Stupid is as stupid does

Vincent J. Curtis

31 July 21

RE: Feds give $400 million to phase out coal-fired steel making at plant.  Hamilton Spectator 31 July 21.

After all the self-congratulations are over, what are the wider implications of taking some of ArcelorMittal Dofasco’s primary steelmaking capacity of line?

Chinese steelmakers use more than twice the amount of coal as Canadian steelmakers do to make a ton of steel.  By taking Canadian primary steelmaking off the market, it leaves room for more, less efficiently made Chinese steel to be produced.  The net effect is to increase the amount of CO2 produced world-wide by primary steelmaking.  It just isn’t produced in Canada.

It also means the Canadian iron-ore produces have to find markets overseas.  Instead of Canada shipping steel abroad, she ships iron ore, reducing the value-added of exports and reducing Canada to the hewer of wood and drawer of water status.

An electric arc furnace produces about 150,000 tons of steel per year, while a basic oxygen furnace produces 2,000,000 tons per year.  The steel produced by the electric arc process tends to be less ductile than primary made steel because of the accumulation of alloying elements present in the scrap.  And primary made steel is essential for the electric arc furnace, since the arc furnace simply remelts scrap steel.

The federal and provincial governments giving hundreds of millions of dollars to one of the largest steel makers in the world is nothing but a vanity project for the politicians.  What primary steel isn’t made at Dofasco is switched to some other ArcelorMittal plant elsewhere in the world, and ArcelorMittal gets an arc furnace well below cost.

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Two twits, Twitter, twaddle, and truth.

Vincent J. Curtis

29 July 21

RE:  A big tent of COVID misinformation.  By Grant Lafleche of the St. Catharines Standard, and Edward Tian special to Torstar.  Published in the Hamilton Spectator 29 July 21.

When two twits are tasked with analyzing tweets, what do you get?  Twaddle!

The purpose of the article by Grant Lafleche and Edward Tian was to discredit the anti-lockdown movement by associating it with other, unsavory, movements and insinuating that the movement had no basis in science.

In fact, the settled science is that widespread lockdowns are ineffective in controlling the spread of COVID.  And it doesn’t matter whether QAnon agrees that the earth is round or not as to the actual facts.  The reason lockdowns persist is that it makes governments look like they’re doing something, and it makes the Karens of the world feel better.

The first articles questioning widespread lockdowns were published in April, 2020, by Hoover Institution Fellow Dr. Scott Atlas.  He showed that prolonging a lockdown beyond two weeks created health issues itself, and that after four weeks the potential benefits of lockdown were eclipsed by the adverse consequences.

In January, 2021, the Stanford University Medical Center released a study of lockdown measures tried world-wide, and found they were ineffective in controlling the spread.  In April, 2021, two M.I.T. professors explained why lockdown measures don’t work.  The mathematical modelling of the spread showed that keeping people indoors with inadequate ventilation caused the spreading of any airborne contagion.

This author has shown empirically with Ontario’s COVID data that the province’s lockdown measures were completely ineffective.  But too many reputations of important people would be crushed if the Ford government admitted it.

Trying to discredit the “anti-lockdown movement” by associating it with unsavory elements is a political tactic that avoids coming to grips with the underlying truth that lockdowns failed – and not due to lack of application.

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Climate Change and British Columbia wildfires

Vincent J. Curtis

28 July 21

Much has been made over the B.C. wildfires and the heat wave that allegedly caused them.  These have been held forth as evidence of climate change.  However, analysis of the actual data proves otherwise.

The official B.C. government statistics can be found at the link below:

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/safety/wildfire-status/about-bcws/wildfire-statistics/wildfire-averages

The annual burn acreage in B.C. can vary by as much as two orders of magnitude.  The ten year average burn acreage between 2010 and 2020 is 348,917 hectares.  The lowest year was 2011 with 12,609 hectares burned, closely followed by 2020 with 14, 536 hectares.  The largest year was 2018 with 1,354,284 hectares burned, closely followed by 2017 with 1.216,053.  The trend from 218 to 2020 is sharply downward.  Statistically, a sharp rise should be expected in 2021.  (This is phenomenon of statistics known as 'reversion to mean.') There are no evident trends that indicate a correlation between world CO2 levels and burn acreage in B.C.

But that doesn’t stop the charlatans that hope to capitalize in some way upon people’s gullibility.  People have been told so often that climate change is responsible for this or that unusual event, that when a big hype is made over a particular heat wave and the burning of forests that follow afterwards, they believe it.  They are given no context by the charlatans that would make the deception obvious.

