Oh, my. Steyn is not going to pull any punches after seeing what Esra Levant just did in Canada. He hints at a strategy to “go nuclear”. He writes:
When I ran into trouble with the “human rights” commissions five years ago, I had lunch with an old friend in Montreal who said just stay quiet, keep your head down, it’ll all blow over. If I’d taken his advice, I would have lost, Maclean’s would have lost, Canada’s media would have lost basic free press rights, and Canadian citizens would have lost basic free speech rights. And then I ran into Ezra Levant, who said no, you need to go nuclear. That’s Ezra’s advice for everything – parking ticket, slow line at Tim Hortons, whatever.
So we did go nuclear.
And Elmasry and the Canadian Islamic Congress couldn’t withstand the publicity, any more than the “human rights” racket could. By the time the CIC lost in court in British Columbia, they had already lost in a far more profound sense. I wish I were in Madam Justice Matheson’s courtroom rather than trapped on a roulette wheel of procedural sophistry in the District of Columbia. But I promise you this: by the time this is through, Michael Mann will have lost as profoundly as Elmasry did.
More on Ezra’s day in court here and here. To help support my pushback against Mann, please see here and here.
Read the full article here: An Inspiring Day
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“I side with Ken White and much of legal view expressed on his site. I suspect Mann will find this gets very ugly very fast and even if you saw it to a conclusion, if Steyn really is prepared to go down in flames in an uncompromising war you gain nothing.”
@LdB,
You final sentence is a bit disturbing in that your phrase “gain nothing” stands against an eroding Right to Free Speech. Steyn is no ametuer pundit. He has been involved with the media in one shape or another for 30 years, and has practiced his trade across 4 different countries and 2 continents. The courts ruling concerning dismissal on Anti-Slapp grounds should keep editors awake at night. Steyn has decided since that ruling to counter-sue; thus, forcing Mann et als to turn over a decades worth of professional correspondence (including the notorious Climategate emails), as well as every single scrap of paper supporting Mann’s scientific publications (something that FOI requests have failed to do). In civil suits all is fair game. Mann stands not only to further have his blotted reputation sullied. But more importantly, he will take down a good number of co-conspirators (The Team) with him. Before this is over, Dr Michael Mann will be standing alone with no friend to fall back on. The Team is quietly disbanding and moving on. They after all have mortgages to pay, and retirement accounts to grow.
For some perverse reason Americans take perverse pride in our unjust legal system. Charles Dickens masterpiece, Bleak House, pales in comparison to what the modern day legal system in America has become. Steyn recently noted how in the US judges have taken on the air of nobility. One is not allowed to speak ill of our judges not matter how poorly they perform. The idea of an impartial judge long ago left the court rooms. If one is a pundit one must tread lightly for fear of offending the one man or woman who someday may have your life in their hands. Everyone knows the game is rigged to allow the maximum amount of billable hours. Judges being lawyers, in the end make sure his fellow lawyers get their cut. We are the only nation in the free world that allows its legal system to be turned into a contorted maze of legal abstractions for the sole purpose of collecting the last red cent.
Mann and his lawyers of course understand all of this. Their goal is to destroy Free Speech through endless, and horribly expensive litigation.
“richard says:
March 10, 2014 at 4:14 am
does not giving up raw data and computer codes count as intent to deceive.
####################
you should remind Dr. Scaffetta of that.
In reality the intent behind these refusals is much more mundane. For example, Jones did want to share his code because it was a mess.
Not standing up bold is how we got to this point.
Fight fire with fire.
Time and Tide await for Mann.
Out to the open arms of the deep blue sea of truth for him.
Steyn in his latest post on this:
Mann’s reputation is already in flames. The onus at trial should be on the damage to Mann’s “reputation” generated by Mann’s own activism and his ‘like kind’ politically driven statements used against Judith Curry and others. Mann has made himself the political football, Steyn just kicked it through the goalposts. Is Steyn dealing with Mann the “scientist” or Mann the political propagandist?
Steyn’s description of the US courts, is Kleptocracy.
Full blown government by thieves, for thieves.
Just like our canadian Just-Us system.
After all, wasn’t it our Supreme Court that just ruled truth is no defence if you “Commit a Hate Crime”.
Translation, no law but what we say it is.And you dumb voters,taxpayers, ain’t “we”.
@Guy Holder
>We need a paypal button so people can contribute without buying anything.
