Canada Warming Twice as Fast?

Vincent J. Curtis

30 Dec 2019


Canada’s new Minister of Climate Change, Jonathan Wilkinson, recently claimed that Canada was warming at twice the rate as the rest of the world.  His predecessor, Catherine McKenna, said the same thing.  They were conveying an opinion expressed in a Ministerial document entitled, “Canada’s Changing Climate Report.”

There it is in Section 4.2, headed ‘Temperature:’ “It is virtually certain that Canada’s climate has warmed and that it will warm further in the future.  Both the observed and projected increases in mean temperature in Canada are about twice the corresponding increase in the global mean temperature regardless of emission scenario.”  It goes on, “It is likely that half of the observed warming in Canada is due to the influence of human activities.”

(Satellite measurements show no global warming since 1998 – the “pause.”)

On that basis, Canadians are to be guilt-tripped into accepting whatever climate change prescriptions the Trudeau Liberals cook up.

Some people can be educated into stupidity.  Good evidence of this than that no one has challenged the glaring flaws in the statements and in the conclusion, that we have to take our medicine.

The obvious, yet unasked, questions about Canada’s warming at twice the rate of the world mean are - why?  How?  Canada shares its atmosphere with the rest of the world.  There isn’t a twenty mile high wall around Canada.  There is no more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere above Canada than anywhere else.  If CO2 is the climate control knob the climate alarmists say it is, then the cause of Canada’s warming at twice the rate as world as a whole cannot be CO2.  Why does this other cause only operate in Canada?

It seems impossible that Canada’s projected temperatures could long rise at twice the world rate.  Wind blows Canadian air south across the border, and winds carry American air north to Canada.  Given wind patterns, how could a thermal anomaly over Canada persist?  And get worse year after year?

Two other troubling statements are: ‘It is virtually certain that…’ and ‘…regardless of emission scenario.’  If Canada is going to warm at twice the world’s rate ‘regardless of emission scenario,’ then nothing Canada or the world does concerning CO2 emission reduction is going to change the outcome.  What, then, is the point of doing anything if ‘regardless of emission scenario’ Canada is screwed? And why two unrelated causes act synchronously to produce double the world rate regardless of emission scenario goes unexplained.

The remark, ‘It is virtually certain that…” does not begin a scientific statement; it begins an opinion.  Opinions have the property that they can be right or wrong.  Beginning an opinion with the assertion, ‘it is virtually certain’ is intended to impart the prejudice that the opinion is right.  Nevertheless, it’s guessing.


Then the report undermines its political thrust, “It is likely that half the observed warming is due to the influence of human activities.”  Half?  Only half?  Here again, guesses and opinion are offered in place of fact.  If CO2 is the climate control knob, natural variation accounts for the other half of the observed warming? 

In fact, no research has been funded that explores the question of the proportion of warming due to natural variation to CO2 induced increase.  Because it would embarrass policy makers to admit that maybe other factors are at play in global warming.  We have nothing but blind guesses.

That these statements from the Climate Change Ministry go unchallenged in the media, in academia, and in political circles is a condemnation of all three.  Progressivism loves the theme of evil western society, and students in the soft disciplines like journalism and the “ studies” courses, beginning in the 1970s, got indoctrinated in neo-Marxism all though school..  A whole generation doesn’t know any better.  Academia is bought – it needs federal money to survive.  And so we are at the mercy of those who would destroy western economies, incrementally, for the sake of the godless cause of “progress.”
-30-

Vincent J. Curtis is a retired research scientist and occasion free-lance writer.

Trudeau: a James II or a William III?

Vincent J. Curtis

22 Dec 2019

The new Minister of Public Safety, Bill Blair, thinks he can get Toronto’s criminal gunmen to give up their firearms through an Order in Council.  Blair will announce soon an OIC that purports to ban guns.  A colour of law will be thrown over this Ministerial action by combining it with a “buy-back” program.  Depriving law-abiding gun owners across Canada of their lawful property Blair thinks will cause criminal gunmen in Toronto to give up their unlawful guns. 

A decadent judiciary might let this violation of rights pass without murmur.

Another occasion when an OIC purported to ban privately owned arms was during the reign of King James II of England.  James’s reign was short, lasting only from 1685 to 1688.  James was a Catholic and a Stuart.  England was protestant and had beheaded James’s father, Charles I, for political conduct characteristic of the Stuarts.

James sought to impose what was known as “popery” upon England, and the resistance to his measures caused James to deprive his protestant subjects of the right to keep and bear arms.  Ultimately, James fled England, and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 brought William and Mary to the throne.  William signed into law the Bill of Rights of 1689, which named and banned the worst excesses of James’s rule.  Vindicating and asserting ancient rights and liberties, the Bill included “that the subjects which are Protestant may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.”

The curious phrasing of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution (The Right of the People...shall not be infringed) led Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to research the origin of the Amendment. This research was published as the majority opinion in the Heller case of 2010.  Scalia concluded that the right to keep and bear arms pre-existed the Constitution, and was found already in Common Law in America, inherited from England as a result of the Bill of Rights of 1689.

Canada, like the United States, is an inheritor of English Common Law, and, absent contrary scholarship, that right to keep and bear arms according to law also exists in Canada.  Scalia argued that the ‘according to law’ provision meant that the right is subject to regulation, but neither law nor regulation can be used to extinguish that right.

King William III signed the Bill of Rights without reluctance.  He required no loyalty tests of the nobility of England.  He was not afraid of an armed citizenry because he had no thought to misrule his kingdom.

He also understood that the common law right to self-defence was meaningless if a person were denied the means of self-defence.

The issues of right raised by gun-control were resolved in common law over three hundred and forty years ago.  So long ago, in fact, that it required the scholarship of the renowned Justice Scalia to rediscover them.  How Canada’s judiciary reacts when these facts are placed before it after the OIC is challenged in court will be an interesting test of its intellectual decadence.

Blair’s predecessor as Minister of Public Safety, Ralph Goodale, was defeated in the last election after serving twenty-six years.  He too threatened a gun confiscation, and paid the price for it.  Apparently, Goodale’s political corpse taught Trudeau nothing.

The Firearms Act of 1995 was passed in response to the murders at École Polytechnique.  The law created a new regime of prohibiting, restricting, licensing, and registering that did nothing except expose the ignorance of guns of the law-makers.  The Act was supposed to be the last word on gun control, and therefore registration of firearms by private citizens would never be used for a general confiscation.  That would be a betrayal of the trust required to begin the registry.

We’ll soon see how trustworthy the Trudeau Liberals are.  Is the Trudeau government fearful of an armed citizenry?  Does it keep old promises?  Does Trudeau believe in a real right of self-defence against criminals and tyranny?  Is Trudeau a James II or a William III?
-30-

Vincent J. Curtis is a retired research scientist and an occasional free-lance writer.

Canada's Financial Update

Vincent J. Curtis

18 Dec 2019


Cutting through the sunny nonsense, you reach the conclusion that Canadians were sold a bill of goods in the 2015 election.

In 2015, Justin (Sunny Ways) Trudeau promised three straight years of $10 billion deficits followed by a return to balance in FY 2019.  The purpose of the deficits was to stimulate the economy.  Well, the facts are in, and none of those promises were kept.

The deficits were all far in excess of $10 billion.  This year’s, promised to be zero but the year began with the deficit $14 billion, increased to 19 billion, and has in fact exploded to nearly $27 billion – in an allegedly growing economy.  Which brings us to the second point of deception, the lack of growth.

