Quotulatiousness

November 24, 2024

“… if Russia were found to have had its own troops assemble a long-range missile and help launch it into the United States, do you think a US president would feel able to let it slide?”

Filed under: Britain, Military, Russia, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

It probably tightened a lot of already tight sphincters when it was announced that President Biden had authorized the Ukrainian government to use US-supplied long-range missiles to attack targets on Russian soil:

There was something truly surreal about President Biden suddenly changing course and agreeing to give Ukraine advanced long-range missiles to attack deep inside Russian territory in the last two months of his administration. There was no speech to the nation; no debate in the Senate; just a quiet demonstration of unilateral presidential fuck-you power. You know: the kind we’ve long worried about with Donald Trump. The missiles up the ante considerably against a nuclear power for a simple reason. As Putin noted:

    experts are well aware, and the Russian side has repeatedly emphasized this, that it is it is impossible to use such weapons without the direct involvement of military specialists of the countries producing such weapons.

The tiny tsar continued:

    We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow to use their weapons against our facilities. And in case of escalation of aggressive actions we will respond also decisively and mirrored.

And he looked on edge, bedraggled and belligerent, his arms and hands not moving a millimeter in what sure looks like AI.

There was a time when a NATO missile strike on Russian territory, followed by a Russian threat to attack NATO “military facilities” in response, would have caused the world to stop dead, paralyzed by the fear of nuclear armageddon. Yet here we are, blithely preoccupied by Pete Hegseth’s sexual exploits and Congressional bathrooms.

Others are not so sanguine. “I believe that in 2024 we can absolutely believe that the Third World War has begun,” Ukraine’s former military chief, Valery Zaluzhny, warned yesterday, noting both the new involvement of NATO troops and the involvement of North Korea. Our own president, having brought us much closer to the brink as a lame duck, seemed unconcerned. He was last seen wandering off-stage in the vague direction of the Brazilian rainforest. Not optimal.

The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, was even punchier, and pledged to allow Ukraine to use British long-range missiles as well: “We need to double down. We need to make sure Ukraine has what is necessary for as long as necessary, because we cannot allow Putin to win this war”. When asked if he was prepared to risk the UK forces or Ukraine or a third country like Poland being nuked in response, as Putin has threatened, Starmer simply ignored the question.

Meanwhile, just to keep things from escalating, the deputy chief of the British defense staff told a parliamentary committee yesterday:

    If the British Army was asked to fight tonight, it would fight tonight. I don’t think anybody in this room should be under any illusion that if the Russians invaded Eastern Europe tonight, then we would meet them in that fight.

There seems to be a general impression that Putin is of course bluffing, that NATO can keep lobbing missiles into Russian territory with minimal consequences, and nothing could possibly go wrong.

But Putin has responded by launching a long-range missile that could be used to carry a nuke but didn’t, as well as lowering the bar for the use of nukes in his military “doctrine“. And ask yourself: if Russia were found to have had its own troops assemble a long-range missile and help launch it into the United States, do you think a US president would feel able to let it slide? Here’s what the British missile, the Storm Shadow, did in hitting an underground military facility in Kursk, according to unverified Russia media sources:

    [The strike] resulted in the Death of 18 Russian Officers, including a Senior Commander, as well as 3 North Korean Officers. In addition, a Dozen other Soldiers and Officers were Wounded in the Attack, including one of North Korea’s most Senior Generals.

I can’t verify that, but it’s perfectly possible. To have NATO’s fingers on the targeting and launch of that missile puts us in a whole new category of conflict.

The job of a president is to keep us far, far away from any risk of nuclear conflict, as Biden seemed to understand until now. And any student of history will know that blithe complacency as two sides trade military escalations is often exactly the precursor to something going very, very wrong. Accidents happen; misjudgments occur; the point of never getting to this point is that this point contains a host of unknowables, some of them globally existential.

I assume that this is all about strengthening Kyiv’s hand in what will be grueling negotiations to end the conflict once Donald Trump gets back into office. Or the intelligence is worse than we know and it’s about avoiding an Ukraine collapse before Biden leaves office — which, after Afghanistan, would be a final, damning verdict on his foreign policy. Or the intelligence is better than we know and the Russian economy is so weak and his military so depleted that NATO thinks this extra pressure will force Putin to crack. Or it’s a norm-defying attempt from an outgoing administration to derail any peace process the incoming one might want to start. The latter possibility — with Biden rolling the dice because he thinks someone else will have to face the music — is not a minimal risk.

