Is COVID a Bioweapon? A conspiracy theory.

Vincent J. Curtis

9 June 21

After Tucker Carlson’s remarkable opening monologue last night on Fox News, I no longer feel restrained about releasing this explosive piece written nearly two years ago.  I submitted to a couple of places for publication, but it was considered too hot at the time. Vincent J. Curtis 28 Feb 23.

 

What follows is sheer speculation.  But it is speculation based on facts.

The proposition to be discussed here is that the COVID virus was an early development bioweapon in a program to address India’s growing demographic advantage over China.

It is often complained about by Canadian social justice warriors that the poor, women, and the racialized are suffering the worst from COVID.  The implication is that racism, sexism, and good old white supremacism are at work in healthcare in Canada, particularly in Ontario.

It is true that a surprising proportion of the patients hospitalized in Ontario with COVID are people of East Indian or South Asian ancestry.  India, as of this writing, is having a very tough time dealing with COVID.  So let’s take it as read that people of South Asian ancestry have a peculiar susceptibility to COVID.

The Chinese Communist Party is scared to death of India’s demographics.  China’s old “One Child” policy is coming home to roost.  Though China has now adopted a three child policy, the demographic damage of decades of the one child policy will be felt over the next thirty to fifty years.  China’s population is beginning to age, and China may see an actual decline in population by 2070.

On the other hand, India’s population is young and growing.  India is expected to surpass China in population in the coming decades.  China has been the most populous region on earth for millennia, and that point of pride will be eclipsed soon by India as a consequence of the policy of the Chinese Communist Party.

Chinese policy going back to the days of Sun Tzu is to take the long view, to win without a battle, and that the Chinese race will eventually absorb any conqueror on account of its vast numbers.  That last point is now at risk.

China has a border conflict with India going back sixty years.  Minor skirmishes instigated by China erupted recently along the so-called Line of Actual Control in the Himalayas.  Indian soldiers worsted the Chinese in these episodes, and Indian media attributes their success to the Chinese soldiers, being the one child of their family, are “precious little princesses” who aren’t willing to risk their lives or even their comfort combatting the rugged Indians.

How would a communist deal with a rising demographic advantage of a rival?  A regime that killed 70 million of its own people would have no qualms about killing several hundred million of the enemy’s population.  The question would be how to do it with minimal accountability.

Although big tech and major media in the U.S. have, for their own reasons, tried to discredit the story that the COVID virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, it is now accepted that it did.  It is also becoming known that, incredibly, U.S. tax dollars might have funded “gain of function” research in the Wuhan lab.  “Gain of function” in this case means taking a virus found on a horseshoe bat, and modifying its genetics to make it infectious to humans.

But what if the level of know-how was such that the virus could be made especially deadly to humans of a particular genetic make-up?  It has been popular for several years to have one’s DNA tested in a lab, and you get a report on your racial ancestry.  The lab work is done in China or is owned by the Chinese; and while individual test results may be private, a picture of genetic characteristics of a region can slowly be built up after enough individual cases are evaluated.

As a bioweapon, COVID is badly designed.  It attacks the very old and the sick.  If you wanted to kill healthy, military age males, the Spanish flu virus is the bug for you.  For this reason, COVID virus may be simply an early development in the project, a project to develop race-selective fatal diseases.  It’s release may have been accidental, or not.

All this is wild speculation; the stuff of the fever-swamps of conspiracy theorists.  However, somewhere there is an intelligence analyst thinking along these lines.

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Vincent J. Curtis is a retired Canadian research scientist, and occasional free-lance writer.

Reject Rouleau, Repeal the EA

Vincent J. Curtis

27 Feb 23

RE: Act quickly on Rouleau’s prescriptions.  Spectator editorial 27 Feb 23.

This editorial summarizes the best that can be said about the Rouleau Report: act on it quickly before it’s import is absorbed.

 

What are Rouleau’s prescriptions the Spectator wants acted upon: strengthening the security state; and that the Emergencies Act be amended to allow the cabinet to invoke it whenever it damn well pleases?  This latter recommendation by Rouleau is an inter alia admission that the Trudeau government invoked the EA unlawfully.  It doesn’t matter that the provision ought to be updated.  The fact is, it was as it was at the time, and the law at the time did not justify the invocation.

Rouleau found the freezing of bank accounts problematic; but the purpose of invoking the EA was to precisely confer the power to do so on the government.  This arbitrary power is contrary to the due process rights guaranteed by the Charter, and the EA is supposed to respect Charter rights.  This is a contradiction Rouleau realizes but can’t quite bring himself to say.

