Marxist trolling

Vincent J. Curtis

30 July 22

RE: Be the change to make our city healthy and cool.  Op-ed by Noelle Allen, who is the publisher of Wolsak and Wynn.  The Hamilton Spectator 30 July 22.

Noelle Allen plays the Marxist troll with her nonsense article.  She doesn’t pretend to expertise in Climate Science, just that she reads authoritative literature.  Literature from the Climate Accountability Institute that says 100 companies in the world produced 71 percent of the CO2 released between 1988 and 2017.  Would one of those companies be the Chinese Communist Party?  She doesn’t say.  How about India based Mittal Steel Corporation – you can’t make steel without emitting a lot of CO2? She doesn’t say.

No doubt major oil companies are on that list, you know the companies that produce the oil and gas that keep the economy running and people from freezing to death in winter.  But, the non-expert assures us, you can do something about climate change by giving money, like to David Suzuki Foundation.  And there are things you can do this hot summer to keep things cool, this non-expert says.

The problem with climate non-experts is the same as with climate experts.  They act like they don’t understand that Canada’s contribution to world CO2 emissions is negligible.  Whatever could be done in Canada is rendered futile by what is happening in India and Communist China.  They just like to see the Canadian hamster running faster in his wheel, thinking he's accomplishing something.

Climate non-expert and expert alike express a sense of moral superiority by telling other people what to do, even though that thing is futile.

-30-

Phony climate expertise

Vincent J. Curtis

29 July 22

RE: Banks far from hitting Paris goals, group says.  AP story by Ed Davey

RE: Big Oil and citizens need to act.  Op-ed by Zahra Hirji of Bloomberg News. 

There is something fundamentally phony about alleged experts advising Canadians what they ought to do to reduce their carbon footprints.  If they were real climate experts, they would know that Canada’s contribution to world CO2 emissions is negligible.  They ought to know that what’s going on in China and India makes whatever little Canada can do utterly futile.  Yet they persist.  Why?

Do they get their sense of self-worth by pushing the hamster in the wheel to go faster, knowing that nothing is accomplished save exhausting the hamster?  Or do they not know these things, making their alleged expertise entirely phony?

I’m inclined to believe it’s a little of both.  These alleged experts think they know something, which makes them merely dangerous; and do get a sense of moral superiority by declaiming on the failings of lesser beings – us.

-30-

Disappointment in papal apology?

Vincent J. Curtis

27 July 22

The most extreme expectation of a papal apology was for Pope Francis to repudiate the Church’s mission in Canada, to say that it was wrong of the Catholic Church to have deprived Canada’s aboriginal peoples of their innocence and culture.  That was never in the cards, but this expectation leads the way to declaring disappointment in the apology, and justifying continued discontent.

What is the mission of the Catholic Church in Canada?  Its primary mission is to bring the Good News of Jesus Christ, and bringing that Good News to the aboriginal peoples of Canada is something the Pope could never repudiate.  The Church’s secondary mission is to preserve and disseminate knowledge in general, a task it assumed upon the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 AD.  The teaching mission of the Church is what the government of Canada harnessed as part of its policy of Indian Affairs.  It is this aspect of the Church’s fulfillment of its teaching mission that the Pope apologized for – cooperating with the government of Canada.

The Pope’s apology made it clear that the evil (such as it is) began with the policies of the government of Canada, in complete agreement with the blame assigned and assumed by Prime Minister Trudeau himself on behalf of Canada.  The Pope also apologized for the misconduct of individual religious who did not act at all times in accordance with gospel teachings.

The disappointment expressed by some in the aboriginal community points to unrealistic expectations, or perhaps to something more personal.  “Activists have every incentive to exacerbate the problem to the fullest, because calm would be the end of their jobs,” said Thomas Sowell.

-30-

Vindicated

Vincent J. Curtis

26 July 22

Spectator editors might not wish to remember, but back on 1 August 2020 I sent them an email entitled “The futility of masking.”  In it I said that unless the mask was an N95 or stronger, it was useless for preventing the transmission of the COVID virus.  Worse, it could induce a false sense of security.  Two years on, that observation has finally been made by no less a personage than Dr. Anthony Fauci, and the video clip in which he made the admission is below:

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2022/07/26/fauci-masks-have-to-be-well-fitted-and-high-quality-like-an-n95-or-kn95/

The lesson here is that the Spectator ill-served the public by playing pom-pom girl to the The Man, and suppressing voices that challenged the received wisdom of the day in the interests of achieving “the goal” whatever it was.  Keep people from getting sick, I guess.  It is a fact that “masks” failed to prevent waves 2,3,4,5, and 6.  There should be enough data in that to at least make one wonder at the efficacy of masks after they were held to be the reason for escaping the logic of the first wave lockdown.

Now we have Dr. Deborah Birx admitting on the Neil Cavuto show on July 22, 2022, that they knew the vaccines weren’t going to prevent infection.  They “overplayed” the effectiveness of the vaccine.  (Why? went unasked and unaddressed.)  Nevertheless, Fauci, Birx, et al suppressed the use of early therapeutics, but now that Pfizer has its new, expensive one is out, Paxlovid, Birx is out there hyping it.  The excuse for vaccination devolved into that it reduced severity of symptoms – maybe.  Half the people who died in the U.S. were fully vaxxed.

(Let that sink in.  Those most in the know knew that the vaccine story was bunkum, and that were overselling its benefits.  If that was known, do you really think the pressure to get people vaxxed would have been even attempted, let alone be so successful?  Your getting vaxxed was supposed to save grandma’s life.  But if it were known that the vaccines didn’t stop infection and spread, how effective do you think that line of argument, fallacious as it is, would be?  Why not just get grandma vaxxed?)

All the failings of The Man were documented in real time by yours truly, and the Spectator ill-served the public by playing pom-pom girl to the authorities who plainly didn’t know what they were doing, were floundering, and were obviously doing stuff just to make it look like they had a handle on things.  I don’t know what the Spectator got out of it by suppressing challenges to the received narrative.  I know progressivism believe in rule of the experts, but when the experts are lost, you need to get another set of experts.  Those calling B.S. with effectiveness on those in charge are the pain telling you that something’s wrong.

