Pointing the Finger of Racism

Vincent J. Curtis


20 March 2014

E.M. is a columnist for my hometown newspaper who has made a living accusing others of racism.  That, I could live with if there was some substance to her charges.  But she has gotten lazy.  In addition, she has failed to recognize the tremendous strides we have made in Canada to put an end to racism.  Perfection is the enemy of the good, and after a while the demand for perfection begins to work against the accomplishment of the good.

She also fails to recognize real racism that exists in Canada officially and by preference, namely the treatment of Aboriginal people and specifically the Indian Act.  It would not be politically correct for her, however, to call for the abolition of special treatment for Indians.  And, if she recognizes it at all, she doesn't.

What is also a little annoying is that E.M. does not seem to be a native born Canadian, but an immigrant from another country.  So here we have a immigrant telling us native borns what is wrong with our country.  Academically, I can accept this if the argument is sincere and well-put.  I don't sense genuine sincerity in the criticisms of E.M. and her arguments are not well put.  If Canada were all that bad, why did she immigrate here, and why is she staying here?

Thus a response to an opinion piece in my hometown newspaper.

E. M. needs to understand that when she points an accusing finger of racism at someone, three fingers point accusingly back at her.

 

Without investigating the facts herself, on the basis of hearsay she accuses citizens of the town of Morris, Manitoba, of racism and homophobia.

 

She complains about the near invisible existence of “systemic racism” in Canada.  But the word “systemic” means “of the system,” and of the system would mean the existence of Jim Crow laws in Canada, or certain covenants that once existed in property deeds.  She couldn’t identify a single one.  But here’s one: The Indian Act.

 

She complains about “cultural assumptions about the dominant group are the norm” and these “regularly and systematically advantage some ethnic and cultural groups and disadvantages and marginalizes others.”

 

Here’s a news flash: anywhere you go in the world, there are going to be assumptions about culture and norms, and the people who were born into that ethnic group and that culture will have the inside track over someone who was not born into that culture and that ethnic group.  Try living in Japan.  Having norms and assumptions about some things is how a society organizes itself so that it can function.  If Ms. M. were to live in Africa or Asia, she would find simply another set of cultural norms and assumptions, most of which are far more hostile to her point of view than she finds in this wretched country.

 

In my view, racial hatred is not ended but provoked by false accusations and by demanding impossible standards be met.  How about accepting some of these cultural assumptions and norms of Canada?  How about trying to fit in?  That would certainly help end suspicion and distrust, at least in this country.

 

The perfect is the enemy of the good.  If Jamaica was all that wonderful a place to begin with, T. M. would never have risked going to Morris, Manitoba, in the first place.

 

If Canada is not good enough, try Russia.

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A Doozy of an Editorial Section

Vincent J. Curtis

22 Feb 2014

 

My hometown newspaper sure had a doozy of an editorial section in Saturday’s edition.  Where to begin?

 

A. V. was taken in by the artist, Gabriel Parniak.  Painters are not kind to title readers.  The content and meaning of a painting is found in the painting, not in the caption or title given to it.  This is true of any work of art: the meaning of any work of art is found in the work itself; and in the case of non-verbal art media that meaning is not verbalizable.  The meaning of a painting cannot be put into words, any more than the meaning of a piece of music can be put into words.

 

By giving a deliberately provocative and highly ambiguous title to a painting of a coffee cup, artist Gabriel Parkiak sucks title-readers like Mr. V. into idle speculation about his meaning in the painting.  The secondary meaning of the painting is the joke pulled by the artist in the ambiguous title.

 

The “Squandering science to honour ideology” editorial, excerpted from the St. John’s Telegram, is another case of Arts majors pretending to know more about science than real scientists do.  If you substitute “National Defense” for “science” and “soldiers” for “scientists” you get the argument that the government doesn’t care about National Defense because it is getting rid of soldiers, which it is.  Well, in neither case does the conclusion follow from the premises.  As for the ideological basis for getting rid of scientists, or soldiers, apparently budget reasons or changing government requirements never entered the minds of the editors of the Telegram.  The editors must believe they have the inside track to the minds of government ministers.  The editors are hiding behind the dodge that they are merely quoting a report from an obviously self-interested group; but they wouldn’t have published the editorial if they didn’t believe the cause worth advocating.

 

D. P. proved once again that not only has she the mind of a vicious adolescent, but so do all her friends.  If I were Ms. Horwath, I’d look to hire a body-guard.

Finally, the LRT editorial by the Spectator’s own editor-in-chief, “LRT is about much more than transit.”  It repeats all the non-demonstratable and non-disprovable arguments in favor of the LRT.  Apparently, the overt purpose of the thing, the obvious need to move people, is not advanced as an argument in favor of it.

