Gender Identity: Disposed Of

Vincent J. Curtis

27 Mar 2017

The question of the reality of gender “identity” and whether or not gender identity is a social construct or not was raised again after University of Toronto Professor of Psychology Jordan Peterson was heckled out of a lecture at McMaster University the other week.  Peterson is locally famous for denying the existence of gender identity as a social construct and refuses to call self-identifying transgendered by ‘zir’, ‘zhe’ and the like.

Let’s quickly dispose of the matter of using nonsense words as English pronouns for the transgendered.  It is sheer bullying and a sheer dominance play to insist that a mature, highly educated grown-up use nonsense words in the course of their speaking with others.  I am reminded of the tactics of the Chinese Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, who seized and put dunce caps on their university professors for the crime of being insufficiently enthusiastic about the latest communist thing.

As a matter of politeness, it should be left up to the individual to decide whether or not they are going to speak in English, or to babble in deference to the person before them.  If bullying as such is bad, one shouldn’t bully oneself.  If some kinds of bullying are okay, then let’s hear when it is okay and the air-tight logical defence for those occasions.  Otherwise, STFU.

Now, let’s quickly dispose of the matter of gender identity as a social construct.  Let’s begin with the definition of man: he is a rational animal.  Man belongs to the genus animal, and the essential and radical quality that differentiates man from any other kind of animal is that he is rational.

Animals lower than man on the evolutionary scale exhibit distinct identities of male and female.  These are facts of biology.  For the lower animals, gender is a reality.  Gender cannot be a social construct in the lower animals for two reasons: (1) animals, especially those lacking a herd instinct, have no society, and so no ‘social’ construct is possible; and (2) lacking rational powers, animals are incapable of abstract ‘constructs’, they are what they are and behave as they behave on account of the instinctual endowments they were given by nature.  Hence, gender is an inescapable reality among the lower animals.

Man, in virtue of his rational powers, is radically distinct from animals.  Being an animal capable of reproduction, there still must be the reality of gender, male and female, in man.  Male and female are still biological necessities in man, and gender is still a physical reality in humans.

It is in virtue of his rational powers that man is capable of having a society, and of possessing ‘constructs’ in the mind.  It is also the faculty which enables individual humans to become confused, since intellect has largely replaced instinct in humans.

Hence, there must be an underlying reality of male and female in the human species.  It is this underlying reality that enables ‘social constructs’ concerning gender to be built around.  If gender was not an underlying reality, then why social constructs concerning gender should even come into existence is a complete mystery.

Because of man’s intellect, it is possible to construct social norms around the things that men and women tend to do distinctively.  One could go so far as to assign responsibility for cooking, cleaning, doing the dishes, driving, and bringing home the bacon as tending to belong to one gender over another, so long as one understood that there were large exceptions.  One could formulate such constructs as typical gender behaviors, so long as one understood that these typical gender behaviors were reflective of an underlying reality and not definitive of it.

The problem with gender-identity theory is that it takes a set of behaviors and holds that collection as definitive of a gender, and not as merely a sign of it.  If behaviors rather than biology were definitive of gender, then gender-identity theorists need to explain: (1) how this business of gender came into being in the first place, since the categorization of behaviors is completely arbitrary, (2) why are there universally only two genders and not more, (3) why the categories of gender are universally recognized while the behaviors that are arbitrarily assigned to one gender or another is arbitrary.

Hence, gender is a physical reality, and it must be so in man because man is an animal.  It is uniquely the power of man that some individuals can get confused about gender.  And those individuals include not only the gender-confused per se, but the theorists that justify such an abnormal condition.

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Jordan Peterson a little shy on proof

Vincent J. Curtis

26 Mar 2017

For a sociologist to say that a psychologist is a little shy on proof is like a pot calling a kettle black.  Neither discipline is a true science, and the only sign that a conclusion from either discipline may be true is how well it comports with common sense.

