5G and Network Centric Warfare

Vincent J. Curtis

25 Feb 22

Network centric warfare was one of those military ideologies that obsessed U.S. military thinkers in the 1990s and early 2000s.  Then, every new or recycled insight had to be formulated as an ideology that would lead ineluctably to victory.  The problem with these ideologies is that none of the authors were good enough as philosophers to pull it off.  The self-contradictions and sheer nonsense were simply glossed over in the glow of the vision idealized.

Network centric warfare seeks to turn an “information advantage” into tactical advantage in combat, even if one’s forces are “geographically dispersed.”  The expressions in quotes go undefined, and this rendering of the concept is simpler and more concrete than “the book” provides.

NCW’s four tenets are: (1) A robustly networked force improves information sharing (What does this even mean?); (2) Information sharing and collaboration enhance the quality of information and shared situational awareness. (No they don’t.  The intelligence product arising from analysis of information from different sources – sometimes conflicting – improves situational awareness.  But the analyst in Langley doesn’t have the same situation as the warfighter on the ground, and so their situational awarenesses aren’t shareable.); (3) Shared situational awareness enables self-synchronization (what is “self-synchronization” anyway?  Why isn’t a person self-synchronized to start with?  Why would sharing something enable it?); and (4) These in turn dramatically enhance mission effectiveness (If objective A is captured, how is the effectiveness of that mission made dramatically more enhanced by the application of tenets 1 to 3?  Doesn’t the effectiveness of the mission have to do with the consequences that follow upon the successful completion of it?)

Okay, I’ve had my fun at the expense of some very highly paid American admirals, generals, and defense consultants.

Shamelessly, the dramatic advances in electronics made from the 1990s onwards are held to demonstrate the validity of NCW theory.  Gosh, grease pencil marks on a map have been replaced with graphics on a computer screen, updated in real time!  You would think enhancements like that would be sought out and absorbed quickly by serious militaries without the need to congratulate an ideology that is manifestly self-contradictory.

Never mind.  Let’s just agree that more information can sometimes be useful, we can drop the ideological baggage and get on with of taking advantage of whatever new technologies can offer.  Knowing the color of the tunic that Rommel is wearing this morning is unlikely to be useful to a warfighter; and knowing that a dozen German flak guns are on the other side of the rise isn’t helpful if the tank commander doesn’t understand the significance of ‘88 mm’.

Focusing on infotech, the point is that between Desert Storm and today, a modern military is inclined to have to process a lot more raw data, turn it into tactically useful intelligence, and disseminate the intelligence to subordinate commanders.  The ability to absorb and disseminate has become the province of sophisticated defense contractors.

Saab is one of those contractors.  Saab is fast becoming a defense systems supplier of choice for budget-minded militaries, which means everyone except the American and Chinese.  Saab has recently announced DeployNet, a deployable wireless 5G/LTE communications system that is scalable both in terms of user numbers and range.  It is said to offer high-capacity bandwidth that is capable of handling data from sensors, “user interactions,” and various other “information sources.”  Real-time hi-res video streaming is possible. It is said to be underpinned by robust cyber security.  It can operate in remote locations and can be used to supplement or replace local networks. Aside from base security, DeployNet is useful for search and rescue, recce, training, and crisis management.  DeployNet is a turnkey operation that comes with handsets, power supply, administration tools, and active telecom equipment.

Its most obvious Canadian uses are in Aid to the Civil Power and in rapid deployment of HQ and Sigs units. (Hurricane Fiona, anyone?) Technologies applicable to NCW don’t always have to involve W, as students of 3BW know.

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Vegan Statistics

Vincent J. Curtis

23 Dec 22

RE: We need to shift towards plant-based foods.  Op-ed by Caerina Lindman.  Lindman is a retired actuary and a member of the Waterloo Region Climate Initiative.  Published in the Hamilton Spectator 23 Dec 22.

This latest cry for Veganism contains a number of fatuous and nonsensical claims.  The claim that animal agriculture uses 83 percent of agricultural land, but produces only 18 percent of total calories is nonsense, as any observation of Alberta agriculture and cattle ranching will show.  Cattle are grazed on land not suited to modern crop growing practices, and this amounts to nowhere near 83 percent of total agricultural land.  Cattle are a tasty intermediate between meadow grass and human.

Another howler is that claim that if the world adopted a plant-based diet, we could free up 75 percent of agricultural land for “re-wilding.”  If the world isn’t eating meat, then it has to get it’s food from plants, the plants eaten by the meat providing animal; so instead of animal grazing on agricultural land, it will, in effect, have to be the humans that do.  The freeing up of 75 percent of agricultural land by becoming vegan is a fallacy; and as for “re-wilding” that’s much different from leaving fallow, and it likely impossible given where that land is.

(No amount of time is going to change prairie into forest, and instead of cattle grazing on prairie grass, it’ll be buffalo - which will have to be hunted to be kept under control as the Indians did for thousands of years.  That hunted meat is going to be sold, so choose your meat source: buffalo or cattle.)

(You have to let buffalo or cattle graze on the prairie grass, or you’ll get massive grass fires.  Fires of dry grass happens often in Alberta’s cowboy country, but suppression efforts keep them from getting out of control, as would happen if “re-wilding” were to become the policy.)

It simply doesn’t follow that the destruction of forests would occur because the food industry would force the world to eat more meat, eggs, fish, and dairy; to say nothing of the claim being a conspiracy theory.  Fish don’t grow in forests, and chickens are kept in coops with small footprints.  Rising CO2 levels and chemical fertilizers will enable an intensification of plant growth on existing land.  Besides, crops consume CO2 as much as a tree does.

