Celebrating Canada?

Vincent J. Curtis

30 June 20

Today's Spectator editorial called for celebrating Canada's 153 anniversary tomorrow. 

It’s rich, to the point of nauseating, to read a Spec editorial calling for the celebration of Canada.  The Spectator has delivered its readers a steady torrent of reasons to hate Canada and most Canadians.  Canada is a racist country, it was and is a colonializing power, its first Prime Minister (besides being a racist colonizer) began a program of genocide against aboriginal people - founded in a belief of white supremacism.

 How can you love a country that’s systemically racist?  How can you respect a national police force that’s systemically racist?  Perhaps the geographic area called Canada has much natural beauty, but the majority of people in it are irredeemable racists, colonizers, and tiny destroyers of the planet earth.  Only Indigenous, blacks, and recent immigrants from the third world are lovable; the rest are deplorably evil.

The praise the editorial does offer for Canada has to do with actions by governments - that it approves of  - in respect of Covid-19, which it would be racist to call the “Wuhan virus,” like they do in China.  The editorial celebrates that most Canadians aren’t selfish, irresponsible yahoos who think the lockdown has gone too far too long, but rather who can be panicked into staying home, living on-line, and doing all the right, progressive things without complaint.  

There is much to celebrate about Canada, but all of them the Spectator has recently condemned as irredeemably and unspeakably evil.  So, Spec readers, let’s all celebrate those systemically racist colonizers who made this country what it is!

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Mandating the wearing of masks

Vincent J. Curtis

30 June 20

Several mayors in Ontario, Canada, particularly John Tory, Mayor of Toronto, have asked for the power to mandate the wearing of masks.

Irrational and “contrary to the science” are the ways Dr. Scott Atlas of the respected Hoover Institution described mandating the wearing of masks, especially out of doors.  He has written several excellent articles in The Hill and as a YouTube video out.

The science can be briefly summarized:

1.      If no virus is present, wearing a mask is useless;

2.      Social distance, or wear a mask, but both are unnecessary;

3.      Wearing a mask outdoors is useless because the virus (from another person) gets rapidly dispersed and killed outdoors;

4.      Wearing a mask indoors may be indicated if social distancing is impossible and a sick person is present.

The “abundance of caution” argument doesn’t hold if you’re claiming to “follow the science.”  Since we now know enough about the virus and its transmission, the abundance of caution argument doesn’t hold if you’re following the science.  It’s one or the other, and it is irrational not to follow the science when the science is as well-understood as it now is.

There is a lot more irrational policy making going on because the science isn’t being followed, such as keeping children out of school.  Children don’t get sick, and they don’t transmit the virus.

Mayors who call for the mandatory wearing of masks outdoors are scared, irrational, and possibly intoxicated on their new-found powers.
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A Tale of Two Protests

Vincent J. Curtis

29 June 20

A Roman Catholic community in a small, rural town was getting tired of celebrating their Sunday masses in accordance with government dictates.  Congregants had to give their names and phone numbers to enter the church, they had to wear masks, and they were escorted to the pew they had to sit in.  Tthey were all “socially distanced,” the church was only allowed to be a quarter full, and the celebration had to be modified to suit government orders.  The police would occasionally come by and check to make sure that orders were being enforced.

Then, their little town was subjected to a Black Lives Matter protest.  Antifa was present, the horror of the killing of George Floyd was invoked, and people were taught that they were systemically racist.  What people noticed was that this crowd of protesters did not socially distance, wore masks selectively, more as disguises than for health, and that the police didn’t care.  The protesters were protected by police, and a journalist was escorted away by police when he started questioning the protesters.

So the Catholics decided to hold a protest of their own.  It was announced on the church website.  The protest would occur at church in place of regular Sunday mass.  The church was filled to capacity, no names were taken, and no one wore a mask.  Curious, the police checked on the proceedings.  They walked past signs reading: “BLM”, “Justice for George Floyd!” and “Down with systemic racism!.”

A policeman whispered to an usher, “this looks just like a regular Sunday mass.”

“On, no.” said the usher. “This is our protest.  We’re offering a mass for the repose of the soul of George Floyd, and the priest’s sermon was all about the evils of racism and how much Black Lives Matter.”

Confused, the policeman checked his policy guide.  Sure enough, it said failure to social distance at protests would not be enforced, but regular Sunday masses would be strictly policed and fines imposed.  Since the gathering at church was a protest, and advertised as such, the policeman departed and left the Catholics to protest in their own way in peace.
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Torstar opts for systemic racism in style guide

Vincent J. Curtis

27 June 20

On Saturday, June 26, Spectator publisher Paul Berton announced that Torstar papers were going to follow new AP style guidelines and capitalize the letter B in black and I in indigenous when referring to black people and aboriginal people.  (Note: aboriginal will remain uncapitalized.)  In addition, the w in white and b brown will remain lower case when referring to white and brown people respectively.  Note the systemtic racism inherent in this latest surrender to the P.C. mob, but never mind.  Mr. Berton enthusiastically embraced the change, even though Trostar had rejected such changes previously, on the ground that that was then and this is now.  He also referred to another Torstar editor's enthusiastic surrentder made previously on another matter and the justification for that bend-over.

I sent Mr Berton the note below, and as of this posting have yet to hear from him.

Mr. Berton;

If the rule now is that black and indigenous are to be capitalized, regardless of the reason why, capitalizing those words turns them into substantives.  Them’s the rules of grammar.

So, why in the story “Toronto cop guilty of beating” do we find in paragraph 1 the expression “Black teen?”  Shouldn’t it read “teen Black?”  or “teenaged Black?”  The substantive is the important word, the noun that takes the adjectives.  The story could have been carried equally well had the victim been described as a teen, which means that Black (the substantive) was not substantive at all in the story.

I suppose a counter-example would be “Canadian teen” versus “teenaged Canadian,” but “Canadian” is an authentic, substantive category of people.  Turning Black and Indigenous into substantives equivalent of Canadian, you make race essential rather than incidental.  But if race is essential rather than incidental, then leaving white and brown lower case means that race is not essential but incidental in those cases,  There can be only one explanation for this disparity in treatment..

With all this uninformed talk of systemic racism, the print media seems to be falling into it themselves in an effort to please.

And that means there’s a good kind of systemic racism and a bad kind of systemic racism.   (Where have I heard that argued before?)

Old-fashioned liberalism treated race as incidental, and I think that’s still the best policy.  And I’m sure there are editors rolling in their graves at the subversive editorializing being slipped into news stories with this selective capitalization.

Regards;

Vincent J. Curtis

P.S. “Why not, given how much it matters to those who care deeply about how the media depicts and names them.”  Think about that.  I haven’t heard such a soft-headed excuse by a responsible person in a while.  Either she is hiding a political agenda behind this excuse, or she fails to grasp that maybe print media has standards of its own to meet, and these aren’t subject to the deep cares of an illiterate mob.  Would she bend over similarly at the deep care in which the Chinese communists take the way they are depicted?
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UWaterloo holds Floyd Virtual Town Hall

Vincent J. Curtis

17 June 20

Bob Lemieux, Dean of Science at the University of Waterloo, sent me a general notification of a virtual town hall to mourn/commiserate/talk over the death of George Floyd, and the larger implications of police brutality, racism, etc.