If we are to prevent a repeat of the Freedom Convoy, the answer is to not oppress middle class working people beyond all tolerance with more and more arbitrary state power, imposed ad hoc and in defiance of previous promises.  (Remember Trudeau promised no vaccine mandates during the 2021 election?)

The solution to bad government isn’t more power, the solution is good government, as in “peace, order, and good government.”  Bad government is plainly disruptive of peace and order.

Rouleau fecklessly gave the government a year to respond to his non-binding recommendations; well, what if they don’t?

We don’t need an Emergencies Act.  The one we have ought to be repealed, being dangerous to our rights and freedoms, particularly if the standard of declaration remains a state secret.  The EA of 1988 wouldn’t have passed if it weren’t connected to the CSIS Act, and we didn’t have an EA invocation from Dec 1970 (the end of the FLQ crisis) until Feb 2022.  The EA cannot be invoked and have our Charter rights respected.  You can’t square that circle.  Emergency legislation should be passed through parliament as needed instead.

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Poole’s palpable panic

Vincent J. Curtis

24 Feb 23

RE: Collective insanity of climate change.  OP-ed by Wayne Poole.  The Hamilton Spectator 24 Feb 23.

From the Spectator’s depleted bullpen of climate change spitballers sprints Wayne Poole, who delivers this shell-shocked disaster of an effort.  The world is insane because it’s not paying attention to him and his friends.  It may be cold comfort to Wayne, but he’s completely wrong.

Nobody knows what the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere will be in the year 2100, and hence nobody knows how much greenhouse forcing there will be eighty years from now.  What we do know is that all the models are wrong, predicting between twice and four times the rate of warming so far observed.  The satellite data shows a trend of about 0,1℃ per decade increase since 1979, with a total increase in temperature of about 1 degree by 2100.  There has been no warming over the last eight years.  Nothing to worry about.

Contrary to popular myth, man’s addition of CO2 to the atmosphere has been entirely beneficial, as the greening of the earth and the increase in crops yields testify.

Like most climate change activists, Poole lives in a nightmare of his own making, and he’s in a panic because not enough other people are living his nightmare with him.  You have to wonder who is the insane one?

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Poole no longer boasts that he was trained by Al Gore.

Rouleau Excusing Trudeau Government Crime

Excuse Making

Vincent J. Curtis

22 Feb 23

RE: Learning the lessons of the trucker convoy.  Hamilton Spectator editorial 22 Feb 23.

A “weighty endorsement” made “with reluctance” is just the sort of thing I’d expect from Liberal Party squishes and Trudeau apologists.  But “a series of police and political breakdowns” is not among the legal reasons for invoking the Emergencies Act.  It is quite untrue that the Trudeau government was “left with no option but to use the Emergencies Act.”

One painfully obvious option was for Trudeau to toss the severed head of the vaccine mandate to the jubilant multitude, whose demand being satisfied would have quickly dispersed.  But Trudeau could not tell his medical officials to “find another way;” no, he felt his reputation involved, and tyrants can’t admit to being wrong.

A public order emergency can only be invoked – at least by the language of the statute – when:  “(c) activities within or relating to Canada directed toward or in support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property for the purpose of achieving a political, religious or ideological objective within Canada or a foreign state”

When the EA was passed in 1988, the FLQ crisis of 1970 was in mind.  By “serious violence” the legislators passing the bill understood acts such as the murder of Quebec’s Deputy Premier Pierre LaPorte and the kidnapping of British Trade Commissioner James Cross.  Not so much as a broken window can be laid at the feet of the Freedom Convoy.

The Liberal government took the legal advice of Attorney-General David Lametti that the cabinet was not bound by the language of the statute, and so upon that advice, which remains a state secret under solicitor-client privilege and cabinet secrecy, the Act was invoked.  Hence, we do not know the conditions under which the EA can be invoked, since the cabinet can rely upon any legal advice compliant with its wishes, and the plain English reading of the statute lies discredited as protection and guidance.

The EA was invoked in order that the bank accounts of the protesters could be seized.  DPM Chrystia Freeland had looked into declaring the protesters “domestic terrorists,” as such a declaration would enable the banks to seize the protesters’ accounts.  But going that route would place either A-G David Lametti or CSIS Director David Vignault in an uncomfortable spotlight as it would be on their authority that such a fantastic and unbelievable declaration would be made.  That approach was abandoned in favor of invoking the EA, where blame could be hidden and shared.

The half-hearted justification of the invocation of the EA falls short of what the Trudeau government and his court eunuchs of the main stream media hoped for, and even they know it.

