Canada forced to take its garbage back.

Environmental Nihilism

Vincent J. Curtis

30 May 2019


Two large ocean freighters are returning Canadian garbage from the Philippines and Malaysia.  Rather than deal with our own garbage responsibly here in Canada, we sent it to two third-world countries on whose corruption we counted to accept it.  A country as geographically huge, wealthy, and as technically sophisticated as Canada found it easier to hide the garbage problem in the third world rather than solve it itself.

Canada has a history of refusing to deal with its own garbage and shoving the problem onto another country.  In the 1990s, Toronto desperately needed a replacement municipal landfill, and the NDP government under Bob Rae could find nowhere in all of Ontario to create one.  The solution was to ship Toronto’s garbage to a landfill in Michigan, and it was arranged for 250 trucks per day to pass through the border carrying Toronto’s municipal garbage to the landfill in Michigan.

Recycling of paper became an example of good environmental stewardship, embraced by municipalities everywhere.  But the waste paper was being sent to China.  Not until China stopped accepting garbage paper did the actual fate of that recycled product become known.  Now, waste paper simply piles up with nowhere to go.

Now we know that waste plastics were sent to Malaysia and other mysterious garbage sent to the Philippines, probably under shady circumstances.  Local pride and anti-corruption efforts have forced Canada to take it back.

These examples have one thing in common: environmentalism can identify a problem but the movement is too chaotic and incoherent to accept reasonable solutions.  Confronted with claimant demands to fix an environmental problem, politicians find that no practical solution is acceptable to those demanding immediate solution.

Toronto needed a new landfill, but nowhere in the vast province was a place found acceptable to those adhering to environmentalism.  Coal burning power generation is now environmentally unacceptable, but the obvious alternatives, nuclear and hydroelectric, are unacceptable also for environmental reasons.  The impractical alternatives, wind and solar, are found upon implementation to have environmental issues of their own, to say nothing of their adverse economics.  The technology required to recycle paper and plastics is economically impractical, the regulatory burden of getting a recycling plant into operation is heavy, and the project is sure to be met with vociferous objections by self-styled environmentalists.

It’s simply easier to ship the problem elsewhere, however irresponsible in the end that may be.

The sovereign solution to waste paper and most waste plastics is incineration.  But the incineration of paper and plastics creates carbon dioxide, and environmentalism has an objection to that too.  Both Canada and the United States would like to dispose of nuclear waste from electrical generation in one location, but environmentalists make it impossible to commission the disposal sites and to transport the waste from source to site.  And so nuclear waste lies distributed in scores of locations all over the continent.

If Canada and other western societies are going to solve responsibly the problems raised by environmentalism, we need to understand and account for the nihilist nature of environmentalism.  The movement isn’t about identifying and solving problems related to the environment, its aim is to create chaos, and specifically economic chaos, by exploiting real or contrived issues related to “the environment.”  Cognoscenti will recognized the Marxian character of the method.  “I identify a problem that you have to fix, but no solution you offer will be acceptable to every one of my friends, and damn you for your failure.”  That’s the politics of environmentalism in a nutshell.

Canada needs to deal with its own environmental issues itself.  That means that a mature public has to expect and discount criticisms from environmentalism.  The perfect is the enemy of the good, and it is not in the nature of a Marxian movement to accept a solution other than as a temporary expedient.
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Tribals versus Frigates

Vincent J. Curtis

10 Feb 2019


Vice Admiral “Hard-over” Harry DeWolf is Canada’s most accomplished sailor.  He earned his nickname while skipper of HMCS Haida and operated in the English Channel in support of Operation Overlord.  The Haida was a Tribal-class destroyer with a top speed of 36 knots.  DeWolf had a penchant for ordering high-speed maneuvers that caused the ship to lean heavily while turning.  Tribal class destroyers operated in the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the English Channel as submarine hunters, escort vessels, and against German E-boat surface raiders.