Follow the money.  The people hyping climate change and who cite B.C. forest fires as sure signs of it get a benefit somehow.  Even if it is only confirmation of their moral and intellectual superiority.

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Climate hypochondria

Vincent J. Curtis

27 July 21

RE: Climate Change concerns for Lake Ontario.  News item, Hamilton Spectator 27 July 21

If you tell a healthy person often enough that they look unwell, eventually they’re going to feel unwell.  Something like this is going on eith climate change, and ordinary people are finding sure signs of reds under the bed, the coming Zombie apocalypse, and climate change – and not necessarily in that order.

We were assured two years ago last June by Professor of Environmental Justice Dr. James Cairns [June 6, 2019] that Lake Ontario would turn into a desert within the lifetime of his young son.  Today, the problem is too much rain.  It’s flushing sewage and other sources of bacteria into Lake Ontario, rendering its beaches occasionally unsafe to swim in.  And, contrary to Dr. Cairns, we are assured today by Dr. Ze’ev Gedalof, professor of geography, environment, and geomatics that rainy seasons will last longer, and storms will be heavier and more frequent in future.  Hence, extreme rainfall, and both higher and lower temperatures will be caused by climate change.

In sum, anything unusual by way of weather will be put down to climate change, so long as we keep our time horizons short enough.

Students of science philosopher Karl Popper will recognize a non-falsifiable theory when they see one, as the theory of man-caused climate change is.  Wet weather and drought, extremes of heat and cold are all due to climate change, as if these extremes never happened before.

Climate hypochondriacs rejoice!  Your hysteria isn’t going to be challenged any time soon.

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Next on The Cancel Culture Dead Pool

Vincent J. Curtis

25 July 21

RE: It’s time to modernize Ontario’s flag. By Torstar columnist Bob Hepburn.  Published in the Hamilton Spectator 24 July 21.

No doubt about it, Bob Hepburn’s column needs to be replaced.  It doesn’t reflect modern-day diversity and distinctiveness.  Hepburn is just another old white guy, interchangeable with practically any other Torstar male columnist.  Hepburn tediously regurgitates boilerplate progressive bromides.

Hepburn’s column, however, did warn us of the next item on the Cancel Culture Dead Pool: the Ontario flag.

Being so old, Hepburn received an Ontario education, when it was still good.  He ought to know that “British-themed” is the world’s best example of diversity and unity.

At one time, Canada’s national flag was similarly British-themed, as were most of the provinces.  The flag of the Hudson Bay Company was similarly themed, as were the flags of British India and Hong Kong, to name a few.  At its height, the British Commonwealth united a fifth of the world’s people and compassed a quarter of the world’s land mass.  It was simultaneously the largest Muslim nation and Hindu nation in the world.  The only reason Canada took immigrants from Hong Kong, India, and Pakistan was because of their membership in the Commonwealth.  What could be a greater symbol of diversity, unity, and peace than a British themed flag?

“Pearson’s pennant” was designed to show exclusivity, not inclusivity.

Hepburn let the cat out of the bag, informing us that after Macdonald, Ryerson, Dundas, other fathers of confederation, the Catholic Church, and heterosexuality, the next item on the woke Dead Pool is Ontario’s flag.

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Woke Minister Wilkinson needs to be woken up.

Vincent J. Curtis

22 July 21

RE: Extreme weather events a wake-up call. Hamilton Spectator news article 22 July 21.

It’s hard to tell if Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson is badly misinformed, poorly educated in Canadian history, or is simply another day-zero fanatic who thinks the world began when the Trudeau Liberals assumed power.

According to Minister Wilkinson, the heat wave and fires in B.C. and the drought conditions in Western Canada are sure signs of climate change, and only Canadians can do anything about it.  He was in Calgary to announce plans to mitigate the potential for flooding again in High River, AB.

Minister Wilkinson should know better than to equate certain weather events with climate change, because weather is not climate.  If it were, how would explain the extraordinary cold snap in February that saw some Texans freeze to death?

The extreme heat and drought experienced today is nothing compared to the heat and drought of the 1930s, when people were literally driven from the land.  Saskatchewan depopulated in the 1930s, and Alberta went bankrupt.  The burn acreage in B.C. is no worse than in previous years, and much less than the 1930s – the “Dirty 30s.”  No new heat record was set in the U.S. during the latest heat wave.  And, Minister Wilkinson, the Highwood River has flooded before 2013; property damage was extensive because the municipal government allowed building on known flood plain!