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We now know that the vaccines were useless or worse than useless against the Omicron variant then prevalent, and hence the Freedom Convoy protesters were right on the merits of their case.  The Rouleau opinion amounts to saying the government has to power to unwisely enforce its will even when it is in the wrong.

Sophia Burthen Pooley – a second look

Vincent J. Curtis

20 Feb 23

I’m going to continue from yesterday’s analysis of Sophia Burthen Pooley’s account by examining an alternative timeline.

The story is that Sophia Burthen Pooley was enslaved by Samuel Hatt in Canada, but she escaped and gained her freedom.  Pooley’ story represents the “annals of slavery in Canada.”

Samuel Hatt arrived in the Niagara area in 1799, became a respectable and wealthy member of the community, and married Margaret Thompson in 1807.  Pooley claims that she was a slave of Mohawk Chief Joseph Brant and “hung around Six Nations for about twenty years.”  This time, let’s say that she meant the Haldimand Tract, from 1785 to 1805, and that she spent all this time with Brant and his brethren.

I claim that Samuel Hatt, if anything, bought Pooley out of slavery from Brant, and the question is when?  If Hatt had purchased Pooley out of slavery before he was married, it would have set tongues wagging about this prominent, unmarried member of the community having bought himself a Black concubine.  In 1805, Hatt was twenty-nine years old, and Pooley thirty-three.  If Hatt waited until after he married Margaret Thompson in 1807 before he freed Pooley and employed her as a domestic servant, Pooley would be thirty five, having spent her years from the age of seven living with Joseph Brant and his circle.

Slavery was abolished by statute in Upper Canada in 1793.  By 1807 that law and custom was well established and understood; and Hatt was a prominent and respected member of the community.  The applicability of British law as it pertained to Indians was not then clear, and Joseph Brant was known to have kept slaves well into the 19^th century.  Pooley claims to have been one of them.

It would be illegal for Samuel and Margaret Hatt to have owned a slave in 1807.  If Pooley did indeed come to work for the Hatts, it would have to be because Samuel Hatt had bought her out of slavery from Chief Joseph Brant, and her employment with them would have served as an indentured repayment of her debt to the Hatts.

After she had lived among the Mohawk Indians for perhaps twenty-eight years, suddenly to become a domestic servant in the household of a British worthy must have come as a rude shock to Pooley.  She was in her later thirties by then, and she would be completely at sea as to the manners and expectations of the Hatt family and household.  No wonder she ran away from them, and she had the maturity and experience to do so.

Perhaps Pooley justified her actions to herself by claiming that she was escaping slavery, a believable charge at the time, 1855, when she related her account to author and abolitionist Benjamin Drew.  Nevertheless, Pooley’s uncorroborated account of her experiences are not sufficient to sustain a charge of enslavement by Samuel and Margaret Hatt, or to besmirch Canada’s reputation as a refuge for escaped slaves.

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The Sophia Pooley slave story reeks

Vincent J. Curtis

19 Feb 23

RE: Author says City of Hamilton aggressively removing his signs honouring former slave.  Samantha Craggs · CBC News · Posted: Oct 06, 2021 6:51 AM EDT | Last Updated: October 6, 2021

 

All we know about Sophia Burthen Pooley comes from her own mouth.  In 1855, she was interviewed by American abolitionist Benjamin Drew for his book The Refugee: or, the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada.  This is the story she related of herself.

Pooley was born into slavery in Fishkill, NY, in 1772.  When she was seven years old, (i.e. in 1779) she was taken to the Canadian border and sold to Chief Joseph Brant of the Mohawks.  She lived near Six Nations for about twenty years before being sold to Samuel Hatt, (i.e. sometime between 1799 to 1805), co-founder of Dundas.  She ran away from Hatt and died in Peel Township in 1860. (at the age of 88.  She would have been 83 in 1855.)

Needless to say, Black historians and guilt-smearing White people love the Pooley story.  “Her story is unique in the annals of slavery in Canada and in the United States,” said Toronto historian Adrienne Shadd, who is Black, incidentally.  “She provides us with a different take on this whole situation of slavery, because of the fact that she had been enslaved in Upper Canada and by a person of Mohawk background.”