For that reason, Jordan Peterson has the advantage.  Peterson reaches conclusions that are obvious to the common sense of steelworkers, but he does so by means of academic terminology and convoluted reasoning that makes him interesting to recent graduates of high school.  He can at times belabor the obvious.  Nevertheless, Peterson has an entertaining way of reaching sometimes interesting and satisfying conclusions, that he has parlayed into a career.

Patrick Watson’s criticism of Peterson betrays the tinge of jealousy.  Beyond holding a lectureship that enables him to pontificate on ‘identity theory and media’ and to be paid to research how ‘identity is used and managed in interaction’ Watson really hasn’t hit the mother lode style-wise as Peterson has.  Watson rather pathetically tries to blacken Peterson’s research and conclusions by accusing him of immoderate profiteering on the back of his own work.  Watson blows hard on a lot of left-wing dog-whistles in the course of doing so.

If Watson had more style, was more brilliant and less tedious, he might do better than a lectureship, as Peterson has.

I do think that Watson should be asking for his money back for the tuition he paid for the courses, if any, he took in philosophy and elementary logic.  Watson fails to detect the substitution by him of a new and unexamined metaphysics in his criticism, or of the illicit change in point of view he makes in the course of it.  That Watson could say, for example, that Peterson is lacking in proof of something, “except legislation such as Bill C-16 and the Ontario Human Rights Code,” you have to wonder if even a threatening email from Kathleen Wynne could be proof enough to satisfy Watson.

When Watson says that a Peterson assertion could be “easily dismantled by any first-year philosophy student,” I note that Watson himself never attempts to do so, as an example of his own brilliance.  He goes on to say that Peterson is an elite level scholar, yet he “makes arguments that would fail in an undergraduate term paper.”  I suppose that remark is supposed to undermine our respect for Peterson, but when I’m explaining something to a teenager I use terms and arguments they understand to get to the right conclusion - without all the philosophical caveats of a term paper in philosophy.  Besides, I’m not sure you could read a passage from Jacques Maritain aloud to an audience and have them understand the full import of it.  You would have to read it yourself, and read it again, and then maybe again to grasp it.

Remember, Watson is talking about conclusions that comport with common sense, and he is demanding of Peterson a university paper to explain and justify a common sense conclusion.  Watson is forgetting Occam’s Razor and the benefits of simplicity.

Watson’s criticism of Peterson is an expression of poverty, both intellectual and personal.  The fact that Watson would try to justify the violence used to disrupt Peterson’s lecture at McMaster on the grounds that Peterson is not just wrong but evil as well, is a blackening of his own academic reputation.

Liberal Budget a Sign of Cosmic Incompetence

Vincent J. Curtis

23 Mar 2017

The pictures of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Finance Minister Bill Morneau said it all.  These are men of pedigree and wealth, credentialed, and they wore fine suits.  They are among the best and the brightest.

Their budget promised more and better housing, funding for municipal transportation systems, for water infrastructure, new technology, and new entitlement programs in child-care with the aim of increasing the number of women in the workforce.  They now measure budget impacts with gender-based analyses.  They aim to eliminate inequalities of all kinds, to say nothing of the racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia and all the other deplorable –isms and –ias that current plague Canadian society.

Meanwhile, the best and the brightest can’t balance the budget.  They can’t even hold to their promises regarding deficit and debt made a mere 18 months ago.

The deficit this year runs triple what they expected less than 18 months ago and consumes entirely their election promise of limits on deficit finance of ten billion a year for three years.  The economy is not growing as their deficit finance projections forecasted.  Consequently, even the promise made 12 months ago of maintaining a constant debt to GDP ratio won’t be met.  And they have no plans to get the deficit under control.

Money is being thrown away with both hands, but where is it all going?  The city of Hamilton is still waiting on tens of millions for new buses and water infrastructure from last year’s federal budget.  Money is being funnelled into the MUSH sector (municipalities, universities, schools, and hospitals) but nothing seems to be coming out the other end.  The billions spent on ‘skills development’ goes to administration of technical colleges.  Billions spent on innovation amounts to tax credits for existing businesses.