How Allied and Nazi Generals Created the Clean Wehrmacht Myth

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, Russia, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 23 Nov 2024

After the fall of the Third Reich, many of Hitler’s generals are convicted as war criminals by the Allies and condemned to prison and disgrace. Yet, within a few years, the Western Powers embrace them Cold War partners against the Soviet Union. In this new alliance, they rewrite history and create the enduring myth of the “clean Wehrmacht“.
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Trump breaks the electoral pattern that had persisted for decades

Filed under: History, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In Quillette, Jason Garshfield outlines the “traditional” pattern of presidential elections and identifies the relatively few breaks in that pattern and how Donald Trump represents a major disruption compared to what outside observers might have expected to see:

How The New Republic saw Donald Trump during the 2024 election campaign.

… Yet the symbolic power of the presidency is paramount. We speak of the 1980s as the Reagan Era and the 1990s as the Clinton Era, not the “Tip O’Neill Era” or the “Newt Gingrich Era”. The presidency represents control over the federal government, and ultimately over the spirit and the direction of the nation. It is the highest political prize, and a party consistently denied the presidency will not remain a satisfied player in the system, even if they achieve political success on other meaningful fronts. This is dangerous in a nation where mutual assent is a prerequisite for the smooth functioning of a free and fair electoral system.

Trump’s 2024 victory does not feel as shocking as his 2016 victory did. After all, we’ve seen this show before. But 2024 is a more remarkable coup than 2016. Back then, Trump’s victory did not buck the prevailing trend. This time, he won against that trend and shattered the pattern.

Some have argued that Trump’s indomitable force of personality, demonstrated in the way in which he has refashioned American politics in his image over the past decade, vindicates the Great Man Theory of History. For instance, Yair Rosenberg, writing for The Atlantic in 2022, commented that Trump’s “personal idiosyncrasies — and, I would argue, malignancies — altered the course of American history in directions it otherwise would not have gone”. To Rosenberg, this represented a turn for the worse, but many of Trump’s supporters would say the same, while casting it in a more positive light. As with Napoleon Bonaparte, one cannot confidently state that if Trump had never been born, someone like him would have done what he did.

Elsewhere in this magazine, I compare Donald Trump to the Mule, a character in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation stories who, with his unique superpower of mind control, manages to undo the entire Seldon Plan which had been designed to direct the future of the galaxy. In Asimov’s fictional social science of psychohistory, humans are compared to molecules within a gas: the path of each individual molecule is unpredictable, but the movement of the gas as a whole can be predicted. But the psychohistorians assume that no one molecule can ever have a significant effect on the whole — and they are mistaken.

Trump is a particle that defies measurement. It is as though Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle applies to him: you can know where he is, or how fast he is going, but never both at the same time. Once you think you have him pinned down to a fixed point in the cosmos, he throws your calculations into chaos. This drives his opponents crazy and imbues his most fervent supporters with a near-messianic belief that he will triumph against any odds.

Social scientists tend to hate the Great Man Theory of History because it renders their work entirely meaningless. No matter how strong certain social forces may be, they can ultimately be dispensed with at any time by unpredictable mighty figures. As a result, the future is frighteningly unknowable. But both Great Man Theory and historical determinism have dire implications. Either individuals are irrelevant, or else we live in an unknowable and irrational universe, which unfolds according to no fixed laws. Neither theory allows rationalism and individualism to coexist.

The durability of the eight-year pattern in American politics seems to provide strong evidence against the Great Man Theory. Many of the leaders and almost-leaders of the United States since 1952 have been outsized personalities, yet the sociological paradigm suggests that their personal charisma had little impact on their success or failure. In this view, neither Barack Obama’s charm nor John McCain and Mitt Romney’s lack of charm radically influenced the outcomes of the 2008 and 2012 elections. It was simply time for a Democrat to win, and McCain and Romney might as well not have run. For that matter, both parties might as well have saved their energy and agreed to simply exchange places every eight years — that is, if we accept historical determinism as the driving factor.

Before Trump, only two other figures in postwar America came close to being Great Men. They were the finalists of the 1980 election: Ronald Reagan, who managed to win against the pattern and usher in twelve straight years of Republican control, and Jimmy Carter, who lost the election he should have won. It is debatable as to whether the 1980 election was more a story of Carter’s weakness or Reagan’s strength, but both undoubtedly played a role. Now Trump has become both Carter and Reagan, the unexpected loser of one election and the unexpected winner of another.