What people need to understand is that the real agenda of the biodiversity crowd, which they dare not say, is that they think the human herd should be culled by 75 percent by the year 2100.  Ecojustice means the same thing; and it’s where “Just Stop Oil” leads.

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Doctors, not engineers

Vincent J. Curtis

22 Dec 22

RE: Why students should wear masks.  Op-ed by Catherine Clase, Mariam Georgis, Ingrid Waisgluss, Joanne Witt, and Evan Ubene.  Clase is a professor of medicine at McMaster University.  Georgis is a research affiliate with the University of Manitoba, Waisgluss is a Ph.D. candidate, Witt is a parent of a medically complex child, and Ubene is a MASC candidate

It’s a good thing the authors of this opinion are doctors because they’re failures as engineers.  They don’t understand how the N95 mask works, yet it’s the one they say is best for preventing the spread of COVID in schools.  (Oh, they’re not very good at epidemiology, either.)

The N95 mask does not filter on exhaust.  On exhaust, the mask dumps the breath directly into the atmosphere through a by-pass valve, avoiding a build-up of pressure tending to bread the seal the mask makes with the face.  Hence, it is pointless to put an N95 on a sick person; the mask will not protect the people around the sick person from the viruses that sick person is breathing out, and the sick person is already infected.

After all we know about COVID, it is remarkable that they’re still flinging around those myths that were used to scare people into obedience.  COVID deaths of children are rare, but…Risks of Long COVID; we can’t rely on rapid tests.  And then there’s the canard that ‘when everyone masks, everyone is protected.’

Nonsense.  Pandemic waves 2,3,4,5 and 6 occurred despite mask mandates.

The public lost faith in the medical community because of the extremism like that exhibited in this opinion piece.  Huffing and puffing nonsense, long-discredited old wives’ tales, won’t revive obedience to their authority.  The Wizard of Oz was spotted behind the curtain.

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Assault weapons aren’t a danger in Canada

Vincent J. Curtis

23 Dec 22

RE: Make assault weapons ban permanent.  Op-ed by Najma Ahmed, John Kortbeek, and Murray Trusler.  Ahmed is a trauma surgeon and professor of surgery at the University of Toronto; Kortbeek is a professor in the departments of surgery and of critical care at the University of Calgary; Trusler is a retire chief of staff, Weeneebayko Health Authority, James Bay, ON.  All are members of Canadian doctors for protection from guns.  Published in the Hamilton Spectator 23 Dec 22.

Once again, we see medical doctors asserting and abusing their alleged expertise to make political demands on something they know nothing about.  The trio who wrote the article at reference demand that “assault weapons” be banned permanently.  Here are some facts.

Assault rifles, if that is what they mean by assault ‘weapons’, were banned in Canada in 1977.  The term assault weapon has no agreed upon definition, either in law or in the firearms debate.  The reason Bill C-21 was amended with over 300 pages of firearms by name shows that legal definition of ‘assault like weapons’ escapes the expertise of the government of Canada.

In 2020, according to Statistics Canada, there were a total of 743 homicides in Canada from all causes, and this figure includes the 22 killings in Nova Scotia by Gabriel Wortman.  (Of 743, 201 were of aboriginals.)  Of the 743, 270 were caused by shooting with a firearm; and of these 270, 30 percent, or 81 in total, were caused by rifle or shotgun.  So far as I can tell, there hasn’t been a single homicide in Canada caused with an AR-15 in 25 years.

Shootings in Canada are not a big business for trauma surgeons, for the occasions of mass shootings have decades of interval between them; and at 81 per year across Canada, rifles and shotguns seem to pose little threat of homicide to the public at large.  Passing legislation and spending billions of dollars to seize the safely used and rigorously controlled private property of law-abiding Canadians is irrational, unsupportable by the data, and based on uninformed scaremongering.

Given that aboriginals have seven times the rate of homicide as the public at large, perhaps a useful experiment in the effect of gun control would be to dispossess the aboriginals of their rifles and shotguns, and watch for a decline in the rate of homicide in that community.  I doubt such a proposal would fly, but dispossession can be achieved under color of seizing everyone’s guns.

Billions of dollars and a lot of political capital will be and is being spent in chasing a fool’s errand.  Homicide rates won’t go down, only the proportions of means will change.

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Beef is good for Canadians

Vincent J. Curtis

22 Dec 22

RE: Transition away from meat would help the planet.  Op-ed by Renaud Gignac and David Steele.  Gignac is an economist and spokesperson for the Coalition for a Sustainable food transition.  Steele is president and executive director of Earthsave Canada.

It seems that the latest tactic of Veganism is to claim that eating beef is bad, not for you, but for the planet.  Whatever the authors claim about rising beef consumption requiring the destruction of forests does not apply to Canada.  It might be useful for the city-slickers of Central Canada to learn how beef is raised in Alberta’s cowboy country.

The prairies end and the foothills begin in western Alberta.  The change is gradual; where the land is flat, crops are raised; where the land is too rough to run a combine over it, cattle are grazed.  There are few trees on the prairies.

In the foothills, where the hills are forested, cattle are grazed for six months of the year, from June 15 to December 15, on the meadows, which preserves the forest ecology.  Trees don’t have to be cut down to expand pasture land.  If there’s not enough feed for cattle, they are either sent to market early, or bales of hay are purchased from existing crop operations.

