Monday, July 27, 2020

White Supremacism a fetish of Democrat Party


Vincent J. Curtis

26 July 20

White Supremacism is a fetish of the Democratic Party of America.  The Democrat Party was the party of slavery, the Confederacy, the Ku Klux Klan, segregation, and Jim Crow. The aim of all of these was to preserve a ‘social distance’ between whites as a class and blacks as a class.

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Democrat Party became more and more liberal and eventually became progressive.  The segregationist president Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt were Democrat progressives in their day.  The progressivism of today is heavily influenced by Marxism, as can be found in the habit of dividing people into classes.  Identity politics by definition classifies people: whites, blacks, Hispanics, the “1 percent”, the deplorables, etc.

Woodrow Wilson enforced segregation, for white supremacism was essential to the high moral cause of national success.  Strangely, Barack Obama used the immorality of white supremacism as a straw-man helpful to personal success.  After disappearing for a while, white supremacism was resurrected and morally inverted by Marxist analysis.  Segregation remains, if not the goal in the case of Wilson, the consequence of the progressive political violence of today.  The white flight of the 1970s will be repeated over the next decade - for the same reason.

White supremacism, whether considered as morally good or evil, remains the fetish of a self-absorbed Democrat Party.  They can’t leave the rest of us alone because it’s been their ticket to power for two centuries.
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Friday, July 24, 2020

Organized Left shows its power


Vincent J. Curtis

24 July 20

On Wednesday, over one hundred people showed up in from of Hamilton City Hall, blocked Main Street, the busiest street in the city, for two hours to paint "Defund the Police" on the pavement.  Trafic was diverted, and no one was arrested.

The most important aspect of the Defend the police strike in from of city hall is the demonstration of how well organized the political Left is.  One hundred people did not spontaneously show up at the same time at city hall with bucket of yellow paint and brushes with the goal of blocking Main Street in midday and painting the chant de jour on the road.

A painful aspect is that the police let them.  If a couple of people showed up to chant anti-gay slogans, the police would be all over them like linebackers on a quarterback.  But the political Left gets a pass.

A black criminal dies in the course of his arrest in Minneapolis in May, and in late July in another city in a different country with different laws and different racial make ups and histories the same cause of defunding the police is chanted like it happened here last week.  On the face of it, absurd, but it isn’t.

It’s hard to defend the police when they enforce the laws selectively.  Overt lawlessness is tolerated, so long as it’s on the Left.  There won’t even be arrests of the ring leaders.

Sure, let’s defund the police.  We already have one mob war, let’s have a few more.
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Anti-Semitism on the planet Neptune


Vincent J. Curtis

23 July 20

The Hanon People's Daily published another communique from the planet Neptune.  The words "White Supremacism" were repeated so often, you had to wonder if they were magical incantations.  Alas, they weren't.  But the writer did manage to slag Steven Miller as that, a Nazi, and a fascist, to boot.  Given the column appeared with a 30 year old photo, these columns could become a regular feature.

“Neptune to Green Acres, Neptune to Green Acres, come in, Green Acres. Over.”

Thus began the latest transmission from the planet Neptune to the Hanon People’s Daily, a once-great metropolitan newspaper that has fallen on hard times.  Its correspondent, a retired professor of Neptune-studies, is communicating the latest horror story from deep in outer space.

The correspondent seems to think that repetition of the expression “white supremacist” is going to convince those on earth of the truth of his assertions.  As Josef Goebbels once observed, a monstrous lie stuns the listener and if the lie is repeated often enough it becomes the equivalent of the truth.  Nevertheless, the perceptive do observe the ugliness of anti-Semitism in the communique in the comparison of a Jew to Nazis and fascists.

Another profound contradiction, so obvious it may escape attention, is that the correspondent who find white supremacism so wrong is himself a white elitist.  If the correspondent believed what he said, he would surrender his place to a woman of colour, but he doesn’t.

The correspondent is exempt from the ramifications of his own ideology.

