The Disastrous Report on Systemic Racism and Discrimination

Vincent J. Curtis

30 April 2022

Aristotle, in his work Prior Analytics, showed how to be certain of reaching the truth.  You start with true premises, reason validly, and the conclusion is true of necessity.  The Final Report of the Advisory Panel on Systemic Racism and Discrimination doesn’t follow Aristotle.  It starts with contentious premises, applies the ideology of post-modern neo-Marxist nihilism, and affirms its starting axioms.

Philosopher Roger Scruton explained this methodology.  The scholarship is not open-minded and guided by the pursuit of truth; it would be dismayed at unorthodox conclusions.  Truth is marginalized and made relative.  The commodity of interest is power, not truth: who has dominion over whom?  You “call upon a fake scholarship and a fake philosophy to give you authority.  Fake scholarship enables people to claim authority for nonsense.  The purpose of that nonsense is to make conformance with orthodoxy the only thing that you have.  But if the scholarship is nonsense, what is there except the conclusions?  And those conclusions turn out to be the usual liberal axioms which is where you started”

The Report begins with the following assertion:

“All Canadians benefit when our national organizations are safe, healthy and inclusive environments in which all citizens have an equal chance to contribute.  Consequently, Canada’s demographics should be proportionally represented at all levels of the Defence Team with regards to gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation.”

Observe the conclusion is non-sequitur of the premise.  The piety ‘safe, healthy, and inclusive,’ is one of those liberal axioms.  Its authors exhibit no comprehension of “unlimited liability” and were never in a fire-fight in Afghanistan. (a work environment)

Economist and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Thomas Sowell has written two books in the last decade that address the proposition that an organization ought to reflect proportionately the demographics of the community.  They are Discrimination and Disparities, and The Visions of the Anointed.  Sowell goes into pains-taking detail showing why demographic proportionality never happens in the real world.  Groups are not essentially alike in capabilities and desires.  Reality is lumpy, uneven, and particular. The idea that proportional representation ought to occur is a long discredited ‘vision of the anointed.’  But the Report takes no cognizance of the findings of Thomas Sowell.  To do so would be counter-productive..

Let’s try a little Sowell-like analysis here.  A Quebec Nationalist doesn’t believe in Canada, and so is unlikely to fight for her.  Given the prevalence of nationalism in Quebec, you can expect French Quebeckers to be under-represented in the CAF.  Blacks are told by the Prime Minister that Canada is a systemically racist country tainted with slavery (the Report itself says), so why would a Black man fight for a country like that?  A Tamil from Sri Lanka didn’t immigrate to Canada to join the army; he come here to get rich, and God bless him for trying.  But for that reason you can expect the CAF to be demographically deficient in persons ‘of colour.’  Aboriginals are told that Canada stole their land and committed genocide against them.  Why would an aboriginal fight for a country that did that to his people?  And so on.  Who believes in Canada and would fight for her?  Disproportionately, white men.

Systemic racism is a circular axiom by the standard of demographic proportionality, explaining it and being proved by it.

Systemic racism never gets explained, and the accusation of genocide against indigenous peoples is a blood-libel casually repeated in the Report.  But what is the reality in front of their faces?

The new Commander of the Army is LGen Jocelyn Paul, a member of the Huron-Wendat First Nation.  If Canada committed genocide against aboriginals, why is he even alive?  If the CAF were systemically racist, how did he get enrolled, become an officer, and get promoted beyond the rank of Major?  Ideologues disregard fact uncongenial to their theory.

The Report roundly denigrates Canada, and demonizes and demoralizes the one group that still believes in Canada and will fight for her.

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If you want to know why the CAF suffers from retention and recruitment problems, look no further than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.  Trudeau wants Canada to hate itself.  I don’t know if this is a political calculation, a means for him to retain power, or if he is just plain sociopathic.  Regardless, Trudeau tries to make Canada hate itself through his “reconciliation” politics, and a general progressivism that blames white men and western civilization for all the evils in the world.  “Reconciliation” means that Canadians have to call into question the legitimacy of possessing the land of Canada – so call land acknowledgements.  It elevates the deaths of aboriginal children in residential schools (due to fatal illnesses) into acts of genocide.  He even raises the suggestion of a past tainted with slavery.  Now, slavery was practiced among aboriginal peoples, but was abolished in Upper Canada in 1793. Effectively, as soon as United Empire Loyalists began showing up with slaves, they were told they can’t have them.  So long as Canada is treated by her political leadership as a country to be despises, a country not worthy of being a country, it’s going to be hard to find men to fight for that.

The Report was predicated on the existence of systemic racism in the CAF, and it simply fulfilled its political mandate faithfully, even though it nowhere touches reality.  It uttered the words the political masters wanted it to say.

Governments profit greatly from high oil prices

 Some good news

Vincent J. Curtis

29 June 22

RE: Profit overrides principle in the energy sector.  Op-ed by Dan McLean.  Published in the Hamilton Spectator 28 June 22.  McLean is a climate Activist with the Hamilton 350 Committee.

The article at reference reveals just how personally unhappy misanthropic Marxists are.  Nothing but evil everywhere, and everywhere triumphant.  Let deepen Mr. McLean’s depression for him.

Alberta just posted a $3.4 billion surplus for its 2021-22 provincial budget; quite a turnaround from the $18.3 Billion deficit originally forecast.  The 2022-23 budget was forecast to be balanced with oil priced at $70 per barrel.  The optimism in Alberta’s finances arises from oil being priced at or above $100 per barrel, and there is no reason in the foreseeable future for prices to fall.  Not with Joe Biden in office until 2025 and his promise to “eliminate” fossil fuels.  Effectively, this means no increase in domestic U.S. production.

Canada’s federal government also profits greatly from high oil prices, and you can expect the federal deficit to come in well below the $52 billion forecast.  Canada has the money now to replenish and reequip her military, and to lend a helping hand to Ukraine.

The irony is that the more profitable oil is to the federal government, the dumber it is to destroy it as a revenue source.

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Questions on 'equitable' access to abortion

Vincent J. Curtis

28 June 22

RE: Equitable access to abortion now! Spectator editorial 28 June 22.

