Trey Gowdy Losing his Mind

Vincent J. Curtis

30 May 2018

Yesterday, on Martha MacCallum’s Fox News show, The Story, Congressman Trey Gowdy was interviewed on the meeting that took place last week between House Republicans and the Department of Justice.  The purpose of the meeting was to work out the delivery of documents what were subpoena’d by two committees he is on: House Intelligence and House Oversight, which he chairs.

In the course of the interview, Gowdy demonstrated a prosecutorial mindset that he seems unable to shake.  Asked about the Mueller investigation, Gowdy expressed his usual opinion that the Mueller investigation needs to be allowed to finish its work.  Then he said two remarkable things: that the Mueller probe was just doing what Trump had asked Comey to do, and he encouraged President Trump, if he had nothing to hide, to consent to be interviewed by Mueller.  Only a prosecutor would offer the legal advice to the accused to talk to investigators.  Every defense attorney on TV has said that it would be madness for Trump to speak to Mueller, would strongly advise against it, and have said that as a rule it is never a good thing for the accused to speak to investigators for fear of a perjury trap.  Gowdy claimed that Trump was not a subject or target of the investigation, though he admitted that that could change on the testimony of some witness.

Perhaps Adam Schiff hasn’t beaten Gowdy about the head hard enough yet, for Gowdy reveals a belief in the good faith of Mueller that plenty of evidence proves he doesn’t deserve.

Let’s start with the assertion that Mueller is simply doing what Trump asked Comey to do.  When Trump said something like that to Comey, it was early in February, 2017.  Trump did not then know that the FBI and CIA had been running MI6 agents at his campaign since April, 2016.  He did not then know that the FBI tried to insert several spies or informants into his campaign.  He did not then know that the FBI and Rod Rosenstein were then and for six months afterwards running a FISA wiretap on Carter Page.  He did not then know that he had been “wiretapped” by the Obama administration in the time of the transition.  He was not then aware that the Steele dossier had been bought and paid for by the Hillary campaign.  In other words, Trump took Comey in good faith and was not then aware of all the bad faith surveillance and insinuation that had taken place behind the scenes from April 2016 through the transition period and was continuing at that very moment, the effort to render Trump’s presidency illegitimate on the charge that he won the office as a result of Russian collusion or aid of some sort.

The evidence of Mueller’s bad faith investigation starts with the hiring of “13 Angry Democrats”, as Trump calls them.  Attorneys who have all demonstrated loyalty to the Democrat party and who have long histories of prosecutorial abuse.  The pre-dawn raid on Paul Manafort when he was a cooperating witness, and the raid on the office of Trump’s private attorney Michael Cohen, and the persecution of many people around Trump all combine to show a desire to destroy everyone around Trump on matters unrelated to “Russia.”

Mueller has demonstrated no interest in the origin of the Steele dossier, and has instead relied upon it as the basis for his enquiry.  The alleged intention that he was to discover and report on Russian interference in the 2016 election falls to the ground in the face of what is already known: that it was so small and insignificant that it couldn’t possibly have affected the outcome of the election, and the “not have changed the outcome” has been the accepted view of the intelligence community from the beginning.

The encouragement by Gowdy for Trump to submit to be interviewed by Mueller shows how confined Gowdy’s view of the law is.  In the first place, for Trump to do so establishes a constitutional problem that may bedevil future presidencies.  The special council is a creature of the Justice Department, which in turn exercises the authority of the president.  Thus we would have a precedent of a subordinate official being able to compel the president to submit to his interrogation – on a matter in which the president is not a fact witness or a suspect.

The questions the Mueller reportedly wants to ask Trump have nothing to do with facts or with Russian collusion.  His questions revolve around obstruction of justice – obstructing of the FBI investigation into Lt-General Michael Flynn, and the firing of James Comey.  In both cases, Trump has a perfect right to do either of these things because of his powers under Article II of the constitution.  Mueller wants to lay the case that Trump obstructed justice in the exercise of this constitutional powers, and that amounts to another constitutional crisis.  Even if this crisis gets resolved by the Supreme Court in Trump’s favor, that won’t happen until well after the 2018 mid-term elections.  Aside from that, the interview is a painfully obvious perjury trap, which Mueller has used repeatedly, throughout the investigation, and throughout his career.

