Quotulatiousness

September 12, 2019

Maclean’s invades The Onion‘s pitch

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

Barbara Kay on a recent Maclean’s article that may indicate a change of editorial direction for the venerable Canadian magazine:

I never thought of Maclean’s as a satirical magazine, but perhaps they are testing the waters on a rebranding. I cannot otherwise account for the bizarre article just published under their aegis by Scott Gilmore, “Thank God I could Enjoy the Age of Mediocre White Men While It Lasted.” This self-flagellatory apologia for being a successful white male reads like a parody of our cultural moment.

I laughed when I read it, and checked the URL to make sure I hadn’t stumbled on a piece from The Onion by mistake, but no, it was indeed a Maclean’s piece. Sadly, I am all too aware that in these fanatically anti-white male times, a lot of identity-politics activists — including white men who pee sitting down to prove their wokeness — will not only take it seriously, they will applaud him.

Gilmore’s thesis is this in a nutshell: simply being white and male gives you such an advantage in life that for all of human history, other people, so dazzled by male whiteness that they are rendered oblivious both to white-male mediocrity and their own inherent superiority, willingly hand things over to you, things like their bodies, their possessions and their national sovereignty, and of course all the good careers. Your skin colour and sex are your ticket to ride. That state of affairs is now ending, Gilmore says, and this piece is effectively Gilmore’s thank-you note to history for allowing him to have benefited from this remarkable deal, and as well an expression of gratitude that white males are now headed to the dustbin of history, where they belong.

The first problem with the article is that Gilmore never defines “mediocre.” One dictionary definition is “of only moderate quality; not very good.” Let’s go with that. Let’s assume he means white men are dumber, lazier and of lesser character than all women and all non-white men. And yet, “being a white male has been the bee’s knees for about 2,000 years. We have been giving all the orders, taking all the credit, and pocketing all the money since Caesar told Cleopatra to pipe down. We wrote the history books and we built the empires (well, other people did the actual building, but we oversaw a lot of it from our sedan chairs). We drafted all the laws, and made sure to always stack the cards in our favour. And, for a truly impressive long time, we were able to keep all the fun to ourselves.”

QotD: Canadians and Europeans

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Europe, Humour, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

In the current issue of The Spectator, Niall Ferguson argues that the Anglo-American “special relationship” is doomed.

“The typical British family,” he writes, “looks much more like the typical German family than the typical American family. We eat Italian food. We watch Spanish soccer. We drive German cars. We work Belgian hours. And we buy second homes in France. Above all, we bow before central government as only true Europeans can.”

He has a point, though cultural similarities are not always determinative: Canadians eat American food, watch American sports, drive American cars, work American hours (more or less), and buy second homes in Florida. But they still bow down before central government as only true Europeans can.

Mark Steyn, Telegraph, originally posted to the old blog (no longer online), 2004-09-30.

September 11, 2019

Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments

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

Colby Cosh discusses the genesis of Atwood’s best-known work from 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale and the new sequel published this week, The Testaments:

In a CBS interview broadcast on Sunday, Atwood insisted again, as she always has, that her book wasn’t a prediction. People who read her book in a spirit of active dread, the kind of people who dress up as Handmaids and march on legislatures, will say that, well, dystopias are created specifically so that they won’t come true. What Atwood is trying to say goes deeper than that, and contradicts it. She won’t even insist that the book was intended as a warning. “I’m not a prophet,” she pleads, while everyone around her tells her what a terrific prophet she is.

What she means, but cannot say because it would sound arrogant, is: “I’m not a prophet, dammit, I’m an artist.” If tyrannies were easy to predict and prevent by spritzing around a bit of literary bug spray, they couldn’t come about in the first place. Atwood knows better than this; she knows that tragedies of this scale never take the form that an author might anticipate. Moreover, people who read The Handmaid’s Tale as a mere tract are deaf to its satirical elements — particularly those of the epilogue, in which the story is revealed to have been unearthed by scholars in a still-more-distant future.

These people are also failing to see that The Handmaid’s Tale is a book — researched, not merely imagined — about the past of humankind. The whole book is predicated on the observation (also made implicitly in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four) that totalitarian regimes are never libertine; they all police sexuality at least as strenuously as they do trade and creative activity, and always come with puritanical, sexually homogenizing features. The novel was heavily influenced by Ceausescu’s Romania and its pro-natalist Decree 770, which abolished contraception and imposed mass gynecological inspection on women of fertile age. Europeans and students (or veterans) of the Cold War will notice this, but how many of the young folk who dress up as Handmaids at protests have any idea? (Are some of them also cosplaying on Twitter as postmodern retro-communists?)

