ADO: The FEC for the AoT, Part Deux

Vincent J. Curtis

12 July 2020

You’ve been given your assignment.  Develop a capstone concept for “The Army of Tomorrow”, tomorrow being the year 2021.  To recap, it’s 2006.  After a dark decade of underfunding, money will start to flow but you have no idea for how long.  History cautions you to assume the government is faithless in their commitments to the CF.  A battlegroup was committed to Kandahar, and the tactical situation is hazardous.  Casualties will be taken.  The new CDS is Rick Hillier, and the Liberal government that appointed him and made the commitments has fallen.  A new Conservative minority government under Stephen Harper, with MND Gordon O’Connor (a former CF BGen), has taken over.

The current military fashions are: Fourth Generation Warfare, Three Block War, Effects Based Operations, Network Centric Warfare, Full Spectrum of Operations, and, of course, Maneuver Warfare.  You have to come up with a Future Security Environment (FSE), a Force Employment Concept (FEC), and a structure for the AoT, (Hint: It would look weird if you disregarded current theories.)

The document has come across as intellectually impressive.  It has to be general enough to be effectively non-falsifiable.  Since the work is going to be reviewed by committees and senior officers, there is no point in using your secret crystal ball that enabled Billy Mitchell to foresee in 1925 the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor by air.  You can only extrapolate from what is known.  You can moderate trends in developments, but a dramatic acceleration has to be well justified.  You cannot, for instance, forecast the tank combat of Kursk, 1943, on the basis of the mechanization of 1928.  Your crystal ball’s insights don’t constitute justification, and could get you consigned to a loony bin.

What do you do? (Don’t check you iPhone – it isn’t invented yet!)

You start by writing your exegesis in an elevated, technical, and abstract vocabulary.  You sprinkle acronyms throughout the text.  Conceptually, the document is highly structured, engineered you might say.  You incorporate those diagrams that imply without specifying relationships among its elements. (These diagrams are both fashionable and futuristic looking, so you might as well stick with that program.).  You carefully define each term of the copious technical jargon you employ.  (Any connection between reality and abstract technical jargon is fortuitous.)  Your approach is highly ideological, and you fill up space by describing ideological processes.

You pay tribute to hoary, arcane, idiosyncratic ideas of the past, “The Five Operational Functions” (Command, Sense, Act, Shield, and Sustain), which themselves are the product of undeclared, unexamined ideological commitments.  Being so abstract, they are untouchable, and also much beloved.

For an FEC, you start with Kandahar and begin extrapolating.  The fundamental deployed formation is no longer the brigade group but the battle group, because that’s all Canada has ever committed since Germany.  The FEC style you dub “Adaptive Disperse Operations” (ADO) because Op Medusa has just happened.  The Kandahar battle group had been operating in company-sized roving patrols, but in Medusa a brigade group minus was pulled together that surprised and annihilated a Taliban brigade.  So the FEC is to operate dispersed until a concentration of force is necessary.  In ADO, you concentrate and disperse ‘adaptively,’ FSO in accordance with maneuver warfare, network-centric warfare, and effects based operations theories. ADO is FSO IAW MW, NCW, and EBO.  

Because the Leopard Is have yet to prove the value of tanks in the Afghan theatre, and the expectation is that new tanks will not be purchased for the CF, you go without tanks in your conceptual battlegroup.  Everything is wheeled.

In accordance with 4GW, the FSE enemy will be ‘tech-savvy non-state actors.’ 

Since close air support from the RCAF is unimaginable, you make no provision for ground-air cooperation, such as that managed between a rag-tag Kurdish militia and the USAF, which annihilated the ISIS Caliphate.

The purpose of this exercise is not to ridicule ADO, the AoT, or ABC.  It’s to have fun with the ideological mindset, and to demonstrate the futility of projecting far into the future.

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Why a Second Wave?

Vincent J. Curtis

29 Sept 20

The mandating of worthless masks may have given people a false sense of security.  That, and excessive lockdown measures.  Luckily, herd immunity has set in.

The number of new cases of COVID-19 is now higher than it was at the height of the pandemic in mid-April.  How could this be?

The short answer is that all the mitigation measures have ceased to work and, in particular, the masking bylaws gave a false sense of security.

The virus is transmitted in two ways: in a mist and as a dry dust.  Surgical masks and those fashionable cloth masks can prevent us from sneezing and coughing on one another.  But they are useless as dust masks.  Masking is limited in usefulness to the indoors, at best.  People who wear masks outdoors simply don’t understand the science.

Mitigation measures have ceased to work because they were overused.  There is only a one in 2300 chance that the next person you meet in Ontario is an “unresolved case,” assuming each and every such case is on the street and not isolating.  Mitigation measures were so unreasonably extended that they became a case of the boy who cried wolf.

Luckily, Ontario has reached the status of herd immunity.  Despite cases being now higher than in mid-April, sickness as measured by hospitalizations and deaths remain flat at just above zero.  High case numbers has not resulted in a corresponding increase in measured sickness.

Social distancing of one meter or greater and good ventilation are sufficient to keep likelihood of transmission low.  More cases, at this point, only deepens Ontario’s herd immunity.

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Caught between their fallacies and their obsessions

Vincent J. Curtis

28 Sept 20

The Ford Motor Company signed a deal with the Ontario and Federal governments in which, in return for $500 Million from the governments, Ford would invest $1.8 Billion of its own money into the Ford Oakville assembly plant to assemble battery powered cars and assemble batteries there as well.  The Spectator editorial praised the agreement, saying that the plant will provide alternatives for "Canadians who desire to ditch their emissions-spewing gas guzzlers" and claimed that "there is a strong and widely held belief that climate change is a "real and existential threat to the future of life on this planet."

Well, speaking of spewing emissions and gas....  Still, I never understood how people's opinions and beliefs had a bearing on scientific facts, such as the reality of climate change, the future of life on this planet, and whether man was responsible.

I just shake my head when feminist-studies majors go gaga over electric cars.  They know nothing, and they’ve learned nothing.

Years ago, Spectator cartoonist Graeme MacKay drew a picture that captured the fallacy of large numbers of electric cars.  It was of a car connected to a coal-burning power plant spewing smoke into the atmosphere and a proud driver smiling obvious to the pollution his driving was creating.

That’s the fallacy of switching from the internal combustion engine to electric in large numbers: where are you going to get the electricity to recharge the batteries?  Don’t talk to me about wind and solar, because every one of these ridiculously expensive sources of power require a fast-recycle natural gas power plant to back them up when they aren’t producing name-plate power, which is most of the time.