Trey Gowdy has spent too much time as a prosecutor.  He implicitly believes in the good faith intentions of Robert Mueller in spite of all the contrary evidence.  It doesn’t enter his head that Mueller is a swamp creature par excellence that he is severely conflicted himself, that his prosecutorial team is conflicted, Gowdy can’t see the demonstrations of fascist thuggery exhibited by the investigation as in the case of Manafort and Cohen, Mueller’s utter failure to this point to investigate the origins of the Steele dossier and of the spying on the Trump campaign by the Obama administration, all the things that point to bad faith in the prosecutor.  Gowdy can’t see it.

Either Trey Gowdy has lost his legal mind, or he must be the worst defense attorney in Washington, D.C.

How the Mueller Investigation Gets Eaten Alive

Vincent J. Curtis

25 May 2018

Let me begin with a couple of stipulations:

1)      The Muller investigation is merely the continuation of the effort to smear Donald Trump with “Russian Collusion” that begin as early as March, 2016.

2)      If the American people choose to elect the Manchurian Candidate as President of the United States, it is not the place of the intelligence agencies to try to change the public’s mind, or to overturn by some means the decision made in accordance with the processes of the United States constitution.

Let me continue with the story of how the heads of the Obama intelligence agencies enabled CNN to publicize the so-called Steele dossier in early January, 2017.  All the news agencies were aware of the Steele dossier before the election.  Responsibly, none of them reported on it because they could not independently verify any of its contents.  But early in 2017, anti-Trump CNN were itching to publicize it.  They needed a news “hook” in order to justify reporting on the dossier.  Organized by John Brennan, the hook was created by having FBI Director James Comey “brief” Trump on some of its contents after a larger briefing on intelligence matters by CIA Director John Brennan, DNI James Clapper, and Comey.

The briefing by Comey was not full, for it only consisted of the “golden showers” allegation, and did not include the fact that the dossier was bought and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign.  After the briefing, Comey nodded to Clapper who nodded to CNN, who ran the story that “Trump had been briefed” on the dossier, which included the following spectacular allegations.  Etc.  That’s how the heads of Obama’s intelligence agencies, working together, enabled Trump to be smeared with the Steele dossier.  And since Trump took pains to ensure that no one – not even his long time confidential secretary - knew that he was going to get an intelligence briefing from CIA, DNI, and FBI that day, Trump knew that at least one of them had leaked to CNN.  Within weeks, James Clapper got hired by CNN to be a contributor.

The monitoring of Donald Trump by the Obama administration began in March, 2016.  The foreign policy establishment of the Republican party had shunned Trump publicly, and the Washington Post editorial board asked Trump in a March 21^st interview from whom he was getting foreign policy advice?  Trump provided them with a list, which included the names Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.  Page was known to the FBI as someone who had helped the FBI entrap a Russian spy several years earlier.  Page, however, was known to be a pro-Russia sympathizer, and Comey and Andrew McCabe immediately briefed Attorney-General Loretta Lynch on the pair.  Not long afterwards, Comey briefed the principals committee of the National Security Council, which consists of the president, the Secretaries of State, Defense, Treasury, Homeland Security, the A-G, Director of CIA, Whitehouse Chief of Staff, the UN Ambassador, the National Security Advisor, and others.  Out of this, somehow, CIA Director John Brennan appointed himself the head of a Trump destabilization task force.

Through CIA contacts with Britain’s MI6, arrangements were made for Page and Papadopoulos to be engaged with agents-provocateurs, in hopes that they would say or do something that might discredit the Trump campaign.

Professor Joseph Mifsud was a professor at the University of Stirling, Scotland, (among other postings) and is connected to Britain’s MI6.  It so happened that Mifsud met with young George Papadopoulos in Italy on March 14, 2016.  In April, Mifsud met with Papadopoulos again and had him accept a posting as head of the “London Centre of International Law Practice,” which required no work.  Mifsud planted with Papadopoulos the idea that the Russians had copies of Hillary Clinton’s emails.  Thus we see young Papadopoulos being set up with an exalted title and the alleged intelligence that the Russians had Hillary`s emails.