Do you notice that everyone calling for more abortion access were themselves born alive?

Last month, the Spec couldn’t define what a woman was.  Now, it seems, it can.  “A woman’s right to choose.” “Woman’s reproductive rights.” What changed?

When does the “principle of bodily integrity” apply?  The Spectator was all-in on COVID-19 vaccinations, even when it became obvious that they weren’t working as advertised and health issues began springing up over their use.  The Spec called for and then cheered the firings of city workers and healthcare workers for not getting vaxxed.  This seems a straightforward violation of the principle of bodily integrity.

By invoking the word “equitable” is the Spec leaving open the possibility that men can become pregnant too?  That’s been the Spec’s editorial position for a couple of years now, what with “pregnant people” and all.

In respect of Canada, what was the “devastating setback” of Roe that Trudeau spoke of?  Or is he just stoking the fires of division in preparation for the next election? (The Tories have this secret agenda.....)

How is the Supreme Court decision an “attack on a woman’s right to choose?” (There’s that word again!) The decision cleaned up a constitutional mess the Court made in 1973.  Abortion wasn’t made illegal, its regulation was turned over to “elected representatives”, where it belongs and did belong prior to 1973.

Why is the Spec all-in on the abortion death cult?  Never seen the blood?  Never seen “Gosnell?”

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When woke meets reality: the Dobbs fallout

Vincent J. Curtis

27 June 22

RE: Abortion protests spill into Canada. By Virginie Ann, a Canadian Press story published in the Hamilton Spectator 27 June 22.

The story begins, “Women, and allies across Canada….”  Who or what could be an ‘ally’ of women?  Wouldn’t that be ….men?  This is the nonsense that arises when woke reality-deniers have to deal with issues not their own.

Woke reality-deniers, and that would include CP style-nazis, have to maintain the fiction that men can become pregnant; that men can be women and women can be men.  That ‘gender’ is a social construct having nothing to do with plumbing.  That’s why AOC, the wokiest of the woke, was out there complaining about the loss of rights of “birthing people.”  Except that the purpose of abortion is to prevent “birthing people” from giving birth.  No, it doesn’t make any sense, and it’s them, not you.

After watching the paroxysm of rage and violence over the Dobbs decision, which has been expected for weeks, it makes it possible to believe that these people would stop at nothing to win.  Including steal a presidential election if they knew they wouldn’t get caught and ardently believed it absolutely vital that they beat Trump.

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I'll bet real money that Virginie Ann is a nom de plume.

Second Amendment enshrines a “first class right.”

Vincent J. Curtis

26 June 22

Lost amid the furor from the overturning of Roe v. Wade was the one-day wonder of the affirmation of the plain English reading of the Second Amendment.  After Heller and MacDonald, the U.S. Supreme Court had made it clear that the Second Amendment was an individual right, and that the right of self-protection was at the core of its purpose.  The New York State law that was overturned plainly violated the stricture “shall not be infringed.”

The majority decision, written by Clarence Thomas, stressed that the right to bear arms was as privileged a right as the right to free speech, to practice one’s religion, to peaceably assemble, and to confront one’s accuser.  Furthermore, the right applied equally outdoors as well as indoors.  No American is required to demonstrate to state officials sufficient reason to be allowed to speak in public, to practice one’s religion, confront one’s accuser, and so on.  The Second Amendment is on par with the First, the Six, and the Fourteenth, and therefore no “may issue” law is constitutional.  The logic is straightforward and ineluctable.  “Shall not be infringed” is unequivocal.

If the Roe decision is of concern in Canada, so ought also the Second Amendment decision.  Canadians also have the natural right of self-defence, and the law concerning the keeping and bearing of arms in Canada derive from the same English statute as the Second Amendment, namely the Bill of Rights of 1689.

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I used the word "enshrined" instead of "confers" because the Heller decisions held that the Second Amendment simply recognized a pre-existing right at Common Law, the right of self-defense and the right conferred by the 1689 Bill of Rights the Right of His Majesty's Protestant Subjects to keep and bear arms according to law.

No respect for rule of law

Vincent J. Curtis

24 June 22.

RE: U.S. Supreme Court expands gun rights, with nation divided.  AP story published in the Hamilton Spectator 24 June 22

Respect for the rule of law in the U.S. is at a low ebb.  Everything is political.  Even authoritative and obvious decisions of what the law is by the U.S. Supreme Court are deemed political.  Politics poisons whatever it touches.

The very headline screams disrespect for law.  The decision didn’t ‘expand’ rights, it declared what those rights legally are, and struck down illegal restrictions upon those rights.  Statements by political figures condemning the decision are outrageous.  Joe Biden opined that he was “deeply disappointed” and that it “contradicted both common sense and the constitution.”  (This is the US Supreme Court were talking about!  Their decisions on the constitution have been deemed authoritative since Marbury

Biden’s job is to see that the laws are faithfully executed, and the Court’s job is to say what the law is.  The decision followed the baldly stated “shall not be infringed” and the New York law plainly infringed upon the individual, constitutional right to bear arms for self-protection.  One is left wondering why Biden hasn’t been impeached yet, not just for failing in his own constitutional duties that the laws be faithfully executed, but for sheer senility.

New York State governor Kathy Hochul called the decision “reprehensible,” saying the state was never trying to restrict people’s rights, just trying to protect people.  Only in political science can someone that incoherent escape university with a degree in hand.  Rather than attack the Court, Hochul ought to have said something about changing the constitution so that such laws do pass muster.  But no.  It utterly escapes her that bearing arms for the purpose of personal protection meets the aim of “protecting people” more clearly and directly than disarming the law abiding leaving only the criminals with guns.  Hochul might as well rail against the law of gravity and demand that it be repealed for being reprehensible and shocking in its scale.

Even the minority dissent tacitly admitted the law was unconstitutional.  The dissent didn’t argue that the law was constitutional, it argued the consequences if the law was struck down.  That’s not a legal argument, but a political one.

Justice Scalia used to say that it wasn’t the job of the court to make law, it was to declare what it is.  If you want gun control, repeal the Second Amendment.  Respect for the law means changing it to suit, not condemning judges for correctly stating the obvious.