The text of that notification is copied below:


The death of George Floyd from police brutality has put an international spotlight on sustained injustices. We recognize that the University of Waterloo and Faculty of Science are not immune to racism. This is our time to reflect, stand together and build a more inclusive community for Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC).

Change always begins with listening and learning. We are committed to creating lasting change within the Faculty of Science and value your input. Over the past week, some of you have reached out to us and shared your thoughts and experiences. We appreciate your courage and honesty.

We want to continue the conversation faculty-wide with a virtual Town Hall on Wednesday, June 24, 2:00 - 3:30 p.m. ET. All Science students, faculty, staff and alumni are welcome to attend.

We have created an anonymous, online anti-racism form for the Science community to start submitting their comments, experiences and suggestions to move forward. Together, we will grow in awareness, identify gaps and commit to change.

We want to do better. This is our opportunity to change. Join us at the Town Hall.


My emailed response was as follows:

Bob;

I attended Waterloo in the 1970s, when large numbers of students from mainland China attended.  I roomed with a guy from Nigeria.  Racism didn’t seem to be a problem then.

So, what happened since then?  Did white Canadian students get schooled in the Ozarks?  My son attended Waterloo in the turn of the millennium, and he’s way more liberal than I am.  He was the secretary of the Russian student’s federation, and he doesn’t even speak Russian.  Nobody cared!  So, what’s happened since then?

I suspect nothing, except for the desire for virtue-signaling and for expressions of moral narcissism.

The problems in America are not, and never have been, the problems of Canada.  Our police aren’t their police.  Canada never had a history of slavery.

So why don’t you just celebrate the fact that we’re not American?  Otherwise, shut-up about racism, unless you want to indict the Han Chinese students, who are racist to the core.  (Not that I care!)

In fact, why not expect people to put their big-boy pants on and simply get on with life without this childish naval gazing?  If life at Waterloo is too tough, there’s always Laurier!

Regards;

Vincent J. Curtis


Needless to say, the email went unreplied to, and I’m sure the virtual town hall went on without me.  I would have hoped that the moral narcisism - political-PC culture would have stayed out of the science community, but it hasn’t.  Even STEM has been infected with toxic, make-believe progressivism.  Did you know that math was racist?  Yeah, it was created largely by white men, and women and minorities (but not Chinese minorities!) have so much trouble with it.  And that’s all the proof you need of math’s racist origins and racism embedded in it.  At least, that the theory of the basket-weaving majors.

When even the science dean feels the need to virtue-signal and bend over, Vaseline jar in hand, the toxic progressive politics on campus is getting really bad.
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Let's not go to extremes over arrest of Chief Allan Adam

Vincent J. Curtis

36 June 20

A big issue in Canada is the arrest of Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca-Fort Chipewyan First Nations that occured in Fort McMurray in March of this year.  Chief Adam was driving a truck with an expired license plate on it, and he was detained by Fort Mac RCMP outside of a bar, at night.  An attempted arrest got ugly, and an RCMP officer was video recorded punching Adam repeatedly when he appeared to be cuffed and on the ground.  He was charged with resisting arrest, in addition to the driving without a license charge.  At trail, the resisting arrest charge was dismissed by the judge, and Adam was convicted on the license charge.

The video of the arrest went viral and was held up as an example of the systemic racism that exists in the RCMP.  The Hamilton Spectator editorialed today about the need to review policing on the basis of the video, and, of course, the anarchist violence released upon the death of George Floyd.  This simple-minded view, that policing needs to be reviewed and defunded to some extent as punishment for systemic racism is addressed below.

Even a propaganda sheet like the Spectator editorial pages must understand – somewhere in the deep recesses that once housed a journalist’s mind – that there are two sides to a story.  This is my best reconstruction of what went down in the arrest of Chief Allan Adam.

Eastern Canadians have no idea of the “lived experiences” of westerners.  Of note, is that out west there are no romantic illusions about aboriginal people.  The aboriginal people of the west are racially much purer than aboriginals of Southern Ontario and eastern Canada.  There are no blue-eyed, blonde-haired people with status cards out west.  The closest to that are known as Metis.

Aboriginals also comprise a much greater proportion of the population.  They came into contact with European culture less than 150 years ago, and up north in places like Fort Chipewyan it was a lot more recent than that.  Before the tar sands project, Fort McMurray was an Indian village of 1,000 people on the banks of the Athabasca River.  And Fort Chipewyan is further north than that.  To many aboriginals, Europeans are newcomers and carpetbaggers to be endured until they eventually disappear.

The government of Canada is the government of the Europeans that First Nations deal with.  The government of Alberta is an upstart and illegitimate interloper.  The RCMP are contracted by Alberta to be the provincial police force, and this is advantageous because aboriginals accept the RCMP as the police force of the federal government.

That Chief Adams had an expired license sticker on his vehicle is surprising, inasmuch as there was a license with a sticker on it at all.  (He must have bought his truck used.)  Since many First Nations don’t recognize the legitimacy of the provincial government, nuisance laws like provincial licensing are ignored as much as can be gotten away with, especially when enforcement is weak.  Chief Adam was arrested, not on his reserve, but in the big city of Fort McMurray.

With this as backdrop, you can appreciate that the situation of arresting Chief Adam was not de novo.  Chief Adams likely had a massive chip on his shoulder.  The police of Fort Mac weren’t going to be bullied into letting an enforcement matter go, and things escalated quickly.  Arresting drunken Indians is pretty routine for the RCMP, and given how hard arrest is often resisted, the arresting officer probably leapt to DefCon4 straightaway.  Resisted arrests are never pretty, and the arrest of Chief Adam was no exception.  But that’s also why we have judges and trials.

It would be wrong to generalize from this episode.  You can’t conclude that systemic racism exists in the RCMP because of this.  You’re missing a lot of data.  At worst, you could say that both sides knew the score.  If, however, you still want to have one policing policy for aboriginals and another for Canadians, well, that’s exactly what systemic racism is – isn’t it!

There are two sides to every story.  Life is more complex than simpleminded anarchists understand.  The only outcome of changing policing under the pressure of anarchist demands is more violent crime.  Had Chief Adam not left his reserve, the RCMP wouldn’t have bothered him for driving an unlicensed truck.
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Racialized is itself an expression of racism

Vincent J. Curtis

26 June 20

A new word has entered the lexicon: racialized.  It is a word used to name people who aren’t white.  But does the construction of the word ‘racialized’ itself betray an underlying racism?

To racialize, you have to start with something and change it into something else.  For example, to radicalize a person you start with someone of commonplace views and, by some process, change them into a person of radical views.  Hence, to racialize you start with someone who has no race and you give them one.  Imparting someone a race is the act of racialization, and, from nothing, the person so processed is racialized.  That’s literally what “racialized” means, the product of a completed process of imparting a race.

White people are not considered racialized.  They have no race. They are the matter you start with that you racialize.  Whiteness is posited as the norm, the blank canvas you start with, and then racialize into a “racialized” person.

What are the values implied by the term racialized?  The protesters imply that racialized means something different from the norm, and possibly inferior on that account.  After all, they’re protesting that the imputation of inferiority is wrong.