On May 10, 2016, Papadopoulos accepted an invitation to meet with Alexander Downer, a senior Australian diplomat, and the man responsible for having the Australian government donate $25 million to the Clinton Foundation.  It happens that Mr. Downer knows quite a few former MI6 types through his association with an advisory board to Hakluyt.  After getting Mr. Papadopoulos drunk in a London bar, Downer got him to spit up the “intelligence” about Russia having Hillary’s emails.  Dutifully, Downer passed on to Australian intelligence agencies that this Trump campaign advisor seemed to have inside information on Russian dirt on Hillary.

Next to be worked on was Carter Page.  Page was invited to attend a conference at Cambridge University – yes, in the UK- called “2016’s Race to Change the World.”  At the conference besides Page, were Christopher Steele (of dossier fame, formerly of MI6 and FBI informant), Stefan Halper a man with deep connects to both CIA and MI6, and Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, and a strong Hillary supporter.  Page reported that Albright was pushing him to get into the public debates, though he repeatedly declined.  He was also provoked and stroked by Halper at the conference.  Had Page said something foolish, pro-Russian, or ambiguous publicly at the conference, what he said could be reported in the media as a foolish-sounding statement of an important Trump advisor – in the presence of Albright and all the other intelligence big-shots who peopled the conference.

It was from this conference that Carter Page flew to Moscow to attend the famous conference at which he actually spoke.  Oddly, what Page said at that conference has not been widely reported since it served no useful purpose to the smear-Trump campaign, but his attendance at that conference provided a hook for Christopher Steele to explain all the Russian contacts in his dossier.  It was the Steele dossier, and Page’s well-known trip to the Moscow conference, that provided the hook for the FISA warrant on Page, and with it a back-door access to the inner workings of the Trump campaign.

Meanwhile, the release on WikiLeaks of the DNC emails that showed the DNC to be in the tank for Hillary seemed close enough to Russia’s emails of Hillary’s that Australian intelligence got around to informing the FBI of George Papadopoulos.  In order to divert attention from the contents of the DNC emails, Hillary and the DNC would immediately divert attention to alleged Russian hacking – of the type Trump allegedly invited Russia to do.  (Anyone who listens to Trump joke about Russia’s possession of Hillary’s missing emails would understand what Trump was laughing at the NSA, and the FBI.)  The FBI did not ask, and the DNC did not offer, their server for forensic analysis by the FBI to determine whether, in fact, the server was hacked by Russia or not.

Russian hacking was again said to be the source of the WikiLeaks dump of campaign chair John Podesta’s emails that proved critically embarrassing to Hillary’s campaign.  It was further alleged, utterly without evidence, that this Russian hacking was for the benefit of Donald Trump.  Allegation piled on allegation that Trump and Russia were in cahoots to defeat Hillary.  Trump’s cause was not helped by the fact that he wanted better diplomatic relations with Russia, and eschewed rising to Democrat bait and criticizing Vladimir Putin at their behest.

The campaign marched on to its surprising climax on November 8, 2016, when Trump defeated Hillary for president.  During the campaign, National Security Advisor Susan Rice and UN Ambassador Samantha Power were furiously unmasking NSA intercepts in the hopes of finding the Russian collusion or something otherwise embarrassing they had been led to believe existed.

After Trump won, the Obama administration and the intelligence agencies continued intense surveillance of the incoming Trump administration.in the hopes of finding something incriminating.  This couldn’t be done directly, and so every one in contact with the Trump team, such as Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, was wiretapped.  It was this surveillance that led to the downfall of Lt-Gen Michael Flynn on account of his misremembering the details of a conversation he had had with Kislyak, the contents of which had been feloniously leaked to the Washington Post.  Flynn was harassed at this time by Obama holdover Sally Yates who hoped to ensnare Flynn in some violation of the Logan Act.