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Disturbing numbers

Vincent J. Curtis

23 June 22

RE: Don’t shut out Afghan refugees.  Spectator editorial 23 June 22

The editorial reported that the government plans to settle 40,000 Afghans in Canada, of which 5,000 are former interpreters and their extended families and 18,000 others who assisted the Canadian mission in some way, a mission that ended in 2011.  The editorial then said that “there’s a risk that those that truly provided assistance could be left behind.”

You have to wonder who is running this clown show.  Who determines who truly helped the Canadian mission, and how do they know?  Why did they wait eleven years to get out, and what did they do in the interim?  Yet, despite taking in so many, we’re concerned that some who truly did help might not be included?   What??

The best estimate of the total number of Canadian soldiers who served in Afghanistan is 40,000, and if every one of them had a personal valet, this program would take them in and then some.  Once again, the generosity of Canadians is being abused.  Another Liberal party voting block is being built.

Anyone who knows guerrilla war knows then insurgents win because the people support them.  The Taliban are in Kabul because that’s what the Afghan people want.  We did our best, but after we left, the people chose our enemies.

Canada owes Afghanistan nothing.  We might owe a debt of gratitude to a few hundred,  but thousands?  There’s way too much corruption and double dealing in Afghanistan to trust many, and those scores of thousands seeking escape are people in danger for reasons having nothing to do with Canada.  Even illiterate Afghans are aware of the Canadian gravy train.

Canada’s refugee settlement program needs review.

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Blue-eyed gold-digger

Vincent J. Curtis

22 June 22

RE: Lawsuit on behalf of off-reserve Indigenous children approved.  Canadian Press news story by Brenna Owen, published in the Hamilton Spectator 21 June22.

Cheyenne Stonechild and her lawsuit would be impossible but for the zeitgeist of today.  Comely, blue-eyed, hair reddish-brown, she is genetically European, and presents about as aboriginal as I do.  Yet, legally, she is aboriginal; Cree, yet born and raised off reserve, further attenuating a claim to being “indigenous.”  And that’s what she’s suing about.

Cheyenne Stonechild, whose name is so perfect it makes me suspicious, was taken from her mother by child welfare and raised in the children’s aid system.  (If her name were Carole Stone or Charlotte Macintosh she’s be far less plausible.)  Her complaint is that she was deprived of a Cree upbringing.  She alleges she was deprived of her Cree language and Cree culture.  She was deprived of her identity as a “Cree woman.”

Only the zeitgeist of the age could tolerate such presumption, and stupidity - and such an obvious play for money.  In the first place, her identity is “Cheyenne Stonechild,” not “Cree woman,” of whom there must be thousands.  Nobody is born into this world with a promise of being raised in a politically favorable language and culture.  Why not sue over not having been raised in a Chinese culture by rich parents?

You don’t get to choose your parents, where you’re born, and your upbringing can sometimes suck.  But you’re alive, with a life you can make something of yourself.  Stomehild can’t be bothered to learn Cree and adopt Cree ways.  She’s rather sue the government for a lifetime’s income.

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Banning plastics: another Trudeau strike at Alberta

Vincent J. Curtis

21 June 22

RE: More single-use plastics to be banned

Among the many dumb things the low-IQ Trudeau government has done, banning plastics because they are “single-use” ranks among the most anti-scientific.  When the pandemic broke out, banning plastic was postponed because single-use plastics were healthier than reusable bags.

The campaign against single-use plastics rests on two arguments: that the oceans are being choked with these things, and that they fill up land-fill sites.  The Trudeau government has argued both, notwithstanding that they contradict each other.  There are ten rivers, eight in Asia, and two in Africa which account for all the plastic garbage floating in the oceans.  Canada does not dump its municipal garbage into her rivers to dispose of it, the Canadian practice is to use landfills.

Hamilton might remember SWARU, the solid waste reduction unit.  It burned garbage, reducing the volume sent to landfill by sixty percent.  The are used throughout the world, such as in Japan.  Plastics are combustible, and the pollution control technology has vastly improved since the 1960s.  If volume of plastics is a real concern, then build SWARUs, and get rid of all combustible garbage, not just Greenpeace’s drive-by target of the month.

A political angle is that Alberta produces plastics, while northern Ontario produces paper.  Alberta votes solidly CPC, while northern Ontario elects Liberal cabinet ministers.  Banning plastics in favor of paper is another way Trudeau strikes at his political opponents.

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It’s not sustainable

Vincent J. Curtis

20 June 22

RE: Loss of farmland in Ontario not sustainable.  Op-ed by Peggy Brekveld, President of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and operates her family dairy farm near. Thunder Bay, ON.  The Hamilton Spectator 20 June 22.  Also “Ontario rapidly losing farmland amid urban sprawl, group says.”  A Canadian Press story by Tyler Griffin, a story about the same group, the same person, saying the same thing as the op-ed.   The Spectator is part of the campaign to stop the expansion of Hamilton’s urban boundary.  Surprised?  Curiously, dairy farming isn’t technically speaking “agriculture” because it doesn’t involve the growing of crops.

Whenever you hear the word ‘sustainable’ being thrown around, the people using it have no idea what they’re talking about.  Digging coal out of the ground hasn’t been sustainable since the first coal mine, but we’ll still be doing it a thousand years from now.

Have you ever driven to Thunder Bay from Hamilton?  You have to drive north of Superior through some of the most picturesque country east of the Rockies.  It’s all granite and water and pine.  Lousy for agriculture, but great for mining and forestry.  West of Thunder Bay, Highway 17 meanders through hilly country and around thousands of little lakes left behind by the disappearance of Lake Agassiz.  Terrain and soil not great for agriculture.  In a couple of hours, you hit the Ontario-Manitoba border.

There, the forests fall away and before lies lie the great prairies of the west.  Agricultural land of unimaginable scale.  Okay, you’re not going to grow tender fruit on it, or raise sweet Ontario corn, but that’s a matter of diet.  There’s more agricultural land in Canada than the benighted can fathom.

Stop worrying about Canada’s food supply.  The only thing that can mess it up is misguided central planning.  If you’re a Freedmanite or a von Misesite, nearly all central planning is misguided.

