Immigrant condemns Canada as racist colonizer

Vincent J. Curtis

15 July 20

Today, the Hamilton Spectator ran a piece written by Hina Saeed.  My guess is that her diatribe against racist, colonialist Canada is an effort to drum up business for her law practice.  Lacking self-awareness, she believes that she is not subject to the ramifications of the ideologies she spouts.

It’s rich indeed to read Hina Saeed, a young, up-and-coming female lawyer, complain about Canada.  She says that Canada was founded on racial injustice, and we have a long history of denying it. Systemic racism, etc., etc.  She calls for the dismantling of structural inequities, and for the implementation of an anti-oppression framework as the foundation for this social change.  Whatever.

Her mainstream government funded agency has been taking a critical look at the perpetuation of colonization!

Saeed clearly accepts no responsibility for the historical injustice of Canada’s founding, for its long history of systemic racism, or, strangely, for the ongoing act of colonization in Canada’s continuing existence.  She doesn’t try to square the creation of the framework for societal change with democratic processes.

Saeed has not suffered from this racism or injustice herself.  She has benefited greatly from Canada.  She is a successful lawyer.  But if she wants to talk nonsense about Canada being founded on racial injustice and systemic racism, then let’s also talk seriously about the slave-traders that are in her background.  And if colonization is the continuing evil of Canada, then why hasn’t she taken her belief to heart and moved to the Muslim world?  Except the history of Islam is a history of military conquest, fire and sword, that sort of thing.

I can see her article as a marketing tool, but the content shows once again that students are being taught in school to despise Canada.  They can be quite arrogant in their ignorance.

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The Consequence of Perfectibility

Vincent J. Curtis

13 July 20

We can all agree that Canada is perfectible.  After all, that’s why legislatures pass new laws and why protesters protest: to make Canada more perfect.

This means that in the past, Canada was less perfect that she is now.  Perhaps a lot less perfect.  To observe Canada’s past imperfections with shock and anger is to reveal both one’s ignorance and an arrogance.  Of course Canada had her flaws – duh!  The three million Canadians of 1885 didn’t have the education, insight, experience, and wealth of 2020.  People in 2155 will look down upon those of today for their risible hubris.

It is fashionable these days to condemn Sir John A. Macdonald, and many want to pull down his statues.  It never occurs to them to wonder why people put up a statue to him in the first place.  It was because Macdonald, more than anyone else, created the geographical entity called Canada, and he kept it from being overrun and absorbed by the United States in the late 19th century.

If you despise the treatment of the plains Indians by Macdonald’s Canada, how much worse would they have fared at the hands of the 7th U.S. Cavalry?

After hubris comes nemesis.  People today need to be more humble when evaluating the past.  Macdonald was a man of his times, as we are of ours.  Long after Macdonald’s death, people chose to honour him.  What makes them wrong, and you right?
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Mandating the Useless

Vincent J. Curtis

9 July 20

Today, the Spectator provided details on the by-law that will mandate masking.  The by-law permits home-made and ad hoc masks without mandating the material out of which the mask is to be made, or the nature of its construction.  These are crucial if air flow is to pass completely through the material and not around it, and the material is such that it can capture the virus.  The conclusion is that Hamilton City Council is going to mandate things that don't work simply to look like they are doing something.  The something they are doing boils down to the enforcement of a new progressive social tic, the wearing of masks in public.  It is a sign of progressive control over society.

The Spec article was informative, and its details show that mandating the wearing of masks has to do with social control and little to do with public health.  The proof of this is found in the details of what passes for a suitable mask: scarves, bandanas, balaclavas, and anything made at home regardless of the material.  There is no concern for the efficacy of the material to block the passage of a virus, making the order useless for public health.  All that’s left is an enforcement of a new social tic, the wearing of a mask in public.

Also telling are the expectations laid on business owners.  If an unmasked person enters a business, the owner is expected to order the customer to comply with the city masking by-law, and if the customer refuses then the owner is expected to order the customer to leave promptly.  The public is conscripted into the enforcement of this law, a kind of social control we’ve read about in an Orwell novel.

There is no scientific basis for ordering mask-wearing, and that is why the public health experts have been so reluctant to recommend the masking of healthy people.  If masking did the trick in preventing transmission, then there was no need for us to suffer a lockdown.  We could have masked everyone and carried on.

The ordering of masking is nothing but the enforcement of a new social tic.  The masks permitted under the by-law have no proven efficacy.