Obama created a diplomatic incident with Russia with less than four weeks to go in his administration.  He did so without consulting Trump on the arrogant ground that “there’s only one president at a time.”  Flynn was left to manage this crisis on behalf of the Trump team, and he asked Kislyak for Russia not to over-react to Obama’s provocation.  Trump would be president soon and would review the matter.  Russia complied, and Obama’s cherished incident fizzled.  Yates was going to take revenge on Flynn for that.

Soon after taking office Trump complained that he had been wiretapped by the Obama administration.  Everybody, including those in the intelligence community, laughed at the allegation, and said that it was further proof of Trump’s unfitness for office.  (Nobody’s laughing nowadays.)  Followers of Fox News may recall that about this time Fox’s senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano was suspended by Fox for saying that it was possible for the Obama administration to surveil Trump indirectly since Britain’s communications intelligence agency GCHQ had direct access to the NSA database.  GCHQ could do the analysis of the NSA intercepts and pass on its findings to the administration without a paper trail in America.  GCHQ strongly denied such an arrangement and demanded an apology.

Nevertheless, Robert Hannigan, the head of GCHQ, passed material on to – not Admiral

Mike Rogers, his opposite number – but to John Brennan in the summer of 2016.  (Brennan also briefed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in July, 2016, on the contents of the Steele dossier, and Reid demanded an investigation.)  Hannigan retired as head of GCHQ three days after Trump’s inauguration, and Napolitano was restored as a Fox News contributor less than two weeks after being suspended.

All the surveillance of Trump and his campaign turned up nothing, and all James Comey had to go on was the Steele dossier.  Perhaps the echo chamber effect told on him, for he desperately wanted to believe that at least some of the dossier was true.  He continued to insinuate in public that Trump was a suspect in a counter-intelligence investigation – never mind the decision of the American people to make him president– though privately he said that Trump was not a suspect.  Trump, who was too busy campaigning to notice, gave Comey the okay to investigate his “satellites” who might have done something wrong when he was busy with other things.  He did ask Comey to go easy on Flynn, as Flynn was a loyal man who was only doing what Trump wanted him to do.  What is noteworthy is that the Obama administration declined to give Trump or his campaign a “heads-up” briefing that the Russians may be trying to infiltrate his campaign.

When it became clear to Trump that Comey was deliberately trying to undermine his administration by continuing this false Russian narrative, he fired him.  That didn’t help, as Rod Rosenstein hired Comey’s great and good friend Robert Mueller to continue the Russia investigation as a special council, and with an apparently unlimited and secret mandate.  Mueller is the swamp creature par excellence, and his loyalty isn’t to the truth but to the ideal that the target must be destroyed.  That the target represents everything official Washington hates is all the more reason for his destroying this target.

So far, the Mueller investigation has turned up nothing.  It has obtained guilty pleas for lying to the FBI from George Papadopoulos, Lt-Gen Flynn, and several indictments against Paul Manafort for events that took place in 2006.  However, he has found nothing showing coordination between Russian state actors and the Trump campaign that would contribute to the embarrassment of Hillary Clinton.  The only Russian connection in evidence is the collection from Russian sources of third-hand hearsay – disinformation – that comprise the Steele dossier.  The Hillary campaign paid for the preparation of the Steele dossier, and Clinton acolytes Sid Blumenthal and Cory Shearer have some role in either the preparation of the Steele dossier, or of a second dossier.

The upshot is that Mueller hasn’t found anything and won’t until he starts to look at the fingerprints on the Steele dossier and how it came to pass that a FISA warrant was obtained against Carter Page.

Based on the questions that Mueller would like to ask Trump, Muller is focussing his destruction efforts on obstruction of justice – that being Trump’s asking Comey to go easy on Flynn, and the firing of Comey itself.  Never mind the unimpeachable arguments that Trump has about his powers under Article II of the constitution, Rod Rosenstein provided Trump with justification for firing Comey and, besides the obvious multiple and overlapping conflicts of interests here, Rosenstein’s document is all one needs to establish reasonable doubt, Mr. Special Prosecutor.  None of this seems to matter to Mueller, who is bent on destroying the target.  (Never mind the obstruction of justice inherent in Barack Obama’s declaration of Hillary’s innocence of crime in March, 2016!)