Meanwhile, billions more is promised to be spent on the fallacy of subsidizing child care, where working women pay other women to look after their children for them so they can work.  One would think Canada had full employment and war-time pressures were forcing the economy to desperately produce more.

And for all of this stimulus, the economy is not growing.  Alberta is no longer a federal cash cow, and Ontario is crippled by the incompetent meddling of another group of highly educated, credentialed, and well-dressed people who have cosmic ambitions but can’t balance a budget.  The cost of electricity in Ontario is out of sight because the experts with fine tastes chose to defeat global warming with windmills and solar panels.  Manufacturing entrepreneurship is discouraged because the expert-entrepreneur is confronted with ruin should he fall afoul of myriad environmental, labor, and other regulations at the provincial and municipal levels.

Basic government functions are suffering.  Postal service is in decline.  Immigration policy is chaotic, make-shift, and creating social problems.  National Defense is falling apart.  We need to completely rebuild the navy and the air force soon, and the government can’t seem to come up with a program or even procure interim replacements. 

The government is actively looking to burn up army readiness at the rate of half a billion a year with some useless peacekeeping mission in Mali, yet Russia continues to put pressure on the Ukraine and the Baltic States, NATO could break up, and we may get dragged into another European war because nobody in the west is building up deterrence.

The basic government competencies are failing, and our elected officials pose as existentialists speaking about faux challenges over which they have no control.  Motion 103 condemns Islamophobia and systemic racism, yet the government maintains the Indian Act, the Charter of Rights has special carve-outs for Aboriginals, and the scale of Islamophobia is exacerbated by the government actively seeking Muslim refugees in preference to Christians.

We have a Minister in charge of the Status of Women, and we have no proof of effect of this ministry.  We have a minister in charge of democratic institutions, but other than trying and failing to mess with ancient traditions we have no idea what this ministry is for.  We have a ministry of innovation, science, and economic development, but other than direct a flow of money, we have no proof of value of this ministry.  We have a ministry of international development and La Francophonie, and it is wonder why these responsibilities do not fall under foreign affairs and international relations.  We have a ministry of small business and tourism even though these matters belong in a trade and commerce ministry and largely are areas of provincial responsibility.  We have a ministry of families, children, and social development, science, international trade, Canadian heritage, environment and climate change.

The only things missing are ministries of virtue-signalling, and bureaucratic expansion and employment.

Well-dressed, credentialed, wealthy, pedigreed, and pleasant people can’t seem to balance a budget or ensure that the basic functions of government are efficiently performed.  Instead, we get virtue-signalling and poses of philosopher-kings.  That is the essential take-away from Trudeau’s second budget.

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Trump Set Cat Among the Pigeons

Vincent J. Curtis

20 Mar 2017

Several weeks ago, President Donald Trump set the news media all a-twitter by saying that he had been wire-tapped by President Barak Obama during the 2016 presidential campaign.  Immediately, denunciations started pouring in to the effect, “How could Trump say such a thing?” and “There is no evidence of such a thing.”  And so forth.

Today’s public hearings of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence was enlightening on how politicalized selective intelligence leaking has become, and how competitive media narratives are either pushed or forgotten, depending on which Democrat talking point one is speaking about.

Chris Wallace of Fox News was typical when he described today as a bad day for President Trump because no proof of wiretapping by President Obama was admitted to or presented to the committee by FBI Director James Comey or NSA Director Mike Rogers.  In the world of intelligence, the parsing of sentences is extremely important because it is in the nature of the business to mislead.  What appears to be a denial is in fact a non-denial denial, and what appears to be denied but isn’t can be revealing of the actual truth.