As I wrote in January, 1996, a commitment to get rid of fossil fuels requires massive new construction of nuclear power generation.  So, let’s hear it for 1,000 new megawatts of CANDU II electrical generation.  You’re going to need a lot to replace the power of all that gasoline burnt in millions of cars.  How many scores of billions of government dollars will have to be spent building nuclear generators just to make obsolete those billions of private dollars spent on refineries?

Fossil fuels will always be the economical choice for powering cars.  The environmentalists are once again caught between their fallacies and obsessions.

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Racism as a racket

Vincent J. Curtis

26 Sept 20

Evelyn Myrie is a Jamaican immigrant to Canada who began complaining about racism practically from the moment she arrived, over thirty years ago.  Apparently, it was never so bad that she decided to leave.  Withal, a permanent accusation of racism has been a dream of hers, and the first Anti-racism Resource Center was her brainchild.

Racism may not be prevalent in Hamilton, but claiming that it is can be personally lucrative.

The first Hamilton Anti-Racism Resource Centre initiative began in April, 2018, and mysteriously collapsed ten months later.  Internal dissention, confusion, and a lack of urgency could be contributing factors.  Obviously, the problem of racism in Hamilton was not then so great and pressing that the mission held the organization together.

After an interlude of eighteen months, the city is trying to resurrect the initiative.  Plainly, the problem of racism was not urgent in that period, and nothing can be pointed to that suggests racism has gotten significantly worse.  No matter.  The city is bound to hold that its citizenry is afflicted with racism, and is attempting again to create a bureaucratic answer to racism.

Enter Evelyn Myrie.  She has been complaining about racism in Hamilton for decades.  If anyone knows where it is, she does.  Council searched for a consultant to guide the centre’s reopening, and her firm, EMpower Strategy Group, seems to have been hired.  (There’s a lot of profit to be had in the non-profit sector!) Her firm and some panel will put forward a list of candidates for the board of the center.  It will only take three months.

This baby is going to have a governing model, a board of 12, and its expenses all covered by city taxpayers.  The purpose of the enterprise will be to cure Hamilton of its non-urgent problem of racism.

Nice work when you can get it.  I can imagine years spent by the initiative getting its arms around their problem, and then coming up with a list of abstract observations and impractical solutions impossible to implement.  Then more years spent monitoring “progress.”  All the while, that Hamilton has a problem with racism will be insinuated in the public discourse.  God help you if you deny it – that only proves that you’re a racist.  Doubt me?  Just read “White Fragility” by Robin Diangeld.

City taxpayers will be supporting an Anarchist-Nihilist project founded upon Marxist analysis of class divisions and identity politics.  Racism is a lucrative business for some people.  Racism can be exploited as a racket.

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Wild 'Karen' Triggered by Car Rally

Vincent J. Curtis

25 Sept 20

RE: Rally Participants should be ashamed.  A letter to the editor of the Spectator published this date.

There’s nothing like a government induced panic to bring out the inner Karen in some of us.  The East German Stasi recruited informants in the same way, so I guess it’s an element of human behaviour that authorities are able to exploit to enforce their power.  Power applied stupidly in the case of the “pandemic”, but it shows why power in the hands of government is so dangerous in the first place.

Sharon McKibbon is so certain there’s a pandemic on, but what is her proof?  We were promised 50,000 to 350,000 dead people in the first few weeks of the outbreak.  There would be bodies in the streets like those shown in Wuhan, China.  Hospitals would be overflowing with the dead and dying.  But none of that happened.  Nothing even close.

Instead, over six months into it, Ontario has fewer than 2,850 dead, mostly due to incompetent handling of those known to be vulnerable.  The average age of those allegedly killed by the virus is in the middle 80’s, higher than the average lifespan.  The odds are that Karen doesn’t even know someone who died of the virus, or knows someone who knows someone.

Ontario has reached herd immunity, which you can tell by just looking at the mortality graphs.  Hospitalizations and the ever-cheerful deaths graphs show peaks in mid-April, and a drop to just above zero by mid-July.  The number of cases is spiking again, to near April highs, but the hospitalization and death charts remain stubbornly just above zero, and this is the clue that herd immunity is upon us.

But the medical professionals advising a bovine premier are clueless.  And no journalist dares ask the question about the evidence of herd immunity, and demand a detailed, technical answer to why not.  I’ll bet money the answer to the question will be a handwave.

The pandemic is over.  Stop the shaming.  End the lockdown orders.  But we can’t because it would expose the incompetence of the medical professionals advising a bovine premier.

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Unprecedented Reality

 Vincent J. Curtis

24 Sept 20

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described the program outlined in yesterday's Speech from the Throne (which opened a new session of Parliament) as creating an "unprecedented reality.

Everyone was tested, and proved negative for COVID-19, which meant social distancing was unnecessary.  Yet they social distanced.  And social distancing meant than mask-wearing was superfluous, yet everybody wore a mask.  Not an N-95 respirator or a canister respirator, but one of those practically useless cloth masks that can’t filter out a virus.  People elbow-bumped rather than shake hands.  The lack of empiricism was palpable.  The spectacle of the Speech from the Throne is an example of Justin Trudeau’s “unprecedented reality.”

I understand that a drama teacher may be a little light on philosophy, but it should be obvious that our Prime Minister doesn’t understand what reality is.  He, like many others, doesn’t believe in objective truth, and so there can’t be an objective reality.  If he insists hard enough, anything he says is the equivalent of truth, and truth, in turn, is merely a reflection of power relationships.  Unfortunately for Canada, Trudeau holds power, and there is an objective reality.

By his environmental policy, Trudeau believes that Canada can become prosperous without making anything.  He speaks of an economic recovery as being “green” and “equitable.”  These aren’t divisions of economic recovery. The divisions are fast or slow, strong or weak, or led by this sector or that, etc.  “Green” and “equitable” economic recoveries come from a dream world, not reality.  The idea that Canada can eliminate its carbon emissions without economic consequence comes from a dream world, not reality.  That carbon taxes will achieve a green and equitable recovery is not based on any realistic economic analysis.

The plan for handling COVID-19 has never been aimed at a measurable goal, and the goals posited keep changing.  Only the lockdown is constant.

