Monday, July 8, 2019

Did Blasey Ford Lie to Congress?


Vincent J. Curtis

8 July 2019

In the course of her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee evaluating the fitness of then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh for elevation to the Supreme Court, Christine Blasey Ford specifically denied knowing about or involvement in the use of hypnosis to change memory.  Shortly after her testimony and after Kavanaugh’s confirmation was voted out of committee, there sprang rumors that she had in fact co-authored a paper on the very subject of the use of hypnosis to change, and even create, “memories.”

The paper involving therapeutic uses of hypnosis (involving the creation of artificial situations) co-authored by Christine M. Blasey:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jclp.20496

Rachael’s Mitchell’s official report on Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony and allegations:

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4952137/Rachel-Mitchell-s-analysis.pdf

The fact that Ford remembered distinctly that it was Kavanaugh who allegedly groped her in the manner she described, and of a witness to that event, but nothing else – not the year, not even how she got home, could be signs that the alleged memory was implanted by hypnosis.  She recollects no details because they don’t exist and weren’t implanted.  Ford appeared to sincerely believe what she was saying to the committee, and she would be sincere if a false memory had been implanted by hypnosis.  She sincerely believes a false memory implanted into her sub-conscious.

On the Left, there are many people who are willing to be kamikazes for the sake of a higher good, and her testimony before congress may have been Ford’s kamikaze run.
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Tuesday, July 2, 2019

Operation Windsor (4/5 July 1944)


Vincent J. Curtis

3 May 2019
  
In the pursuit to Mons, the Canadian Corps employed an embryonic form of blitzkrieg.  Infantry and tanks, supported by artillery, would advance in the morning.  The tanks were mechanically unreliable and walking speed slow, but the crews would try, best as they could, to crush German machine gun nests and pillboxes.  Overhead, allied aircraft would bomb and strafe exposed German positions in the rear.  The advance would go for 7,000 yards and then stall, having moved beyond range of supporting artillery and being well within range of German guns.

The Germans learned from defeat, but had the Canadian commanders of World War II upped their game?  It seems not.  Hans von Luck, in his book Panzer Commander, described the British tactical method in Operation Goodwood (18/19 July 1944): “As almost always with the British, they carried out their tank attacks unaccompanied by infantry, as a result, they were unable to eliminate at once any little anti-tank nests that were lying well camouflaged in woodland or behind hedges.  The main attack broke down under our defensive fire.”

Let’s return to our hero of last month, Lieutenant William F. McCormick, 1st Hussars.  In an article published in the Waterloo Region Record on June 8, 2011, McCormick recounted the events of June 11, 1944.  “Ordered into action, McCormick arrives to a terrible scene: a field of Sherman tanks burning quietly with no enemy in sight…An order crackles over the radio: Advance.  The order is repeated, Advance.  Then a new request, “Who will volunteer to advance?”  McCormick orders his tanks onto the battlefield…McCormick spies enemy soldiers sitting calmly by their trenches.  They look like they’re watching a sports event… He opens fire on them and advances into the wheat field.  Wham! The tank to the left of him is hit…Wham! A shell explodes into the tank on his right.  McCormick thinks the fire is coming from his right flank.  Before he can find a target, a shell explodes into his tank…[The 12th SS] destroyed 37 tanks and damaged 13 others.”  No infantry screen for the tanks there, either.  New methods were needed in a hurry.

Operation Windsor was conducted to capture Carpiquet village and airfield, both D-Day objectives that McCormick himself had in his grasp.  Carpiquet stood between the Canadian 3rd Division and Caen.  Major General Rod Keller turned the planning over to Brigadier K.G. Blackader commander of the 8th Canadian infantry brigade (Queens’ Own Rifles, Chaudière, North Shores).  The 8th would be reinforced with an attached battalion (the Royal Winnipeg Rifles) and the 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade. (Fort Garry Horse, Sherbrooke Fusiliers, Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa, elements of 79th  Armoured Div).