This is what we know about Samuel Hatt.  He was born in England in 1776.  In 1796, he came to the Niagara region in then Upper Canada to join his brother Richard Hatt, who had built the “Red Mill” near Ancaster.  (This would be within the area known as the “Land between the lakes,” purchased from the Mississaugas of the Credit in 1792.).  In 1807, Samuel Hatt married Margaret Thompson (1784-1825), with whom he had ten children.  In 1812, he fought as a Captain in the 5^th Lincoln Militia (“Hatt’s Volunteers”) that accompanied General Sir Isaac Brock on his expedition to Detroit.  Richard and Samuel Hatt made their fortune in land speculation and the building of flour mills.  In 1816, Samuel Hatt moved to Lower Canada and purchased the Seigneury of Chambly-Ouest.  Samuel Hatt died in 1842.

Here are some very obvious problems with the story related by Pooley to Drew.  Fishkill is close to New York City.  New York was not a slave state, and New York City not then noted for slave ownership.  I’m not saying it’s impossible that Pooley was “born into slavery” but even if so there would be no need for her to be taken, at the age of sever, to “the Canadian border” to escape slavery, or to be sold as a slave.  What would a child of seven know about being enslaved anyway?  And why, if the purpose was to sell her as a slave, would she be taken to Indian Territory when she could be sold in New York City?  And if slavery wasn’t then tolerated in New York City, maybe she wasn’t ‘born into slavery’ after all.

The American Revolution, in 1779, was then at its height, and there was no such thing as a “border” with “Canada” in those days.  There was Quebec, as created by the Quebec Act of 1774, and a strip of land on the west side of the Niagara River wasn’t purchased from the Mississaugas by British authorities until 1781.  A border between the Province of New York (as the State of New York was styled prior to the outbreak of the Revolution) and Quebec was nebulous, and to get to the Niagara River from New York City would require passing through the territory of the Iroquois Indians, of which the Mohawks were the most fierce. This is where Pooley might have encountered Brant, but “Six Nations” or the Haldimand Tract was not purchased until 1785, when Pooley was thirteen.

Another problem with Pooley’s account is that Upper Canada abolished slavery by statute in 1793, and Pooley’s alleged enslavement by Samuel Hatt would have to have occurred after that date, since Hatt didn’t arrive until 1796, when he was twenty.  Never mind that the British attitude towards slavery was hostile even before then.(Lt-Gov Sir John Graves Simcoe was an abolitionist, and he was appointed Upper Canada’s first Lt-Gov by Henry Dundas, 1^st Lord Melville, precisely because he was.  Dundas was another abolishist.)

All of Samuel Hatt’s children, except Thompson Clark Hatt (1822-1878) had died before Drew published his book and could dispute Pooley’s account.  Thompson would have had no knowledge of Pooley.

Pooley’s account of herself is uncorroborated, and facts that she alleged are impugned by other facts that we know well, particularly that slavery was illegal when she was allegedly enslaved by Hatt.  Hatt, a leading member of the growing community, was not known as a scofflaw.  And what, exactly, did this enslavement consist of – being a household domestic?  What else was Pooley, likely illiterate, qualified to do as a single woman in her mid-twenties, except being a domestic?  Agriculture in Upper Canada was all subsistence farming in those days, and cotton picking or other harvesting of cash crops didn’t then exist in Upper Canada.

If Pooley, four years Hatt’s senior, was ever associated with Samuel Hatt it would have to be as a household domestic, but not as his slave.  Hatt might well have bought her out of slavery from Joseph Brant.  Her “enslavement” with Hatt might well have amounted to her working off as a domestic servant what Hatt had paid to Brant to acquire her freedom.  White people, known as indentured serfs, had to work the same deal.  They worked off the cost of their passage.

Pooley’s numbers don’t add up.

It was awfully convenient then, and still so today, to pretend that slavery once existed in Canada, and that some leading historical figures are tainted by slavery.  This account of Sophia Burthen Pooley is not strong enough to sustain smearing Samuel Hatt as a slave-owner, or Canada (the legacy of slavery in Canada!) as having been a place where slavery existed.

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Climate Change and sap running

Vincent J. Curtis

17 Feb 23

RE: Maple trees get jump on syrup season thanks to climate change.  By J.P. Antonacci.  The Hamilton Spectator 17 Feb 23.

“The fast start to maple syrup season continues a trend of maple trees loosening their sap earlier and earlier.  ‘Part of global warming,’ Richardson said.”

 

The sap begins running in maple trees in Ontario about the middle of February every year, regardless of the weather.

The saps running the climate change narrative at the Spectator do so year round, regardless of the facts.

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Islam over Canada

Conflicts of Interest

Vincent J. Curtis

13 Feb 23

RE: Blanchet is the one who should resign.  Op-ed by Mohamed Lachemi, President of the former Ryerson University. The Hamilton Spectator 13 Feb 23.