Moreover, anybody familiar with the people he is speaking ill of knows the falsity of the accusations leveled by the special white guy.  Perhaps he thinks he raises the morale of the losers who believe him by slandering the people more successful than they..
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Tuesday, July 21, 2020

The irrational aim: slow the spread, prolong the crisis


Vincent J. Curtis

21 July 20

The first principle of war is the selection and maintenance of the aim.  Maintenance of the aim is as important as the selection.  In the pandemic war, the aim keeps changing.

At first, the aim was to “flatten the curve,” then it became eradicate the virus, and now it’s to slow the spread.  These different aims have each been used to justify the same lockdown.  The first aim was achieved within the first two weeks of the lockdown, and then things went awry as more cooks fiddled with the recipe.  The second aim, eradication, proved impossible, and so we’ve slipped into the irrational third, slowing the spread and prolonging the crisis.

Why slow the spread?  It’s a pandemic that isn’t going away.  Many people are going to get infected.  But, over ninety percent of the people who get infected are asymptomatic, meaning they didn’t even know they had it.  Young, healthy adults and children particularly can handle the virus easily.  Slowing the spread only delays the onset of herd immunity.  Meanwhile, the lockdown ravages the economy and adds to the life-years lost due to the adverse health effects of the lockdown itself.  We know to protect the elderly and those with underlying conditions.

If you’re hoping for a vaccine, what do you think mass vaccination does?  It creates herd immunity!

Slowing the spread is an irrational aim.  It prolongs the crisis.  We need to get through it quickly, not slowly.
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Monday, July 20, 2020

If it doesn't say NIOSH, then it isn't serious


Vincent J. Curtis

20 July 20

When you’re in the presence of Hamilton city council, it’s easy to get the feeling that you’re the smartest person in the room.  The mandatory masking by-law is one example.  The by-law’s perverse incentives create a false sense of security.  If the by-law were serious, we’d see words like NIOSH and FDA in it, but we don’t.  The by-law is a bow to the mob in the service of an irrational aim.

The mantra of “my mask protects you and your mask protects me” fails under the by-law.  My respirator-mask filters the air on intake, and bypasses filtration on exhaust.  My mask protects me from you, but not you from me.  A surgical mask is intended to protect those around the wearer from germ-laden particulates exhausted by the wearer, though these have a leakage rate of between 10 – 25 percent.  Loose-fitting, they do not protect the wearer from small particles being breathed in from the outside.

Luckily, much of this doesn’t matter.  Only a small proportion of the population is contagious at any time, and, absent the virus, masks are irrelevant.  In addition, social distancing of 1 meter or more is sufficient protection unless you are in a crowd indoors with contagious people.  In that case, a NIOSH approved respirator is indicated.  A scarf won’t do.

The by-law is useless on its own terms.
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Marxists are organizing these homeless encampments


Vincent J. Curtis

20 July 20

It only takes a little research to figure this out.

Missing from the stories covering homeless encampments, in Hamilton, in Toronto, is the fact that they are organized.  They are supported.  These encampments would not exist without the work of Marxist-Anarchist-Nihilist activists.

Look at any encampment and you notice that there are no tarps or cardboard  hobo shelters.  The shelters are all modern tents.  The homeless need food, water, a place to bathe, a place to relieve themselves.  Many of these needs are met with the financial support of organizations and the physical labor of activists.

The three week encampment at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto was so well supported financially that nearly all the campers actually spent the night in the Sheraton Hotel across the street, at $275.00 a night.

Yes, there are genuine homeless and mentally challenged in these camps.  These people are being used by the activists to create chaos and lawlessness in our cities.  Our society is under assault by M-A-N organizations and activists for the thrill of it, for the satisfaction of disrupting those in power, and perhaps to cause them to exercise power to the satisfaction of the M-A-N groups.

Mayors and city councillors need to get smart.  They need to enlist the intelligence gathering powers of the police to identify the activists and bring the law to bear on them.  Identifying the activists and their sources of funding isn’t hard.
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Saturday, July 18, 2020

Following the non-science on masking


Vincent J. Curtis

18 July 20

On Friday, Hamilton city council passed a by-law that required the wearing of masks indoors.  The problem is tow-fold.  First, the business is required to enforce the by-law on customers, setting up hostility between the smarter customers and the business.  Second, the masks mandated are shown not to be effective as virus filters.