I get that a drama teacher lives occasionally in a made-up world.  But as Prime Minister, Trudeau has to deal with actual reality if he’s going to do us any good.  His talk of an “unprecedented reality” tells me that he doesn’t know what reality actually is.  Rarely does it yield to political will.

The media should be ridiculing Trudeau for his claim of “unprecedented reality”, particularly in view of his lack of empiricism.  Ridicule is a facet of reality he does understand because it undermines his power, and ridicule might be the slap in the face he needs for the good of the rest of us.

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Truncheons for thee, press freedom for me

 Vincent J. Curtis

23 Sept 20

RE: The time for fatherly scolding in now past.  Hamilton Spectator editorial of today.  The editorial calls for heavy fines, property confiscation, and even incarceration for people like those who held the Car Show on Sunday.

We started with fear, then cajoling, a foray with reasoning, then shaming, and, recently, scolding.  Now, the Spectator is calling for the truncheon, reluctantly.  Heavy fines, confiscation of property, arrests and jail time.

For what?

The theory is that restricting your freedom might possibly do good for somebody else.  Your compliance for the possible good of people we cannot name and do not know.

What’s the likelihood that that theory, unacceptable as it is, actually works? Today, there is a one in 2,300 chance that the next person you meet in Ontario is an unresolved COVID-19 case – assuming every unresolved case is on the street.  The odds are pretty good against your encountering a contagious, active case.

The enforcement is being levelled at the 99.96 percent of the population who aren’t the problem.  People who aren’t the problem and who know no one who has even been a problem find it hard to accept endless curtailment of their freedom on the basis of faulty reasoning and no tangible evidence.

When the editorial says that people are menaces to public health, and argues that “surely, individual rights are trumped by our collective right to optimal public safety” it argues the case of the tyrant and without evidence.  Individuals who aren’t contagious simply aren’t menaces to public health.  There is no such thing as ‘collective rights.’  What ‘optimal’ public safety is, is a mystery.

Humpty-dumpty has fallen apart, and there’s no put him back together.

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'Dr. Dirk' named Ford point man on COVID response

Vincent J. Curtis

22 Sept 20

RE: Ford's choice of 'Dr. Dirk'  sparks criticism

It’s hard to see how Dr. Dirk Huyer, Ontario’s Chief Coroner, could give worse advice to Premier Ford than he is already receiving.  As of today, Ontario reported 6,128 unresolved cases of COVID-19.  Ontario’s population is 14.6 million.  A bit of math will show you that the unresolved cases amount to 1 in 2,400 people, roughly.

If you assume the very worst, that these unresolved cases are all contagious and are not isolating, the odds are that only one in the next 2,400 people you encounter could give you the virus.  Not will, but could, depending on the intensity of the encounter.  So why is Premier Ford limiting crowd sizes to six or ten people?  Are Ford’s medical advisors too proud to hire a mathematician to help with statistical issues?

If you limited crowd size to 500, there is still only a one in five chance that one of those 500 people would be an unresolved case.  Limiting crowd size is a way of looking like you’re doing something, but really aren’t.

Ford needs to get better advice, and shaking up his medical team can only help.  The addition of a mathematician would also help.

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Heavy-handed Ford losing respect of ordinary people

V incent J. Curtis

21 Sept 20

A car show in Hamilton Sunday night made the Canadian national news.  Over 500 show cars spontaneously appeared in one of Hamilton's largest shopping centers, along with a commensurately large crowd.  Premier Doug Ford on Friday laid now severe new restrictions on crowd size to combat, so he thinks, a second wave of covid-19 infections.  Ordinary people responded with this act of defiance.  It took Hamilton Police, together with reinforcements from Peel Regional and York Region Police and the Ontario Provincial Police to break up the show.  Three hours were required for the police to muster their forces before moving in.  There were no arrests or fines.

“Reckless behaviour,” “totally unacceptable,” “should be ashamed of themselves,” “actions….abhorrent,” “unacceptable behaviour,” “threatening,” these are the scolding words used to categorize a car show, featuring over 500 vehicles, held in the Ancaster Power Center.  Social distancing wasn’t maintained!  People went maskless!!

People don’t like being infantilized, but listen to the scold-to-child talk from the authorities, Premier Ford, Supt. Mason, and Mayor Fred.  They must have missed the upraised middle finger the car show represented.

What they aren’t missing is that the scaremongering isn’t working anymore.  People have this figured out, faster than the medical professionals advising Ford.  The pandemic, such as it was, is over.  Life needs to get back to normal.  And they’re going to take it back in a way that’s fun and makes a mockery of the authorities.

The argument that you have to curtail my freedom because it might benefit somebody else doesn’t impress after six months.

If the scolds in power are smart, which they aren’t, they’ll lighten up, or they’re going to create a generation of scofflaws.  A rule of command is to never give an order that won’t be obeyed.  We’re getting to the point where ordinary people are ignoring the orders and trolling at the scolds in authority.  Premier Ford better find the civil libertarian inside himself quickly, because shaming doesn’t work.

Ordinary people are learning to how play the games of the far-left, and that won’t be good for civil order in the future.

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Ontario reaches herd immunity

Vincent J. Curtis

19 Sept 20

Ontario has reached herd immunity in respect of the coronavirus pandemic.  The proof of this can be found on the Ontario COVID-19 data page (https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data), and in particular the charts labelled “Daily Deaths” and “Comparing active and hospitalized cases.”

Both charts show the classic development of herd immunity.  The ever-cheerful “Daily Deaths” chart shows deaths peaking on April 30 at 86 deaths, and then tapering off in early July to a consistent 1 to 3 per day.  The curve remains flat at just above zero from early July to the present.

The Comparison of Active with Hospitalization chart is even more remarkable.  It shows hospitalization peaking on May 7th at 1,024, and tapering off near to zero in early July, where it remains to the present.  The number of active cases is overlaid the hospitalization curve, and it shows although active cases have risen since early August, hospitalizations (and deaths) remain just above zero.  Cases may be rising, but actual sickness, as measured by hospitalizations and deaths, remain unchanged at just above zero.  This is the sign that herd immunity has been reached.

Lockdown restrictions can be lifted and masks removed.  It is a sign of stupidity to add protections and restrictions to a society that has reached herd immunity.  More cases does not mean more sickness, hospitalizations, or deaths.

The question now is, will the medical masters who have savoured political power so advise the bovine politicians, or will they treat the data like Dr. Paul Alexander - to be complained of, dismissed, and distained?