-30-

 I invite readers (and skeptics) to review my many blog postings on COVID starting in mid-March 2020.  

Green conspiracy theory against nitrogen?

Vincent J. Curtis

25 July 22

RE: Green Health Care.  Letter to the editor by Dr. Stephen Brown, staff anesthesiologist, William Osler Health System

The political Left knows how to organize, and when it’s motivated the organization goes far and deep.  Don’t call me a conspiracy theorist when there really is a conspiracy.

Take the offering by Dr. Stephen Brown who writes of the efforts to reduce “volatile anesthetics” in operating rooms, as if these contributed significantly to global warming.  What he’s talking about is nitrous oxide.  Funny thing, but the knock on chemical fertilizer is that they emit nitrous oxide, a “greenhouse gas,” and therefore must be abolished.  The trouble and hunger in Sri Lanka, and the farmer’s strike in Holland pertain to the elimination of chemical fertilizers out of fear for their emission of nitrous oxide.  Prime Minister Trudeau wants chemical fertilizer use in Canada to be reduced by thirty percent out of fear of nitrous oxide. (a.k.a. "nitrogen" in the parlance of the scientifically illiterate.)

From the operating room to farmer’s fields around the world, a strange war on nitrous oxide has suddenly erupted.

And it’s so stupid!  Nitrous oxide is present in the atmosphere at a concentration of 340 ppb, as in billion, and is growing at the rate of 1 ppb per year.  In 660 years it will reach 1 ppm.  The effect of nitrous oxide on global warming is negligible and will remain so for centuries.  But we’re going to deprive people of food and let them suffer in pain out of an elitist, stupid concern for its effect on global warming?

There’s a conspiracy afoot, and it’s a really stupid one.

-30-

Forced to speak English

Vincent J. Curtis

25 July 22

The coverage of the Pope’s visit to Canada features stories on so-called “survivors” complaining about being forced to attend schools.  (Image that, kids being forced to attend school!)  There, they were deprived of their culture, being forced to speak English. (Poor, pitiful me was forbidden to speak English in French class!)

But what of the deprivation of language and culture, the so-called “cultural genocide”?  The old Cree language, for example, had no words for ‘equation’, ‘x-variable’, ‘hundred,’ ‘thousand,’ botany and its technical terms, geography, and ‘sailing ship’.  The students could not learn to read and write in Cree because Cree had no letters, no literature, or written language of any kind.  Penmanship? Forget it!  English opened the door to the world.

Educating students in Cree would have left them illiterate, innumerate, and unable to communicate to the outside world – precisely the condition a true education would alleviate.  (Let’s not get into what Cree dialect they would be taught in!)

There was, and is, nothing stopping those allegedly deprived of their language and culture from learning that language and culture on their own time at home, after they finished school, and in adulthood.  There’s a lot of those initiatives in non-indigenous communities, so what’s stopping them?  Wallowing in self-pity is too easy, too profitable, and has too many white liberal sympathizers.

You don’t hear the English complaining about being deprived of their Latin and Anglo-Saxon language and culture.  They adapted to circumstances and thrived.

The modern Cree language is English, and that enables the Cree to thrive if they adapt to circumstances.

-30-

The ancient Celts occupied Britain at the end of the last ice age, about 20,000 years ago.  In 43 AD, Rome conquered and occupied ‘Roman Britain’.  The ancient Celts learned Latin and adopted Roman ways.  When the Romans left, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes invaded, and the Romano-Britons learned Saxon and adopted Anglo-Saxon ways.  When the Normans invaded, the Anglo-Saxons learned French and adapted to Norman ways.

In the 14^th century, along came Geoffrey Chaucer who wrote “Canterbury Tales.”  The language he used was then an avant-garde tongue – English - which combined Anglo-Saxon, French, and Latin.  Today, we recognize Chaucer’s language as Middle English.  This language flourished, and by the time of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I it had transitioned from late Middle English into the Early Modern English of William Shakespeare.  Shakespeare’s plays are now performed in two styles of English, Received Standard Pronunciation, and Original Pronunciation, the latter being as Shakespeare would have heard it, and written it.

Events and dynamisms change things, and against this we are supposed to take pity on aboriginals who were “deprived” of their original language and culture?  Never mind that they were made obsolete by events.  The culture that enabled the survival of humans in Northern Ontario and the great prairies is no longer necessary, or “sustainable” as they say.

 

Are the English to lament their loss of Latin and early Saxon languages, and if so to whom do they complain?

Dear Ms. O'Reilly, RE: RHVP inquiry

This posting is primarily for Hamiltonians interested in the RHVP inquiry.  This is an email sent to Spec reporter Nicole O'Reilly who is covering the Red Hill Valley Parkway Judicial Inquiry.

Vincent J. Curtis

22 July 22. 

Ms. O’Reilly;

As you probably are painfully aware, I’ve written often and extensively about the RHVP.  I’ve followed your excellent reporting carefully on the inquiry, and take particular interest in the friction testing, which seems to be the heart of the controversy, to the exclusion of other, balancing, interests.

On May 12, 2019, I wrote the following fragment:

“As lawyers argue over the significance of friction test results, we will observe another risible show of Arts majors grappling with science.  At issue will be the significance of the test procedure as well as the significance of the test results.

Tradewind Scientific is a company that provides various services to airports, and the first item listed on their home page is: Friction measurements and condition reporting.  The company does not say what test protocol they use for measuring friction, but ASTM E-1859 is the one that would be most widely recognized for validity and significance of results.  The test protocol has significance with respect to runways, but its significance with respect to curving highways is much more in doubt.

Coefficient of friction is a result of the nature of both interacting surfaces, in this case a rubber tire and the asphalt.  ASTM-E-1859 provides for a pair of tires being braked in longitudinal fashion, and its results are significant only for longitudinal friction.  The protocol claims no significance for friction in a lateral movement, as when a car is subject to lateral forces in a curve.”