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People who use the word “sustainable” mean “steady state.”  There’s nothing “sustainable” about any phase in the life-cycle of an insect, yet insects have survived on earth for hundreds of millions of years.  And insects don’t rely on central planners.

Admitting Poilievre is right

Vincent J. Curtis

17 June 22

RE: Freeland can do more to fight inflation.  Spectator editorial 17 June 22.

The Spectator finally admitted that inflation is too much money chasing too few goods.  In its editorial of May 13, (Poilievre’s inflation disinformation) the Spectator maintained that this was Poilievre “disinformation.”  The Spectator having admitted that Poilievre was right, it must also admit the Governor of the Bank of Canada acted politically during the pandemic.  He deserves to be fired for that, and for the mistaken monetary policy he pursued in consequence.  The mandate of the Bank is to keep prices stable while achieving full employment.  Preventing inflation is the Bank’s job.

The Canadian bond market is used to buying $20 billion to $30 billion a year of federal bonds.  If in 2020 the Bank had tried to sell $200 billion in bonds, the market would have choked and interest rates skyrocketed.  That would have been a sure sign that the Trudeau government’s handling of the COVID crisis was seriously flawed.  Instead, the Bank printed the money.  Likewise, $115 billion in 2021.

Printing the money instead of borrowing it was like taking novocaine, it numbed the pain, but now Canada is paying the price in painful inflation.  The Governor of the Bank ought to have known this, but pursued a monetary policy that led to inflation anyway.

The Governor shielded the Trudeau government from the consequences of its folly until after the 2021 election, and now Canadians pay a price until 2025.

This political act of the Governor is, and deserves to be, a firing offence to an opposition party.

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The Crown and First Nations

Vincent J. Curtis

11 June 22

RE: Easier to use than lose the monarchy.  Spectator editorial. 10 June 22

Among the many good and practical reasons for retaining the monarchy is that Crown-Aboriginal relations depend upon there being…..a Crown.  If the monarchy is eliminated, it doesn’t follow that a Republic of Canada is under any obligation towards aboriginals that had been made by the Canadian Crown.  Nor does it follow that a Republic is the beneficiary of land settlements that were made with the Crown.

Crown-aboriginal relations is founded upon the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which amounts to an executive order from the head of the British Empire (as it then was) to the governors and peoples of the colonies concerning the aboriginal peoples of North America.  The Royal Proclamation was made without reference to the British Parliament, and when the American colonists succeeded in their revolution, their treatment of American Indians bore no resemblance to the instructions they had received from King George III.

A break in legal continuity entailed by abolishing the Crown in Canada leads to a host problems, including the legitimacy of Canada itself.  All the land agreements are made with the Crown.  Canada would have to change the basis for its existence to occupation by force or of Terra Nullius, which is somewhat contradicted by the existence of treaties.

Canada enjoys perhaps the best form of government possible: a constitutional monarchy in which the monarch is largely absent.  Replacing that with something fashionable entails more grief than can be imagined.

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Another General bites the dust. Why is this happening?

Vincent J. Curtis

17 June 22

RE: Retired officer faces sexual assault charges.  Canadian Press news story 16 June 22.

Retired LGen Trevor Cadieu joins three other flag officers accused of criminal sexual assault in the last sixteen months.  MGen Deny Fortin was charged for an event that allegedly happened in 1988.  VAdm Hayden Edmondson was charged for an event that allegedly happened in 1998.  Adm Art MacDonald was accused but not charged after an investigation of an event that happened in 2010.  Cadieu is charged for an event that allegedly happened in 1994.

Why should the public care?  The Canadian taxpayer invested literally millions of dollars in the careers of these men, developing their talents so that now, at the peak of their careers, they can pay off that investment at the top management of the Canadian Armed Forces and Department of National Defense.  These allegations effectively deprived the taxpayer of their investments in these men, who, but for these accusations, had stellar careers that took them to the top of their profession.

The question is why so many, and why now?  Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I wonder if there isn’t a cabal of angry lesbians in the JAG (Judge Advocate General) Office, the SMRC (Sexual Misconduct Response Center), and the CFNIS (Canadian Forces National Investigative Service).  Such a loose cabal have the power to search out and prepare trouble for any high-flying male officer in the CAF.  Generals Cadieu and Fortin are charged with things that allegedly occurred when they were cadets at RMC thirty years ago.  The accusers are protected by anonymity from any fall-out.

How could CFNIS sweep the CAF for evidence against Generals?  In the vetting process for security clearances.  Very deep investigations are required to vet someone for above Top Secret clearances, which might include talking to old RMC classmates, for example, or people they’ve worked with in the past.  It’s easy to accumulate a little, unverified dirt, and once said, it’s an offense to lie to an investigator.

Another approach to this issue is suggested in the analysis by Dr. Jordon Peterson of female anti-social behaviour.  This phenomenon manifests itself in reputation destruction, the “mean girl” syndrome.  Peterson thinks that today’s society is suffering from a radical influx of female anti-social behavior in the form of cancel culture and reputation destruction and savaging.  Social pathologies that have a feminine orientation include the infantilization of everything, manipulation and innuendo, toxic femininity that derogates and savages reputations and to escape scot-free in the aftermath.  The fall of General Jonathan Vance very quickly led to the fall of Adm MacDonald, VAdm Hayden, and MGen Fortin, like within weeks.  Like copy-cat mass shootings.

A cabal could work hand-in-glove with an outbreak of female anti-social behavior.

DND might usefully call in CSIS and the CSE to check out the possibility of a cabal.  It’s costing the taxpayers millions.

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Scarsin’s folly. Media blew credibility

Vincent J. Curtis

13 June 22

Back on March 24, 2022, in the posting “Unpacking cow manure” I ran a section on “Scarsin’s Folly” writing the following:

 

“It’s been widely reported that Scarsin Forecasting has forecasted 26,600 new cases of COVID in the Hamilton area this spring.  Let’s do a little math!