 

I’ve seen the ‘sun and moon’ and then ‘the stars’ argument made before in the service of many other causes.  That style of argument, i.e the benefits of the secondary effects or the unintended consequences of the thing, is the tip-off that there is something wrong with the basic sales pitch of the thing itself.  When the bill comes due, I wonder if Mr. B. will still be working at the newspaper.

 

Like I said, a doozy of editorial section.

 

Just keeping the mental knife sharpened.....

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Giving the wackos an airing

Vincent J. Curtis

 

31 March 2014

 

 

My hometown newspaper is once again on a tear.  It is indulging the habit of airing opinions that are transparently and obviously absurd.

 

Perhaps, letting some people and some groups bay and the moon is a good thing.  Steam is let off that would otherwise build in pressure until something exploded violently.  However, it is also often useful to review the argumentation employed by these wackos, if nothing more than to keep our own mental knives sharp.

 

The first article was written by D.C. who is a poobah in the groups “Environment Hamilton” and “Hamilton 350.”  The first group “seeks to inspire people to protect and enhance the environment” while the second is a global warming doomsday cult.

 

Briefly, D.C. rehearses the usual arguments that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and to prove his case cites one of the usual suspects: a “NASA sponsored” study (read: Jim Hanson).  Apparently, industrial civilization is going to collapse on the grounds that Rev. Malthus would recognize and, in fact, first employed himself some two centuries ago, when the earth had fewer than one billion of human population.  Presently, the earth has over seven billion and that number continues to grow.

 

D.C.’s solution to the problem of the imminent collapse of world civilization as we know it is to collapse the world civilization and the world economy as we know it.  So, catastrophe awaits human civilization regardless.

 

Those who are familiar with Gaia and with deep ecology will recognize the proposed solution: to reduce the size of the human herd to manageable proportions.  But D.C. generously thinks it should be done in a “graceful” way.  Other things which will prevent global catastrophe are to have a maximum wage as well as a minimum wage to reduce income inequality.  He calls for monetary reform, but fails to propose anything.  He wants economic measures such as GDP to be abolished because they promote the wrong thing.  And, of course, work sharing.

 

He concludes with “if this seems like idealistic claptrap, remember that the economy is a sub-set of the environment.”  Well, the economy being a “sub-set of the environment” is claptrap as well, so in an argument full of claptrap, D.C.,  you may as well end with a resounding example of it!

 

The Gaia people believe that a sustainable world human population is around one billion people.  That means that over the next generation or two, to meet their expectations, the human herd has to be reduced by six-sevenths, or by 85.7 %.  That is a die-off of a species not seen since the last asteroid hit the earth.  And if we don’t do this, something even worse is going to happen!!  What this is I’m not sure, but I think I, my children, and my grandchildren would rather take their chances with the other thing.

 

A human die-off of 85.7 % would certainly do a number on the world GDP.  Now that would be a good reason not to look at those numbers anymore.

 

What ought to be most worrisome is that these folks chant the following incantation: Think Globally, Act Locally.  What this means for us is, that it is the Western economies and the Western populations that are intended to take the hits.  If India, China, and Brazil don’t cut back on their economic growth and their population growth, there is no point about Canada, the United States, and Europe cutting back on theirs, because the world will go to hell simply on the growth of those three countries.

 

Getting India, China, and Brazil to go along with Environment Hamilton and Hamilton 350 is a matter D.C. fails to address.

 

The second wacko is K.D.  This guy rehearses the usual arguments about the abolishment of Separate Schools in Ontario.  The right of Roman Catholics to have a fully funded Separate School system in Ontario is a black-letter right that was put into the original British North America Act of 1867, and remains there in the current Constitution Act, 1982.  To abolish Separate Schools in Ontario would require that the Constitution Act be amended in the teeth of Roman Catholic opposition.  This niggly little problem, K.D. utterly fails to address.

 

What he complains about simultaneously are: Public Schools are failing because of mismanagement by the school boards, while Separate Schools are doing just fine, thank you.  But not due to the superior management by the Separate Boards, it is because the playing field is not level!  And it is high time for a little equity, he argues.

 

To bring about equity, the funding for Separate Boards needs to be ended entirely!  All students need to be treated equally (equally stupidly, he means.)  We need to eliminate duplication of services.  A government duopoly will not do, we need a government monopoly.  K.D. would not be aware that the public boards were failing without the Separate Boards to compare them to.

 

Nevertheless, we need to have one system that would benefit all students in Ontario.  Milk and honey would flow in abundant quantities, sufficient for all if this came to pass.