After peaking briefly in the summer of 2017 at an annualized rate of over three percent, the actual rates of GDP growth has ranged near two percent, or slightly below.  Canada experienced negative GDP growth in October.  These rates are no better than what they were under Stephen Harper, who was fastidious about keeping the budget in balance.  So the theory of trading deficits for growth proved to be arrant nonsense, as should have been obvious from the source the promise was coming from.

The Liberals have lost control of spending, and now offer the chestnut of keeping debt to GDP ratio constant.  Nonsense.  They are weakening Canada's financial position in return for nothing.  Trust-fund babies like Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself, aren’t trusted to handle their own money, and shouldn’t be trusted to handle Canada's.
-30-

Why was Currie a better General than Simonds?

Vincent J. Curtis

8 Oct 2019


The question I hope to answer over the next several columns is why Arthur Currie was a better general than Guy Simonds.  From his experience in the Boer War, Sam Hughes believed that the Canadian amateur was a better soldier in fighting war than the British professional.  Hughes’ evidence was the manifest success of the Boer commandos in holding off the British for so long and worsting them in many encounters.  Is the superiority of Currie over Simonds an example of the superiority in war of the amateur over the British trained professional, or, in the Canadian context, of the militia officer over the Regular, as Hughes believed?

The explanation of why Currie was superior can be found under the headings of training, experience, talent, personality, and instrument.  By instrument I mean that the Canadian Corps of 1917-18 was a superior fighting instrument to the 2^nd Canadian Corps of June – August 1944.  As will be shown later, this too has to do with experience.

The philosopher Aristotle said that science was knowledge of the general, while experience was knowledge of the particular.  Hence, it was possible for the man of pure experience to hit upon the correct solution to a problem faster than the man of pure science because the man of experience may have seen a similar problem solved before.  With this stipulated, let us now examine the knowledge and experience of Arthur Currie.

Currie was born in 1875, and received a high school education.  He found employment as a teacher in Victoria, B.C., later he became an insurance salesman and then a land speculator.  At the age of 21, he joined the 5th (B.C.) Field Artillery Regiment in 1897 as a gunner.  He was commissioned in 1900 and progressed rapidly through the ranks.  He came to command his regiment in 1909.  Currie was an enthusiastic student, said to take every course available.  Being artillery, the tactical courses would have been about the brigade and divisional battles and the artillery fire planning for each.

A friend and subordinate of Currie’s was Garnet Hughes, son of Victoria M.P. Sam Hughes, who was Minister of Militia and Defense from 1911 to 1916.  When war broke out in August, 1914, Hughes appointed Currie GOC 2^nd Brigade, 1^st Canadian Division in September, 1914.  In October, from Valcartier, Currie took his Brigade to Britain.

The 1^st Canadian Division was in the line in April, 1915, at Ypres, when the Germans launched their very first gas attack. Poisonous chlorine caused the French colonial troops to break for the rear, leaving the flank of the Canadian position hanging.  Currie demonstrated coolness, bravery, and a real tactical instinct when he led his brigade to counterattack into the flank of the advancing Germans.  He persuaded a couple of British brigades to help out and together the German breakthrough was stanched.  As a result of his actions, Currie was promoted to Major General and the command of 1^st Canadian Division.

Between April 1915 and April 1917, the Currie method of meticulous preparation and artillery support was demonstrated at Mont Sorrel in June, 1916.  The Corps only participated in the Battle of the Somme near the end.  By 1917, the Canadian Corps was commanded by Julian Byng, who tasked Currie with studying the battles of the Somme and Verdun and to make recommendations.  Currie questioned both senior and junior French officers and compared the impressions of the senior officers with the experiences of the junior.

Currie found that French success resulted from careful staff work, thorough artillery preparation and support, surprise, and a high state of training among the assault troops.  The Canadian platoon was reorganized into task groupings to better deal with common tactical problems: the machine gun nest, clearing a section of trench, and beating off German counterattacks.  Over the course of two years, Currie came to master the set-piece battle and accepted the strategy of bite and hold.

At Vimy, the fruits of the study became manifest.
-30-


Next month: Currie as Corps Commander

Don Cherry gets fired

Vincent J. Curtis

12 Nov 2019

Given the moral cowardice that prevails in much of media (see Northwest University), it is not surprising that Don Cherry would get fired for having said something that riled up a twitter mob.  It doesn’t matter that what Cherry said was sensible and patriotic.

Cherry hit upon a painful contradiction in the view that progressives have on immigrants and immigration.  We hope that immigrants come to Canada with the aim of becoming Canadian and integrating into Canadian society.  But if no one tells them what is expected of them, how are they going to integrate?  What could be more Canadian than honoring our war dead by wearing a poppy on Remembrance Day?

The progressive twitter mob were outraged that anyone should place expectations upon immigrants.  Progressives hold that immigrant cultures are superior to Canadian culture, that immigrants are doing us the favour by coming here, and that we ought to learn from immigrants.  Progressives can’t admit that there must be something about existing Canadian culture that makes Canada so appealing that immigrants leave the home of their birth to take their chances here.

If the plan is to have immigrants replace us in future, then shouldn’t we make sure that they will carry on Canadian culture and traditions?  If the plan is to have immigrants substitute and replace Canadian culture, then it is patriotic to oppose immigration.

Cherry hit painfully on this contradiction, and so the progressive mob howled in pain and outrage.
-30-

Tanks, Tanks, Tanks.

Vincent J. Curtis

5 Aug 2019

The Normandy campaign concluded at the end of August, 1944, after the Germans were almost entirely cleared from France and the 1^st Canadian Army was advancing into Belgium.  Many “lessons learned” have been written about the campaign, but what can be said about it from the perspective of 75 years on?

In a “what-if” scenarios, let’s ask, “what if the Canadian Army had been equipped with the Mk I Centurion tank?”  This thought experiment isn’t all that far-fetched, as the Centurion was fielded in May, 1945.  It was on the design boards in early 1943.  What would have happened if the Canadian Army had been equipped with Centurions and its 20 pdr gun, in Normandy?

It is likely that the 2^nd Canadian Corps would have torn through the German army like a chainsaw through softwood.  One of the main reasons the Germans were able to hold their own for so long in Normandy was their superiority in tanks, in particular the Panther and the Tiger.  These tanks could, and usually did, defeat large numbers of Shermans from long range.  The 75 mm gun on the Sherman couldn’t penetrate the frontal armour of a Tiger even from point-blank range, while the long-barreled German 75 mm and 88 mm guns could brew up a Sherman from over a mile away.

Canadian armour was getting beaten in detail by these superior German weapons - in those little battles that occur within the larger one.  The Canadians did not have quickly to hand the means of defeating Panthers and Tigers.  What was in their hands was the British 17 pdr gun, which could defeat Panthers and Tigers from long range.  The 6 pdr anti-tank gun with which infantry battalions were equipped was useless except for close range side-shots.  The PIAT anti-tank projector had an effective warhead – if you could crawl within a hundred yards of the target and hit the thing.

The only tank that could tackle a Tiger or a Panther was a Sherman Firefly, a Sherman which mounted that 17 pdr gun.

Tac Air, in the shape of formations of Typhoons, were effective against Tigers and Panthers, but the ground troops were not equipped with ground to air radio sets, making  close cooperation impossible.