Assuming spring to be 91 days long, to reach their figure there would have to be 292 new COVID cases per day for 91 days.  With a population of 550,000, Hamilton holds roughly 3.75 percent of Ontario’s population of 14.8 million.  If all of Ontario were suffering new cases at the rate that Scarsin predicts for Hamilton, Ontario would be seeing 7787 new cases per day, something not seen since the peak of the most recent wave of the pandemic.  Since pandemics do ebb and flow, to have an average rate of near pandemic peak levels, it means that some awful peak is coming if Scarsin’s forecasted number is correct.

Hamilton does not live in isolation, and that awful peak would have to be coming to Ontario as a whole also.

For the last four weeks, Ontario’s daily average case number has bounced around 2,000 per day.  At this rate, on average, Hamilton would experience 75 new cases per day, and in 91 days a total of 6825 cases, a quarter of Scarsin’s forecast.  Scarsin, advocating for continued mask mandates, argues that their 26,600 can be reduced to 8867 if masks are retained.  This is still much more than the Ontario average applied to Hamilton.

We have a right to ask if Scarsin isn’t generating elaborate looking panic porn that justifies the evident desires of those who pay them.”

Ontario has since closed into COVID-19 page for lack of business, even before spring ends.  We can now say the Scarsin forecast was wildly overestimated, and neither Hamilton nor Ontario experienced the wave of infection and death that was forecasted.  A real scientist warned explicitly and repeatedly that all this was panic porn, nothing but wild exaggerations, and that proved to be correct.  But was this published in a newspaper?  No!   Why?  That would be “misinformation.”  Misinformation that turned out to be correct.

The tragedy is that the media blew their credibility re-enforcing a message – that turned out to be false.  Why do it?  Because of the narrative.  It’s the narrative that matters, not the discovery of truth, which debate often uncovers.

Anyhow, when Scarsin Forecasting comes looking for another contract, pay them the wages of an astrologer or a fortune-teller.  When reading newspapers, people look for the narrative they’re being sold, not truth.

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Green exposes Freeland as 'empty dress'

 

Green did good!

Vincent J. Curtis

15 June 22

Hamilton Centre MP Matthew Green did a creditable and newsworthy job of exposing the Trudeau government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act.  Green is on the statutory committee investigating the declaration of the Act.

Green asked Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland for specifics from her Department showing that a threat to national security actually existed at the time.  Green wanted entered into evidence quantifiable facts on the economic impact of the occupation to show that it met the threshold of a “threat to national security.”  What a threat to national security is, is defined in Section 2 of the CSIS Act.

Freeland responded with evasions and time consuming speechifying.  Green was having none of it, and he repeatedly cut her off and demanded specifics.  Under pressure, Freeland’s responses became patronizing, condescending, and passive-aggressive.  She practically whispered how she “disagreed so forcefully” with Green’s brushing aside her evasions in his quest for facts.

Since Green is Black and was calm, it wasn’t easy for Freeland to play the poor woman being picked on by an awful white man.  Unintentionally, Green showed Freeland to be an empty dress.  (If men can be empty suits, women can be empty dresses – that is if you believe in the distinction between men and women.)

Green exposed that the Trudeau government had no economic justification for invoking the Emergencies Act and that there was no basis for a declaration under national security.  All the Act, requires, despite all the hand waving, is the agreement of the Lieutenant-Governor in Council, a.k.a. the provincial government, and poof! The Government can do anything it wants.  Rights be damned.

Since there is no legal penalty for invoking the Emergencies Act under false premises, the Trudeau government can only pay a price at the polls.  This threat to civil rights needs to be repealed.

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Trudeau Missing in Action, or AWOL?

Vincent J. Curtis

14 June 22

RE: Minister under fire

For the second time in four months, Prime Minster Trudeau has come down with COVID-19 and is unable to attend Commons sittings.  There, his Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendicino is under fire for having misled the House concerning the invocation of the Emergencies Act.

The mendacious Mendicino claimed before the House and testified to a Commons committee investigating the invocation that the Act was invoked on the advice of the police.  All three police services involved, Ottawa Police, the OPP, and the RCMP deny making such a request or tendering such advice.  The Deputy Minister has tried to clarify Mendicino’s statements to no effect.

Ordinarily, a Minister who misleads the House ought to resign, yet Mendicino refuses.  The question is why?  Was he instructed by Trudeau to, in effect, blame the police for invoking the Emergencies Act?  Does Trudeau stand behind his Minister who misled the House, and if so, why?

Conveniently, Trudeau has come down with his second case of the vapor and is non-functional, just like in February when the Truckers came to Ottawa to demand a meeting with Trudeau.  The responsible man that he is, Trudeau can’t stand in the House and explain why his Minister shouldn’t resign, and then explain why the Act was invoked since there was no police request or “advice” after all.

Pulling on that thread could unravel a government.

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Is Trudeau faking illness?

Vincent J. Curtis

13 June 22

Prime Minster Trudeau came down with COVID-19, again.  He reported that he’s feeling fine, thanks to his vaccinations.  The CBC and other news outlets are falling for this obvious propaganda nonsense that can’t stand the slightest examination.

Trudeau credits his being vaxxed and boosted for his feeling fine, even though full vaccination failed him for the second time.  Trudeau allegedly came down with COVID in February just as the Truckers for Freedom were rolling into Ottawa.  An actual infection of COVID (amounting to at least a four shot!) ought to have triggered as good an immune response as a vaccination.  (After all, a vaccination simulates infection in order to trigger the body’s immune system to respond as to a rea infection.)

Yet here we’re expected to believe that a mere four months after an actual infection, Trudeau is infected again.

Is the natural immune protection against COVID so short-lived, i.e. four months, that multiple infections a year are possible?  Or was Trudeau faking illness in February to avoid having to meet with the Truckers?

If Trudeau wasn’t faking it in February, we were sold a bill of goods concerning the vaccine mandates.  Their periods of effectiveness of the vaccines, four months or less, were never going to stop the spread of COVID.

The mystery remains, why thank vaccines when a previous infection would have provided protection. either as well or better?  Why thank vaccines that allowed him to become infected – twice?

As a healthy man in his fifties, Trudeau is in a low-risk category, so he should be feeling “okay” regardless of his vax status.  After all, he had the real thing in February, right?