If we contribute to his pocket, we will be accused of being a part of the great anti-science machine that is financing [blah-blah-blah]. If he can pull this off without ‘being financed’ as Mann undoubtedly is, it is yet another victory.
Mann’s only way out of this is to claim he is not a public figure. Steyn defense is to show that he is.
Steven Mosher says,
Occam’s razor likes this. I know plenty of people who’ve sat on their code for this reason. I blush to admit that there have been occasions I have done the same thing, albeit in a different field.
Mark Bofill: Me too. But I wasn’t being paid by the government to work on something with the phony kudos of saving the planet, at the expense of the lives of millions of the poorest for a decade or two until some better science and (most of all) policy came along. Not that Jones or Mann is to blame for all the abysmal policy made on the back of their work. But any such link should mean total openness, whatever the embarrassment.
Do we know that Mr. Steyn has not sought out and is currently receiving legal advice? I seriously doubt he is forging ahead without some sort of hired legal expertise, whether he chooses to have them represent him in court or not.
This is the line that hits home:
“That’s to say, if it takes half-a-decade and a seven-figure sum to confirm that you had the right to post a 280-word blog post, then the First Amendment isn’t worth tuppence.”
Especially if Steyn believed what he was saying was the truth.
“sussing out “wolf whistle” meanings . . . .”
Make that “dog whistle”–i.e., detectable only to persons with super-sensitive hearing — with decoder rings, in effect.
just had to pop this one in,
Adelaide news Feburary 1, 1933: ‘Climate Never Changes’ – The Commonwealth Meteorologist (Mr. Watt) smiles when he is asked about what is wrong with tthe weather, because all the records show that it is normal. “There has been no appreciable climatic change anywhere since the dawn of history,” said Mr. Watt today. When people compare the present with the past, they remember only the abnormal. The ordinary is forgotten. The belief that climate is changing is only an error of memory.”
I’m surprised NRO hasn’t chosen to be more feisty. This is their chance to win a Pulitzer!
Richard Drake,
True enough. 🙂
In reality the intent behind these refusals is much more mundane. For example, Jones did want to share his code because it was a mess.
I heard this story about how Lincoln’s Gettysburg address was written on the back of an envelope .. Presidential chic, I’m told.
The UNIX file system was invented on a napkin at a bar.
Steven Mosher says:
March 10, 2014 at 8:21 am
“In reality the intent behind these refusals is much more mundane. For example, Jones did want to share his code because it was a mess.”
So, that makes it OK? The only time you have to share your work is when it’s good? Doesn’t that kind of undercut the whole purpose?
Good for Steyn! Not many have the guts to stand up to their bullies.
Steven Mosher
March 10, 2014 at 8:21
says:
‘In reality the intent behind these refusals is much more mundane. For example, Jones did want to share his code because it was a mess.’
Perhaps. But, in the case of Warwick Hughes that was never his stated reason. Instead, Phil Jones commented to Hughes that he had 20+ years invested in his research and he wasn’t going to hand it over to Hughes so that he could try to prove him wrong. Hans von Storch exhibited amazement at Jones’ attitude. And I don’t think messy codes was the reason Mann never handed them over to McIntyre.
Dear Mr. Steyn,
Good luck and note that Levant hired an excellent lawyer.
pottereaton says: March 10, 2014 at 8:08 am
McIntyre’s rebuttals of Mann’s purported “exonerations” should be more than adequate grounds to establish a legitimate rationale for Steyn’s alleged libelous assertion. I just don’t think their introduction will ever be required after oral arguments as to resolution of the opinion vs. fact issue. We’ll see.
P.S. I like your use of a link to the post to which you are responding. I am henceforth stealing it (I saw no copyright) and trying my own variant 😉
I’m with pokerguy. Steyn’s a hero for standing up to a bully like Mann.
John Tyler says:
March 10, 2014 at 7:19 am
Did not Mann’s hockey stick plot dispense with the Medieval Warming Period? The existence of that warm period has never, ever been a matter of dispute.
The global nature of the MWP and its timing has been questioned however.
Are we to believe that Mann was unaware of this discrepancy?
Has it not been shown that Mann’s algorithm, which produced the hockey stick, will also produce a hockey stick if the entered data are random numbers?
If fed by autocorrelated red noise (not the same as what Mann did) M&M showed that some hockey sticks were produced (and some negative ones), they only showed 12 out of 10,000 results! The data entered by M&M were not just ‘random numbers’.
Are we to believe that Mann was unaware of this?
Why do you suppose that he would have run the tests that M&M did with an inappropriate noise model?