Wilkinson’s smug conceit that he is morally and intellectually superior to his opposition adds no weight to his argument that Canadians have to stop resisting madcap ways of addressing “climate change.”  He needs to reflect upon the fact that Canada’s emissions are only 1.5 percent of the world total, and China is hell-bent on building as much coal-fired electrical generations as she can before 2030.

That, and a history lesson of the Dirty ‘30s.

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Time is running out ad

Vincent J. Curtis

22 July 21

RE: ssho.ca ad pg A9.  Hamilton Spectator 22 July 21.  This is an ad promoting halting the expansion of the urban boundary in Hamilton.  This is the stuff of California in the 1970s.

The group trying to block urban boundary expansion in Hamilton is certainly well-organized and spectacularly well-funded.  They can afford a full page, full colour ad.

Students of Thomas Sowell can recognize a “vision of the anointed” at a glance in this ad.  The anointed know better than the benighted what to do with the land.  Being morally and intellectually superior, they want to make home-buying decisions for the next generation of Hamiltonians.  Their ad is devoid of data relevant to the issue, and they are otherwise impervious to data and the failed examples of theirs in the past.

Allegedly, the 3300 acres farmland within city boundaries is “prime.”  They do not say what crops are grown on the land presently, what is the dollar value of the crop yield, and how much in taxes is paid to the city for the land.

Let me assure Hamiltonians that Canada has no dearth of farmland or food production, and that 3300 acres cannot feed a city of half a million people.  If that land were turned over to residential development, the GDP produced on the land then would vastly exceed its economic value now, to say nothing of the vastly higher tax revenues to city coffers.

To say nothing of the adverse consequences of denying new home buyers the homes they want at prices they can afford.

Hamilton, The Ambitious City, is destined to become even greater if it doesn’t shoot itself in the head.

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Who cares what he thinks?

Vincent J. Curtis

21 July 21

RE: Dismantle symbols of the past like Dundas signs, says prof.  News item by Jon Wells, Hamilton Spectator 21 July 21.

Amiel Joseph is a Mac professor of Social Work who research areas include postcolonial theory and critical race theory.  Straightaway, you know that Prof Joseph is engaged in those fake disciplines that Roger Scruton, and others (including Jordon Peterson) warned us about.  There is no scholarship in these fake disciplines, only the insistence of conformity to an underlying political orthodoxy, and pretentions to authority.

The story alleges certain things that ring false.  John Graves Simcoe, the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, is a bad guy because he “was involved in the colonial project.”  Well, duh!  Simcoe signed into law in 1793 a bill from the legislature that abolished slavery in Upper Canada.  Which brings us to the Jarvis family who allegedly owned slaves and the Hatt family which allegedly traded slaves.  Really?  When?  I dispute that.  It certainly couldn’t have happened in Upper Canada after 1793.  Show me the original scholarship, if you can!

Dundas allegedly delayed the abolition of slavery.  In fact, Dundas saved the bill abolishing slavery which would have been defeated in the British House of Commons had he not added the word ‘gradually’ before the word 'abolish.'  For his political sagacity that saved the abolition bill, Dundas gets condemned by modern-day fanatics and fools for whom facts are optional.

We are faced with an onslaught on attacks on Canada’s treasured history.  Macdonald’s statue has to be torn down.  Dundas has to be removed from memory, like in Stalinist Russia.  Residential schools are the very worst thing ever perpetrated on earth.  John Graves Simcoe is bad, Jarvis, Henry Bathurst, Samuel Hatt: bad, bad, bad!  Everyone is a colonizer, a settler, and an oppressor, except Blacks, Indigenous, that those screaming ‘colonizer’ the loudest. (They are not subject to the ramifications of their own ideology.)

It’s time for people to recognize the con game being played on their guilt feelings.  The alleged evil is as fake as critical race theory and “postcolonial” theory are fake disciplines, with fake scholarship, that confer fake authority.

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Aboriginal Bad Faith: Six Nations want money other bands need.

Vincent J. Curtis

21 July 21

RE: Six Nations hopes former residential school as searched ‘as soon as possible.’  Hamilton Spectator news article by Kate McCullough 21 July 21.

What is clear upon a moment’s reflection is that the location of a residential school graveyard on Six Nations, if it exists, does not exist in the living memory of anyone on Six Nations.  The story reports that some locations on the site of the former residential school were searched by ground penetrating radar and archeological assessors, and nothing was found.  Construction on other portions of the old site which ought to have turned up something, turned up nothing.

Survivors told stories of girls becoming pregnant and babies disappearing, but none of them can recollect the location of a graveyard associated with the school.