The concern about cutting down forests is nonsense.  The world’s population has more than doubled in fifty years, and if forests have to be cleared to feed a growing world, the grass and grain grown on the cleared land needs CO2 as much as trees do, and cattle serve as a tasty intermediate between grass and human.

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What does FAWG mean?

Vincent J. Curtis

20 Dec 22

What does FAWG mean?  How do you even pronounce it?  Thanks to Scott Taylor, Editor and Publisher of Esprit de Corps magazine, we have some answers.

In his On Target article of December 19, 2022, entitled “The RCAF is still not ‘woke’?” we learn that FAWG is an acronym for “F’d A Woman Gay.”  It seems to refer to a man being so bad at sex with a women, that she turned lesbian in consequence of the bad experience.  It’s an insult to the guy, but the acronym weirdly has extreme pertinence to the RCAF.  Here’s the story:

A pilot officer with the RCAF at Cold Lake, AB, had a consensual sexual relationship with a female Canadian Armed Forces officer.  This female officer subsequently had a consensual sexual relationship with a woman.  When these facts became known, the young male pilot was tagged by some 30 of his buddies with the call sign FAWG at a so-called “call sign assignment conference.”  Eventually, someone complained of the term, saying it was “an abusive and derogatory comment against the female member and the LBGTQ2+ community.”  Hence, an investigation was ordered.

In the end, two senior officers, were charged for failing to stop the use of the call sign, and an unknown number of junior officers faced administrative action.

The ethics and value system exhibited by the RCAF hierarchy in Ottawa in this incident is remarkable.  A female officer became the object of gossip and scandal, and nothing is done.  Being a woman, and a lesbian to boot, protects her from administrative action.  A male officer gets officially teased for his lack of sexual prowess; and, by general consent among his peers, and by him, that’s deemed acceptable.

But somehow, the acronym FAWG is considered offensive, because it is perceived by someone (and not necessarily the female officer, it’s another anonymous accuser) in the gay community as a slur against, not lesbians, but the entire LGBTQ2+ community.  And that’s intolerable. (who knew the complainant was authorized to speak on behalf of the entire community?)

I’ll bet dollars to donuts that the complainant didn’t go first to the young officer, or the Wing Commander, and ask for a remedy to their peculiar bugbear.  Did the senior officers even know what FAWG stood for?  I think you have to be a certain age to be that hip, and I’m not sure his teenage daughters would have heard of the call sign assignment.  (“Dad, do you know what FAWG means?)

I’m not woke; I don't stay current with the latest sexual slang out of the gay community.  Woke is crazy, irrational, and incoherent.  Its main tactic, cancellation, begins by calling upon a Victorian – chivalrous sense of politeness; and its aim is to destroy another piece of western civilization for a lack of modern politeness.  Wokeness and its tactic wouldn’t survive in an Islamic or Chinese culture.  The gentle sensibilities of the woke have to be doted on by the stronger, tougher, and evil non-woke, who deserved to be cancelled for their insensitivity, micro-aggression, and colonial-settler ways.

In a strange way, the Ottawa CAF hierarchy agree with this determination, and they’ll be damned if it’s their careers that get cancelled.

Being tagged by his mates is okay.  A female officer becoming an object of scandal by her sexual choices is okay.  But noting it is not, because it offends a third party?  And it’s the young male officer who suffers the career action, but not his female paramour?  Meanwhile, the poor Wing Commander has to police call signs for political correctness?

I still have no idea how to pronounce it – like FOG?

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UPDATE: from Air Force to add oversight after officers lose pay over pilot call sign.  (CP) by Lee Berthiaume.

Two senior officers were reprimanded and fined for not intervening after the “sexually explicit” call sign was assigned to a junior fighter pilot.  The call sign was said to be homophobic and derogatory of a female pilot.  It was assigned during a “call sign review board” on June 22 at 4 Wing in Cold Lake, AB.  The officers are said to have “accepted responsibility and are working to understand the harm that was caused by their failure to act.  The two senior officers pleaded guilty and were docked several day’s pay.  The two senior officrs will also receive mentorship to ensure they learn from their mistakes.

Canadian law protects false accusers

Vincent J. Curtis

16 Dec 22

RE: Mac prof found not guilty of sexual assault.  By Kate McCullough.  The Hamilton Spectator 16 Dec 22.

After the Jian Ghomeshi trial, law procedures in Canada for sexual assault were twisted out of all recognition of justice.  Accusers, whether true of false, have their identities protected even as the innocent have their reputations trashed beyond repair.

In the Dany Fortin case, a former classmate got jealous as Fortin made General and she did not, and allegedly waited 34 years to bring, after her retirement, the accusation that brought down the man famous for handling the logistics of vaccine distribution.  The case was so weak, it should never had been brought to trial, but the attitude of the times required that the woman be believed; and her case against Fortin was publicly and easily demolished.  The judge concluded that the accuser was mistaken, but she pays no price for her error and her anonymity remains protected in retirement, even as the innocent Fortin is treated as a leper by the Department of National Defense.

In the Mac case, the pressure of the times required that the courts be used by a jilted lover to destroy the reputation of her professor-paramour.  An accusation of sexual assault is highly defamatory, regardless of whether the charge is true or not; but the accuser’s reputation is shielded from public shame even when the evidence shows that her true motivation was jealousy of a younger rival.  The evidence was such that reasonable doubt was the best to be expected, and because the police refused to challenge the complainant in private, the trail went ahead to its public catastrophe, 

Perhaps the prof deserves the loss of his reputation and employment, he was certainly shown to be a cad, but his false accuser remains a Ph.D. candidate untouched by scandal and able to bring a like charge again.