‘Racialized’ means that blacks, Hispanics, aboriginals, etc. are construed as derivatives from whites, and whiteness is the parent norm.  This foundation of a hierarchy of racial classification carries the stench of a deplorable racism.  Cancel it.
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The Sheer Egotism and Ignorance of Protesters Revealed

Vincent J. Curtis

24 June 20

This is a continuation of the the critique of the Op-Ed "The silenced plight of Hamilton's racialized students" written by Kojo Damptey and published in the Spectator on 23 June.

In a ridiculous screed, author Kojo Damptey delivered a spectacular performance of rank egotism.  She seems to think schooling ought to revolve around, not education, but her causes.  And she’s tired of ‘carrying the burden’ of teaching the school board what their true job is, and it isn’t merely confessing to white guilt.

Forgive me for thinking that the purpose of public education was education.  You know, the teaching of hard facts and the development of skills both mental and physical.  Kojo and Company (she speaks of ‘our anger’) believes the role of the school board, as measured by their priorities, is to “deal with the realities of racism,” which is a pretty shrivelled view of schooling.

Kojo & Co. object to the arrest of black students and forcing them into the back of a cruiser, while the Board remains silent. She terms an arrest ‘police violence.’  However, Kojo offers no alternative to dealing with drug pushers in school, or actions to take when a student is murdered.  Having the Board make ‘symbolic gestures of solidarity’, whatever that means, seems bizarre and insufficient.

The egocentricity bellows on for hundreds of words, but weirdly concludes with a call for the firing of Glenn DeCaire as head of security at McMaster University.  What the head of Mac security has to do with racism in high schools isn’t mentioned, but the call derives from “lived experiences.”

As serious as a child with a loaded gun.
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Colonialization Protesters Won't Leave

Vincent J. Curtis

24 June 20

In the news was a near riot to tear down a statue of Canada's first Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald in Kingston, Ontario, his adopted home town.  There is a statue of Sir John A. in Hamilton, and it too has been threatened with destruction.  The Spectator editorialized that Canada accempt more immigrants soon as a means of stimulating the economy.  And, of course, there was the racist rant by Kojo Damptey.

The arrogance, ignorance, and hypocrisy of the radical-progressive left is truly amazing.  We’re seeing demonstrations that threaten to tear down statues of Sir John A. Macdonald because he was a racist colonizer.  Practically every one of the demonstrators is white.  So, why don’t these demonstrators demonstrate their personal commitment to the cause of decolonialization and emigrate to Europe?

If Canada is the product of colonization and we inhabit lands that belonged to aboriginal people, as the Spectator endorses, why did we see an editorial that called for increased immigration as a means of stimulating the economy?  Doesn’t more immigration exacerbate the colonialization problem?  And since the prevalence of racism increases as more racial mixing occurs, doesn’t increased immigration from poor countries exacerbate the racism problem in Canada?

If black people also reject the colonial product that Canada is, why don’t they return to their country of origin, or else move to Africa?

If recent immigrants from Muslim countries deplore Canada’s racism and Islamophobia, why did they come here?  Why didn’t they return to the Islamic paradise?

The answer is that none of these people are subject to the ramifications of their own ideology.  Other people are.  The “issue” is never the issue, the issue is power.  The object of exerting their power is to humiliate the Canadian middle class.  When Justin Trudeau says that Canada is systemically racist, he is expressing his contempt for middle and working class Canadians.

It’s about power and humiliation.
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BLM coming to Hamilton

Vincent J. Curtis

23 June 20

This date the Hamilton Spectator published an op-ed written by Kojo Damptey, a local race hustler who presently gets paid to be Interim Director of Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion.  Her piece was headlined, "The silenced plight of Hamiton's racialized students."  It was really a bizarre rant, and it's going to take a series of posts to address it.

If one can characterize Kojo Damptey’s rant on racism in Hamilton’s high schools, the words would be juvenile, ignorance, arrogance, and hypocrisy.  In the entire piece, Kojo did not offer a single fact; what we got were allegations, impressions, and overwrought expressions of feelings.  The only solution seemingly offered to end racism in high schools was to destroy the systems.

Ignorance is not surprising, because knowledge of hard facts is no longer important in high school.  History is no longer taught; instead, they offer social studies, which can be described as opinion built upon constructs.  Instead of a history of the 20^th century, i.e. a body of facts, students are taught “globalization” in social studies.  Geography is no longer taught – ironically.  English spends too much time on creative writing, and not enough on simple expository prose.  Students learn to express their feelings, because they have so little hard knowledge to convey.  An arrogance develops from the certainty of their feelings, and because they are never challenged to analyze and to defend their position.  The coddling of the emotions of students leads to a prolonging of the period of juvenility, as we witness here.

Kojo and friends are yet another example of the Marxism-Anarchism-Nihilism phenomenon.  Marxist because people are divided into classes: black, Queer, racialized, Muslim, and the evil whites.  Anarchist and Nihilist because the only solution is to destroy the irredeemable system, and replace it with – nothing.

As serious as a toddler with a loaded gun.
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Progressives Never Wrong, Even When They Say So

Vincent J. Curtis

19 June 20

In its headline story of today (The Catastrophe That Never Happened) The Hanon Times has finally admitted that it was wrong.  Wrong by a lot.  Off by a factor of twenty.  But the conscience of the paper is clear because it was on the side of the angels, it thinks.  Trouble is, there is no evidence that the lockdown measures did anything, and if they did something, it left us vulnerable to s second wave.  All the while the lockdown, which the paper weirdly supported, produced health problems of its own, to say nothing of devastating the economy.

There was no reason for the paper to have taken a position on the lockdown.  It could simply have reported on it, and published opinion pieces from both sides.  But no, the paper had to become politically involved, and it couldn’t admit the existence of another side.  Insofar as there was one, they were selfish morons who would be responsible for many deaths.  Then the George Floyd riots broke out, and social distancing rules be damned, this cause was too progressive to criticize.

There is a weird progressive investment in Canada in the defeat of Trump.  The belief in the U.S. is that if the economy stays flat, Trump will lose in November.  If civil disturbances continue, Trump will lose.  But why are we ruining our economy?  Why are we piling up a mountain of debt?  Is it in sympathy with blue America?  Do Canadian progressives hope to contribute to Trump’s defeat by not providing a counter-example that could help him?

Progressives are crazy!
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Canadian Parliamentary Black Caucus: Fake Victims and Racists Themselves

Vincent J. Curtis

17 June 20

Members of the Canadian Parliamentary Black Caucus, through spokesman Greg Fergus, MP, today called for "action" on systemic racism in Canada.  None of the black MPs and senators who are calling for “action” on racism can claim to be victims of systemic racism themselves.  Their careers and political success deny it.

These members of the Parliamentary Black Caucus have three thing in common: ignorance of Canadian history, a hatred of Conservatives (whom they excluded); and they wouldn’t know “systemic racism” if they showered with it, which they do, every day.

They cannot, they dare not, try to define what systemic racism is.  With one notable exception, systemic racism is illegal in Canada.  It’s illegal under the Federal Bill of Rights of 1960; it’s illegal under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms; and it’s illegal under the various provincial Bills of Human Rights.  Unless people are speaking of Platonic Forms, the only place systemic racism can exist (excluding the exception) is in the hearts and minds of individual people.  But it’s legal to exist there because Section 2 of the Charter of Rights enshrines the rights to freedom of thought, belief, and expression.  Those words weren’t put there to protect only popular thoughts and beliefs.