Trudeau thanks vaccines because he can’t ever be wrong.  And, as actor James Garner used to say, you can never admit a con.

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Layered Anti-tank Defence

Vincent J. Curtis

30 Jan 22

The current worries about a Russian invasion of the Donbas region of Ukraine, and past concern about invasions of the Baltic States, put in mind the development of layered anti-tank defense.  The Genforce doctrinal enemy was based upon the Soviet concepts of befehlstaktik employed against the Germans beginning in late 1942 which, in turn, was an evolution of the deep-battle concept of Mikhail Tukhachevsky   If you’ve read Erich von Manstein’s book Lost Victories, the combat and the terrain of Ukraine will be familiar.

The Germans were the first to develop layered anti-tank defense because they were the first to cope with the novel invention: the British tank - in World War 1.  Erich Ludendorff outlined the general principles of layered anti-tank defense – an outgrowth of another new concept, the elastic defense - that are still relevant today.  Ludendorff identified anti-tank mines, ditches, artillery, natural obstacles such as water courses and soft ground, suitable arms in the hands of the infantry, and panzers for counter-attack as its elements.

The aim was to use obstacles like ditches and minefields to canalize and hold the enemy tanks in a kill zone for dedicated artillery to destroy.  Infantry centers of resistance were protected with obstacles and mines from direct assault by tanks, and if tanks did assault an infantry position, the troops would have suitable arms such as, in those days, anti-tank rifles and heavy machine guns.  The illustrious Browning M2 .50 cal heavy machine gun was developed as an anti-tank weapon.

Ludendorff observed that infantry either preceded, accompanied, or followed tanks, and it was the role of machine guns, trench mortars, and artillery to try to separate the infantry protection from the tanks.  (Even then it was recognized that tanks couldn’t hold ground.) Deeper in the battle zone, unaccompanied tanks were vulnerable to attack by heavy anti-tank weapons.  If the enemy incursion grew big enough, the confused and disorganized attackers would themselves be counterattacked with panzers held in reserve. (Op GOODWOOD!)

Strategic principals have changed little since the days of Ludendorff. What has changed are the details of the weaponry.

When the Germans were forced onto the defensive in Russia, a layered anti-tank defense was implemented as part of an elastic defense system.  But didn’t Hitler order a general “stand fast” as the go-to German defense method?  He did; and elastic defense and more generally the German “three-line” defense method are stand fast defenses.  A restored front line was the aim at the end of the battle.  The main line of resistance was expected to be penetrated in places, and was supposed to be restored by counter-attacks from forces held in reserve against attackers disorganized by penetrating the MLR.  The depth of the battle zone in WWI, one to two kilometers; it expanded to ten kilometers in WWII in Russia.  The depth depended on how deep the attackers’ artillery could reach into the battle zone and the speed of the tanks.  Hitler rejected Manstein’s wholesale “mobile operations” method, though he tolerated Manstein employing it in emergencies.

Throughout WWII the sovereign German anti-tank weapon was the 88 mm flak gun.  Kept in depth, a few of these accurate heavy guns destroyed numerous British counterattacks in the desert in 1941 and 1942.  A thin screen of these defeated Operation GOODWOOD, the first British attempt to break out of the Normandy beachhead. (An account of that battle is given by Hans von Luck in his book Panzer Commander.) In GOODWOOD, unaccompanied British tanks met a thin line of unprotected 88s and their crews hidden in woods and tall crops, and the 88s picked off British tanks at long range until the British gave up.

It wasn’t until later in the war that, in desperation, the Germans developed panzerfaust, a 30 to 100 m range, hand-held launcher that fired a shaped charge rather than a kinetic energy warhead to penetrate tank armour.  Earlier, the Germans infantry had the Paks, which proved useless against T-34s.

More to follow!

Part 2:

The German Pak 36, a 37 mm gun, proved completely inadequate against Russian T-34 and KV-1 tanks during the winter of 1941-42.  They were replaced by the Pak 38, a 50 mm version featuring more kinetic energy downrange.  That, in turn was quickly replaced by the Pak 40, a 75 mm gun which fired shaped charge munitions.  Though effective against armour, these were big pieces of equipment, about the size of a pack howitzer, and that, combined with its short range, made it obsolescent well before war’s end.

On the British and Canadian side, a wheeled piece of light artillery, the long barrelled 17 pdr, was specifically developed for the heavy, anti-tank role.  Its high-velocity shell could penetrate the frontal armour of Tigers and Panthers out to 800 m range.  The infantry had the PIAT, a device that used springs to project a shaped charge out to 100 m or so.  The 17 pdr was so effective that the British fitted them into the turrets of Shermans and, called the Firefly, used them in specifically anti-tank roles. Canadian infantry units were also equipped with 6 pdr anti-tank guns which, against Tigers, Panthers, and Mark IV’s, were in the words of Argyll CO Lt-Col Dave Stewart, “not worth a pinch of coon-sh*t.”

The 75 mm Sherman was developed as an infantry support tank.  After the war, tank doctrine changed and allied tanks would henceforth be equipped with guns capable of defeating the enemy’s tanks.  Infantry-held weapons were repeatedly upgraded.  The bazooka and PIAT were replaced in Canadian service with “the 3.5.”  These were replaced by the 84 mm Carl G.  A heavier, long range recoilless gun came out as “the 106 mm.”  As shaped charge, rocket, and guidance technology improved, the TOW (tube launched, optically tracked, wire guided) missile came along, as well as, in the Canadian service, the Eryx, a SRAAW(H) (short-range anti-armour weapon, heavy).

These were to be deployed against Soviet tanks that had increasing sophisticated armour systems.  The Soviet T-55 featured well sloped armour all around, then came the T-62, T-64, and finally the T-72.  Soviet tank doctrine emphasized numbers and mobility, and hence tank weight was restricted to between 40 and 45 tons.  Armour protection needed to be clever to be proof against shaped charges if weight couldn’t be increased.

Chobam armour came along in the 1960s, employing ceramic plates to handle the plasma jet that makes shaped charges effective.  Ceramic is much higher melting than steel, and can defeat a plasm jet from a shaped charge.  As shaped charges became more sophisticated in the way of HESH rounds, explosive reactive armour was developed.  It can also work against armour-piercing fin stabilized discarded sabot rounds (APFSDS).