Now that the effort to enmesh the Trump campaign in some nefarious effort by Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton is becoming known, the fact that the Mueller investigation is merely another growth of the same poisoned tree may begin to overtake his investigation.  So long as one ignores all the stuff that passed before Mueller was appointed, his investigation seems defensible.  But once one sees that his investigation is merely a continuation of the previous efforts to destroy first the Trump campaign and then the Trump presidency, the justification for continuing starts to become more pro-forma - of letting the guy finish his job.

By the time Mueller finds the courage to demand that Trump appear before a grand jury to answer for some crime that Mueller has invented out of thin air (c.f “Fraud against the United States”) popular opinion may turn irreversibly against this last gasp of the Obama administration and the Hillary campaign.  If Mueller is embarrassed in court, as by not being ready to bring the case against certain Russian companies, or to have parts of the Manafort case invalidated by an overly broad mandate or unconstitutional appointment, his investigation may be forced to come to an inconclusive close.

The Muller investigation is the illegitimate continuation of a campaign ruse perpetrated by the Hillary campaign and aided and abetted by the Obama administration.  Members of the National Security Council, John Brennan, and James Comey acting somewhat in concert, but not with complete knowledge of what each other was up to, created a hall of mirrors, an echo chamber, in which they convinced themselves of Trump’s guilt of something, and never mind the choice of the American people, his presidency must be brought down.  The Democratic party and never-Trumpers in the Republican party had interests in thwarting the will of the people, and their contempt for the constitution and for their thirst to hold on to power, they permitted this attempt on the Trump presidency to continue.

Hopefully soon it will end, and the perpetrators of this fraud on the American electorate will face the justice they richly deserve.

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North Korea: It doesn’t end well.

Vincent J. Curtis

23 May 2018

Regardless of whether President Trump and Kim Jung Un of North Korea meet in Singapore, or not, no turn of events ends up well for the Kim regime.

The meeting in Singapore will show whether or not Kim is strong enough in his own country to leave it for more than a day.  It is quite possible that with Kim away in Singapore for a few days a bloodless coup will be launched against him.  This fear of coup may be one reason why President Trump has publicly offered to guarantee Kim’s safety.

But even if the Singapore meeting is successful, and Kim denuclearizes, his regime is still not safe.

The purpose of the Democratic Republic of North Korea is the worship of the Kim dynasty.  Kim is the political center of gravity of North Korea.  If he were deposed in a coup, North Korea very quickly would fall apart.  It would have no purpose.  The successor regime would have no legitimacy.  There will be no reason for the continued repression of the North Korean people.  North Korea would dissolve in civil war, and China would have to step in to manage the situation.

But if no coup takes place, and Kim denuclearizes North Korea without loss of face domestically, the return is for the United States, Japan, and South Korea to make the North economically prosperous.  Such an outcome would not only be disastrous for the Kim regime, it would also be impossible to sustain.  The Kim regime is a kleptocratic, murderous tyranny.  It steals what it needs, and kills those who object.  Nobody is going to take risks and engage in free enterprise when the slightest accumulation of wealth would be commandeered by the regime.  The ‘animal spirits’ of which economist John Maynard Keynes spoke would be immediately crushed by the regime, if they ever showed themselves.

The illegitimacy of the Kim regime also would be made obvious if North Korea suddenly did became prosperous as a result of American and South Korean aid.  If the North Korean people became aware of the economic and cultural success of South Korea, the question will arise: why cannot we be like them?  They are our cousins and they have done so much better than ourselves, who are starving and deprived!  For its own preservation, the Kim regime cannot allow the people of the North to become aware of the wealth and success of the South.

Likewise, a peaceful merger of North and South Korea into one country, as occurred between East and West Germany, would also be fatal to the Kim regime.  The prosperous and pluralistic South would not tolerate for an instant the pretentions of a communist regime to rule the country.