The only legitimate “action” that can be undertaken to suppress racism that exists in the hearts and minds of Canadians is jawboning.  Anything else would be an arrogant and hypocritical violation of the Charter of Rights.  No Canadian should be discriminated against by his own government because of what he believed or thought.  That’s systemic discrimination.

The group said, "For more than 400 years, Black Canadians contributed to what all Canadians enjoy today, in spite of the legal, social, and economica barriers."

It is impossible that for more than four hundred years, black Canadians contributed to what Canadians enjoy today because the earliest ‘Canada’ be said to have come into being is 1791 with the passage of the first Constitution Act 229 years ago.  The first Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe signed into law a bill prohibiting slavery in Upper Canada in 1794.

The greatest number of blacks in Canada today come from the British Commonwealth, not descended from U.S. slaves.  Greg Fergus’s grandfather immigrated to Canada from Montserrat, a British Protectorate.

It is deceitful for Fergus to imply a claim on 400 year of Canadian oppression, or contributions to Canadian success, through his race.  (A racist thought, come to think about it.)

Speaking of arrogant and hypocritical, the Parliamentary Black Caucus is itself an explicitly racist association.

These fake victims practice racism themselves without the least embarrassment or even awareness.
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Black GG Says Canada is Racist

Vincent J. Curtis

17 June 20

Michaelle Jean is no one to speak of systemic racism in Canada, or Quebec, as she has.  If anything, she has been the beneficiary of reverse discrimination, and nothing in her life has been impaired by racism; quite the opposite.

Jean came to Canada at age eleven as a refugee from Haiti.  She attended university in Canada and taught at universities both here and abroad.  She was employed by the CBC and Radio-Canada.  She was appointed Governor-General of Canada, replacing Adrienne Clarkson (herself of Chinese extraction), and later became Secretary-General of La Francophonie.

She was appointed GG despite suspicious of Quebec separatist leaning and her French citizenship, which she had to renounce.  But the fact that she was black, female, francophone, and an immigrant with an attractive overbite made the political optics of her appointment irresistible.  To demonstrate a broadmindedness and the absence of prejudice, she got the job.

Now, however, this Haitian refugee speaks of Canada’s “long legacy of hatred from the time of colonial conquest based on white supremacy.”  And “It’s simply irresponsible to deny racism in Canada against blacks and Indigenous.”

That’s gratitude for you.  It’s not like she speaks from personal experience.

My suggestion is we revoke Jean’s landed immigrant status and send her packing back to Port-au-Prince, where she’ll just have to make do without a security detail and a limo driver.  But she’ll be free of Canadian racism.
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Antifa Tactics

Vincent J. Curtis

16 June 20

The Black Lives Matter movement thinks it has a friend in Antifa, but it doesn’t.  Far from being a movement against racism, Antifa seeks to promote it.

During the protests in the wake of the George Floyd killing, Antifa arranged for pallets of bricks, rocks, and bottles to be dropped off in convenient locations before the demonstrations began.  Antifa agents then encouraged people to throw these missiles at police, and to riot and burn and loot.  The visuals were of black people destroying and stealing, which confirmed the stereotype of prejudice to millions of people watching.

Antifa members do not engage in illegal acts themselves because a felony record does not play well in the white-collar business world they expect circulate in professionally.  Many in Antifa come from upper-middle class backgrounds.

Another tactic is to create an apparent groundswell for the removal of a statue, or the renaming of a place. The purpose is not so much to destroy history, but to either provoke a backlash, which they can they claim is proof of systemic racism, or to humiliate the middle class by getting its destructive demand carried out.  Antifa hates the middle class.

With Antifa, the issue is never the issue, the issue is power.  Antifa realizes it can’t hold power itself, but does try to get the respectable people who do hold it to bend to their will by accusations of racism, threats of humiliation, and intimations of violence.
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What Lockdown? Racism now more dangerous than coronavirus

Vincent J. Curtis

15 June 20

The woke folks once again demonstrated: that they are so small-minded that they can only hold one big idea in their minds at a time.  It is now established that racism is more of an existential threat to Canada than the coronavirus is.

A rally of three hundred in Gore Park (Hamilton) merged with another of three hundred in Dundurn Park to form a chanting mob of six hundred in front of City Hall.  Chanting promotes the creation aerosols of bodily fluids, the primary mechanism of coronavirus transmission, but never mind.  It doesn’t matter that the group size exceed the permitted maximum.  No one accuses these people of being selfish morons who will be responsible for any rise in cases.

To protest for the respect of rights protected in the Charter of Rights is bad, but to protest over the death of an obscure black criminal in Minneapolis that occurred three weeks ago is commanded by righteousness.  Such is the reasoning of mob frenzy.

The difference between the mob at Queen’s Park and the one at City Hall is that the latter can put a mob in front of your house.  They have the power to humiliate, and they use that power rigorously.  That’s why old statues are torn down, places renamed, and why people are made to kneel: as demonstrations of the power to humiliate.

Another aspect of wokeness is psychological projection.  What they accuse others of is what they actually do themselves.  More on this later.
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No Justice, No peace, no Brains in the Least

Vincent J. Curtis

13 June 20

Newton’s Third Law is that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  That law of physics seems to have an equivalent in society.  The Black Lives Matter and Antifa movements are fomenting a powerful and as yet unfelt reaction.

Canada isn’t the United States, and Hamilton isn’t Minneapolis.  Seattle, Washington, isn’t Birmingham, Alabama, circa 1963.  You wouldn’t know that from the rhetoric of BLM, from the talk of the Prime Minister, or any of the other race hustlers on both sides of the border.

The curious thing about the BLM demonstrations in Canada is the proportion of white people in them.  There’s an awful lot of virtue-signalling going on in these demonstrations, of people trying to prove to themselves that they aren’t racists, it’s other people who must be.  There’s a hard core of Marxists-Anarchists-Nihilists who are there to fill an emptiness in their souls by destroying western civilization a little at a time.

The accusation of racist has been an epithet of choice on the progressive left for decades. It has been used both to intimidate and as a means of discrediting political opponents.  The demonstrations long after any emotion should have worn off are acts of political intimidation, and are a show of strength to an unorganized citizenry.

In Innisfail, population 7,800, a town the middle of rural Alberta, a BLM rally of 350 white people was held to teach the residents about systemic racism.  This was an effort at intimidation, and to show that even remote countryside wasn’t safe from the cultural revolution.

Between these demonstrations and the enforcement of the lockdown (now discredited by the demonstrations), the lessons being taught are: that the government will selectively withhold its power to provide security to unorganized civil society; that it’s going to select certain categories of people for punishment for their “sins”; that it’s going to pick aggrieved groups and comply with their demands; and that certain people are going to be singled out for humiliation.

I’ve seen intimidation used as a sales tactic, and it’s probably an effective tactic in electoral politics also.  It may be that Prime Minister Trudeau sees another majority government through dark hints of systemic racism and the cataclysm that would ensue if he weren’t re-elected.  However, an unexpected reaction against government intrusiveness and weakness would have him turfed.
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Justin: Canada Full of Systemic Racism

Vincent J. Curtis

12 June 20

With that peculiar, breathy voice Prime Minister Trudeau uses whenever he wants to sound especially serious, the drama-teacher princeling looked into the camera yesterday and said that Canada is full of systemic racism.  He and his Indigenous Services minister both accused the RCMP of systemic racism.  It makes you wonder how this happen on their watch.