I am curious to see what the critics make of the sequel, because the act of writing one seems a bit cynical, and yet perhaps Atwood has found some clever way of making it work. Offred’s narrative in The Handmaid’s Tale is, as I say, unearthed in a later future; it is important to the functioning of the book that we come to see her as a figure from the past, a human voice whose plea from an obscure period has been flung forward into the hands of half-comprehending and unsympathetic scholarly boobs.

September 8, 2019

Cynicism is the correct way to view the two largest federal parties in Canada

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

Andrew Coyne on the contrast between the Liberal Party, led by Prime Minister Dressup, and the Conservative* Party, “led” by the empty suit I like to call “The Milk Dud”:

As we await the start of the election campaign that began several months ago, some cynics would have you believe the whole thing is little more than a hollow ritual, an empty contest in mass manipulation between rival gangs of careerists and power-seekers who, for all their partisan breast-beating, do not differ in any meaningful way.

Don’t be fooled. Seldom have the choices between so stark, or the stakes so high.

The two main parties, after all, could not be more different. The one, it is well known, is little more than a personality cult centred on the leader, while the other is a personality cult, minus the personality. The first is notably bereft of any governing philosophy or principles but will say and do whatever it takes to win, while the second will say and do whatever it takes to lose.

Of course, both parties have from time to time had their share of scandals, a Wright-Duffy here, an SNC-Lavalin there, but with a critical difference. For whereas the Liberals abuse power because they can — because being so often in government and so accustomed to its pleasures, no one expects them to do any differently — the Conservatives do so because they must: because being so rarely in government, they are at every disadvantage, between an uncooperative bureaucracy and a hostile media, and need recourse to every expedient just to even the scales. Or because the Liberals did it first. Or just because.

* Note that no actual conservatives are members of this party, the name is just a convenient label, not an accurate descriptor.

September 7, 2019

C2A1: Canada’s Squad Automatic FAL

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 6 Sep 2019

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…

Canada was the first country to formally adopt the FN FAL as its standard service rifle, and in 1958 it added the C2 light machine gun version of the FAL to its arsenal. The C2, later updated to C2A1, was a heavy-barreled version of the regular FAL rifle. It shared all the same basic action components, but with a dual-use bipod/handguard, a rear sight calibrated out to 1000 meters, and 30-round magazines as standard. The gun was mechanically fine, but not a great light support weapon, as its rifle lineage sacrificed handling and sustained fire capability. Only about 2700 were produced, and it was ultimately replaced by the C9 (FN Minimi) in the 1980s.

Many thanks to Movie Armaments Group in Toronto for the opportunity to showcase their AR-10 rifles for you! Check them out on Instagram to see many of the guns in their extensive collection:

https://instagram.com/moviearmamentsg…
http://www.moviearms.com

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
Tucson, AZ 85754

September 5, 2019

Phony Trudeaumania has bitten the dust

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

Nico Johnson discusses the dangers of family dynasties in democratic countries:

When future political historians look back at the 21st century, Justin Trudeau’s election as a Liberal leader may be regarded as a bland footnote. Despite all the hope Trudeau brought Canadians in his once seemingly eternal, post-election honeymoon, his leadership inevitably toppled into a swamp of sticky scandals and hurried apologies.

Justin Trudeau may still be re-elected. However, the Conservatives can rest easy in the knowledge that Trudeaumania, at least for this current Trudeau, is well and truly dead.

What is noteworthy, however, is the atmosphere of surprise and confusion that has clouded commentators’ judgements surrounding the downfall of Trudeau. In the corridors of Ottawa’s broadcasters, it may have appeared absurd that natural political decline should apply to their darling Prime Minister; the leader of the “woke world.”

Trudeau’s appearance of invincibility, which still makes these commentators swoon (note the SNC-Lavalin coverage) was first created in those blue-skied months following his leadership election in 2013.

Perhaps Justin, with his charisma and handsomeness, seemed like a breath of fresh air to Canadian progressives. Gone were those days of Ignatieff, the drooling philosopher, who rather spectacularly (considering his semi-illiterate predecessor) lost 43 seats forcing the Liberals into third-party status.