How Newfoundland and Labrador lost their independence

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Geography By Geoff
Published Jul 16, 2024

Did you know that Newfoundland and Labrador were once an independent country in the same manner as Canada was? It’s true! It was called the Dominion of Newfoundland and due to a series of unfortunate events, it had to relinquish its independence. In today’s video, we cover the vast geography of the province, it’s very old history (including Vikings!) and how the country managed to lose its independence when it managed to survive on its own for decades. Oh … and we’ll also talk about why Labrador got included in the name upon confederating with Canada.
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QotD: Wood

Filed under: Quotations, Technology, Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

If someone today invented wood, it would never be approved as a building material. It burns, it rots, it has different strength properties depending on its orientation, no two pieces are alike, and most cruelly of all, it expands and contracts based on the relative humidity around it. However, despite all of these problems, wood is the material of choice when building houses. In fact, we can use wood better than we can use steel, masonry and concrete.

Joseph Lstiburek, Builder’s Guide to Cold Climates, 2000.

November 23, 2024

They just can’t stop themselves from taking the MAGA bait

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Kat Rosenfield in UnHerd discusses the inability of American leftists from rising to the (obvious) trolling from pranksters on the right:

Carol Kane and Billy Crystal as Valerie and Miracle Max in The Princess Bride, 1987.

The current state of the American political discourse is best understood through the lens of the 1987 movie The Princess Bride — or more specifically, one scene therein. It’s the part where Miracle Max is decompensating over the insistence of his wife, Valerie, on saying the word, “Humperdinck”, the name of the movie’s evil prince, who is also Max’s most loathed nemesis.

“Why would you say that name!” he screams.

“What? Humperdinck!?” she shrieks back, gleefully.

One gets the sense that these two do this a lot — her Humperdincking, him screaming, which only makes her Humperdinck harder. That this problem has two obvious solutions only illuminates its intractability. Valerie could stop saying the name, but then again, Max could also choose not to react to its every utterance as if he’s been electrocuted. That neither of them are making different choices suggests that something about this dynamic serves them both.

I thought of this scene when the first “Your body, my choice” post from a male Trump voter skittered insect-like across my timeline in the wake of the election — closely followed by a handful of “My body, his choice” remixes by savvy OnlyFans models hoping to cash in on the moment. This crude riff on the feminist war cry that once defined the battle for abortion rights was akin to an inaugural shout of “Humperdinck!”, designed explicitly to trigger a meltdown among liberals. And lo: if you do an internet search for the phrase now, around 5% of the results are of people posting it and 95% are critics freaking out in response. “Women need to be kept safe from the ‘your body, my choice’ peddlers,” The Guardian announced, while CNN warned: “Attacks on women surge on social media following election”. And The New Yorker, for whom the phrase is a harbinger of a “coming era of gender regression”, described it as “A New Rallying Cry for the Irony-Poisoned Right”.

The phrase “irony-poisoned” in that last headline — which graces an essay by Jia Tolentino — struck me as an especially savvy bit of rhetoric. It functions as a preemptive strike against the obvious counterpoint to all this panic. Namely: “your body my choice” is a repulsive thing to say, but also the furthest thing from a legitimate threat.

The men behind these posts are not rapists-in-waiting, announcing their intent to commit sexual violence; they are trolls, gleefully trolling away in the hope of making people Mad Online. But if Tolentino knows this is bait (and she clearly does), she nevertheless cannot help taking it, hook, line, and sinker. The piece is imbued with a near-religious sense of horror at seeing the feminist catechism of “my body my choice” twisted by nonbelievers into something unfathomably malignant. This is beyond distasteful; it is heretical. And unlike the provocations in which the millennial Left once delighted, back in the days when one measly crucifix soaked in urine could trigger a weeks-long meltdown among religious conservatives, this little joke (Tolentino argues) is simply not funny.

How the US Paranoia of Leftism was Born

Filed under: Britain, History, Quotations, Russia, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 21 Nov 2024

Elizabeth Bentley’s defection in 1945 didn’t just expose a Soviet spy network — it fueled America’s second Red Scare and a wave of anti-communist paranoia. Her revelations about Soviet infiltration within the U.S. government became a catalyst for McCarthyism, reshaping American politics and society in an era defined by fear and suspicion.
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Common sense on males in female sports from … checks notes … the United Nations?

