This Friday I'll be in Calgary at the Essentials of Freedom conference organized by my friend Danny Hozack. If you're in the area please join Danny, me, Brian Lilley, Mark Milke and others to talk about what's going wrong and how to get it right again. Including (but you saw this coming) a discussion of Magna Carta and our upcoming documentary funded through Kickstarter.

Mark Steyn, "The One-Man Global Content Provider," just wrote a great post "The Field Where Liberty Was Sown" about Magna Carta, the "real rights" it contains, and the modern threat to freedom as voters get seduced by the "right" to free stuff from politicians in return for their right to due process, property and so on. In it he kindly praised our documentary project and people have really taken notice. Thanks, Mark. We really appreciate it.

See my latest thoughts on the Greek financial crisis on the IRPP's Policy Options blog here.

Last night I attended an excellent panel discussion "Magna Carta: What does it mean to Canada?" hosted by House of Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer. And I was very struck by a comment by panelist the Hon. Pierre Poilievre (Minister of Employment and Social Development and Minister for Democratic Reform) that our liberties may be eight centuries long but they are only one generation deep. Exactly why we're making the documentary (https://www.kickstarter.com/…/magna-carta-our-shared-legacy…) and I'm delighted to report that we're now at 45%. Nearly half way. A long road ahead... but many thanks to all who have gotten us this far and let's keep it going.

Here's yet another weird story. The head of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea wants people to use balloons and computer hacking to spread the news within North Korea that North Korea has a horrible human rights record. I think they know it. They live there. It's kind of obvious. I guess they might like to get balloons, or computers. But it seems a strange and myopic way to look at the problem and the commission report.

Sorry to burst his balloon. But what's really needed is for people in the outside world to know how bad things are and, once they know it, to act as though they knew it. To support strong measures against the North Korean regime's appalling military and foreign policy ambitions, and to treat with loathing any government that aids and abets the tyrants in Pyongyang.

File this under “News stories that should surprise no one”: Fighting continues in Ukraine despite a Western-brokered “ceasefire.” It’s the familiar pattern when a group of people who piously insist that a conflict can have no military solution sit down with the guys imposing one. First the nice guys sign a humiliatingly one-sided deal that places specific, unreasonable requirements on their ally who is getting pummeled in return for nebulous and unenforceable obligations on the people doing the pummeling.

Then the appeasers take the deal as proof that the bad guys never really meant it, it was all a misunderstanding and there is no military solution. But the bad guys take it as proof that the military solution is working brilliantly, not just gaining ground but causing the clueless weaklings opposite to grovel.

Then the aggression continues.

When you put your face under a bully’s foot, he steps on it. It should surprise no one.

Sun News Network has set. It is a bittersweet feeling. Click here to read the rest.

Does anybody remember soft power? Apparently Canada has it in abundance. It just doesn’t work. Click here to read the rest.