Utopia, you are standing in it!

The astonishing world-wide expansion of capitalism in the third quarter of the [nineteenth] century…
(The Age of Capital, page 147)

Eric Hobsbawn (1917 to 2012) was one of Britain’s leading historians. A lifelong Marxist, his most famous books are the trilogy covering what he himself termed ‘the long 19th century’, i.e. from the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 to the Great War in 1914. These three books are:

• The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848 (1962)
• The Age of Capital: 1848–1875 (1975)
• The Age of Empire: 1875–1914 (1987)

To which he later appended his account of the ‘short’ 20th century, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914 to 1991 (1994).

The Age of Capital: 1848 to 1875

The Age of Capital: 1848 to 1875 does what it says on the tin and provides a dazzlingly panoramic overview of the full economic, political and social events right across…

200 small nuclear reactors are presently powering 160 ships and submarines all around the world, and have been for decades.

What’s on foot is a move to bring those reactors onshore and use them to shore up power grids being wrecked by the chaotic intermittency of wind and solar.

STT promotes nuclear power because it works: safe, affordable, reliable and the perfect foil for those worried about human-generated carbon dioxide gas – because it doesn’t generate any, while generating power on demand, irrespective of the weather – unlike the forever unreliables: wind and solar.

One of the feeble ‘arguments’ against it, is that nuclear power plants are of such vast scale that they take longer to build than the pyramids of Giza, and cost twice as much. SMR technology takes the sting out of that case.

And, as Walter Starck outlines below, SMRs provide the perfect opportunity to reintroduce our…

Supermarkets are easy, apparently. So easy that you can set up and run a chain of them and at the same time “actively work towards other government goals across the environment, technology, business, and the labour market.”

What does that mean? The author helpfully explains (I am not making this up, somebody actually said this):

• develop[ing] skills and technology in software, robotics, and distribution systems
• developing 21st-century skills across the New Zealand workforce.
• sustainable practices such as innovative packaging, bulk product refill stations
• solar-powered warehouses could give consumers more reasons to use Kiwishop
• prioritising local suppliers to reduce transportation costs
• ensure better nutritional values for produce
• incentives for food suppliers to use sustainable practices… utilising hybrid, organic, or te ao Māori farming methods
• sustainable seafood manufacturing practices could be rewarded, further enabling the Government to achieve its related objectives.
• better business practices, such as paying staff at least the living…

Today, Sunday, August 15, 2021, marks the 50th anniversary of the closing of the gold window at the US Treasury, at which a small set of privileged entities were at least legally entitled to demand redemption of dollar claims issued by the US government at the official gold price of $35 an ounce. (In 1971, as in 2021, August 15 fell on a Sunday.) When I started blogging in July 2011, I wrote one of my early posts about the 40^th anniversary of that inauspicious event. My attention in that post was directed more at the horrific consequences of Nixon’s decision to combine a freeze on wages and price with the closing of the gold window, which was clearly far more damaging than the largely symbolic effect of closing the gold window. I am also re-upping my original post with some further comments, but in this post, my attention…

(author, Christina Lamb in Afghanistan)

Christina Lamb begins her heartfelt memoir of 27 years of reporting from Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Washington in FAREWELL KABUL: FROM AFGHANISTAN TO A MORE DANGEROUS WORLD by describing the British withdrawal ceremony in Helmand province, Afghanistan that for her symbolized the transfer of power to the Afghan army.  It might have been a happy occasion, but for Lamb it reminded her of the numerous errors in British policy in the region, the 453 British soldiers who were killed, the hundreds who had lost limbs to roadside bombs, and those psychologically scarred for life.  Lamb also points to the tens of thousands of Afghans who had lost relatives, homes, and who had become refugees.  By October, 2014 England was ending its 4^th war in Afghanistan dating back to the 19^th century, but this was their longest and leadership was determined to remove all…

Renewable energy storage is literally setting the world on fire. When giant lithium-ion batteries aren’t exploding in toxic balls of flame, their limited capacity means that they add a trivial occasional trickle of electricity to the grid; and do so at an astronomical cost.

The wind and solar acolyte would have us believe that if we throw another few billion dollars at Elon Musk, we will quickly overcome the inherent intermittency of wind and solar.

