Peacekeeping – in Europe

Vincent J. Curtis

30 May 2017

The election of the Trudeau government in 2015 brought with it hopes in some for a return to international peacekeeping as a prestigious feature of Canadian foreign policy.  Attention was focussed on a mission in Africa, and the West African nation of Mali in particular.  None of the peacekeeping opportunities were, on second look, particularly appealing.  Despite pressure from the UN, the Trudeau government has not committed itself to any large-scale peacekeeping intervention in Mali, or anywhere else in Africa.

With good reason.  In the first place, it is not in Canada’s national interest to have Canadian soldiers keeping peace among the warring tribes of Africa.  Whereas it is in Canada’s national interests to keeping the peace among the warring tribes - of Europe.

To say nothing of national interest, the obvious racialism involved in having Canadian soldiers patrolling the African bush to keep the tribesmen from killing each other presents no winning visuals and a real danger of a loss of prestige as a result of some incident.

Even at two percent of GDP spent on defense, Canada lacks the military strength to supply a peacekeeping mission in Africa and a mission of deterrence in Europe.  In Afghanistan, we were stretched to maintain a full-strength battalion and a brigade headquarters in Kandahar indefinitely; subtract an additional battalion from the reserves for a mission elsewhere, and something would have had to give in short order.

Maintaining the peace in Europe is by far Canada’s higher priority, and we have to husband what military strength we have in order to keep that peace.

One of the threats to the peace of Europe comes from the Putin regime of Russia.  Russia is an interesting socio-political case.  For seventy years, as the heart and soul of the Soviet Union, Russia represented the sacred flame of communism and official atheism to the world.  When the fraud of communism could no longer be maintained, the Soviet empire collapsed, leaving Russia shorn even of her Czarist imperial lands.  There must be a huge emptiness in the psychological core of the Russian people right now.

The country went into serious demographic decline.  The population of ethnic Russians shrank.  Of a total population of now less than 150 million, only 120 million are ethnic Russians.  The average lifespan of a Russian is falling, and alcoholism and corruption are said to be rampant.  Russia’s GDP is smaller than Canada’s.  She relies heavily on exports of oil and gas for foreign exchange, and with depressed prices for both those commodities, her capacity to import foreign goods is not what it was a decade ago, when oil and gas prices were more than double what they are now.

President Vladimir Putin faces a huge challenge in getting a demoralized Russian people turned around, and he turned instinctively to the prestige game.  He believes that the fall of the Soviet Union was a great geo-political disaster.  The role he is playing to the Russian people is that of the Strong Czar, which is distinct from the Good Czar.  Putin is exercising Russia’s military strength to regain lands which once comprised the Czarist empire: in Georgia, Crimea, and in eastern Ukraine.  He is menacing the Baltic States.  In addition, he is propping up the Assad regime in Syria, and is supplying Iran with missile defenses.  Russian air forces are testing the NORAD defenses again, and are buzzing NATO warships in the Baltic and the Black Seas.

Putin is doing the things that dictators typically do in order to distract attention from internal domestic problems: create international problems that justify internal oppression and distract attention from the internal issues.  The good Czar would undertake the thankless and personally dangerous task of a spiritual revival in Russia; the strong Czar creates and carefully manages external problems.

Publisher Scott Taylor has observed that Russia is in no position to attack and conquer Europe.  Russia has recently cut military expenditures even as NATO countries are being encouraged to increase theirs.  By comparison, Germany has a population of 82 million and a GDP nearly triple that of Russia.  True, Russia still has a large nuclear force that could reduce Western Europe to a nuclear waste-land; but what is the point of trying to rule a nuclear waste-land?

The threat that Russia represents under the Putin regime is the nibbling at the edges of NATO, and a consequent loss of prestige of that organization that would follow should he succeed.  The seizure and forced incorporation of all the Ukraine would create diplomatic tidal waves that NATO could do nothing about.  Such a move, if successful, could cement Putin’s standing in Russian history while diminishing NATO’s prestige at the same time.  An attempt at seizing one of the Baltic States, on the other hand, would create a far more ticklish problem for both Putin and NATO.  If, say, NATO member Latvia were seized in a lightning invasion, NATO would be faced with a fait accompli and NATO countries would have to ask themselves how much they were prepared to risk for the sake of a country of less than two million people and of territory not vital to the security of the rest of NATO.

That is why deterrence in Europe is central to Canadian foreign policy.  We don’t want to have to answer that question in respect of the Baltic States, and would greatly prefer a stabilization of the Ukraine/Crimea problem.  Only military deterrence can inhibit a seizure of Latvia, and military measures that can make a seizure less than lightning fast contribute to the stability of Europe.  Putin is not going to risk all his prestige on a less than sure thing.