The Russia T-80 and T-90 main battle tanks are equipped with highly sophisticated armour systems.

The American Javelin is a long range, and the British NLAW a short range, shoulder fired anti-tank system that can defeat the T-90.  Their weakness is that they’re subsonic, and time is required to put rounds on target.  In the Russian doctrine of numbers, time makes the shooter vulnerable to destruction by the tanks remaining.

Missing in modern anti-tank defense is a high-velocity gun, like the Rheinmetall 120 mm L/55 on a carriage.  (Are you listening, Rheinmetall?)

A weakness of large anti-tank systems is vulnerability to air attack.  The steppe of Ukraine is flat and treeless.  There’s no place to hide from the air.  Without air cover, large systems need air protection like MANPADs (man portable air defense systems, e.g. Stinger missiles) to stay operational.  Layered anti-tank defense has become a complicated business of blow and parry!

How can Canada help Ukraine Latvia defeat a tank onslaught?  Well, with earth moving equipment to build tank ditches, with cement and re-bar to build dragon’s teeth and bunkers, with fuses for IEDs.  Canada’s stock of anti-tank weapons is too small to equip out of our inventory.  What Canada has is an economy that can buy things.

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Elections Canada goes big-tech woke

Vincent J. Curtis

8 June 22

RE: Making false election claims should be illegal, report says.  By Marie Woold The Canadian Press.  Published in the Hamilton Spectator 8 Jun 22.

I wonder if alleged policy makers and experts even read the stuff they put their names to.  Is some anonymous staffer writing crazy things just to prove that the expert doesn’t vet his own alleged opinion before he utters it to the press?

The example in this case is Chief Electoral Officer Stephane Perrault’s report on electoral reform.  He claims that changes in law are needed to “protect against inaccurate information that is intended to disrupt the conduct of an election or undermine its legitimacy.”  Until the 2020 U.S. presidential election, nobody would have thought of this as a need.  The question is, why is this now a need in Canada?

The call would formalize in law the technique of suppressing “misinformation” and “disinformation” conducted to support the political ends of the COVID crisis response.  What sensible person over 40 would think of such a thing?  A bloodless technocrat who thinks he’s keeping up with the times might, or a woke staffer worming his way into the system.  I favor the latter theory.

If Elections Canada runs elections with the openness and integrity that it always has, and Elections Ontario just did, there will be no need for a new legal hammer.

If a disinformation campaign sufficient to undermine an election occurred, it would have to be organized and funded by a major political party, one that stood to benefit from the campaign.  No one would employ that law against important politicians, like, say, a Hillary Clinton.

Only small fry dissenters stand to be hammered.  Like weak political enemies of the regime.  Just like during the pandemic when panic overrode our civil rights.

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Look, up in the sky!

Vincent J. Curtis

9 June 22

·         RE: Climate ball now in Ottawa’s court.  Op-ed by Mark Winfield.  The Hamilton Spectator 9 June 22.

Mark Winfield is a professor of “environmental and urban change” at York University.  He left off Kool-Aid drinker.  His list of horribles due to climate change shows only that he’s drunk the Kool-Aid and is a climate narcissist.  Somehow, Ontario’s construction of Highway 413 is going to make the world’s climate measurably worse.  You know, forest fires, biblical flooding, pestilence, bacterial blooms, and extreme weather events.  Biblical stuff, meaning we’ve experienced it before.

Let me help him.  That big, bright shiny ball in the sky known as the sun delivers all the energy that drives the earth’s climate.  If not for the sun, the temperature of the earth’s surface would approximate that of outer space.  Because the earth rotates on a tilted axis, the earth experiences seasons.  When a hemisphere is tilted towards the sun, it experiences summer, and winter when tilted away from it.  The intensity of these seasons change over 20,000 years as the earth’s orbit precesses around the sun, and the summer or winter of each hemisphere occurs when the earth is closer to or farther away from the sun in its annual orbit.

The sun also undergoes sunspot cycles which may be related to solar energy output.  More or less output means more or less energy for the earth.

If mankind has any influence at all on the world’s climates, it is microscopic compared to this.  By microscopic, I mean immeasurably small.  Constructing Highway 413, switching to electric cars, using windmills instead of nuclear power, voting Liberal or Conservative, Canada disappearing altogether changes nothing important to the earth’s climate.

Stop worrying about the climate.  God’s got this.  Stop being a narcissist and think you can do God’s work.  And call me when meteorologists can forecast weather accurately three months out, never mind a century out.

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Tone deaf Trudeau ignores dead Catholics

Equates hate to Islamophobia

Vincent J. Curtis

7 June 22

RE: Combatting hate,  By Justin Tang.  The Canadian Press.  Published in the Hamilton Spectator 7 June 22.

Prime Minister Trudeau came off tone deaf in London, ON, yesterday, June 6.  After fifty Roman Catholics, including many children, were slaughtered while attending Mass on Pentecost Sunday, and the priest abducted.  The perpetrators were evidently well-organized Muslim extremists, but Trudeau chose to condemn systemic racism and Islamophobia in Canada.  That’s right, the blood-guilt for the killing of four members of a Muslim family by a lone madman taints Canadians who aren’t Muslim, but there’s nothing said about blood-guilt attaching to Muslims for the slaughter of Catholics.  I wonder why?

Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion Ahmed Hussen, yes he’s a Minister of Canada’s Crown, piled on, telling a Council of Imams of the Trudeau government’s work to combat Islamophobia.  He said nothing of Islamic extremists slaughtering Catholics in Nigeria for the offense of being Catholic.  Blood-guilt flows only in one direction, you understand.

You begin to wonder where madmen get their motivation.  You wonder how conspiracies like White Replacement Theory get started.

The Muslim community in Canada has little to fear, certainly much less to fear than Catholics in Nigeria.  If they did, they’d pick up and leave.  The remarks by Trudeau and his Minister were ugly, and offered for his political benefit at the expense of native-born Canadians.

