Is NOTCANZ in trouble?

Vincent J. Curtis

14 Aug 2025

NOTCANZ, elsewhere known as AUKUS, (for Australia, United Kingdom, United States) is a military alliance within the Anglosphere that does not include Canada or New Zealand.  It was organized for the purpose of transferring US nuclear submarine propulsion technology to the Royal Australian Navy. Its wider purpose was to counter increased Chinese presence in the Indo-Pacific region.

Something nuclear is a new departure for Oz.  The settled policy of Australia since Hiroshima was to shun nuclear power technology, and there have never been nuclear power electric generators in Australia.  The country has no means of dealing with nuclear waste. By contrast, Canada was an early world leader in the development of peaceful nuclear power, with the first CANDU reactor in service in 1962.  The nuclear reactor at McMaster University in Hamilton, ON, has since 1959 supplied the world with medical radionucleotides. But the political powers in Oz wanted nothing to do with nuclear technology.

The NOTCANZ saga began when Australia started looking for replacements for their Collins class diesel-electric submarines, which had been built in the 1990s by Kockums, a subsidiary of Saab.  The Australians turned to the French, and ordered a dozen of the French Barracuda class submarines, which are nuclear powered, but Oz wanted them with conventional diesel-electric propulsion; these were to be called the Attack class.

This complication caused delays and cost overruns that had the Australians worried. Despite assurances from President Macron himself about the rapid fulfillment of the contract, the Australians suddenly dropped the contract, and embraced an offer for US nuclear propulsion technology for the new fleet of Aussie subs. The cry of “maudit anglais” could be heard from Paris to Canberra, and the Australians paid the French some US$584 million to settle the cancellation.

Aussie submariners had worked aboard US nuclear powered subs, and were absolutely sold on the superior capabilities of nuclear propulsion for the task in view, namely the countering of Chinese presence in the Indo-Pacific region, a strategic end that happily coincided with American strategic policy.  Going with American technology had strategic advantages to the RAN: one being it would strengthen the strategic alliance between the RAN and the USN generally, and especially for the end of countering China; another lying in the difference between French and American nuclear propulsion technology.

American nuclear propulsion technology calls for the uranium to be enriched to the level of 93 percent, whereas the French technology utilizes uranium enriched only to the 6 percent level.  The higher American enrichment enables the reactors to run for the life of the submarine, making refueling unnecessary; the lower enrichment of the French technology requires refueling after ten years service.  Because Australia has no means of dealing with the nuclear waste from refueled nuclear submarines, any jump to nuclear propulsion would favor an American option.  And so, on September 21, 2021, AUKUS was born.

The two Pillars of AUKUS are (1) the acquiring by Australia of nuclear powered attack submarines, the AUKUS class, and the rotational basing of US and UK nuclear powered subs in Australia; while (2) entails “the collaborative development of advanced capabilities in six technological areas: undersea capabilities, quantum technologies, artificial intelligence, autonomy, advanced cyber, hypersonic, and counter-hypersonic capabilities, and electronic warfare; and two broader functional areas: innovation and information sharing.”

Then, in June 2025, just like that, the United States Department of Defense launched a review whether to scrap the AUKUS agreement with Australia and the United Kingdom.

As we’ve seen, the US is falling behind in deliveries of nuclear subs for its own fleet; the capability of delivering AUKUS class boats may not be there; and the US will not deprive itself of nuclear subs in order to fulfill a commitment to another country, no matter how close an ally.

There is a diplomatic opening for Canada here. It is to acquire French Barracuda class subs, with the prospect of leveraging a closer military and diplomatic alliance with France, counterweighting our dependency on the US.

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A Glance Over the Fence

Vincent J. Curtis

9 July 25

 After years of neglect, declining equipment readiness, retention problems, and procurement delays, the nation’s military, under new political leadership, is about to receive a surge of new funding.  This surge presents problems of a different kind.  No, I’m not talking about the CAF and the promises of the new Carney government, but about the US military under President Trump. It’s worthwhile to see how the US military is addressing its problems with acquisition and budgeting, a year before the CAF confronts similar problems of its own.  For this review, I’m going to concentrate on the US Navy.

In his first term, President Trump said he wanted a 350 ship fleet, but the US Navy operated 287 ships in Fiscal Year 2025, six fewer than in FY24.  For FY24, the US Navy requested funding for nine new ships; in FY25, six; but for FY26 the request is for nineteen!

The request for new ships includes the following:1 Columbia class ballistic missile submarine; 2 Virginia class attack submarines; 2 Arleigh Burke class destroyers; 1 America class amphibious assault ship; 1 San Antonio class amphibious transport dock; 9 medium landing ships; 2 John Lewis class oilers; and 1 Tagos class ocean surveillance ship.

The Columbia class will replace the Ohio class of subs that form the sea-based leg of the nuclear triad. (The others being land-based ICBMs and USAF carried bombs). The Columbias are supposed to be extremely stealthy carriers of ballistic missiles, and will be equipped with 16 Trident 2 D5s.  This class of 12 subs is expected to cost $132B. (Surprise: The program is already running behind schedule!)

The Virginia class sub is the USN’s current fast attack submarine. It can track enemy subs, and launch Tomahawk missiles. One of these requested ships will include a Virginia class payload module, which increases its missile load-out significantly.  Delivery of Virginia subs already on order is nearly three years behind schedule.

The Arleigh Burke class destroyers escort aircraft carriers, launch Tomahawk cruise missiles, and provide a ballistic missile and, with their Aegis combats systems, air defense also. The FY26 acquisitions are of the so-called the Flight III models, which come equipped with the AN/SPY-6 air and missile defense radars, a major upgrade over the AN/SPY-1D system on the Flight IIs. The Flight II DDGs are now pushing past $2.2 billion in cost, up from $1.8 billion. 

The America class Assault Amphibious ships are a mini-aircraft carrier for Marine Corps F-35Bs and helicopters.

Tagos ocean surveillance ships tow a sonar array that tracks submarines, and can map the ocean floor

Costs are rising, and deliveries are falling behind schedule: seventy percent of construction is behindhand.  Despite the shipbuilding budget doubling over the last 20 years, the number of ships the US Navy operates has remained essentially unchanged.

The FY25 ships won’t enter service for another 4 to 6 years. Delays are a real problem: the Kennedy, the next aircraft carrier, is delayed by two more years; and this may force the fifty year old Nimitz into another deployment or two. American procurement doesn’t run like a Swiss watch either, and looking to the US to supply Canada with naval assets may prove futile.

Out of a total defense budget request of US$962 billion, the USN portion is $292 billion, of which $248 billion is for the base budget.  The USN wants to increase its authorized strength by 12,300 to reach 344,600 sailors in FY26. In the US, funding above base is optional, and the selection of programs comes down to political decisions, if they’re funded at all.

One observes that the capabilities and size of the USN are astonishing, that delays and cost overruns are the norm at the bleeding edge of technology; that political neglect has ramifications years after it ends, that hesitation inhibits readiness and costs lots of money. The RCN can’t window shop and think over too much longer if it expects no gaps in capability and meet the budget,

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I Decline an Invitation

Vincent J. Curtis

12 Aug 2025.

I received the following invitation to attend a “TD Walter Bean Lecture” at the University of Waterloo, to be delivered by Sir Andrew Steer, as follows:

Hi Vincent,

The climate crisis is accelerating — and so is the need for courageous leadership.

Join us Monday, September 29 for a compelling public lecture from Sir Andrew Steer, former President & CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund and one of the world’s most influential climate leaders.

From building resilient cities to restoring ecosystems, Dr. Steer will explore what’s working, what’s failing, and how countries like Canada must lead — at home and on the global stage.