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Decolonized nature protection? Huh?

Vincent J. Curtis

15 Dec 22

RE: COP15: a final chance to preserve biodiversity.  Op-ed by Lagi Toribau, acting executive director of Greenpeace Canada.  The Hamilton Spectator 15 Dec 22.

Greenpeace long ago lost its moral authority, the by-product of having previously lost its collective mind.  It became simply hostile to western civilization.  In the exhortations of this nonsensical piece on biodiversity, we hear repeated the exhausted cry that the end is near; a tipping point approaches; and everything must be accomplished by the year of doom, 2030.

The article contains this precious morsel, “[A Nature and Biodiversity Act] would recognize that we are living on stolen Indigenous land and fundamentally decolonize our approach to protecting nature,” an odd concoction of political jibe in a bill about biology. 

That we are living on land ‘stolen’ from the Indigenous might have force but for the fact that the Indigenous kept stealing it from each other, and the Crown paid in cash for rights to the land.  The Crown paid again a decade ago when upon review the money paid over two hundred years ago was deemed insufficient.  The monies went to the Mississaugas because they occupied the land after the Huron nation was annihilated by the Iroquois, who afterwards returned to their territory in present-day New York.

But how does one “decolonize” concern for biodiversity?  How did it get colonized in the first place?  Biodiversity is an abstraction, while it is territory, a concrete that gets colonized.  It’s all poetry and nonsense.

Greenpeace despises western civilization, and their diatribe on biodiversity is simply another expression of it.

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Two professors of health were talking economics

Vincent J. Curtis

14 Dec 22

RE: Can the NDP become truly progressive again?  Op-ed by Toba Bryant and Dennis Raphael.  Bryant is an associate professor of health sciences at Ontario Tech University.  Raphael is a professor of health policy at York University.  The Hamilton Spectator 14 Dec 22.

When two university professors of health talk politics and exhibit no knowledge of history or economics, you know the product is going to reek of arrogance, certainty, and error.  By history, I mean not knowing that the pursuit of socialism caused 100 million deaths in the 20^th century.  They seem unaware that everything they have, from the clothes on their backs, to their BMWs, to the buildings they live and work in, are the all products of capitalism.  Socialism has never produced anything new.  It only seems progressive to hose in the faculty lounge to determine the working life of millions of people.  After all, they know best!

The pair like the word “critique” – of our economic system.  A critique implies an alternative, and that alternative, by the back door, is socialism.  Every injustice in the world is laid at the feet of capitalism, and if only it were eradicated and replaced with socialism, Utopia would exist on earth.  Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot were all bringing Utopia to earth.

The professors speak approvingly of confronting the capitalist system because of: income inequality, poverty, food insecurity and hunger, precarious work and unemployment, housing insecurity and homelessness all of which are caused by capitalism and all of which will be cured by socialism.  The unfair distribution of economic and social resources of capitalism is the cause; and all will be corrected by the wisdom of the all-knowing apparatchik. Dislike Bill 23?  Wait till an all-powerful bureaucrat takes on the housing problem, the solution of which his life depends.

They are mystified by the sudden disappearance of opposition within the NDP: the Waffle Wing, the New Policy Initiative, the Leap, and the disallowance of a leadership candidate for the BC NFP, all of which were blotted out like so many party men once pictured next to Stalin.  All that’s missing in their work is a reference to capitalist roaders.

Nothing is more progressive than concern for climate change and the environment.  Chernobyl, the Aral Sea, and the smog of Shanghai are monuments and augers to the fate of the environment under the aegis of socialism.  Communist China is the world’s worst emitter of carbon dioxide, and have only plans for expansion of her coal-fired electoral plants.  Dissent isn’t long tolerated in socialist countries lest it destabilize the regime.

As Nietzsche once observed, what lie would you not tell, what crime would you not commit if you thought you were bringing Utopia here on earth?  It's even easier on the conscience when you don't even know.

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Indigenous indignities

Vincent J. Curtis

12 Dec 22

RE: Indigenous leaders, Hamilton councillors to meet on Monday.by Sebastian Bron  The Hamilton Spectator 12 Dec 22.

Hamilton’s councillors are well advised to stay away from this pow-wow.

Let’s start with the meeting setting and place: a tipi on Battlefield Park.  The Indians of the east lived in wigwams and longhouses, not in tipis.  Tipis were the housing of nomadic plains Indians, not the forest dwellers of the east, who were without access to the buffalo hides which form the outer wall of the structure.

Battlefield Park is famous as the place where a small force of British troops surprised and routed an American invading force.  Siting a tipi in the park is like putting a mosque in the Vatican.

The Indian organizers hope to provide an ‘education’ to the new councillors.  What makes this endeavor in condescension especially ridiculous is that, since no Indian can be said to represent any other, the Councillors will be educated in Mr. George’s highly personal opinion.

Mr. George claims to represent the “original caretakers” of the land, must be taken as false, since, notwithstanding that no Indian can be said to represent another, all the tribes who could claim to be the originals were wiped out centuries ago.  The last aboriginals who could claim to be ‘caretakers’, that is, exploiters; are the Mississaugas, who possessed the ‘Land between the Lakes” from 1650 (after the annihilation of the Hurons) to 1792 when it was purchased by the British Crown. The Crown has been the caretaker of the lands in question for longer than any extant aboriginal tribe.

Against lessons on aboriginal holistic medicines and healing and of sacred fires, Hamilton can set McMaster University Children’s Hospital, which is where aboriginals themselves take their children to be cured by European medicine-men.