The Canadians in Normandy were losing four and five Shermans for every Panther and Triger killed. If that ratio were dead even, or two to one in our favor, the Germans could not have held up theCanadian advance for nearly as long as they did.

What lesson can be drawn from this ‘what-if’ scenario?  The immediate lesson is that Canadian combat troops have to have in their hands the best, most modern equipment to deal with the enemy.  Not just the best that we can think of, but equal if not better than what the enemy has.  Everybody knew about Tigers since March, 1943.  So, why weren’t our generals and our engineers trying to figure out ways of dealing with these new battlefield tactical problems?


Was Clarence Decatur Howe working day and night?  No. Did engineer MacNaughton look at the bazooka and see a 106 mm recoilless rifle?  No. Was Crerar hounding Howe for a new weapon?  No.  Why weren’t Crerar and Simonds developing TTPs (tactics, techniques, procedures) for ground troops to defeat these menaces?  Being generals, they ought to know something about ground combat.  They ought to know before their battalion commanders the tactical problems their platoons are going to face.

As recently as 2006, it was seriously proposed by our generals that we didn’t need tanks anymore and that the new doctrine of ‘maneuver warfare’ would overcome any tactical problem.  No replacement for the Leopard I’s were in prospect during the Chretien years, and rather than embarrass the government, our generals put out the superior doctrine story – even though Genforce employed tanks and maneuver warfare doctrine already!


The need to put into Canadian hands equipment that is not just the best, but better than what the enemy has is one lesson from the Normandy campaign.  There are others. like TTPs
-30-

Singh call for Electoral Reform

Vincent J. Curtis

24 Oct 2019


It didn’t take long for disaffected losers to raise the tattered flag of electoral reform above ramparts shattered in the recent election.  NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is waving it desperately to deflect attention from his party’s poor performance under his leadership.

In Vancouver Granville, the electorate chose Jody Wilson-Raybould as their Independent representative in the new parliament.  Under Mr. Singh’s tired and refuted plan of proportional representation, he would have to say to the people of Vancouver Granville that their choice and decision doesn’t matter.  JWR wasn’t selected by a party leader and so she can’t represent you.  Your preference doesn’t matter in the larger scheme of things.

Such is democracy under proportional representation.

Except to save his own political skin, there really is no excuse to call for proportional representation.  Mr. Trudeau promised it in 2015 and struggled mightily to bring it about, but failed.  In the first place, a constitutional convention would have to be called, and there simply was strong resistance against it across Canada.  Wasn’t Mr. Singh paying attention?

Mr. Trudeau today is thankful he failed.  Not a peep from him.  He’s learned his lesson.
-30-

Hillary Smears Gabbard

Vincent J. Curtis

19 Oct 2019


This week, Hillary Clinton openly smeared Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), a candidate for the Democratic presidential nominee.  Hillary claimed Gabbard was being “groomed” to be a “Russian asset.”  Hillary also accused the 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein of being a Russian asset.  Let’s examine these explosive accusations both in their substance and in a wider political context.

During the Whitewater Investigation, when Hillary’s husband, Bill Clinton, was president, New York Times columnist William Safire concluded that Hillary Clinton was a pathological liar.  I share that opinion, and do not for a moment believe Hillary’s latest outrages against truth.

The entire smear against Gabbard is that she is “being groomed” to be a Russian “asset.”  The being groomed aspect is intended to be worse than a patronizing putdown.  Children are groomed.  Gabbard is a mature woman, old enough to run for president.  Grooming in the sense implied by Hillary is reserved for a child – one being groomed for sexual abuse.  While one sense of grooming could be used in the case of an adult, as when, for example,  a general is being groomed to become a chief of staff, it means a favored person is given experience necessary for the top job.  By no means does Hillary imply that the Russians are giving Gabbard experience to become an asset of theirs.  The being groomed part of the smear is simply to make the false accusation that follows more vicious and personal, giving a whiff of sexual perversity.

The choice of the term asset is somewhat clever.  The obvious alternative would be “agent,” but the use of asset instead makes the accusation more slippery.  An agent is someone who is acting on behalf of, or is employed for the purpose of, gaining a benefit for the person who hired the agent.  A spy can clearly be an agent.  But an agent knows that he is operating to confer benefits onto someone else  Hillary wants to imply that Gabbard may not even be aware that she is going to benefit Russia in some unspecified way, making the charge harder to dispute.

Hence, grooming and asset together mean that Gabbard may not yet be of value to Russia, and she may not even be aware that she is going to become one in some unspecified way.

An asset is not necessarily an agent.  Anything of permanent value can be an asset.  For example, Hillary permitted the transfer of twenty percent of American uranium reserves to a Russian company, for which she received indirectly $145 million.  Those reserves are now an asset of Russia.  So by calling Gabbard an asset Hillary means in a vague and undefined way that Gabbard is going to become something of value to Russia, though in what way is left tantalizingly unclear.

The “grooming to be a Russian asset” against Gabbard is an example of the Clintonian method of smearing – vicious, diabolical, and vague enough not to be immediately dismissible.

Hillary may have gone to the well too often in making this smear promiscuously against Gabbard, Jill Stein and Donald Trump - of being assets of Russian president Vladimir Putin.  The Russia hoax against Trump lasted three years before it finally ran out of gas due to utter lack of evidence.  Hillary ought to be jailed for hoaxing America like she did, but without doubt she will get away scot-free.

The media response is, to say the least, strange.  The media have heard the same charge from the same source before.  No one asked Hillary obvious questions: “how do you know this?”  “Who told you?”  “How is this taking place?  If asked, Hillary would squirt a load of ink into the water and try to slink away amid vague insinuations of insider insight.  She couldn’t say that Fusion GPS told her, or that a former British spy named Christopher Steele did a study for her.  That would give the game away, and undermine the impeachment of Donald Trump.

Gabbard served on the board of the DNC during the 2016 nomination, and she discovered that the DNC was applying pressure to ensure that Hillary won the nomination over Bernie Sanders.  Gabbard resigned the board and endorsed Sanders.  Hillary’s smear is straightforward revenge for that “betrayal,” though we still don’t know why now?

The real question is why the media are giving it the currency they are.  Why are they taking this absurd charge from a known pathological liar seriously?  Why aren’t they piling on Hillary for a smear she can’t back up?

Do Hillary and Bill Clinton still possess a hypnotic power over the Main Stream Media?
-30-

Genetics Condemns Darwinism

Vincent J. Curtis

13 Oct 2019

(This is an edited text of a note I sent to Dr. Edward Feser, author of the book Aristotle's Revenge.)


Biology has no explanation for speciation, and the problem of explaining evolution is an insuperable one for biology.

The very existence of an empirical science of genetics condemns Darwinism.  That genetics can be an empirical science with predictive powers requires a high degree of faithfulness in the transmission of genetic information from one generation to the next.  Geneticists would be astonished and alarmed if a flock of chickens bred to produce white eggs would have one hen that faithfully produced a purple one.  (Long story, the hen that produced them was genetically of the grandparent generation.)  A biologist would be shocked if an egg produced by a chicken hatched an eagle.  All the dog breeding experiments over hundreds of years have only ever produced dogs, never a cat or even a wolf.  The teleology all points to faithful reproduction.