I replied as follows:

Dr. Frayne;

I’ve been a critic of the global warming/climate change fraud for over 30 years. Regardless, the question for Canadians is why, given that Canada is responsible for only 1.5 percent of global CO2 emissions, should Canada attempt to lead on anything related to CO2 reduction? Canada isn’t a part of the problem and therefore can’t be part of the solution. India and China far surpass Canada in emissions, and they’re doing nothing to slow the growth of their emissions of CO2. Even now, our burning forests are emitting multiple times the amount of CO2 that Canadians themselves emit annually, making a mockery of any feeble attempts on our part to reduce our CO2 emissions by some fraction.  A question, often asked but never answered, is by how many degrees will sacrifices by Canadian reduce the global temperature in the year 2100? The answer is in the hundredths of a degree Celsius. Immeasreable.

The very concept of a global temperature, on which the climate change panic rests, was destroyed in 2007 by two Canadians, mathematician Chris Essex of UWO, and Ross McKittrick of UG. They observed correctly that the earth, not being at thermal equilibrium and temperature being am intensive thermodynamic variable, the earth has no temperature, and that statistics can’t supply what physics denies. Their paper is found in J. Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics Vol 32 No 1 pp 1-27. They demonstrated that, given the many ways of calculating an average, from a set of numbers, trends of temperature both up and down can be obtained from the same data set by different methods of calculating the average.

Given all this, that Canada should lead on anything related to climate change reduction, is absurd, and never mind the implicit assumption that climate change can only be for the worse!

To save both ourselves the embarrassment of my heckling the speaker, I must decline your invitation.

Regards;

Vincent J. Curtis. M.Sc.

 

The C2 we could have had

Vincent J. Curtis

5 Oct 23

The squad support light machine gun, or LMG, has been a part of Canadian fighting technique since the Hundred Day campaign of WWI.  Then, an infantry platoon was task organized into one section of Lewis gunners, one section of grenadiers, and two sections of riflemen.  When encountering a German machine gun nest, usually featuring a water-cooled Maxim MG-08, the Lewis gunners would put continuous suppressive fire on the nest, enabling the grenadiers to get close enough to take it out with Mills bombs, predecessor of the 36 grenade.

After the war, Canadian defence went to sleep.  The British, however, closer to the danger, kept awake enough that they had ready to manufacture the Bren LMG and the No. 4 Lee-Enfield.  During the war, Canada’s John Inglis Company manufactured Bren guns, both in .303 British, and, for the Chinese Nationals, in the rimless 7.92x57 mm Mauser calibres.  The Canadian government created Canadian Small Arms, a Crown Corporation, to manufacture No. 4 Lee-Enfield rifles in a factory in Long Branch, Ontario.

When WWII was over, millions of rifles and thousands of Bren guns were left in Canadian hands.  Bolt-action rifles were obsolete, and semi- or fully automatic rifles were the firearms of the next major war.  NATO was formed in 1949 to keep the Soviet Union from invading through the Fulda Gap; and, NATO being a collection of countries, standardization became essential.  One of those standardizations was on the 7.62 x 51 mm NATO cartridge.

No particular design of rifle was chosen as the NATO standard, and Canada settled on the FN FAL pattern, which was dubbed the FN C1A1.

FN in Belgium had been a distributor of Colt Patent Firearms in Europe since 1900.  One of Colt’s designs was the Browning Automatic Rifle, or BAR, which the United States Army adopted in 1918.  The BAR was never tactically deployed in WWI, but the BAR remained in American service as a squad support weapon.  FN sold commercially a few Colt-made BARs in Europe in the 1920s, and in the early 1930s FN tooled up to manufacture their own pattern BARs.  FN made some improvements, such as adding a pistol grip.

For FN, WWII came and went; their factory was overrun, but the Germans didn’t use the BAR.  A number of militaries were then in the market for new weapons, and FN sold them their improved BAR, named the BAR-D.  The principal improvement to the sturdy and reliable BAR was a quick detachable barrel, making the FN BAR a true LMG.  Anyone who’s changed barrels on the C6 will be familiar with how that detachment system worked, and when the 7.62 mm NATO cartridge came along, the BAR-D1 was chambered in that calibre.

John Inglis hadn’t made a Bren in a decade, and it made no sense tooling up to convert 3,000 Canadian Brens into 7.62.  The factory in Long Brach was also long idle, and it was tooled up to make the FN C1A1 under licence.  The C2 was just a C1, except for a heavy barrel, and a three position change lever, which permitted automatic fire.  Its standard magazine was 30 rounds instead of 20, for the C1; and it was nothing for Long Branch to make a heavy barreled version of their standard production rifle.

The lack of a detachable barrel, and being on the light side for an automatic rifle, made the C2 rather ineffective as a support weapon, and it was uncontrollable in longer bursts.  For a little more money, Canada could have purchased 2,713 BAR-D1s from FN instead, since it also used FN-FAL magazines, and Canada would have had an excellent Bren replacement in the section support role.

Canada, in the C6, did get a BAR, of sorts.  The working parts of the C6 are nearly the same as the FN BAR, except turned upside down for feeding from the top.

The BAR-D1 is the C2 that Canada should have had, but luckily didn’t need.

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Fifty-four or Fight!

Vincent J. Curtis

15 May 25

“..somebody drew that line many years ago, like a ruler, right across the top of the country..” observed President Donald Trump in his first Oval Office meeting with Prime Minster Mark Carney. That line, sometimes called the 49^th parallel, was drawn by his predecessors, in 1818 and 1846.

The Treaty of 1818, between the United States and Great Britain, settled matters, including boundary disputes, that arose from the War of 1812.  The 49^th parallel was agreed as the boundary from Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains.  West of that terminus lay the Pacific North West, and no final resolution was reached concerning that region.

Called the Oregon Country by the Americans, and the Columbia District by the British (whence British Columbia), the Pacific North West, which includes the Columbia and the Snake Rivers, may be defined as that part of North America bounded by the Pacific Ocean on the West, the 42ºN latitude on the south; the continental divide on the east, and 54º40’N latitude on the north; the last being the southern boundary of Russian America.  Louisiana Territory, purchased by the United States from France in 1803, lay on the east side of the continental divide.

Captain George Vancouver, on behalf of Great Britain, discovered and mapped its sea coast; and Alexander Mackenzie, trekking from Canada by land, reached the Pacific coast in 1792.  For America, Lewis and Clark reached the mouth of the Columbia River in 1805.  In these early days, the fur trade was the main economic reason for controlling the area.  Starting in 1807, explorer David Thompson began developing the region around the Columbia River on behalf of the Montreal-based North West Company, then a competitor to the Hudson’s Bay Company.  In 1811, at the junction of the Snake and Columbia Rivers, Thompson formally claimed the land on behalf of Great Britain, the company erecting Fort Nez Percés on the site.  The American Pacific Fur Company set up a trading post at the mouth of the Columbia in 1811, but the company collapsed during the War of 1812, and its assets fell into the possession of the NWC.

Americans were as bad at geography then as they are now; many believed that the Louisiana Territory extended up to Russian America; and in 1818 American negotiators offered to saw-off the disputed territory along the 49^th parallel, a westward continuation of the boundary from the Rocky Mountains.  The British counter-offered the Columbia River as a boundary, as this would protect the trade of the NWC, and later the HBC. No resolution was reached, and the Treaty of 1818 established a joint occupation of the region for a period of ten years.  Discussions continued, but the Americans could not accept the Columbia River boundary, for they would be left with no deep-water port on the Pacific coast.  (San Francisco Bay didn’t fall into their possession until the Mexican-American War of 1846) Lacking resolution on the boundary dispute, the joint occupation agreement was renewed.  It is noteworthy that in this period the only continuous white presence in the region were the employees of the HBC. At its height around 1840, 34 outposts, 24 ports, six ships, and 600 employees were managed out of Fort Vancouver (modern day Vancouver, WA), and by 1846, only perhaps 3,000 white people lived in the disputed area.