Hamilton City Council did quite well in 1848 deficient in education in the ways of aboriginals, and, given the revolution of a century and three-quarters, the Council of today needs one even less.

Hamilton’s Councillors are accountable to the electorate, not to their “urban indigenous strategies,’ whatever that is.

The dignity of Hamilton requires their councillors to snub this exercise in aboriginal condescension.

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The bureaucratic mind

Vincent J. Curtis

9 Dec 22

RE: Students must submit form to opt out of masking.  News item by Ritika Dubey The Hamilton Spectator 9 Dec 22.

RE: Negotiations don’t always lead to peace.  Op-ed by Steve Delag, and English teacher living in Dundas, ON.

You have to admire the bureaucratic mind.  Students have a right not to wear masks in school, but they have to fill out a form to exercise that right.  The form may be a little hard to obtain.  Next comes the line that asks the reason why you want to exercise this right.  And the step after that is the determination of whether that reason is good enough.  So, sure you can exercise your right, but you have to fill out the form and give a reason that we find satisfactory.

This progression almost sounds like the evolution of gun control in Canada.

What happens if a student who hasn’t submitted a form shows up at school without a mask?  He forgot it.  Will he be suspended or expelled for not wearing a mask when sitting at the next desk is a maskless student who had filled out his form?

Bureaucrats can be the blandest form of life on earth, but violate one of their rules and you won’t know what hit you.  Or understand the severity.  Or understand why there’s no emotion in administering the punishment.

Steve Delag is right.  There’s no point in negotiating away your defenses to appease a bad-faith interlocutor.  It is true for students, Canadian gun owners, and for Carthage.

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Pigmies stab medical hero

Vincent J. Curtis

8 Dec 22

RE: McMaster University planning to sell Osler house. Hamilton Community News.  The Hamilton Spectator 8 Dec 22.

This reeks of small-mindedness, and of cowardice.  Sir William Osler is being disgraced by nameless Mac administrators in a calculated way for reasons they won’t say.

“Those working at universities have access to books and journals, and they know how to read” is the justification.  Apparently, Osler’s offenses are too startling to be spoken for the delicate ears of today to hear, but rest assured, they’re “racist.”

Unnamed people at McMaster, who apparently couldn’t, or didn’t read, first acquired the Osler home, only to hear “public questions arising” about the father of modern medicine’s “racist” views.  And so, the great man gets cancelled, stabbed in the dark by the nameless on grounds we aren’t allowed to judge for ourselves.  The cancellation of Osler all sounds so very polite society, but is so very small-minded.

(How it follows that one must to sell Osler’s home, a century after his death, on account of his racist views escapes me.  Is Mac, or the administrators, afraid of moral taint from the great man?  Or are they afraid the moralistic machine gun will be turned on them?)

A hand not on the knife is that of Nav Persaud, Canadian Research Chair in Health Justice, University of Toronto, who owes her job to Osler.  She’s the one who, in a medical journal of all places, complained of Osler’s racist views.  Not his view on the practice of medicine.

Except her evidence is too shocking to be reported, even though they’ve been in the public record for over 100 years.  Hers is that ‘public questioning’.

And so a great man gets cancelled by small-minded, anonymous moral pigmies, of insignificant consequence to medical science compared to Osler.  We don’t get to know their names, or to evaluate their evidence and judgement for ourselves.

They have the power, and that’s that!

Mao, with this theory of the guerrilla, would be proud.  Another exemplar of western civilization and culture gets assassinated in the dark, by the nameless, and for precise reasons we cannot know.

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If I called it "dark forces" would that be a racist view of mine, or of the person imputing it?

Garbage in, COP15 out

Vincent J. Curtis

8 Dec 22

RE: Developed countries called on for financial support. A CP story published in the Hamilton Spectator  8 Dec 22

If the COP15 delegates agree on anything, it’s that they need more money and power, and that western civilization should pay.  Seventy years of foreign aid isn’t enough!

In his work, Prior Analytics, Aristotle showed that a conclusion validly drawn from false premises, is false.  In computerspeak, this is called GIGO.  Let’s look at two premises of the COP15 conference.

“Most of the remaining biodiversity is in the developing nations of the global south, while most of the money – much of which has been generated at the expense of that biodiversity – is in the rich countries of the north.”  Disregarding incoherence, the basic idea that the wealth of “the north” has been generated at the expense of biodiversity is false.  The most of the wealth of the world today has been generated in the last thirty years, by the revolutions in high tech and financial engineering.  The internet did not occasion the destruction of “biodiversity,” whatever that abstraction denotes.

Then, there’s this shockingly Marxist claim by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, “We need developed countries to provide meaningful financial support for the countries of the global south as custodians of the world’s natural wealth following centuries of exploitation and loss.”  This example of distilled Marxism, the exploited and the exploiters, makes no sense economically, or even logically.  Has the south’s biodiversity been lost, or not?  How, in exchange for the north’s wealth, will the south export its biodiversity?

GIGO!

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What is the ‘global south?’  Is it really those countries south of the equator, or not?  Only  third of the world’s land mass lies south of the equator; we’re talking most of South America, The Congo and farther south in Africa, a part of Malaysia, and Australia.  I’ve not heard warnings of a massive, immanent loss in species in those regions, and some countries of the global south are developed countries, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, South Africa, and Australia.  Even here, perhaps, the Marxists speak in euphemisms; it’s not really geographically south but economically south.

 Let's also stipulate that there is no evidence of a mass species die-off as is thought to have occurred five times previously, or if one is occurring, that man is responsible.  Those are mere bald, unproven assertions.  Why is this not all as scam: give us money and we'll stop harassing you!