So, city council finally bowed to non-science and mandated the wearing of masks.  Does this mean that we can be free and end the lockdown?  If not, why not?

In the literature given the councilors by the Medical Officer of Health, which they obviously didn’t understand, was that the masks they were mandating are ineffective.

City council mandated the ineffective - and hence the mandate gives a false sense of security.

The Lancet article stated that it had confidence that N95 masks or stronger would likely be effective in reducing transmission within 1 meter, but the word ‘might’ was used when addressing disposable surgical and lessor kinds of masks.  There is, of course, no scientific evidence even possible for home-made masks for efficacy as a virus filter.

According to Lancet, masking may be useful if engaged in intense interaction with an infected person within 1 meter distance, and hence the article recommended social distancing of 1 m, obviating the need for masking altogether.  At 2 m social distancing, masking is quite useless because there is nothing left in the air to filter.  The general uselessness of masking to filter transmission of respiratory viruses is acknowledged in the New England Journal of Medicine, and explains why the W.H.O. doesn’t recommend masking.  But our councilors know better.

Let people decide for themselves if they want to eat indoor in a restaurant, get their hair cut, go into a bar, or wear a mask.  Stop all this drunk-on-power coercion!
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 End-note:  The problem with masking is two-fold: (1) does the mask provide a seal around the face, forcing the air to pass through the filter?  If there is no seal, then air can and tends to pass around the filter. (2) Can the filtration material remove the virus, or are the pores too large?  N95 masks are intended to remove dust in an industrial environment, and so are pretty form-fitting to the face.  Disposable surgical masks are not form-fitting, and the filtration material can remove mist from breathing but are not effective with dust.  Hence, the mist from the breath of an infected person can partially be filtered by a surgical mask, and hence is slightly efficacious in removing virus-contaminated mist from an infected person's breath, and that's it.  A healthy person is not protected from dry virus in the air by a surgical mask.  The N95 is pretty good.  But a fire-fighter or a soldier who have to wear gas-masks to removed gas or smoke from the air they breathe, have to use rubberized, form-fitting masks to be protected.  Beard wearers have to prove that they can get a seal with their mask, or else they have to cut their beards.  Getting a good seal is a pre-requisite for a mask to work.  Then, the filter has to work also.  Surgical masks don't meet these requirements, and neither do any of the home-made jobs.



Friday, July 17, 2020

Are we too scared to end the lockdown?


Vincent J. Curtis

17 July 20

The Hamilton Spectator today ran an op-ed headlined, "Revocery: it will take a lot more to get out of lockdown than it took to get in."  It was written by Laura Duncan, a part-time Assistant Professor, and Michael H. Boyle a Professor Emeritus at McMaster University.  Both of them are researchers at the Oxford Centre for Child Studies.  The thesis of the work was that people have been so scare mongered at the beginning of the lockdown and throughout in order to maintain it, that it will be hard for the government to justify restoration of normalcy.

Note: the expertise is in one of those "-studies" programs, and they are writing outside their realm of expertise.  The following is a kind of rebuttal.

The article by Laura Duncan and M.H. Boyle contains the seeds of its own destruction.  The lockdown should be ended entirely immediately, and let the people, each in their own way, figure it out.  Let them choose to go or not go to a restaurant, go or not go into a bar, get their hair cut or not, wear or not wear a mask. At this point, the lockdown is unjustified, undemocratic and unconstitutional coercion.

The word the authors were hunting for is ‘fearmongered,’ and they’re right.  People have been fearmongered to the limit of their endurance.  Research in the United States has demonstrated that life-years lost as a result of the lockdown is far greater than life-years lost from Covid-19 deaths.  Keeping the lockdown on only causes the disparity to worsen, and only fearmongering keeps the lockdown on.