In my career, I’ve used and interpreted many ASTM test protocols - far more than the average lawyer.  It is important not to extend the significance of a test result beyond what is claimed in the written protocol.  ASTM E-1859 is intended to test runways, using tires comparable to those used on aircraft, and in straight-ahead, or longitudinal braking.  Its significance for a lateral skid with passenger car tires and tread design is unknown and the E-1859 protocol is careful not to say anything about highways and passenger car tires.

In my view, Tradewinds was trying to secure a testing contract with the city.  Had they secured one, they could have used that as a sales point in many major cities and even the province.  Never mind the test results would have unknown significance, the safety aspect would stampede municipalities into contracting for Tradewind’s services.

Moore was perfectly right to question the test results offered by Tradewind.  The balance of interests of environmental concerns versus road safety was already built into the road, and asphalt is but one variable in a very complex equation.  Even if Tradewind’s numbers proved to be significant, there are other means of addressing the side-sliding issue, such as reducing speed limits.  That’s a lot cheaper than repaving or resurfacing.

Moore did nothing wrong by not acting on something unusual, and highly questionable, namely a test and conclusion with no North American validity or context.  He was acting in the city’s best interest.

We’ll soon see if the lawyers are humble enough to recognize that they don’t know engineering and the business of building and maintaining major roads better than the engineers do.

-30-

For a fuller account of the origins of problems on the RHVP, check out my blog post of 22 Feb 19, "I blame the wackos."

 

 

Burn in hell!

Vincent J. Curtis

23 July 22

When the Pope is in Canada on his apology tour, I hope he tells his tormentors that they’ll all burn in hell if they don’t shape up.

How stands their love of God and neighbour as they demand money and apologies, saying that both will never be enough?  Never mind that the Pope had nothing to do with Canada’s residential schools, neither did the vast majority of his tormentors! (160,000 passed through residential schools over 110 years.)

I’ve never heard it asked of a “survivor” what they learned in school.  Did learn reading, writing, and basic arithmetic?  If so, they learned things the Neolithic aboriginal culture couldn’t did have, because it had no written language or numbers.  Aboriginals had no metallurgy or philosophy or science of any kind.  They weren’t “deprived” of their culture - they had massive voids filled in.

Aboriginals couldn’t survive today living the ways of the past, and none of them even try.  So, what was “lost” except an obsolete way of life?  Even hunters in the high Arctic use modern rifles and snowmobiles, wear western clothing, and rely for a balanced diet on supplies flown in from the south.

Over forty Catholic mission churches were burned down on reserves when anger exploded after signs of Christian burials were re-discovered on the grounds of residential schools.  (How many cemeteries are there on reserves?) And you wonder why the residential school model was chosen?  Do you really think it was safe to send one or two nuns onto reserves to teach school in the 1890s?

It takes a lot of chutzpah to demand an apology, and a bulky set of blinders (or vicious motives) to think one is required, or will even help.

-30-

Apocalypse Now, again

Vincent J. Curtis

21 July 22

RE: On climate, or time is running out.  Spectator editorial 21 July 22.

Once again, the climate crazies are forecasting the apocalypse.  In 1989, the first time it was forecasted, the global warming apocalypse was supposed to occur in the year 2000.  Oceans were going to rise, glaciers melt, and the world was going to burn up, and there wasn’t time to discuss it (so shut up!).    That didn’t happen.  In the early 2000’s, the expression “global warming” had to be dropped because of the so-called global warming pause that began in 1997 (and ended in 2015).  That pause didn’t stop famous climate wackos (some of whom won awards!) from claiming the Arctic sea ice would disappear in summer between 2014 and 2018.  That’ didn’t happen either.  Now, 2030 is the year of the apocalypse.

The less specific expression “climate change” was adopted to replace the directional “global warming” because anything anomalous could attributed to climate change.  Nobody doubts that climate changes, it’s always changing, going in cycles is change.  (The Farmer’s Almanac, famous for its weather forecasts, has existed for 203 years because seasonal weather is not predicable from one year to the next.  If it were, there’d be no need for the Almanac and deviations from the expected would be identifiable.)  The question is how much change is anthropogenic in origin?  But that can’t be researched, and famous climatologist Dr. Judith Curry was driven from the profession for claiming it needed to be.

The Spectator is writing this year about heat and fires in Europe because they’re not happening in B.C.  Last year, B.C. experienced a “heat dome”, and had lots of fires.  The burn acreage in B.C. last year turned out to be only the third highest of the last eleven, in a decade with no trend either up or down. Burn acreage in B.C. will be low this year, and since that explodes the trend to an apocalypse narrative, it goes unreported.  It’s a dog that isn’t barking, and best not report that fact.

The fashion this year is Europe.  It goes unreported that the worst year for forest fires in France was 1949 because that destroys the trend to apocalypse narrative.  London had two days of 40℃ temperatures this week, and then cooled a lot.  Unreported is that in 1976, London had 16 days in a row of temperatures above 33℃.  Reporting that would explode the trend to apocalypse narrative.  Basically, everything before 1979 gets erased, and that’s why there are so many new records and “unprecedented” occurrences.

The climate crazies aren’t serious, for if they were they’d confront the challenges to their theory.  But they don’t because they’re ideologues.  And so the question is, why persist in this phony and disprovable narrative of the trend to the apocalypse?  The answer lies in the ideologue’s proposed remedies that would be inflicted on the western world to halt the alleged trend.  Ultimately, driving people into a frenzy for action would seem to require the imposition of these alleged remedies to ward off the apocalypse since they are the only alternative.  Doing nothing is what leads directly to the apocalypse, according to the narrative. Those remedies would start a new trend towards a new apocalypse: the decline of western civilization, the goal of post-modernism.

The decline of western civilization is the goal.

-30-

A word on forest fires.  You can only burn a forest once.  Then, it takes forty or fifty years of growth to build the forest back up to the point that it can burn again.  Forests that burn are old and have lots of dry wood, and they burn when weather conditions are hot and dry.  It is therefore not surprising that the worst period of burn acreage in North America occurred during the 1930s, when weather year after year was especially hot and dry.  The hot and dry conditions of the 1930s created the “dust bowl,” drove the Okies off the land, and depopulated Saskatchewan.  The climate crazies don’t talk about the 1930s because every climate record they claim is new was surpassed a couple of times in the 1930s, when CO₂ levels were low.  Western North America used to be a smoky place.  Forests have adapted over a hundred million years to periodic fires, and now depend upon them for renewal and good health.  Fire suppression and poor forest management can lead to spectacular and uncontrollable forest fires, due to the buildup of dry tinder.