The other line being spun is that wind power can be ‘stored’ for future use in pumped hydro systems. Like big batteries, pumped hydro involves converting one form of energy to another and reconverting it to electricity for ultimate use, with very substantial energy losses along the way.

But physics, economics, and even routine mathematics were never the strongest points of the wind and solar cult.

Michael O’Ceirin, on the other hand, always…

I vividly recall the fall of Saigon in 1975 as the ARVN collapsed and the North Vietnamese swept into South Vietnam in a perfectly conventional military attack, complete with tanks, a far cry from two decades of guerilla warfare.

It was the first “current affairs news” that I ever took notice of. But then the images were unforgettable: ARVN pilots escaping with their families using any helicopter they could get their hands on, landing on any US warship with deck space; American sailors pushing the machines over the side to make room for more; other choppers landing in the sea.

The best documentary of this event is the 2014 PBS special, Last Days in Vietnam. A terrifying, heartbreaking, gripping movie that you will not regret watching. The title of this post is a quote from one of the Americans involved in that evacuation.

I don’t think we’re going to…

While Sikh weddings will often feature the symbolic dagger known as the “kirpan”, that is not the connection I am writing about. In NSW at the moment both weddings in general, and kirpans worn by school students, have featured in debates about religious freedom. For weddings, those committed to religious beliefs are deeply concerned that all weddings are banned under COVID-19 provisions. In relation to the kirpan, I have written previously about a ban on these items applied to school students and the problems that raised for observant Sikh students. Both of these issues provide an example of what is called “indirect discrimination” on the basis of religion. The kirpan ban seems to have recently been sensibly modified to take into account concerns of the Sikh community. I argue here that the wedding ban should be approached in a similar way, and the deep-seated concerns of believers in NSW met…

Roger Pielke Jr on what the IPCC report actually tells us about the climate.

Here is an excerpt:

“There are two perspectives that people need to keep in mind. Firstly, some of the gravest risks are certainly lower than we thought they were. That’s good news. The bad news is that the IPCC is quite conclusive that we are changing the climate and we are going to continue to do so. And it’s going to have negative effects and create risks.

The IPCC report obviously did not tell us that climate change isn’t a problem. But just because it’s a problem doesn’t mean it’s the apocalypse. Climate change is real. It’s serious. I’m a strong advocate for mitigation and adaptation policies. But that doesn’t mean that it’s ‘code red for humanity’ and billions of people are at immediate risk, as the secretary-general of the UN claimed. That’s just irresponsible hyperbole.”

Update: The Government House Leader tabled the Retroactive Prorogation Rationale in the House of Commons on 28 October.

Introduction

On 19 August 2020, the exigencies of a minority parliament and global pandemic brought about the first prorogation of the Parliament of Canada in seven years.[1] The day before, Prime Minister J. Trudeau had dismissed Bill Morneau, the Minister of Finance –universally recognised in all Commonwealth Realms as the most important cabinet portfolio.[2] Most of the press, with the notable exception of Paul Wells[3], portrayed Morneau’s dismissal as a voluntary resignation.[4] But rumours of Morneau’s dismissal had swirled the previous week, at which time the Prime Minister sealed Morneau’s fate by publicly affirming his confidence in his Minister of Finance.[5] This first prorogation since 2013 also stopped parliamentary committees from continuing their investigation into the WE Scandal, which had proven politically embarrassing to the…

Guest post by Tim Stretton, 14 August 2021.

For centuries the English common law rules concerning married women’s rights—known by the shorthand ‘coverture’—restricted a wife’s ability to control real estate, own movable property, enter into contracts or participate in litigation without the cooperation of her husband. Yet, ongoing research confirms that a significant minority of women in broken marriages defied these restrictions and fought lawsuits against their husbands in equity courts. Chancery alone heard thousands of suits pitting spouse against spouse between 1500 and 1800.[1]

We know precious little, however, about how the women involved in these legal actions found and secured London-based lawyers and what advice they received. At first sight, a Chancery action from 1698 involving Mary Hockmore appears to offer a tantalizing exception, as it includes a lengthy deposition from a solicitor recalling his discussions with Mary a few years earlier.