The question is: why is the Spectator running inflammatory opinion pieces from people with blatant conflicts of interest?  Author Mohamed Lachemi is a big-time Muslim, the president of a university that dare not speak its name because of past association with residential schools.  He’s calling on Bloc Quebecois leader Yves-Francois Blanchet to resign because Blanchet is “unworthy of his position.”

Lachemis is defending Amira Elghawaby, a bigoted Muslim fanatic who was appointed by Justin Trudeau allegedly to call attention to Islamophobia in Canada, but really to appeal to Ontario’s Muslim community in time for the next election.  Elghawaby’ brief is to complain about Quebec’s Bill 21, which imposes the policy of laicité upon anyone representing the Quebec state.  In practice this means no religious symbols, no niqabs, no burkas, and no hijabs can be worn; and no crucifixes either, but never mind.

Being called upon prejudicial tweets she made, Elbhawaby said she was sorry for the offense some took at her offensive remarks, which she didn’t retract or repudiate.  Naturally, Blanchet was unimpressed, and called for this compromised fanatic’s position to be scrapped.

To her rescue comes Lachemi, who calls upon Blanchet to resign – for insensitivity and Islamophobia.  Blanchet is “haranguing a woman of colour,”  “Blanchet’s comments came just days after the sixth anniversary of the mosque shooting in Quebec city, which took the lives of six people, “ and “stoking Islamophobia by word and deed can have deadly results.”  But when Islamic sects bomb each other’s mosques in Pakistan and kill scores, that passes without comment; Blanchet is insensitive!  Beating up on a woman – of colour!  It’s offensive to Islam!  (oops!) Er, it’s so unchivalrous and unchristian and ungentlemanly!

Justin Trudeau is playing his divide-and-conquer strategy again in the run up to the next election, and the appointment of a highly compromised fanatic as Islamophobia czar is a part of it, and part that strains national unity since it alienates French Quebec.

We don’t need more strains on national unity. Piling on criticisms of French nationalists from more compromised Muslims, engaging in blatant conflicts of interest, makes it tougher on Canada.

I guarantee you, Islam have no interest in the national unity of Canada.

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Indigenous knowledge

Vincent J. Curtis

11 Feb 23

RE: Contract to search for graves criticized.  CP story by Stephanie Taylor.  The Hamilton Spectator 11 Feb 23.

I’ve always wondered at the expressions, “indigenous knowledge” and “indigenous wisdom.”  What makes them different from knowledge in general and wisdom in general?  Now, we have enlightening examples of Indigenous knowledge and indigenous wisdom, and they turn out to be species of the crudest self-dealing and racism.

To advance the identification of bodies buried in these alleged residential school graveyards, the federal government issued a $2 million contract to the International Commission on Missing Persons.  This Netherlands-based institution specializes in identifying human remains of those killed or gone missing in war and major disasters.  The Commission was hired to help after the 2013 Lac-Megantic rail disaster, which saw the center of the town burned out.

Not good enough for Kimberly Murray, former executive director of Canada’s inaptly named Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and an “independent” special interlocutor on residential school graves.

“They have no competency with aboriginal people within Canada,” she protested, as if the bodies of ‘Aboriginal people within Canada’ were different as human bodies from all other human bodies around the globe.  In what respect, Murray did not say; but her reasons become apparent presently.  Giving this contract to a non-aboriginal organization “risks causing harm” and “lacks transparency.”

If the contract had been awarded to some stood-up aboriginal organization that, in turn, sub-contracted the Netherlands based Commission to do the actual work, that would be okay.  The Indigs would get a cut.  By Ottawa hiring the Commission directly, the indigs got cut out.

The whining continued.  “They don’t understand the constitutional regime that we’re under.  They don’t understand Section 35 constitutional protected rights. They don’t know anything about Indigenous laws and protocol.”  As if any of this mattered in the identification of bodies.  As if Dutch people were incapable of understanding a briefing on matters relevant to their charge.  What plainly matters to Ms. Murray is that they’re not indigenous.  Federal silver is being passed out, and an indig isn’t getting his palm crossed with any this time.

This could also be a case of psychological projection: the incompetence Ms. Murray sees in her compatriots in race she thinks is also true of white people, disregarding how we came to this pass.

Then, Murray comes clean: “My concern is that it’s not indigenous led.”

There it is.  Ms. Murray is in no sense an “independent” anything in respect of indigenous anything.  She’s up to her neck in conflict of interest, and her complaints here are nothing but special pleading.