Facts on the ground began to change in the 1830s when Americans began to settle in the Willamette Valley, and American presence rapidly expanded after the opening of the Oregon Trail in 1843.

By 1844, the annexation of the Republic of Texas was a central issue of the presidential election of that year. Texas was a breakaway province of Mexico; her annexation would inevitably lead to war; further complicating matters was that Texas would enter the Union as a slave state, upsetting the balance in the U.S. Senate, and spreading slavery outside the South.  The Oregon Country thus represented to the Democrats the prospect of balancing future free states in the new territory against Texas, as well as appeal to American expansionist sentiment. The danger was having to fight two wars against two enemies simultaneously.  Fighting a war with Great Britain over Oregon would see, as in 1814, the Royal Navy bombarding the major U.S. cities that lay on the eastern seaboard, which included Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Charleston.  Hence, the pledge to “Fifty-four Forty or Fight” was an audacious move by James K. Polk and the Democratic party in the election of 1844, though the slogan itself was actually coined by the Democrat press.  Polk raised tensions further in his 1845 State of the Union address, declaring that that U.S. title to the entire Pacific North West was “clear and unquestionable,” and he later recommended giving one year’s notice of the termination of the joint occupation agreement. Newspapers urged that it was “by right of the manifest destiny of the United States to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us.”

The British, however, were equally adept at rattling the sabre; but were also aware of the low commercial value of the Columbia District to Great Britain as compared to trade and good relations with the U.S.  Both sides were therefore privately inclined to compromise, and it was President Polk who re-offered the proposal first made by his predecessor, President John Tyler, for the 49^th parallel as the boundary, sweetened by ceding the entirety of Vancouver Island to Britain.  Lord Aberdeen, who sought good relations with the United States, agreed, and the matter was settled by the Oregon Treaty, signed on June 15, 1846.  The Mexican-American War broke out on April 26, 1846.

And that’s why the 49^th parallel forms the boundary between Canada and the United States today: by the proposals and agreements of successive U.S. administrations, from James Monroe to James K. Polk.

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Buy American!

Vincent J. Curtis

29 Apr 25

Donald Trump is particularly responsible for driving Justin Trudeau from office. Confronting Trudeau with a list of complains and demands at a pre-inaugural meeting at Mar-a-Lago, Trump began teasing and, sensing weakness, taunting Trudeau as the “Governor” of the 51^st state. He claimed that the United States subsidized Canada to the tune of $200 billion, and said that he was tired of it. Canada, as an independent country didn’t work without these subsidies, and that Canadians would be much better off if they became American, with him as president.

It never occurred to Trudeau to reply that if Canada were a 51^st state, she wouldn’t be able to extend political asylum to Mr. Trump when the Democrats attacked him with lawfare. President Putin of Russia missed a chance to humiliate the Biden Administration by not offering Mr. Trump political asylum in Russia, in the midst of his legal travails before his election in November, 2024.  But I digress.

To date, no one has asked President Trump to account for this $200 billion claim.  In recent years, Canada has opened up a trade surplus with the United States in the order of $60 billion a year.  In every voluntary economic transaction, both sides think they benefit. In this annual set of voluntary transactions, America nets $60 billion worth of Canadian stuff, and Canada takes in exchange, pieces of paper covered in black and green ink, and embossed with the image of a deceased American worthy. Canadians consider this fair exchange!

An accumulation of large amounts of these pieces of paper, ordinarily, would become intolerable; but Canadians continue accepting these pieces of paper in exchange for their stuff because other people will take these pieces of paper in exchange for their stuff that Canadians want. A German will exchange these pieces of American paper for a new BMW.  The Chinese will exchange them for an iPhone.  Americans will even exchange them for other, virtual, pieces of paper known as stocks and coupon-bearing bonds.  That’s the splendour of having the world reserve currency; and, even more wonderful, is that, if America runs short of these pieces of paper for her own domestic needs, she can always print more of them on the presses in basement of the Federal Reserve building.

To reduce the trade imbalance, Trump introduced tariffs.  From the founding of the Republic to the introduction of the income tax in 1913, the U.S. Federal government earned most of its revenue from tariffs.  They’re easy to collect.  The era of the greatest expansion in economy, population, and power of the United States was from 1870 to 1910, and this is the period that Trump looks to for inspiration.  With tariffs, Trump can reduce income taxes without loss of revenue to the Treasury.

What can Canada do to deal with Trump? One smart thing the Canadian government can negotiate is to buy American made military equipment: that satisfies simultaneously a number of Trump’s demands: to take active measures to reduce the trade deficit; to increase military spending, and it’s an endorsement that American made military equipment is the best in the world.

So, what to buy: the F-15EX, the F-16 Viper, or (okay) the F-35? In WWJD (What would Jacky Do, EdC Vol 28, No. 5.), I showed that small were the differences in dimensions between a Type 26 Frigate and an Arleigh Burke class destroyer, and the American made ship costs less than half the projected cost of the frigate -- with exchange.  Canada needs more helicopters, drones, the latest in mobile artillery; Canada could use Abrams tanks, and there are plenty of innovative small arms from Knight Armaments that could be purchased for trial in lots of 500 to 1000.

How can Canada pay for all of this? By completing the Keystone XL pipeline, which will enable America to ship American produced oil and LNG to Europe by substituting Alberta production for American for consumption.

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Russian Su-35 shot down

Vincent J. Curtis

12 June 25

A Russian Su-35 Super-Flanker was shot down over Russia on June 9, 2025, and Ukrainian sources suggest it was downed by a Ukrainian flown F-16V Viper aided by a SAAB 340 Airborne Early Warning & Control (AEW&C) aircraft.  The reports are unconfirmed, but the German newspaper BILD reports that a Ukrainian F-16V fired a long-range AIM-120 guided missile at the Su-35 from a distance of 50 miles using tracking data provided by a SAAB 340 AEW&C, which had been tracking the Russian place from a distance of several hundred miles.  The Russian air-superiority fighter crashed near the Russian city of Korenvo, which lies in the Kursk Oblast. The Russian pilot parachuted safely, and survived.

The AIM-120 missile is a “fire and forget” type that ordinarily obtains its initial tracking data from its host plane, in this case the Ukrainian F-16.  Had the F-16 used its own internal radars to obtain a lock on the Russian jet, the Russian jet would have detected the presence of the F-16 and the pilot become aware of the possibility of an attack. The radars on board the SAAB 340 are much more powerful than can be fitted into an F-16 and, to the Russian jet, an AWE&C aircraft, being unarmed, posed no threat, besides being hundreds of miles away from it.

But the tracking data from the SAAB 340 provided the initial lock to the guided missile, enabling the F-16 keep its radars turned off, remaining effectively invisible to the Russian jet. If the Su-35 saw the F-16 at all, it would have seen it turn away at a great distance and the Russian pilot would not likely suspect that an attack was coming.  If the Russian pilot detected the incoming missile, it would have been too late to take evasive action.

There are other theories as to how the Su-35 was shot down, but there is no doubt that one was, and if it was by an F-16 carrying an AIM-120 aided by a Saab 340 AEW&C, it demonstrates a new development in air combat.

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YANKEES REPULSED!

Vincent J. Curtis

5 Feb 25

STONEY CREEK – (Special to Esprit de Corps): After a desperate night attack by British forces upon the invading American army, the Yanks have withdrawn to Grimsby, and left the battlefield in British possession.

After losing Fort George on May 27, British forces (Brig-Gen Jⁿ Vincent commanding) withdrew to a position on the Burling Heights at the head of the Lake, disbanding militia units along the way.  One brigade of Americans, (Brig-Gen W^m Winder commanding), pursued Vincent as far as Grimsby, where he halted and awaited reinforcements. Winder was joined by a second brigade, Brig-Gen Jⁿ Chandler, commanding. This division advanced to Stoney Creek; and, on June 5^th, halted at the farm of the Gage family.  The plain object of the invaders was the capture of York.