The plan was for a set-piece battle.  The infantry would advance behind a creeping barrage, supported by tanks on both flanks.  In the air, two squadrons of Hawker Typhoons would provide tactical air support.

Proceeding north to south: a diversionary attack by the Sherbrooke Fusiliers was made against Francqueville.  The main attack against Carpiquet village was made by the North Shores and Chaudière.  The Queen’s Own were to pass through and take the airport control buildings.  The RWR supported by Fort Garry Horse would seize the airfield hangers south of the village.  The approach by the RWR did not go well.  Infantry were subjected to unsuppressed German mortar fire as they advanced across open ground towards the airfield and took fire also from the south bank of the Odon River.  Late in the day, the depleted RWR reached the airfield hangers but were unable to dislodge the German defenders.  The Fort Garry Horse encountered a battlegroup of Panther tanks and were “overwhelmed.”  The RWR were ordered to withdraw under cover of darkness, leaving the airfield in German hands.

Next day, the Germans made three counter-attacks against Carpiquet village, and were repulsed with heavy losses.

Two more battalions behind the RWR would have taken the airfield.  But it was clear that new combined arms methods were needed, and new methods for the timely suppression of enemy defensive fires had to be learned.
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Thursday, June 27, 2019

Democracy does not depend upon Entitlement.


Vincent J. Curtis

23 June 2019

The famous English philosopher Sir Roger Scruton has spoken on the business of what he calls fake subjects and fake disciplines that are proliferating at universities in Europe and North America.  These are characterized by fake scholarship and a fake philosophy that seems to convey authority, enabling people to claim authority for nonsense.  The purpose of that nonsense is to make conformity to orthodoxy the only thing that you have.  If the scholarship is nonsense, the only thing you have are the conclusions, which turn out to be the liberal axioms you started with.  And now to the matter at hand.....

That there even exists a course entitled “Social and Environmental Justice” is proof of the intellectual rot that has set into Canadian academia.  The proliferation of fake subjects and disciplines is worse in the America, and is signified by the course: “fill-in-the-blank-Studies.”

The thesis of Professor James Cairns is that democracy depends upon entitlement.  He cites the case, irrelevant to Canada, of Rosa Parks who refused sit in the back of the bus as required by law in a city of the 1950s deep South.  As an example of entitlement, he asks, “What would have happened if she had given in?”

The short answer is that the civil rights movement would have found someone else.  Rosa Parks was a carefully chosen set up to challenge that law in Federal court.

The general proposition that democracy depends upon entitlement is nonsense, starting with its poor formulation.  And poor formulation is a demonstration of the intellectual poverty of the discipline which offers it.  To begin with, what is meant by ‘democracy?’

And then the word, ‘entitlement.’  Entitlements do not cause democracy – contrary to what the thesis hold.  Canadians have rights and privileges as citizens of this country, but an entitlement refers to something like unemployment insurance and old age security.  Entitlements are things, things that are earned in virtue of something else.  Entitlements have nothing to do with the form of government under which you live.  The German Empire pioneered social entitlements as a means of staving off democracy!

Cairns, with his fake discipline, is hopelessly muddled and the product of his scholarship amounts to nothing more than the prejudices and axioms he started with.
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Up to the ankles in Climate Change


Vincent J. Curtis

26 June 2019

This day the Spectator reported on the damage done to the Lake Ontario shoreline as a result of high water levels in the lake - for the second time in three years.


The Spectator is up to its ankles in evidence of error, and yet it persists in perpetuating the error.  Rising CO2 levels and rising methane levels were supposed to trap more heat in the atmosphere, causing a climate that is warmer and drier.  The Spectator is reporting that Lake Ontario is overflowing because of the unexpectedly cool and wet winter and spring we had.  Oops!

Earlier, the Spectator reported on the problems local farmers were having as a result of the cool and wet winter and spring.  The problems local farmers are having is experience all over North America, and for the same reason: a cool and wet winter.