Filed under: Health, Media, Politics, Sports — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ramesh Thakur summarizes some of the findings from a recent report by the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls which somehow defies the narrative from most of the legacy media in the Current Year:

Has Hell frozen over? Uncommonly for the UN (think Antonio Guterres with the global warming hyperbole), one of its recent reports is full of common sense. In the last three years, I have been critical of UN performance regarding some high-profile issues, including World Health Organisation failings in responding to the coronavirus pandemic and a power grab for future pandemic management; lawfare against Israel by the world court and International Criminal Court; and UN Women’s betrayal of the raison d’être for its creation and existence with a shamefully delayed acknowledgment of the weaponisation of mass rape, sexual violence, mutilation and public humiliation of Israeli women on October 7th 2023.

Enter Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls. It’s a relief and a pleasure to acknowledge her positive report “Violence against women and girls in sport“. Published on August 27th, it was presented to the UN General Assembly last month. She notes that until very recently, the need for a separate category for females “to ensure equal, fair and safe opportunities in sports” was a “universally recognised principle”. Maintaining separate-sex sports is a proportional action that corresponds to legitimate aims within international law. Females also have a right to privacy under international law which is forfeited by compelled mixed-sex spaces in intimate facilities. Alsalem explained to Fox News on October 21st that this is primarily a human rights issue, not a cultural or an individual issue.

Biological advantages for males in competitive sports include strength (162% greater punching power on average!), weight, muscle mass, speed, height, reach and endurance. Separate categories for males and females were created to recognise this biological reality and provide equal, fair and safe opportunities for females to win recognition, prize money, fame and career advancement. Allowing biological males into female sports is unfair and amounts to cheating by males who are simply not competitive in male sports (think swimmer Lia Thomas). It steals women’s dreams, aspirations and rewards. Alsalem’s data show that more than 600 female athletes in over 400 competitions have lost nearly 900 medals across 29 different sports. Other reports document instances of injuries from trans-on-females encounters, including teeth knocked out, concussions resulting in neural impairment, broken legs and skull fractures. Thus safety is yet another another concern.

Despite the unfairness, invasion of privacy, opportunity costs and safety risks, many athletes and coaches who object to trans-inclusion policies are silenced or forced to self-censor at the risk of losing sporting opportunities, scholarships and sponsorships. Many who do speak out despite such formidable hurdles are accused of bigotry, suspended, expelled and subjected to unfair disciplinary proceedings. Many (like Moira Deeming) face hostility if they assemble to discuss how to deal with these issues, violating the fundamental human rights to freedom of belief, opinion and expression. Some have quit sport entirely under the cumulative stress. Because “biological sex is central” to women’s “experiences of discrimination and violence”, countries that permit biological men to compete in women’s sports deny women “their femaleness”. To counteract the “worrisome trend”, she recommends the creation of open categories in sports competition and non-invasive and confidential sex screening procedures to ensure fairness, safety and dignity for female athletes alongside inclusive participation for everyone.

The trans-extremist assault on female spaces in the workplace and sporting arenas has been in the thick of the culture wars. Amidst the wreckage of those wars, the DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) industry has morphed into DIE (division, intolerance, exclusion), promoting resentment, language-policing and unjust outcomes instead of real solutions. Trade-offs are central to public policy decision-making. The last major issue on which this was ignored was the panicked response to Covid and we will be paying for the resulting disasters for many years yet. By putting the spotlight back on the importance of balancing competing and clashing rights through policy trade-offs, this report provides a key to navigating our way out of the wreckage. It’s potentially also helpful in Sall Grover’s appeal in the Giggle v. Tickle case, as is the return of Trump to the White House. Alsalem is right to note that these policies originate from and exist almost entirely in Western countries. Their hold on many parts of the UN system is evidence of the hegemony of Western ideas and practices as the global norm. The adoption of trans and multigender language and the inclusion of trans athletes in international sports is confirmation of cultural imperialism at the cost of women-specific human rights.