Since 1963, the Liberal party has governed Canada for thirty-nine of those fifty seven years.  They’ve provided Lester Pearson, Pierre Trudeau, Jean Chretien, Paul Martin, and Justin himself as PM.  The conservative interlopers were Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper, neither of whom was a fire-breathing social conservative.  With all this liberal-progressive governance, or at least neutrality, how did systemic racism arise, and why does it persist?  Justin himself has been PM for the last five years, and it’s still a problem?  His cabinet was supposed to be reflective of Canada, half women and minorities represented out of proportion to their number.  So what happened?

Justin owes us an accounting of its rise, and in the course of that explain what systemic racism is, precisely.

This accusation could simply a ruse, an effort on his part to deflect attention from something else.  Could he be trying to buy indulgences from the Marxist-Anarchist-Nihilists in Canada?  I kneel, and say you’re right?  We can’t be sure, but an accounting for the rise of systemic racism under his nose would be helpful in understanding his actions or inactions.
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Fire the Chief and Demoralize the Police

Vincent J. Curtis

11 June 20

The People's Daily ran an article on a report on a clash between a Pride parade and counter-protesters that took place in June, 2019.  Long story, but the police intervened and broke it up but not to the satisfaction of the LGBTQ+ organizers.  The complaints of the organizers were reviewed by an independent lawyer and the police standards branch.

The curious thing about the Floyd riots is that they occur in the cities that are the most progressive, where ‘systemic racism’ ought not to exist.  The chief of the Minneapolis police is black, and he has been chief for the last two years.  The Mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota is black.  Seattle, the site of an insurrection, has had an extreme progressive as Mayor for years, and the population of Seattle has for decades been politically progressive to a high degree.  The same is true of Los Angeles, New York City, and Chicago.  So, what gives?  Why should rioting over police excesses and demands for the defunding of police occur in cities where progressive attitudes generally and progressives in power ought to have wiped it out?  These cities aren’t Birmingham, Alabama, circa 1963.  The Klan doesn’t run these cities.

The answer is found in the book On Guerrilla Warfare, written by Mao Tse-tung in 1937.  The guerrillas are the fish and the people are the sea, he wrote.  If the sea won’t support the fish, the fish die.

Systemic racism has been a cardinal principle of progressivism for fifty years.  It has been inculcated in universities since the end of the Vietnam War.  The most progressive cities are the places where the progressive analysis is most widely accepted.  Those seas are most congenial to the accusation that the death of George Floyd is representative of the racism of police.  And as Mao wrote, the way of bringing down the system of government is to attack the force that supports it and the people that run it.  This explains why even the most progressive of mayors are attacked along with calls for the defunding of city police.

With this in mind, I read the story “Pride report puts police chief in hot seat.”  One report written by Scott Bergman, is clearly aimed at bringing down Chief Eric Girt.  That report is at odds with another report written by Gary Heron of the Professional Standard Branch that says the complaints against the police were unsubstantiated.  Berman’s report is endorsed by the official spokesmen of the LBGTQ+ organizations.  Regardless, the tactical handling of the small affair at issue would have been in the hands of a Staff Sergeant, who is two levels below the Chief in the police hierarchy.

The clash between the Pride parade and a small number of counter-protesters was a one-off.  With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps it could have been handled differently.  It was a learning experience for many.  But does peace in the city turn on the taking of the Chief’s scalp?  Is there some principle to be upheld?

If there is a principle to be upheld, the principle ought to be of the maintenance of order.  But disorder, confusion, and the demoralization of police is the aim of getting rid of Chief Girt over this affair.  That is something the police board and the city council cannot countenance.

You can’t salve every sore.  When the sore is disingenuous, salving it will only lead to more demands, and another demonstrations of the complainant’s power.   This is the opposite of democratic rule, and lies on the road to Seattle.

Chief Girt needs to be sustained in his position as a counter-demonstration of reasonableness and order, and the maintenance of police morale.
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Systemic

Vincent J. Curtis

10 June 20

Whenever you want to make a blanket smear that is difficult to shake, you use terms that are fuzzy in meaning.  Like calling someone a “Russian asset” instead of a “Russian agent.”  Asset is fuzzier than agent; and since one can be an asset without knowing it, asset is a harder accusation to escape than agent.

So it is with the term, “systemic,” as in systemic racism.  A similar word is “systematic,” meaning performed in accordance with a system.  But systematic racism is plainly not practiced in Canada, and so the accusatio can be easily dismissed.

Instead, we are hit with “systemic.”  This word means of, or pertaining to a system.  But in the case of racism, what system?  Is The System racist?  We’ve been told of the existence of a ‘System,’ but what comprises The System is fuzzy.  It could be anything, and you could unwittingly be a part of it.  Being unwitting, you’re denial of being a part of The System is unpersuasive.

Hence, the charge of “systemic racism” is a means of imputing the odiousness of racism to society as a whole, since the whole of society constitutes a “system” containing all others.  And denying the existence of systemic racism, the expression being fuzzy, leaves one open to the charge of being blind to it, and therefore an unwitting component of it.  Which is a way of accusing the doubter of being an odious racist.

Sophistical, clever, dishonest, and vicious.
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Hairy Hamiton, Wendy's Potty-Mouth

Vincent J. Curtis

10 June 20

The city of Hamilton, Ont., and smaller cities and towns around it, was not permitted to move to the second phase of Ontario's re-opening.  The reason offered was that coronavirus was still not under control.  As a result, barbershops and hairdressers could not reopen.  The progressive People's Daily sought to explain and justify the continuation of Hamilton's time out.

Also, Wendy Mesley, a long-time CBC newsreader suffered a bit of potty-mouth two days ago, and was suspended by the Mother Corp.  Through the miracles of modern make-up Wendy still looks pretty perky.  However, her being white, Canadian born, bleached-blonde, and old marks her for out for a Jacboite guillotining, career-wise.

RE: Why can’t Hamilton re-open?

As Hamilton and vicinity moves from hirsute to downright Bohemian, the philosophical among us ask, “Why can’t I just get a haircut?”  The short answer is, “because you’re an idiot, who listens to idiots.”

The credentialed experts, from the W.H.O., through Saint Theresa Tam to the local scold, have proven why the practice of medicine is an art.  They have been wrong from the beginning and have repeatedly reversed themselves; but our fascination with credentials have proven our undoing.  When, after getting their fourteen days of lockdown, they asked for another four weeks, we should have started looking for a second opinion.  Now, we’ve passed one hundred days and they’re still guessing.

The experts can’t prove the lockdown saved a single life.  Our LTC facilities have been cleaned out; there are few victims left to be claimed.  The outcome would have been the same, lockdown or no lockdown.  Prove me wrong hairy one – with real data, not dialectical arguments.

The lack of normal amusements caused the United States to explode social distancing rules, with Black Lives Matter being the occasion.  Inexplicably, BLM seeped into Canada, and poor, old, suspended Wendy Mesley, in talking about it, got caught with progressive potty-mouth.  Wendy is getting long in the tooth, and her slip may justify a sudden career move, to be replaced, no doubt, with a younger, less perky ‘vooman of kular.’