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Doug Ford encouraging Defunding of Police

Vincent J. Curtis

18 Sept 20

Premier Doug Ford is doing his bit to promote the Defund the Police movement.  He announced smaller limits on gatherings and increased fines for violators of up to $10,000, all in response to rising numbers of cases (not hospitalizations or deaths) in certain regions of Ontario.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees our right of peaceful assembly, hasn’t been repealed, suspended, notwithstood, or otherwise put on holiday as a result of this extremely disappointing pandemic.  The authority Ford exercises in placing these new restrictions and fines arises not out of legal law or science, but from panic, fear, and a sense of pragmatism.  Be not afraid, and you realize the violence being done to our rights.

The police are expected to enforce these unconstitutional orders.  There is no use arguing law or science with a cop, because they don’t know and they don’t care.  What they do is enforce the rule of law as they understand that law to be.  Enforcing unconstitutional orders they still see as their job, because the unconstitutional part is a judge’s business.

In short, the police enforce unconstitutional orders under the Nuremburg Defense: I was just following orders.  Doug Ford is taking away your individual rights because it might be good for someone else.

If there were fewer police, there would be less brutal enforcement of unconstitutional orders.  Ergo, defund the police.  The chiefs would have to decide which is more important, busting party-goers or dealing with traditional crime.

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Anatomy of a Swamp take-out

Vincent J. Curtis

17 Sept 20

This story is of a classic take-out maneuver by the Swamp.

The Swamp refers to the permanent Federal bureaucracy that, over decades, has become Democrat in political orientation.  The way the President ensures the permanent bureaucracy responds to political control is to place political appointees in charge of departments.  In this case, Michael Caputo was the political appointee, and his technical assistant, who was independent of the bureaucracy, was Dr. Paul Alexander.

Ordinarily, the Center for Disease Control is not political.  Its members no doubt are highly political, and the pandemic has given the Democrats among them opportunity to strike little blows at President Trump as part of the Democrat campaign of resistance.  Dr/ Alexander is as qualitied as any of the permanent CDC staff to made editorial adjustments to CDC reports, and did so when he spied an unwarranted editorial presentation that could be used to attack President Trump.

How would the media know about the displeasure of the permanent bureaucracy at this Canadian interloper’s temerity?  They would contact friends in the media to complain on a not-for-attribution basis.  Then, Dr. Alexander’s associates are questioned about him, his work, and his integrity, and we saw several stories in the Spectator of McMaster University denying any current association with Dr. Alexander.

After several week of insidious questioning, an appearance before a Democrat run committee was demanded, and these are run like inquisitions, as we’ve seen several times before.  Before long, Caputo is taking leave and Dr. Alexander is out as his senior advisor, with limited future prospects at his old employer.

The permanent bureaucracy took out their political masters who knew enough to recognize seditious conduct when they saw it.

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Hate-Trump fake news, Canadian style

Vincent J. Curtis

14 Sept 20

Most Canadians don't follow American media closely.  They tend to hate Trump because of all the evil things they hear about him for the media they do follow.  Below is an example of fake news from a rather well-known Canadian writer.

Warren Kinsella asks, “Has Donald Trump finally been tripped up?” Kinsella falsely said, “American media, including Trump-friendly Fox News, report he referred to U.S. soldiers as ‘suckers’ and ‘losers.’”  In addition, the editorial cartoon depicts Trump saying the same thing about the 190,000 Americans who died of the Wuhan virus.

All this is fake.  Clever, but fake news.  Let’s disregard the pathetic taunt that Fox News is Trump-friendly, shall we?  The original fake story appeared in Atlantic Magazine, alleging that Trump, while in Paris, didn’t want to visit his second American graveyard that day and disparaged the servicemen of World War I.  The Atlantic story was anonymously sourced.  The disparaging business was refuted by no fewer than 25 people on the record, included John Bolton, Trump’s National Security Advisor at the time.

American media did not report such and so about Trump, they reported that Atlantic Magazine reported such and so about Trump.  Important difference in credibility.

With this hate-Trump story floundering, a second anonymously sourced story was concocted that Trump said the same thing about Vietnam veterans at Arlington cemetery,  Trump has disparaged the Vietnam War, but never its veterans, and this item of fake news survives only in the hate-Trump fever swamps (Admittedly, a very large place.)

Trump supporters have heard so much fake news about him – starting with Russia collusion – that the MSM, CNN, MSDNC, have no credibility any more.

Kinsella’s statement is deceptive, fake news.

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Marxists abuse Integrity process to harass opponent.

Vincent J. Curtis

15 Sept 20

A small group of Marxist in Hamilton are supporting two homeless encampments in the downtown of the city.  They emailed city councilors to beg the city not clear the encampments.  One of the councilors sent them a blunt reply.  The Marxists responded by lodging an ethic complaint against him with the city's Integrity Commissioner.

The ethics complaint to the city Integrity Commissioner is a demonstration of why this experiment in extra-democratic processes should be abolished.  It is too subject to abuse.  There are no penalties to complainants who abuse the process.  Integrity complaints are a cudgel available at a whim to disable a political opponent.

A small, closely associated coterie of Marxists, who hide behind the names of alleged organizations,, are trying to foist little bits of chaos and disrespect for the rule of law in the city through homeless encampments.  When Councilor Whitehead addressed them in stern language on the subject of these encampments, the Marxists suddenly went all prissy-Victorian, and pretended offense.  Whitehead was allegedly “disrespectful” - of tramps and hobos.  His email in which he expressed his views was called, “uneducated” and “derogatory”, and consequently subject to an integrity complaint.

Whitehead was engaged as a city councillor on a matter before his committee.  The protections of free speech are particularly strong in those circumstances.  The Integrity Commissioner is obligated to dismiss the complaint out of hand in these circumstances, and ought to take action against those complaining.  This is transparently an effort at a political take-out, and that requires action to protect the process – or get rid of the process entirely.

Writing emails that are “uneducated”, “disrespectful”, and generally in plain language that conveniently offends prissifed-Victorian moral codes complainants don’t’ believe in themselves is the job of honest politicians these days.

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Editor whines about defenses against media

Vincent J. Curtis

12 Sept 20 

RE: Good Stories need balance and background

Spectator editor Paul Berton complained in his weekly piece on Saturday of the defenses now mounted against media investigations, saying media is only trying to present a balanced picture and understanding of the background of the story.  For brevity, I made no mention of Ben Rhodes's comment that today's journalists are 27 year old know nothings who were fooled, for example, about Obama's Iran deal by setting up a media "echo chamber."  And forget about fake news altogether.