Lt-Col Jⁿ Harvey was dispatched by Gen Vincent to reconnoiter the invaders’ camp, returning with both a plan and the password.  Harvey proposed a surprise night attack as the means of repulsing the American force, which greatly outnumbered the British and had a stronger artillery arm. Vincent agreed, and placed Harvey in command of the operation.  Thus, a British force consisting of five companies of the 1/8 (King’s) Reg^t of Foot, the 49^th Reg^t of Foot, approx. 700 men were to hurl themselves against a force five times their strength. Noteworthy among the gallant 700 were 30 militiamen (Lincoln, York, Oxford & others), and 12 native allies.

The gallant 700 was guided from Burlington Heights to their attack position by Mr. W^m Green, a local lad familiar with the terrain, the location, and the lay-out of the camp. Our fortitudinous British departed at 23:30 o’clock.  They followed the old Indian trail called locally, “The King’s Street”, tromping in silence over ten miles to reach Stoney Creek, where they saw the campfires of the unsuspecting invaders.  A couple of native allies dealt with a sentry, silently, in their usual fashion involving bow, arrow, and tomahawk.  Cheers of success cost us the element of complete surprise, and the attack went in noisily.  The plan had been to bayonet the sleeping invaders in their tents; but now the alarm was raised, and, though in a state of confusion, the alerted invaders stood to arms.

The charge was initially successful; but the terrible disparity in numbers began to tell. The invaders had time to form ranks and direct their musketry in the direction of the of coming commotion; their artillery became effective, and their center held.  At this desperate moment, the brilliance of Yankee generalship commenced to turn the tide in our favor.  Attempting a maneuver at night, the invaders left his artillery exposed. The gallant 49^th (Maj Chas. Plenderleath commanding) charged and captured two guns. The impulse of their charge carried the 49^th into a surprised invader regiment (believed to be the 23^rd U.S. Infantry Reg^t), and in the course of pursuing the flying 23^rd, our boys encountered and captured no less a personage than the invading commander himself, Brig-Gen Chandler, Esq. Not to be outdone by his superior, Brig-Gen Winder surrendered himself to the self-same captor of Gen Chandler, Pte A. Fraser, leaving the invaders leaderless, and hapless.

Retreat in confusion began by regiments.  Both generals now being guests of the 49^th, Yankee command fell to a Col Jas. Burn, who ordered a retreat, which didn’t arrest until the flying invaders reached their old camp near Grimsby.  In less than three-quarters of an hour an invading force strong enough in daylight to brush aside resistance and capture York, sure in its superiority, was knocked on the head and driven back, their commanding generals and four artillery pieces held as prises de guerre by a force a fifth of their size. At dawn, a victorious Col Harvey ordered his troops to withdraw into the woods lest invader scouts ascertain how few were the victors.  When it was clear that the invaders were at Grimsby, Harvey’s men embraced the hospitality of the camp the invaders had so graciously left to them.

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Mark Carney's Habit of Deception

 Practicing Deception

Vincent J. Curtis

4 June 25

In the brevity of his presence on the public stage, Canadian Prime Minster Mark Carney has made numerous demonstrations of deception, which are contrary to trustworthiness, to good order, and to good government.  No, I’m not referring to the accusations of plagiarism or to his claims to the successful work of the Minister of Finance of the Harper Government, the late Jim Flaherty; no, I’m referring to actions like those below.

One of first acts as Prime Minister was to announce that he was cancelling the carbon tax, and, with a flourish, signed a document in an impressive looking red folder. The show resembled U.S. President Donald Trump signing an Executive Order: poof, it was the law of the land. The carbon tax was created by legislation, and it would take legislation to repeal it; hence, the carbon tax was not actually cancelled by his signature as Carney claimed it was; and the piece of paper in the impressive red folder that Carney signed had no force of law.  Orders-in-Council are documents that have force of law in Canada, and these are signed by the Governor-General upon the advice of the Cabinet or the responsible Minister. The OIC that the Governor-General signed in this instance merely reduced the rate of the carbon tax to zero; the law creating the carbon tax is still in force and on the books, and the tax rate can be raised at any time by another OIC: a carbon tax on commercial products like gasoline and diesel fuel is still the law of the land; the legislation hasn’t been repealed, either by Carney’s signature, the Governor-General’s signature, nor, so far, by Act of Parliament.  The show was political theatre that looked like a Trumpian exercise of power to the casual viewer.

Another series of acts of deception by Mark Carney concerned retaliatory tariffs by the Canadian government on goods imported from the United States; these tariffs were imposed in retaliation to tariffs suddenly imposed by the Trump Administration on Canadian goods. Carney’s tariffs were announced with great fanfare, and were offered as a sign of Mark Carney’s toughness and decisiveness against Trump; “elbows up” and all that.  These tariffs were supposed to collect $20 Billion, which were to be put towards the relief of those sectors of the economy affected by the Trump tariffs.  Secretly, on April 16^th, within weeks of their imposition, Carney introduced a program of exemptions, crafted in a way that makes it look like the tariffs remain in force, but any importer can request, and upon request receive, an exemption from paying tariff on goods imported from the United States.  This program wasn’t published in the Canada Gazette effectively until after the election (Published April 25; election April 28), though the exemption program came into force on April 16^th, i.e. before being published in the Canada Gazette.  This is why the Liberals refuse to answer the question put to them in the House of Commons, “how much tariff has been collected so far?” And “how can the government provide relief, or support, to those sectors of the economy affected by the Trump tariffs, when we’re collecting no money for it?”

Another area of deception concerns Bill C-69, the anti-pipeline legislation.  Carney has been making allusions to the construction of “nation building projects” that enjoy “consensus”, and hasn’t rejected openly the idea that oil and gas pipelines from Alberta qualify as “nation building projects”, at least not yet.  He has proposed get-arounds to deal with specific projects he approves of.  In the case of the anti-pipeline legislation, he’s hinted that a special piece of legislation would be crafted to override the sticky provisions of C-69 for that particular case.  This is not good-government legislating; it’s deceiving someone, such as the people who voted for and support C-69 as being decisive against more pipelines from Alberta.  But Carney doesn’t need to come out against pipelines from Alberta; he merely says “if there’s a consensus”, which there won’t be, because the Premier of British Columbia, David Eby, is adamantly opposed to running a pipeline through B.C. to reach tidewater from Alberta; and members of Carney’s own cabinet, such as Steven Guilbeault, are fervently opposed to more oil and gas production from Alberta.  Carney can appear to favor expansion of oil and gas production in Alberta, but be helpless to make it happen, which is his preferred option, given his long involvement in the Net Zero movement. Deceptive atmosphereics.

Another example of deception concerns the “decarbonized barrels” going through oil pipelines, as a condition of building new pipelines.  The process of extracting and upgrading Alberta bitumen was developed in the 1960s; roughly one quarter of the extracted bitumen is burnt to provide the heat and power to extract and upgrade the remaining three-quarters.  “Decarbonizing” means that either hydro or nuclear power replace the combustion of bitumen; that saved one-quarter becoming product for sale, for others to turn into, and burn, as fuel.  Alberta premier Danielle Smith has said that decarbonization has to occur after the pipelines are built; the revenue from a one million barrel a day pipeline will provide the money to pay for the construction of a nuclear reactor to replace the bitumen as the energy source to run the extraction and upgrading process. She’s also said it would be a failure if government had to build all these things, and not the private sector. Carney, the Net Zero guy, refuses to build a pipeline unless it carries “decarbonized barrels.”