If Kim turns on his heels and spurns negotiations with Trump, the outcome will still be eventually fatal to his regime.  The campaign of maximum pressure against North Korea will continue, and may even worsen, and what little economic life is left in the North will be crushed out of it.  Kim and the people around him are in it for themselves.  For Kim, it is a matter of life or death.  For those around him, it is what they can get out of it for themselves: prestige, wealth, creature comforts in the midst of utter deprivation.  Those around Kim live on the lip of the crater of an active volcano, and they serve Kim at the risk of a capricious death for what they can get out of it for themselves.  If Kim cannot provide them with what they want on account of the sanctions, then what is the use of risking life and limb for serving Kim when there is nothing in it?  They have to ask themselves.

To tamp down the risk of a coup, Kim will have to engage in more capricious oppression against those closest to him.  He dare not risk losing face, and so he will have to resume nuclear and missile testing, and get all boastful and threatening about it.  It would be easy at this point for Trump to goad Kim into doing something rash, like firing missiles in the direction of Japan or at Guam.

A rash move by Kim is all the pretext necessary for the United States to destroy the Kim regime by military means.  I would not rule out the use of three or four nuclear weapons in order to make quick work of it.  A prolonged conflict would drag in China and Russia.  I believe Trump has already hardened his heart to this, which is why he would be happy to meet with Kim, or not.

With Kim dead, and his nuclear and missile facilities all smoking ruins, the North Korean generals who are left would lack the political legitimacy, a reason, and even the means to resist the complete collapse of North Korea.  With Kim gone, and with no weapons, what is the point?  Every man for himself!

What would be left is for China, the United States, South Korea, and Japan to manage the integration of North and South Korea into one country that was not a threat to either China or Japan.  Korea, a genuine and prosperous democracy sharing a border with China, cannot undermine the legitimacy of the communist party in Beijing.  The fear of this is why China props up North Korea.  Likewise, Korea cannot become a staging area for United States forces to mass against China.  These are the ticklish problems that will have to be worked out after North Korea collapses with the fall of the Kim regime.

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Vincent J. Curtis is a free-lance writer interested in military affairs.

Stop the Gun-banning Madness!

Vincent J. Curtis

9 May 2018

RE: Under Pressure: Trudeau defers to police on gun restrictions

The totalitarian impulse and the splendid ignorance of the gun-banners are wonders to behold.  The gun banners want Canada's parliament to (a) ban guns, and (b) remove political decision making and transfer it to the police.  Under Trudeau’s gun ban bill, cabinet authority to overrule Mountie determinations will be removed.

There is a civics lesson here.  In what other field is the authority of the cabinet said to be “repealed?”  Foreign policy?  Justice?  National Defence?  The environment?  In fact it lies nowhere else, and it can’t even in the gun banning case.  Responsibility may be delegated, but authority cannot be.  The Mounties may be given the task, but the authority they exercise is parliament’s, and the cabinet is parliament’s steering committee.  It may appear that the Mounties are free of political decision making, but the minister responsible for the RCMP has powers that can make the Mounties change their minds.

So why pretend, except as a political fig-leaf?  There are probably several hundred thousand restricted rifles in Canada.  Is the government going to stand idle if some pompous police officer decides that these rifles should be banned, confiscated and their owners deemed felons if they fail to comply?

To illustrate how political and how stupid the gun laws presently are, the rifle that Marc Lepine used remains unrestricted, but the AR-15 is restricted.  The reason for that anomaly is that the aboriginals up north use the Lepine rifle (i.e. a Ruger Mini-14) for hunting seals.  Aboriginals are not going to pay any attention to federal gun laws.  Another example of absurdity: the M1A is unrestricted, but the FN C1 is prohibited.

Gun banning does not reduce violent crime.  Gun banning creates more crime than it prevents.  Mr. Trudeau would be much better off shelving his gun ban as unwise, just as he has discovered the unwisdom in so many other things he promised.

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Oddly, the Spectator saw fit to publish an abbreviated version of this article.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/guns-rcmp-licence-prohibited-1.4664030

The attached link will add further confirmation to my argument concerning pompous police and the fact that gun laws create more crime than they prevent.

V-E Day

Vincent J. Curtis

8 May 2018


It would be wrong of me to fail to notice that is is V-E Day. This day in 1945, Winston S. Churchill announced to the world the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany.