Nova Scotia gets boondoggled on climate

Vincent J. Curtis

6 Dec 22

RE: Report outlines climate change risks to Nova Scotia. A CP story published in the Hamilton Spectator 6 Dec 22.

The Nova Scotia government got fleeced by the report on the alleged impacts of climate change on the province.  Hopefully, the government isn’t deluded into thinking that Nova Scotia can halt climate change by its own heroism, and instead uses the report’s fearmongering to justify hardening infrastructure.

The authors couldn’t have done so much as a comprehensive literature review.  The forecasts of 4.5℃ temperature rise comes from RCP8.5, the most extreme climate model that scientists don’t take seriously, but is the one used by policy makers to scare the public into granting them more power.  The unrealistic RCP8.5 model requires over 1000 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere to achieve that temperature rise.  The realistic models predict between 460 and 580 ppm by 2100.

The forecast of a one metre rise in sea level is far higher than the IPCC forecast of between six inches and a foot rise by 2100.  The prediction of a 5.1℃ rise in ocean temperature won’t be caused by climate but on the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation phenomenon, the Atlantic Ocean’s version of El Nino.  The Atlantic Ocean – shockingly - will control Nova Scotia’s climate, not CO2 levels!

The business of storms like Fiona becoming stronger and more frequent requires amnesia to accept.  Atlantic hurricanes have been decreasing in number since the 1950s, and 2022 was a year of low activity.  Responsible meteorologists dismiss storm intensity as a climate phenomenon.

Nova Scotia’s risks are from money wasted on climate change, not climate change itself.

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I wrote in my Oct 24^th 2022 piece, “Paris Accord Rests on Quicksand” the following concerning the RCP8.5 model:

“Nobody knows what the CO2 concentration will be in the year 2100.  I’ll test a couple scenarios to illustrate the nonsense.  The RCP8.5 model (Representative Concentration Pathway) forecasts 1000 ppm CO2 in 2100, producing a temperature rise of 4.3℃ and a “radiative forcing” (i.e. the greenhouse effect of that CO2) of 8.5 W/m².  But for 8.5 W/m² of additional forcing to increase temperature by 4.3℃, it requires the “global average temperature” to be 204K, by the Stefan-Boltzmann law.  That’s -69℃!”

COP15: Their real agenda

Vincent J. Curtis

5 Dec 22.

RE: Seeking hard targets on biodiversity. A CP story by Bob Weber.  The Hamilton Spectator 5 Dec 22.

The earth once had trilobites, dinosaurs, sabre-toothed cats and woolly mammoths.  They’re long gone.  Mass die-offs occur all the time.  There are thought to have been five major mass extinctions in earth’s history, and none of these are attributable to the wickedness of man.  Which brings us to COP15 that holds that a mass extinction is occurring and that man, or at least the attendees, given enough money and power, can put a stop to it.

No doubt COP15 will recommend fossil fuels for extinction, even though rising CO2 levels are an unmitigated boon to plant life.  Plant life being the basis for all the world’s food chains, without plants there’d be no animal life on earth either.  The relationship between vigorous plant growth and animal life escapes the attention of the likes of Extinction Rebellion.

There’s nothing special about the set of particular species presently existing on earth, except for the human species.  And that’s the one that is targeted for extinction.  The enemy is western civilization and the enlightenment, which have enabled the human species to increase in number to eight billion.  “Ecojustice” demands that this number be reduced by 75 percent by the year 2100 – to save the planet!  A reduction in number by 75 percent in 80 years is considered to be a mass die-off.  But that’s the goal.

You won’t have lithium batteries if all the children of Africa are dead, and China doesn’t care.  The means of maintaining biodiversity runs through the extinction of western civilizations, the enlightenment, and ultimately of the human species.  And the attendees all agree they need more money and power.

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Horowitz on Progressivism

Vincent J. Curtis

4 Dec 22

About ten years ago, American political activist David Horowitz began a speaking tour on college campuses throughout the United States to warn people, especially students, of the true nature of progressivism.  He knew progressivism from the beginning; he knew it inside and out.  I surmise that his lectures were video-recorded, and some of them wound up on YouTube.  I was so impressed with this one that I took notes.  Below are the raw notes I took from Horowitz’s lecture.  Jonah Goldberg, a few years ago, wrote a book entitled “Liberal Fascism” which covers the same waterfront and is likewise insightful.  It’s book I recommend.  Horowitz’s analysis is pithy and pungent.

David Horowitz on Progressivism:

Progressives break things, and leave it to others to clean up the mess.

Communists, fellow travelers, and dupes.

They’re not Jeffersonian Democrats, they’re communists.

The mentor of the entire American Left today is Saul D. Alinsky.  Don’t telegraph your agenda, he recommended.  Lie.

Four features of the Leftist mentality.

“Man if born free but live everywhere in chains.  Society did it.  People in a state of nature get along, they’re not greedy, they don’t lie, they’re not vain, they’re not driven by their ego.  Everybody on the Left believes this crock.  That’s why they think government can solve problems.  (Government the creator of slavery, segregation, war, whatever.)  You take people who are lying, cheating, and stealing, and oppressing, and we give them lots of power, and they’re going to fix everything???  No, they’re not, they’re going to go on being what they were before they came to power, only much worse.

Conservatives understand that the root cause of social problems is us.  We’re the problem; that’s why it’s never been solved.  We are the problem; therefore, the founders devised a system of government with checks and balances, to make it really difficult to change things.  To tyrannize over our fellow citizens.