 

K.D. has been a high school teacher for 28 years.  He used the statement “there are equally the same frustrating issues that come from dealing with hundreds of teenagers in one place.” Equally the same.

 

Wow.

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Pradaxa: a bid for enrichment

Vincent J. Curtis

15 Feb 14

The report below is in respect to a law suit in which a university located in my hometown is indirectly involved.  The case involves excessive bleeding caused by the use of Pradaxa, a drug said to be superior to warfarin in the control of blood clotting due to irregular heartbeat.  The blood clotting from inrregular heart beat can break free from the heart, travel to the small blood vessels of the brain, and cause a stroke.  Warfarin, pradaxa and other drugs prevent clots from forming to begin with.  This condition has dangers of its own.


I read the excellent report Steve Buist, Investigations Editor of my local newspaper, on the Pradaxa case, presently ongoing in East St. Louis.  Based on what he wrote, there seems to be one or more logically fallacies at the heart of the court case.  The most obvious one may be boiled down to the distinction between the relative and the absolute.

The PHRI study, by which the FDA approved Pradaxa, compared the relative effects of warfarin and two dose levels of Pradaxa.  Among the three, the 150 mg dose of Pradaxa was relatively the best for treating blood coagulation problems.  But that result does not establish that, absolutely, there will be no complications in using the the drug at that concentration.  The case against Boerhringer Ingelheim and PHRI seems to be based upon the belief that Pradaxa was held up to be absolutely safe, when in fact the clinical trials only showed that it was relatively the best treatment among those studied. Moreover, these results are statistical and based upon probabilities; they may not hold in individual cases.

I am a little surprised that the PHRI study did not include a control group of sufferers who were denied any kind of treatment.  A study that included that kind of control group would presumably show that, absolutely, treatment with Pradaxa provided the best of outcomes, again statistically. It would also show that none of the outcomes were as good as perfect health.  These people are suffering a morbidity, after all.  The taking of Pradaxa is to substitute a less bad morbidity for one that is worse.

Thus when people who are being treated with Pradaxa suddenly suffer abnormal bleeding, against what are we to compare that abnormality: relative to a warfarin treatment?  What of the absence of treatment altogether?   Would the patient have suffered a stroke instead of bleeding in that time period?  In individual cases, no one can say what the absolute outcome is going to be.  We know what the statistical average should be in a large number of cases.  We know what we would like it to be in individual cases: to be like the restoration of perfect health; but that ideal is not always possible. And grown people ought to know that.

In addition, when one studies a group of 44,000, as was done in the PHRI study, any outcome which happens six times in a million will not likely be observed.  Thus when jumping to the full population, numbering in the many millions, outcomes are possible which were not observed in clinical trials. Grown-ups ought to know this.

Thus the lawyers for the plaintiffs are going to engage in one or more logical fallacies and are going to try to prove that the scientists at PHRI and at Boerhringer Ingelheim didn't know what they were doing.  The lawyers are going to try to show that they, mere amateurs, are smarter than the scientific experts.  The scientific experts are experts in medicine, not the more obscure realms of logic.  I fear the trial will prove to be a farce of reasoning and argument.

I understand why Boerhringer Ingelheim is dragging its feet.  The plaintiff's lawyers have nothing to go on except the complaints of their clients and the inconclusive FDA report that Buist mentioned in his article.  They are engaging in a fishing expedition so that they can find some statement which in isolation proves to be sensational to their case.  The requirement by the judge that the company provide copies of "any possible derivation of means to document someone's thoughts, words, and deeds short of attaching electrodes to their scalps and electronically downloading what is contained in their minds" is almost inconceivably broad and would likely amount to millions of pages if completely fulfilled.  That is quite a burdensome administrative undertaking, disruptive and costly for the company and of no possible benefit to it.  No doubt some things will be left out, and the failure to deliver some obscure document will be held up as a sign of a guilty conscience and bad faith.  The note taking by the scientists will, in future, be conditioned by the fear that those notes may be subpoenaed as evidence.

Buist's account of the case was excellent.  I fear from his report that the trail will prove to be a farce and will unfairly blacken the reputations of some really good people.  Unfortunately, the lawyers for the plaintiffs will not be made to suffer for their misdeeds, and the trial judge will not be made to suffer for failing to act upon the observation that this case is a farce start to finish.

If you just want new drugs like Viagra, then by all means let trials like that over Pradaxa flourish. But if you want new medicines that treat serious illnesses, then these farce-trials need to be exposed for what they are: a bid for enrichment, first by the lawyers and then by the plaintiffs.
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CCV was never a Good Idea

 

 
Vincent J. Curtis


23 Dec 2013

 

David Pugliese broke the story that the Close Combat Vehicle acquisition project will be cancelled by DND.  The CCV acquisition was plagued with problems from the beginning, and several rounds of requests for proposals were unsatisfactory.