Nevertheless, Six Nations band council asked the Federal government for $10 million of a new $30 million fund to search for old graveyards, in addition to another $10 million from the Ontario government.  What did they plan to squander this money on?  There was no budget associated with the demand, and no search project in prospect.  And ground penetrating radar searches aren’t that expensive.

We are led inevitably to bad faith.  The government is handing out money, so Six Nations band council cynically puts out its hand too.  Never mind those who might actually be able to use the money properly.

All traces of a school graveyard, if it ever existed, must have completely disappeared by the 1940s.  So, what is the point giving Six Nations $10 million again?

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Astroturf campaign

Vincent J. Curtis

20 July 21

RE: Stop sprawl floods councillors inboxes.  Hamilton Spectator news article 20 July 21.

Being experienced politicians, city councillors can recognize an organized campaign, and can detect when Astroturf is pretending to be grassroots.  I’ll bet that if Councillor Nrinder Nann were taken behind the woodshed, the campaign could be made to stop.

Campaigns to stop urban sprawl, save farmland, green space, and other such slogans. began in California in the 1970s, so we know how these things end.  Renowned economist Thomas Sowell has written about it in several of his books, including Discrimination and Disparities.  Because of rising demand and no new supply, the price of existing housing skyrockets.  Affordable housing disappears.  The poor and lower middle class are driven from their neighborhoods.  The policy responses to skyrocketing home prices in the U.S. led to the financial crisis of 2008.

It’s easy for existing home owners to say no to new housing construction.  They benefit, though their children may not.  Housing in Hamilton becomes unaffordable to new buyers early in their working careers.  All the people calling for stopping the sprawl pay no price for being wrong.  They have this vision, and they’re determined to impose it on others – the new home buyers.

Builders have lots to lose if they guess wrong, and they’re not going to build all at once.  They’ll let the market decide what houses should be built and in what price range.

Don’t let the visionaries trick or coerce council into imposing the “vision of the anointed” upon new home buyers.

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Fighter Jets needed to protect Canadian sovereignty.

Vincent J. Curtis

19 July 21

RE: Trudeau should listen to Canadians and cancel fighter purchase plan.  Op-ed by Tamara Lorincz, who is a Ph.D. candidate at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Wilfred Laurier University and fellow with the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute.  Published in the Hamilton Spectator 19 July 21.

It’s Ph.D. candidates in “International Affairs” like Tamara Lorincz that make science majors feel superior.  In science, you have to deal with data and completing theories, and opinion polls don’t count.  In “International Relations” the opinions of the usual gang of idiots – this gang being too old to suffer the consequences of their folly – whose wisdom Trudeau is to follow.  The proposition being not to replace Canada’s forty year old CF-18 fighter jets with newly constructed airframes.

Young Tamara never asked herself, “If Canada isn’t flying combat aircraft in our airspace, who will?”  My guess is, first the United States, and then Russia.  Already Russia routinely challenges our response by flying T-95 Bear bombers close to our airspace.  Without a response, Russia could violate our sovereignty.

And without a response from us, our partner in NORAD would chase them away – by flying through Canadian airspace.  You would think a Ph.D. candidate in “International Affairs” would think of this, but apparently not.  You’d think Tamara would be aware of Canada’s responsibilities under NORAD and NATO, but maybe she skipped those courses.

The point of the Fighter Jet Replacement Project isn’t to do anything new; it is to replace aircraft at the end of their service lives with new construction that is safe to fly.  That’s isn’t provocative in any way, to anybody.

Keep STEM free from artsy poisons!

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Is a thousandth of a degree worth this?

Vincent J. Curtis

17 July 21

RE: Do Liberals have a plan for zero emission vehicles? Torstar editorial 12 July 21

The Torstar editorial piece cast rare shade onto the climate change planning of Prime Minister Trudeau.  This was over Trudeau’s declaration that every new car sold in Canada after 2035 would have to be electric.  There are sound reasons to doubt the utility of the declaration, other that as an election ploy – to remind voters who their friend is on climate change.

No one asked Trudeau what would be the environmental benefit of nothing but electric vehicles after 2035.  For example, by how much would the increase in global temperature be reduced as a result of this extremely expensive undertaking?  What did the cost-benefit analysis say?

My estimate is that Canada’s going all-electric after 2035 would reduce the prospective increase in global temperature by less than a thousandth of a degree.  For less than a thousandth of a degree, Canadians will be forced by buy vehicles tens of thousands of dollars more expensive than gas-powered vehicles, and there could be no subsidy as there exists now for EVs.  Can Ford Focus buyers afford a Tesla? In addition, Trudeau mentioned no provision for the loss of fuel taxes that pay for road construction and improvements.