The purpose of the lockdown was to flatten the curve, and it was flattened months ago.  Now we’re being menaced by “cases.”  This is a pandemic, we’re going to get “cases,” and locking down only slows the rate of getting new cases. We’re going to get them, it’s just a matter of when.  So why lockdown?  The people who are getting the cases now are healthy people who are practically unaffected by the infection.

The lockdown has been counter-productive since mid-April.  End it now, and let people get on with their lives.
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Wednesday, July 15, 2020

The Good Idea


Vincent J. Curtis

15 July 20

Today, the Hamilton Spectator ran a front page photo piece of people wearing masks, and all exclaming that wearing one is a good idea.  Worthy of the Peking People's Daily at the night of the Cultural Revolution.  One of the four people said it best.

Dr. Peter Kilonzo articulated it best, “If it helps prevent getting infected by this virus, then [wearing a mask] is a good idea.”

If!

If only there were data to justify that conditional; but there isn’t.

If no virus is present, if I’m not infected and neither are you, then wearing a mask is useless.  If you social distance, wearing a mask is useless; it’s one or the other.  Out of a population of half a million, Hamilton had 856 known cases, so how prevalent is this virus?

There is no scientific evidence that wearing any old mask can stop your becoming infected.  Mask wearing has some use if worn by an infected person, but that’s it.  And infected persons should be isolating.

If mask wearing stopped the transmission of the virus, then there was no need for the lockdown; people could have masked up and proceeded with caution more or less with normal routine. 

If you’re under eighty years old and are otherwise healthy, the odds heavily favor your being asymptomatic - if you are one of the 1.7 per thousand infected.  If you’re under eighteen, you simply don’t get infected and don’t pass on the virus – that’s the data.

If thumb-twiddling helped prevent getting infected, then twiddling your thumbs is a good idea.  What’s never a good idea is to argue against the folly of the latest fashionable rage of the age.
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Immigrant condemns Canada as racist colonizer


Vincent J. Curtis

15 July 20

Today, the Hamilton Spectator ran a piece written by Hina Saeed.  My guess is that her diatribe against racist, colonialist Canada is an effort to drum up business for her law practice.  Lacking self-awareness, she believes that she is not subject to the ramifications of the ideologies she spouts.

It’s rich indeed to read Hina Saeed, a young, up-and-coming female lawyer, complain about Canada.  She says that Canada was founded on racial injustice, and we have a long history of denying it. Systemic racism, etc., etc.  She calls for the dismantling of structural inequities, and for the implementation of an anti-oppression framework as the foundation for this social change.  Whatever.

Her mainstream government funded agency has been taking a critical look at the perpetuation of colonization!

Saeed clearly accepts no responsibility for the historical injustice of Canada’s founding, for its long history of systemic racism, or, strangely, for the ongoing act of colonization in Canada’s continuing existence.  She doesn’t try to square the creation of the framework for societal change with democratic processes.

Saeed has not suffered from this racism or injustice herself.  She has benefited greatly from Canada.  She is a successful lawyer.  But if she wants to talk nonsense about Canada being founded on racial injustice and systemic racism, then let’s also talk seriously about the slave-traders that are in her background.  And if colonization is the continuing evil of Canada, then why hasn’t she taken her belief to heart and moved to the Muslim world?  Except the history of Islam is a history of military conquest, fire and sword, that sort of thing.

I can see her article as a marketing tool, but the content shows once again that students are being taught in school to despise Canada.  They can be quite arrogant in their ignorance.
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Monday, July 13, 2020

The Consequence of Perfectibility

Vincent J. Curtis

13 July 20

We can all agree that Canada is perfectible.  After all, that’s why legislatures pass new laws and why protesters protest: to make Canada more perfect.

This means that in the past, Canada was less perfect that she is now.  Perhaps a lot less perfect.  To observe Canada’s past imperfections with shock and anger is to reveal both one’s ignorance and an arrogance.  Of course Canada had her flaws – duh!  The three million Canadians of 1885 didn’t have the education, insight, experience, and wealth of 2020.  People in 2155 will look down upon those of today for their risible hubris.

