Quotulatiousness

July 3, 2022

David Warren waves the flag

As noted the other day, the official period of mourning sickness that enveloped Canada last year after the blockbuster revelations about residential schools has not been followed-up by any substantive proof of any of the sensational claims that Prime Minister Trudeau seized upon to lecture Canadians about our historical guilt (the “genocideal nation” that he claimed we were) and to haul the national flag down to half-staff for half a year. David Warren chooses to wave the flag instead:

Justin Trudeau has always had a strong affinity for the symbolic gesture, especially when the media are around to record it.

The latest trick in what we might call “eco-commie-perv agitprop”, emerged while shaming Canadian history and traditions. I’ll touch on it in a moment. It is a product chiefly of the Indian Wars of the last few years. The White Man, and more specifically when Catholic, has been accused of massacring the Native People in 20th-century residential schools, just as he did upon coming to the continent. He then ploughs the anonymous victims into mass graves, showing his affinity to, exempli gratia, the Nazis.

This propaganda campaign, which quickly reached the tedious stage, was founded on a series of oft-repeated unambiguous lies, driven into our susceptible children in our compulsory public schools, and throughout life by such agencies as the CBC. (All our significant media are now under government control, subsidy, and watch.) White men, especially the Catholics, contaminate Canadian history by their Satanic essence, according to this malicious fantasy. Goodness and innocence can be found only in their victims, the “visible minorities” (or majorities, as the case may be). Shame is inculcated among persons exhibiting the wrong race.

I write of Canada, but something similar is happening in the United States, and has been carried to Europe on the sails of Hollywood and popular “music”. Canada is, however, an extreme example — of brazen idiocy — and even to underprivileged (all-white) rural places the message is piped in. Disharmonious voices must expect state interference, and eventual arrest.

For Canada now has political prisoners, including many who participated in the Freedom Convoy of truck drivers. Tamara Lich, a prominent organizer of this demonstration, has been gratuitously jailed, though she didn’t even try to commit a plausible crime. This week she was gaoled again, apparently for receiving a freedom medal. (Persons it was in her bail conditions not to meet may have been in the audience.) She was put out of sight for “Canada Day” (the former Dominion celebration, yesterday). This manipulation of Canadian law is, sadly, no longer unprecedented. It seems to be ordered directly from the Prime Minister’s Office.

Tougher than Guadalcanal: New Georgia – 201 – July 2, 1943

World War Two
Published 2 Jul 2022

The Allies begin the next phase of their Solomon Islands offensives, the invasion of New Georgia, even as the regional fighting continues on New Guinea. Adolf Hitler schedules his summer Kursk offensive for July 5th, and the Allied invasion of Sicily is set for July 10th.
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More evidence produced against RCMP Commissioner … how long can she hang on now?

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the free-to-cheapskates cut-down edition of The Line‘s weekly dispatch, the editors look at another confirmation that RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki really ought to resign, and soon:

Another document has been released that addresses the controversial teleconference between Lucki and local commanders and officials in Nova Scotia on April 28, 2020. This document is an email (which has been published by the Mass Casualty Commission in full), written by Lia Scanlan, a civilian who was working with the Nova Scotia RCMP as a communications advisor. She was a participant in the teleconference that is the source of the controversy. In an email sent to Lucki in 2021, well after the events in question but well before the recent controversy erupted, Scanlan harshly criticized Lucki’s conduct.

The bulk of Scanlan’s email relates to Lucki’s insensitivity to the officers and civilian staff in Nova Scotia in the aftermath of the shooting. (Lucki, for her part, has already acknowledged that she behaved badly in the meeting and regrets it.) What’s interesting for the purposes of the broader story, however, is that Scanlan’s email repeats the primary allegation contained in the earlier explosive document: that Lucki told the local commanders and officials that she was under political pressure to accelerate the release of information about the crime prior to a forthcoming gun-control announcement by the Trudeau Liberal government.

Specifically, Scanlan wrote: “Eventually, you informed us of the pressures and conversation with Minister Blair, which we clearly understood was related to the upcoming passing of the gun legislation. and there it was. I remember a feeling of disgust as I realized this was the catalyst for the conversation and perhaps a justification for what you were saying about us.”

This is interesting for two big reasons. The first is obvious: it is verification, from a new source also present at the controversial meeting, of the primary allegation that has been made against Lucki, and which she has not explicitly denied, though she has now put out two vague statements denying any intention to interfere. The second interesting thing is that one of the immediate lines of defence that miraculously sprung into being last week — just kidding, these were clearly PMO talking points — was that criticisms of Lucki’s conduct simply reflected the old-guard, all-male club mentality of the RCMP seeing an opportunity to put a hatchet into the uppity lady boss they’ve been saddled with by the Trudeau government.

Your Line editors weren’t born yesterday. We’re sure there’s plenty of good ole boys in the RCMP who do indeed feel exactly that way about Lucki. Scanlan, though, doesn’t reflect that. She’s a young woman, and a civilian. Further, even if the allegations were 100 per cent coming from an old-boys club, that doesn’t mean the allegations aren’t true. There have been many, many examples of pissed-off, agenda-driven people with axes to grind striking back at their rivals and opponents by … telling the truth about them.