Darwinian progressivism: live it, or die.
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Floyd’s Riots

Vincent J. Curtis

8 June 2020

Even in the most trying circumstances, a mature adult can gain control over his anger in a matter of days.  Children are only learning to control their emotions, and generally have such short attention spans that a child cannot sustain anger for more than a day.  Only adults have the mental focus to sustain anger.  Hence, demonstrations, protests, rioting, and looting nearly two weeks after the death of George Floyd must be conducted by physical adults who are emotional children.

On any given weekend, two dozen black people are shot and half a dozen killed in the city of Chicago.  This has been going on for years.  When Rahm Emanuel was mayor, there were over 4,000 murders in Chicago a year.  But nobody cares because it was and is black-on-black crime.  It would be embarrassing to take notice, since the cities in which black-on-black crime is worst have been run for decades by progressive Democrats.

The Floyd riots occurred because the crime fit a progressive narrative: that whites are racists, and blacks are their victims, and then we had this video showing an apparently lethal use of force by an arresting police officer who was white.  It’s easy to get angry watching the video, but the Floyd riots exploited that anger to satisfy a political agenda.

Antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM) exist upon the basis of provable lies.  But that doesn’t seem to matter, because it is the “larger truth” that their lies seem to speak to.  Withal, the foundational principles of these organizations are Marxism, Anarchism, and Nihilism.  They don’t have workable solutions to the problems they say exist; on the basis of a Marxist analysis they strive to create anarchy for the purpose of destroying western civilization as we know it.  They have nothing to replace it with.  It would be like the fall of Rome in 476 A.D. under the assault of the Ostrogoths.

To date, what George Floyd was really like has not been brought into the public consciousness.  Floyd was a career criminal who had done a lengthy stretch in a Texas prison for violent crime.  After his release he moved to Minnesota.  Floyd was arrested for trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill.  He was high on fentanyl and methamphetamine, and was infected with the Covid-19 virus at the time of his arrest.  The video does not show why Floyd was put on the ground and had a knee on his neck, but if Floyd had tried to infect the officers by spitting on them or otherwise resisting arrest, that would explain why he was subdued in the manner he was, and his protestations of “I can’t breathe” not taken seriously by the subduing officer.  Regardless, George Floyd was not an innocent angel, and may have contributed to his own misfortune.

Nevertheless, the narrative of white racist guilt and black oppression found an apparent example.  The material into which these poisonous deceptions were kneaded was moral narcissism.  The crowds were filled with white progressives who wanted to prove to themselves that they weren’t racist.  They wanted to show to the world their moral purity, and were willing to play-act an expiation of the guilt of white racism and white privilege by appearing on video kneeling before blacks upon command.

Infecting the crowd like a virus were agitators from Antifa and BLM.  They provided the rocks, bricks, bottles, and encouragement to turn a demonstration into a riot, and a riot into looting.  Angry blacks and morally narcissistic whites battled police while black criminals looted and burned on a shocking scale.  Such demonstrations continued long after the emotional shock of the Floyd arrest video ought to have worn off.  For many, it was party time!

A curious fact about Minneapolis and Minnesota in general is that they are among the whitest and most progressive-liberal places in America.  How is it possible for a place so progressive to be so full of white racism?  In fact, all the cities in which rioting took place had been Democrat controlled for decades and were in states that had both a Democrat governor and a Democrat Attorney-General.  How could this be?  Aren’t progressives and Democrats supposed to be especially sensitive to matters of race?

In his book, On Guerilla Warfare Mao Tse-tung described guerillas as the fish and the people the sea.  A population of white, progressive, moral narcissists who were personally not guilty of the racism attributed to whites together with angry blacks provided the sea in which Antifa and BLM fish could swim.  That is why Democrat run cities were pillaged: progressivist propaganda became accepted fact, and the only place riotous emotion could get released was their own cities and neighborhoods.  White suburbs offered no such congenial “sea” of people.

Meanwhile, authorities were paralyzed under the fear of being accused of racism.

Things were made worse because correct law-enforcement procedures weren’t followed and the cause of the protesters was taken seriously.  The correct attitude of law enforcement is to the effect that they don’t care what the cause of the demonstration is.  They don’t care what’s on the signs or the words chanted.  So long as the demonstrators remained peaceful and within the physical space allotted to them, they can walk, and wave, and chant all they like.  But, if they get violent, start to loot, step outside the boundaries set for them, they will be arrested, and they shouldn’t expect their arrest to be gentle.  If authorities had taken that attitude from the beginning, the fire of emotion would quickly have burnt out.

But it wasn’t followed, and each riot and each episode of looting encouraged more, to the point where Antifa and BLM were commanding – and getting - authorities to submit and take a knee as a sign of submission to the cause of George Floyd.

The riots in Washington, D.C. were a special case.  This was a case of the Trump résistance and the Trump haters going berserk.  What was the point of defacing the Lincoln Memorial or the various other war memorials?  Simply nihilism, progressivist nihilism.

The apparent solution to the problem Floyd’s arrest exposed is the defunding or complete abolition of police departments.  Some progressive politicians are taking this seriously.  Getting rid of police won’t reduce tensions, it will create vigilantism.  Millions of AR-15s were bought for the day of WROL: without the rule of law, and abolishing police will simply make the gun-owner supreme.  I can almost hear the white supremacists say, “Bring it on!”

Progressivism allowed itself to be taken over by its worst instincts: Antifa, BLM, and the belief that they were not subject to the ramifications of their own ideology.  Well, a lot of people suffered under its ramifications and its indulgences.  However, I think the younger generation are too far imbued with progressivism to realize what just happened and to rethink their whole outlook.

G.K. Chesterton said that those who don’t believe in God don’t believe in nothing, they become capable of believing in anything.  An overriding sense I have of this whole affair is that the participants have rejected God, and hence are lost.
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Stopping Future Pandemics

Vincent J. Curtis

8 June 20

The People's Daily today ran an article on how to stop present and future pandemcis.  The article was slugged the short and the long game of pandemic control, or some such.  A "tell" was that the author failed to mention China.

One of the tests of the validity of a theory is internal consistency.  Is the theory able - without contradicting itself - to account for the facts?  The theory offered by clinical oncologist Simon Sutcliffe on controlling future pandemics does not.

Sutcliffe lists as causes of future pandemics: deforestation, expansion of agriculture, climate change, and wild animal markets.  He lists as causes of the spread of pandemics: poverty, hunger, overcrowding, limited education, poor hygiene, social distress, and others.  He concludes that leadership on social and environmental discussions will help reduce the prevalence of future pandemics.  His peroration was a call for standing squarely with those choices necessary for pandemic control.

Not a word of his theory accounts for the development and spread of the Wuhan pandemic.  The coronavirus came from a “horseshoe” bat in a cave hundreds of kilometers from Wuhan.  A contractor was sent to these caves by a Wuhan virology lab to obtain new viruses to study.  In capturing a bat, the contractor got bat blood and urine on his skin, and despite quarantining himself for 14 days passed on the virus to his girlfriend, who became patient zero.

The pandemic took root in Wuhan because the Chinese Communist Party was embarrassed and corrupt.  When the health effects became undeniable, the city of Wuhan was shut down, and Wuhan residents were prevented from leaving the city for other parts of China.  They were, however, permitted to fly out of Chine to other parts of the world, like the U.S. and Europe.  Being in the pocket of the CCP, the World Health Organization was late in warning the world about the coming danger.