Kitaro – “Silk Road” (live)

Filed under: Japan, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Kitaro
Published Jul 11, 2024

From the album Zen – Live In Katsuyama
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QotD: Nietzsche’s message

Filed under: Books, History, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

[Nietzsche’s] objection to Christianity is simply that it is mushy preposterous, unhealthy, insincere, enervating. It lays its chief stress, not upon the qualities of vigorous and efficient men, but upon the qualities of the weak and parasitical. True enough, the vast majority of men belong to the latter class: they have very little enterprise and very little courage. For these Christianity is good enough. It soothes them and heartens them; it apologizes for their vegetable existence; it fills them with an agreeable sense of virtue. But it holds out nothing to the men of the ruling minority; it is always in direct conflict with their vigor and enterprise; it seeks incessantly to weaken and destroy them. In consequence, Nietzsche urged them to abandon it. For such men he proposed a new morality — in his own phrase, a “transvaluation of values” — with strength as its highest good and renunciation as its chiefest evil. They waste themselves to-day by pulling against the ethical stream. How much faster they would go if the current were with them! But as I have said — and it cannot be repeated too often — Nietzsche by no means proposed a general repeal of the Christian ordinances. He saw that they met the needs of the majority of men, that only a small minority could hope to survive without them. In the theories and faiths of this majority he has little interest. He was content to have them believe whatever was most agreeable to them. His attention was fixed upon the minority. He was a prophet of aristocracy. He planned to strike the shackles from the masters of the world …

H.L. Mencken, “Transvaluation of Morals”, The Smart Set, 1915-03.

November 22, 2024

Kalthoff 30-Shot Flintlock: The First Repeating Firearm Used in War (1659)

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published Aug 7, 2024

The first repeating rifle used in combat by a military force was a flintlock system developed by the Kalthoff brothers. It was adopted in the 1640s by the Danish Royal Guard, who purchased a bit more than 100 of the guns, and used them successfully in the Siege of Copenhagen in 1659. The Kalthoff is a .54 caliber flintlock rifle with a magazine of 30 balls under the barrel and a powder storage compartment in the buttstock. A lever under the action is rotated forward 180 degrees and then back to completely reload the rifle — this action loads a ball into the chamber, seats it fully in place, loads powder behind it, primes the pan, cocks the hammer, and closes the frizzen. This was an amazing amount of firepower in the mid-1600s, and the mechanism in the gun is brilliant.

The Kalthoff brothers (Peter, Mathias, Caspar, Henrik, and William) spread out across Europe working for many royal courts although it was in Denmark where their gun saw the most substantial military use. The system would lead to other repeating flintlock designs like the Lorenzoni, but these did not really meet the quality of the original Kalthoffs (in my opinion). However, the system was very expensive to make and rather fragile to use. By 1696 the Danes had taken them out of service in favor of simpler and more durable designs. Kalthoffs today are very, very rare, and it was an incredible privilege to be able to take this one apart to show to you. Many thanks to Jan, its owner, for letting me do that!
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QotD: Pre-modern armies on the move

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Armies generally had to move over longer distances via roads, for both logistical and pathfinding reasons. For logistics, while unencumbered humans can easily clamber over fences or small ridges or weave through forests, humans carrying heavy loads struggle to do this and pack animals absolutely cannot. Dense forests (especially old growth forests) are formidable obstacles for pack and draft animals, with a real risk of animals injuring themselves with unlucky footfalls. After all the donkey was originally a desert/savannah creature and horses evolved on the Eurasian Steppe; dense forest is a difficult, foreign terrain. But the rural terrain that would dominate most flat, arable land was little better: fields are often split by fences or hedgerows which need to be laboriously cleared (essentially making a path) to allow the work animals through. Adding wagons limits this further; pack mules can make use of narrow paths through forests or hills, but wagons pulled by draft animals require proper roads wide enough to accommodate them, flat enough that the heavy wagon doesn’t slide back and with a surface that will be at least somewhat kind on the wheels. That in turn in many cases restricts armies to significant roadways, ruling out things like farmer’s paths between fields or small informal roads between villages, though smaller screening, scouting or foraging forces could take these side roads.

(As an aside: one my enduring frustrations is the tendency of pre-modern strategy games to represent most flat areas as “plains” of grassland often with a separate “farmland” terrain type used only in areas of very dense settlement. But around most of the Mediterranean, most of the flat, cleared land at lower elevations would have been farmland, with all of the obstructions and complications that implies; rolling grasslands tend to be just that – uplands too hilly for farming.)

