Utopia, you are standing in it!

(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.

Introduction

I have chronicled several examples of scholarly inconsistency between how some academics cover and write about Harper versus Trudeau, The four most notable examples come down to the following: tactical prorogation, contempt of parliament, the caretaker convention and the appointment of Supreme Court Justices just before the writ, and, finally, on calling snap elections when the House of Commons has not first withdrawn its confidence from the government. I documented last year how the same scholars who launched incessant vituperations over Harper’s tactical prorogations in 2008 and 2009 remained silent or became far more measured and reasonable in response to Trudeau’s tactical prorogation in 2020. Some of the disparity in the coverage of Trudeau’s prorogation versus Harper’s and the House of Commons declaring the Trudeau government in contempt of parliament in 2021 versus the House of Commons declaring the Harper government in contempt of parliament in 2011 undoubtedly does…