Sutcliffe’s theory accounts for neither development nor spread.

The call to stand squarely with those choices necessary for pandemic control has truck-drive-through sized holes in it.  The word necessary creates one hole, since that which is necessary is often a matter of opinion, and in the present case highly contentious opinion.

Stripped of its details, Sutcliffe’s argument is a rehash of boilerplate progressive ideology: the growth of mankind is bad, the evils that attend the human conditions, and we must do as the experts tell us because they know best.

If you want to prevent the development and spread of future pandemics, first stop China from experimenting with dangerous things.
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Kneeling Trudeau Must Resign

Vincent J. Curtis

7 June 20

The Prime Minister of Canada represents the country in international affairs, and the Federal government on domestic matters.  On Friday, June 4^th, the Prime Minister of Canada knelt before a mob of Black Lives Matter and Antifa assembled illegally on Parliament Hill.

Perhaps Mr. Trudeau thought at the time he was just being a clever pol who could virtue signal for votes and acclaim.  Still, symbolically, he represented Canada at that moment of submission.

Black Lives Matter and Antifa were not on the ballot in the last election, and no one voted for them or their programs.  Yet, they gained the submission of the government of Canada, without a vote.  They certainly have a peculiar moral grip on the head of the government.

I don’t see how Mr. Trudeau can carry on as the head of an independent government after having thus abased himself, and Canada.  He must resign,

If he refuses to resign then he must call an election immediately to allow the Canadian people to democratically decide for themselves the proper posture of the government of Canada to these products of American dysfunction.

Having disgraced himself and Canada, Trudeau must resign.
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Gun Owners Notice Trudeau Kneeling Before BLM and Antifa

Vincent J. Curtis

6 June 20

We saw the spectacle of the Prime Minister of Canada abasing himself by kneeling before a mob of Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters on Parliament Hill.  The mob was chanting “Stand up to Trump!”

It is not clear whether Mr. Trudeau was representing Canada at that moment of kneeling, but the symbolism was not auspicious.  Needless to say, the mob was violating all the rules against large assemblies and social distancing that prevail in Ontario.

We know from the rioting and looting in the United States what Antifa and Black Lives Matter stand for, and it isn’t just defunding, or the elimination, of police departments.

This would be the same Prime Minister who righteously banned over 1,500 semi-automatic firearms and plans to confiscate them from law-abiding gun owners under some program to be announced in the future.  He also plans on banning handguns altogether.

I’m not sure gun owners are comfortable with being deprived of their means of self-defence - of their lives and property - against mobs, looting, and rioting, especially when police forces have been proven to be unreliable and may be weakened in the future.

By abasing himself before the mob, Mr. Trudeau compromised compliance with his legally questionable gun ban.  Lawlessness for them, but tyrannical enforcement for law-abiding gun owners isn’t going to sell.
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Trouble in Sweden?

Vincent J. Curtis

5 June 20

The editors of the People’s Daily once again think they’re dancing in the end zone when they’re not.  (How the 40 yard line looks like an end zone, I don't understand...)  As I warned on May 20^th, be careful about news reports that confirm the preferred narrative all too well.

The news then was that “scientific study” proved that hydroxychloroquine was not just ineffective in the treatment of Covid-19 but was positively harmful.  I warned that the prevalence of Trump-hatred made this study too convenient and that it contradicted other known facts.  Well, the Lancet, which published the study, just retracted it because when asked for a peer review of their data, the authors went dark.  The Lancet had been spoofed.  The W.H.O. has likewise reversed course on hydroxychloroquine.

The AP is highly anti-Trump, and their report on Sweden fits a narrative altogether too well.  Trump hated the lockdown because it ruined his economy, and Sweden fought the pandemic without resorting to a lockdown.  Hence, Sweden must be punished for being an ally, however inadvertent, to Trump.  The article (and the editorial it spawned) was to the effect that the Swedish model was a disaster and the Swedes are in an uproar over it.

But that’s not what the facts in the AP report say.  When asked, “Could you have done better?” the Swedish expert said, “Yes.”  If he had said, “No.  We were perfect in every way from the get-go.” he would appear unreasonable.  The question elicited the answer that could be exploited.

When asked, “What could you have done better?” the answer was “look after the elderly and those in nursing homes better.”  It turns out that most of Sweden’s deaths occurred among the elderly (surprise!), and the uproar in Sweden is over that.  But Sweden isn’t going to suffer the long term health impacts of a lockdown: alcoholism, suicides, and undiagnosed diseases.  So more is to be written about this.

Sure, the Swedish economy, which is export dependent, suffered from the pandemic, but where’s the surprise?  A small country isn’t going to escape an economic downturn when all its customers are hiding under their beds.  Nobody said that Sweden’s economy wasn’t going to suffer at all, or that nobody in Sweden was going to die of Covid-19.  It was the difference between lockdown and no lockdown, and the difference in health terms was negligible.

Yes, Sweden’s Nordic neighbors are shunning Sweden, but that proves nothing.  They’re embarrassed, and resent Sweden’s independent approach - and they all hate Trump.  (Just like the editorial writers.)

Fair warning again, forget your hollow victory laps.  Watch out for bias confirmation.  When the analysis is complete and cooler heads prevail no country will put up with another lockdown, and it is to an improved Swedish model that we will turn.
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Systemic Racism Defined

Vincent J. Curtis

3 June 20

Systemic Racism includes the policies and practices entrenched in established institutions, which result in the exclusion or promotion of designated groups.

On the basis of this definition, Canada does practice systemic racism.  The paragon and legal embodiments of systemic racism are the Indian Act, and Article 35 of the Charter of Rights and Freedom, which protects “aboriginal rights.”

So before public discussion about systemic racism in Canada goes all haywire, let’s keep in mind the pre-eminent actual case of it and deal with it first.

It’s funny watching all the talk about racism in the U.S. on American television.  All the cities in which rioting and looting occurred were in cities with Democrat mayors  The worst and most persistent cases of looting occurred in cities with Democrat mayors, AND have Democrat governors AND Democrat Attorneys-General as well: Minneapolis, Minnesota; New York City, Los Angeles; Chicago, Las Vegas. Philadelphia.  St. Louis has been Democrat since 1949.  Washingto, D.C. No doubt about it, Democrat run cities and especially those in Democrat run states are infested with racist cops, useless politicians, and especially racist voters.  Democrat equals racism, as in the days of Jim Crow.  Must be in the party's genetics.

I watched an interview of the Mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota, the twin city of Minneapolis.  He was a black man who raged at length, and quite oblivious to the irony, about racism everywhere.

Racism, racism everywhere – everywhere progressive Democrats and Liberals run things.  The voters must love it.
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The Singh - Trudeau Comedy Duo

Vincent J. Curtis

3 June 20

Jagmeet Singh is a real pip.  His very position as leader of the NDP is a testament to the absence of racism in Canada.  Yet, here he proclaims, “How many more people need to die before there is action?”  Hum, when did the last person die of racism in Canada?

Oh, yeah, it was the destruction of the Air India Flight 182 from Canada in 1985, when Sikh extremists were making a political statement.  Oops!