Then there is the problem of directedness of evolution.  Why only upward and why only occasionally?   Why aren’t apes spontaneously and to this day occasionally giving birth to proto-humans?  It was started once, a few million years ago and never done since - why?  (Was it a miracle?) There have been over 7 billion humans born since 1900, so why have we not seen either a higher state human or a retrocession into a more primitive type like Peking man?

Even with simple life like viruses, we hear of new strains of influenza – but these still produce influence, not meningitis.

The principle of biology that “like begets like” seems to hold – like a principle of science!  There seems no room for evolution in the manner of genetic mechanics.  All the teleology points to faithful transmission of genetic information from one generation to the next.

A problem for philosophy is to identify the thing in which the evolutionary change occurs: not in the parents, and the offspring is what it is from the moment it comes to be.  So, it can’t be said to be the offspring that changed. (The offspring is a different substance from the parents)  And it can’t be the species because a species exists in its membership.  So there is a problem identifying in exactly what evolutionary change occurs.

In his book, The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes, Mortimer J. Adler goes through all the philosophical failings of biology in trying to explain how rational man could evolve from non-rational, primitive apes.

It’s a wonder how Darwinism even persists as a theory apart from the atheism it seems to support.  Although Aquinas allowed for evolution, I think all we have that’s tenable is a theist theory.  The teleology points to faithful transmission of information and it would take some kind of external (miraculous, since it occurs only once) intervention to change the course of natural teleology.


P.S. I’m open to biology solving its problems without recourse to theism, but as a chemist I get some satisfaction at watching Darwinists sputter when challenged.  They seem to know it’s B.S., but it’s all they’ve got.
-30-

Closing the Gap

Vincent J. Curtis

1 July 2019


Operation Tractable kinda-sorta ended on Aug 16^th, 1944, with the capture of Falaise by 2^nd Div. But the gap wasn’t closed.

On the 16^th, the 4^th Div and the 1^st Polish Armoured Division were ordered to take Trun and link up with the American 3^rd Army at Chambois.  The 1^st Polish outflanked the German defenses and, dividing itself into three battle groups, sent one to Chambois, one to Hill 262 (Mont Ormel), and another to the south of Trun, easing the its capture on the 18^th by 4^th Div.

The gap, about four miles wide and through which the German 7^th Army had to pass, was spanned by the Dives River.  The Dives formed an impassable barrier to vehicular traffic except at two points, Moissy and St. Lambert-sur-Dives.  The hamlet of Moissy had a ford, led to by a single lane dirt track; next to it was a narrow foot bridge.

St. Lambert, a village of 150 souls, had a two-lane bridge that was strong enough to support a Panther tank.  The gap area was flat, wide-open, and easily observed from the heights around Trun, ideal killing ground for artillery and Typhoons.

Capturing Trun, the 4^th Div was nearly spent, but did send a battle group forward to seize St. Lambert.  The battle group comprised B and C Coys of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, about fifty men each, and C Squadron of the South Alberta Regiment, the armoured recce unit of 4^th Div.  In overall command was Major David Currie of the SAR.  The task of Currie Force was to stop the passage of 100,000 Germans.

Backstopping the Dives position, three miles to the east were two Polish battlegroups on Hill 262.  They had with them Capt Pierre Sevigny an artillery FOO for the 58^th Bty, 4^th Medium Regiment.  After crossing the Dives, escaping Germans had to pass around Hill 262, and the Poles scourged them with tank and small arms fire as well as Sevigny’s artillery fire.  Over the 36 hours from the 20^th to 21^st August, Capt Sevigny was to win Poland’s highest military decoration, the Virtuti Militari.  His work inflicted thousands of casualties on the Germans and enabled the Poles to hold out against German attacks trying to re-open the gap.  Four depleted SS Panzer divisions east of the Dives repeatedly attacked the Poles, who fought them until they ran out of ammunition - and then fought them hand-to-hand. 

Currie Force approached St. Lambert at dusk on the 19^th - and was repulsed with the loss of two of its fifteen Shermans.  Pulling back 1,000 yards, Currie used the night to personally recce the defenses.  Attacking again at dawn, Currie Force gained half the village by noon, forming another gauntlet escaping Germans had to pass.  Currie Force repulsed repeated counterattacks, and near dusk surged ahead to capture the rest of the village.

As the battle progressed, columns of death began to sprout from the choke points   The corpses of men, horses (Wehrmacht transport was still largely horse-drawn) wrecked vehicles, artillery pieces, trucks and tanks were piling up along the roads, choking passage even more.

Discipline in the Wehrmacht began to crack.  Prisoners were being taken first by the dozen, then fifty and then a hundred at a time.  Pte E.H. McAllister of the Argylls was credited with capturing 160 men.  The famous picture of David Currie winning his VC shows a German officer surrendering to Argyll George Mitchell, CSM of C Coy, with Pte John Evans off to the right.  (A moment after the picture was taken, Mitchell buttstroked the Officer for looking arrogant.)

Before noon on the 21^st, 4^th Div pushed ahead from Trun, with the Canadian Grenadier Guards relieving the Poles.  Over 50,000 were trapped, and the German 7^th Army surrendered, Paris was liberated three days later.

For several feats of personal military prowess, his skillful and determined attacks and defense, and for demonstrating an epic coolness under fire for 36 hours, Major David Vivian Currie was awarded the Victoria Cross.
-30-

TACCOM 2019

Vincent J. Curtis

13 Sept 2019


TACCOM, in its 2019 version, is Canada’s largest gun show.  It brings together the world’s largest and most important gun manufacturers, equipment suppliers, Canada’s largest distributors, and allied businesses into one trade show.  If you’re a gun-guy, TACCOM 2019 is hog-heaven.

Yes, the usual suspects were there. Sig Sauer featured its P series of firearms, Glock, FN Herstal featured its FN509; and even Canik had a small display.  You touch, feel, and even dry fire some of these military style handguns.

Allied and related businesses also had substantial presences, like Durham Military Vehicles, and Hudson Supplies.  I’ll bet an LSVW hadn’t had such TLC than the one on display at the Durham booth.

Hudson was there to cultivate interest in its line of carry gear for which it is a master distributor: Tasmanian Tiger.  Hudson head honcho Marc “Buckleman” Beaudoin got his start marketing extremely tough and secure lock-unlock buckles for attaching MOLLE gear to each other.  And the buckles and tactical gear were certainly featured in his booth.  But the star of the show was the extraordinary array of the Tasmanian Tiger gear.

Tasmanian Tiger is a line of premium professional grade carry equipment for military, police, first responder, EMT, and generally people who have to carry heavy loads long distances.  Hikers and backpackers would find the line interesting to browse, and they could find something of use to them, so versatile, modular, and varied are the systems.  In Tiger you have carry systems all designed to work together no matter which pieces you mix and match.

The foundation of the carry system are the X1 and V2 frame systems.  The bare X1 frame reminded this writer of the legendary 1966 pattern pack frame with its bottom shelf-frame and tubular construction.  But this frame ran up to the shoulders.  It also had reinforcement bars that crossed into an X.  The X1 system is designed for bulky, heavy loads that are to be carried on the back for long distances and for a long time.  The frame is designed to stabilize and distribute the load.

The lumbar area is extremely well padded, as is the hip belt generally.  Well-padded shoulder straps ease the burden on the shoulders.  In addition, care has been taken to ensure good ventilation across the back.