Obviously, forest fire cannot be used as an indication of climate change.  Forest fire requires a mature forest and a period of hot, dry weather.  Eventually, you’d run out of forest to burn, and then forest fire would cease to be an indicator of climate change.  And an indicator is not a some time thing.  But that won’t stop a stupid, unscrupulous, or simply ignorant news agency from touting forest fire as an undoubted sign of climate change.

Dutch farmers on strike: over nitrogen?

Vincent J. Curtis

20 July 22

You’d think they were Canadian truckers, or something.  Dutch farmers have gone on strike, and are using their enormous farm equipment to shut down highways all over Holland.  The cause of their complaint is the Dutch government’s decision to deprive them of chemical fertilizer.

The environmental lemmings have discovered another cliff to stampede you over.  That cliff is called “nitrogen.”  You can pardon poets for not knowing that the earth’s atmosphere is seventy-eight percent nitrogen, and that nitrogen is transparent to infra-red radiation, meaning it isn’t a “greenhouse gas.”  (neglecting that 78 percent of a greenhouse’s atmosphere is nitrogen!)

What they really mean is nitrous oxide, N₂O, or laughing gas.  Nitrous oxide is active in the infra-red.  It is present in the atmosphere at 340 ppb (that’s a ‘b’ as is billion), so its greenhouse effect is minimal.  It has been growing at the rate of 1 ppb per year for the last thirty years.  Nitrous oxide degrades in the atmosphere into nitrogen and oxygen.  One source of anthropogenic nitrous oxide is thought to be chemical fertilizer.

The extent of the insanity of poets is found in Sri Lanka, which banned the importation of chemical fertilizer, and now the country is without food.  Holland is a major exporter of agricultural products, but the poets running Holland are rushing the country headlong over the nitrogen cliff.  Depriving Dutch farmers of chemical fertilizer will strangle their productivity and put many of them out of business.  The farmers think the poets want their land so that they can build housing for all the new immigrants arriving from the Middle East.

Regardless, you’d think the poets would ask themselves about the food supply and Holland’s balance of payments should Dutch agriculture go the way of Sri Lanka.  But you’d be wrong.  The poets may be capable of balancing competing interests, but that’s not at issue here.  What’s at issue is the poets’ conception of themselves as morally righteous people, and what better way to demonstrate one’s moral righteousness than to screw your farmers for the sake of saving the whole world, especially when your personal financial security is not at stake.  Being subject to the ramifications of your own ideology is stupid.

“Nitrogen” is the newest cliff the environmental lemmings want to stampede the world over.  That, and cattle burps and flatulence.  Don’t tell the poets they’re wrong on science grounds because they know the science better than actual scientists do.  Besides, you’re getting in the way of doing the morally righteous thing.  So, shut up!

-30-

The MSM isn’t covering the Dutch farmer’s strike or the causes of the trouble in Sri Lanka because they’re wedded to the environmentalist agenda. They’ve been described as the publicity arm for Greenpeace.

Stop talking about my hair!

Vincent J. Curtis

20 July 22

RE: Trudeau launches expanded ocean protection plan.  A CP story by Amy Smart.  Published in the Hamilton Spectator 20 July 22.

Prime Minister Justin “Lloyd” Trudeau wants people to stop talking about his new haircut.  To change the subject, he “re-launched” an old chestnut.  Lloyd called it “Ocean Protection 2.0”  The 1.0 plan was launched in 2016, and conveniently is in need of a second launch.

The new/old plan is about “moving forward, with new, bold action.” that’s going to involve “partners from coast to coast to protect and restore our oceans.”  And it’s going to be done on $200 million a year over the next decade.  The plan involves the removal and disposal of hundreds of abandoned boats and the creation of an all-important reconciliation-inducing indigenous coast guard auxiliary, in B.C.  No word on the craft they’ll be equipped with.

How one protects and restores “her” oceans was never asked of Lloyd by the adoring media stenos, but it evidently polls well.  Restoring our oceans sounds better than a garbage sweep of coastal beaches.  No question on who the partners between the coasts might be, or their relevance of Saskatchewan to ocean clean-up.  Perhaps the media were so taken by the moving forward and the bold new action that they ceased paying attention.

Lloyd’s mastery of the media around him continues, even as he reveals his true self to those remote from his illustrious presence.

-30-

Public Health Karens

Vincent J. Curtis

19 July 22

RE: Booster Cartoon 2 by Anna Carter, Burlington.  In her letter to the Spectator published today, Anna Carter thinks anti-vaxxers are idiots, public-health hazard losers and “deserve to be shunned by all decent people.”

Speaking of public health losers and idiots, we come to Anna Carter.  She thinks condemning so-called anti-vaxxers as losers is too kind.  There are two types of anti-vaxxers, those who are opposed to vaccinations in general, and those who think the vaccines particular to COVID-19 are worthless swill, when they aren’t dangerous.  I belong to the latter category, having seen the evidence and followed the numbers.

The UK vaccinated its population with the AstraZenica vaccine, and found it produced a disturbing number of deaths and infirmities, which the UK government is only now addressing.  Canada threw out millions of doses of the AZ vaccine, as Canadians shunned it, and not even poor African nations would take it.  There is little data on the single dose J&J vaccine because so many batches were improperly made.  The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines seem to produce the fewest side effects, but fail in the essential purpose of actual vaccination; the best that is said about them is that they reduce severity of symptoms.  They do not prevent infection or transmissions.  Famously, Prime Minister Trudeau, double vaxxed and boosted, came down with COVID twice in four months, which doesn’t speak well either for the vaccines or for natural immunity.

Withal, there is a disturbing and unexplained rise in excess deaths among men between the ages of twenty and fifty since widespread, essentially forced vaccinations.  The current data on the BA.5 and BA.2.75 variants show that even natural immunity lasts only six months; and since vaccination is a stimulation of the immune system by simulating an infection, at best these vaccines only last…six months.  Against this, we have the risks of the vaccines and the specter of immune system exhaustion through repeated stimulation.  The accumulated data shows that no case can be made for vaccinating people under the age of 40, and even 60 if you’re healthy.

