12-28-2009

“The great fear is Abdulmutallab is the first of many ready to attack planes and kill tens of thousands.” The 25 suspects, of Pakistani and Somali descent, were radicalised in UK mosques. Some had been to university and studied engineering or computer sciences. Others were former street gang members.

Have Americans decided that liberty is passé, and that equality and fraternity — or the pretense of both — are far more important? To paraphrase Churchill’s famous statement about Munich, in which he is purported to have said that “the government had to choose between war and shame. They chose shame. They will get war, too.” Our government has had to choose between liberty and social justice. They chose social justice. They will get neither.

After taking fire, General Cucolo clarified that he couldn’t imagine putting a woman in prison for getting pregnant. But let’s hope the headlines calling this a climb down are overblown. His order was sensible — and in a saner world would have been utterly uncontroversial.

Truly, as the snow falls, does the business of saving the planet from global warming become more convoluted and more lucrative by the day…it is Tata which next month is to close down its Corus steel works at Redcar, to make a potential £600 million in “credits” from the carbon emissions this will save, while in India it will earn a similar amount in UN CDM “credits” by building a plant of similar capacity in Orissa. It will thus make a potential gain of £1.2 billion, at the expense of 1,700 jobs on Teesside, for no overall reduction in the amount of CO2 emitted to the atmosphere.

Filed under: Chip by Chip