This opinion piece is loaded with irony.  It contains the understanding that today’s journalism is more than mere reporting, it is about shaping of opinion.  While the article explains how opinion shaping can be avoided, it also reveals how it can be done.

Take balance.  There is nothing in the idea of ‘facts’ that entails balance.  The facts are what they are.  Balance arises out of the idea of editorial slant, that is, the manner in which facts are presented and/or withheld so as to encourage the reader to adopt a certain opinion.  Balance is ostensibly an effort to combat that tendency, or at least to provide the publisher with deniability that the story was indeed intended to shape opinion.  The trouble with balance is what is being balanced.  What is the balance between good and evil?  If a story reports on human rights violations perpetrated by China on its Uighur minority, is the story balanced by obtaining from the Chinese Ambassador a categorical denial of all the facts alleged?  Balance is not a virtue in reporting.

Media have become tedious and predictable.  Organizations now defend themselves against misrepresentation in media by having media relations departments, to which reporters are referred.  This may be unsatisfactory, but journalism did this to itself - it’s always looking for ‘a story’ and embarrassment and conflict always make for a better story.

What went unmentioned was the idea of narrative.  A narrative is a larger story, and news articles are contrived to support the narrative.  Trump-Russia collusion was one such narrative, and earned the New York Times a Pulitzer Prize, even though it was completely false and without a shred of evidence.  The narrative is standard practice in today’s journalism, and narrative goes beyond balance and background, the latter being subordinated to the narrative.  Narrative is at the heart of editorial selection, of deciding what to publish and especially not to publish.

The airing of problems that modern journalism has in presenting good stories is full of irony, since many of the problems arise from reactions to past journalistic practices.

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Doug Ford's Justice Lacks Chinese Efficiency

Vincent J. Curtis

11 Sept 20 

RE: Ford demands enforcement of quarantine regulations

The above reference is to a new article that appeared in today's Hamilton Spectator.

When you read the statistics contained in the report, Doug Ford’s demand that quarantine regulations be enforced is simply baying at the moon.  The story is of what happens when you enact draconian laws while lacking Chinese efficiency.

Between March 25th and September 3rd, over 2.5 million people crossed the Canada-U.S. border, most being essential workers.  Being essential means never being ordered to quarantine yourself.  Police were asked to check on 87,388 people subject to quarantine, which resulted in zero arrests, one summons, and forty-two tickets.  Ford is complaining about lack of Federal charges, which carry heavier penalties.

The problem here is scale.  The judicial system couldn’t handle 87,000 new criminal cases in less than six months.  The distinction between essential and non-essential is arbitrary, and the Crown having to explain why dope and liquor stores (and their employees) are essential while priests and churches are not will not go well.

Another problem is the practicality of the lockdown itself.  It isn’t sustainable beyond 48 hours without trucking, petrochemicals for fuel, electrical power, food services, water, health care services, and so on, creating such large holes in the lockdown that it obviates the purpose.  The exemptions prove the concept to be impractical.

Then, there’s the mindset of enacting draconian laws and hammering people for not obeying.  At a certain point, people rebel, seeing no purpose to it, and no amount of shaming is going to work either.  The government doesn’t have the muscle now to hammer all the people disobeying all these new masters and their orders.

Something else should have been thought of to deal with the crisis because the law and punishment model isn’t working any more.

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Bob Woodward’s 'Lie'

 Vincent J. Curtis

10 Sept 20

In his new book Rage Bob Woodward quotes President Donald Trump as saying that he was downplaying the dangers of the coronavirus pandemic.  This statement was immediately pounced on by the Washington media and the Democrats (but if repeat myself) as proof that Trump lied to the American people about the virus.  Mr. Woodward has so far not corrected or qualified this perception.

What is a lie?  A lie is a deliberate mis-statement of the truth with the intention of deceiving the listener.  A lie is a kind of statement, for starters.  None of the people accusing Trump of lying have offered a statement that is the lie they are talking about.  If you ask, what did Trump say that was a lie, they can only say that playing down the dangers constitutes a lie, but they offer no statement of Trump’s that constitutes a lie of the type they claim.

There is a reason for this.  ‘Playing down the dangers’ is a statement of opinion.  “I don’t thinks that’s dangerous.”  “It’s not as dangerous as you think,” These are opinions, and it is the nature of an opinion that it be right or wrong.  Since the opinion is being offered about the future, the opinion cannot be a lie because the facts haven’t happened yet.  The truth is not yet known.  And because the truth is not yet known is why the opinion can be right or wrong.

As for Trump’s statements in public, Dr. Anthony Fauci is on record as saying that Trump did not say anything in public that he did not also say in private to Dr. Fauci and the pandemic response team.  Trump did not distort or misrepresent in public anything that was said to him in private in Dr. Fauci’s presence.  If Trump is of the opinion that America can persevere and overcome the pandemic, this opinion is not something Dr. Fauci can refute with scientific evidence.  And if Trump’s desire to accentuate the positive was contrary to Dr. Fauci’s best judgement, Fauci undoubtedly would and could say so.

It is Leadership 101 for the leader to ensure that his followers don’t panic in the face of adversity.  Nothing constructive comes of panic.  “Keep calm and carry on” is not a lie; it is a determination, and this is the determination Trump wanted to instill in America.  His response team concurred, and acted accordingly.  All of this is to the chagrin of the MSM and the Democrats.

They would have wanted Trump to induce panic in the population, all the better to beat him in November.  But he didn’t induce panic.  And so his playing down of the dangers of something that was unknown and whose dangers lay in the future is, now that it’s mostly over, portrayed by critics as a lie which could and did lead to the deaths of thousands.  This latter implication is itself an opinion; it is unprovable, and by the critics’ standards, itself a lie.

In his speech tonight in Freeland, Michigan, Trump made reference to Winston Churchill during the Blitz sustaining English morale.  Was Churchill lying to the British people, that if they endured they would ultimately win?  The future was unknown, and Britain was alone. Churchill based his belief in his own strategic analysis and the opinion of his senior military advisers that they could and should carry on the war, and that “there are good and reasonable hopes for final victory.”  The danger Britain faced in 1940 was far more dire and had far less prospect of ultimate success than America facing the pandemic in February, 2020.  Churchill did not lie, and, from the perspective of September, 2020, neither did Trump.