The V2 frame is size adjustable and intended for medium to heavy loads.  It is designed as an inverted-V frame with fiberglass reinforcing bars.  Like the X1, the V2 frame comes well-padded in all the right places, and is extremely comfortable to wear.

Those are the bases of the systems.  The really interesting part is the wide variety of packs that attach to these frames.  They are all modular, MOLLE attachable, and made with weight-saving 700 cordura nylon. 

The TT series of packs range in size from nine to an incredible 100 litres.  There are the simple “Essential” packs, a 22 L, 25 L, 30 L, 37 L, combat and mission packs; a 25 L radio pack.  There’s a 45 L, 50 L, 75 L, 80 L pack, and the incredible 100 L range pack.  These packs come with internal and external division for mission specific applications.  Colours include black, olive, khaki, coyote, and multicam.

Then there’s vests and web gear designed to work with the packs.  These can carry plates, as well as a variety of pouches for rifle and pistol mags, cuffs, and loads of other stuff.

If you plan on carrying anything on your back, your front, or even the back of your front seat or headrest, you got to have a look at the Tasmanian Tiger line from Hudson Supply.  Military, police, EMT, or just a plain hiker or back packers like me there’s got to be something interesting to you.
-30-

Trudeau promises gun ban

Vincent J. Curtis

20 Sept 2019


 The latest unwise promise from Justin Trudeau is that if re-elected he would ban “semi-automatic assault weapons” and allow municipalities to restrict or ban handguns. These promises are all constitutionally and legally dubious.  They certainly won’t achieve anything.

Since any weapon can be used to assault, I assume he means assault rifle.  A “semi-automatic assault rifle” is a contradiction in terms since the distinguishing feature of an assault rifle is that it is capable of fully-automatic fire.

As for municipalities being given legal authority by the Federal government, it is a pure play for Toronto votes and is constitutionally dubious.  The provincial governments have full authority over municipalities, and possess the power to block any by-law pretending to ban the possession and legal use of private property.

The recent TACCOM 2019 gun show in Toronto showed how useless any such an “assault” ban would be.  On display were irearms that are “assault-like” in character but are entirely unrestricted under current law.  The gun designers are smarter than Liberal gun-banners, and already have the solution to a Trudeau gun-ban ready for market.

A gun-ban will be met with massive non-compliance.  Is Trudeau prepared to create several million scoff-laws in Canada just for the sake of his progressive vanity?
-30-

Climate Change as an Election Issue

Vincent J. Curtis

11 Sept 2019


What Canada can do about climate change will undoubtedly be an election issue, though it shouldn’t be.  Why it shouldn’t be can be explained with a few incontrovertible facts that even ardent believers cannot ignore.

Canada produces 1.5 percent of world CO2 emissions annually, of which Ontario contributes about a third.  If every car, factory, and person in Ontario were vaporized and the land returned to primordial forest, it would reduce Canada’s contribution from 1.5 to 1.0 percent.  That reduction of 0.5 percent is equivalent to reducing atmospheric CO2 content from 408 to 406 ppm.  That 2 ppm difference has no impact at all on CO2 induced climate change – if it exists.  The wildest hopes for the Trudeau carbon tax won’t cut Canada’s CO2 emissions by anywhere near a third.

So what are we talking about – tiny fractions of ppm in this election?  Seriously?

Canada’s contribution to world CO2 emissions is too small for anything we do to make a difference.  Talk of “what Canada can do so save the planet” is happy-talk, virtue-signalling.  It is playing on ignorance.

Serious people should speak of serious things, especially in an election.  Speaking of what Canada ought to do to affect climate change isn't serious.
-30-

TRACTABLE

Vincent J. Curtis

4 June 2019

After the destruction of Worthington Force, an enraged Guy Simonds ordered GOC 4^th Canadian Armoured Division, George Kitching, to take Hill 195.  The division commander passed the order onto OC 10^th Brigade, J.C. Jefferson. who in turn passed it on to Lt-Col Dave Stewart, CO of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders.  “I mentally wrote the Argylls off, as well as myself” recalled Stewart.

With the fate of the Black Watch on Verrières Ridge in mind, Stewart began his planning process with a map recce.  He found a concealed route through the German lines to well up the slope of the feature from an unexpected direction.  Bringing his scout platoon with him, Stewart reconnoitered the route, and dropped off members of the platoon as guides on the way back.  Stewart’s plan was to lead the Argylls in single file back along the route in darkness, infiltrate the German position, and occupy Hill 195 silently.  Routine sounds of battle would, hopefully, cover the sound of five hundred men tromping in the darkness and banging shovels into rifles.

Stepping of at midnight 10/11 August, the Argylls with “an almost incredible smoothness” occupied Hill 195.  The companies were deployed around the summit, and the troops began digging in by 04:30.  Over one hundred Germans occupying the feature were surprised and captured.  Stewart contrived to bring along a troop of 17 pdr anti-tank guns, and sited them to enfilade the most likely route of a tank assault.

Hill 195 was not a bald knob.  Located in the center of the German line, it had trees, scrub, hedges, and a wheat field for concealment.  It lacked much cover, and chalk bedrock lay less than two feet below the surface. Slit trenches were shallow.  When the sun came up and the Germans realized that Canadians held the dominant feature of their line, they tried to dislodge them with artillery and mortar fire.  When that didn’t work, tank and infantry assaults were launched from the direction Stewart expected.  The 17 pdrs left the tanks smoking wrecks, and machine guns made short work of the German infantry.  Canadian field artillery and Typhoons shot up an assembly area where heavy German tanks were massing.

With their main line of resistance breached, the Germans pulled back closer to Falaise.

Operation Tractable was launched on August 14.  It was another Simonds special.  This time, eight hundred Lancasters would bomb targets along the road from Hill 195 to Falaise.  Then, at noon, the 3^rd Infantry and 4^th Canadian Armoured Divisions, forming a main effort, would strike southwards cross-country two miles east of the road.  They would cross the Laison River, and bear down on Points 184, 115, and 159 north-east of Falaise. (The aerial bombardment savoured of a ruse, but the Germans weren’t fooled.  Captured documents told the Germans where the main effort was.)  A heavy smoke screen was used to impair the effectiveness of long range German anti-tank and machine gun fire. Of course, some of the bombs landed in Canadian and Polish lines and caused about four hundred casualties.  

Tractable was another heavy slog.  It took until the 16^th to push the six miles from east of Hill 195 into Falaise, and another two days to clear the town.  But taking Falaise was not enough to close the gap.  The places of real tactical significance were two small villages seven miles south east of Falaise: Trun and Chambois.  These were to be taken by 4^th Div and the 1^st Polish Armoured.  These two armoured divisions thrust south on August 16^th while Falaise was still being cleared.

Suddenly, a spark of generalship appeared.  The commander of the 1^st Polish, General Stanislaw Maczek, swung east and outflanked German defenses.  Then, he split his division into three battle groups, sending one in rear of Trun, one to Hill 262, and one to Chambois, all in the German rear.  Aided by the Poles, 4^th Div captured Trun on the 18^th.

The final drama was to occur at St. Lambert-sur-Dives and Hill 262, where the Canadians and the Poles would choke the gap closed.
-30-

TOTALIZE

Vincent J. Curtis

19 May 2019

Operation Windsor saw the capture of Carpiquet village.  Next came Operation Charnwood (8-9 July 1944) which saw the capture of Carpiquet airfield and the town of Caen north of the Orne.  Then followed Operation Atlantic, which was run in conjunction with the notorious Operation Goodwood (18-19 July, 1944).  Atlantic saw the Canadians capture Caen south of the Orne and create the bridgehead necessary for an assault on the Verrières Ridge.

