Bad news for Conrad

The bad news (see also):

The U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday cleared the way for resentencing former media baron Conrad Black next month in Chicago for fraud and obstruction of justice after rejecting his appeal.

A U.S. appeals court in October upheld Lord Black’s 2007 conviction on one fraud count and for obstructing justice while it overturned two other fraud convictions.

... Lord Black’s resentencing is scheduled June 24 before a federal judge in Chicago. Lord Black, 66, has been free on bail since July after serving nearly 2-1/2 years of his original 6-1/2-year prison term.

Sorry to hear it but given that two of his convictions were overturned maybe it'll be a reduced sentence like, say, time served.

Canada says "NO" to more Kyoto nonsense

But, more importantly, so did the USA:

DEAUVILLE, France: Russia, Japan and Canada told the G8 they would not join a second round of carbon cuts under the Kyoto Protocol at United Nations talks this year and the US reiterated it would remain outside the treaty, European diplomats have said.

... They argued that the Kyoto format did not require developing countries, including China, the world's No. 1 carbon emitter, to make targeted emission cuts.

Good show!

[Via]

Update: From the comments re. BC's continuing carbon lunacy (eg. school boards are required to shell out hundred$ of thousand$  for carbon credits and, as the new Premier says, the boards receive money from the carbon tax). As Lilley says, it's an elaborate "shell game". See this video near the 4 minute mark:

Pat Condell on Jews v. Muslims: "no contest"

Via Blazing Cat Fur:



Good diatribe! On the money for the most part. Glad to see he kept his virulent hatred of religion toned down for this one. But I guess the subject matter kind of dictated that. Is it worth asking how much of the Jewish people's phenomenal success Pat would be willing to attribute to their religious heritage? Didn't think so.

Front page flakes

A bizarro tale about two flaky parents who want to raise their child gender neutrally was the lead story on the front page of today's Post:

... A Toronto couple says it is trying to raise a genderless child, refusing to reveal baby Storm’s sex to encourage a more neutral approach to the infant.

Hiding the four-month-old’s sex from the outside world is a “tribute to freedom and choice” that they hope will let Storm grow up unfettered by the values of others, Kathy Witterick and David Stocker have been quoted as saying. [Typical, unrealistic progressive nuttery - unwilling to accept the laws of nature and convinced that social engineering will bring their utopia.]

From Barbara Kay:

Close observers ... are especially troubled that Storm’s two brothers have been co-opted into collusion with the scheme and, well-rehearsed, assiduously self-monitor their own discourse about “Z,” the neutral replacement for “he” or “she.” [Neither "he" nor "she" but "Zed"?]

... Free will has its limitations. One such limitation is human biology. The denial of biological reality by highly educated, but humanly naive “progressives” — and their choice to privilege the “world” over the needs and rights of their own children — speaks more to their narcissism than to their idealism. [I'd say 'over-educated' - ie. educated beyond their capacity to understand.]

... This misguided couple needs intervention before their adult folie à deux becomes a children’s tragedy à trois.

Interesting, but front page?

"A contemporary moral epedemic"

From an excellent essay by William Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University:

The Truth About Greenhouse Gases
The dubious science of the climate crusaders.

“.... how easily the masses have been led astray, and how imitative and gregarious men are, even in their infatuations and crimes,” wrote Charles Mackay in the preface to the first edition of his Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. I want to discuss a contemporary moral epidemic: the notion that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, will have disastrous consequences for mankind and for the planet.

... Our present global warming is not at all unusual by the standards of geological history, and it is probably benefiting the biosphere. Indeed, there is very little correlation between the estimates of CO2 and of the earth’s temperature over the past 550 million years (the “Phanerozoic” period). The message is clear that several factors must influence the earth’s temperature, and that while CO2 is one of these factors, it is seldom the dominant one. The other factors are not well understood. ...

... a quotation from the preface of the second edition [of Mackay’s book]: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”...

[Via WUWT]

Feel-good trumps do-good

Lawrence Solomon on fair-trade coffee:

...a study out recently from Germany's University of Hohenheim ... followed hundreds of Nicaraguan coffee farmers over a decade, concluded that farmers producing for the fair-trade market "are more often found below the absolute poverty line than conventional producers.  "Over a period of 10 years, our analysis shows that organic and organic-fair trade farmers have become poorer relative to conventional producers."

Several years ago, I received a call from a church in Kingston, inquiring whether Green Beanery could supply it with freshly roasted fair-trade coffee on a weekly basis ... the church officer mentioned that the parishioners wanted to do what they could to help poor farmers in the Third World. I replied that I'd be happy to supply the church, but I also advised him that fair-trade coffee would not help the poorest of farmers - these smallholders are actually hurt when Western consumers forsake them for coffee produced by better-off farmers who can afford the certification fees.  I also mentioned that various coffees produced by small farmers in some of the neediest parts of Africa would taste superb while costing the church less, allowing it to spend the difference on some other worthwhile cause.   After a long pause, the church official replied something like: "I still think the parishioners would feel better knowing that they were drinking fair-trade coffee." [That church must have been the United Church.]

... in this well-intentioned pricefixing game, the fair-trade farmer is the pawn and the joke is on the customer. ...

Might'a known. As in many "well-intentioned" socialist do-good schemes, the meddlers do more harm than good.

Theo Caldwell interview with Brad Wall - tossing nerf-balls.

I really like Theo Caldwell on Sun's Caldwell Account. He's one of my favorites. However, in this interview with Brad Wall he could have at least made a token effort to challenge him. Instead he tossed him nerf-balls. For example, Ezra Levant would never have let him off so lightly on the BHP/Potash Corp issue. Wall's a good guy but any interviewer who purports to defend free markets shouldn't have let him skate so easily.