Another, particularly disturbing, act of deception concerns the failure to produce a budget in the spring session of parliament, and pretending to be defeated by the summer recess routinely scheduled for late June.  Carney was the man with a plan; the banker, experienced in business; it therefore came as a shock even to Liberal supporters when the government announced that it would present no budget for fiscal 2025-26.  The public shock was so great, that a fiscal update was then floated to be presented in September.  A budget may yet be produced in September. The Carney government, and its immediate predecessor, has had the Department of Finance at its permanent disposal; it has last year’s budget as a recent example; it has last fall’s fiscal update; and it has Carney’s own seemingly omnipotent “experience” available to it, and yet something as basic as a budget is beyond its powers? This is deception; the Carney government doesn’t want the full scale of the fiscal crisis before the country, with a deficit exploded beyond $100 billion, known to the public; at least not yet.  Pierre Poilievre said he would work the parliament through the summer, if elected, to get Canada’s affairs put in order quickly, so pretending to be helpless before a rule of parliament is deceptive.

Carney still enjoys the honeymoon period of his Prime Ministership, and might win a majority if an election were forced on the country right now.  The good atmospherics he generated at the recent First Ministers’ Conference adds to his popularity, or at least to the illusion that something good is being done, and that he is competent.  His Trudeauesque performances in Question Period demonstrate that deception and contempt for its opponents remains the dominant attitude of the Liberal government: the new man isn’t being honest in the House, and nothing has changed despite the change of leader.

It will take a few months for people to see through the deception and fakery of Mark Carney as Prime Minister. His habit of employing deception as the smoother path than to face up to difficulties in a manful way, leads to a breakdown in trust, to bad government; and Canada has already had enough of that.

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Haudenosauee Still Bullying Hamilton

Vincent J. Curtis

12 May 25

The City of Hamilton is once again menaced with trouble by the self-styled “hereditary chiefs of the Haudenosauee,” or Iroquois indians.  This aboriginal aristocracy insists on being consulted, and having an approval, on engineering projects concerning the Red Hill valley, and other places as their whimsy chooses, projects that are far above their capabilities to judge.

The consciences of city councillors are soothed somewhat, if not entirely placated, at this humiliation by the thought that they are bound by the so-called Nanfan Treaty.  It’s a pity no one in the legal department has read it, for otherwise the hereditary chiefs would be escorted from the building; and the city would have to deal with the trouble the chiefs imply they could cause.

The Nanfan Treaty is a straight-up quit claim, “quit claimed onto the King of England forever all the right, title, and interest and all claims and demands whatsoever.”

John Nanfan was the Acting Governor of the-then English province of New York; he had no royal commission to be Governor; and, more importantly, he had no Letters Patent from King Willian III to act as his plenipotentiary to negotiate a treaty with anyone on behalf of the English Crown.  Nevertheless, on 19 July, 1701, representatives of the Iroquois confederacy walked into his office with an offer to surrender lands - which they did not actually possess.  Specifically, the Iroquois Nations deeded to the English Crown their title to Beaver Hunting grounds that they claimed to have acquired by right of conquest in the 17^th century, and that saw the annihilation of the Huron Nation in 1649.  This territory included the Niagara Peninsula, all of South-Western Ontario (the “Land between the Lakes”), the Bruce Peninsula, and the north shore of Lake Ontario as far east as Oshawa.  This and more were part of New France at the time, and claimed, as well as occupied, by French Algonquinian allies, which included the Mississaugas of the Credit.  Much of this territory was subject to the Dish with One Spoon Wampum treaty!

The Iroquois “voluntarily surrendered, delivered up, and by these presents do for us, our heirs and successors forever, quit claimed onto the King of England forever all the right, title, and interest and all claims and demands whatsoever.”  That’s pretty definitive, and raises the question why would the Iroquois surrender title in exchange, apparently, for nothing (albeit land that wasn’t theirs)?  It was ostensibly offered as a gift to the King William III of England, his heir and successors, out of an admiration for him.

The answer seems to be that this was a way for the Iroquois to engage English help to protect hunting and fishing territory, which, up until then the Iroquois had to defend on their own; and, in particular, to drive the Mississaugas out of the Dish With One Spoon territory. For the English, the beaver trade would then flow though English hands instead of through French hands.  But the English did not help, and the Nanfan Treaty fell from the notice of history, until it’s recent revival.

The wording quoted above clearly denies the hereditary chiefs any right to interfere, make claims, or demands, concerning the surrendered territory - that includes modern-day Hamilton. If anyone had a claim, it would be the Mississaugas, but they sold this land to the Crown in 1792.

Naked force is an ugly thing; and submitting to a bullying and humiliating consultative processes is judged a pang the city can endure rather than have to deal with expensive delays and politically difficult confrontations. Nevertheless, there’s no treaty basis for some self-chosen group of indian aristocrats to have a veto over city engineering projects in the Red Hill Valley, or anywhere else.

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Net Zero nuttery

Vincent J. Curtis

1 May 25

Net Zero nuttery is rooted in the belief that carbon dioxide causes bad weather, and that Canada can stop the world from sliding into a climate catastrophe seventy-five years hence. It also means that the year of the tipping point, when the slide into ruin becomes irreversible, is 2030.  Mark Carney has to move fast.

But reaching Net Zero in Canada the task of Sisyphus.  Canada’s forest fires of 2023 produced four times the amount of carbon dioxide that the Canadian humans produced that year; every attempt to capture anthropogenic CO2 by planting forests is but the creation of a time-bomb that inevitably will explode.  A couple years of drought in a mature forest produces plenty of kindling; the fire that destroyed Jasper, AB, was stoked by dried pine trees that had been killed years earlier by the pine beetle.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has pulled America from the Paris Climate Accord, and plans to re-introduce the production and use of “beautiful, clean coal.”  China, he observed at his recent rally in Michigan, opens a new coal-fired power plant every week; and India is not far behind. Both countries make steel by the use of coked coal, still the only practical way of reducing iron oxide into metallic iron.  Mr. Trump also plans to open the north slope of Alaska to oil and gas production under his program of “Drill, baby, drill.”  The curtailment of Alberta’s oil and gas production won’t compensate for these new sources of emissions which Mr. Carney believes will destroy the world.

The cities of Toronto, Mississauga, and Vancouver elected Mr. Carney and his party because they thought he was the man to deal with Mr. Trump, and prevent Canada from becoming the 51^st state of the American Union.  Apparently, these cities haven’t suffered enough crime, homelessness, and degradation of civilization enough to vote Conservative – yet.

Canadians will soon find that Mr. Carney is a lot less than his resume suggests.

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Chris Vokes at Friesoythe

Vincent J. Curtis

23 Dec 24

Friesoythe is a town on the river Soeste in Lower Saxony, Germany, with a population of about 23,000. Originating in the 13^th century, modern Friesoythe is said to be influenced by several cultures: German, Anglo-Saxon, Dutch, Friesian, Swedish, and Danish.  In April, 1945, it was razed by elements of the 4^th Canadian Armoured Division on the orders of GOC MGen Chris Vokes.  Vokes further ordered that the town’s rubble be used to repair roads for the advantage of divisional armoured vehicles.

We last saw Chris Vokes December, 1943, at Ortona, Italy, where, as GOC 1st Canadian Infantry Division, he forced back two German divisions, and captured the town that was the Adriatic end of the Gustav Line. Monty took a dim view of Vokes in that, his first battle as a divisional commander, deprecating him as “a mere cook.” By 1945, Vokes was gaining the reputation as “Canada’s Fightingest General.”

Ortona was a vicious, unexpected urban battle in which the Germans sowed the town with booby-traps and mines.  What Vokes saw was a German Parachute Division willing to cause the utter destruction of a beautiful Italian sea-side town for the defence of the German Fatherland.  Friesoythe also happened to be defended by German Parachute troops who, however, seemed much more inclined to preserve, as the end of the war drew near, the Fatherland’s towns.

And the end was drawing near. Everybody knew it.  By the middle of April, 1945, only the most fanatical Germans were resisting stoutly.  Canadian KIAs were running four or five per battalion a day, and the troops were getting tired of it.