 

Julie DiMambro, spokesperson for MND Rob Nicholoson, was quoted as saying, “…our Government has been living up to our promise to give the Canadian military the tools it needs to get the job done….the Canadian Armed Forces are once again the best in the world.”

 

The real story behind the cancellation of this new CCV tool is not the lack money, not a lack of satisfactory options, but the lack of a warfighting doctrine by the army combined with the lack of money.  The Army brass simply does not know what the next job is going to be, and cannot justify to itself buying an expensive tool designed for a job that may not come up.

 

What army reservists are training for is often a good sign of what DND brass expects the army to have to do should the call go out.  Since the end of field operations in Afghanistan, army reservists have not been doing much of anything specific, and nothing that involves the coordinated movement of several companies at a time.  Training from out of the 1960’s: patrolling, light infantry advance-to-contact, has been the army reservist fare since the wind-down of Afghan style tactical scenarios.

 

Some time in February, 2014, several light infantry units of 31 Brigade, 4^th Canadian Division, are going to be moved to Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, to undertake an exercise there.  Rankin Inlet lies on the western shore of northern Hudson’s Bay.

 

It is expected that the reservists will operate out of the NORAD Forward Operating Location Rankin Inlet facilities at the Rankin Inlet Airport.  What exactly the reservists are going to practice, few involved seem to know.  What the anticipated OPFOR object this exercise is supposed to defeat is met with a chuckle.  No mechanized combat vehicles or artillery are expected to come along.  Light infantry is going to be plunked down in the middle of the Arctic and expected to do something by itself.

 

DND is going to overpay for the nine-day exercise in the high Arctic, and sources suggest that 31 Brigade is looking for the excess cash.  Deploy, freeze, return, collect.  An object of this exercise may be that it demonstrates to the world Canada’s commitment to the high Arctic.  But no one involved seems to know.

 

The army top command has communicated no idea of the next kind of war the army will be called upon to fight.  They have communicated little idea of how they would like to fight.

 

Spending $2 billion on the acquisition of a new vehicle that is designed to fight best on the terrains of Europe could prove to be financially dislocating.  Investing that much money into what could prove to be the wrong thing does not help burnish reputations or help the soldiers who have to risk their lives working with them.

 

DND did have a particular vehicle in mind when the CCV project began, and would likely have bought it had it been offered.  Rheinmetall makes an all-new Puma CCV for the German Army.  It was designed from the ground up to be able to work closely with the Leopard II tank, which the Canadian army now has in good numbers.  What Rheinmetall actually offered DND as a CCV was not the Puma they hoped and expected, but a reworked and upgraded Marder vehicle, which the German army was taking out of service and replacing with the Puma.  DND turned down the offer for used vehicles.

 

Also offered in the CCV category was the new Swedish CV 90 vehicle.  Whether this vehicle would be able to work closely with non-Swedish tanks and on non-Swedish terrain remained questions.

 

Buying a vehicle now that unquestionably could work with the current inventory of Canadian tanks might have justified the CCV acquisition project to go forward.  Lacking such assurance, a good reason to acquire a CCV regardless was lacking.

 

Through the Canada First Defense Strategy, the Canadian government promised the military a stable and predictable level of funding over a twenty year period.  That promise lasted until the first budget crisis.  The cancellation of the CCV project, however, was not the product of the government failing to live up to the promise for the military to buy new equipment.  This was a decision of the military brass, who can’t justify the expenditure to themselves.

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Book Review: My Share of the Task, a Memoir

 

 

Vincent J. Curtis

30 October 2013

 

My Share of the Task: A Memoir By General Stanley McChrystal

 

Portfolio/Penguin
2013
ISBN 978-59184-475-4
452 Pages
Hardcover
$29.95 US

 

This is as much a book about leadership as it is a history.  General Stanley McChrystal was as important as General David Patraeus was in America’s War on Terrorism in the decade from 2001 to 2010.  McChrystal was the one who organized the counterterrorism effort of the U.S. military against al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The death of al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006 and the destruction of his network were the high achievements of McChrystal’s organization in that decade.  These, combined with the exploitation of the “Anbar Awakening” and the military surge of 2007-8, were what led to an end of the wave of terrorism and civil war that engulfed Iraq in the aftermath of the invasion that brought down Saddam Hussein, and enabled the Coalition to depart Iraq in 2011 with a stable Iraqi government in place.