The battle for Verrières Ridge was a bloody nightmare for the Canadians, with a lack of coordination and a repetition of bad methods leading to over 2,500 casualties.  Operation Spring (25-27 July, 1944), which gained a toe-hold on a part of the ridge, was an especially notorious fiasco.

The American breakout in Operation Cobra suddenly made it possible to entrap the entire German army in France in a pocket southwest of Falaise, with the Canadians forming a pincer from the north.  Operation Totalize (7-11 August 1944) was Canadian II Corps commander Lieutenant General Guy Simonds’ plan to advance from Verrières Ridge to Falaise.

Montgomery considered Guy Simonds to be highly capable, and perhaps Canada’s best general.  That opinion saved Simonds’ career more than once, and Simonds returned the admiration by making himself physically resemble Monty.  Among his other failings, Simonds was a martinet who despised most of his subordinates, and not a few of his superiors, as barely competent. 

This attitude impaired his effectiveness as a general.  His leadership style stifled innovation and initiative other than his own.  For all his self-regard, Simonds still needed the enterprise of subordinates to exploit the opportunities his operations created.

The Germans developed blitzkrieg following their experience facing the Canadian Corps after Amiens.  The Canadians had dominated No Man’s Land with patrolling and trench raids, and German infiltration (Hutier) tactics are no different in fieldcraft from reconnaissance patrolling.  But the Canadians, interwar, never experimented with infiltration tactics, or trained as battlegroups.  By early August, 1944, it was obvious that Sherman tanks needed infantry help dealing with German anti-tank nests, among other deficiencies in tactical methods.

For Totalize, Simonds invented the Kangaroo armoured personnel carrier, which was made by “defrocking” a Priest self-propelled gun of its weapon, leaving room in the Sherman chassis for a section of men.  There was the help.

Totalize was a familiar set-piece battle but using bigger hammers, closer timing between blows, and other techniques of ancient renown.  Tactically, Totalize was a case of hi-diddle-diddle- straight up the middle, the middle being the Caen-Falaise road.  Heavy strategic bombers were would carpet bomb both sides of the highway south of the start-line.  Immediately upon completion of the air mission, artillery would open up and the first wave of tanks and APCs would drive south in a night attack, bypassing pockets of resistance along the way.  Tracers from Bofors 40 mm guns and target marking artillery shells were guides to direction.

Great innovations from Simonds, but then gremlins crept in to undermine the plan.  There was no radio comms with air.  Some bombs dropped on 3^rd Canadian Division HQ and wounded Major General Rod Keller.  Bombing the route of advance created a tank obstacle course which was run en mass at night by inexperienced APC drivers.  Simonds ordered a halt at noon on the 8^th to bring up the artillery after the first objectives were taken.  Given a respite, the Germans regrouped and a second dose of heavy bombing failed to destroy German counterattacking panzer groups.  Totalize stalled.

Trying to restore momentum, Simonds ordered Worthington Force to capture Hill 195.  The result was the most infamous event of Totalize.  An inexcusable navigation error had Worthington Force, a battlegroup consisting of the British Columbia Regiment and the Algonquins, seize Hill 140, seven kilometers from the assigned objective.  Unsupported by Canadian artillery or Typhoons, it was annihilated by a counterattack force of German Panther tanks.

Totalize culminated with the capture of Hill 195 on the 11th by a lone infantry regiment that infiltrated at night into the position.
-30-

 

Who is Joseph Mifsud?

Vincent J. Curtis

24 July 2019

If you want to know who Joseph Mifsud is, check out my blog posting of December 31, 2017, entitled "How the Russian Inquiry Really Began."

It is located under the December 2017 postings of the blogspot.

You could have read it all here first, folks!
-30-

America: Love it, or Leave it

Vincent J. Curtis

19 July 2019


The sentiment: ‘America; love it or leave it’ has been around since the founding of the country, even before the establishment of the Republic.  Southern Ontario – Quebec as it was known in 1784 – was settled by British Empire Loyalists.  The Loyalists were Americans who disagreed with the American Revolution and supported Britain.  When the revolution succeeded, the Loyalist left America.  However much they may have loved their homes, they left America on account of political differences.

And let’s not forget the Mohawks.  They left their traditional grounds in present-day New York State and moved onto the Haldimand Tract in 1785 for the same reason as the Loyalists.  The land they left was arguably more theirs than the colonists’.

Later came the American Civil War, in which the slave states seceded from the Union in order to protect their ‘peculiar institution.’

The sentiment of ‘love America or leave it’ has a long history.

But the high dudgeon presently in the media over a chant at a Trump rally has more to do with current politics than seriously considered views.  Lots of people hate Trump, and emotion colours our perception of things.  People who hate Trump naturally want to find ill in anything he does.

Those who follow these rallies will have noticed a prevalence of three beat chants, such as “U-S-A”, “Four-more-years,” and “Lock-her-up”.  A recent one has been a play upon a Democratic contender: “First, you have the Boot, and then ‘edge-edge.  Boot-edge-edge”  The crowds love participating in a Trump rally, which is why he routinely speaks before 25,000 in a hockey arena with several thousand more watching on giant screens outside.  It was entirely predictable that Trump would talk about “The Squad”, as the four freshmen Democratic congresswomen call themselves: Alexandrea Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Presseley.  (“Is she related to Elvis?” Trump playfully asked.) It was also entirely predictable, and it was predicted by one observer, that the crowd would boo and take up some chant at their mention.  In this case, it was “send-her-back” while Trump was speaking of Ilhan Omar, a refugee from Somalia.

These chants are playful things that add to the festivity of a Trump rally.  People expect to chant, and look for opportunities to do so.  Again, Trump haters are going to get all serious about how wicked such sentiments are.  But the spirit in which these sentiments are expressed are not as hard-edged as the Trump haters express their hatred of Trump.

On the merits of the chant, however, there is some seriousness to it.  Ilhan Omar owes America a lot, and she doesn’t show it.  She expresses no love for the country that took her in and afforded her a good life.  Omar’s family fled the civil war in Somalia and resided in a camp in Ethiopia.  America accepted her and a bunch more Somalian refugees and gave them a home in Minnesota.  Safe and nourished in America, she attended good American schools, where she got a real education - not like she would have got in Somalia.  She was elected first to the Minnesota State legislature, and then to Congress.  Her words, actions, and traditional Somali headgear betray the ultimate aim of her politics, and it isn’t to make America great again.

Given her evident disdain for the country that has given her a good life and success, her absence of gratitude, her failure to recognize any of the good qualities of the country that took her in, it is only natural that the ire of American nativists would get raised a little bit at her prospect.  Therein lies the edge to the chant, “send-her-back.”  Native-born Americans love America as it is.  There are literally thousands of people at the Mexican border who also love America as she is, and would love to replace Ilhan Omar as a citizen.  There is plenty of reason to think that Omar is seriously in the wrong.  There are good reasons to ask why she stays, but we know why.
-30-

How Cleaner Fuel Standards Actually Work

 Vincent J. Curtis


11 July 2019
  
The Liberal government, as a means of reducing Canadian CO2 emissions, is proposing to impose something like California’s ‘cleaner fuel’ standards on Canadian motorists.  This can’t possibly work for the stated purpose of reducing CO2 emissions.