Besides their general worthlessness for people under the age of sixty, there are a surprising number of people who reject the mRNA vaccines in particular on religious grounds, due to their testing on an aborted fetus.  (The Catholic Church has officially given the okay on this, but many protestants nevertheless are opposed.)  Go ahead and call these Christians Neanderthals if you wish.

I welcome being shunned by the likes of Anna Carter and all decent people like her; to me it’s a badge of intelligence.

-30-

A doctorate in nonsense

Vincent J. Curtis

18 July 22

RE: NATO’s new strategy is dangerous.  Op-ed by Tamara Lorencz. The Hamilton Spectator 18 July 22.

“NATO’s new strategic concept is…a plan to maintain the West’s power and wealth through armed force and the containment of other countries.”  This is what we get from a Ph.D. candidate at the Ballsillie School of International Affairs of Wilfred Laurier University? (I hasten to add, as a UWaterloo science grad!)

So banal, so predictable, so tedious, so moralistic!

I think it was David Hume who observed that you cannot draw a moral conclusion from a set of factual premises.  The Doctor of Philosophy candidate neglected to mention the moral premise behind the moralistic “maintain their power and wealth” crack.  Perhaps the post-modern premise that “if it’s western, it’s evil” is the unsaid premise, but a doctoral thesis dedication to rationality and logic would have necessitated its inclusion.  Except that logic and rationality are western intellectual concepts, and “it its western, its evil.”

Banal tediousness is found in “maintain their power and wealth.”  Is it not possible the NATO powers wish to maintain their independence and freedom through a military alliance? Is the post-modernist doctoral candidate so good at mind-reading that she dismissed this obvious purpose?  Is she not aware that NATO enabled member countries to scrimp on defence spending and enabled more social welfare spending?  Is not “force and containment” deterrence from external aggression, as was feared from the Soviet Union, and is now expressed by Russian in Ukraine?

This product of a Ph.D. candidate is what I’d expect in a Grade 12 social studies essay - from an unimaginative student thinking she’ll get better grades by affirming the prejudices of her teacher.

She concludes, “Canada should reject NATO’s new strategic concept and reconsider our continued membership in this military alliance.”  Do you know how often Canada has been advised to become a neutral country by Leftists?  Do you know how shattering it would be to Canada’s military policy if she pulled out of NATO?  To say nothing of Canada’s diplomatic position in the western world if that were to happen?  All this gets casually ignored, as if the proposal itself had no consequences.  No consideration of why Finland and Sweden, after seven decades and after the fall of the Soviet Union,  are joining NATO.  No consideration of the influence within NATO that Canada would lose if she left.

Like liberal-arts studies programs everywhere, the Ballsillie School is evidently turning out nothing but worthless, post-modernist junk.  Analyses like this are harmful in government advisory bodies because they have no contact with reality.  Business has no use for this junk.  Perhaps with her Ph.D. Dr. Lorencz can get a job managing a Timmies, or, with courses in finance, a job as a bank teller.

-30-

Trudeau Govt gaslights on vaccines

Vincent J. Curtis

15 July 22

RE: First COVID-19 vaccine for kids under five approved. A Canadian Press story by Laura Osman 15 July 22.

RE: Mandatory random testing is returning. A CP story by Laura Osman 15 July 22.

The left hand of the COVID medical freak show doesn’t know what its far-left hand is doing.  It approves vaccines for kids under five, and then demonstrates its confidence in the efficacy of those vaccines by requiring random testing of the fully vaccinated upon entry to Canada.  Well, which is it: do they work, or not?

The CDC in the U.S. found Moderna’s vaccine for kids to be four percent effective.  Young kids don’t’ get COVID, so vaccinating them against nothing produces negligible protection.  This is the junk that’s approved in Canada.  People younger than forty are in greater danger from the seasonal flu than from COVID.  Those are the numbers, but the zombies running public health have their fixations.

Dr. Leslyn Lewis was widely condemned for saying that we were using children to shield adults from sickness, but here it is.  We vaccinate kids to protect others.  But even this fails basic tests of logic.  If vaxxing A protects B, how does it follow that unvaxxed B is a danger to A?  Isn’t A’s vaccination protective of A?  Isn’t A’ protection the basis of B’s protection?  That’s what vaccination used to mean before progressive medicine took hold of COVID. Yet, that’s the justification for vaxxing everyone. Try to “follow the logic, or lack thereof.” On that!

Vaxxing kids is criminal.  Those recommending it ought to be sanctioned, charged, and run out of medicine.  They’re no better than zombies.

-30-

Sir Lanka: It was supposed to be us

Vincent J. Curtis

14 July 22

It was supposed to happen to the United States.  It was supposed to happen to the western world.  But it happened to Sri Lanka first.

Variations of the Green New Deal have been proposed since the beginning of the 1990s, i.e. immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union.  What’s a good Marxist to do after his central project collapsed and discredited his belief system?  Why, he turns to revenge against the United States.  He wants to demolish the economic system that proved superior and was triumphant.  So, good Marxists became progressive environmentalists.  The American economy would be destroyed by ruining its energy supply, and then by any other means.  The western weakness of self-criticism would be exploited.  Hence, Kyoto.  Hence, global warming.

The political leadership of Sri Lanka bought into the most extreme of the nonsense.  They believed they were going to make Sri Lanka rich by 2025 by jumping whole-hog into green energy and net zero.  Fertilizer imports were banned.  The returns are now in, and the consequences are in the news.

The Sri Lankan economy has collapsed.  The country is without food, money, a functioning energy grid, and now a president.  The Prime Minister it without a house, his having been torched by the mobs.

Dutch farmers are acting like Canadian truckers because their government wants to ban fertilizer and kill cows.  Fertilizer releases “nitrogen,” a greenhouse gas!  They want cows banned because they release methane, another “GHG.”  Those running the Netherlands couldn’t pass Grade 9 chemistry.

