Category: Uncategorized

Online discussion of the impact of the pandemic on intellectual property rights. The recording can be found here.

The world-wide standoff between Google and newspapers continues. Is Google a wrongdoer, or just a convenient piñata full of money? My analysis in the National Post is here.

The middle and working classes are standing up not only against dictators but, closer to home, against the left, too

I recently published in Spanish translation an op-ed on the importance of strong intellectual property rights for national economic development.

The Beatles got it right: evolution, not revolution. No thoughtful person wants revolution. People get hurt, killed, wealth is lost, society is set back. Revolution is wrong. Especially when revolution has been the cry of the reds (communists) and blacks (anarchists). If the call is to overthrow capitalism (which after all is nothing more than economics 101), then the callers got some learnin’ to do.

The problem is, in too many places the reds and the blacks got the upper hand (through violence, of course). And now real people, who want decent, peaceful lives, are putting their own on the line. It’s terrifically stirring. We should be doing everything we can to support them (and be grateful for the national sanctions programmes that do so much to further them–thanks, United States, in particular; and no thanks to all the reluctant temporizers who put their own wealth and petroleum access ahead of real people’s interests–Are you listening angela? philippe? vladimir? justin?).

In 1848 there was a very different political landscape. Little western democracy about, and that nascent. Radicals confused untested communism (now tested and proven decidedly idiotic) with emancipation from sclerotic hereditary regimes. Idiotic sclerotics confused the need for progress with heresy. Idiots, meet the wall. It ended badly for everyone, as violent and vengeful actions fuelled by ignorance on both sides tend to do. That is a simplified understanding of a long swath of history but it will serve for the nonce.

Have we sadistic and brutish self-serving simpletons like mao and castro and lenin and guevara et al. using the current revolutions to herd the people into a new pen? Generally, not, it seems. Briefly there was chavez, the bloated jerk, but now the people are rising up against his sham populism too.

And my heart quivers for the new revolutionaries, the nameless ones with Lebanese flags painted on their noses and cheeks, holding umbrellas in Hong Kong, burning banks in Iran, in the streets against the castro proxies in Venezuela, chasing vote-rigging leftists out of Bolivia. Is there better evidence of the indomitability of humanity, of the courage and power of the common woman and man than this? May it all go well and may none perish!–but alas they will perish.

May every name be remembered and every memory a blessing.

In Lebanon they oppose the terror machine and the shameless exploitation of the people in the name of Nasrallah and his shiftless cabal of warlord cronies.

In Venezuela they seem finally to wake (well, they did vote in the idiots in the first place. Oh, and the second place. After that it’s a bit dodgy). Four million Venezuelans in Colombia and elsewhere selling candy in traffic or clinging to marginal employment or exploitation, their families left behind or scattered. Now the people are in the streets against the slimy residue of narcoterrorists that litter their state buildings.

In Iran they riot for cheap gas… a bad reason but not by any stretch the whole of of it. They push back a genocidal regime bent on building power and conquest on the breaking backs of the average citizen (many of whom were stupid enough, it must be said, to have joined a revolution against the much more acceptable shah, all because of militant islamism, as vile a scourge as communism and fascism in their times). Well times have changed, mullahs; times have changed, self-dealing revolutionary guards.

In Hong Kong–Hong Kong!!–the people, young especially but not only, are in a battle to the death with the most vile, oppressive, murderous regime in history. I cannot even think of such courage and devotion without wanting to shed tears for them. For all of the above… This says so much about the human spirit, about its value, about what we still can accomplish on this poor plagued planet.

Iraq: complex, but again, the depredations of foreign power Iran.

Well, and then there is Chile, which puzzles me, frankly. I would be glad to hear from those who understand it better than I. I was there recently. I have close friends there. I get the increase in public transit fares caused by misguided global warming policies. I suspect the rest is sinister, manipulated by politicians out for gain (so I have had reported). May they too find peace and prosperity. Articulate a clearer platform. Break fewer things.

It is worth noting too that such people’s movements are likely to have a big impact on immigration and refugee problems, too.

So is 2019 the culmination of 1848? Well, maybe. It’s all risky as hell but perhaps a new revolutionary ethic is abroad: we’re mad, we don’t have to take it, we deserve better. Together we are strong. It’s about people, not ideology; about caring, not taking.

And they do deserve better. May our prayers, our efforts, our monies and our governments sustain them. Even our bodies! (But admittedly not mine, which is old and decrepit, sorry). Let’s not equivocate. For once, I’m with the revolutionaries. The barricades are getting righteous.