In April, 1945, Friesoythe had a population of about 4,000, most of whom had moved to the countryside as the Canadian Army approached.  The town was defended by about 200 German fallschirmjager.  First up to attack was the Lake Superior Regiment, which, on April 13, attacked the town by frontal assault, and were repulsed after taking 2 KIA and 19 WIA.

Next up were the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada, under the command of LCol Frederick Wigle, DSO, OBE.  Wigle had taken command from the much beloved LCol Dave Stewart, of Hill 195 fame, and quickly endeared himself to his men.  Vokes also had a high regard for Wigle, of whom he wrote in his autobiography, “A first-rate officer of mine, for whom I had a special regard and affection, and in whom I had a particular professional interest because of his talent for command.”

“Wigle decided on a daring flank attack” to capture the town after a night march, which “[took] the enemy unawares”, after the previous attack by the Lake Superiors.

The march and attack were successful, the town being taken and secured by 1030 hrs that morning. However, the advancing companies in the dark missed two platoons’ worth of Germans, who attacked an unguarded battalion Tac HQ.  Wigle was killed by a sniper’s bullet in the back, and perhaps the sniper was a civilian.  Or so it was believed at the time.  Alerted, the advancing companies quickly returned and saved Tac HQ from being overrun.  The Argylls were outraged at Wigle’s death and began burning the town.

Vokes wrote in his autobiography, “I summoned my GSO1…. 'Mac,' I roared at him, 'I'm going to raze that goddam town.”  Vokes had many willing hands, and he ordered that flamethrowing armoured vehicles be dispatched to reduce the town with industrial thoroughness and speed.  Friesoythe’s rubble was used to repair district roads.

Vokes said in 1985 he had no remorse over the destruction of Friesoythe.

The destruction of a captured town may seem shocking to modern Canadian eyes, but in the long history of European warfare, the sacking of a town that resisted capture, and whose needless resistance had caused unnecessary deaths among the attackers, was standard operating procedure, and expected. Sacking taught the world a lesson; and was a catharsis, purging anger, stress, and tension from the attacking troops.  As Ortona, so Friesoythe?

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Chris Vokes at Ortona

Vincent J. Curtis

10 Nov 24

Maj-Gen Chris Vokes CB, CBE, DSO, CD (13 Apr 1904 – 17 Mar 1985) commanded the 1^st Canadian Infantry and 4^th Canadian Armoured Divisions in WWII. He also commanded the Canadian Army Occupation Force until its withdrawal from Europe in 1946. He was accused of being unimaginative as a general, a butcher, whom Monty is said to have called a “mere cook”, a reputation established at the Battle of Ortona in December, 1943.  We will be concerned with establishing the validity of that assessment.

Vokes was born in Armagh, Ireland, the son of Maj Patrick Vokes of the British Army.  The Vokes family came to Canada in 1910, where Major Vokes was employed as an engineering officer at RMC; and the family lived in the BMQs on Ridout Row.

Unsurprisingly, Chris Vokes attended RMC as a cadet, from 1921 to 1925; and was commissioned into the RCEs. After commissioning, he attended McGill University from 1928 to 1927, earning a B.Sc. degree. He took the elite Staff College course at Camberley, England, from 1934 to 1935, and while there was promoted to Captain.  Vokes’ lasting claim to fame in this era was to have made the engineering drawings for the rifle range butts at Camp Dundurn.

Brigadier-General Chris Vokes commanded the 2^nd Canadian Infantry Brigade during Operation HUSKY, the invasion and conquest of Sicily, (July – August, 1943) and Op BAYTOWN, the Italy landings, both under division commander Guy Simonds.  The Canadian Permanent Force between the wars was a very small place, and Vokes and Simonds must have known each other well. Simonds also attended RMC between 1921 and 1925, making them classmates.  In addition, both were Brits and sons of military officers, Simonds having been born near Bury St. Edmonds, Suffolk England; and his father having been an officer in the British RRA.  Simonds, however, was, like his father, a gunner, commissioning into the RRCA.  Simonds attended Camberley from 1936 to 1937.

So, why was Simonds picked over Vokes to command 1^st Div after Samson’s death? Simonds’ brilliance was noted at RMC, but the fact that Simonds was a gunner may have played a part in the selection. The GOC Canadian Army in England, Andy McNaughton, was also a gunner, as was Harry Crerar (RMC 1909; Camberley ‘24-‘25). Simonds did not endear himself to McNaughton after advsing diplomatically that McNaughton should step away from operations, and he was banished to Bernard Montgomery in Africa. Monty noticed Simonds’ gifts, and protected him from Canadian Army politics during and after the war.

Vokes was promoted Maj-Gen and given command of 1^st Div after on 1 Nov 43 after Monty moved Simonds to command the newly formed 5^th Canadian Armoured Division, to give Simonds experience with tanks. Thus it was engineer Vokes in command at Ortona. Not that being a gunner would have helped at Ortona; but the experience might have humbled Simonds, or driven him completely mad.

Many studies of Ortona have been written.  Ortona was not a general’s battle. No amount of artillery, no grand maneuver, no combination of fire and maneuver, no thrusting of reserves at the critical point at the critical moment was going to solve the problem of Ortona, given the band-box, and rugged and soggy terrain in which 1^st Div had to operate. Ortona was a soldier’s and a platoon commander’s battle, a combined arms battle at the platoon and company levels.  The capture of Ortona itself was left to 2 CIB, under the command of Bert Hoffmeister, while 1 and 3 CIBs were forcing themselves north and west of the town in an attempt to cut off its defenders.

Ortona, a town with a peacetime population of 10,000, formed the Adriatic end of the Gustav Line. The approach to the town was protected by a feature that came to be called “The Gully.” This feature, a ravine, was three miles long, averaged 200’ deep, and spanned 200 yards across at the sea-shore.

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 “The Gully” was a ravine, three miles long, averaging 200’ deep, and spanned 200 yards across at the sea-shore, tapering to 80 yards at its tip.  A road ran parallel to the ravine on the German side. This enormous ditch provided cover on the counterscarp, or reverse slope, and made the defenders impervious to artillery fire. The road behind it made admin and mobile supporting fire easy.  Recce snuck right up to the edge of the Gully, observed its excellence as a defensive position, that it was strongly-manned, and reported these details to higher.  These items of intelligence did not deter Vokes from ordering frontal attacks upon it.

It was only after crossing the Gully that the town of Ortona itself could be attacked.  Another problem was that the Gully feature was not well, or even correctly, marked on the topo map. Being impervious to artillery fire, the defenders could immediately come out of their hidey-holes and re-man their MG nests immediately after the lifting of fire. Shades of WWI!. Another problem was the ground was so muddy that tank movement was a problem, the ravine itself was too deep and wide for tanks to cross, and the Germans had developed mines and anti-tank weapons in the interim.

It took several attempts to figure out that “artillery conquers, infantry occupies” wasn’t going to work.  Reconnaissance by battle did discover that the Gully had to be turned at its south-western end, and, with the winning of a VC, it was.

C Coy of the Van Doos, 81 men strong, led by Capt Paul Triquet, VC, with the aid of seven tanks of the OntRs, managed on the night of Dec 14-15, to outflank the Gully around its south-western end, burst through German resistance and, with 17 men and 4 tanks remaining, seized a strongpoint, the Casa Berardi farmhouse; the rest of his regiment joined him and held it for four days, eventually the Germans were compelled to abandon the Gully.