Admiral DeWolf would struggle to earn his nickname today if he skippered one of the Type 26 frigates. These are to become the primary combatant vessel of the Royal Canadian Navy.  These frigates have a top speed of only 26 knots, three knots slower than the Halifax class frigates they will replace.

At 26 knots, the Type 26 frigate is more a luxury yacht than a warship.

At 26 knots, a Type 26 could not serve as an escort vessel for a Nimitz class aircraft carrier (30 kt), an Iowa class battleship (33 kt), or an Arleigh Burke class destroyer (30 kt).  It might detect, but could not catch, a Virginia class nuclear submarine (25 kt).  It couldn’t catch the German battleships Graf Spee (29 kt), the Scharnhorst (31 kt), or the Bismarck (30 kt).  It can keep up with the new Queen Elizabeth class of British aircraft carrier (25 kt).

For a frigate, the Type 26 is simply too slow.

The intended role of the Type 26 is anti-submarine. But for this purpose it is curiously unarmed.  It has no specified anti-submarine weaponry organic to it.  It is planned to carry two helicopters which – when they can fly - will carry either two or four anti-submarine torpedoes (depending on the type).  Otherwise, the main armament planned for the frigate consists of vertical launch missile systems, both anti-ship and Tomahawk type cruise missiles.  It sports a single 5 inch BAE Mk 45 gun and several smaller calibre auto-cannons for close-in anti-missile and anti-aircraft defense.  The helicopters are British types.

In comparison, Tribal class destroyers bristled with weaponry.  This included four 21 inch torpedo tubes and 20 depth charges.

The expression “gun-boat diplomacy” was coined not just from the destruction the warships involved inflicted, but because of the destruction they obviously could inflict.  Battle and the threat of battle are what move the enemy, Clausewitz says.  Gun boats carried many menacing looking long barrel, large calibre guns in multiple turrets.  The gun armament of a Tribal class destroyer looks menacing for a vessel of its size, and certainly looks more dangerous than a single gun in a single turret.  Canada will not be able to look menacing with a Type 26 frigate even though it is triple the displacement of a Tribal class destroyer.  The frigate’s weaponry being largely invisible, the lack of menace with a Type 26 leaves a chasm between peace and all-out war.

The VLS systems make the frigates a potent means of delivering precision fire on the enemy, both on fixed targets far inland and on surface vessels, if it sees them first.  It looks designed to operate with a British led task force in the North Atlantic, whatever that is supposed to do nowadays.  The Germans are on our side, and the Russians would have to face-off against the Americans should matters in Europe come to a head.

The real threat today lies in the Pacific, against China.  To be relevant and credible, the RCN needs to be able to operate with the U.S. Navy, and for that these frigates need more speed.

Their problem is that they are too broad across the beam.  They displace 8,000 tons, are 492 feet long, and a fat 68 feet across the beam.  The Tribals were 377 feet long, a slim 36 feet 6 inches across the beam, and displaced 2550 tons.

Lack of speed is the great weakness of the Type 26.  The Tribals were better physical specimens of a warship.
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Celebrating Biodiversity

Vincent J. Curtis

23 May 2019


Celebrating biodiversity is metaphysically weird.  It’s like having a bag of mixed nuts and celebrating not the nuts but a mixture per se.

Or like being in a forest and celebrating neither the forest nor the trees but a mixture.

Diversity is a quality, not a substance.  Diversity exists in something else.  We don’t often celebrate the color blue per se or bigness per se.  Even if we celebrate a big, blue object, we are celebrating its beauty, not blueness or bigness per se, though they may contribute to the overall beauty of the object.

Sophisticated sounding words sometimes betray an underlying lack of sophistication.