It would be disastrous if these radar indications turn out not to be graves at all.  The country would have been pulled through an emotional knot-hole unnecessarily, and the backlash would be terrific.  By keeping control over all aspects of excavating ground radar indications, Big Indig hopes to avoid a massive embarrassment.

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BTW. Kinberly Murray is a member of the "Kahnesatake Mohawk nation" in Quebec.  Independent, indeed!

 

 

Green steel made with nuclear power

Madcap economics

Vincent J. Curtis

9 Feb 23

RE: Will Enbridge pipeline lock in CO2 emissions? Op-ed by Eugene Ellman, who writes on sustainable business and finance.

For a guy who writes about sustainable businesses, Eugene Ellman ought to be panicked about Dofasco’s madcap attempt to make so-called “green” steel.  To be sustainable, a business has to be economically viable, and making steel by hydrogen alone is the most uneconomical way of doing so.  Dofasco will be utterly uncompetitive with steel makers everywhere else, especially Indian and Chinese makers who will continue to use coal.

To make steel with hydrogen alone, you need massive investments in electrical generation.  The footprint of a wind farm and solar panel complex needed to make that much hydrogen would be intolerable, especially in a province fighting to keep its green spaces. You’re going to need nuclear generation.  So, how “green” now is that hydrogen, and that steel?

Green steel is an economic disaster.  Pursuing the chimera of “green” steel wouldn’t be taken seriously but for the cult of climate change.  It is not “sustainable” economically.

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People who talk about “sustainable” anything don’t know what they’re talking about.  They think they mean “steady-state,” which is impossible.  None of the four stages of an insect’s life cycle is sustainable, and that’s why they go through different stages.  And insects have been around for hundreds of millions of years.

Of Earthquakes and Climate Change

Vincent J. Curtis

8 Feb 23

RE: 15 million people live under threat of glacial floods: study.  AP story.  The Hamilton Spectator 8 Feb 23.

Thousands of people are dead in Turkey from an earthquake, thousands more lie trapped in rubble, and the Spectator runs a quack story on climate change.  15 million people are at risk of death from climate change!  They live next to lakes in which a mountain glacier could conceivably calf an iceberg, or release an ‘outburst flood,’ and the resulting rush of water could drown everybody!  It actually happened in Peru in 1941!  (before climate change, incidentally) And for the sake of those 15 million in China, India, Pakistan, and Peru who won’t move, we have to go broke.

Millions of people choose to live in known earthquake zones, like in Turkey.  Millions of people choose to live near the ocean, and are exposed to the risk of a tsunami, as happened in Fukashima, Japan.  It’s not up to us in Canada to fix that by impoverishing ourselves.

And just who issued this newsworthy bit of worry?  Unnamed people, who wrote an unnamed article that appeared in the Hansard of the climate change movement, Nature.  It’s better and more effective when you write the warnings from unnamed “experts” and disaster risk “scientists” without opening the curtain and exposing the real Wizard of Oz.

Climate change is the pathetic, all-purpose narrative of the bored and the brain dead.

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It’s time to cut the stupidity on Climate Change, Canada.

Vincent J. Curtis

7 Feb 23.

RE: It’s time to cut out ties to fossil fuels.  Op-ed by Heather Lambert.  Lambert is a volunteer with the Kitchener-Waterloo Chapter of the Citizen’s Climate Lobby.  The Hamilton Spectator 7 Feb 23.

It remains a mystery why the Spectator blithely continues to run op-eds by the utterly uninformed who pretend to expertise.  The op-ed writer obviously failed to watch a nine minute viral video by Konstantin Kisin in which he demolishes the argument offered in the op-ed.

Canada, by her own heroic efforts, can do nothing to stop the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere.  If Canada disappeared, it would change nothing.  The future of CO2 in the atmosphere will be decided by the world’s poor – in India, China, Latin America, and Africa - who don’t want to be poor anymore.  So forget about advising what Canada ought to do.

The good news on the climate front is that the world’s atmosphere isn’t warming despite rising CO2 levels.  As Steve Milloy’s viral tweet publicized, NASA satellite temperature data shows the global average temperature hasn’t risen in eight years and five months! The world isn’t going to hell in a hand basket after all.  Global temperature might rise by a degree by 2100 based on current trends.  Above about 100 ppm CO2 concentration has little to do with the greenhouse effect.

The global warming/climate change argument has always been about control, about world government, and hobbling the economies of Western countries.  It time to take notice of that fact and of the actual science.

Enough with the fake experts!

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Followers of this blog will have heard Kisin’s argument made here several years ago.  Milloy’s too.

Coming home to roost.

