Free Republic

I was not there. My sister was, however, for she was returning to Toronto from her cottage, Sunday evening, and turned onto Highway 401, about the longitude of Trenton, Ont. By that chance, she found herself a half-mile ahead of the hearses for six of our Canadian boys, back from Afghanistan. She reports there were firemen, with their trucks, saluting from almost every bridge along the way to Toronto, and people out, by their thousands, on the bridges and along the highway -- including veterans in full dress, grannies, moms, dads, babes -- and “youffs” even in red face-paint, wrapped...

Getting cooler A few months ago, I wrote a series of unflattering columns on current trends among the Gaia worshippers. The last of these opened, “The more I think about ‘global warming’, in light of the most recent United Nations report, the more confident I become in averring that it is a fraud, a political stunt, a criminal imposture, that every intelligent journalist should be helping to expose.” Since then, I have been bombarded with correspondence both favourable and unfavourable. I notice the former comes chiefly from those with plausible scientific backgrounds, the latter almost entirely from those whose ignorance...

By the word “Anglosphere” we mean the countries whose primary language is English, and whose legal, political, cultural, and religious traditions are directly descended from Britain and Magna Charta. Specifically: the U.K., the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand -- and there was a time when we might have mentioned South Africa, and the English-speaking elites of India and other parts of the former Empire. United by a language, to begin, but through that language with a common-sense view of the world that is distinguishable from continental Europe’s; the “west of the West”, as it were. Andrew Roberts is a British...

This week, the International Atomic Energy Agency methodically reported that revolutionary Iran continues its uranium enrichment programme, and continues to stonewall the agency’s inspectors asking routine questions about it. Also, to stonewall exceptional questions about, for instance, the source of some bomb-grade uranium particles their inspectors found by chance. The latest fay U.N. deadline passed, for Iran to suspend that nuclear programme, and the Iranian government confirmed it would continue to ignore such demands. Indeed, better and prompter information than the IAEA receives seems to be supplied regularly to Kayhan, the venerable Tehran daily that has evolved into one of...

“Mosque” is a term that covers a multitude of architectural sins these days, but the one at Regents Park in London is the real deal. Big golden dome above the tree tops, 140-foot minaret. I used to live nearby and I must have strolled past it hundreds of times and, if I ever did give it a second glance in those days, it was only to marvel: “Wow! That Hindu temple is totally awesome.” I walked by it the other week for the first time in a long time. How did it get to sit on such a piece of...

The more I think about “global warming”, in light of the most recent United Nations report, the more confident I become in averring that it is a fraud, a political stunt, a criminal imposture, that every intelligent journalist should be helping to expose. We need more reporting on the circular assumptions built into the IPCC’s ludicrous computer models, on their use of misleading and conveniently changing baseline years, and on the trends within their own trends. (For instance, they have quietly reduced their middle-range prediction of temperature rise in the coming century by more than one-third; their mean sea-level rise...

At last Catching up after the holidays, I see that Saddam Hussein was finally returned to his maker, after a trial of patience that lasted three years. Attentive readers will recall that I had little (read: no) sympathy with the policy of granting the man a show trial, and thereby encouraging every freelance psychopath in the Sunni Triangle to smear things out while Saddam persisted on TV. He should have been shot, not hanged, the moment after it became clear that he could no longer provide useful information on the location of his colleagues. The idea that other regional despots...

November 11, 2006 Back to war It is Armistice Day, again. I usually write something sentimental when my column happens to fall on this day -- and would, this year especially, as the recent inheritor of my grandfather’s diaries from the trenches of the First World War, and my father’s pilot’s log from the Second. Both, embodiments of the scout’s honour: their nation called them, and they were prepared. As millions of others’ kin. We left a lot of bodies in fields in Europe; in the Pacific, and in the Middle East. But we won those wars. Germany and Japan...

SUNDAY SPECTATOR October 15, 2006 Desolations When I filed this, the United States was still trying to get a limp resolution through the United Nations, condemning North Korea for its claim to have tested a nuclear device, in defiance of all its international agreements. The Americans wanted something like “the full chapter seven” -- which would not merely impose, but enforce a general embargo on all shipments of military equipment to the rogue state, and could lead to a naval blockade to isolate it. Instead, to please not only its enemies such as China, but its nominal allies such as...