This wasn’t supposed to be.  The big weather forecasters predicted a warm and dry winter, consistent with the global warming theory.  But that’s not what happened in the actual event.  If climate science were real science, the gap between prediction and actual event would send the scientists back to the drawing board.  But that won’t happen.

Too much politics, too many careers, and too much reputation is invested in the global warming hypothesis – now called climate change on account of the unsustainability of the “warming” hypothesis. Now, rising CO2 is blamed for both hotter and cooler, and for wetter and drier climates, and every bad weather event.

The climate change nonsense would die in an instant the moment it failed to support the progressive political narrative.
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Proportional Representation and Independent Members


Vincent J. Curtis

24 June 2019


As the election of a new Canadian parliament approaches, it is useful to recall a promise made by Liberal leader Justin Trudeau during the last election that set progressive hearts atwitter.  He promised to reform representation in the House of Commons from a member representing a constituency to party representation based on party proportional vote, or proportional representation.

It is hard to tell who were the bigger fools, Trudeau for proposing the thing or progressives for believing him without checking the constitutionality of such a change.

Jody Wilson-Raybold and Jane Philpott remain as members of the House of Commons after being expelled from the Liberal caucus.  Under proportional representation, they (and perhaps the trouble they caused) would have been expelled from the House with their expulsion from the caucus.  Their right to sit in the House would have depended upon their faithful representation of the Liberal party, and the moment they caused trouble, the leader of the party would have the right to replace them with someone who would.  That’s what proportional representation means: no independent members and nothing but faithful party-line votes in the Commons.

If you’re the leader of the party, proportional representation means never having to face a challenge from the ranks.  I don’t think the majority of Canadians are so tied to partisan party interests that they find the idea of an independent member intolerable.

The possibility of Independent membership in the House can make the political show less Soviet-like.
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Monday, June 24, 2019

Canada Declares Climate Emergency

Vincent J. Curtis

19 June 2019


Canada's Minister of Climate Change, Catherine McKenna, is evidently a philosophy drop-out since she doesn’t understand that one cause produces only one effect.  Minister McKenna is pushing the belief that temperatures in Canada are rising as twice the rate of the rest of the world.

I get the theory that rising CO2 traps more heat in the atmosphere, and therefore temperatures should rise.  But the atmosphere being uniform requires temperatures to rise uniformly around the globe in some sense.  That the chunk of the globe called Canada should be rising at twice the rate of the rest means that something other than CO2 is at play.

But what is McKenna’s response?  To double down on CO2 reduction.  Never mind that Canada contributes a mere 1.5 percent of global emissions, and the complete elimination of that won’t matter a whit to CO2 caused global warming.  No, her response is downright Pavlovian.  She can’t even be bothered ask what is causing Canada’s rate to be double, and try to address that cause.

If rising levels of CO2 causes global warming, then the uniformity of the atmosphere requires that increase to be uniform, unless some other causes are at play.  If Canada’s temperatures are rising at double, then some cause other than just CO2 must be at play. Minister McKenna is so religiously fixated on CO2 that’s all she thinks about, and she won’t be rescued by that course in philosophy she missed.
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Australia Declares Climate Emergency


Vincent J. Curtis

22 June 2019


Sydney, Australia declared a climate emergency in a move eerily similar to the one last week by Canada.  From this and other considerations one can draw certain conclusions.

The climate emergency business is being pushed behind the scenes by some political movement.  That hundreds of cities around the world, meaning the English-speaking world, would declare climate emergencies does not happen spontaneously or by accident.

The declaration is nothing but fatuous virtue-signalling.  Australia is a country of 25 million people that contributes 1.0 percent of the world’s annual CO2 emissions.  Like Canada, there is nothing Australia can do to stop the train.


These importunate demands for virtue-signalling is a sign of a religious movement losing confidence in its hold over people.  It thinks that by strenuous re-affirmation of its beliefs that will somehow lead to the action they want.
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