To be generous, by “nitrogen” they likely mean nitrous oxide, N₂O, which indeed is active in the infra-red.  It is present in the atmosphere at less than 5 ppm, and it degrades to nitrogen and oxygen under the influence of UV light.  So, it doesn’t persist.  Neither does methane, cow flatulence or natural gas, present at about 2 ppm.  It gets converted into carbon dioxide and water in the atmosphere.  These gases aren’t used in a greenhouse, but they get called GHG’s because they’re active in the infra-red.

Mankind is in no danger from “global warming” or “climate change,” and that’s why the matter cannot be discussed.  You have to shut-up and act immediately, immediately!  Never mind India and China!!  That, in turn, betrays the political motivation of climate change, as explained in paragraph 2.  If you read my piece on “Beer’s Law and Climate Change,” and “Molecular mechanism of global warming” you’ll understand the scientific reasons why anthropogenic climate change is bunkum.  The reason you see so many claims from allegedly reputable scientists about climate change has to do with $$$, in particular their next research grant.  When science is guided by the hand of government, you don’t bite the hand that feeds you, and if all it takes is to toss a little incense into the temple of the climate god to get your next paycheque, that’s what you do.  Being a Marxist helps ease the conscience, because, if you’re a Marxist, you don’t have one.  Change the funding bias against climate change, and watch the change in outlook of scientific publications.

As for the average person, look at Sri Lanka and imagine that that’s what’s in store for us.

-30-

Tell ‘em what they want to hear: another climate story

Vincent J. Curtis

13 July 22

RE: Rich nations cause climate harm to poorer nations.  By Seth Borenstein and Drew Costley, an AP news story published in the Hamilton Spectator 13 July 22.

If you really want to suck someone in to a scam, tell them something that confirms their biases.  Several years ago a completely fake and meaningless paper was submitted for peer review that confirmed the progressive biases of the editors and likely reviewers.  Despite being turgid and essentially meaningless, it got published.  And so we arrive at an allegedly scientific paper that confirms progressive biases, alleging that rich nations harm poor nations in their climates.  The balderdash is so cheeky, it actually quantifies the “harm” in dollar terms to three significant digits.  That precision ought to be a clue.

In the 1970s, acid rain was a big environmental issue in Ontario.  Despite there being little doubt about the actual effect, nobody attempted to quantify in dollar terms the damage done to Ontario’s lakes, never mind to three significant digits.  That ought to serve as another clue in this case.

Let’s grant for the moment the theory of anthropogenic global warming.  The theory forecasts what will happen in the year 2100.  The effect had not allegedly begun in 1990, which the paper claims is the start of its analysis.  It stops in 2014 because by then India and China had built so many coal-fired power plants that they were out-producing the United States, the alleged evil-doer, and but also well before temperatures began to rise.  This period would include the so-called global warming pause of 1998 to 2015.

When alleged scientists play economist, check you wallets.

-30-

Yes, you can put this down as another hoax.

Will Halton be bamboozled? Woke bullying vs. Catholicism

Editors;

RE: Halton Catholic school board faces accusations of anti-Black racism

The Catholic Church is justly famous for its intellectual rigor.  The Christian faith as we know it today is the product of the theology of Jerusalem passing through the philosophy of Greece.  Thomas Aquinas, who set the standard for Scholasticism, was a Dominican monk who taught at the Sorbonne in Paris in the 13^th century.  Then, there are the Jesuits.  Will the Halton Catholic Board demonstrate anything like the intellectual rigor traditional of Catholic institutions in the face of boilerplate progressive accusations and standard bullying practices?  Past performance is not favorable.

The most obvious failing in the accusations is over-generalization.  One “staff member” uses the N-word – context unknown – and this proves anti-Black racism present at the Board.  Failure to act at the pace set by the accuser is an indication of the depth of the problem.

A second weakness is a failure to put the complaints in a Catholic context.  Catholicism is all about the individual, but the accusations all involve standard progressivist groups.

Another give-away is the usual progressivist jargon: “evidence-based data,” (which the Halton Board does not keep) “macroaggression,” “traumatizing,” and so forth.  So are the alleged solutions, “police-free, professional-development, policy review, data collection, inclusive curriculum, response mechanisms, equity,” and other time-wasting, expensive, and harassing measures.  You’d never know they were talking about Catholic teachers and a Catholic school system.

Progressives pride themselves on the sensitivity to intersectionality and the needs of victim groups, but they exhibit no sensitivity to the audience they’re addressing in this instance, namely practicing Catholics.  They’re being treated the same as confused, fallen-away liberal protestants.

Perhaps the problem lies in the massive chip on the shoulder of the accuser.

-30-

Descending in fascism? Hey, if that's what it takes

Vincent J. Curtis

12 July 22

RE: Omicron the scariest COVID yet. Spectator editorial 12 July 22.

“COVID isn’t about us....[it’s] never about just us.  They’re always about other people.”  “It’s not just seniors who suffer disproportionately.”  “For other people, COVID is still scary.”  “All of us need to play a role in combatting COVID because everyone is affected when anyone’s infected and vulnerable people are affected the most.”  ”We must therefore redouble our efforts…Redoubling our effects means protecting ourselves first and vaccinations remains an essential tool in the arsenal.  That means laying plans for a fourth shot.”  Mussolini couldn’t have put the argument more clearly.

Here’s the rub: the vaccines don’t work.  In fact, the evidence may show that they are counter-productive, leaving multi-vaccinated people more vulnerable than the unvaccinated at this stage.

Omicron was wildly contagious but had milder symptoms.  Yet, more people died under Omicron than under the alpha and delta variants?  Alpha and delta were faced without vaccines.  When Omicron came along, more than three quarters of the population were double vaxxed.  Finding double vaccination didn’t stop the Omicron wave, a third dose was called for, and it proved a failure.  We are now discovering excess deaths in alarming numbers in young and middle-aged people – people who didn’t need vaccination to combat COVID themselves but got vaxxed anyway.

The fascist approach to fighting COVID has proven a disaster.  Let’s stop pushing it, shall we?

-30-

The editorial exhibits a strange desire for fascist methods to achieve a progressive aim, which I am pleased to point out.