The elephant in the room that no one wants to highlight is that the American people are subject to NSA surveillance of their emails and their telephone conversations 24/7/365 without a specific FISA warrant and have been since 2006.  It took Edward Snowden to bring it to light, and forced the admission that DNI James Clapper lied in public to a Senate Committee when he told the committee that the U.S. government does not routinely monitor or collect information on Americans at random in any way.  The NSA, in fact, collects meta-data on all electronic communications that flow through the computers of American telephone companies.  Hence, it is a trivial statement for President Trump say that he was wire-tapped by President Obama during the campaign, for every American was.  What might be missing is for that data to be mined for intelligence.

The New York Times and Washington Post were recipients of “surveillance transcripts” of close advisors to Donald Trump.  Nobody other than Trey Gowdy seems to remember this.  Either these news reports were true or they were not, but they cannot be simultaneously both true and false.  If the news reports of the contents of surveillance transcripts are true, then it is also true that surveillance was taking place.  If Trump himself was not the direct object of surveillance, but everyone around him in his campaign was, then what difference does it make, for Trump has to work through his campaign team in order to campaign?

There are several political narratives in play here.  The first is collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian effort to influence the election.  The Democrats continue to insinuate the Donald Trump is the Manchurian Candidate, that his apparent softness towards Putin is suggestive that Putin wanted to help Trump win, and that whether there was collusion or not Trump’s election was owing to Russian efforts to discredit Hillary Clinton.  Another narrative follows from the first, that for all the suggestiveness of collusion and the investigation of Russia’s interference in the American election, the Trump campaign itself was never surveilled by the Obama Administration for evidence of collusion.

The newspapers reported on a FISA request in June, 2016, that was rejected and may have named Trump, and another in October, 2016, that was approved.  Today, both Comey and Rogers denied there were FISA requests, and that the investigation into Russian interference began in July, 2016.  So what do we make of the newspaper accounts that go into some detail?  That seems to be forgotten.

There also has been repeated reference to “seeing no evidence of collusion” between operatives of the Trump campaign and Russian interference.  Forgetting for the moment that nobody owns Trump, what can we make of the statement “seeing no evidence.”  That statement is ambiguous, for it could mean that there is all kinds of intelligence collected on Trump and none of it shows collusion, or that they don’t have any evidence of any kind, period.  They don’t have evidence, not having collected any.  Having no evidence could mean that there was collusion all over the place, and the intelligence community cluelessly never mined their data or wiretapped anybody.  So having no evidence is not exculpatory either.

Likewise, having no evidence that Trump was wiretapped is ambiguous, and that statement also is not exculpatory.

Today, the Democrats were all about Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort, and Mike Flynn being directly or indirectly in the pay of the Russian government – however attenuated those connections may be.  But the Democrats wants us to forget that Bill Clinton received millions of dollars in speaking fees from some pretty shady governments including the Kazakh government, and that the Clinton Foundation would up receiving $145 million while Russian interests got ownership of 20 % of the United States uranium production in a transaction detailed in the book “Clinton Cash” by Peter Schweizer.

By claiming he had been wiretapped, Donald Trump set Congress to investigating the business of the leaking of classified information anonymously by outgoing Obama Administration officials that sought to portray him as in collusion with the Russian government and his benefiting from Russian interference in the election.  Trump is taking a beating from the news media about the factual content of the tweet alleging that Obama wiretapped him.  But what is also suffering in the investigation are: the credibility of the news media that reported on the contents of the now-disputed surveillance; the Democrat contention of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia; and that Trump owes his election to Russian efforts to bring down Hillary Clinton.

The Democrats are leaving many hostages to fortune in their seeming hostility to Russia and their vilification of Vladimir Putin.

The one fact that simply can’t be erased is that former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn was surveilled by American intelligence, and his name was feloniously unmasked in the transcript of the surveillance and released to the news media by a member of the Obama Administration.  That criminal act we have yet to see the end of.

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The Rights of Twelve Year Old Girls

Vincent J. Curtis

7 Mar 2017

The political Left is nothing if not laughably inconsistent.  Last night, Hamilton (Ontario) City Councillors were treated to an earnest presentation of “play-pretend.”  The public is supposed to play along with a class of people who have certain profound psychological disturbances.  While playing along was offered as a human rights issue, it was understood as being an inexpensive form of therapy, a path of least resistance.

