Rod Black is much better at this stuff than CFL football.
15-0 just into the third period now for Womens Hockey…err, 16-0, 17-0, 18-0
Heil gets the silver, behind Kearney of the US.

Dr. John C. Drew interview:
… it’s a long clip, but well worth the listen.
ht

I know I’m going against the flow, but given the latest poll results, you may want to consider my polemics:

A common whisper among Canadian conservatives these days is, “we can’t do what we want to, because of the media!”
On conservative blogs the theme is rampant; if Harper fails, blame the media … if Harper doesn’t stand against the global warming fraud, blame the media … if Harper stops showing overt support for the Afghan mission, blame the media … if public support for the CPC wanes, blame the media.
Well then, how about this; if the media is so pervasive and all-powerful, I suggest that Stephen Harper relinquish the title of Prime Minister and hand over the crown to none other than Robert Fife, Ottawa bureau chief of the CTV. Being chief and all of an organization that supposedly is powerful enough to determine CPC policy, strategy, and direction, it only makes sense … chief … Prime Minister … king … take your pick.

Bonus: Scene of a Crime

….They might work after all. *