What they seem to be happy about is a sign of health.  But what it is in diversity constitutes health is open to debate, and rather than debate what they mean by health in the thing they have in mind, the apparent sophisticates claim to celebrate an obscure quality that is so abstract it is hard to imagine.  That makes them look smarter than you.
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Quebec's Bill 21

Vincent J. Curtis

22 May 2019


For all the sophisticated analysis and insights into the (western) concepts of individual rights that end up attacking Bill 21 and defending the hijab, the analyses miss the forest for the trees.  Analyses the conclude against Bill 21 all seem proceeded in ignorance of history and perhaps, like the debate itself, are too polite or too politically correct for precision.  Which is a roundabout way of saying, they all ignore the elephant in the room.

Bill 21 is about Islam.  The mission of Islam is to impose dhimmitude upon the society it inhabits, and Bill 21 is about fighting against that mission.  That’s all there is to it.

Oh, there is handwaving about other religions and their symbols, but all this is simply camouflage for the Bill’s real purpose, combatting the mission of Islam.

Quebec society did not pull itself out from under the weight of the Catholic Church merely to submit itself to the rule of Sharia.
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Coercing Doctors into 'Mercy' Killings

Vincent J. Curtis

17 May 2019


The decision by the Supreme Court of Canada to order that doctor-assisted suicide become the law of the land demonstrated that second-rate minds sat on the bench.  The really obvious metaphysical failing in the decision was to say that an unqualified evil was a limited good.

Having said that an evil was a good, there is no principled reason to contain the decision to the bounds it placed upon the new good.  For example, why should it only be a doctor that kills the patient, and not a nurse?  Why not a close relative, like a spouse, do the mercy killing?  Or a contract killer, just so long as the death is painless?  After all, the patient gets killed mercifully, right?

There is now an attempt to coerce doctors of conscience into at least refering patients who ask to be killed.  What we have here is a case of the legal profession ordering the medical profession to do its killing for it.  The lawyers can judge that a life may be snuffed out, but they shrink from snuffing it out themselves.  Public executioner was once a volunteer’s job, but in assisted suicide the legal profession is trying to compel someone to be the executioner or to participate in some way against their conscience.

Funny, but the legal profession does not compel its own members to take any old client or any old case, especially one that bothered their conscience.  The lawyer can decline for any number of reasons.  But doctors are going to be compelled to participate in cases they don’t want to for reasons of moral conscience.

Too bad the Supreme Court lacked moral sense.
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The Green New Democrat

Vincent J. Curtis

16 May 2019


U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed a “Green New Deal” for the United States as a way of saving the world from destruction by climate change.  Part of the policy involves the abolition of fossil fuels.

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is now proposing something similar -  the Green New Democrat.  It is getting harder and harder to tell AOC and Singh apart – politically.


Neither of these science-economic geniuses have addressed the problem of how, after they’ve abolished fossil fuels, they going to feed all the people they’re trying to save.  The agricultural equipment that makes farming so efficient run on fossil fuels.  All this food is transported to markets in the heart of major cities by long- and short-haul trucks, which run on fossil fuel.  How is Singh going to commute between Burnaby, BC, and Ottawa in any reasonable period of time except by fossil fueled transportation?

And if Singh only wants to ban the production of Alberta’s major export, Premier Jason Kenny is ready to turn off the pipeline to BC right now.

As a science grad from Waterloo, this old fossil finds it endlessly amusing to watch Arts majors propose absolute, dogmatic answers based upon their superior grasp of science and technology.
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Lake Ontario Floods: it's all climate change

Vincent J. Curtis

14 May 2019


This wasn’t supposed to happen, never mind happen again.  Global warming, er, climate change was supposed to make our weather hotter and drier.  Yet, so far this month of May daily high temperatures have been at or below normal.  And we’ve experienced a lot of rain.  Lake Ontario is flooding its shores, again.  New England and the maritimes are going to experience a snow fall.  The northwest passage is choked with ice.


Hotter and drier, colder and wetter; it’s all climate change, right?
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Another UN Panel Forecasts End of the World

Vincent J. Curtis

11 May 2019

RE: Saving the natural world is akin to saving our home. (Hamilton Spectator)


When it comes to pseud-scientific forecasts of an apocalypse, the Spectator rises to the bait like a trout to a fly.  In this instance, an UN body called, Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, declares that one million species are going to die-off soon – and the first question the Spectator asks is not, “is this even true?” or “how can they know?”  Instead, the Spectator asks, what are we going to do about it?