The political Left is forever calling for fact-based this, evidence-based that, and castigates the political Right for being anti-science.  Except when the facts and evidence pertain to the science of biology.  Then, suddenly, a whole new scale of values is – without explanation - introduced, and we are all supposed to look at things differently or else we are evil, heartless savages.

Here are a few biological and metaphysical facts: male and female are constructs founded in reality; that the male and female are male and female not just in macroscopic observables, but right down to the microscopic chromosomes.  No amount of surgery, hormonal treatment and make-up can alter the fundamental reality that a person is determined male or female at the moment of conception.  Doctors don’t “assign” sex at birth, but name it based upon observable reality.  These people who have so-called sex identity issues realize what they biologically are, and they understand that they are trying to be something they are not.  That psychological condition has been proven, so even so-called transgendered people (who are distinct from mere cross-dressers by degree of earnestness) understand there is game being played. 

Here’s another regrettable fact: I wish I were a billionaire, but no amount of wishing can make it so. 

(However, y'all can help me out with my problem if you'll accept my cheques in exchange for tens of millions of dollars worth of goods.  Deal?)

Back to reality:

The real question before council is the best course of therapy for these people: to go along with the game of play-pretend, or to say with greater love no, you are wrong.  Do you say to a paranoid schizophrenic that his demons are real and that people really are out to get him - playing-pretend and going along with his fantasies?  Or do you react with greater love and say that he is wrong and needs help?

You have to wonder where the feminists are in this debate.  Feminism destroyed its credibility by siding with Bill Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.  Feminists rage on about a non-existent “rape crisis” on university campuses, but says nothing about the rape crisis that is seizing Europe or the misogynistic tendencies of Islam.  Feminism said nothing about the mass sexual assaults that took place in Cologne and elsewhere in Germany because the perps were Middle-Eastern men.  Likewise, feminists say nothing about the prospect of allowing biological men to use women’s change rooms and washrooms.  Feminism began as a movement of the Left, and feminists today likely find themselves in a moral conundrum: not knowing which branch of progressivism to support.

Where are the people demanding that the human rights of twelve year old girls be respected?

There are good reasons why men should not be allowed to use women’s change rooms and restrooms.  Besides damaging the social order in itself, far graver will be the principle that will be invoked to justify collapsing before transgenderism and the damage that that principle will do to the social order in future.  Nobody seems to care about the good of society as a whole, but a large number of special interests all want their piece of social favoritism.  Nobody seems to care about the rights of girls not to be exposed to male genitalia.

It is strange to talk about “principles” when discussing matters of Left wing politics, I know.  To the Left, a “principle” is like a Kleenex tissue, something you use at the moment out of need, and then throw away at the first convenient opportunity.

For me, one principle is that twelve year old girls have a certain right to privacy, and that right overrides the desire of certain men to have us play-pretend with them.  Tough love is still love, and refusing to go along with the game of play-pretend is better both for the individual and for society as a whole.

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Obama Wiretapped Trump

Vincent J. Curtis

4 Mar 2017

That the Obama Administration wiretapped offices in the Trump Tower in October, 2016 – the stretch run of the campaign – is old news.  It was first reported by Heat Street on Nov 7, 2016, just a day before the election.  That report was followed up quickly by reports in UK’s The Guardian newspaper.  Oblique references to it may have appeared belatedly in the New York Times.

National Review had a couple of articles commenting on the details then emerging of the wiretapping.  David French and Andrew McCarthy wrote about it on January 11, 2017, and McCarthy wrote more extensively on it in an article published on January 17, 2017.