It is fashionable these days to condemn Sir John A. Macdonald, and many want to pull down his statues.  It never occurs to them to wonder why people put up a statue to him in the first place.  It was because Macdonald, more than anyone else, created the geographical entity called Canada, and he kept it from being overrun and absorbed by the United States in the late 19th century.

If you despise the treatment of the plains Indians by Macdonald’s Canada, how much worse would they have fared at the hands of the 7th U.S. Cavalry?

After hubris comes nemesis.  People today need to be more humble when evaluating the past.  Macdonald was a man of his times, as we are of ours.  Long after Macdonald’s death, people chose to honour him.  What makes them wrong, and you right?
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Thursday, July 9, 2020

Mandating the Useless


Vincent J. Curtis

9 July 20

Today, the Spectator provided details on the by-law that will mandate masking.  The by-law permits home-made and ad hoc masks without mandating the material out of which the mask is to be made, or the nature of its construction.  These are crucial if air flow is to pass completely through the material and not around it, and the material is such that it can capture the virus.  The conclusion is that Hamilton City Council is going to mandate things that don't work simply to look like they are doing something.  The something they are doing boils down to the enforcement of a new progressive social tic, the wearing of masks in public.  It is a sign of progressive control over society.

The Spec article was informative, and its details show that mandating the wearing of masks has to do with social control and little to do with public health.  The proof of this is found in the details of what passes for a suitable mask: scarves, bandanas, balaclavas, and anything made at home regardless of the material.  There is no concern for the efficacy of the material to block the passage of a virus, making the order useless for public health.  All that’s left is an enforcement of a new social tic, the wearing of a mask in public.

Also telling are the expectations laid on business owners.  If an unmasked person enters a business, the owner is expected to order the customer to comply with the city masking by-law, and if the customer refuses then the owner is expected to order the customer to leave promptly.  The public is conscripted into the enforcement of this law, a kind of social control we’ve read about in an Orwell novel.

There is no scientific basis for ordering mask-wearing, and that is why the public health experts have been so reluctant to recommend the masking of healthy people.  If masking did the trick in preventing transmission, then there was no need for us to suffer a lockdown.  We could have masked everyone and carried on.

The ordering of masking is nothing but the enforcement of a new social tic.  The masks permitted under the by-law have no proven efficacy.
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Wednesday, July 8, 2020

Mandating masks after its all over


Vincent J. Curtis

8 June 20

Today's Hamilton Spectator ran three articles of interest.  The first was a news story on Hamilton hospitals having no Covid-19 patients for the first time since mid-March.  The story also quoted the infected and death count to date, and these are quoted below.  The second story was that city council plans at its Friday meeting to unanimously approve a new by-law mandating the wearing of masks.  The third article was a weird tattle-tale piece by Canadian Press headlining that Conservative leader Andrew Scheer was spotted in a Toronto airport lounge not wearing a mask.  The story came complete with picture.  Obviously the hounds of correctness are chasing and barking at every deviation from correctness they can find.  You can't fat-shame, but you can mask-shame.

The horses haven’t just left the barn, they’ve galloped over the hill and are now out of sight.  City hospitals are free of Covid-19 patients for the first time since mid-March.  The curve hasn’t been just flattened, it has been driven down to zero.  Out of a population of half a million, there were a total of 856 probable and confirmed cases, and 44 deaths, according to the Spectator report, and 91 percent of cases have been resolved.

Now, our city council turns to the matter of mandating the wearing of face masks.  The credentialed experts on masking, Dr. Theresa Tam, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and the World Health Organization have been ambivalent about the efficacy of mask wearing.  Sometimes yes, sometimes no, depending on wind conditions and the alignment of the planets.  The data, insofar as anybody cares, shows that mask wearing is helpful when worn by a sick person.  Nevertheless, the city council proposes to get with the fashionable rather than the science and the data.

The mandating of masks now has to do with social control and appearances than with measurable health benefits.  It arms the scolds and finger-waggers who can’t leave other people in peace.  Speaking of which, Canadian Press ran a tattle-tale article –complete with picture – of Andrew Scheer not wearing a mask in a Toronto airport lounge!  Horrors!