If you believe that social institutions are the source of the problem, and that if you change social organizations you can change people. Even Hillary Clinton said we have to redefine what it means to be human in the 21^st century.  That is communism.  That is what drives them.  Their core belief that if we get enough power and change social institutions, we’re going to create new men and new women, and we’re all going to get along with each other.

Second characteristic:  They like the term progressive because they believe history is in a forward march.  Things are getting better and better; now and again there are setbacks.  “The moral acrc of the universe is bent towards justice.”  NO IT ISN”T!!  Is there a worse century in history than the 20^th century?  The slaughter of human beings, and slave labor camps, the oppressions, 100 million people were killed.  Progressives believe that there’s a happy future.

Progressives are focussed on the future, not the past like conservative, and the chief characteristic of the future is that it’s imaginary.  The future they’re focussed on has never existed in human history.  It’s very destructive, as we know from the progressive movements of the 20^th century, which killed 100 million people - in peacetime.

Progressivism is a crypt-religion.  The world is a fallen place, and we’re going to save it.  They see themselves as the savior.  If you think the redemption is going to take place in this life, and you’re going to be part of it, that’s the Hitlers, that’s the Maos, that’s the Lenins.  If we have the power we can do it.  If you believe that social institutions can change things, then, looking at your opponent, they’re not going along with the program, you see yourself as the army of the saints.  Who are they?  They’re the party of Satan.  That’s why they’re rude, that’s why they’re interrupting, that’s why it doesn’t bother them in the least that there are no conservatives on their faculties.  Conservatives are evil!  They’re spreading ideas that are evil, and are keeping people from enjoying this paradise on earth that they’re going to bring about.

Third characteristic is their problematic loyalty to America.  Alienation from America.  America’s the problem; what weakens America is actually good.

Fourth characteristic is that they lie.  You cannot be a Leftist without lying.  Without lying about the most basic strategic facts about who you are.  The kingdom of heaven on earth that they’re going to bring about.  (How arrogant is that?)  Progressives cannot telegraph their agendas.  How can they be so delusional?  Because in their minds, these are just building blocks to a Socialist America.  If you are prepared to use the IRS to punish your political opponents, if you have a healthcare system controlled by the government that controls the services that can save the lives of loved ones, and you have spy agencies that know everything that’s going on, you don’t need a secret police to destroy any opponent. 

Bill Ayers:  I despised Bill Ayres because I was a Marxist revolutionary, and he was a rich, snot-nosed irresponsible twit, and an ignoramus.  Which he remains today. 

If you believed you could bring about heaven on earth, what lie would you not tell, what crime would you not commit?

The more noble and lofty the idealism the bigger the crime it will justify.  (quoting Nietzsche).

Read their books.  The most extreme racist views.  Racist against white, but they’re still racist views.

Progressives show contempt for the people they’re defending: to say that’ they’re brainwashed all the time, and have no volition of their own.  They allow themselves to be socially constructed.

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COP15 Biodiversity Conference

Vincent J. Curtis

4 Dec 22

A synod of the woke, called COP15, is supposed to be held in China soon.  This UN COP concerns biodiversity, and the purpose of the synod is to bewail the evils visited upon the world by western civilization.  And China is a fitting place to bewail the evils of western civilization.

The conference, however, has had to be postponed because, of all things, the resilience of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and in particular its Omicron strain.  No one, though, sees the irony that, in this case, biodiversity in viruses is unconsciously regarded as bad.

The usual collection of circus side-shows will make their displeasures known during the synod, in particular Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil.  The two ought to be at war with one another, but aren’t.  You see, CO2 is an unalloyed good for plant life on earth.  The increasing CO2 content in the air has boosted crop yields, and has been a boon to any life form that lives by photosynthesis.  One can see from space the greening of the planet earth.  And plants form the basis of the world’s food chains; without plants, there would be no life on earth.  And rising CO2 levels means healthier plant life.

Thus, if you believe in biodiversity, as Extinction Rebellion allegedly does, you cannot get past the importance of healthy plant life.  Just Stop Oil is fighting tooth and nail to halt the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere, and consequently that which forms the basis for biodiversity.  We know historically that species come and go, and there is nothing special about the set of species now exist.  But if diversity of species is important, then so is CO2, and for much of the earth’s history CO2 levels were measured in thousands of ppm, not hundreds as it now is.

That Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil are not at loggerheads indicates that their true, final aims are not in opposition.  Their point of union is bewailing the evils western civilization has visited upon the world.  Their true, final aims are the end of western civilization, of the enlightenment, of science, knowledge, and education.  And what’s to take their place?  The darkness of China.

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Not the fanatical kind of environmentalist

Vincent J. Curtis

2 Dec 22

RE: What type of environmentalist are you? Op-ed by Emily Kennedy, an associate professor and associate head of the department of sociology at UBC.  The Hamilton Specator 2 Dec 22.

Dr. Emily Kennedy doesn’t hesitate before slanging the enemy.  She writes, “We know the fossil fuel companies have invested heavily into misinforming the public about climate change – targeting conservative voters in particular and exacerbated on social media.”

Actually, Dr. Kennedy doesn’t know any of this, because it didn’t happen and isn’t happening.

Global warming didn’t become a thing until after the Kyoto Treaty.  After that came the fraudulent hockey stick graph that galvanized the imagination.  It was followed by a movie so packed with falsehood that it could only be called “An Inconvenient Truth.”  Then climate change came to be substituted for global warming because, inconveniently, the globe paused its warming.  You can’t have rising CO2 and not have warming, that’s too embarrassing!