Trump’s critics offer no statement they can hold up as a lie; they can only offer statements of opinion about the future that they disagree with.  It is a leader’s job to lead his followers well, and keeping his followers calm in the face of adversity is an example of good leadership.  It is only because Trump led well during the pandemic that has the MSM and the Democrats angry; they would have preferred he led poorly so as to beat him in November.  But Trump led well, and so the media accuse Trump of lying when he led well.

Woodward has no use for Trump and thinks he is unfit for office.  Disregarding whom Woodward has ever though was fit for office, let’s see how long it takes for Woodward to correct the false impression that Trump lied when he properly downplayed the dangers of the virus with the aim of pulling America through as unscathed as possible.

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Race hustlers can't stand their analysis applied to themselves

Vincent J. Curtis

9 Sept 20

The Hamilton Spectator this date published an op-ed written by Kojo Damptey, who is apparently employed by the City of Hamilton as head of a civic inclusion initiative.  The gist of Damptey's article is that Canada is irredeemably systemically racist.  Being limited to 750 words, Mr. Damptey established his case by listing alleged crimes of racism committed in Canada going back to the 1830s.

It takes one to know one.  Kojo Damptey, Hamilton’s professional race hustler, unburdened himself of every alleged police race crime in Ontario history and concluded that Canada is systemically racist.

He was correct on one point, the Indian Act (and Section 35 of the Charter) establishes the principle of systemic racism in Canada.  But these are examples of the good kind of racism.  As for non-aboriginal races, racism was legally abolished in Canada beginning with the Federal Bill of Rights of 1960.  Then came the Charter and various provincial Human Rights Codes.  Ah, but it’s not the law that matters, it’s the conduct of the police that’s determinative, according to Damptey’s analysis.

Mr. Damptey will be the first to admit that there are individuals who are racist; he only has to look in the mirror.  But I don’t condemn the entire Jamaican community as irredeemably stupid and consumed by race and drugs on the basis of individual examples, as Damptey did of Canada, by which he meant the white races in Canada.

You live, you learn.  As Canadians became aware of injustice, they acted to correct it.  That is why the history of Canada is one of increasing justice.  Looking back, of course you can see the acts of injustice that moved Canadians to change.  We should be proud of our progress, not ashamed of our history.  Eliminate history, and you eliminate progress.

Damptey’s analysis is incoherent.  He couldn’t stand his analysis applied to himself or his community.

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Freeland - Trudeau to re-ban single use plastics

Vincent J. Curtis

9 Sept 20

The World Economic Forum released a study which showed that ninety percent of world oceanic pollution came from ten rivers: The Yangtze, Indus, Yellow, Hai He, Ganges, Pearl, Amur, Mekong, Nile and Niger.  Eight of these rivers lie in Asia, and two in Africa.   As a result of the pandemic, the Trudeau government suspended its ban on single use plastics, but Deputy Prime Minister Freeland recently announced that the ban would be re-instated.

Single use plastics, such as shopping bags, were permitted during the pandemic because of their cleanliness, while the alternative cloth bags were deemed too risky a carrier of disease.  Now that the pandemic is nearly over, the ban on plastics is going to be re-instated on the grounds that they are toxic and harmful, and contribute to oceanic pollution.  The re-instated ban is part of the green restart of Canada’s economy announced by Freeland.

No one at the press conference asked Freeland which of those ten rivers passed through Canada, or on what continent she thought Canada lay.  Nobody asked her if she was aware that Canadian cities by and large landfill their municipal waste.  Nobody asked her why she was accusing Quebec of dumping massive quantities of municipal waste into the St. Lawrence River, where it ends up in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and thence the North Atlantic.  Nobody asked her why Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario, having no ocean access, needed to be included in the ban.

Nobody asked Minister Freeland why the justification for banning single use plastics – their toxicity, harmfulness, and contribution to oceanic pollution - could be so patently absurd.  Is the government that stupid, or they think we are?

The answer to plastic waste is incineration, but the Liberals have snookered themselves on that point because they are committed to eliminating carbon dioxide emissions.

And they govern us.

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Drivel: Freeland calls for economic restart to be "green."

Vincent J. Curtis

7 Sept 20

With head shaking like a schoolmarm lecturing an unruly class, new finance minister Chrystia Freeland said, “The restart of our economy needs to be green.”

Minister Freeland is smart enough to know that her statement is patent drivel.  Let’s assume for the moment that she isn’t an environmentalist wacko, what would be the purpose of uttering this item of patent drivel?  She must be trolling supporters of the government who need cheering and don’t realize that her statement is drivel.  Maybe it’s a warning to all and sundry that criticism of her efforts to restart the economy will be met with fierce and woke retaliation.  Like accusing the Conservative opposition of hating the planet and trying to kill people - that kind of cancellation culture woke.

Maybe, Minister Freeland’s feet never touch the ground, and she thinks an economic restart can be green.  In that case, an example of what she means by a green restart would be helpful in understanding what she actually means.  An economic restart is an abstraction, not a physical entity and so can’t bear physical characteristics such a colour; and if by green she means environmentally friendly, then what is it about a restart that could be environmentally friendly?  Is green a code word for not assisting in the restarting of Alberta’s economy?  The green lies in what is restarted, not the restart per se, and her confusing restart with what is restarted is where the drivel originates 

Maybe Freeland is a true-believer environmentalist wacko, and sincerely believes that her drivel can be realized.  The trouble is, economies are too complex for central planning, and trying to restart one part of the economy while suppressing another is almost bound to fail once government subsidies are removed.

Minister Freeland’s bizarre piece of drivel might hearten depressed Liberal supporters, but causes only suspicion and wonder in those in contact with reality.

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A Conservative Case to Defund the Police

Vincent J. Curtis

4 Sept 20

Last month, about 100 people decided to pain "Black Lives Matter" on Main Street in front of Hamilton's city hall.  Main Street is a major thoroughfare, and the painters blocked traffic for two hours and the police did nothing.  They only helped re-route traffic.  No arrests were made.  Tdoay, it was announced that after a police investigation no charges would be laid.  Some people were issued a warning by police, but that was the extent of legal action against people engaged in public mischief, unlawful assembly, and vandalism.  It was learned that it cost the city over $5,000 to remove the pointed slogan from the asphalt.