A force of 450 troops in the Baltic States is a start.  Providing those troops with real defensive power with plentiful machine guns and anti-tank weapons will be the next step.  Diplomatically, Canada can encourage a spiritual revival of the Russian people through engagement with the Russian Orthodox Church and encouragement of the spread of the western enlightenment through cultural exchanges, rendering the prestige game moot.  We can’t do this if we are busy putting out brush fires in Africa.

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A version of this appears in the July, 2017 edition of Esprit de Corps magazine.

Renaming Ryerson

Vincent J. Curtis

19 July 2017

There is a movement afoot to have Ryerson University change its name on account of the false allegation the man after whom it is named, Egerton Ryerson, was responsible for the residential schools for Canadian aboriginals.  Blaming Ryerson for residential schools is like blaming Friedrich Nietzsche for the excesses of Adolf Hitler.

For those not familiar, Ryerson University is based in Toronto, Ontario, and Egerton Ryerson was a 19^th century giant of education in Upper Canada, Canada West, and, after confederation, Ontario.  Egerton Ryerson was a political reformer, educator, and protestant clergyman.  He was the founder of the public school system of Ontario, and Ryerson University stands on the site of the school he founded to educate teachers.  In 1847, Ryerson wrote a report that recommended the establishment of residential schools in Canada West for the purpose of teaching adult aboriginal Indians the arts of farming land.  The concept of residential schools was derived from the best examples of schools in Britain: Eton and Harrow, and lives on today in Upper Canada College, Ridley College, Robert Land Academy, and Hillfield-Strathallen College.  Ryerson had been working on behalf of aboriginals in the Toronto area as early as the 1820’s.

Ryerson died in 1882, before the Federal residential school system for aboriginal children was even established, and was in no way responsible for it.

It would be an egregious example of ignorance parading about as avant garde political correctness to erase Ryerson’s name from the university in Toronto that bears his name on account of his alleged connection to the Federal residential school system for aboriginals.  But it would be delicious example of the mal-education that passes off as forwardness at that institution presently.

Ryerson had nothing to do with residential schools, but what does that matter?

Nowadays, students at that university and most others are taught that there is no such thing as absolute truth.  According to the tutelage of progressivism there can a truth for me and a truth for you.  Truth is whatever works.  If you can persuade enough people of something, then that becomes the truth – so far as they are concerned.  To say to them otherwise is a sign of your white privilege, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, anti-intersectionalism, alt-rightism, or some other deplorable attribute.

To remove Ryerson’s name from the university would be a case of the progressive movement eating one of their own.  Lovely.  And a sign of impenetrable ignorance.  Double lovely.

The Democratic Party disavowed itself of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson on the ground that they owned slaves.  Disavowing Ryerson on entirely specious grounds is the next logical step for progressivism – insofar as logic and truth possess objective meaning to progressives.

To remove Ryerson’s name from the university that bears it means that all those graduates in grievance studies will get their diploma from a school whose name they are ashamed of – The University That Dare Not Speak Its Name.  Nameless U.

Try getting a job with one of those – a diploma in uselessness, and even the bearer is ashamed of it.

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But He Should Have Had Counsel!

Vincent J. Curtis

18 July 2017

Among the many imbecilic comments made about Don Jr. meeting with a Russian to get dirt on Hillary is the assertion that someone else should have gone in his place.  [I have just finished reading a piece by Conrad Black and loved his use of the word ‘imbecilic’].

Specifically, the Monday morning quarterbacks say that ‘counsel’ should have gone in his stead, or some lower level staffer; or he should have brought ‘counsel’ with him.  I would like to enquire: why?  What makes a lawyer, of all people, so damned special?  What gives a lawyer clean hands?

Recall that Don Jr was offered incriminating evidence on Hillary Clinton and the DNC by someone he knew and trusted.  The offer came out of left field, and was described in a way guaranteed to raise one's curiosity: 'what the hell have they got??' must have run through his mind.  The information was described as a form of leak from some high official in the Russian government.  If Don Jr had sent someone else to a meeting that he said he, Kushner, and Manafort would attend, the purveyors of the information might wonder what was up – and not hand over the information.

The criticism that some junior staffer should have been sent look at the information first seems to forget that there were no junior staffers in the Trump campaign at that time.  The campaign consisted of Trump himself, his immediate family, a few of his business staff and acquaintances, and his campaign manager.  The Trump campaign was run on a shoestring, with Trump having spent some $50 million of his own money to secure the nomination by June 3^rd, 2016.  Who was Don Jr. going to send?