The other problem is pathfinding and geolocation. Figuring out where you off-road overland with just a (highly detailed) map and a compass is sufficiently difficult that it is a sport (Orienteering). Prior to 1300, armies in the broader Mediterranean world were likely to lack both; the compass (invented in China) arrives in the Mediterranean in the 1300s and detailed topographical maps of the sort that hikers today might rely on remained rare deep into the modern period, especially maps of large areas. Consequently it could be tricky to determine an army’s exact heading (sun position could give something approximate, of course) or position. Getting lost in unfamiliar territory was thus a very real hazard. Indeed, getting lost in familiar territory was a real hazard: Suetonius records that Julius Caesar, having encamped not far from the Rubicon got lost trying to find it, spent a whole night wandering trying to locate it (his goal being to make the politically decisive crossing with just a few close supporters in secrecy first before his army crossed). In the end he had to find a local guide to work his way back to it in the morning (Suet. Caes. 31.2). So to be clear: famed military genius Julius Caesar got lost trying to find a 50 mile long river only about 150 miles away from Rome when he tried to cut cross-country instead of over the roads.

Instead, armies relied on locals guides (be they friendly, bought or coerced) to help them find their way or figure out where they were on whatever maps they could get together. Locals in turn tend to navigate by landmarks and so are likely to guide the army along the paths and roads they themselves use to travel around the region. Which is all as well because the army needs to use the roads anyway and no one wants to get lost. The road and path network thus becomes a vital navigational aid: roads and paths both lead to settlements full of potential guides (to the next settlement) and because roads tend to connect large settlements and large settlements tend to be the objectives of military campaigns, the road system “points the way”. Consequently, armies rarely strayed off of the road network and were in most cases effectively confined to it. Small parties might be sent out off of the road network from the main body, but the main body was “stuck” on the roads.

That means the general does not have to cope with an infinitely wide range of maneuver possibilities but a spiderweb of possible pathways. Small, “flying columns” without heavy baggage could use minor roads and pathways, but the main body of the army was likely to be confined to well-traveled routes connecting large settlements.

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Logistics, How Did They Do It, Part III: On the move”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2022-08-12.

November 21, 2024

“If the Federal Court of Appeal greenlights that standard for freedom of peaceful assembly … then governments would have the power to ban virtually every large protest”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

In The Line, Josh Dehaas explains why Justice Mosley’s Federal Court decision earlier in 2024 didn’t go far enough to protect Canadians’ rights, specifically their right to assemble in large numbers where the government claims to think that things might get violent:

Arms of the Federal Court of Canada

Earlier this year, Justice Mosley of the Federal Court of Canada ruled that the invocation of the Emergencies Act in response to the Freedom Convoy protests was illegal.

There was a lot to like in that ruling, not least of which because it agreed with the official position of my organization, the Canadian Constitution Foundation.

First, Mosley agreed that the definitions of “national emergency” and “threats to the security of Canada” weren’t met by the federal government, thus invalidating their use of the Emergencies Act. Second, the Justice agreed that freezing bank accounts without a warrant violated the Charter right against unreasonable searches. Third, he agreed that the regulations that banned travelling to, participating in, and funding certain assemblies under threat of up to five years in prison violated freedom of expression.

But not all of Mosley’s ruling was commendable, from our point of view. What we didn’t like was a finding that the same regulations that violated expression because they banned a person from “merely going onto Parliament Hill waving a placard” regardless of whether that person had blockaded or breached the peace, didn’t also violate the Charter guarantee of freedom of peaceful assembly. How could that be? The CCF is asking the Federal Court of Appeal to overturn that finding when it hears the government’s appeal, most likely in early 2025.

This week, we got the government’s stunning and frankly, disturbing, response to that very point of contention. We expected the government to argue that the limitations to individuals’ rights to peaceful assembly were reasonable, given the need to deal with the protest writ large. That wasn’t their only claim.

Instead, the government pulled out an entirely novel line of reasoning, arguing that the Charter doesn’t protect assemblies if they might turn violent or breach the peace. If the Federal Court of Appeal greenlights that standard for freedom of peaceful assembly — establishing a new precedent on when Charter freedoms can be subject to limits — then governments would have the power to ban virtually every large protest. The federal government’s view that assemblies are not Charter-protected and can be blocked in advance if someone in the crowd might reasonably be expected to breach the peace cannot stand if we’re to have any meaningful right to peaceful assembly at all.