The decision by the police not to charge the road painters makes a conservative case to defund the police.  Not enforcing the law against radical leftists, but vigorously enforcing it against ordinary people makes the case that the police favor certain groups, and forgive certain lawbreaking, of a leftist persuasion.  (Protesting is a right more sacred than religious worship!) So, why should conservatives support this kind of arbitrary policing?

If you violate any of the illegal and unconstitutional ordinances, orders, and rules that are supposed to “slow the spread”, if you stand up for your rights against overweening and arbitrary power, if you don’t wear one of those useless masks, then God help you for breaking the law, and here’s an $880 fine.  But vandalism over $5,000 and public mischief are against the law also, but if it’s for a leftist cause, then you get a pass from the police.  I guarantee that if the painted words said, “KKK” or “OCBLM” (only certain black lives matter) you’d be arrested and held over the weekend before a bail hearing.  For certain, you would, in addition, be accused of a hate crime.

“Law is for the law abiding” is often the case, as it is in this case.  But selective enforcement of the law based on political considerations makes a conservative case to abolish that kind of policing.

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The Army of Tomorrow, Today

Vincent J. Curtis 

11 July 2020

Yogi Berra once said that predicting the future was hard, especially since it hadn’t happened yet. 

Imagine you were a Canadian military planner in 1927.  Andy McNaughton orders you to forecast what the army should be like in 1942, a mere fifteen years in the future.

“Simonds,” you cry. “Take a note!”

The Bren gun and the Browning Hi-Power hadn’t been invented.  The No. 4 Lee-Enfield rifle hadn’t been developed.  The 2” mortar hadn’t been thought of.  The armoured doctrine of Plan 1919 was known, and the British were experimenting with it, but this was way beyond Canadian industrial capabilities and the funding interests of the government.  We were up to date on artillery doctrine even if we lacked the guns.  Tanks, trucks and other mechanical gear were primitive and unreliable.  The Kellogg-Briand Pact and the Locarno Treaties made war in Europe illegal.

A future strategic environment (FSE) assessment would fail to account for the coming revolutions.  The Nazi Party was an obscure, fringe group. Germany itself was crippled by the Versailles Treaty and was convulsing with political unrest.  Berlin was dissolute with the frivolities of the late 1920s.  The Soviet Union was still consolidating its communist revolution.  Lenin was dead, and Trotsky and Stalin were competing for the leadership of the party.  Russia was deeply impoverished and economically confused.  Japan had been an ally in the Great War, and hadn’t invaded China.  The great depression lay ahead. 

It’s now 1942.  The Canadian army has three divisions in Britain and would launch an ill-fated raid on Dieppe.  The Germans are on the Volga River in Russia and driving on the Caucuses.  Brand new Sherman tanks engage with Panzer Mk IVs in the deserts of Egypt and Cyrenaica.  The Canadian Force Employment Concept (FEC) is a shambles, the only things that hold from 1927 are artillery doctrine and that peculiar Canadian invention of World War I, the Machine Gun Corps.  The machine gun is the self-same Vickers .303 HMG, but mounted on Bren gun carriers instead of armoured cars.

Andy McNaughton orders you to forecast what they army should be like in 1957.

“Kitching” you cry.  “Fetch your Underwood!”

The 1942 FSE of 1957 would be blind to revolutionary events.  The atomic and then the hydrogen bombs would be invented.  Strategic bombers would advance successively from the new Lancaster, to the B-29, the B-36, the B-47, and the B-52.  Germany would be defeated, occupied, and replaced as an enemy by the Soviet Union.  NATO would be created.  The Korean War would be fought.  Sherman tanks would be replaced by Centurions, woolen battle-dress by FSOD, the No.4 by the FNC1, the Bren by the C2, the Sten by the Sterling, the PIAT by the 3.5”, and the Vickers by the Browning.  Ballistic missiles would be deployed.  But why have an army if the war will be over in thirty minutes?

It’s now 2006.  You’re a Major.  In Kingston.  You’ve been issued a T-shirt, Bermuda shorts, sandals, and a Toshiba 486SX laptop with Office 2000.  Andrew Leslie tasks you with coming up with a concept for “The Army of Tomorrow”  (AoT for short).  This will be the capstone concept for future material acquisitions and doctrinal development through 2021.  No pressure.  You look up.  It’s a blue sky.  What do you do?

Here is the Present Security Environment (PSE).  Canada, under Prime Minister Paul Martin and MND Bill Graham, just committed Canada to a mission at Kandahar, dramatically expanding our commitment in Afghanistan.  No idea how long this will last.  The tactical situation around Kandahar is hazardous.  General Rick Hillier is the new CDS.  The dark decade for the CF is over, as Hillier made it a condition of his appointment that money starts to flow.  We have no tactical aviation, no transport helicopters, and the heaviest lift aircraft we have are C-130H Hercules, each with over 30,000 flying hours.  We have no modern artillery and no tanks.

Start typing.

To Be Continued….

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Scientific Pretentions Exposed

 Vincent J. Curtis

3 Sept 20

Today’s Hamilton Spectator ran a piece written by four authors, headlined “Our Health is Shaped by our Wealth and Income.  The four authors were: Dennis Raphael (a Professor at York University), Toba Bryant (associate Professor at Ontario Tech University), Juha Mikkenon ((executive director of the Finnish Association for Substance Abuse Prevention), and Alexander Raphael (student at Ryerson University).  It pretended to show scientifically that living and working conditions determine health.  It’s scientific pretentions are exposed below.

The very headline of this article by four credentialed “experts” is itself a howler, and a tip-off that there’s something really wrong with its contents.  The article is an illustration that claims to scientific authority are often nothing more than pretentions and dressed-up common sense.

The four credentialed experts list no fewer than 17 social “determinants” of health.  Straightaway, it isn’t clear if they’re talking about statistical averages, or that this applies to individuals.  They don’t say what the units of measurement these determinants are.  They don’t say what the range of values of “H = “ is.  In short, the authors are implying that there is an equation relating the value of ‘Health’ to 17 other variables, which they call determinants of health, but, lacking units of measurement and ranges of values, they really don’t have such an equation.  They offer ordinary common sense puffed up as scientific discovery.

The authors claim that the disadvantaged are more likely to contract and succumb to COVID-19, and are also bearing the brunt of adverse economic effects.  This claim flies in the face of the facts.  The many homeless camps around North America were expected to be ravaged by COVID-19, or some other epidemic given the living conditions, and surprisingly were practically untouched by the virus.  As is well known, the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions succumb, and the elderly aren’t bearing the brunt of adverse economic effects.  University students are now rapidly contracting COVID-19, and they aren’t the disadvantaged.