He concluded his remarks with three statement you probably would never hear uttered today:

"Advance Britannia!  Long life the cause of freedom!  God Save the King!"

A wonderfully stirring speech, even today.

More Absurd Aboriginal Outrage

Vincent J. Curtis

8 May 2018

RE: OMA decision about privilege and racism

The demand by aboriginals for ritualistic denunciation and penance for colonization has gotten absurd.  The Ontario Medical Association is not that kind of political organization, and yet it is castigated by an aboriginal member, Dr. Nel Wieman, for declining to open a council meeting with such a statement.

India was subjected to British colonization as Canada was, and the president of the OMA appears to be of East Indian extraction.  So we have a Canadian aboriginal demanding that an East Indian apologize for British colonization!

The OMA Governing Council voted 105 - 65 against opening with the statement demanded.  And the OMA president is out there apologizing for the outcome of a democratic vote.  Apparently, if the minority acts offended enough, the majority is expected to reverse itself.  But what happens when that new minority acts offended enough itself - an infinite regress?

What is demanded is nothing less than that the OMA council be mau-maued into reversing its original decision, and then, in Chinese Red Guards fashion, have the medical doctors be subjected to “cultural competency training.”  In addition, ‘cultural safety and humility training be made mandatory for eligibility for all future council members.’

The OMA will go out of business if it caves to these demands.  In the long run the OMA would be better off if simply expelled members like Dr. Nel Wieman and carried on with its normal business undisturbed by irrelevant politics.

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De-Normalizing Granic Allen, PC Mississauga-Centre

Vincent J. Curtis

8 May 2018

Granic Allen is a social conservative who ran for the Ontario Provincial PC leadership earlier this spring.  When she was knocked out of the running, she moved to Doug Ford, who won the contest.  She was nominated as the PC candidate for Mississauga Centre, and was removed by Ford earlier this week because she announced her disgust that the Ontario sex education curriculum allegedly taught anal sex in the second grade.

On the same editorial page was the column of Dr. Latham Hunter, a reliable progressive.  She explained why she home schooled her children and expressed how frustrating it was that she could not protect them as she hoped. 

RE: Ford is a pragmatist first

RE: Porn is brain-training a generation of boys

The Spectator expressed its editorial pleasure that Ontario PC leader Doug Ford removed Granic Allen as the party’s candidate for Mississauga-Centre.  Allen is vocally anti-progressive, and the straw the broke the camel’s back was Allen’s claim that anal sex is taught in grade 2.  In fact, that matter is raised in grade 7 (pg 196 Health and Physical Education 2015-revised).

What is taught in grade 2 is gender identity theory and the concept of “birth assigned sex.”

Allen’s formal de-normalization came about from an error on a technical point, and the Spectator was pleased.

However, Dr. Latham Hunter in the very same editorial section, expressed views not dissimilar to those held by Granic Allen. (Porn is brain-training a generation of boys.).  Dr. Hunter explains that one of the reasons she home-schools her children is to prevent their exposure to corrupting influences in Ontario public schools, such as the discovery of pornography.

Is the Spectator going to be consistent and de-normalize Dr. Hunter and banish her column from its pages?  Or is Hunter okay because she is generally progressive in view and her crank opinions are ineffective, whereas Allen’s are anti-progressive and dangerously effective?

Is there significance to the fact that women and mothers want to protect their children from corrupting influences, and regard non-reproductive sexual practices as wrong?  I think there is something deep inside mothers that tell them that free sex is wrong., and we should listen to them.  To hell with progressivist ideas.

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The Avro Arrow Today

Vincent J. Curtis

3 May 2018

The problem of the timely delivery of an operational F-35 arose seven years ago.  The Conservative government of Stephen Harper, with Defence Minister Peter MacKay, wanted to sole-source a purchase of F-35s from Lockheed-Martin, but could not close the deal because an operational aircraft simply could not be delivered.  Meanwhile, the operational end of the current fleet of CF-18s was getting closer.

The Harper government was offered a proposal that would see the redevelopment the CF-105 Avro Arrow as an alternative to the purchase of an aircraft that may never be delivered because of decisions made by the U.S. congress.  This offer was not taken seriously by the government, and dismissed with the argument that the Arrow was “1950’s technology.”  At the election of 2015, the Trudeau Liberals promised never to buy the F-35, if it ever became available, and would instead hold a competition to replace the aging CF-18s.