I guess the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is running out of steam, and so a new scare is needed to sow economic chaos in western economies.  But let’s try to answer first questions first.  How can they know?  Biologists do not know how many species there are on earth, and I don’t think biology has a million names of species in its catalogue.  We are not witnesses mass die-offs with our own eyes, and all we have of evidence of mass extinctions in the past are inferences from the fossil record.  In addition, no cause is offered as to why such things happened in the past, or what proximate cause should be operating now.

On the other hand, what is a UN panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystems supposed to find, except catastrophe unless…. ?  If the panel came back and said everything was A-Okay, what would happen to the panel’s funding and to the jobs of the bureaucrats who work on it?  Survival of species may be more personal that appears on the surface.

Another congenial reason for finding catastrophe is the one of calling on member governments to exert more power in the economic sphere.  You know, socialism as opposed to laissez-faire capitalism.  The sort of thing progressives leap to as the solution to the cause du jour.

What else?  One of the beliefs of Gaia and Deep Ecology is that there are too many human beings in existence.  They think that one billion is the right number, whereas presently there are over seven billion.  To get there you need a die-off of 87 percent of the human species, and a way to get there is to so mess up the world’s economic system that it can only support a billion.

As with climate change, the general aim of the panel’s report is to blame the successful western economies for a forthcoming calamity (which is always just down the road) in the hopes that western countries will bring themselves down a few pegs.  How can we know this?  As the Spectator notes, “One of the scientists insisted the world must rethink its ‘infatuation’ with economic growth.”  And the Spectator responds, “That’s sound advice, and surely we’ll need to regulate human activity in new ways…even if that makes some of the luxuries we want more unaffordable or even unattainable.” Spoken like a true progressive.  Try telling that to a Chinese peasant waiting for the Chinese economy to get him off the farm and into decent clothes.  So, who else is there but us?

Just like the climate change hoax.  Same program, different excuse for it.  And the Chinese are even less interested in limiting economic growth than they are about CO2 emissions.

We are getting the same message from the same people.  A UN panel and progressives blame successful western economies for a global catastrophe that is just down the road, and only western countries can save the world and must do penance for their sin of immoderate success.

Fool us once, shame on you.  Fool us twice, shame on us.
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Questions for Mueller

Vincent J. Curtis

7 May 2019

1.      When did you conclude that Donald Trump did not “collude” with the Russians?  September or Dec 2017?

2.      Given that Rod Rosenstein announced that no Americans had knowingly colluded with Russians in February, 2018, why did you wait until March, 2019, more than a year later, to render your report?

3.      Why did you prosecute Paul Manafort, and not main Justice, since his crimes had nothing to do with Russian collusion during the Trump campaign?

4.      Who ordered the pre-dawn guns-drawn raid on Manafort’s house?  Why? What would have happened had the agents met a man on the other side of the door ready to defend his hearth and home against home invaders with a shotgun?

5.      Who ordered the 29 man raid on Roger Stone’s house?  Why was that done?

6.      If Trump had pardoned Manafort, would that have constituted obstruction of justice?

7.      Your investigation was predicated as a counterintelligence investigation, was it not?

8.      For whose benefit is a counter-intelligence investigation conducted?  The president?  If justice isn’t being vindicated by your investigation, how can the president obstruct justice when your investigation is being done for his benefit and you aren’t out particularly to vindicate justice?

9.      Why did you need to interview President Trump when you already had all the information he could give you on collusion?  Were you trying to catch the president in a perjury trap by asking to interview him personally?

10.  Why did your team try to coerce Jerome Corsi to plead guilty to a crime he didn’t commit, and then not prosecute him when he refused you?