No one in the main stream media wagged their tongue about the police state methodology being employed by Obama to tilt the election in favor of his chosen successor, Hillary Clinton.  Obama, hamstrung by having to work in an actual democracy, could not invent something out of whole cloth, but if the slightest word hinting at collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia appeared in the wiretaps, it would have been splashed all over the media immediately.  Nothing like it was heard, and so the matter ought to have ended there so far as the Obama Administration was concerned.

That the Obama Administration wiretapped Trump Tower late in the campaign, after trying and failing to get a FISA warrant in June, 2016, did not become news until President Donald Trump himself ranted about it in his Twitter account early this morning.

Of course, the MSM tried to tie the tirade to a report that appeared in Breitbart yesterday, hoping that waving the name Breitbart around would immediately discredit Trump’s accusation.  But it isn’t working, and shouldn’t work because that the Obama Administration had wiretapped Trump Tower has been open-source news for five months.

That the Obama Administration people are sensing trouble with this appears in their improbable non-denial denials.  The first non-denial denial is to say that Trump has offered no “proof.”  Except that the proof has been in the open source media undenied by Obama for five months now, and Obama is counting on most people not realizing it.

The next three non-denial denials appear in the following three quotes from close Obama associates:

“Neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false," said Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for the former president.

Lewis also said Saturday: "A cardinal rule of the Obama administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice.”

Former Obama foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes tweeted earlier in the day: "No President can order a wiretap. Those restrictions were put in place to protect citizens from people like you."

Of course, Obama can’t “order” surveillance on Donald Trump, he has to get either a criminal warrant or a FISA warrant, and it is a judge who permits the wiretapping.  Let it be noted that neither CIA Director John Brennan nor Attorney-General Loretta Lynch count as a “White House official” because neither one worked at the White House.

It may well be a cardinal rule “not to interfere with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice” but that doesn’t mean that Obama can’t order the opening of one, or strongly encouraging the opening of one.

The qualifier “led by the Department of Justice” leaves open the possibility that the investigation was being led by the CIA, i.e. John Brennan, and Obama is completely free to order Brennan to direct CIA intelligence resources at some thing or another.  Obama ordered his good friend and a person he greatly admired, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, to be wiretapped.  Trump isn’t someone Obama even likes.

The qualifier “independent” investigation also leaves open the possibility of Obama ordering an investigation, in virtue of which it is not ‘independent’ and therefore can be directed by the President.

Lawyers are supposed to be skilled in words, and the non-denial denials are worded in a way which misdirects without being outright lies.  Effectively, these denials don’t deny that Trump was wiretapped, what they appear to say is that Obama himself had nothing to do with it.  Except on close examination, there are enough loopholes in the qualifiers that none of these statements will prove to be outright lies if it comes out that Obama was up to his neck in surveillance of Trump.

Trump unleased this tirade against Obama for a reason.  That Obama engaged in police state methods against Trump in the midst of an election doesn’t look good on the former president.  Obama and his people know it, and that is why they are in full spin mode.  The next week may well expose the direction of Trump’s counter-offensive against allegations of collusion between his presidential campaign and Russia, and taking direct aim and Obama could be part of it.

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Emir Obama and His Wives

Vincent J. Curtis

2 Mar 2017

The news is now out that Valerie Jarrett has moved into former President Barack Obama’s new home in Washington, D.C., with all of her belongings, in an arrangement not unlike an Arab Emir and his wives.  Jarrett, five years older than Barack Obama, was born in Shiraz, Iran, to American parents, where she lived until she was five.  As a child she spoke both Persian and French.

Jarrett met Michelle Robinson and Barack Obama in 1991, and hired Michelle to work in the Mayor’s office in Chicago.  Michelle Obama followed Jarrett when the latter moved from the Mayor’s office to Chicago’s Department of Planning and Development.  Jarrett introduced the Obamas to “a wealthier and better-connected Chicago than their own.”  Jarrett married William Jarrett in 1983, and divorced him in 1989.  William Jarrett died in 1993 at the age of 40.