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Trudeau drenches Canada in blood-guilt

Vincent J. Curtis

6 June 22

RE: Trudeau joins march marking first anniversary of deadly attack.  PM says people should not ignore reality of systemic racism.  By Maan Alhmidi The Canadian Press published in the Hamilton Spectator 6 June 22.

RE: Over 50 feared dead in Nigeria church attack, officials say.  By Chinedu Asadu The Associated Press

A year ago today in London, ON, a nut-bar ran down and killed four members of a Muslim family who were out for an evening walk.  It was deemed a hate crime.  Today, the Muslim community memorialized the first anniversary of their deaths with a political rally to condemn Islamophobia in Canada.  Justin Trudeau was there in person.  According to the news report, Trudeau said people should not ignore the reality that millions of Canadians are facing microaggression, discrimination, and systemic racism every day.  He said his government (unlike the Ford PC government) has taken action to address hate and racism in Canada, but there is more work to be done.

Esa Islam, a cousin of the deceased family, singled out Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government for not committing to pass a law to fight Islamophobia.

Okay, so Canada is filled with systemic racism, and Doug Ford won’t do anything about it, but Trudeau has, except that his measures isn’t working.  No matter, the point is Canada is systemically racist and full of Islamophobia, and Trudeau is a good guy.  The blood-guilt is evident.

In Nigeria, fifty Catholics were massacred as they attended Mass for Pentecost Sunday.  It occurred in St. Francis Catholic Church in Ondo state.  Many children were killed.  The priest was abducted as well.  It was said that gunmen opened fire and detonate explosives, in addition to abducting the Roman Catholic priest.  “It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack,” said the piece.  Nobody was prepared so say, or even speculate, about who was behind the attack or their motives.

But it is obvious.  Boko Haram operates in Nigeria.  About half the Nigerian population is Muslim.  It was an attack on a Catholic Church at worship on a particularly auspicious occasion in the Church Calendar, Pentecost.  The attack was well organized and pre-planned.  Obviously, it was some extremist Muslim group or other, but we dare not attach blood-built to Muslims because that would be Islamophobic.  Besides, a groups of their bastards might try to kill us if we say that!

There you go, heroic Canadians.  We get the blood guilt for the attack by a nut-bar but Muslims get a pass for a planned slaughter by calculating organizations.  And everyone, including your politicians are too cowardly to say what’s obvious.

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Honest Injun

Vincent J. Curtis

3 June 22

RE: Prime Minister signs historic land claims settlement.  By Bill Graveland.  The Canadian Press.  Published in the Hamilton Spectator 3 June 22.

“Canada needs to stop using the word reconciliation.  You will never reconcile.  You will never make it whole,“ said Chief Ouray Crowfoot as he accepted a cheque for $1.3 billion.  “This land claim - $1,3 billion, that’s a lot of money – it will never make it whole of what it was before.”

Justin Trudeau has put Canada on an endless reconciliation treadmill.  No matter how much money and how many apologies, it will never be enough for reconciliation.  Meanwhile, Trudeau publically assuages his guilty liberal conscience with other people’s money.

It doesn’t matter that Trudeau said “We’re gathered today to right a wrong from the past.” And to refer to the agreement as a “settlement.”    To which Crowfoot replied that the settlement “doesn’t make up for past wrongs.”

So, if the ‘settlement’ settled nothing, and achieved no reconciliation, what was the $1.3 billion given for?  To give Trudeau a favorable headline on an issue he conjured to divide Canadians and to shame us of our past.

Give credit to Chief Crowfoot for his honesty.  He’ll gladly take fool’s money for as long as they can be bamboozled out of it.  And Canadians will remain fools until they figure out the game being played, at their expense, of settlements that settle nothing, of apologies that aren’t accepted, and say “enough!”

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When I was a kid, the expression "honest injun!" meant the same as "I swear it's true!"

So What? Spec surrenders moral high ground

Vincent J. Curtis

2 June 22

RE: Feds getting it right on gun control.  Spectator editorial 2 June 22.

Trudeau is cynically taking advantage of public outrage of a shooting in the United States to push gun control in Canada.  “To which we say, so what?”

What clearer expression of the progressive creed could there be?  "What lie would you not tell, what crime would you not commit if you thought you were bringing about Utopia on earth?"  Acting cynically and unethically is fine if it advances the right political agenda.  That’s the Spectator’s clear editorial position.

But, having given up the pretense of defending a moral high ground, on what basis can the Spectator condemn racism, sexism, Islamophobia, Transphobia, white supremacism, the “genocide” of aboriginal school children, and politicians long dead for their policies and actions in office?  They have none.  It’s all a pretense.  Fake.  Dishonest political calculus.in advancement of a morally ambiguous progressive agenda.

It’s now clear that moral outrage expressed in the Spectator is to be discounted as cynical political calculus.

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Trudeau government illegal use of the Dispensing Power

Vincent J. Curtis

1 June 22

RE: Drug laws to be eased next year.  News item Canadian Press.  Published in the Hamilton Spectator 1 June 22.

Senator Eugene Forsey, a noted expert on the constitution of Canada, must be rolling in his grave.  The Federal government is going to invoke the dispensing power or the suspending power to ease Canada’s drug laws in a section of the country.

The dispensing power and the suspending power were both made illegal in the Bill of Rights of 1689.

The dispensing power was the “prerogative or discretion claimed by the monarch of exempting from the operation of statutes in particular cases. It was exercised by medieval and Tudor monarchs but became a bone of contention in the 17th cent. The Long Parliament, in its Nineteen Propositions, accused Charles I of making excessive use of it.”

The Bill of Rights of 1689 declares specifically:

(1)  That the pretended power of suspending the laws or the execution of the laws by regal authority without the consent of parliament is illegal;

(2)   That the pretended power of dispensing with laws or the execution of laws by regal authority as hath been assumed and exercised of late, is illegal.

The proposed action of the Trudeau government is a use of these pretended regal authorities, and is plainly illegal.  And Act of Parliament is necessary to make it legal.

I mentioned Forsey because his autobiography mentions a mandarin invoking the dispensing power to justify something “administratively convenient,” and Forsey embarrassed him with the 1689 Bill.  Bureaucratic slovenliness isn’t new.

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