11.  Did you investigate the origins of the Steele dossier?  Wasn’t there Russian collusion on the part of the Hillary campaign, given that the Steele dossier contains nothing but Russian disinformation?

12.  Without the Steele dossier, what evidence at all did you have of Russian collusion on the part of the Trump campaign?

13.  Why did you prosecute Michael Flynn for lying to FBI agents when the agents concerned didn’t think he lied?  Was their testimony admissible in court, given the deceitful way it was obtained, i.e. without informing the White House Counsel what Comey was doing?

14.  The day before Trump fired Jim Comey, Rod Rosenstein gave the president a paper arguing for his dismissal.  Would Rod Rosenstein recommendation constitute reasonable doubt for corrupt intent, which is necessary for an obstruction charge to stick?

15.  Did you review the FISA warrant against Carter Page?  Were you aware of the surveillance of Carter Page?  When did you conclude that Page was not a Russian agent?  Were you aware that Page had committed no felony that justified a FISA warrant?  Why didn’t you prosecute those who obtained the FISA warrants by a fraud upon the FISC?

16.  Why didn’t you interview Christopher Steele?  The Russian woman who worked for Glenn Simpson at Fusion GPS and who met with Don Jr. at the Trump tower, Natalia Veselnitskaya?

17.  Why didn’t you interview Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, as the guy who contracted Christopher Steele?

18.  Why didn’t you interview Bruce Ohr of the DoJ, being the go-between between Steele, Fusion GPS, and the FBI?

19.  Why didn’t you question Hillary Clinton as the one who ordered Perkins Coie to commission and finance the Steele Dossier?

20.  Why didn’t you question Perkins Coie and Marc Elias about their involvement in evading reporting requirements of the Hillary campaign?

21.  Did you send A-G Barr the letter of March 27, 2019, for the purpose of leaking it to the press and an opportune moment?  Why didn’t you just call him with your concerns?

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Gun ownership is safer than hospital care

Vincent J. Curtis

6 May 2019

RE: Doctor calling for gun reform

It’s a bit rich for a medical doctor to call for more gun control because of the damage gunshots can cause.  According to a report by ProPublica (Sept 19, 2013) 210,000 people die per year in U.S. hospitals as a result of medical mistakes.  Let’s divide that by 20 to get a conservative estimate for Canada, giving around 10,000 who die per year from medical mistakes in Canada.

There were only 220 homicides by shooting in Canada in 2016, according to Statistics Canada and reported in the Spectator on 29 Sept 2018.  Hmm, 10,000 deaths by medical mistakes versus 220 killings by guns.  So far as a health problem is concerned, hospital “care” is far more dangerous than gun ownership.

Doctors should to pull the plank out of their own eye before they notice the speck in the eye of law abiding gun owners.

Never mind Doctors for Gun Reform what we really need is Gun Owners for Medical Reform!
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Nasty Kamala

Vincent J. Curtis

3 May 2019

Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) has gained a well-earned reputation for nastiness in her treatment of witnesses that appear before her congressional committees.  Repeated watching of her questioning reveals the underlying technique.  It is a technique that makes her look good on television and is especially effective against witnesses who are taken aback or are flustered by her performance.  When it fails, she can look bad, though not spectacularly so.  Her technique tends to backfire when the witness is not flustered by her attacks.

Her questioning of Attorney-General Willian Barr this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee exposed her technique to analysis.  In her cross-examination of Barr, she placed an emphasis upon the credentials of the people she was citing, and she assumed the air of an expert who was examining the work of some pretender.  In the Kavanaugh hearings, she exuded an air of menace that comes from the secret knowledge she has and the witness, apparently, does not.  If the witness gets flustered, her air of expertise and secret knowledge can appear devastating to the credibility of the witness.  Harris also frequently interrupts the witness’s answer when it looks like the witness is answering the question well.  She also bobs her head when questioning in a manner that suggests impatience with a recalcitrant witness and an expertise on her part.