If you think my attack on Singh is racist, then you’ve just proven that you’re the racist because I’ve treated Singh no differently than I’ve treated any other leftist fool.

Racism in Canada is like bad weather: it happens occasionally, there’s little you can do about it, and trying to do something about it is more harmful than enduring it.

The interplay between Trudeau and Singh was like a comedy duo in which the straight-man sets up the punchline delivered by the joker.  Trudeau (the jokester) delivered:  the last thing people want to hear is another speech on racism from a white politician.  He’s right, but getting one on the evils of white racism from a South Asian politician is even more grating.

Trudeau continued, “We hear your calls for justice, equality, and accountability.  We acknowledge your anger, your frustration, your heartbreak.”

Then, they both stuck their snouts in the trough.
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Enough Already with George What's-his-name!

Vincent J. Curtis

2 June 20

This is what therapeutic progressivism and identity politics gets you: riots and looting without end under the guise of justice seeking.

The justification for anger at the death of a petty black criminal in the hands of Minneapolis police ended two days afterwards.  Authorities surrendered to the mob and promised everything short of a swift hanging.  But it wasn’t enough.  It only whetted the appetite.

There was no justification for demonstrations followed by rioting and looting in other American cities.  These are nothing but expressions moral vanity, “Look at me world!  I’m demonstrating for justice!”  But what justice are they protesting for?  I get the emotional release, but not even children can sustain an emotional outburst for over a week.

Therapeutic progressivism holds that white society is strong enough and rich enough to pay any price and bear any burden to succor any aggrieved minority group you can invent; and if it isn’t, it deserves to die anyway.

So strong is the hold of therapeutic progressivism on the mind that even conservative commentators can’t get past the “George Floyd was murdered by police” meme.  Even they can’t say that genuine anger over that should have ended in real adults long ago.  Even they can’t bring themselves to say that his death is just an excuse to party.  They won’t call Childish Moral Vanity for what it is.

Therapeutic progressivism makes children of some adults, and indulgent fools of others.
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How Big a Risk is COVID-19?

Vincent J. Curtis

28 May 20

“The only thing we have to fear is – fear itself!” So said Franklin Roosevelt.  Fear and fascism are the weapons of choice our political masters employ whenever people squirm under the boot on their neck.

Dr. Theresa Wetpants can be relied on to claim that a “rise in the number of cases” occurred after the weight of oppression was lifted a little.  Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson extended his lockdown of the city until the end of August because of a lack of compliance.  There were six hospitalized cases of Covid-19 in his city of one million, and his tweeted reason for extending the lockdown is that “compliance is not 100 %”

Imagine that, a small number of Albertans who won’t comply 100 % with the order of a pompous ass!

We have two things to fear from extending the lockdown.  The first is that the virus could mutate into something more virulent, and the sooner it gets killed off the less likely such a mutation could occur.  The second is that more people are dying and will die as a result of the lockdown itself than from the virus, from suicides, undiagnosed cancers, strokes and heart attacks that go untreated, and so on.

We cannot wait for a vaccine.  The Trump Administration might pull off that Hail Mary play, but we still have no vaccine for SARS or HIV, so we could be waiting a long time.

The answer is to free the people.  In Ontario, one person under the age of forty died of Covid-19.  As Joanna Frketich reported, the vast majority of cases show no symptoms at all, so mild is the infection.  Herd immunity stops the spread of the virus, and by maintaining the lockdown we prevent herd immunity from developing.  Herd immunity kills off the virus because it runs short of people to transfer safely to.

Cases are not the same thing as deaths, and we know that people under the age of sixty are quite safe.  We shouldn’t be intimidated by threats of “cases.”

It’s time for Canadians to regain their sanity and their freedoms, and send the tiny tyrants packing.
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Fighter Jet Replacement 2020

Vincent J. Curtis

7 Apr 2020

The glacier that is the Fighter Jet Replacement Project is suffering from climate change: it’s retreating.

If the COVID-19 crisis confirmed anything, it’s that if the Prime Minister wants something to happen, it happens.  Conversely, the FJCP shows that if the PM doesn’t want something, it doesn’t happen. 

The coronavirus crisis knocked many things out of the news.  Remember the Gaslink Pipeline crisis and the shutdown of the CN Rail line?  Seems like ancient history.  The prospects of conflict around the world changed profoundly also.

Russia and Saudi Arabia are fighting an oil war which caused the price of crude to crash into the twenty dollar range.  Since oil and gas exports fuels Russia’s economy, Vlad is hurting, and, at 67, his appetite for risk isn’t getting bigger either.

There is talk that the virus could be the Chernobyl of the Chinese Communist regime.  With its “Belt and Road” policy and strategy of “Anti-access/Area Denial” in the South China Sea, China pursues a policy of international dominance that deflects attention from problems at home.  The Xi Jin Ping regime could press expansionism harder as folks at home blame it for the pandemic.

The Trudeau Liberals promised to spend, oh, $21 billion on new fighters and $62 billion on new frigates.  So far, that’s just been talk.  Yet, $184 billion got conjured out of thin air to help companies and people and government programs get through the pandemic shutdown.

The last year has been unkind to some of the FJRP contenders.  Boeing’s stock price plunged seventy-five percent as a result of the 737 Max debacle and the collapse of air travel.  Bombardier exited the commercial jet manufacturing business entirely, and that $6 billion Canada invested created good jobs for Airbus workers in Huntsville, Alabama.

All the interesting developments in fighter jets have been in the older designs.  The F-15X Super Eagle is a superior fighter in every way to the F-35, except in stealth.  It’s faster, flies higher, has greater range, has the newest electronics, and now carries an altogether new package of lethal ordinance.  Its unit purchase price is much lower.  The F-16V is the Block 70 version of the most produced Gen 4 fighter.  It does everything Canada requires of a fighter, together with the sovereign advantage of being cheap to operate - meaning lots of flying hours for pilots.  It’s not a stealth aircraft, but its radar cross-section is remarkably low.

Lack of fighter jet range is a problem in the Pacific waters China seeks to dominate.  Supposing a fighter jet were developed that combined speed, altitude, endurance, and a large ordinance package?  One already has.  It was called the Avro Arrow.

The Mark II Arrow had the speed and altitude performance of today’s MiG-31.  It was designed with a 2,900 gallon internal fuel load.  With modern jet engines, the Arrow could fly from Canada to Europe on internal fuel.  Its nose cone was large enough to house the biggest of today’s scanning radar arrays.

A window has opened to test the Arrow concept.  Nothing’s stopping the government from letting a contract to build a Mark III prototype.  The Liberals wanted the FJRP to stimulate Canada’s aircraft industry, well here’s their chance.

The Arrow was designed for the RCAF’s primary mission, the air defense of North America.  With its long legs, the Arrow would find strategic relevance in the Pacific theatre also.  A strategy of anti-access/area denial wouldn’t work against a land-based aircraft with the Arrow’s combination of speed and endurance..

The Arrow remains strategically relevant to the primary mission of the RCAF.  The qualities that give the Arrow that continuing relevance will also find application in a conflict in the Pacific theatre.  The Prime Minister intended to use the FJRP to stimulate the Canadian aircraft business, and now that the coronavirus pandemic has changed the strategic picture, we have time – and the money - to explore a possibility that ought to have been explored long ago.
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