Furthermore, planning needs to begin within five years to construct numerous nuclear power plants to be able to recharge all those batteries.  The declaration applies to all of Canada, and so-called renewables aren’t feasible in many parts of Canada, leaving nuclear as the only non-carbon alternative.

The declaration is an admission that the carbon-tax regime will fail.  Paradoxically, the more successful the carbon tax is, the less benefit there is to be obtained by switching to all EVs.

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Cuban Uprising Forecast of 2008: A Repost

 

Obama and US Foreign Polic 

Vincent J. Curtis                                                                                   10 December 2008 

            Throughout the election campaign, President-elect Obama claimed that he could make the world love America again.  All it will take is his charm, his personality, his rhetoric, his policies, and his inspirational leadership in the White House and America will be admired again by the world, unless you happen to be one of America’s partners in NAFTA.  Today, he announced that he would give a major speech in an Islamic capital in order to “reboot” America’s image in the Muslim world.

From Ahmadinejad of Iran, to Kim Jong Il of North Korea, to Chavez of Venezuela, Obama said he can soften the hard hearts of dictators, despots, and tyrants as President Bush and other conservative Republicans cannot.  To the democratically elected president of Columbia, Uribe, however, he maintains a hardened heart.

As senator, Obama gave a remarkable speech in February in which he said, in effect, that the world would be a safer place if America stopped developing and deploying new weapons and he became president.

            A tour of the north-east gate of Naval Station Guantanamo, and a little reflection, will quickly disabuse a thoughtful person of such possibilities.

            The north-east gate of Gitmo is the only land connection between the naval station and the Republic of Cuba.  It is one of the few check points remaining of the cold war.  Here you will see the watch towers, the armed guards, the wire, and the defenses.  Tension at this control point remains high.

            American forces on Gitmo pose no military threat to the Cuban regime, and the Cuban leadership is undoubtedly aware of this.   At the same time, it would be suicidal for the Cuban regime to attack Gitmo.  Yet Cuba still maintains a threatening posture at Gitmo.

            Anybody who knows the costs of military activity understands how expensive it is for the Cuban regime to keep tensions high at Gitmo.  The poor Cuban taxpayer and the straitened Cuban economy are forking over a lot of money for the regime to keep up a pretense; money that could be well spent improving the general welfare of the Cuban people.  Yet the Cuban regime persists, decade after decade, and president after president, Republican or Democrat.  Why?

            The answer is that the Castro regime needs justification to keep the Cuban people repressed.  While Fidel Castro may seem to be popular, he and his brother Raul, being tyrants, cannot trust anyone very much.  The Castro regime has to keep the Cuban people looking over their shoulders so that they won’t conspire and combine against it.  A near state of war against America provides justification for the activities of the secret police and for the sacrifices in money and freedom the Cuban people have made, apparently to defend themselves and their revolution, but really to protect Castro’s life and position as head of the Cuban state.

            But Cuba is a specific example of a general phenomenon.  The internal dynamics of tyrannies and despotisms make it necessary that a state of tension be maintained between these states and their neighbors; and between these states and the United States, since the hyperpower is the most convenient scapegoat in the world.  Maintaining a state of tension with foreign countries serves to protect the tyrant or the despot at home.  Tension abroad justifies intrusive security at home.

            Natan Sharansky, former Russian dissident and a former minister in the Israeli government, devoted his book The Case for Democracy to analysis of this phenomenon.  It was this book that encouraged President Bush to attempt to democratize Iraq after the war of 2003, and is the basis for a similiar policy in Afghanistan.

The situation at Gitmo with Cuba is but a specific example of the general case.  If the demon power wasn’t the United States, it would be Great Britain, or Israel.  Tyrants and despots need to maintain a tension at home akin to a war footing to protect their own lives, and in Cuba tension with the United States justifies the pressure at home.

            Since the tyrant and the despot fear a reduction in tension with the United States, the likelihood that the new personality in the White House will cause them to change their rhetoric or their policies against America is nil.  They fear for their own lives too much.  At best they will offer lip-service.

            The personality in the White House has little to do with whether America is liked or not by the rest of the world.  No president in recent years was more affable and more liberally forthcoming on the international arena than the Democrat centralist Bill Clinton.  Yet his liberality saw the rise of al-Qaeda, with all its acts of terrorism against America before 9/11.  His charm failed to create a Palestinian state; and his affability failed to stem the rise of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.  The French regime of Jacques Chirac remained unmoved by the centrality of his politics, also for domestic reasons.