The Charter means what it says

Vincent J. Curtis

11 July 22

RE: Top court ruling fails Canadians.  Op-ed by Craig Wallace.  The Hamilton Spectator 11 July 22. “The charter of Rights and Freedoms allows for restrictions on rights, to better protect society.” he says.

That’s all this country needs: a Supreme Court that takes a more restrictive view of rights guaranteed under the Charter.  That the Charter really doesn’t mean what it says, it means less.  Disregard the word ‘guaranteed.’

The restrictions on Charter rights that occurred during the pandemic and the freezing of bank accounts after declaration of the Emergencies Act show how little regard there is for Charter rights by those with political power – by those who command the men with officially sanctioned guns.  The only power a single individual has against the government lies in the courts, and if the courts are against you as a matter of policy, then Canada is no better than the Soviet Union, China, or North Korea.  The only difference being the stomach the political leaders have for the rigorous enforcement of their will.

Suppose the government said society needed protection from white supremacism.  Should the courts agree and allow for the suppression of certain kinds of speech and beliefs?  What about the arrest and detention of individuals for expressing and publicizing politically obnoxious views?

The Charter is the one instrument the court has to protect the individual rights of Canadians from the exercise of government power.  It would be foolish to indulge the government of the day its demand to restrict rights for the better protection of society.

-30-

Trudeau hates Canada: apologizes for nothing.

Vincent J. Curtis

9 July 22

RE: Trudeau apologizes to descendants of No. 2 Construction Battalion CEF

This apology should be viewed as another effort by Prime Minister Trudeau to humiliate Canada.  He portrays Canada’s history as one atrocity after another, and this “apology” is to create another atrocity out of nothing.

The No. 2 Construction Battalion served honourably in Britain and France from the fall of 1917 to December 1918.  Attached to the Canadian Forestry Corps, the battalion filled a role that needed filling, namely forestry work in France.  The battalion was among the first to be repatriated to Canada, arriving in February, 1919.  A salient fact about the battalion is how few troops there were in it.  After recruiting across all Canada, the battalion sent overseas 19 officers and 595 men.  A standard battalion required 1049 men.  The Black troops were assigned the duties they were because there weren’t enough Black men in all Canada to staff a full battalion and keep it staffed in the face of battle losses.

A segregated battalion was common in those times.  The U.S. Army, under the presidency of that great progressive Woodrow Wilson, was kept rigidly segregated.  Besides, given the prejudices of the times, what would be the point of distributing 595 Black soldiers among half a million white soldiers?

So, what’s the apology about?  To say that white soldiers of a hundred years ago, now all deceased, the grandfathers and great-grandfathers of those living today, were racists.  What is demanded in compensation to “descendants” by their self-appointed spokesmen?  Money and power.  Instead, Trudeau is offering to punish the soldiers of the CAF today with more rigorous progressive indoctrination.  CRT, and all that.

It’s all a big. shameful joke.  But Trudeau keeps power by dividing Canadians.  Trudeau hates Canada.

-30-

Where's justice for the Canadian taxpayer?

Vincent J. Curtis

7 July 22

RE: Justice for indigenous families.  Spectator editorial 7 July 22.

The House of Commons has the power it has because it began centuries ago with the power of the purse.  Thanks to that power, the executive government now rests in the hands of the steering committee of the House.

Chief among the powers of the House is the setting of taxes, and close behind is the power of budgeting.  The statement, “From 1991 until this year Ottawa knowingly discriminated against Fist Nations children by chronically underfunding the child welfare services they needed.”  is irrational.  Budgeting is a complex business, resources are finite, lots of interests need to be balanced, and if parliament decides to spend this much and no more on indigenous child welfare services, that’s it.  Justice has nothing to do with it.  This is what Canada has to give, period.  And there’s no higher authority to say otherwise – until now?

If, from some cosmic perspective, this seems retrospectively unjust, well, get in line.  Lots of good causes got “underfunded” from their perspective as the government fought inflation and then chronic deficits.  The provinces claim the feds chronically underfund Medicare.  But the budget is passed as law just like any other law, and there’s no gainsaying it, particularly not by creatures of parliament like the CHRT.  Unless, that is, you’re a progressive with a divine view of the world.

This $40 billion settlement is an injustice to the Canadian taxpayer.  The next government should abrogate it, and then abolish the CHRT whose god-like self-regard got this mess started.

-30-

 

The Commonwealth is no anachronism

 

Anachronistic Avant-Garde

Vincent J. Curtis

6 July 22

RE: Commonwealth is an anachronism.  Opinion piece by Martin Regg Cohn.  Published inexplicably in the Hamilton Spectator 6 July 22.

It’s amazing how quickly the avant-garde can fall behind the times.  Martin Regg Cohn would regard himself as on the leading edge of forward thinking.  He’s one of those people who would abolish the monarchy in Canada, but not admit that he’s calling for Canada to become a republic, like the United States or France or Germany.

The Commonwealth is anachronistic only if those British ideals of rule of law and tolerance are anachronistic.  Cohn completely misunderstands the significance of Rwanda’s membership in the Commonwealth.

Rwanda was a Belgian colony.  The official language was French.  Then came the genocide.  Rwandans who, it must astonish Cohn to learn, are intelligent human beings, determined among themselves that they needed a whole new model of society and government.  They chose the British model because of its hard-won tradition of tolerance and dedication to the rule of law.  Most surprisingly everybody learned English.  Then, Rwanda applied for membership in the Commonwealth.  Cohn would destroy what inspired post-genocide Rwanda.

In his “Iron-curtain” speech, Churchill declared that, besides the UN, the world needed associations of nations “which harboured no design incompatible with the Charter of the United Nations, far from being harmful, are beneficial, and, as I believe, indispensable. I spoke earlier of the Temple of Peace.  Workmen from all countries must build that temple….”

The Commonwealth is an association of nations dedicated to the cause of good government, mutual benefit, and domestic peace.

Like many self-appointed forward thinkers, Cohn would destroy what he doesn’t understand.  The Rwandans understand.

-30-

Martin Regg Cohn is an anachronism of the Toronto Star.