Jarrett lived with Barack Obama in the White House during his years as president.  Jarrett dined with the president and Michelle Obama when she lived with them in the White House.  It is not clear whether or not she will enjoy the same privileges in Obama’s new digs, especially if Michelle has to cook.

This raises the question of the status between Michelle and Valerie, but they are said to be best friends.  They are said to be together deciding on colors, carpets, wall paper, furnishings and art, according to ‘a source.’  Valerie and Michelle have ‘big plans’ for travelling and shopping and for strategizing against President Donald Trump.

Jarrett was Obama’s closest adviser before and during his presidency.  Often described as Obama’s consigliere, Obama “doesn’t make a decision without her….Obama trusts her judgement more than any other person on the planet, as does Michelle,” according to the unnamed family friend.  Valerie Jarrett helped shape his domestic and foreign policies.

The new Obama residence is in the Kalorama section of Washington, about two miles distant from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.  At 8,200 square feet, the residence is large enough to house the three comfortably, and provide space for Obama’s reported effort to undermine his successor’s administration.  A ‘close family friend’ said that Obama’s goal is to oust Donald Trump either by forcing his resignation or by impeachment, according to reports.

Obama’s former Attorney-General Eric Holder is telling friends and allies in the progressive movement that Obama will re-enter the political scene soon.  The ex-president has come to embrace his role as the leader of the opposition against Trump, spurred on by Valerie and Michelle, and by “his loathing of Trump’s policies and whose presidency he considers illegitimate.”  In particular, Obama is “dismayed” at the tearing down of Obamacare, the removal of the welcome mat he put out for refugees, cabinet picks like Jeff Sessions, and leaving Jim Comey in place as FBI Director.

Obama blames Comey in part for Hillary Clinton’s defeat because Comey irresponsibly announced eleven days before the election that he was re-opening the investigation into Hillary’s email scandals.  Obama regards Jeff Sessions, against all evidence, as racially insensitive and therefore unfit to control the Civil Rights division of the Department of Justice.

It was Valerie Jarrett who convinced Obama that he had to get himself re-involved in national politics if he expected to save his legacy, “and, as usual, he bowed to Valerie’s political wisdom and advice.”

Obama’s first foray back into the political limelight came when he opposed Trump’s Executive Order to restrict immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries, leaving forty-four other countries of the OIC untouched.  Obama excused the demonstrations against Trump’s order as “citizens exercising their Constitutional right to assemble, organize, and have their voices heard by their elected officials….what we expect to see when American values are at stake.”  Why Obama unnecessarily added his voice to the anti-Trump chorus was never asked of him.

The women of power around Barack Obama puts in mind the observations that Niccolo Machiavelli, author of “The Prince,” made about the irresponsible power of concubines behind the throne.  Besides Jarrett and Michelle, there was also Susan Rice, Obama's Ambassador to the UN and National Security Adviser, and Samantha Power Rice's successor as Ambassador to the UN, at the heart of Obama’s foreign policy team.  It is not widely recognized that Obama’s now former CIA Director John Brennan converted to Islam when he was posted as CIA Station Chief in Saudi Arabia.  During his college years, Brennan spent a year at the American University in Cairo taking a course in Middle Eastern studies and learning Arabic, which he speaks fluently.  And Ben Rhodes of Obama's NSA is thought to be behind the "Russian connection" information operation, or disinformation campaign, presently being waged by the Democrats, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

This is an odd assortment of dots to connect, and the question for the media is whether they will accept Emir Obama’s forthcoming campaign against Trump at face value or will they actually look under the hood and inspect the motor of the machine.  Obama's campaign being the product of what, exactly?

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How to Spend $80 billion

Vincent J. Curtis

15 Dec 2016

A decade ago, NATO alliance members, Canada included, pledged to spend two percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product on defense.  Only the UK and the USA have consistently met that goal.  President Donald J. Trump has said that unless other NATO members start pulling their weight in respect of defense spending, the United States may not come to the defense of an attacked NATO country that failed to pull its weight.