So, lacking junior staffers, what about sending ‘counsel’ in place of Don Jr.  That would be Don McGahn, who was busy doing work for Don Jr.’s dad.  What is it about being ‘counsel’ that makes one’s doings dirt-free?  What could ‘counsel’ do except take the information and pass it on?  ‘Counsel’ would be acting as an agent of Don Jr. in that case, and he would be in no position to question what was given him as Don Jr. actually did, because ‘counsel’ could never fully understand what Don Jr. was expecting.  He could not review the dossier then and there and reject it immediately, as Don Jr. did.

None of the Monday morning quarterbacking proves superior to the actual events insofar as protection from “Russian collusion” is concerned, and still of having a look at what was offered.

Now, let’s suppose that at the meeting the Russian lawyer provided Don Jr. with a thumb drive containing Hillary Clinton’s 30,000 deleted emails.  These emails would have been obtained by Russian hacking into Hillary’s server.  How would this change the picture?

At $10, does the price of a thumb drive constitute a ‘thing of value’ to the Trump campaign, assuming it’s acceptance by Don Jr. constituted a donation to his father’s campaign?  I think there is enough reasonable doubt that the thumb drive per se was a thing of value, being a small thing of general utility; or that Don Jr.’s accepting it (and not being sure of what was actually on it when he did) amounted to a donation to the campaign from a foreign source.

The data on our theoretical thumb drive which are Hillary’s 30,000 deleted emails is itself of no monetary value, since these are merely arrangements of magnetic particles on an otherwise $10 thumb drive.  The data may be priceless politically, but of $10 monetary value as a thumb drive.

Would the acceptance of the thumb drive constitute “collusion with Russia?”  Well, collusion is a secret cooperation in order to cheat or deceive others, and a thumb drive containing Hillary’s authentic 30,000 deleted emails is not deception because they are authentic.  It is not clear that ‘cooperation’ was involved either because there was no expectation of what Trump would do with it.  Getting a favorable hearing about repealing the Magnitsky Act in return for handing over the thumb drive still doesn’t amount to ‘cooperation,’ or even a quid pro quo since listening is not really a quid in return for the quo. 

And it would not matter whether a junior staffer, or ‘counsel’ or Don Jr in the presence of ‘counsel’ accepted such a thing.  The Trump campaign would at that point be in possession of political dynamite.  Trump could hand them over to the FBI in the expectation that James Comey would do the right thing with them, or he could publish them himself for all to see, and do so quite legally.  If the New York Times can legally publish the Pentagon Papers, Trump could legally publish Hillary’s 30,000 deleted emails, top secret information and all.

When you start looking at concrete cases, the wisdom of the Monday morning quarterbacks falls apart.  Don Jr. did perfectly well in the circumstances, and it's hard to see how some other arrangement could have worked at getting a look at the information.  You also get a clearer picture of what “collusion with Russia” would look like – a coordinated and knowing campaign of deception between the Russian government and the Trump campaign to make Hillary look worse than she already did - but falsely worse.

The case for “collusion with Russia” against the Trump campaign was threadbare and entirely lacking in concrete evidence well before the Don Jr. meeting was revealed.  The analysis of this episode ought to lead one to conclude that “collusion with Russia” never took place by the Trump campaign, given what it would have to look like and entail.

Hillary and the Democrats were not cheated of the presidency of the United States, which is what is meant by “collusion” in this case.  Hillary and the Democrats were rejected by the American people.

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Media Hounding Don Jr. - For What They Would Do!

Vincent J. Curtis

17 July 2017

The more I read about the media hounding of Donald J. Trump, Jr. over his meeting with a Russian lawyer, the more I believe that the brains of the media have been fried by spending too long in the Washington hothouse.

In researching this matter, the first thing I noticed is that it is damned hard to get a paper copy of Don, Jr.’s email chain from the media.  If you read the actual emails, you have to wonder what all the fuss is about.  Perhaps that is why the media doesn’t want the public to examine the matter for themselves, and so withhold the original source documents.   The emails show that Don Jr. was asked to meet with a source who allegedly possessed salacious and potentially criminal information on his father’s opponent, Hillary Clinton.  What reporter wouldn’t have taken the meeting?

No one has yet given a mature reading of the emails.  So let us give it a try…..