Personalities as widely different as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush cannot make the Syrians, the North Koreans, the Iranians, and radical Islamists love America, and Obama says he can.

            It is understandable that Americans want to be liked in the world, and to a certain extent they expect to be.  Yet widely, they are not.  The internal dynamics of many foreign states cannot permit their regimes to have good relations with the United States; in fact it is necessary to the survival of the regime that bad relations exist between the tyrant’s country and America.

            For that reason, Obama and his followers are likely to get a lesson from foreign policy on the limits of charm.  His winning personality in the White House is unlikely to move American relations with the rest of the world much for the better, for America is not the only country in the world with domestic interests.  A test of this thesis will come when the Castro regime falls utterly, and a new regime takes its place.

The next Cuban regime will have justify its existence by rapidly improving the economy of Cuba, as Raul Castro is already trying to do.  For that, better relations with America will be essential.  So no matter how crusty the American president happens to be, when the Castrol regime falls relations between Cuba and America will improve and tensions here will relax.

-         XXX –

Vincent J. Curtis is a free lance writer.  He has written on military affairs for several years, and  he toured the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in January of this year.

 

Torstar pushes vaccine passports

Vincent J. Curtis

15 July 21

RE: Vaccine passports are essential, get used to it. Toronto Star editorial 15 July 21

RE: Vaccine hesitance highest among Black Canadians, survey suggests.  News item the Canadian Press 15 July 21

Never shy about advocating for progressive authoritarianism, on a day when Ontario, a province of 15 million people, reports 143 new cases, the Toronto Star asserts that vaccine passports are essential.  Essential for what?

(Especially weird is the demand in the editorial that college students get vaccinated, or they can’t attend.  The data, Karen, is that those in their early twenties are at no risk from COVID, and the risk of adverse reaction to the vaccine is actually greater than the benefit it confers on twenty-somethings.  I’ll explain the rest later, after you calm down.)

Essential for what?  So that we can show our passport to enter Tim Horton’s field? To enter a movie theatre? To work out at the Y?  Who is going to check?  Who will enforce the checking?  What will be the sanctions for not checking?  Why is law enforcement thrust into the hands of private businesses and private citizens?  Because there aren’t enough state police?

“No one will force you to be vaccinated, but there will be consequences if you don’t.” says the Star without a trace of irony.

Black Canadians, by choice, are lagging in vaccination rates.  Does the Star recommend that they pay the consequences for their recalcitrance, or do Blacks get a pass because they’re Black?

And is the Star next going to editorialize about how Blacks are done in because they’re behind the vaccination curve?

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DAOD 9005-1 Sexual Misconduct

Vincent J. Curtis

30 Apr 21

Defense Administration Orders and Directives (DAOD) 9005-1 is entitled “Sexual Misconduct Response.”  Issued on 18 November 2020, it supersedes DAOD 5019-5, Sexual Misconduct and Sexual Disorders.  DAOD 9005-1 is an order that applies to officers and non-commissioned members of the CAF, and is the order on which the accusations of sexual misconduct against General Vance and others stand or fall.

In respect of Big Jon, they fall.

The DAOD opens with a definition of sexual misconduct: “Conduct of a sexual nature that causes or could cause harm to others, and that the person knew or ought reasonably to have known could cause harm.”

Harms includes: “actions or words that devalue others on the basis of their sex, sexuality, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression; jokes of a sexual nature, sexual remarks, advances of a sexual nature or verbal abuse of sexual nature in the workplace; harassment of a sexual nature, including initiation rites of a sexual nature; viewing, accessing, distributing or displaying sexually explicit material in the workplace; and any criminal code offense of a sexual nature…”

The order explains that a workplace is any location where work-related functions and other activities take place and work relationships exist, such as: travel, conferences, DND or CAF sanctioned instruction or training activities, and other DND or CAF sanctioned events, including social events.  There are also the usual workplaces: ships, planes, vehicles, offices, classrooms, garrisons, hangars, messes, dining halls, quarters, gyms, on-base clubs, on-line forums, and locations for sanctioned events such as holiday gatherings and course parties.

Key elements are ‘unwanted’ and workplace, with workplace drawing a line between private and professional life.  A consensual Friday night fling at the Angus Inn Motel isn’t 9005 material, but jokes in a classroom, a pin-up calendar, and unwanted attention at the Waterloo Officer’s Mess could be show-stoppers.