The numbers and the science say no need to harass people more.
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Tuesday, July 7, 2020

Woke Progressives sorta love Canada, if only.

Vincent J. Curtis

7 July 2020

The Hamilton Spectator today ran an opinion column by Margaret Shkimba headlined, "Canada Day 2020 left us a lot to reflect on."  Shkimba is another woke-progressive.  A few pithy comments on it below:

Shkimba’s latest column once again demonstrated her ignorance and arrogance.  She can afford to criticize Canada because she, personally, isn’t responsible for this country’s sins, and she can make all the woke recommendations she likes because she, personally, won’t be affected by any of them. 

She wonders what it means to be Canadian.  Obviously, she doesn’t understand the raisin pudding model of Canada upheld by Justin Trudeau.  You can be one of the raisins, or you can be the bland, flavorless gelatin that holds everything together - and is responsible for all the country’s past sins (including holding it together in past times of crises).

She thinks Canada is the greatest country in the world, but can’t call herself a patriot because that term has been appropriated by “white supremacists” – of another country!  I wonder if she has a similar repugnance to the word “white” to describe the colour of a tablecloth, or “supreme” to name the highest court in the land.

She loves Canada – but not this one.  The one she loves is the one that’s better for everyone, and meets all the latest woke requirements for perfection.  (If you’re not perfect, then you’re not really good.)  The one culture that is evil to inculcate is the Anglo-Saxon one.  She falsely states that “Canada has a history of slavery.”  No, Canada does not.  This is woke fiction.  She then says that Quebec is “addicted to whiteness.”  Whatever that means.

She ends with a call to rewrite history.  That’s all we need, historical revisionism in which children are taught to hate their country for all the evils it has done.  One example, cited by Shkimba, is the Cree being allowed to starve to death under the stewardship of Sir John A. Macdonald.  This is more woke fiction, period.  Yet we’re supposed to believe this story sums up Macdonald’s entire career.

Another hash of ignorance and arrogance.  If Shkimba’s lucky, the woke mob won’t discover her because you’re never woke enough.
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Comments on Special Report Panel Discussion of July 6, 2020

Vincent J. Curtis

6 July 2020

A couple points on FoxNews Special Report panel discussion of this evening:

Charles Lane, obviously, hasn’t read Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism, or he would have known where Trump got the expression “left-wing fascism.”  It may be divisive to refer to left-wing fascism, but it is also divisive to call people racists, especially when they aren’t.  And racist is a term thrown about recklessly by the left as a means of silencing and discrediting people who like Trump.

Maybe the panelists should spend more time trying to figure out Trump’s deeper motivations when he tweets out a Bubba Wallace tweet, and comments on the loss of viewership since NASCAR banned the confederate flag.  He’s still engaging in the culture war. Trump is pointing out that collapsing in the face of the progressive-fascist mob gains you nothing.  You lose the people who are paying your bills by bowing the people who couldn’t care if you lived or died.  Has anybody noticed that literally everybody pressing to change the name of the Redskins is NOT an Indian?  Famously, real Indians either like the name, or couldn’t care less.  It’s all a P.C. war, and Trump wants it known that P.C. can be defeated if you stand up to it.  P.C. holds the middle class in contempt.

Don’t worry this moment about Tammy Duckworth’s lies or Susan Rice’s lies.  Both of them blew themselves up with their comments.  And if Biden does choose either one, they’re on tape ready for immediate recall.  As for the NYT and WaPo stories that Brit Hume talked about, everybody knows by now that most of the media have given up all allegiance to truth when it comes to Trump.  Soon it will hit people that lies by the media are a sign of the contempt they hold for the intelligence of their readers.  Contempt for the middle= and working-classes is what got Trump elected in 2016.

If Kanye West gets on the ballot in Pennsylvania and Michigan, Biden is sunk.  Blacks will have some place to go other than Biden.  They want to prove that they’re black despite not voting Democrat.