 

McChrystal spent most of his military career in the Special Operations community of the U.S. military.  He qualified as Airborne, Special Forces, and Ranger and spent most of his development period either in command of units or as the J3 (Operations Officer) of units.  He spent as little time in the Pentagon as he could get away with.  Eventually, the lack of political instincts which would have been developed by a long stay in the Pentagon were to cost him at the end of his career.

 

The military reader can gain on two fronts by reading this book.  The first is on leadership and the second on the development of “industrial counterterrorism.”

 

In taking the reader through his development period, McChrystal enables the student of leadership to gain valuable insights not only into what made McChrystal the General, the Commander, and most importantly the leader he became, but also what makes good military leaders in general in the modern world.  Seeing the finished product in Iraq, the British saw him as a “soldier-monk.”  Supported by his loyal military wife Annie, McChrystal dedicated his life to the war against al Qaeda.  He spent years in Iraq and Afghanistan, living in spare accommodations immersed in the war, and enjoyed next to no down time back home during the prolonged crisis of the war.  McChrystal did not do a “tour”, he fought the war.

 

McChrystal’s great achievement as a leader was the development of Task Force 714.  There was no model for such a thing.  But in order to fight the metastasizing cancer of al Qaeda inspired terrorism in Iraq, McChrystal invented what came to be called “industrial counterterrorism,” and TF714 was the vehicle by which that method of combatting terrorism was deployed.  All the means by which intelligence was gained and analyzed were fused with the means of fighting in TF714, and industrial counterterrorism was the product of a feed-back loop of intelligence and captures run at very high speed.  Based on information provided by intelligence, US and British Special Operators used to go out on several missions a night, capturing terrorists for the further exploitation by the intelligence side.  Without a leader with the man-management skills of McChrystal, industrial counterterrorism would never have come about.  Industrial counterterrorism was only possible because of the vast, but disparate, intelligence and special operations resources of the United States.

 

McChrystal’s downfall came about when he let a trait that made him a great leader – trust – be exploited by people he ought to have been cautious in dealing with.

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Book Review: How to Break a Terrorist

 

 

Vincent J. Curtis


 3 January 2014

 

How to Break A Terrorist by Matthew Alexander With John R. Bruning

 

St. Martin’s Griffin
2008
ISBN 978-0-312-67511-0
287 Pages
Paperback

 

Never trust an interrogator.  That’s the bottom line message of the book.

 

Matthew Alexander is a pseudonym, but the man has appeared on television, which is how he came to my attention.  Alexander was the guy who come up with the clue which led to the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006 by the U.S. military in Iraq.  Al-Zarqawi was the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, and was the man responsible not only for a lot of terrorism in Anbar province, but for sparking the civil war between Shiite and Sunni sects that was only broken by the “surge” of 2007-8.

 

What makes the book interesting is the inside look it gives to the methods of “Industrial Counterterrorism” that was developed by U.S. General Stanley McChrystal to combat al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan.  McChrystal’s book, published in 2013 and reviewed previously, gives the official account of the interrogation which led to the vital clue that ultimately led to the killing of al-Zarqawi.  Alexander’s book, published five years before McChrystal’s book, refutes the official account and Alexander claims for himself the success of having “broken the terrorist” that led to Zarqawi.  Since McChrystal does not deal with Alexander’s claim and admits that his book was written with security of operations in mind, one can conclude that Alexander is right, and that several people were decorated for an achievement they did not themselves gain but were nevertheless decorated for reasons of internal politics.  Alexander was shafted, and this book gains a measure of revenge.

 

At the time of the book’s publication, the enhanced interrogation techniques employed by the CIA to break three of the highest value terrorists in al Qaeda had become known and were highly controversial.  Alexander tossed gasoline on that fire.  His book is sub-titled “The U.S. interrogators who used brains, not brutality, to take down the deadliest man in Iraq.”  He spends several mercifully short chapters needlessly to preen about his skills, and otherwise compare himself favorably to the knuckle-dragging brutes in the CIA.

 

While the thrust of his preening was that brutality was not necessary to the breaking of his terrorist, by focussing on his skills he proves that brains in general do not always suffice either.  Alexander writes about how it was his brains, his experience, his knowledge base, his risk-taking, and his insights which led to success and not those of the team of interrogators that had been assigned to breaking the key terrorist.

 

The book does provide lots of detail about the inner workings of Industrial Counterterrorism, and how U.S. interrogators work to break people and find out what they want to know.  Alexander admits that the person he was to a terrorist was false, and the promises he made them were broken.  He can justify this as the way it works in order to achieve a good end.

 

In all, this book is worth a read.

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