Grotesque incompetence of Trudeau Gov't.

Vincent J. Curtis

5 July 22

RE: Canadian airports top global list for delays.  Canadian Press story by Christopher Reynolds.  Published in the Spectator 5 July 22.

“Ideologically rigid, nonchalant, and grotesquely incompetent” is how Victor Davis Hanson described Joe Biden’s Administration.  The Trudeau government is making the beleaguered Biden Administration look good by comparison.  Topping the global list of airport delays is the tip of the iceberg.

Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos announced that “fully vaccinated” no longer had meaning, and that time from last vaccination shot was the proper measure.  Measure for what?  Canada still maintains the obsolete and totally worthless policy of requiring a person to be “fully vaccinated” before they can travel commercially by air or train or bus in Canada.  By now, even the janitor knows that there’s no stopping the spread of the latest COVID variant by any means, and also knows that vaccination is no barrier to infection or transmission.  Some provinces are eliminating requirements for self-isolation after testing positive for COVID.  So, what’s the scientific basis for the policy?

Duclos is the Minister for Health, and here he is announcing Transport policy with the Transport Minister nowhere in sight.  Sitting next to Duclos was Theresa Tam, but not one reporter thought to ask Tam for the scientific basis for “nine months,” when the third dose sort-of works for only four months.  NO one asked about reports of side-effects from getting multiple vaccinations.

Obsolete and incompetently conceived policies are being announced by the wrong Minister, and nobody asks the alleged expert to explain.  Canadians are learning about the incompetent clown show running the government the hard way.

-30-

A bad day for Page 1

Stupid Streets: any excuse will do.

Vincent J. Curtis

4 July 22

RE: Street design changes pitched as deaths spike.  Headline story by Matthew van Dongen.  The Hamilton Spectator 4 July 22.

The streets haven’t changed and traffic volumes are down, but pedestrian deaths are up, 16 last year and a ‘grim’ 9 so far this year.  Obviously, the street is at fault for these rising numbers.

“We can’t rely on people to change their behavior,” reasons a lawyer who represents injured cyclists. “We need infrastructure that helps protect vulnerable road users.”  Since the humans can’t learn, the streets need to get smarter.  At taxpayer expense.

When I visited Hamilton last July, I noticed how much more aggressive Hamilton’s drivers were than I remembered.  Aggression was stimulated in part because of all the construction, mistimed traffic lights, and other obstructions that made getting to where you needed to go so frustrating and time-consuming.  My car got totaled on Garner Road in a rear-end collision while I was stopped at a red light.  Driver inattention.  No matter how smart the street, the drivers have to have the brain in gear.

“Smart streets” is another progressive solution in search of a problem.  Its aim is to choke traffic flow because driving is morally evil and drivers deserve to be punished.

-30-

Net-Zero Nonsense

Vincent J. Curtis

4 July 22

RE: Businesses discuss reaching net zero.  Page 1 below-the-fold story by Ritika Dubey.  The Hamilton Spectator 4 July 22

In Europe, the energy shortage is so bad, the Greens are restarting coal-fired power plants.  In California, unscheduled power black-outs have become so common that Stanford University is shutting down summer classes.  But the ostriches of Hamilton, are talking about net-zero?

In my 30 years of manufacturing, I never encountered another manufacturer that wanted to change for the sake of change.  The risks and costs of being wrong in the slightest way were too great.  It’s fine for paper-shufflers to talk about net-zero because they’re nearly there to start with.  Transforming matter from one form into another takes energy, and capital, and simply to do it differently is fixing something that isn’t broken.

Metaphor mixing Hamilton Mountain MP Lisa Hepfner says, “We’re on the precipice of a seismic shift” in how sustainability is defined.  When we shift over that precipice, why not make the new definition something easy, and then call it a day.  Reaching net-zero may give moral satisfaction, but as a practical matter is a waste of time and economically disastrous for most.

-30-

 

Campaigning for a fourth dose?

 

Campaign for the useless?

Vincent J. Curtis

2 July 22

RE: Time to renew Hamilton’s vax campaign.  Spectator editorial 2 July 22.

The poster children for the uselessness of masking and COVID vaccinations are Prime Minster Trudeau and Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos.  Trudeau ostentatiously got vaxxed and boosted, and then became (conveniently) infected with COVID in February and again (conveniently) in June.  Less remembered is that he isolated himself (conveniently) for a month starting March 12, 2020, after his wife tested positive for COVID.  Trudeau wears a mask like it were a subliminal suggestion of political correctness, which it probably is.  Duclos likewise is vaxxed, boosted, masked, - and infected nevertheless.

Realization of the uselessness of the vaccines to prevent infection and transmission is what led to the truckers’ strike in February, when a vax mandate was imposed upon them.  The only alleged benefit is a reduction in severity of symptoms, which is rather pointless anyhow to otherwise healthy people under 60.  Even Theresa Tam admits the vaccines didn’t work, but she has yet to apologize for being wrong about boosters.  Being wrong is one thing, lying is another.

The full range of pressure available to the government to coerce people to get vaccinated was employed: taking away rights, firings, shaming, ostracizing, and official condemnation.

Nobody’s going to tell the Spectator where to put their vax enthusiasm (well, almost no one!); People just aren’t going to do it this time.  The resistance began when vaxxing didn’t stop the sixth wave, and then children fell under the evil eye of desperate health care officials.

The progressives broke Humpty-Dumpty, and he can’t be fixed.

-30-

Climate change causes electoral reform?

Vincent J. Curtis

30 June 22

RE: Climate action needs electoral reform – fast.  Op-ed by Jane Jenner.  The Hamilton Spectator 30 June 22.

Is this going to be the latest climate change disaster: that climate change causes electoral reform in Ontario?  Or is this simply another demand that the electoral process be changed until it reliably produces the results we want?  And by that I mean either gives power to the party I like, or denies it to the party I don’t.

Quite apart from the business of monkeying with the electoral process is the proposition that Ontario, by her own actions, can stop global climate change.  No, it can’t.  Canada can’t.  John Kerry admits that not even the United States can.  So, get over your narcissism Canadian climate activists, you just aren’t that important.

-30-