The Germans began preparing Ortona for a deliberate defense on Dec 12, starting by rubbling parts of the town to create defensive positions and obstacles to tanks; they mined and booby-trapped everywhere, and made heavy use of snipers to halt movement in the open. Rushes by tanks were impossible.  What to do? Lt Bill Longhurst of the Loyal Eddies came up with “mouseholing.”  Many of the buildings of the town were of stone and masonry construction, and were connected together like so many rowhouses; by mouseholing was meant the placing by engineers of a charge against the wall that separated adjacent buildings, preferably on the top floor, and blowing a hole in the wall.  Bombers would toss in grenades, entrymen would then rush through the breach and seize the room of the next building, shooting any surviving enemy. The rest of the building would then be cleared top-down with grenades, Stens, and rifles. Rinse, and repeat.  Sound familiar?  Ortona was where these concepts were developed, and by mousholing, no one had to venture outside and risk the German snipers. The innovative use of combined arms: infantry (Loyal Eddies, Seaforths), armor (C Sqn 12RBC), engineers (4^th Field Coy RCE), direct fire anti-tank artillery (90^th Anti-Tank Bty) were essential in driving out the Germans.  Nor can we underestimate the morale factor: the belief in inevitable victory.

By the time the battle was over, 1^st Div. had suffered 502 KIA, and 2339 casualties total.  The German figures are not known, but the 90^th PanzerGrenadier Division was, for all practical purposes, destroyed, while the battalions of the 1^st Parachute Division were reduced to company strength.

Assessment: Vokes’ first time in battle was as a brigade commander in Sicily. Three months after the end of the Sicily campaign, he was appointed GOC 1^st Div, replacing Simonds. A month in that job and the battle for Ortona began. Vokes did not know the ground, did not know the enemy, his strength (2 division) or his intent(deliberate defense in urban terrain); lacking experience, he did not know himself; and the weather turned the ground into mud. He was pressured by Monty to hurry up. Not auspicious auguries for his first major battle all by himself, and the battle not being a general’s battle to begin with. The solution to Ortona turned on the discoveries of reconnaissance by battle, the improvisation of mouseholing, and the innovation of combined arms action at the platoon and company levels.  Do these factors support the contention that Vokes was an unimaginative engineer, a butcher, a ‘mere cook’, as Monty said?

Vokes may have been an inexperienced cook at the time, but the war didn’t end at Ortona.  He continued to be employed as GOC 1^st Div, and Simonds later employed him as GOC 4^th Div in Northwest Europe until the end of the war. Being a Simonds associate may have harmed Vokes’ postwar career. he was never promoted above MGen, as E.L.M. Burns eventually was, and he was employed only as commander of military districts until retirement in 1959.  His Italian reputation stuck with him ever afterwards, valid or not.

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Who were the Pharisees?

Vincent J. Curtis

7 Apr 25

Who were the Pharisees, and why do they appear so often in the Gospels? The Gospel of Sunday, April 6, related the story of the casting of the first stone. In the story, a group of Pharisees hauled an adulteress before Jesus, and demanded from him to know how she should be punished, reminding Jesus that, in accordance with Mosaic law, she deserved to be stoned to death.

The Pharisees, I learned from Gibbon, belonged to a sect of Judaism that strictly adhered to the Mosaic law.  They weren’t just pious, they were ostentatiously pious; and they may have been mutely righteous in their expectation that others be pious as well. Self-righteously pious people exist today, afflicting many religions, and the Pharisees formed a cult of them within Judaism.  When Jesus made reference to people who, during times of fasting, made it obvious to others that they were fasting, he was likely referring in particular to Pharisees.  That they gained no credit with God for their ostentatious piety, was likely taken by Pharisees as a biting criticism, not only for undercutting their pretensions to superior piety, but also because Jesus implicitly was claiming to know the mind of God.

Jesus did not respond immediately to the claimant question put to him about the adulteress by the mob of Pharisees; he sat down and began to draw something with his finger in the dirt.  Making them wait had the effect of quietening the mob, and forcing them to think a little.  After being questioned a second time by a quieter mob about what to do with this woman who deserved by the Mosaic law to be stoned to death, Jesus responded, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

Jesus caught the Pharisees dead to rights; they were hoisted on their own petard.  Not one of them, in their sanctimonious piety, could claim to be without sin. Avoiding sin was the certainly basis of their piety; but the forgiveness of sins was unknown to Judaism; and not one could claim, in the presence of others of their kind, to have avoided sin entirely during their whole lives.  Having concentrated their minds by delay, and by this challenge to their conceit, Jesus returned to ignoring them; and, one by one, the mob realized the game was up, and departed in defeat, leaving Jesus alone with the woman. “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.” he told the woman.  The prospect of the forgiveness of sins was revolutionary in the Jewish world.

Next Sunday will be Passion Sunday, followed by Holy Week, and finally culminating with Easter. Here again, the Pharisees play a central role in this story.  By claiming to be the fulfillment of the Mosaic Law, Jesus was upsetting to their entire world view: he had to be eliminated, ‘cancelled’ (as we’d say nowadays) in the most emphatic manner possible.  Their plan was for Jesus to be put to death, publicly and officially, by the Roman magistrate, Pontius Pilate.

Palestine was then a province of the Roman empire; it was a particularly rebellious one, as it was peopled by the Jews.  The Jews were monotheists in a world of Polytheism; Yahweh wasn’t simply one god among many, on par with Jupiter of Zeus, but the only god there was; Jupiter and Zeus were utter fictions, as well as all the lesser gods of Polytheism.  The Jews groaned under the weight of a Roman government and the abomination of an official religion of Polytheism; they gained no sympathy for their plight by the rigor of their contempt for the treasured gods of Polytheism.

The Roman magistrate administered justice in accordance with Roman law; it was beneath the majesty of Roman justice to adjudicate disputes of religious doctrine among sects of Judaism.  Another, and even more important, responsibility of the Roman governor was to keep the peace; riots and rebellion in the province which he governed were not favorable indicators of his quality as a Roman administrator.

To have Jesus condemned by Rome, the mob, led by Pharisees, took Jesus before Pilate and claimed that Jesus was disturbing the peace, and saying that he was “King of the Jews.” These accusations were calculated to raise the ire of a Roman magistrate: first, by the spectre of public disturbances; and, second, by the threat characteristic of the Jews of forming their own kingdom on the territory of the Roman empire. Pilate was more impressed by the riotous mob before him than by the capital charges against Jesus when he took Jesus into custody.  Jesus was known to have said, “Render onto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and onto God that which is God’s.”; and, so far as Roman justice was concerned, this was a perfectly lawful position for a Jew to take. When, as Roman magistrate, Pilate questioned Jesus about his ‘kingdom’, and Jesus responded “My kingdom is not of this world,” Pilate knew he was in the presence, not of a criminal rebel, but of yet another Jewish mystic who was embroiled in another, tedious religious dispute.  It was beneath the dignity of Roman justice to execute a man who was guiltless of a crime under Roman law, and Pilate knew he could not be party to an official execution of Jesus.  “Truth? What is that?” spat a very worldly Roman magistrate, pressured by the riotous mob on his hands.

It was permissible under Roman law to employ torture to extract a confession; and after having Jesus scourged and crowned with thorns, Pilate presented the tortured figure of Jesus before the mob and said, “I find no case against him.”  When the Pharisees protested about the religious disturbances Jesus was causing, Pilate said, “Take him yourselves and crucify him; I find not case against him.”  Thus, the effort by the Pharisees to have Jesus discredited, legally and officially by a Roman magistrate, failed; and by turning Jesus over to the bloodlust of a mob, Pilate quieted the incipient riot.  A tawdry murder of Jesus would not achieve the religious end the Pharisees desired; and hence the Pharisees carried out a quasi-official crucifixion of Jesus, undisturbed by Roman authority, by which they expected to ‘cancel’ Jesus and the growing religious movement that percolated around him.

