Drivel: Freeland calls for economic restart to be "green."

Vincent J. Curtis

7 Sept 20

With head shaking like a schoolmarm lecturing an unruly class, new finance minister Chrystia Freeland said, “The restart of our economy needs to be green.”

Minister Freeland is smart enough to know that her statement is patent drivel.  Let’s assume for the moment that she isn’t an environmentalist wacko, what would be the purpose of uttering this item of patent drivel?  She must be trolling supporters of the government who need cheering and don’t realize that her statement is drivel.  Maybe it’s a warning to all and sundry that criticism of her efforts to restart the economy will be met with fierce and woke retaliation.  Like accusing the Conservative opposition of hating the planet and trying to kill people - that kind of cancellation culture woke.

Maybe, Minister Freeland’s feet never touch the ground, and she thinks an economic restart can be green.  In that case, an example of what she means by a green restart would be helpful in understanding what she actually means.  An economic restart is an abstraction, not a physical entity and so can’t bear physical characteristics such a colour; and if by green she means environmentally friendly, then what is it about a restart that could be environmentally friendly?  Is green a code word for not assisting in the restarting of Alberta’s economy?  The green lies in what is restarted, not the restart per se, and her confusing restart with what is restarted is where the drivel originates 

Maybe Freeland is a true-believer environmentalist wacko, and sincerely believes that her drivel can be realized.  The trouble is, economies are too complex for central planning, and trying to restart one part of the economy while suppressing another is almost bound to fail once government subsidies are removed.

Minister Freeland’s bizarre piece of drivel might hearten depressed Liberal supporters, but causes only suspicion and wonder in those in contact with reality.

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A Conservative Case to Defund the Police

Vincent J. Curtis

4 Sept 20

Last month, about 100 people decided to pain "Black Lives Matter" on Main Street in front of Hamilton's city hall.  Main Street is a major thoroughfare, and the painters blocked traffic for two hours and the police did nothing.  They only helped re-route traffic.  No arrests were made.  Tdoay, it was announced that after a police investigation no charges would be laid.  Some people were issued a warning by police, but that was the extent of legal action against people engaged in public mischief, unlawful assembly, and vandalism.  It was learned that it cost the city over $5,000 to remove the pointed slogan from the asphalt.

The decision by the police not to charge the road painters makes a conservative case to defund the police.  Not enforcing the law against radical leftists, but vigorously enforcing it against ordinary people makes the case that the police favor certain groups, and forgive certain lawbreaking, of a leftist persuasion.  (Protesting is a right more sacred than religious worship!) So, why should conservatives support this kind of arbitrary policing?

If you violate any of the illegal and unconstitutional ordinances, orders, and rules that are supposed to “slow the spread”, if you stand up for your rights against overweening and arbitrary power, if you don’t wear one of those useless masks, then God help you for breaking the law, and here’s an $880 fine.  But vandalism over $5,000 and public mischief are against the law also, but if it’s for a leftist cause, then you get a pass from the police.  I guarantee that if the painted words said, “KKK” or “OCBLM” (only certain black lives matter) you’d be arrested and held over the weekend before a bail hearing.  For certain, you would, in addition, be accused of a hate crime.

“Law is for the law abiding” is often the case, as it is in this case.  But selective enforcement of the law based on political considerations makes a conservative case to abolish that kind of policing.

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The Army of Tomorrow, Today

Vincent J. Curtis 

11 July 2020

Yogi Berra once said that predicting the future was hard, especially since it hadn’t happened yet. 

Imagine you were a Canadian military planner in 1927.  Andy McNaughton orders you to forecast what the army should be like in 1942, a mere fifteen years in the future.

“Simonds,” you cry. “Take a note!”

The Bren gun and the Browning Hi-Power hadn’t been invented.  The No. 4 Lee-Enfield rifle hadn’t been developed.  The 2” mortar hadn’t been thought of.  The armoured doctrine of Plan 1919 was known, and the British were experimenting with it, but this was way beyond Canadian industrial capabilities and the funding interests of the government.  We were up to date on artillery doctrine even if we lacked the guns.  Tanks, trucks and other mechanical gear were primitive and unreliable.  The Kellogg-Briand Pact and the Locarno Treaties made war in Europe illegal.

A future strategic environment (FSE) assessment would fail to account for the coming revolutions.  The Nazi Party was an obscure, fringe group. Germany itself was crippled by the Versailles Treaty and was convulsing with political unrest.  Berlin was dissolute with the frivolities of the late 1920s.  The Soviet Union was still consolidating its communist revolution.  Lenin was dead, and Trotsky and Stalin were competing for the leadership of the party.  Russia was deeply impoverished and economically confused.  Japan had been an ally in the Great War, and hadn’t invaded China.  The great depression lay ahead. 

It’s now 1942.  The Canadian army has three divisions in Britain and would launch an ill-fated raid on Dieppe.  The Germans are on the Volga River in Russia and driving on the Caucuses.  Brand new Sherman tanks engage with Panzer Mk IVs in the deserts of Egypt and Cyrenaica.  The Canadian Force Employment Concept (FEC) is a shambles, the only things that hold from 1927 are artillery doctrine and that peculiar Canadian invention of World War I, the Machine Gun Corps.  The machine gun is the self-same Vickers .303 HMG, but mounted on Bren gun carriers instead of armoured cars.