Vincent J. Curtis

7 Feb 23

RE: Mask rule wouldn’t have eased virus surge in the fall, report says.  A CP story by Liam Casey and Allison Jones.  The Hamilton Spectator 7 Feb 23.

No wonder this report was buried.  What’s true now was equally true two and a half years ago.  On August 1, 2020, the Spectator was informed of the futility of masking, along with specific reasons why that was so.  An enterprising reporter could have put the argument before the laughably named “science table” and asked for a refutation.  But no, the Spectator chose to bury the story, and missed the scoop of the decade.

The Spectator was informed week by week and even day to day of the calamity and incompetence of Ontario’s response to the COVID pandemic, of the mistakes and incompetence of the “science table” on which no eminent scientist, engineer, or economist sat.  All buried, for the good of the team you understand.

Even Dr. Kieran Moore was exposed for his incompetence.  He clung to mask mandates to the very end, May 2022.  He couldn’t see the evidence before his eyes.  Now we know he was not an expert, that he was the vessel of an advisory body that finally came to see the light, and that is why Dr. Moore didn’t impose a mask mandate last fall.  Not because of his own expertise, but because of advice from people more expert than him.

What a farce.  People instinctively know the COVID pandemic was badly handled.  That discontent will remain beneath the surface for a long time.

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See my postings on Kieran Moore: Thumb-Sucking to the last (11 Feb 22) and Theater, Not Science (14 Feb 22) and the ever-popular The Futility of Masking (1 Aug 20)

China and the new Indo-Pacific Strategy

Vincent J. Curtis

29 Nov 22

Not long after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was publicly berated by Chinese President Xi Jinping for allegedly leaking the content of confidential discussions to the media, Canada released a “long-awaited” strategy for involvement in the Indo-Pacific theatre.  The document outlines a ten year plan for increasing Canada’s military, diplomatic, and economic involvement in the region to counterbalance China’s expanding presence there.

Several years ago, under President Xi, China introduced its “One Belt, One Road Initiative.”  The aim of the policy is to increase China’s influence, both economic and diplomatic, around the globe, and by implication displace the influence of the United States.  This is a new departure in China’s long history.

For thousands of years, China has been a world onto itself.  It customarily contained between a quarter and a third of all humanity.  It meant something to be Chinese racially and culturally; all others were considered barbarians.  If you were Chinese, you were a subject of the Emperor, and we saw an example of this old mentality in the discovery of Chinese police stations in Canada.  China’s diplomatic interests were with its contiguous neighbours: the Mongols, South-East Asia, Tibet, and Turkic Khanates to the west, including that of the Uyghurs.  China never became an overseas imperial power.  Yes, it sent its people overseas, but not to colonize or rule, as European countries began to do in the 15^th century.

Because of its self-imposed isolation, ordered by the Emperor in the mid-15th century, China fell behind Europe in science, technology, wealth, internal cohesion, and military power.  Consequently, in the 19^th century, China came to be dominated economically by European powers.  Later, Japan, advancing rapidly in development, seized Manchuria from China in 1931, and in 1937 became engaged in a savage war of conquest that did not end until 1945.  The communists took control of “mainland” China in 1949, and under the rule of Mao sent Chinese soldiers into Korea to fight for communist control of the entire peninsula.

The world-wide “One Belt, One Road Initiative” is thus a new departure in China’s diplomatic history.  An offshoot consistent with that policy is aggressive moves into the South China Sea.  It is this part that is bringing China into conflict with the United States, Australia, and the Philippines, and is causing great disquiet in Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia.  India has also taken notice, and physical confrontation has taken place in the Himalayas along the so-called “Line of Actual Control.”  The One Belt, One Road Initiative extends tentacles into Africa and South America, but that is a topic for another day.

Given that it is his signature policy, and has met thus far with disquieting success, President Xi is unlikely to give it up.  The Chinese are very big on Sun Tzu, and that most eminent of Chinese strategists would advise caution, patience, endurance, and to refrain from battle until victory is well-nigh certain.  China will push and menace, but is unlikely to resort to a test of arms unless victory is swift and sure.  Besides, what has China to gain by military conquest: lands that are not contiguous with the mainland?  Lands occupied by barbarians?  The objective of Chinese policy on its far-flung neighbours is the long traditional one of China: dominance and control, not necessarily occupation and governance.