The key element of the standard is the adulteration of motor fuel with oxygenated components, like ethanol.  Canada already includes ethanol to the extent of 10 percent in motor fuel, so perhaps Trudeau plans to increase the requirement to 15 percent.

One reason why increasing the amount of ethanol, or adding some other oxygenated adulterant, to gasoline won’t work to reduce CO2 is that you have to manufacture the adulterant.

To make ethanol, you have to plant corn, grow corn, harvest corn, ferment corn, separate and purify the ethanol, dispose of the waste, and then transport the ethanol to market.  All this takes fossil fuel.  Whatever CO2 might be saved coming out of the tailpipe of a car is more than made up in CO2 emissions from having to make the ethanol in the first place.

But it is far from clear that oxygenates in fuel even reduce CO2 output from the tailpipe.  Substituting an oxygen for a carbon in the fuel reduces the energy content of the fuel.  So to get the same amount of power from the engine, you need to burn slightly more fuel – and putting out the same amount of CO2.

There are well-known ways of reducing CO2 emissions from fuels.  One method is to use natural gas or propane as the fuel.  These have a higher ratio of hydrogen to carbon than gasoline does, and so will produce less CO2 per unit of power.

Another method is to increase compression ratios in engines.  In Europe, where gasoline costs $5 to $6 per litre, cars use small, high compression engines and 98 octane fuel to maximize efficiency.  And greater efficiency means less CO2 output per distance travelled.  But if you travel more because fuel costs you less, then those benefits to CO2 emissions are lost.

The Europeans also use diesel engines in cars much more than in North America.  The reason those fuel-efficient diesel cars are not sold in North America is to protect the North American car companies.  They don’t make those engines in North America.  The excuse for keeping them out is the allegation that these diesels are too “sooty” for North American air quality standards.  Diesels do produce soot, but if the aim is to reduce CO2 emissions, the prohibition against cleaner diesel engines needs to be relaxed.

Yet another method of reducing tailpipe CO2 emissions is to use hybrid engines or out-and-out electric engines.  Apart from the high capital costs of these engines, the problem here arises from how the batteries get recharged.  If, in the case of hybrids, they get recharged by idling the car in the driveway, then the only benefit of CO2 reduction comes from driving a lower powered car.  If the electric car is recharged from power produced by a coal-burning power plant, then the CO2 reduction benefit is also illusory.

There are no free lunches when it comes to reducing CO2 emissions from the tailpipe.  What you seem to gain at one point is lost elsewhere.  And anti-smog air quality standards, such as those pertaining to NO_x emissions, can get lost in the shuffle.

The only way out is to force a reduction in the distance driven by Canadians.  Higher taxes on fuel are an obvious way of doing this, but raising taxes for the sake of climate change is not popular.  This is why Trudeau is trying to back-door an effective tax increase though the higher costs of a “cleaner fuel” standard, and why Andrew Scheer is calling the cost effect of such a standard a tax.

The use of fossil fuels is essential to the running of the Canadian economy and to feeding her people.  Addressing climate might be important, but it is only one important thing among many.
-30-

Did Blasey Ford Lie to Congress?

Vincent J. Curtis

8 July 2019

In the course of her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee evaluating the fitness of then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh for elevation to the Supreme Court, Christine Blasey Ford specifically denied knowing about or involvement in the use of hypnosis to change memory.  Shortly after her testimony and after Kavanaugh’s confirmation was voted out of committee, there sprang rumors that she had in fact co-authored a paper on the very subject of the use of hypnosis to change, and even create, “memories.”

The paper involving therapeutic uses of hypnosis (involving the creation of artificial situations) co-authored by Christine M. Blasey:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jclp.20496

Rachael’s Mitchell’s official report on Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony and allegations:

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4952137/Rachel-Mitchell-s-analysis.pdf

The fact that Ford remembered distinctly that it was Kavanaugh who allegedly groped her in the manner she described, and of a witness to that event, but nothing else – not the year, not even how she got home, could be signs that the alleged memory was implanted by hypnosis.  She recollects no details because they don’t exist and weren’t implanted.  Ford appeared to sincerely believe what she was saying to the committee, and she would be sincere if a false memory had been implanted by hypnosis.  She sincerely believes a false memory implanted into her sub-conscious.

On the Left, there are many people who are willing to be kamikazes for the sake of a higher good, and her testimony before congress may have been Ford’s kamikaze run.
-30-

Operation Windsor (4/5 July 1944)

Vincent J. Curtis

3 May 2019
  
In the pursuit to Mons, the Canadian Corps employed an embryonic form of blitzkrieg.  Infantry and tanks, supported by artillery, would advance in the morning.  The tanks were mechanically unreliable and walking speed slow, but the crews would try, best as they could, to crush German machine gun nests and pillboxes.  Overhead, allied aircraft would bomb and strafe exposed German positions in the rear.  The advance would go for 7,000 yards and then stall, having moved beyond range of supporting artillery and being well within range of German guns.

The Germans learned from defeat, but had the Canadian commanders of World War II upped their game?  It seems not.  Hans von Luck, in his book Panzer Commander, described the British tactical method in Operation Goodwood (18/19 July 1944): “As almost always with the British, they carried out their tank attacks unaccompanied by infantry, as a result, they were unable to eliminate at once any little anti-tank nests that were lying well camouflaged in woodland or behind hedges.  The main attack broke down under our defensive fire.”

Let’s return to our hero of last month, Lieutenant William F. McCormick, 1^st Hussars.  In an article published in the Waterloo Region Record on June 8, 2011, McCormick recounted the events of June 11, 1944.  “Ordered into action, McCormick arrives to a terrible scene: a field of Sherman tanks burning quietly with no enemy in sight…An order crackles over the radio: Advance.  The order is repeated, Advance.  Then a new request, “Who will volunteer to advance?”  McCormick orders his tanks onto the battlefield…McCormick spies enemy soldiers sitting calmly by their trenches.  They look like they’re watching a sports event… He opens fire on them and advances into the wheat field.  Wham! The tank to the left of him is hit…Wham! A shell explodes into the tank on his right.  McCormick thinks the fire is coming from his right flank.  Before he can find a target, a shell explodes into his tank…[The 12^th SS] destroyed 37 tanks and damaged 13 others.”  No infantry screen for the tanks there, either.  New methods were needed in a hurry.

Operation Windsor was conducted to capture Carpiquet village and airfield, both D-Day objectives that McCormick himself had in his grasp.  Carpiquet stood between the Canadian 3^rd Division and Caen.  Major General Rod Keller turned the planning over to Brigadier K.G. Blackader commander of the 8^th Canadian infantry brigade (Queens’ Own Rifles, Chaudière, North Shores).  The 8^th would be reinforced with an attached battalion (the Royal Winnipeg Rifles) and the 2^nd Canadian Armoured Brigade. (Fort Garry Horse, Sherbrooke Fusiliers, Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa, elements of 79^th  Armoured Div).

The plan was for a set-piece battle.  The infantry would advance behind a creeping barrage, supported by tanks on both flanks.  In the air, two squadrons of Hawker Typhoons would provide tactical air support.