Andy McNaughton orders you to forecast what they army should be like in 1957.

“Kitching” you cry.  “Fetch your Underwood!”

The 1942 FSE of 1957 would be blind to revolutionary events.  The atomic and then the hydrogen bombs would be invented.  Strategic bombers would advance successively from the new Lancaster, to the B-29, the B-36, the B-47, and the B-52.  Germany would be defeated, occupied, and replaced as an enemy by the Soviet Union.  NATO would be created.  The Korean War would be fought.  Sherman tanks would be replaced by Centurions, woolen battle-dress by FSOD, the No.4 by the FNC1, the Bren by the C2, the Sten by the Sterling, the PIAT by the 3.5”, and the Vickers by the Browning.  Ballistic missiles would be deployed.  But why have an army if the war will be over in thirty minutes?

It’s now 2006.  You’re a Major.  In Kingston.  You’ve been issued a T-shirt, Bermuda shorts, sandals, and a Toshiba 486SX laptop with Office 2000.  Andrew Leslie tasks you with coming up with a concept for “The Army of Tomorrow”  (AoT for short).  This will be the capstone concept for future material acquisitions and doctrinal development through 2021.  No pressure.  You look up.  It’s a blue sky.  What do you do?

Here is the Present Security Environment (PSE).  Canada, under Prime Minister Paul Martin and MND Bill Graham, just committed Canada to a mission at Kandahar, dramatically expanding our commitment in Afghanistan.  No idea how long this will last.  The tactical situation around Kandahar is hazardous.  General Rick Hillier is the new CDS.  The dark decade for the CF is over, as Hillier made it a condition of his appointment that money starts to flow.  We have no tactical aviation, no transport helicopters, and the heaviest lift aircraft we have are C-130H Hercules, each with over 30,000 flying hours.  We have no modern artillery and no tanks.

Start typing.

To Be Continued….

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Scientific Pretentions Exposed

 Vincent J. Curtis

3 Sept 20

Today’s Hamilton Spectator ran a piece written by four authors, headlined “Our Health is Shaped by our Wealth and Income.  The four authors were: Dennis Raphael (a Professor at York University), Toba Bryant (associate Professor at Ontario Tech University), Juha Mikkenon ((executive director of the Finnish Association for Substance Abuse Prevention), and Alexander Raphael (student at Ryerson University).  It pretended to show scientifically that living and working conditions determine health.  It’s scientific pretentions are exposed below.

The very headline of this article by four credentialed “experts” is itself a howler, and a tip-off that there’s something really wrong with its contents.  The article is an illustration that claims to scientific authority are often nothing more than pretentions and dressed-up common sense.

The four credentialed experts list no fewer than 17 social “determinants” of health.  Straightaway, it isn’t clear if they’re talking about statistical averages, or that this applies to individuals.  They don’t say what the units of measurement these determinants are.  They don’t say what the range of values of “H = “ is.  In short, the authors are implying that there is an equation relating the value of ‘Health’ to 17 other variables, which they call determinants of health, but, lacking units of measurement and ranges of values, they really don’t have such an equation.  They offer ordinary common sense puffed up as scientific discovery.

The authors claim that the disadvantaged are more likely to contract and succumb to COVID-19, and are also bearing the brunt of adverse economic effects.  This claim flies in the face of the facts.  The many homeless camps around North America were expected to be ravaged by COVID-19, or some other epidemic given the living conditions, and surprisingly were practically untouched by the virus.  As is well known, the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions succumb, and the elderly aren’t bearing the brunt of adverse economic effects.  University students are now rapidly contracting COVID-19, and they aren’t the disadvantaged.

The authors quoted approvingly the following statements: “Canada is so wealthy that it manages to mask poverty,” and “we have one of the worst records in providing an effective social safety net.”  The first statement is nonsensical on its face, since poverty is the deprivation of wealth then possessing wealth means that poverty is most effectively masked.  And Canada may have one of the worst records for providing a social safety net, except for 185 other countries on earth. Note: effective social safety net is an obscure abstraction, and so what constitutes an effective net is unclear.  Clear thinking scientists don’t write blatant nonsense like this, and if they do it is a sign that there is something wrong with their theories and thinking.

The authors then employ the following howler: the quality of the social determinants have stagnated or worsened.  The determinants were offered as variables in an equation, having numerical values and units of measurement.  A number is a quantity, not a quality; hence the reference to a determinant having a quality that stagnates or worsens is another sign that no actual science is present here and the credentialed authors don’t even realize it.  And so, when the authors speak of an equitable distribution of the determinants they become downright incoherent.  A determinant is a variable that has a quantity and unit of measurement associated with it, and how this mathematical entity could get distributed equitably among people is a complete mystery.  Real science is clear.

The authors also fail to state the statistical correlation between their variables, which they call determinants, and actual, measured performance.