In a conflict with China, the objective of the United States would be regime change.  At a minimum, that would mean replacing Xi Jinping with another communist.  A more ambitious goal would be the wholesale replacement of Communist Party rule, and that would involve bloody revolution.  As General Douglas MacArthur observed, and Japan demonstrated, it is foolish to get involved in a land war in Asia.  If it came to a test of arms, an invasion of China is out of the question.  At best, coastal cities might be occupied.  This points to air and naval power as being the dominant means of prosecuting an armed struggle in peacetime with Communist China.

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There ought to be hell to pay

Vincent J. Curtis

3 Feb 23

A couple days ago, the Spectator ran a news item that asserted authoritatively, and on the basis of scientific analysis, that mathematically models shows that 2,800 died as a result of COVID ‘misinformation’ in Canada.

The problems with this claim are obvious, and leave the conclusion open to dispute; but what is indisputable is that Canada blew half a trillion dollars on COVID measures, in CERB, lost revenue, and unforeseen expenses.  Never mind the cost to the private sector with disruptive lockdowns and useless mandates.

Now, we are beginning to see the medical costs that the irrational response to the pandemic had.  Cancer screenings that were skipped; children’s vaccination programs that were skipped, and countless operations that are medically necessary but don’t need to be done today.  A three year backlog developed, and now there’s a crisis.

In addition, tens of thousands of “excess deaths” are occurring now, when there ought to be fewer deaths than expected - the pandemic having cleared out the unhealthy.  And tens of thousands is a lot bigger than 2,800.

The irrational mishandling of the COVID pandemic is going to cost more lives than the measures might have saved.  The national economy is still in disarray and debt grew irresponsibly.  The inflation we are experiencing is the direct consequence of financing that debt.

There ought to be hell to pay for this mismanagement: in the medical profession, in media, and in politics.  But so many are up to their necks in complicity, justice will never be done in this life.

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See the 30 Jan 32 post "Bullsheet in service of the agenda."

How easily they were fooled

 Vincent J. Curtis

2 Feb 23

RE: Dofasco aims to build pipeline to service ‘green steel’ project.  The Hamilton Spectator 2 Feb 23.

Throw the word green around, and the gullible sit up.  But you can’t fool Mother Nature, or the thermodynamicists responsible for building Dofasco’s ‘green’ iron-making process.  Dofasco says it’ll need half a billion cubic meters of natural gas annually to run the new, ‘green’ iron-making process.

My back-of-the-envelope calculation estimates that this amounts to 256,000 metric tonnes of carbon, producing just under a million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.  Switching from one fossil fuel, coal, to another, natural gas, reduces emissions to the extent that hydrogen is able to participate in reducing iron oxide to metallic iron, but carbon still does the bulk of the work.  The story doesn’t say how much coal Dofasco expects to discontinue using.

This ‘green’ iron and ‘green’ steelmaking is a farcical boondoggle.  It’s all about looking good and pretending to be good.  It can’t produce steel in the quantity and at the low cost of the blast furnace – BOF method.  The Chinese and the Indians don’t care about climate and making steel the old way, are going to eat the ‘green’ steelmakers’ lunch.

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1 cubic meter of natural gas contains 0.512 kg of C.  500 x .512 = 256.  times 1,000,000/1000 kg per metric tonne.

Hijab is cultural and political, not religious

Vincent J. Curtis

1 Feb 23

RE: Hijab stands for a belief in a way of life.  Op-ed by Farah Ahmad.  The Hamilton Spectator 1 Feb 23.  Ahmad works in the communications department in the Ahmadiyya Muslim community of Hamilton.

It’s kind of weird being asked to celebrate National Hijab Day, especially when a hijab is a cultural thing not a religious thing, as writer Farah Ahmad admits.  Nothing in Islam speaks of a woman’s obligation to wear a hijab, for otherwise those wearing a niqab would be in the wrong.  Islam speaks of a woman’s need to be modest, and a woman’s hair being visible is not deemed immodest in the West, or in East Asia, sub-Sahara Africa, among Australia’s aborigines, or aboriginals of North America.  A hijab is a cultural thing, not a religious obligation.  And it has come to stand for a belief in the way of life, that life being Islamic, and specifically Shari compliant.

So, why am I celebrating a symbol of Islamic compliance?  Nobody celebrates the pope’s mitre, and there is no National Scottish Kilt Day, though perhaps there ought to be.

The reason is that the hijab has become the symbol of political Islam, as distinct from religious Islam.  The hijab has become a symbol of compliance with Sharia, a distinctly political thing.

Quebec’s Bill 21 is the target of hijabbery.  Quebec has taken the stand that laicité, the policy of French secularism, shall prevail in Quebec.  The hijab being a symbol of a political religiosity, the wearing of it by representatives of the Quebec state was forbidden.  Simple.

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