The Light of Other Days

Who doesn't find this Wikileak stuff interesting?  Talk about a guilty pleasure.  We all know it was obtained illegally, but we can't look away.  Why would we?  Its a chance to test what we think we know against what is revealed.

I was happy enough when Climategate broke. We heard exactly what we have been saying they were doing in their own words.  "Hide the decline," is famous now.  I can't support the Climategate leak and not support the Wikileak dumps.  Just remember that Climategate was not leaked by Wikileaks.  It mysteriously appeared on a Russian server and was taken down after everyone could download it all and redistribute it themselves.  Was wikileaks active before Climategate?  Perhaps they had the info and chose to censor themselves?  I suspect Wikileaks would have censored Climategate to protect the progressive movement of which they are likely a part.  The original hacker may have retaliated by releasing it himself.  That's a lot of ifs and assumptions I know.  This cloak and dagger stuff is full of guesses.

That is the trouble with Wikileaks.  Nobody is entitled to their secrets except Wikileaks of course and they will look out for their own interests first.  What a delicious can of worms.  If we try to stop them then we hurt whistle blowers and free speech.  If we don't stop them, then we may as well publish it all ourselves and go back to invisible ink. 

It also strikes me that Wikileaks' main informants will be the clandestine intelligence services of rival powers.  How long before they start disseminating false mock up leaks?   How much of the current information is veritable? 

Its all very intriguing.  It reminds me of a book I read by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter.  The Light of Other Days is Science Fiction but it deals with relevant questions like privacy and truth.  In it an entrepreneur invents a way to send signals through microscopic wormholes to beat the speed of light lag in communications.  He renders satellites obsolete first and then its the entire infrastructure that becomes useless.  Small improvements eventually make these tiny wormholes into CCTV cams that can be positioned anywhere in time and space.  Imagine that.  Full disclosure of everything that ever happened everywhere to anyone.  How many friends would you keep if that happened and how many would you lose?  How would the courts keep up and how much respect would you have for them after getting so many things so wrong?  We would all be guilty but some more severely than others.  Could we get over it if we found out what the Church has known all along; that we are all sinners? 

Its a great read and I highly recommend the book to everyone concerned with privacy and freedom.  We will have to come to terms with Wikileaks sooner or later.  We will have to decide where to draw the line on what can be hidden and from whom.  I think this book will provide an entertaining compliment to the whole wikileaks  phenomenon as it unfolds in the coming weeks and years.

Tories Gaining, Coalition Waning

Congratulations are in order for the government's 2 newest MPs.  I'm talking about Julian Fantino and Robert Sopuck.

Julian Fantino in particular had a hard battle.  I lived in Vaughan for about 5 years and can tell you its a very Liberal place.  Liberals there aren't the ideological sort but the old boys, kiss-the-ring, Libranos types.  It could be argued that the hard left Liberal ideology is what got them into their current mess.  Dion got the popular vote in their last leadership race so I think its fair to say that the soul of the party has gone to live next to the NDP in obscurity.  Liberals in Vaughan however haven't got any rings to kiss.  The Natural Governing Party is gone and Ignatieff offers little hope for a return to glory.  Vaughan is ripe to forge new loyalties and the by-election results are the first step in that direction.   Julian Fantino is already a household name there.  I always knew he would end up in politics and he is just the man in just the place and time to usher in a new Conservative era.  Congratulations again to Julian Fantino!

Robert Sopuck is new to me.  I don't recall having ever stepped foot in  Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette but I applaud and congratulate the voters of that riding.  Congratulations to Robert Sopuck.

The Christmas season is one of generosity and so I will also extend my congratulations to Winnipeg-North.  Just over 10% of the voters there voted Conservative this time and I'm confident that number will grow.  It seems the majority of voters there are resigned to have their representative languish in opposition.  They chose ideology over good sense and that isn't all bad.  The Liberals are still right of their coalition partners the NDP. Ideologically speaking, I hope that trend continues all the way over to the responsible choice some day.

Congratulations to all the candidates and voters for caring enough to participate in democracy and adding their voices to our future.  Thank you all.

The eco-nuts have lost the debate on the Oil Sands

I watched a couple of excellent debates with Ezra Levant and various green stooges yesterday.  I must conclude that we have won the debate.  The various boycotts and public defamation campaigns (PD rather than PR) have utterly lost the argument.

The debate between Andrew Nikiforuk and Ezra Levant in Calgary was fantastic.  This is the sort of debate that I've come to enjoy.  I prefer a hostile audience and a hysterical opponent.  I like the deeply polarized back and forth  between very different ideologies that almost reminds me of a sport.  Nikiforuk lays on the thick and pointless rhetoric and Ezra Levant handily upends the entire righteous onslaught.  By the end of the debate Nikiforuk is sounding shaky and shrill and indirectly concedes the point that Oil Sands oil is more efficient and more ethical than any other major source of oil on earth.  

Ezra Levant and Andrew Nikiforuk debate ethics of Alberta's oilsands from Trevor Howell on Vimeo.


These are the sorts of debates you'll have in your own life.  Skeptics must be prepared to fight from a corner without a friend in the room. Have the courage to stand up to the liberal nonsense and you'll find their arguments combusted like a greenpeace pamphlet in the fireplace. 