First, the timeline.  The email chain began on June 3^rd, 2016 and the episode concluded with the meeting on June 9^th.  The meeting was initiated by Rob Goldstone.  He told Don Jr. in the June 3^rd email that the “Crown Prosecutor of Russia” spoke to their mutual friend Emin’s father, Aras, about incriminating evidence on Hillary Clinton.  Goldstone inter alia said that this package of information was ‘part of the government’s support for Mr. Trump, helped along by Aras and Emin.’  In response to this, Don Jr. emailed back, ‘If it is what you say, I love it.’ i.e. in reference to the information.

This episode took place in early June, 2016, more than six weeks before the hacked DNC emails appeared on WikiLeaks.  These were the emails that showed collusion among the DNC to ensure that Hillary won the nomination over Bernie Sanders.  The Russian angle was initiated during the Democratic convention in order to distract attention from the authentic and politically explosive contents of those emails.  Whenever a journalist asked some Democrat poohbah about the contents of the DNC emails, the poohbah would not answer the question but instead refer to their alleged Russian origin. (Recall Debby Wasserman-Schultz was forced to resign over the contents of the emails, and Donna Brazile was exposed in them.)

Also ongoing at this time was the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server "matter."  That "matter" climaxed on July 5^th, 2016, with James Comey pardoning Hillary Clinton.  Everybody suspected the fix was in for Hillary, from statements directly from Barack Obama himself, to the tarmac meeting between Comey’s boss Loretta Lynch and Hillary’s husband Bill.  The emails hacked from John Podesta's gmail account and posted on WikiLeaks, also attributed to Russian efforts, was more than four months in the future.

So, six weeks at a minimum before the words “Russia” and “collusion” were on the lips of every media type and Democrat hack (but I repeat myself), Don Jr. was invited to receive some interesting information about Hillary over and above what was then publicly known.

Now, look at the supposedly incriminating lines quoted to establish collusion.  They come from Goldstein, who said that the package was ‘part of the [Russian] government’s support for Mr. Trump…’  On a point of mere grammar, Goldstein is obviously offering his sheer opinion, i.e. that the Russian government supported Mr. Trump.  That opinion was quite evidently offered to hype the meeting he wanted to arrange with Don Jr.  A moment's thought will bring you to the conclusion that Goldstein simply cannot know that the Russian government supported Mr. Trump.  Even if Goldstein’s KGB handler told him to say that, it doesn’t make it so.

Don Jr.’s allegedly incriminating response was, “If it is what you say, I love it.”  Grammatically, the antecedent to the pronoun 'it' is the information that is on offer.  What political operative, investigative journalist, or FBI agent wouldn’t want to have a look at a file like that?  I’d love to see it too!  And so would Peter Switzer, author of Clinton Cash.

Another tip-off to an authenticity problem is the reference to the ‘Crown Prosecutor of Russia.’ made by Goldstein.  Does such a position even exist?  Russian is a republic, not a Grand Duchy, and so there is no “crown” in Russia; and the ‘of Russia’ in the title would mean a position equivalent to the US Attorney-General.  Why would such a person approach the father of a friend of a friend?  How would he even know of the existence that chain of relationships, let alone know that that approach would reach the Trump campaign?

Now, assuming that such a file did exist with authentic information, would such a fact establish a favoritism of Putin for Trump?  Actually, it shows the opposite.  The dossier offered to Don Jr. was of money and favors and collusion between Hillary Clinton and the Russian government, and that the dossier was in the manner of a leak.  Thus, authentic proof of collusion with Russia by Hillary Clinton was being offered to Don Jr. as a leak.  Hence, the alleged favoritism of the Russian government towards Trump falls to the ground given that the information on offer is of benefits given by Russia to Hillary Clinton.  Goldstein’s opinion that the dossier is a sign of the favoritism of the Russian government for Trump Sr. is self-contradictory.  The leaked proof of Russian collusion with Hillary is a sign of Russian favoritism for Trump Sr.  Doesn’t make sense.

All this confusing background makes a meeting all the more intriguing.  Here is potentially salacious information from sources Don Jr. knew and trusted, and it’s no wonder he took the meeting.  What the hell have they got??

Regardless of who else invited themselves to the meeting with Don Jr., when presented with the dossier, Don Jr. asked straightaway if they had any proof or supporting documentation to back up the allegations in the file.  That was when the Russian delegation started talking about the Magnitsky Act and the adoption of Russian children.  When Don Jr.’s question about the authenticity of the dossier was not addressed, he immediately lost interest in the dossier, and the meeting ended.  The hyped dossier of Russian goods on Hillary Clinton proved to be a ruse for something else.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Now, if the media could take off their tin-foil hats for a minute, maybe some of the collusion hysteria would be allowed dissipate.  And yes, I mean you too Dr. Charles Krauthammer!