Canadian defence priorities – don’t listen to what they say, watch what they spend the money on

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

The Hub provides an edited transcript of what retired Lieutenant General Andrew Leslie (and former Liberal whip in the Commons) said to the Standing Committee on National Defence earlier this month, which shows very clearly where national defence ranks in Justin Trudeau’s world:

My intent is to offer some criticism of the status quo so that we can learn and then perhaps some sort of question period to get into some solutions. Essentially, in my opinion, “Strong, Secure, Engaged“, the precursor to the current defence policy, delivered nothing substantive in terms of modern military equipment, which saw Canada, in fact, become weaker, more insecure, and essentially absent from the deployable stables of troops required for either United Nation missions, or, of course, NATO.

The 2024 defence policy update of “Our North, Strong and Free” is no better, unfortunately, in that it promises some urgently needed equipment years from now, but nothing today. Indeed, the 2024 defence spend will be less than that of 2023. Of course, we’re well aware of what just happened down [in the] United States. Both Republicans and Democrats are united and increasingly vocal about telling Canada how disappointed, frustrated and fed up they are with Canada’s failure to defend itself and their allies, with a special mention on the Arctic.

Meanwhile, as we know, and I was involved in the last NAFTA renegotiations, that’s coming due at a time when a variety of key players down south have articulated clearly the base of 3 percent [of GDP spending on defence] looms on the horizon, and how defence, security, trade, and border security are all intertwined. At this time of crisis internationally, with what’s happening in the Middle East, in Ukraine, Canada’s military readiness is at its lowest level in 50 years. Canada spent last year, in 2023, more money on consultants and professional services than it did on the Army, Navy, and Air Force combined — which quite frankly, is madness.

The Army has over 50 percent of its vehicle fleets, which are awaiting spare parts and technicians. The Navy is struggling mightily — bless them — to keep elderly warships, a handful of them at sea, specifically in the Indo-Pacific, and they’re desperately short of trained sailors. The Air Force has been unable to participate in significant NATO deterrent exercises, either up north or over the oceans, in conjunction with our friends and allies, because they don’t have the pilots, the spare parts, or the money to fly the aircraft.

In the Arctic, which is many times larger than Europe, Canada has fewer than 300 military support staff who are not a deterrent — they’re essentially unarmed. Some of them are part-time, bless them, and about 1,600 Ski-Doos equipped with rifles, and Canadian Rangers who are not combatants. Their role is to observe and report.

The bottom line is that Canada has no permanently assigned combat elements to deter potential presence by the Russians or the Chinese, who are showing up in our waters with increasing frequency. But other people do. Russia specifically has between 25,000 to 35,000 combat troops deployed in their Arctic with huge amounts of operational equipment — air, land and sea. The United States, bless them, has 22,000 full-time military and part-time military professionals with more equipment than the entirety of the Canadian Forces in terms of combat delivery. So really, thank you America for defending our Arctic.

We are facing unprecedented dangers and challenges, and quite frankly, I see no sense of urgency to change, to modify, to re-guide the efforts of the government towards supporting and assisting in the Canadian Forces.

Some facts. We have less than 35 military personnel deployed on UN missions; in 2003, we had close to 2,500. We are the only NATO nation whose level of military operational readiness is going down when everyone else is skyrocketing up. We have the longest and least efficient procurement system in NATO; indeed, in any nation that I can find. We are the only nation in NATO that does not have a costed plan to get to 2 percent of GDP, which was first agreed to by the minister of defence in 2008 and reiterated in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and I could go on. We are the only NATO nation whose defence minister has publicly admitted that he could not convince his fellow cabinet members of the importance of NATO defence spending, and the 2 percent GDP. And, as mentioned already, we’re the only NATO nation whose defence budget decreased this year.

Emphasis mine.

1966: Chieftain Tank Simulator | Tomorrow’s World | Retro Tech | BBC Archive

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

BBC Archive
Published Jul 15, 2024

“All the tension, the excitement, and indeed the technical demands of driving a modern tank into battle … but, in fact, I haven’t moved a yard.”

Raymond Baxter test drives the British Army’s Chieftain tank simulator, used for training tank drivers. The illusion is created using a large 1:300 scale model of the battlefield, a computer, and a roving mirror connected to a television camera. The battlefield can be altered simply by swapping out the model trees and buildings.

Mr Baxter can attest to how realistic the experience is, and it costs just one tenth of the price of training in a real Chieftain tank.

Clip taken from Tomorrow’s World, originally broadcast on BBC One, 28 September, 1966.

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