Utopia, you are standing in it!

Mercenaries have earned a dubious name for themselves throughout history; their object, as a rule, has been to obtain maximum pay for minimum risks, with the result that those hiring them rarely get value for money. Mercenaries, usually white and recruited from the former colonial powers, became familiar and generally despised figures in Africa during the post-independence period. They were attracted by the wars, whether civil or liberation, that occurred in much of Africa during this time and, as a rule, were to be found on the side of reaction: supporting Moise Tshombe in his attempt to take Katanga out of the Republic of the Congo (1960–63); in Rhodesia fighting on the side of the illegal Smith regime against the liberation movements; in Angola; on both sides in the civil war in Nigeria; and in other theaters as well.

The Congo

In the chaos of the Republic of the Congo…

The media’s obsession with cataclysmic climate change is matched only by their fixation on unreliable wind and solar power as the only solution.

That narrative has been tortured for over more than 20 years, now. But even among their own ilk, the “only more subsidies for wind turbines and solar panels will save us” narrative has worn thin, of late.

Michael Moore’s Planet of the Humans lifted the lid on the cynical and manipulative crony capitalists profiteering from the climate industrial complex that they helped to create. For his trouble, he’s been effectively censored by the media, with his movie pulled from YouTube and other platforms, simply because the fact that renewable energy is an enormous moneymaking scam, doesn’t fit the narrative. Australians won’t find any reference to Planet of the Humans on ‘their’ ABC or SBS, ordinarily the natural vehicles to carry Moore’s anti-capitalist, chip-on-his-shoulder, rhetoric.

Michael Shellenberger, once…

The Antonine Wall runs between the Forth and Clyde in Scotland, about 100 miles (160 km) north of Hadrian’s Wall. It was built under the orders of Antoninus Pius in the early 140s, and was permanently abandoned in the 160s. His Roman biographer states that he built a turf wall in Britain once the governor, Lollius Urbicus, had defeated the ‘barbarians’. Pius may have needed to establish a reputation for himself as a firm ruler, but perhaps there were local problems like idle soldiers, the tying up of too many troops in the numerous garrison posts of Hadrian’s Wall, and difficulties with supplying the remote central sector forts. There may even have been a change of policy requiring more exact control of the area north of Hadrian’s Wall, perhaps connected with the fact that the latter cut across the tribal lands of the Brigantes, the principal tribe of northern Britain…

Glenn Loury, a professor of economics at Brown University, is well known to us as an African-American intellectual who, though a centrist with liberal tendencies (he might contest that position), dares to question the received wisdom of critical race theory. In this he’s sympatico with Columbia’s John McWhorter, and the pair often do discussions on bloggingheads.tv’s “The Glenn Show.”

Two days ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a profile of Loury, and though it’s probably paywalled for most of you (click screenshot to see), judicious inquiry will yield a copy. It details his personal/political history from a young liberal on Chicago’s South Side to a college-age conservative who voted for Reagan, and then to his embrace of Christianity and return toward the Left by reading people like Murray, Herrsntein and Dinesh D’Souza.  I didn’t know Loury was religious (and I’m not that keen on it, since…

UnHerd interviews a Swedish medical researcher and practicing physician about what things are like there now. It seems the epidemic is winding down there now. Let me start up with Worldometers:

And a Swedish journalist fisks the NYT’s article about the Swedish response, which isn’t isnt quite the horror show the NYT is making it out to be. Also, it “didn’t do nothing” — it just relied more on persuasion and voluntary recommendations rather than mandates. (Good luck with THAT when dealing with Belgians, Israelis, or New Yorkers ;))
Maybe Sweden spared itself a 2nd wave by not locking down so tight in the 1st wave? 

(2) Dr. Seheult on inhaled steroids:

(3) I’ve mentioned earlier speculation that past TB vaccination with the BCG (bacille Calmette-Guérin) vaccine may impart a degree of protection against COVID19. Now a story affirming this got published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy…

Haley Zaremba writes at oilprice Will Trump’s Proposed ESG Regulation Help Big Oil? Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The ESG Push to Gamble Pension Funds on Climate Concerns

Instead of joining the financial revolution geared toward environmental, social, and governance (ESG) that many experts believe is coming down the pike (with or without the cooperation of the United States) the Trump administration has actively fought against this likely inevitability. A new proposed regulation from the United States Department of Labor would explicitly bar the department from taking ESG into consideration in decision making concerning U.S. employer-provided pension funds. Ostensibly, this move is because the government doesn’t believe that the nation’s pension fund managers are doing a good job, but many critics see this as a blatant attempt to redirect investment dollars towards fossil fuels, which are increasingly falling out of favor with investors.

[Note: The author’s bias shows…

HuffPo, one of the biggest exponents of “cancel culture”, now has published one of its longest articles claiming that such a culture doesn’t exist. The piece is a long and unconvincing response to the letter published last week in Harper’s (and four other international venues). That letter was simply a call for open debate, and “cancel culture” (CC) was defined implicitly in the piece. I’ll reproduce just a small section of that letter, and I’ve put the characteristics of “cancel culture” in bold. Note that the letter calls out these characteristics on both the Right and on the Left, though the signers, mostly Leftists, concentrate on their own end of the political spectrum:

. . . .The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into…