Proceeding north to south: a diversionary attack by the Sherbrooke Fusiliers was made against Francqueville.  The main attack against Carpiquet village was made by the North Shores and Chaudière.  The Queen’s Own were to pass through and take the airport control buildings.  The RWR supported by Fort Garry Horse would seize the airfield hangers south of the village.  The approach by the RWR did not go well.  Infantry were subjected to unsuppressed German mortar fire as they advanced across open ground towards the airfield and took fire also from the south bank of the Odon River.  Late in the day, the depleted RWR reached the airfield hangers but were unable to dislodge the German defenders.  The Fort Garry Horse encountered a battlegroup of Panther tanks and were “overwhelmed.”  The RWR were ordered to withdraw under cover of darkness, leaving the airfield in German hands.

Next day, the Germans made three counter-attacks against Carpiquet village, and were repulsed with heavy losses.

Two more battalions behind the RWR would have taken the airfield.  But it was clear that new combined arms methods were needed, and new methods for the timely suppression of enemy defensive fires had to be learned.
-30-

Democracy does not depend upon Entitlement.

Vincent J. Curtis

23 June 2019

The famous English philosopher Sir Roger Scruton has spoken on the business of what he calls fake subjects and fake disciplines that are proliferating at universities in Europe and North America.  These are characterized by fake scholarship and a fake philosophy that seems to convey authority, enabling people to claim authority for nonsense.  The purpose of that nonsense is to make conformity to orthodoxy the only thing that you have.  If the scholarship is nonsense, the only thing you have are the conclusions, which turn out to be the liberal axioms you started with.  And now to the matter at hand.....

That there even exists a course entitled “Social and Environmental Justice” is proof of the intellectual rot that has set into Canadian academia.  The proliferation of fake subjects and disciplines is worse in the America, and is signified by the course: “fill-in-the-blank-Studies.”

The thesis of Professor James Cairns is that democracy depends upon entitlement.  He cites the case, irrelevant to Canada, of Rosa Parks who refused sit in the back of the bus as required by law in a city of the 1950s deep South.  As an example of entitlement, he asks, “What would have happened if she had given in?”

The short answer is that the civil rights movement would have found someone else.  Rosa Parks was a carefully chosen set up to challenge that law in Federal court.

The general proposition that democracy depends upon entitlement is nonsense, starting with its poor formulation.  And poor formulation is a demonstration of the intellectual poverty of the discipline which offers it.  To begin with, what is meant by ‘democracy?’

And then the word, ‘entitlement.’  Entitlements do not cause democracy – contrary to what the thesis hold.  Canadians have rights and privileges as citizens of this country, but an entitlement refers to something like unemployment insurance and old age security.  Entitlements are things, things that are earned in virtue of something else.  Entitlements have nothing to do with the form of government under which you live.  The German Empire pioneered social entitlements as a means of staving off democracy!

Cairns, with his fake discipline, is hopelessly muddled and the product of his scholarship amounts to nothing more than the prejudices and axioms he started with.
-30-

Up to the ankles in Climate Change

Vincent J. Curtis

26 June 2019

This day the Spectator reported on the damage done to the Lake Ontario shoreline as a result of high water levels in the lake - for the second time in three years.


The Spectator is up to its ankles in evidence of error, and yet it persists in perpetuating the error.  Rising CO2 levels and rising methane levels were supposed to trap more heat in the atmosphere, causing a climate that is warmer and drier.  The Spectator is reporting that Lake Ontario is overflowing because of the unexpectedly cool and wet winter and spring we had.  Oops!

Earlier, the Spectator reported on the problems local farmers were having as a result of the cool and wet winter and spring.  The problems local farmers are having is experience all over North America, and for the same reason: a cool and wet winter.

This wasn’t supposed to be.  The big weather forecasters predicted a warm and dry winter, consistent with the global warming theory.  But that’s not what happened in the actual event.  If climate science were real science, the gap between prediction and actual event would send the scientists back to the drawing board.  But that won’t happen.

Too much politics, too many careers, and too much reputation is invested in the global warming hypothesis – now called climate change on account of the unsustainability of the “warming” hypothesis. Now, rising CO2 is blamed for both hotter and cooler, and for wetter and drier climates, and every bad weather event.

The climate change nonsense would die in an instant the moment it failed to support the progressive political narrative.
-30-

 

Proportional Representation and Independent Members

Vincent J. Curtis

24 June 2019


As the election of a new Canadian parliament approaches, it is useful to recall a promise made by Liberal leader Justin Trudeau during the last election that set progressive hearts atwitter.  He promised to reform representation in the House of Commons from a member representing a constituency to party representation based on party proportional vote, or proportional representation.

It is hard to tell who were the bigger fools, Trudeau for proposing the thing or progressives for believing him without checking the constitutionality of such a change.

Jody Wilson-Raybold and Jane Philpott remain as members of the House of Commons after being expelled from the Liberal caucus.  Under proportional representation, they (and perhaps the trouble they caused) would have been expelled from the House with their expulsion from the caucus.  Their right to sit in the House would have depended upon their faithful representation of the Liberal party, and the moment they caused trouble, the leader of the party would have the right to replace them with someone who would.  That’s what proportional representation means: no independent members and nothing but faithful party-line votes in the Commons.

If you’re the leader of the party, proportional representation means never having to face a challenge from the ranks.  I don’t think the majority of Canadians are so tied to partisan party interests that they find the idea of an independent member intolerable.

The possibility of Independent membership in the House can make the political show less Soviet-like.
-30-

Canada Declares Climate Emergency

Vincent J. Curtis

19 June 2019


Canada's Minister of Climate Change, Catherine McKenna, is evidently a philosophy drop-out since she doesn’t understand that one cause produces only one effect.  Minister McKenna is pushing the belief that temperatures in Canada are rising as twice the rate of the rest of the world.

I get the theory that rising CO2 traps more heat in the atmosphere, and therefore temperatures should rise.  But the atmosphere being uniform requires temperatures to rise uniformly around the globe in some sense.  That the chunk of the globe called Canada should be rising at twice the rate of the rest means that something other than CO2 is at play.

But what is McKenna’s response?  To double down on CO2 reduction.  Never mind that Canada contributes a mere 1.5 percent of global emissions, and the complete elimination of that won’t matter a whit to CO2 caused global warming.  No, her response is downright Pavlovian.  She can’t even be bothered ask what is causing Canada’s rate to be double, and try to address that cause.

If rising levels of CO2 causes global warming, then the uniformity of the atmosphere requires that increase to be uniform, unless some other causes are at play.  If Canada’s temperatures are rising at double, then some cause other than just CO2 must be at play. Minister McKenna is so religiously fixated on CO2 that’s all she thinks about, and she won’t be rescued by that course in philosophy she missed.
-30-

Australia Declares Climate Emergency

Vincent J. Curtis

22 June 2019


Sydney, Australia declared a climate emergency in a move eerily similar to the one last week by Canada.  From this and other considerations one can draw certain conclusions.

The climate emergency business is being pushed behind the scenes by some political movement.  That hundreds of cities around the world, meaning the English-speaking world, would declare climate emergencies does not happen spontaneously or by accident.

The declaration is nothing but fatuous virtue-signalling.  Australia is a country of 25 million people that contributes 1.0 percent of the world’s annual CO2 emissions.  Like Canada, there is nothing Australia can do to stop the train.


These importunate demands for virtue-signalling is a sign of a religious movement losing confidence in its hold over people.  It thinks that by strenuous re-affirmation of its beliefs that will somehow lead to the action they want.
-30-