It only takes 3 – 4 percent of Trump voters to say they’re for Biden to tilt the polls.  Two reasons: they don’t want a mob to riot on their front lawn, and it keeps the Dems from pulling a bait-and-switch at the convention.  If Biden were down, a switcheroo would be explicable.  If he’s ten points up, it’s a lot harder to explain.
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Wednesday, July 1, 2020

The Stoner 63

Vincent J. Curtis

12 May 2020
  
Eugene Stoner is arguably the most important gun designer of the latter half of the 20th century.  Stoner went to work for ArmaLite, then a division of Fairchild Aircraft, soon after the division’s founding in 1954.

The aircraft business learned a lot about aluminum during the war, and ArmaLite was established to design small arms using aluminum forgings and fiberglass as means of reducing weight.  Stoner’s first significant design, the AR-10 came in 1955.  It featured the multi-lugged rotating bolt and direct gas impingement operating system presently featured on the Canadian C-7.  The AR-10, in .308/7.62x51 NATO calibre, was much lighter than its conventional contemporaries, the steel and wood FN FAL (FN C1 in Canada) and the U.S. M-14.  The in-line design made the AR-10 controllable in full auto mode because the recoil went straight into the shooter’s shoulder.  The AR-10 was inherently accurate because it had no cycling gas piston and the multi-lug bolt-head provided a more consistent lock-up than the tilting bolt of the FN and the rotating bolt of the M-14.

The futuristic AR-10 entered late into a crowded field and had only limited commercial success.  But the commercial market liked a reduced power cartridge rifle, and in 1957 Stoner downsized the AR-10 into the AR-15 in .223 Remington calibre.  The AR-15 was popular with Asian militaries, and the U.S. Air Force ordered a large number of these in 1960 to replace the M2 carbine, with which Air Force ground personnel were equipped.  In 1964, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered the U.S. Army to purchase the AR-15, becoming the XM-16E1.  The rest is history.

ArmaLite sold the rights to the AR-15 and the patent on the direct impingement system to Colt in 1959.  Stoner’s next development was the AR-16/AR-18 rifles.  The AR-18 was intended to be the poor country’s AR-15.  This rifle was made with stampings instead of forgings; it used the multi-lugged rotating bolt and employed a short-stroke gas piston to cycle the action.  The AR-18 was not commercially successful, but its operating system was employed in other firearms, like the British SA-80.

Stoner left ArmaLite for Cadillac-Gage, where he developed the Stoner 63.  This platform featured the multi-lugged rotating bolt and a long-stroke gas system, like the AK-47.  The idea behind the ’63 was a modular platform that, using the same receiver and operating system, could be configured into a rifle, a carbine, a Bren style light machine gun, a belt-fed light machine gun; and, with a heavy barrel, a medium machine gun mountable on a tripod.  The U.S. Navy SEALs adopted the ‘63, and used it in Vietnam.  Their preferred configuration was the light, belt-fed machine gun, and was carried by every rifleman in the patrol.  Commercially, that’s as far as it got.

In his later years, Stoner joined Knight’s Armament Company where he improved upon his earlier work, the most famous example of which is the SR-25 designated marksman rifle.  After Stoner’s death, KAC continued development of the Stoner 63 concept.  Optimizing it for the SEAL role, KAC recently came out with the Light Assault Machine gun, in both 5.56 and 7.62 calibres.  Both guns are exceptionally light; the 5.56 version being 5 lbs lighter than the C-9, and the 7.62 version 8 lbs lighter than the C-6.  The LAMGs do not have quite the sustained fire capability of the C-9 or C-6, but aren’t far behind.  Their constant recoil systems enable the shooter to hold the gun on target in full automatic fire

Since “the future will be dangerous and uncertain,” the Canadian army should acquire 500 or 1000 of these LAMGs and experiment with the firepower they provide to the infantry section.  They would be outstanding patrol weapons.  They are meant to be carried in the assault and have 200 rounds link on tap.  They reload as fast as the C-9.  In ‘the new environment,’ a section will want more firepower and might need the reach and smack of a 7.62.
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