She began be asking Barr a vague question that required a yes or no answer.  Then she actually says, “Yes or no?”  Since the question is vague, by manipulating the meaning of the terms, you can make the witness appear to lie.  At other times, in a rising voice she prepares her question in a hectoring and menacing way, insinuating that she knows what she is talking about and the witness does not.  She will repeat a question in a manner of impatience, suggesting with witness is evading something.

She questioned Barr about whether or not he and Deputy Attorney-General Rod Rosenstein had consulted with “career ethics officials” before they did anything.  She described Mueller as a “career” prosecutor.  The unflappable Barr looked a little flustered as he wondered why he would consult DoJ ethics officials, career or otherwise, at all since he had no conflicts.  He denied that Mueller was a “career prosecutor.”  Harris then switched to the conflict that Rod Rosenstein had, brazenly repeating a Republican talking point, his being both a witness to the Comey firing and to overseeing the Mueller investigation.  Was Rosenstein cleared by “career ethics officials” to both oversee the Mueller investigation and to participate in charging decisions, she wondered?  And had Barr personally consulting with CEO’s about Rosenstein’s ability to participate.  At first, Barr couldn’t understand what she was driving at, wondering if she knew how things were done at the DoJ, until finally, with bemusement, he said that making charging decisions was Rosenstein’s job, and that the Senate had confirmed Rosenstein in that job by a vote of 94-6.

Another line she took against Barr was whether or not he had personally examined the underlying evidence of the Mueller report before he decided not to charge the president with obstruction of justice.  Barr replied that he hadn’t, and said repeatedly that he relied on Mueller’s report as being truthfully representative of the underlying evidence.  Harris continued to badger Barr about examining the underlying evidence of the report in a manner that suggested that that is what Mueller’s supervisors are supposed to do.  Barr tried to explain to her how charging decisions were actually made, but it was no use.  She might have invoked her expertise as a former A-G of California to impatiently explain to Barr how eggs were to be sucked.  Each time, Barr simply said the reasonable thing, that he relied on what Mueller said was factual and truthful, and that neutralized her attack.  What Harris was demanding was that Barr find something in the evidence that Mueller did not, in particular cause to charge president Trump with obstruction of justice.  She was also expecting Barr is have examined the 2 million or so pages of evidence and testimony amassed by Mueller.  She was also expressing a distrust of underlings.  If the Mueller team was paid $35 million over 22 months and couldn’t be trusted with producing a report that accurately and truthfully reflected their work, then perhaps another team ought to have been hired.  And if Harris, when A-G of California, actually did review the evidence underlying the reports of underlings, she mustn’t have got much of her own work done.  It also must have been hell working for a boss who was so distrustful.  Moreover, why trust the underlying evidence?  If the underling can’t be trusted to report findings accurately, why trust them to accumulate “findings” at all?  Soon, Harris would be doing the ballistics evaluation herself.

Her habit of badgering the witness can make Harris look particularly Stalinist on occasion.  Jeff Sessions grew so frustrated at her constant interruptions that he addressed the committee chair and asked permission to answer the questions.  Harris was silenced by the committee chair – over her squawked objections.  On another occasion, retired Marine Corps 4-star General John Kelly, while he was DHS Secretary made Harris look bad when he unflappably returned answers to her badgering, and calmly asked her to shut up long enough for him to answer.

Harris is supremely qualified to be a Stalinist inquisitor.  She badgers witnesses, feigns a secret knowledge, and seems to menace the witness with what she secretly knows, sometimes cautioning him to be careful in his answer.  She asks questions full of vague terms.  She pretends to expertise herself, sometimes insinuating a secret expertise she has, and she emphasizes the expertise of the people she knows the witness didn’t make use of.  All of it can be quite intimidating and requires an unflappability on the part of the witness to survive looking whole.  As a TV spectacle, her technique is calculated to make her look good, in a dangerous sort of way, at the expense of the witness.  And even when she is gotten the better of, she makes it appear as if she were victimized in some way.

Altogether, a nasty piece of work.
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