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Mandating masks after its all over

Vincent J. Curtis

8 June 20

Today's Hamilton Spectator ran three articles of interest.  The first was a news story on Hamilton hospitals having no Covid-19 patients for the first time since mid-March.  The story also quoted the infected and death count to date, and these are quoted below.  The second story was that city council plans at its Friday meeting to unanimously approve a new by-law mandating the wearing of masks.  The third article was a weird tattle-tale piece by Canadian Press headlining that Conservative leader Andrew Scheer was spotted in a Toronto airport lounge not wearing a mask.  The story came complete with picture.  Obviously the hounds of correctness are chasing and barking at every deviation from correctness they can find.  You can't fat-shame, but you can mask-shame.

The horses haven’t just left the barn, they’ve galloped over the hill and are now out of sight.  City hospitals are free of Covid-19 patients for the first time since mid-March.  The curve hasn’t been just flattened, it has been driven down to zero.  Out of a population of half a million, there were a total of 856 probable and confirmed cases, and 44 deaths, according to the Spectator report, and 91 percent of cases have been resolved.

Now, our city council turns to the matter of mandating the wearing of face masks.  The credentialed experts on masking, Dr. Theresa Tam, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and the World Health Organization have been ambivalent about the efficacy of mask wearing.  Sometimes yes, sometimes no, depending on wind conditions and the alignment of the planets.  The data, insofar as anybody cares, shows that mask wearing is helpful when worn by a sick person.  Nevertheless, the city council proposes to get with the fashionable rather than the science and the data.

The mandating of masks now has to do with social control and appearances than with measurable health benefits.  It arms the scolds and finger-waggers who can’t leave other people in peace.  Speaking of which, Canadian Press ran a tattle-tale article –complete with picture – of Andrew Scheer not wearing a mask in a Toronto airport lounge!  Horrors!

The numbers and the science say no need to harass people more.

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Woke Progressives sorta love Canada, if only.

Vincent J. Curtis

7 July 2020

The Hamilton Spectator today ran an opinion column by Margaret Shkimba headlined, "Canada Day 2020 left us a lot to reflect on."  Shkimba is another woke-progressive.  A few pithy comments on it below:

Shkimba’s latest column once again demonstrated her ignorance and arrogance.  She can afford to criticize Canada because she, personally, isn’t responsible for this country’s sins, and she can make all the woke recommendations she likes because she, personally, won’t be affected by any of them. 

She wonders what it means to be Canadian.  Obviously, she doesn’t understand the raisin pudding model of Canada upheld by Justin Trudeau.  You can be one of the raisins, or you can be the bland, flavorless gelatin that holds everything together - and is responsible for all the country’s past sins (including holding it together in past times of crises).

She thinks Canada is the greatest country in the world, but can’t call herself a patriot because that term has been appropriated by “white supremacists” – of another country!  I wonder if she has a similar repugnance to the word “white” to describe the colour of a tablecloth, or “supreme” to name the highest court in the land.

She loves Canada – but not this one.  The one she loves is the one that’s better for everyone, and meets all the latest woke requirements for perfection.  (If you’re not perfect, then you’re not really good.)  The one culture that is evil to inculcate is the Anglo-Saxon one.  She falsely states that “Canada has a history of slavery.”  No, Canada does not.  This is woke fiction.  She then says that Quebec is “addicted to whiteness.”  Whatever that means.

She ends with a call to rewrite history.  That’s all we need, historical revisionism in which children are taught to hate their country for all the evils it has done.  One example, cited by Shkimba, is the Cree being allowed to starve to death under the stewardship of Sir John A. Macdonald.  This is more woke fiction, period.  Yet we’re supposed to believe this story sums up Macdonald’s entire career.

Another hash of ignorance and arrogance.  If Shkimba’s lucky, the woke mob won’t discover her because you’re never woke enough.
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Comments on Special Report Panel Discussion of July 6, 2020

Vincent J. Curtis

6 July 2020

A couple points on FoxNews Special Report panel discussion of this evening:

Charles Lane, obviously, hasn’t read Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism, or he would have known where Trump got the expression “left-wing fascism.”  It may be divisive to refer to left-wing fascism, but it is also divisive to call people racists, especially when they aren’t.  And racist is a term thrown about recklessly by the left as a means of silencing and discrediting people who like Trump.

Maybe the panelists should spend more time trying to figure out Trump’s deeper motivations when he tweets out a Bubba Wallace tweet, and comments on the loss of viewership since NASCAR banned the confederate flag.  He’s still engaging in the culture war. Trump is pointing out that collapsing in the face of the progressive-fascist mob gains you nothing.  You lose the people who are paying your bills by bowing the people who couldn’t care if you lived or died.  Has anybody noticed that literally everybody pressing to change the name of the Redskins is NOT an Indian?  Famously, real Indians either like the name, or couldn’t care less.  It’s all a P.C. war, and Trump wants it known that P.C. can be defeated if you stand up to it.  P.C. holds the middle class in contempt.