Vance is accused of having had several affairs.  Most notoriously, he was accused by Major Kellie Brannan of fathering two of her eight children over the course of a twenty year affair.  A long-term affair is not what is contemplated by the definition of sexual misconduct.  There is no issue about ‘unwanted’, and nothing apparent that involves criminal code violations.

Brennan further alleged that they had had consensual sex in Vance’s office and in his car, which, if true, still mightn’t meet the definition of misconduct unless they were caught in flagrante delicto by a third party who wanted to make an issue of it.  In that case, both would be guilty of misconduct, not by harming each other, but for harming the third party.  Section 129, conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline, could supply the service offence charge for violating the DAOD.

If the alleged affair were adulterous, Vance’s wife would have cause for complaint, but that’s a civil matter, not a disciplinary one.  The U.S. military has a legal prohibition of adultery, but the Canadian military does not.  (If we did, we could have lost the services of Lieutenant General Guy Simonds just before the Normandy invasion.)

A long-term affair, a succession of affairs, adulterous affairs, are not sexual misconduct as defined in the DAOD, which is all that is of military significance.  Vance knows his regs; he wasn’t making passes at everything in a skirt, which is what the DAOD foresees as misconduct.  Untethered from the DAOD, accusations of sexual misconduct are just subjective opinions of no disciplinary significance.  Besides, Vance is now released, making the administrative action mentioned in the DAOD moot.  (There is always politically motivated lawfare.)

To deflect unwanted political attention, Prime Minster Trudeau appointed Louise Arbour, another retired Supreme Court Justice, to look into and report upon the ‘culture of sexual misconduct’ in the CAF.  Arbour follows upon Marie Deschamps (passim) whose vagaries of 2015 led to Op Honour; and Michel Bastarache (passim) who wrote a stinker on the RCMP last year.

I watched Arbour get torn to pieces by Mark Steyn at a Munk Debate in 2016.  I look forward to her report.

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Talking through her hat

Vincent J. Curtis

13 July 21

RE: Beef industry won’t protect climate scorched Canada.  Hamilton Spectator op-ed by Jennifer Molidor, who is senior food campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity.  13 July 21

Jennifer Molidor doesn’t know what she’s talking about. But, being a fanatic, that doesn’t matter to her.  (Economist Thomas Sowell would describe her as one of the anointed with a vision, to whom actual data is anathema.)

Here is the list of things she alleges: that methane from cattle is a dangerous greenhouse gas; raising cattle uses groud that could be put to better use; that cattle consume a lot of water in these drought-stricken times; they’re bad for soil health, and in particular are damaging to grasslands.  For a person dedicated to biological diversity, she has a vegan’s repugnance for cows!  Allegations all without data, as Dr. Sowell would point out.

The allegation that methane is a dangerous greenhouse gas is an oft-repeated canard.  It is simply too low in concentration to be dangerous.  In Alberta cattle country, cattle tend to be raised on ground that is unsuitable for growing cash crops, either because the ground is too rough or is too isolated for the big combines to get to.  For decades, cattle have been grazed for half the year in the Kananaskis as a means of keeping grassland grassland; and anyone who’s stepped in a cowpie can tell you that cattle fertilize the ground they walk over.  Water consumption is not a problem out along the Cowboy Trail, with hundreds of streams created by snow melting in the mountains and running down to the South Saskatchewan River.  It’s the primary water supply in those parts.  If there wasn’t enough water to raise cattle, the herd would be shipped to the slaughter house.

Molidor is a fanatic who will say anything.  Her ignorance of actual facts might be what protects her from pangs of conscience, or maybe not.

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Zero credibility

Vincent J. Curtis

12 July 21

RE: 21. Do Liberals have a plan for zero emission vehicles? Toronto Star editorial of 12 July

I just completed a driving trip from Calgary to Hamilton and return.  Averaging 800 km per day, I stayed overnight in Wolseley, SK, Dryden, ON, Marathon, Parry Sound, and Hamilton.  On the return, Bruce Mines, just east of Sault Ste Marie served to-die-for lake fish at the Bobbers restaurant.  Nipigon, with its picturesque new bridge over the Nipigon River, was the next stop.  Finally, after stopping at Quetico Provincial Park on Highway 11, I stayed at Kenora for rest and Walleye fish and chips from Lake of the Woods.

Road construction around Winnipeg was horrible, and, turning south of the Trans-Canada Highway at Virden, I stayed the night in Carnduff, SK, for a visit to a granddaughter.  The pickup trucks were lined up so neatly at the local diner at breakfast - they looked like so many cattle at a feed trough.