Coal companies, oil companies had nothing to say about any of this.  There was no misinformation campaign - the word misinformation didn’t become common until 2020.  And where is ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and Aramco on Twitter and Facebook?  Where’s the campaign aimed at people like me?

It’s all paranoid fantasy.  I’ve probably spent more summers camping in Algonquin than young Dr. Emily’s been alive.  Her specialty is sociology, not environmental studies.  She understands how to drive fanaticism, but knows precisely squat about climate science.

I appreciate, and have appreciated nature.  I guess that makes me a skeptical environmentalist, skeptical of misinformed fanaticism.

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Dr. Emily just published a patronizing book on how to categorize people by their environmental beliefs, and through categorization how to convince the doubtful to become truer believers.

Masking study fallacies are obvious

Vincent J. Curtis

1 Dec 22

RE: Mac-lead research shows surgical mask as effective as N95. By Ritika Dubey The Hamilton Spectator 1 Dec 22.

The paper by Dr. Mark Loeb is not readily accessible on line, but from the news reports it is clear why Dr. Loeb found that surgical masks are as effective as N95 masks for preventing the spread of COVID-19.

Let’s start with the fact that he was studying exclusively health care workers who attended to COVID-19 infected patients.  Front-line health care workers generally have robust immune systems to start with, given that they work with patients with infectious diseases all the time.  Second, from the time-line in the story, these health care workers would have been vaccinated, and if the vaccine worked, the masks they wore really wouldn’t matter.  So, of course there was no difference in masks given the robustness of the immune systems of the trial’s subjects.  If they simply don’t get sick, of course it will appear that the masks perform the same because the masks weren’t providing the protection assumed by the study.

A more general problem with the trial is its lack of control.  I know Dr. Loeb was dealing with trained professionals, but given that the subjects were in Canada, Egypt, Israel, and Pakistan, the exposures to the disease in the different locales are different, and unobservable to him. The geographic separation means the infectiousness to which the trial subjects were exposed can be different, and it wasn’t Dr. Loeb himself fitting the subjects with masks before exposing them to the disease.

Loeb’s study seem to defy common sense, and that’s why, given the trials weaknesses, it can’t be definitive, or even taken as indicative yet.

An N95 is supposed to seal closely to the face, while a surgical mask does not.  A mask that seals closely to the face has a better chance of sealing viruses out than one that does not.  In addition, the filtration material of an N95 can remove viruses from incoming air, while the material of a surgical mask cannot remove particles as small as 0.1 microns.

I know the Spectator proudly is trumpeting this study favorable to their prejudices for mask mandates, but the weakness of Dr. Loeb’s study are glaring and his study should by no means be taken as deciding anything.

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Trudeau: A study in technique

Vincent J. Curtis

30 Nov 22

In my analysis of Trudeau’s testimony before the Commission examining the invocation of the Emergencies Act, I observed a number of rhetorical and dialectical tics that he exhibits so often that they constitute a technique he employs to protect himself politically.  These are: to portray himself either as a hero or as the innocent victim; you cannot blame him for what he does; he has numerous unnamed friends who give him “reports” convenient to him; a habit of discrediting his opponent with bad-faith calumny or insinuation; truth being imposed by those with power, he has no compunction about insisting that his truth is *the* truth; and a habit of self-justification.

In this brief scrum with Global News reporters earlier today, we can observe elements of these characteristics.  He was asked for his take on the proposed “Alberta Sovereignty Act.”  He responded:

 

“Obviously, we’re going to look at this very, very closely [inaudible].  But we’re already seeing a number of Albertans expressing real concern [his invisible, unnamed friends again] by the fact [here comes *his* truth, a calumny] that the Alberta government is trying to by-pass the legislature on a number of issues.  These are some things that are, obviously, going to play out over the coming weeks and months, but our focus remains [here comes the hero] on Albertans getting affordable child care [*his* truth], making sure that Albertans are part of a growing, cleaner economy that are going to see good jobs and protect our environment for years to come [*his* truth straight out of the WEF, a smudging of his destruction of oil & gas jobs, agriculture by reducing fertilizer use, and attack on cattle ranchers for cattle flatulence].  Moving forward, on safer communities which includes banning military style assault weapons [*his* truth, which insinuates a calumny against those who oppose him].  These are things we know Albertans care about.  [*his* truth, obtained from his invisible friends from Alberta]”

 

“We’re going to focus on delivering for Albertans the way have [he’s a hero] we know [here comes more of *his* truth] the exceptional powers which the premier is choosing to give the Alberta in by-passing the Alberta legislature it’s causing a lot of eyebrows to raise in Alberta [so his invisible friends tell him], and we’re going to see how this plays out.  I’m not going to take anything off the table [he said this before invoking the EA], but I’m also not looking for a fight [don’t blame him for what he is forced to do by Alberta].  We want to be there to continue to deliver for Albertans [he’s a hero].  There’s going to be things that we agree with that government [they’re not us] on; and there will be things we disagree with them on.  My focus is always going to be constructive [he’s a hero, don’t blame him for being forced to act.] in terms of delivering for people across the country. [he’s a hero]

The adverse reference to the Alberta Sovereignty Act giving the Alberta cabinet so-called Henry VIII powers (causing eyebrows to raise!) is more than matched by the Henry VIII powers conferred on the Trudeau cabinet in the Greenhouse Gas Pricing Act, which gave the Liberal cabinet powers without reference to the legislature.  But don’t expect consistency when you’re dealing in bad-faith.  Another example of *his* truth that calumniates his opponent in bad-faith.

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