It does Canada no good to pull out of NATO as a means of avoiding US pressure to spend more money on defense.  In the first place, Canada cannot pull out of NORAD, which is a bilateral continental defense alliance with the United States.  In the second, the purpose of a defensive alliance is to reduce defense spending across the board.  Leaving NATO would require Canada to look after all its defense needs outside of NORAD, such as sovereignty in Arctic waters.  Departure would entail an increase of defense spending anyhow.

Canada simply needs to put on its big-boy pants and start acting like the important nation she has become.  Canada’s contribution to world peace will come about partially by becoming militarily stronger.  Defense spending is cheap insurance, and if it keeps Trump off our backs in respect of trade, then it will be doubly worth the money.

The difference between what Canada spends annually on defense and two percent of GDP is roughly $20 billion.  Over the four years of a Trump Administration, Canada needs to find a home for $80 billion in defense dollars.  These are not hard to find.

The RCN needs to be completely recapitalized, and $40 billion could easily be spent on that.  Canada should be aiming for a 25 ship surface combatant fleet consisting principally of frigates, but also a couple of battlecruisers (or missile cruisers if a ‘battle’ cruiser seems too warlike), supply ships; and icebreakers for the far north would round out a blue water navy.  Beneath the waves, the four submarines of the Lemon class – I mean the Victoria class – could also absorb a few billion to get them finally operational.

That leaves $35 to $40 billion to spend on capital equipment for the RCAF and the army in years three and four.  Placing an order now for 120 to 150 F-35s would absorb the best part of $20 billion, and the purchasing war stocks of expendables and capital upgrades of bases would consume the rest of year three’s capital expenditure.

In year four, it would be the turn of the army.  What capital upgrades could the army use?  Let’s start with rifle sights.  New, digital rifle sights enable Recruit Bloggins to hit small targets out to a thousand meters with 90 percent plus probability of a hit with minimum training.  The system, called Tracking Point PGF, is presently being solid already mounted on rifles and is expensive, but a precision marksman per section should have one immediately.  As the system matures it will be affordable to replace Elcan sights with them.

Compared with other armies, Canada’s army is utterly deficient in rotary aviation.  And I don’t just mean AH-64E Apache Guardian helicopters – you know the ones that can kill tanks from multiple kilometers away, and terrorists as well?  I mean drones that kids across the street play with.  How hard can it be to equip ground units – infantry, armour, and especially artillery with small drones that enable spotters to find the enemy at great distances and quickly without exposing themselves?  Even body cameras can be acquired and used to look around corners to provide a picture of what’s waiting for the lead man.

Canada has a terrific facility in its Mechanized Training Center at CFB Wainwright.  The army has also employed SAT ranges as a means of simulating combat for soldiers.  What about virtual reality?  How hard can it be to equip a company or a battalion or even the entire reserve system with virtual reality trainers as successors to the now old and mostly non-functioning SAT trainers?

The tactical ground communications system is centered on the TCCCS radio system that was essentially obsolete the moment it was fielded.  Cell phones in urban areas provided parallel lines of communications for guerrilla forces, whereas the TCCCS system allows only one channel of communication, to be used serially.  Given all the new cell phone and satellite technology, surely some communication system can be developed that empowers every soldier on the battlefield to communicate with any other soldier other than by shouting.  The aural system by which the soldier receives tactical instructions from his commander can be one of those that not only amplifies quiet sounds around him but also electronically dampens sounds above 85 dB – protecting the soldier’s natural hearing.

We are deficient beyond imagining in artillery as compared with Russia and the United States.  Realistically, we could triple the number of M777 guns in inventory and still be below our proportionate needs.

 

These ideas barely scratch the surface, and none of them involve increasing the operating costs of the CAF over the four years.  All of these expenditures are capital.  To that extent they are temporary.  Expansion of the operating cost of the CAF, if necessary, can await a second Trump term.

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A version of this article was published in the Feb 2017 issue of Esprit De Corps magazine.