The authors quoted approvingly the following statements: “Canada is so wealthy that it manages to mask poverty,” and “we have one of the worst records in providing an effective social safety net.”  The first statement is nonsensical on its face, since poverty is the deprivation of wealth then possessing wealth means that poverty is most effectively masked.  And Canada may have one of the worst records for providing a social safety net, except for 185 other countries on earth. Note: effective social safety net is an obscure abstraction, and so what constitutes an effective net is unclear.  Clear thinking scientists don’t write blatant nonsense like this, and if they do it is a sign that there is something wrong with their theories and thinking.

The authors then employ the following howler: the quality of the social determinants have stagnated or worsened.  The determinants were offered as variables in an equation, having numerical values and units of measurement.  A number is a quantity, not a quality; hence the reference to a determinant having a quality that stagnates or worsens is another sign that no actual science is present here and the credentialed authors don’t even realize it.  And so, when the authors speak of an equitable distribution of the determinants they become downright incoherent.  A determinant is a variable that has a quantity and unit of measurement associated with it, and how this mathematical entity could get distributed equitably among people is a complete mystery.  Real science is clear.

The authors also fail to state the statistical correlation between their variables, which they call determinants, and actual, measured performance.

There is no science going on in the article, written by four credentialed experts.  What they offer are common sense opinions dressed up to look scientific and therefore more respectable than mere opinion.

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No, Richard, Climate Change is still not an existential threat

 Vincent J. Curtis

2 Sept 20

Today's Spectator published a letter from a climate alarmist.  The gist of it can be ascertained from the rebuttal below.

This year, the Farmer’s Almanac released its 202nd annual edition.  It, of course, contains the famous weather forecasts for the coming year.  That the Almanac has been published for 202 years in a row is an empirical acknowledgement that climate is always changing.  If climate didn’t change, then weather patterns would be predictable year after year, and there would be no need for the Almanac.  Yet it continues.

Hence, the Spectator wasted space publishing the diatribe by Richard MacKinnon.  No climate scientist has gone out on a limb and declared that a particular weather event was caused by climate change.  The effect of increasing carbon dioxide content from 280 ppm to 408 ppm is like adding two people to a capacity crowd at the Air Canada Centre.  It’s just not that significant.  And it simply isn’t true that warmer air leads to stronger winds and more persistent rain, as the Sahara and Arabian Deserts prove.  Wind is caused by differences in atmospheric pressure, not temperature.  Annual rainfall in southern Alberta is also quite variable from one year to the next, and so it ought to be in South Asia.

Wildfires aren’t caused by climate change, they’re caused in nature by lightning strikes in dry vegetation, and drought conditions combined with poor forest management can make the destruction worse than some say it should be.  The “record” heat in Death Valley simply wasn’t a record, only in the limited time frame considered.  The actual record occurred earlier, when carbon dioxide level was low.  Droughts in Africa are not unusual, any more than in California.  Hurricane Laura was especially intense because it passed over the famously warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, source of the Gulf stream.  Ten children killed in Uganda by a lightning strike were killed - by a lightning strike, not climate change.  The Amazon losing 17 percent of its original area may have something to do with Brazilian logging and farming practices, not climate change.

One could refute point by point, not that it would change any minds.  The modelling failures around COVID-19 ought to make the public wary of modelling forecasts generally, but that’s all the climate fearmongers have got.  They have models, not data, and backcasting the models show that they overestimate actual temperature change by a lot.  The models are incapable of forecasting a reversal in trends, as occurred in the 1940s from warmer to cooler, and the late 1970s, when we went from the coming ice ahr to global warming.  Many temperature records of the 1930s remain records to this day.

Climate is always changing, and that’s why the Farmer’s Almanac has been in business for over two hundred years.

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ChInese Thuggery (Shockingly) Shocks Canadians

Vincent J. Curtis

1 Sept 20

The Canadian government, through the National Research Council, paid a Chinese lab to develop a vaccine against COVID-19.  The field trials of the vaccince were to be started in Canada a couple of weeks ago, but the Chinese refused to hand over the material.  As a result, the government of Canada has paid several western firms to acquire some 76 million doses of their vaccines.  The conduct of China in this affair shocked the editors of the Hamilton Spectator, and editorialized that Canada needs to adopt a different approach to Chinese relations, a position advocated by this writer for decades.

It’s good to see the Spectator have a come-to-Jesus moment concerning Communist China, but why was it even necessary?  Isn’t the word ‘communist’ enough of a warning?

Communism gives bullies a moral excuse to bully.  Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Guevara, the Kims – which one of these was ever an honest humanist?  After the ruthlessness of the last twenty years, of the militarization of the South China Sea, of the pressure on Hong Kong, the industrial espionage which destroyed Nortel, the forced technology transfers, the games being played with agricultural exports what made you think that the Chinese communists could be trusted to deliver something important to us that was not simultaneously advantageous to them?

Jean Chretien had the Chinese communists figured out: cash and carry trade, and ignore their human rights abuses - there being nothing we could do about it.  Where the talk of a free trade agreement came from, we’ll never know what starry-eyed idealist proposed such nonsense.

China serves one useful purpose in Canada.  When China invests in Canadian resource development and exploitation, you can be sure those resources are going to get delivered to the Chinese market, whatever roadblocks leftist in Canada might throw up.  Chinese investment in Canadian resources is useful in developing the north.

Communism was, is, and always will be bad news for the world.  I don’t understand why, after Tiananmen massacre, the collapse of the Soviet Union and empire these lessons fail to penetrate.

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Trudeau angered by toppling of statue to Sir John A. Macdonald

Vincent J. Curtis

1 Sept 20

A statue to Sir John A. Macdonald, the leading Father of Confederation and Canada's first Prime Minister, was toppled over the weekend by vandals and Montreal Police ignored the matter.  Prime Minister Trudeau was asked how he felt about it, and he said he felt angered.  The statue stood for 125 years.

It’s rich of Prime Minister Trudeau to be angered over the toppling and beheading of the Macdonald statue in Montreal.  After all, it was Trudeau who ordered the name of Hector Langevin scraped off the historic Langevin Block building on Parliament hill.  This bit of vandalism was committed by Trudeau for the same reason that the Macdonald statue was vandalized: the connection of those Fathers of Confederation to residential schools.

Trudeau may be angry, but he started that ball rolling.

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