Given the origins of the meeting, it is no wonder that Don Jr took it.  Any number of other people would also – journalists, and FBI agents.  It is only in retrospect that Russian collusion can be inferred since this meeting took place well before "Russia" was on every lip, which might have served as a caution to Don Jr.

But when you are as desperate to show anything, as the media and the Democrats are at this stage, anything will do – even something as pathetic as this twenty minute meeting based on a ruse.

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This Media Hysteria Over Russia Debunked

Vincent J. Curtis

17 July 2017

The media hysteria over Russian “collusion” by the Trump campaign is proving so impervious to reason that even normally reliable Fox News is getting affected.  Presently, the hysteria is focussing on a meeting that took place between Donald Trump, Jr. and some people of Russian origin who purported to have potentially incriminating information on Hillary Clinton.

However, I want to focus here on a scandal that got forgotten.  The scandal is whether President Donald Trump accepted or did not accept Russian President Vladimir Putin’s statement that he did not interfere in the American election.  The meeting between Trump and Putin and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov took place at the G20 summit just concluded, and was legendary for its length.  The meeting was supposed to last half an hour, but lasted for two and a half hours.  After one hour, Melania Trump was sent in to break it up by the G20 organizers, and she was rebuffed.

The meeting was a productive one, and a cease-fire zone was established in Syria as a result of it.  In the course of the meeting Trump raised the matter of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.  Putin denied interfering, as he had previously.  But the question the media could not stop asking was whether Donald Trump accepted the denial or not.

Rex Tillerson at a news conference said that Trump did not accept the denial, but the media needed to know if Trump had said so to Putin’s face in the meeting.  Media persistence on the question led to the conclusion that Trump had not said so to Putin’s face, and therefore that he had in fact accepted Putin’s denial.  Of course, this would make a fool out of Tillerson and be evidence of collusion with Russia.

A mature negotiator might find it a little undiplomatic and counterproductive to tell a person discomfited by the facts, as Putin may have been, to his face that he is a liar and that you don’t believe him.  Doing so might get in the way of progress and cooperation in other areas where there is less disagreement.  The fact that Trump did not say to Putin’s face that he thought Putin was lying only tells me that Trump is a mature negotiator, not that he was Putin’s fool.  Likewise, there is little to gain diplomatically for Trump himself to come out of the meeting and proclaim that he thought Putin was lying about involvement in the American election.

Tillerson, the Secretary of State and an interlocutor in the meeting, came out and answered the question; and in diplomacy that is enough to get the point across.  Putin gets told, but not in a way that he loses face; nor does it imperil the personal diplomacy between Trump and Putin.

However, the media is full of 27 year-old-know-nothings, as Ben Rhodes observed; and that would include numerous 70 year olds with the maturity and metal capacity of 27 year old know-nothings.  They howled for a while about Trump being a fool and making fools of his staff.

Then on Friday, the New York Times, of all media outlets, spills the beans on the story.  The media horde were travelling on Air Force 1 with Trump to Paris for the celebration of the July 14 Bastille Day in France.  They were treated to an unexpected bantering press conference with Trump on the way over.  In the course of that conversation somebody asked Trump about his meeting with Putin and whether he pressed Putin over Russian interference in the election.

Trump recounted that Putin twice denied to him that Russian had meddled in the presidential election.  Trump concluded, “What do you do?  End up in a fistfight with somebody?”

“I said to him, ‘Were you involved in the meddling with the election?’  He said, ‘Absolutely not.  I was not involved.’ He was very strong on it.  I then said to him, in a totally different way, “Were you involved with the meddling?  He said, ‘I was not – absolutely not.’”

Mature people recognize that at that point there is no productive purpose in further pressing, or of accusing Putin of lying.  And yet the media hysteria over collusion will not let them see it; they needed Trump to create an unproductive diplomatic spat to prove something to them, and even then they wouldn’t have let Trump off the collusion hook.

If the media thought a little deeper about it, the whole conversation Trump recounted shows that there hadn’t been collusion at all.  Trump would not have had to ask if Putin was involved, because Trump would have known through the acts of collusion.  I can’t imagine that Trump and Putin would have put on a clever charade to fool Rex Tillerson about collusion during the election, which is what those exchanges in a private meeting would have amounted to.  With Trump’s leaky White House, any effort to privately arrange such a charade would be in the media before it ever happened.

The media are fixated on collusion, and any evidence to the contrary gets ignored.  Even the older media types lack the maturity to see how the facts don’t correspond to collusion.

Now, the media are hounding Don Jr., and their capacity to understand plain English is being impaired by hysteria.  But that is for another day.

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