For me, learning who the Pharisees were added a new authenticity to the Gospels.  Now, it makes perfect sense for these Pharisees to be the ones who repeatedly challenged Jesus on his knowledge of, and adhesion to, the Mosaic law.  The shadings of local colour in the story of the casting of the first stone aren’t things a writer of pious fictions could retrospectively invent; that story actually happened, and somebody recorded it

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Spec runs hit piece on Tulsi Gabbard

Vincent J. Curtis

9 Feb 25

RE: Canada, start worrying about Tulsi Gabbard. Op-ed by Wesley Wark, a senior fellow at the Cetner for International Governance Innovation. The Hamilton Spectator 8 Feb 25.

Why is the Spectator running this shit-hit piece on Tulsi Gabbard? That desperate for content?  The Spectator knows squat about Tulsi Gabbard, and that goes for their boy, Wesley, who wrote the piece.

Their boy Wesley relies on Hillary Clinton for insight on Tulsi, that she’s “a Russian asset”? Tulsi Gabbard resigned as Deputy Chair of the DNC in 2016 and endorsed Bernie Sanders when she saw how the game had been rigged against Standers and in favor of Hillary. Their boy didn’t mention that.  Nor did he mention that Tulsi is opposed to “regime change wars’ such as the one Hillary launched against Muammar Gaddafi in 2013 (in which Canada participated).  So now, there are slave markets in Benghazi and Libya is the place where refugees depart for Europe. Thanks Hillary. Their boy didn’t mention why Hillary might bear a grudge against Tulsi.

As to her alleged lack of qualifications: so, qualified like James Clapper who lied to congress about not spying on U.S. citizens? (That’s what Trump wants to put her in charge: to stop these abuses.)  Tulsi has a Top Secret clearance already and a clean FBI background check. Their boy Wesley doesn’t have those creds.

As for Canada: Tulsi hasn’t said boo about Canada. How, exactly, does she “threaten the trust-relationship at the heart of our intelligence sharing” that Trump doesn’t already threaten? Their boy doesn’t say. What secrets to we have that she can’t be trusted with, given that ODNI isn’t a line collection agency (& therefore the U.S. has already)?

There’s lots more to say, but the Spectator has to stop publishing Democratic Party shit as if it were journalism. If Tulsi were working for a Democrat, they’d condemn what their boy said as blatant sexism.

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The weaponization of history

Vincent J. Curtis

1 Feb 25

RE: We live in a world where history is being weaponized. Op-ed by Paul Racher. The Hamilton Spectator.

It might be useful to know where this world is that Paul Racher writes about.  One gets the impression that some Western Civ chauvinist dominated his life, but such a person is not representative of real Western Civilization.

Mr. Racher would do well to read Thomas Sowell’s book “Discrimination and Disparities” to learn why the civilization of Western Europe presently dominates the world.  He would also do well to watch at least the first two of the four episodes put on YouTube by historian and classicist Victor Davis Hanson on the origin and rise of Western Civilization, beginning around 850 BC in Greece.  What makes Western Civilization unique and special today is its absence of chauvinism, its willingness to absorb and assimilate what is good about other cultures, but most especially the fact that anyone regardless of race can be Western.  This is not true of the Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and many other cultures.

It’s easy to bash Western Civilization because it’s one of the few that will tolerate it and let you live.

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Greenland? Manifest Destiny!

Vincent J. Curtis

27 Jan 25

President Donald Trump stirred international controversy when he renewed his proposal that the United States acquire Greenland. Though many international observers found this proposal outrageous, it is actually consistent with historical American territorial expansion, and is taken seriously in the United States.

President Thomas Jefferson purchased Louisiana from France in 1803. President James Monroe declared in 1823 American opposition to European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere: the Monroe Doctrine.  In 1845, under President James K. Polk, it became the “Manifest Destiny” of the United States to expand across the entire continent. ‘Manifest Destiny’ became the justification for the Oregon Boundary dispute with Great Britain, which was settled in 1846 by the Oregon Treaty that demarked the 49^th parallel as the boundary between the United States and British North America.  The Republic of Texas was annexed in 1845, sparking the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, that also gained the United States the territories of New Mexico and California. The Gadsden Purchase of 1853 completed the acquisition of Arizona.

In 1867, under President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of State William Seward, purchased Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million, an acquisition called at the time “Seward’s Folly.” When Seward proposed purchasing Greenland and Iceland from Denmark, the proposal went nowhere. In 1910 and 1917, discussions with President Woodrow Wilson concluded with the U.S. acquiring the Danish West Indies (now the U.S. Virgin Islands); but Denmark made an agreement with Britain in 1917 to give her the right of first refusal should Greenland be sold, protecting loyal Canada from envelopment.

The United States occupied Greenland in 1941, after Nazi Germany occupied Denmark and the Danish Ambassador signed a treaty of defence. The U.S. used Greenland for bases to protect the Atlantic convoys carrying Lend-Lease aid to Britain

In 1946, the Truman Administration proposed purchasing Greenland for $100 million, but was turned down. In 1951, the United States signed the Greenland Defense Agreement with Denmark, which permitted the United States to keep the WWII bases and to build new ones.  The U.S. promptly built Thule Air Force Base, with a 10,000’ runway, that become a home to the Strategic Air Command, flying B-36s, B-47s, B-52s, and KC-95 tankers. Reconnaissance flights from Thule could keep tabs on Soviet activity in Murmansk, Novaya Zemlya, and Dikson. Thule still handles 3,000 flights a year.

Presently, the United States maintains 45,000 personnel in Greenland, and Thule AFB is now controlled by the U.S. Space Command.  BMEWS (Ballistic Missile Early Warning System) radars were first installed in 1961 to detect Soviet ballistic missile launches from Russian territory and from submarines operating in the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans.

Thule people moving eastward from Canada occupied Greenland shortly after the Vikings did during the Medieval Warm Period; but while the Vikings died out, the Thules survived, and today comprise 90 percent of Greenland’s population of 56,000.  In 1721, Greenland was claimed it as a Danish colony. In 2009 Denmark granted Greenland self-governance.  President Trump has wondered aloud about the legality of Denmark’s claim on Greenland, and there’s talk that an offer of $400 billion would mollify Danish concerns about an American take-over.

Why would America want sovereignty over Greenland when it already has all the control it needs from a NATO ally, Denmark, for defense of North America? One answer may be mineral wealth. Greenland has large deposits of strategically vital rare earth minerals, the global supply of which is controlled by China.  Access to these mineral deposits may become viable if shipping routes that are blocked by ice year round open in the event of global warming.

Greenland forms the western boundary of the Denmark Strait, one of the passages from the Arctic Ocean into the North Atlantic.

The proposal that the United States purchase Greenland is consistent with a 200 year history of expanding American control over the Western Hemisphere. The United States presently has all the military control it needs for defense, but the mineral wealth of Greenland might make it worthy of acquisition, as Alaska was.

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Elephants in the room

Vincent J. Curtis

23 Jan 25

RE: An economy built on waste. Op-ed by Wayne Poole. The Hamilton Spectator 23 Jan 25.

Once again, the Spectator publishes a Cri de Coeur from a climate nutter who fails to address the multiple elephants in the room. Never mind the nonsense “science” called upon by the writer, the article appears on the day when a foot of snow fell on New Orleans and the Florida panhandle, which border the Gulf of America.

One elephant is, “who is he talking to?” Canada, producing 1.5 percent of global CO2 emissions, isn’t part of the problem and isn’t part of the solution. The United States has just withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accord, and China alone will commission 100 coal fired power plants this year. Canada could disappear, and the alleged danger posed by rising CO2 would remain, which, given the snowfall on the Gulf of America, obviously isn’t going to turn the planet earth into Venus.

As to the dubious “science”: methane at 2 ppm, and nitrous oxides at the 500 ppb range, rank a distant fourth and fifth as greenhouse gases respectively. Carbon dioxide is no threat to global overheating, as demonstrated this week, and these latter gases are of theoretical interest only.  Calling for their demise is part of the anti-human agenda, which I deplore.

The climate hoax has been busted, and its time for the Spectator to acknowledge that.

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