Michael Jackson BEYOND THE PALE So Michael Jackson does the moonwalk not the perp walk. Perhaps even now he's having some special friends over for a celebratory Neverland sleepover, there being apparently being no end of mothers willing to entrust their moppets to him. Here's what I wrote about the paleface for The Sunday Telegraph four years ago: MICHAEL JACKSON flew into disease-ridden Britain last week, wisely taking the precaution of wearing a surgical mask. At Blenheim Palace, which must have seemed a bit of a comedown after Neverland, they rolled out a red carpet covered in disinfectant. Just for...

Everybody does it Monday, 16 May 2005 Mark Steyn Is this it? The moment when the one-party state's internal organs crumble to nothing like an old rou‚ in the final stages of syphilis? Well, I wish I were that confident. No doubt, as before, Stephen Harper will be running as Boy George: the calmer calmer calmer calmer calmer chameleon. Last time round, to offset the perennial Liberal-media message that all conservatives are by definition extremist rabid fundamentalist nutcakes--and worse, extremist rabid fundamentalist "U.S.-style" nutcakes, Mr. Harper was measured, moderate, soft-spoken and narcolepsy-inducing and, when the sky-is-falling types still shrieked that...

Woe, woe, Ontario Monday, 30 May 2005 Mark Steyn What do the Liberals have to do to lose? The rule that there’s no such thing as bad publicity is supposed to apply to soap actresses and rock stars, but look at the polls: Grits 32.5 per cent, Tories 30.5 per cent. And, even when you find a national poll showing a Conservative lead, break it down regionally: Liberals 38 per cent, Tories 34 per cent. That’s Ontario, which is the critical battleground, as we psephologists say. “Yours to Discover,” as the licence plates say. And what one mainly discovers after...

<p>On Monday, April 25, the Public Interest passed away at the ripe old age -- for a quarterly journal of public policy -- of 40. It was a peaceful death, almost serene. Irving Kristol, co-founder and co-editor throughout its life, presided at the interment, a small dinner of past contributors and friends of the magazine.</p>

by Daniel Pipes New York Sun April 26, 2005 What steps should Western border agencies take to defend their homelands from harm by Islamists? In the case of non-citizens, the answer is simple: Don't let Islamists in. Exclude not just potential terrorists but also anyone who supports the totalitarian goals of radical Islam. Just as civilized countries did not welcome fascists in the early 1940s (or communists a decade later), they need not welcome Islamists today. But what about one's own citizens who cross the border? They could be leaving to fight for the Taliban or returning from a course...

Banned in Canada Monday, 2 May 2005 Mark Steyn A decade or so back, I was in London and switched on the radio and the top story on the BBC News that morning ran as follows: “A Conservative MP has been found dead in . . . unusual circumstances.” That’s annoying enough--like those people who rush up to you and say, “You’ll never believe what I just heard . . . no, wait, I’m not supposed to tell you, forget I mentioned it.” But worse was to come. The news bulletin ended and the anchor on the morning show came...

<p>WASHINGTON -- Say what you will about Bashar Assad, dictator of Syria and perhaps the dimmest eye doctor ever produced by British medical schools, but subtle he is not. Since the huge street demonstrations against his occupation of Lebanon, three terror bombings have occurred there, all in heavily Christian, anti-Syrian neighborhoods. Only slightly less subtle was the nearly half-million-man Beirut rally demanding Syria's continued occupation staged by Syria's Lebanese client, Hezbollah, followed by the ``spontaneous'' demonstration Assad orchestrated for himself in Damascus.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON -- It is now conventional wisdom that the new opening to a Middle East peace is a result of Yasser Arafat's death. This is only half true, and it misses the larger point.</p> <p>Arafat's death was a necessary condition for hope, but not a sufficient one. It was necessary because Arafat had the power to suppress and literally kill any chances of peace. But his passing would have meant nothing if it had not occurred at a time when the Palestinians finally realized that Arafat's last great gamble, the second intifada, was a disaster.</p>