Time passed, and the Liberal government just this year got around to starting that competition.  The first new replacements for the CF-18s are not expected to be delivered until 2025, and to fill the operational gap the government resorted to purchasing aging F-18s from Australia.

If Canada had a fleet of fighter aircraft that could reach 70,000 feet altitude in level flight at a speed of Mach 2.3, a wing-loading of under 50 lbs/sq. ft., thrust-to-weight ratio of 1, and had a long combat radius, nobody would be laughing.  Yet, that was the design performance of the Avro Arrow.  The Orenda Iroquois engines, those developed especially for the Arrow, were successfully wind-tunnel tested at that altitude and speed, and the big Arrow carried a lot of internal fuel.  In speed, range, and altitude, that aircraft would outperform any modern fighter, including the F-22 Raptor.  It could intercept a U-2 spy plane at altitude, and any bomber aircraft in the world, then or now, except perhaps the exceptional XB-70.

Where fighter technology has developed since the 1950s is in avionics, in turning capability, and more recently, stealth. The F-15 Eagle and the F-16 Fighting Falcon pioneered 9 g turning capability, and the sub-sonic F-117 Nighthawk pioneered stealth.  The F-22 incorporated these developments into one aircraft, and the F-35 is supposed to be the next generation of avionics.

The characteristic that distinguishes one aircraft from another is its airframe.  Not its engines, not its avionics, as both of these can be changed or improved without anyone saying it was a different aircraft.  A Boeing 747 is still a 747 regardless of whether its engines come from Rolls-Royce, Pratt & Whitney, or GE.  If avionics are changed, or its body stretched, then we might say it is a Mark II, a Block 15, or a J-model of that aircraft, not that it is a different aircraft.  Hence, it is disingenuous to dismiss out of hand the Arrow as “1950s technology.”

If Bombardier were commissioned to make the Arrow airframe, and that airframe were powered by the same Pratt & Whitney engines that drive the F-22 Raptor, and an appropriate avionics and missile package were purchased from Lockheed-Martin or Boeing, then suddenly this aircraft would be a very modern fighter-interceptor.  It would be lacking in stealth, like the F-15.  The airframe may have to be strengthened to handle high-g turns, if dogfighting were one of its expected missions.  But it would be as much a modern platform as the F-35 is, except better in terms of flying performance.  A modern improvement of the Arrow package could be the incorporation of vectored thrust.

If the F-35 is protected from dogfighting on account of its stealth, the Arrow would be protected on account of its speed and altitude.  “Look-down, shoot-down” radars at an altitude of 70,000 ft. would detect “stealthy” aircraft flying far below, and the outcome of that battle would depend upon who had the superior situational awareness and missile performance.

As an Australian politician observed, the F-35 should be called the A-35, since it is more designed for ground attack than fighting the air superiority battle.  Risking an aircraft that costs $200 million to fire multi-million dollar missiles at targets that cost but a few thousand dollars is sensible to a country that has the vast economic resources of the United States.  But to a country like Canada, it doesn’t.  It would make much more economic sense for a country like Canada to use a cheaper aircraft and cheaper technology for that role, like, say, the A-10 Warthog with its 30 mm Gatling gun, or a Super-Tucano.

We are confronted with the fundamental absurdity of the F-35.  A multi-role aircraft is not stellar at any one thing, and you bear the cost of multi-role all the time, even when you executing just one of them.  The F-35 is like a Lamborghini SUV: are you really going to get it muddy?  Are you going to risk busting an axle rooting around in the back country with one?

An Arrow built today is not “1950’s technology.”  It would be highly capable of performing the primary and traditional missions of the RCAF: high altitude interception and winning the air superiority battle.  If the government is prepared to spend $16 billion to acquire a new fighter seven years from now and develop the Canadian aircraft industry at the same time, it ought to brook the professional conservativism of the RCAF brass and examine seriously the proposal of redeveloping Canada’s most famous still-can-do.

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