As we said last week, Lucki is probably finished. If she doesn’t have the good judgment to resign, she should be fired. We don’t honestly know if this problem goes any higher up the chain of command than her. That’s why we repeat what we said last week: we need an investigation into this.

We will note that the government’s tone has slightly changed this week. It’s hard to read too much into government statements. And we want to be careful to avoid simply projecting our own views onto bland bureaucratese. But it does seem to us that the government’s position has evolved slightly, from “There’s no truth to these allegations and we stand by the commissioner” to something more akin to, “Hey, if she did this, it wasn’t because we asked her to. Don’t blame us!”

Commissioner Lucki? That sound you hear is the big red bus you will soon be thrown under pulling up to the curb you are standing beside. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Model 1907/15 Berthier: The WW1 Standard Infantry Rifle

Filed under: France, History, Military, Weapons, WW1 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 24 Jul 2017

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

When World War One broke out in 1914, France mobilized millions of men into military service — and it became abundantly clear that a lot of new rifles would need to be manufactured. The 1886 Lebel was no longer in production and was a slow rifle to make in any case — but the 1907 Colonial Berthier was being produced already, and was a more efficient design as well. By late 1914, plans were underway to drastically increase Berthier rifle production.

A few changes were made to the 1907 pattern, mainly changing the front end to accept the standard 1886 Lebel bayonet (“Rosalie”). After the first 80,000 had been made, the bolt handle was also changed from the bent carbine style to a heavier duty straight type. With these changes made, the Modele 07/15 was ready for mass adoption by the infantry, where it would serve side by side with the Lebel.

The primary manufacturer of 07/15 rifles was the St. Etienne arsenal, which build between 1.0 and 1.2 million of them by the spring of 1917. The Chatellerault arsenal produced another 436,000, and the Delauney Belleville automobile factory retooled its workshops to make rifles, producing another 170,000 of them. The Remington company in the US also took a contract to make 250,000 Berthier rifles, but was unable to meet the terms of the contract. Remington had taken on more wartime production work than it could handle, and failed to meet French quality and scheduling requirements. In August of 1916 that contract was cancelled, with just 9,440 rifles sent to France for use. The remaining 5,000-10,000 that had been made by Remington were sold on the commercial market in the US.

By 1916, it was clear that the 3-round capacity of the Berthier was a very real disadvantage (both tactically and psychologically) to the German Mauser rifles, and an upgrade program was put underway. This would ultimately become the 1916 pattern and would go into production in 1917.

If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow

QotD: The US media when Donald Trump “happened”

Filed under: Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

[The 2008 election was] where the split between Party and Media really became obvious — the Party desperately wanted the only “adult” (by 21st century Democratic Party standards) in the room to be the nominee, but The Media wouldn’t hear of it. It seemed as though the struggle for the whip hand was finally over …

But then Donald Trump happened, as my students would’ve written. Though it’s only a few years in the past, we’ve already forgotten just how much The Media loved Bernie Sanders when the Republican nomination was still in doubt. Trump, of course, made The Media lose their shit so egregiously that what they did to W. looked like the happy ending to an Oriental massage, but virtually nobody was cheerleading for Hillary qua Hillary. It took the specter of The Donald as president to get them all on the same page.

Which brings us to now. The Democratic Party can read a poli-sci textbook. They know how difficult it is to beat an incumbent president in a good economy. Hell, it’s almost impossible to beat an incumbent president in a bad economy — see 2004 and 2012. It takes a major systemic shock to turf out an incumbent in the modern era — a catastrophe on the magnitude of a serious third party challenge (Ross Perot in ’92), or the incumbent being Jimmy Carter. The poli-sci textbooks say that the Dems’ only hope is to run the closest thing to the Antimatter Donald Trump they can find. That is to say: the blandest, SWPL-iest Goodwhite on their roster.

Alas for them, The Media will be having none of that. Trump somehow triggers them even more than he did in 2016 — don’t ask me how; it violates several important laws of thermodynamics — so they’re going all-in on goofballs like AOC and her “Squad.” The Media loves “the Squad,” and since The Media have convinced themselves that theirs is the whip hand, they’re ordering us to love “the Squad” too. To which Trump replies with a version of “lol get fucked,” and since “you’re free to leave this country if you hate it so much” seems forehead-slappingly obvious to anyone without a journalism degree, Trump’s poll numbers rise. Which prompts another stern lecture from The Media, which receives another “lol get fucked,” and around and around and around we go …

But here’s the thing: The battle for the whip is a battle royale. There are more than just two combatants. The Party still thinks it’s in charge. The Media, with 2008, 2012, and 2016 in its pocket, think they’re in charge. Nobody bothered to ask “the Squad,” though, and that’s the truly terrifying thing: “The Squad” thinks they’re in charge, and they might actually be right.

We’ve already got Congress voting to condemn Trump’s tweets. Set aside how brain-bogglingly infantile that is — and how petty and retarded it appears to the American public. Consider just how badly Nancy Pelosi et al, aka The Party, had to screw up to find themselves in this situation.

Severian, “Which Hand Holds the Whip?”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2019-07-17.

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