There is no science going on in the article, written by four credentialed experts.  What they offer are common sense opinions dressed up to look scientific and therefore more respectable than mere opinion.

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No, Richard, Climate Change is still not an existential threat

 Vincent J. Curtis

2 Sept 20

Today's Spectator published a letter from a climate alarmist.  The gist of it can be ascertained from the rebuttal below.

This year, the Farmer’s Almanac released its 202nd annual edition.  It, of course, contains the famous weather forecasts for the coming year.  That the Almanac has been published for 202 years in a row is an empirical acknowledgement that climate is always changing.  If climate didn’t change, then weather patterns would be predictable year after year, and there would be no need for the Almanac.  Yet it continues.

Hence, the Spectator wasted space publishing the diatribe by Richard MacKinnon.  No climate scientist has gone out on a limb and declared that a particular weather event was caused by climate change.  The effect of increasing carbon dioxide content from 280 ppm to 408 ppm is like adding two people to a capacity crowd at the Air Canada Centre.  It’s just not that significant.  And it simply isn’t true that warmer air leads to stronger winds and more persistent rain, as the Sahara and Arabian Deserts prove.  Wind is caused by differences in atmospheric pressure, not temperature.  Annual rainfall in southern Alberta is also quite variable from one year to the next, and so it ought to be in South Asia.

Wildfires aren’t caused by climate change, they’re caused in nature by lightning strikes in dry vegetation, and drought conditions combined with poor forest management can make the destruction worse than some say it should be.  The “record” heat in Death Valley simply wasn’t a record, only in the limited time frame considered.  The actual record occurred earlier, when carbon dioxide level was low.  Droughts in Africa are not unusual, any more than in California.  Hurricane Laura was especially intense because it passed over the famously warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, source of the Gulf stream.  Ten children killed in Uganda by a lightning strike were killed - by a lightning strike, not climate change.  The Amazon losing 17 percent of its original area may have something to do with Brazilian logging and farming practices, not climate change.

One could refute point by point, not that it would change any minds.  The modelling failures around COVID-19 ought to make the public wary of modelling forecasts generally, but that’s all the climate fearmongers have got.  They have models, not data, and backcasting the models show that they overestimate actual temperature change by a lot.  The models are incapable of forecasting a reversal in trends, as occurred in the 1940s from warmer to cooler, and the late 1970s, when we went from the coming ice ahr to global warming.  Many temperature records of the 1930s remain records to this day.

Climate is always changing, and that’s why the Farmer’s Almanac has been in business for over two hundred years.

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ChInese Thuggery (Shockingly) Shocks Canadians

Vincent J. Curtis

1 Sept 20

The Canadian government, through the National Research Council, paid a Chinese lab to develop a vaccine against COVID-19.  The field trials of the vaccince were to be started in Canada a couple of weeks ago, but the Chinese refused to hand over the material.  As a result, the government of Canada has paid several western firms to acquire some 76 million doses of their vaccines.  The conduct of China in this affair shocked the editors of the Hamilton Spectator, and editorialized that Canada needs to adopt a different approach to Chinese relations, a position advocated by this writer for decades.

It’s good to see the Spectator have a come-to-Jesus moment concerning Communist China, but why was it even necessary?  Isn’t the word ‘communist’ enough of a warning?

Communism gives bullies a moral excuse to bully.  Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Guevara, the Kims – which one of these was ever an honest humanist?  After the ruthlessness of the last twenty years, of the militarization of the South China Sea, of the pressure on Hong Kong, the industrial espionage which destroyed Nortel, the forced technology transfers, the games being played with agricultural exports what made you think that the Chinese communists could be trusted to deliver something important to us that was not simultaneously advantageous to them?

Jean Chretien had the Chinese communists figured out: cash and carry trade, and ignore their human rights abuses - there being nothing we could do about it.  Where the talk of a free trade agreement came from, we’ll never know what starry-eyed idealist proposed such nonsense.

China serves one useful purpose in Canada.  When China invests in Canadian resource development and exploitation, you can be sure those resources are going to get delivered to the Chinese market, whatever roadblocks leftist in Canada might throw up.  Chinese investment in Canadian resources is useful in developing the north.

Communism was, is, and always will be bad news for the world.  I don’t understand why, after Tiananmen massacre, the collapse of the Soviet Union and empire these lessons fail to penetrate.

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Trudeau angered by toppling of statue to Sir John A. Macdonald

Vincent J. Curtis

1 Sept 20

A statue to Sir John A. Macdonald, the leading Father of Confederation and Canada's first Prime Minister, was toppled over the weekend by vandals and Montreal Police ignored the matter.  Prime Minister Trudeau was asked how he felt about it, and he said he felt angered.  The statue stood for 125 years.

It’s rich of Prime Minister Trudeau to be angered over the toppling and beheading of the Macdonald statue in Montreal.  After all, it was Trudeau who ordered the name of Hector Langevin scraped off the historic Langevin Block building on Parliament hill.  This bit of vandalism was committed by Trudeau for the same reason that the Macdonald statue was vandalized: the connection of those Fathers of Confederation to residential schools.

Trudeau may be angry, but he started that ball rolling.

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