Next stop was Swift Current, SK, and finally, home.  You enjoy a lot of beautiful Canada when you drive through her.  Average fuel economy was 5.4 L/100 km.

This trip would be impossible today with electric vehicles.  They can’t get close to 800 km in a day, and the time it takes to safely recharged can’t be improved much.

The Spectator is right at wonder at Trudeau’s deadline to eliminate fuelled vehicles.  He has once again set a goal so far into the future he leaves it up to others for its success, or, more likely, failure.  But he gets the glory today.  And that’s the point.

He has no plan to deal with the cost of electric vehicles, which today are heavily subsidized, and there is a big difference in cost between a Ford Focus at $20,000 and a Tesla at 75,000 – its actual cost before subsidies.  He has no plan to deal with the loss of revenue from all the gas and fuel taxes presently on fossil fuels.  But until the media start asking questions on these and similar topics, Prime Minster Lightweight gets to skate.

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Triggering white guys isn’t smart

Vincent J. Curtis

11 July 2021

RE: Non-racialized Canadians will be educated on systemic racism.  Story by Stephanie Taylor of the Canadian Press.

When one is committed to fighting the war against stupidity, one never lacks for fodder by reading the pages of the Spectator.  Case in point: the government plans to educate white Canadians on the evils they commit, in particular engage in systemic racism.  The headline called whites “non-racialized” which is a peculiar formulation intended to avoid the blatancy of saying white in a headline.  If there are racialized and non-racialized, then whites must not have a race?  But I digress.

Teaching the evils of systemic racism should be fun to watch, since not even Prime Minister Trudeau is able to define what it is.  The Indian Act is an example of systemic racism since it is official law and creates a class of people, namely status Indians, and endows them with special rights.  Another example is for the government to arrange for special vaccination clinics for Blacks and indigenous and exclude whites of any nationality.  But these are the good kinds of systemic racism.  Otherwise, I can’t think of systemic racism that you can actually point to.

The Charter of Rights, various provincial Bills of Rights, and human rights codes should eliminate systemic racism if it can be discovered and prosecuted.  Otherwise, systemic racism boils down to holding white men to be responsible for all the evils in the world on account of their skin colour.

If they believed their own arguments, which they don’t, they would be careful about trigging white men.  The results to get ugly really fast.

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Reconciliation is not the city’s business

Vincent J. Curtis

11 July 21

RE: Hamilton Council doesn’t get it on reconciliation.  Hamilton Spectator editorial of 11 July 21.

Since when is it the city of Hamilton’s business to take any kind of position on “reconciliation?”  Indian affairs is a federal responsibility.  The city is a creature of the province of Ontario.  The responsibility of city council is to tend to the city’s business, not federal business.

I think it’s wonderful that aboriginal people choose to live in Hamilton, but if they find a statue to Canada’s first Prime Minister triggering, then maybe they should consider moving to Six Nations reserve.

In the vast sweep of Canadian history, the residential schools issue is small potatoes.  Yes, tragedy occurred in the misguided effort to school aboriginal children.  Tragedy is the lot of life in this world.  How many thousands of Canadians died at Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele,  Hill 70, on D-Day, at Kapelche Veer, the Scheldt Estuary, and liberating Holland?  We have to keep tragedies in perspective.

Canada faced two Riel Rebellions early in her history, in 1870 and 1885, but Canada undertook nothing like the slaughter that saw the settling of the American west.

Residential schools are a monument to what happens when distant bureaucrats who are concerned about their careers in Ottawa run a program intended to benefit people they don’t care about in distant regions.

We have no idea what “reconciliation” will look like, or what will make aboriginal people happy – other than the departure of the white man and western civilization.  These issues are for the federal government, not city council.

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Ersatz White Men

Vincent J. Curtis

11 July 21

RE: Rutherford first transgender Department head.  Hamilton Spectator news item 10 July 21.

After listening for years about the need for diversity and about the unwarranted dominance of white men in positions of authority, what does McMaster do?  Instead of hiring another white man to head its Psychology Department, it hires and ersatz white man!  In this case, a transgendered white man.  And the public is supposed to be distracted by the fact that the white man isn’t really a “man” but a transgender?  Given the big deal being made over the transgendered business, it Dr. Rutherford really a man that he presents as, or is this a secret admission that he’s pulling one over on us

I’m happy that Dr. Mel Rutherford got the job he richly deserved, but he got it on the basis of his accomplishments, not because of what lies between his legs.

Can’t we celebrate that Dr. Rutherford got the job without making an issue of his personal issues having nothing to do with his qualifications?

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