You can see that Ezra won the debate by the end of the video.  More proof that this is a winning argument comes from the next debate in Ottawa.  This time its Ezra and Elizabeth May the leader of the Green Party.  I found this debate slightly less entertaining and edifying than the first one. 

Ezra Levant was awesome of course.  Elizabeth May on the other hand treated the debate like a Green Party press conference.  She immediately falls back on the "we still need to do more" argument.  Gone is the old "Stop the Tar Sands" shrieking.

This is a victory.  The leader of the Green Party supports the Oil Sands.  Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Suzuki Foundation, and the rest are that far removed from the wishes of the people today.  We are winning and its thanks to Ezra Levant and all the skeptics out there turning one person at a time.  Keep it up, and enjoy part one.

Ezra Levant - Elisabeth May debate Pt. 1 from Vlad Tepes on Vimeo.

(h/t GayandRight I appreciate all your good work and that of the Free Thinking Film Society.) 

Praise for the Conservative Senate's scrubbing of the Climate Change Accountability Act

Peter Foster wrote a marvelous piece in the Financial Post last week titled "Canada Doges Carbon Suicide." 

Its definitely worth the read but here are some the relevant and juicy bits. 

Mr. Harper has always clearly grasped-- apparently unlike the majority of his international counterparts--that the greatest threat facing humanity is not climate change, but climate-change policy. Bill C-311 was a perfect example. Opposition parties, in thrall to radical green groups or sheer hypocrisy, were supporting a piece of draconian legislation that would not have had one raindrop's worth of perceptible effect on the global climate. Nor would it have in any way influenced the way other countries are attempting to writhe away from this issue.

So there.  Harper and the Conservative Government are doing one heck of a job.  Here's one for the Harper haters out there:

Anti-Harper carpers niggle that three years ago Mr. Harper declared that climate change was the "greatest problem facing humanity." Good grief, could that have been mere political expediency, based on the necessity of pacifying a needlessly alarmed electorate? Did he not really mean it? You'll be telling us next that he really favoured that BHP takeover of Potash!

And here is some more with a damning quote from the IPCC:

Before he was forced to talk the minority talk, Mr. Harper described climate change as a "socialist plot." Intriguingly, this fact is now openly acknowledged. This week, German IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer said in an interview: "[O]ne must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy....One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy any more."

I shared this article on Facebook and its triggered a huge debate on Global Warming with a warmist friend of mine.  I'll post it here when it winds down but its tens of thousands of words long already.  

I strongly suggest you read the whole article for yourself because its that good.  Mr. Foster and I are of one mind on this. 

Waiting for Divine Intervention.

So where is God?

Last week I was quite moved by an article in the National Post titled: His wrath upon their heads.  In it Father Raymond J. de Souza rightly condemns the abhorrent and heinous murders of Coptic Christians in Iraq.

I've known Iraqi Christians and I've heard their stories.  They are some of the finest people you will ever meet and their faith is strong.  I grieve for them and I share Father de Souza's sentiments.  The crimes by Al Qaeda in the name of Islam cry out for justice.  Father de Souza says it best:

The blood on the altar makes it clear. No amount of goodwill, no amount of dialogue, no amount of circumlocutory evasions, no amount of supine prostrations--nothing will dissuade the jihadists. So let us not abnegate ourselves over the dead bodies of our fallen brethren in Christ. Let us speak frankly of those who want to kill us.
Allahu Akbar-- God is great! So those Catholics on Sunday heard the jihadists shout in the church. Can there be any greater sacrilege than to kill the innocent at prayer, while shouting that God is great?

There can be no greater sacrilege.  The words and acts of Al Qaeda reek to heaven and earth.  Not since the Holocaust has there been a greater need for Divine Intervention.  Al Qaeda is the embodiment of all things evil.  Persons and intuitions who deliver anything less than total and unambiguous retribution on the members of Al Qaeda have abdicated any authority granted them.

One only needs to look at the Omar Kadr case to know whose side the Justice system is on.  Kadr will walk free and with millions of dollars as sure as the sun will come up.  This is how liberal justice works.

Will God then grant us a miracle of justice?  Will the piano of righteousness serenely and faultlessly descend on the guilty head of one Omar Kadr?

No.  It didn't happen to Hitler and it won't happen to Kadr and his friends.

As with World War 2 the only justice we can expect is the justice we secure for ourselves.  The courts, the politicians, the media, not even God Himself seems up to the task.  God is never up to the task.  Its always us.

You may have realized that I'm an atheist.  I'm not entirely sure about Gods existence as I can't be entirely sure about anything.  I'm more like an agnostic who has come to a decision.  I don't say this to feel superior and no I don't hate my dad.  I have simply decided not to fear the truth as I see it.  Atheism is the unfortunate answer to an old question.

Let me be wrong.  Let these blaspheming murderers feel the wrath of God.  Let me know that God lives for I will not worship one who allows this evil against Him and His followers.  God seems as powerless as I am.  At least I know that I am real.

I feel a desire to be that piano and to land on the heads of the guilty.  Is that God?  Is that my calling.. to become justice.  Its probably just another impossible wish.  I can't be alone.

Ether way I'm waiting and watching for a sign from God.  So far its nothing but people on all sides.  Good people, bad people but always people.  No devils and no angels but for the corporeal type.

I don't believe there will be any justice of any kind unless we make it.  We can't just keep waiting for Divine intervention.