Don’t worry this moment about Tammy Duckworth’s lies or Susan Rice’s lies.  Both of them blew themselves up with their comments.  And if Biden does choose either one, they’re on tape ready for immediate recall.  As for the NYT and WaPo stories that Brit Hume talked about, everybody knows by now that most of the media have given up all allegiance to truth when it comes to Trump.  Soon it will hit people that lies by the media are a sign of the contempt they hold for the intelligence of their readers.  Contempt for the middle= and working-classes is what got Trump elected in 2016.

If Kanye West gets on the ballot in Pennsylvania and Michigan, Biden is sunk.  Blacks will have some place to go other than Biden.  They want to prove that they’re black despite not voting Democrat.

It only takes 3 – 4 percent of Trump voters to say they’re for Biden to tilt the polls.  Two reasons: they don’t want a mob to riot on their front lawn, and it keeps the Dems from pulling a bait-and-switch at the convention.  If Biden were down, a switcheroo would be explicable.  If he’s ten points up, it’s a lot harder to explain.
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The Stoner 63

Vincent J. Curtis

12 May 2020
  
Eugene Stoner is arguably the most important gun designer of the latter half of the 20^th century.  Stoner went to work for ArmaLite, then a division of Fairchild Aircraft, soon after the division’s founding in 1954.

The aircraft business learned a lot about aluminum during the war, and ArmaLite was established to design small arms using aluminum forgings and fiberglass as means of reducing weight.  Stoner’s first significant design, the AR-10 came in 1955.  It featured the multi-lugged rotating bolt and direct gas impingement operating system presently featured on the Canadian C-7.  The AR-10, in .308/7.62x51 NATO calibre, was much lighter than its conventional contemporaries, the steel and wood FN FAL (FN C1 in Canada) and the U.S. M-14.  The in-line design made the AR-10 controllable in full auto mode because the recoil went straight into the shooter’s shoulder.  The AR-10 was inherently accurate because it had no cycling gas piston and the multi-lug bolt-head provided a more consistent lock-up than the tilting bolt of the FN and the rotating bolt of the M-14.

The futuristic AR-10 entered late into a crowded field and had only limited commercial success.  But the commercial market liked a reduced power cartridge rifle, and in 1957 Stoner downsized the AR-10 into the AR-15 in .223 Remington calibre.  The AR-15 was popular with Asian militaries, and the U.S. Air Force ordered a large number of these in 1960 to replace the M2 carbine, with which Air Force ground personnel were equipped.  In 1964, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered the U.S. Army to purchase the AR-15, becoming the XM-16E1.  The rest is history.

ArmaLite sold the rights to the AR-15 and the patent on the direct impingement system to Colt in 1959.  Stoner’s next development was the AR-16/AR-18 rifles.  The AR-18 was intended to be the poor country’s AR-15.  This rifle was made with stampings instead of forgings; it used the multi-lugged rotating bolt and employed a short-stroke gas piston to cycle the action.  The AR-18 was not commercially successful, but its operating system was employed in other firearms, like the British SA-80.

Stoner left ArmaLite for Cadillac-Gage, where he developed the Stoner 63.  This platform featured the multi-lugged rotating bolt and a long-stroke gas system, like the AK-47.  The idea behind the ’63 was a modular platform that, using the same receiver and operating system, could be configured into a rifle, a carbine, a Bren style light machine gun, a belt-fed light machine gun; and, with a heavy barrel, a medium machine gun mountable on a tripod.  The U.S. Navy SEALs adopted the ‘63, and used it in Vietnam.  Their preferred configuration was the light, belt-fed machine gun, and was carried by every rifleman in the patrol.  Commercially, that’s as far as it got.

In his later years, Stoner joined Knight’s Armament Company where he improved upon his earlier work, the most famous example of which is the SR-25 designated marksman rifle.  After Stoner’s death, KAC continued development of the Stoner 63 concept.  Optimizing it for the SEAL role, KAC recently came out with the Light Assault Machine gun, in both 5.56 and 7.62 calibres.  Both guns are exceptionally light; the 5.56 version being 5 lbs lighter than the C-9, and the 7.62 version 8 lbs lighter than the C-6.  The LAMGs do not have quite the sustained fire capability of the C-9 or C-6, but aren’t far behind.  Their constant recoil systems enable the shooter to hold the gun on target in full automatic fire

Since “the future will be dangerous and uncertain,” the Canadian army should acquire 500 or 1000 of these LAMGs and experiment with the firepower they provide to the infantry section.  They would be outstanding patrol weapons.  They are meant to be carried in the assault and have 200 rounds link on tap.  They reload as fast as the C-9.  In ‘the new environment,’ a section will want more firepower and might need the reach and smack of a 7.62.
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