With Trudeau’s leadership, the Liberal party would have a candidate who seemed so perfect for Canadian political life that even a eugenicist would struggle to replicate it. With his status as an Anglophone-Quebecois, which managed to pacify the sensibilities of English Canada, whilst having his Quebecois heritage to maintain seat-rich Quebec—Trudeau must have seemed like a divine gift.

Yet even in those early days, Trudeau lacked noticeably in the fundamental requirements that statesmanship should necessitate. He had no political experience after being almost casually elected to the House of Commons. Nor did he possess any working experience, and had been entirely unknown to the Canadian public until the eulogy at his father’s funeral. To put it quite simply, Justin Trudeau would have never become Prime Minister of Canada if his father, Pierre, had not been one too.

August 28, 2019

The political football of “mass” immigration in the Canadian federal election campaign

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

Recently a registered third-party (under Canadian election rules) paid to have billboards put up in major cities that appeared to be from Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada:

A billboard in Toronto, showing Maxime Bernier and an official-looking PPC message.
Photo from The Province – https://theprovince.com/opinion/columnists/gunter-berniers-legitimate-position-on-immigration-taken-down-by-spineless-billboard-company/wcm/ecab071c-b57d-4d93-b78c-274de524434c

Colby Cosh discusses the issues raised:

I offer sarcastic congratulations to everyone who gave Maxime Bernier the stupid controversy he wanted over the “Say NO to mass immigration” billboard, bearing his image, that briefly appeared in a few Canadian cities and was taken down in a hurry Monday morning. The billboards were purchased from Pattison Outdoor Advertising by a third-party supporter of Bernier’s People’s Party. The company’s initial response to the resulting outcry was to observe that the message of the billboard complied with advertising standards; it did not contain any hateful, disparaging, or discriminatory language.

“We take a neutral position on ads that comply with the ASC (Advertising Standards Canada) Code as we believe Canadians do not want us to be the judge or arbiter of what the public can or cannot see,” was Pattison’s original statement in the face of controversy. (Most everybody, including the company, seems to have missed the point that election advertising is explicitly “excluded from the application” of the Code on the grounds that political expression deserves the highest degree of deference; the Code does say, for what it’s worth, that “Canadians are entitled to expect” that such advertising respects the underlying principles.)

[…]

The question I have for objectors and denouncers of the billboard is how they think it could have been rewritten, expressing the same underlying idea, so as to be acceptable. If the unpleasant-sounding word “mass” were replaced with “large-scale,” would there have been less of a ruction? Maybe any objection to prospective levels of immigration to Canada is to be regarded as inherently racist and hateful, even when no racist or hateful language is used.

If that is the case, it is perfectly predictable that the People’s Party will exploit this and cry “mob censorship,” and public polls on immigration suggest they will have some success, in case recent history everywhere didn’t offer enough of a hint. Moreover, we are left with an awkward question how any limit upon or criteria for immigration, any government immigration policy per se, can be justified at all. What, indeed, can be the objection to “mass immigration”? Who will have the courage to put up a “Say YES to mass immigration” billboard?

QotD: The secret power of Quebec separatists that Western separatists lack

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

Even back in the day Western or Alberta separatism could never pass the Tebbit cricket test: Albertans have always kept cheering for Canadians at the Olympics or the hockey worlds, even at times when we were convinced intellectually that Confederation was a swindle. Much less would Westerners ever consider rooting against Canada, or hoping for its humiliation, or sabotaging it in a context of warfare or geopolitical struggle. Reform intellectuals like Hill have always wanted to create a sort of Western Canadian nationalism; that the necessary basis for nationalism is a nation, or something even slightly like one, has always escaped them. This is the super-secret advantage that Quebec has when using the blackmail tactics Hill and others are trying to imitate. Quebeckers have a genuine alternative loyalty to their extended Quebecois family, and Westerners have no equivalent. If we did, we wouldn’t have to advertise for secessionist generalissimos in the papers.

Colby Cosh, “Advice on Western separatism: don’t take it any more seriously than it takes itself”, National Post, 2019-07-26.

August 24, 2019

Prime Minister Dressup versus the Milk Dud

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

Barbara Kay on the most recent pre-campaign attack by the federal Liberals on Andrew “The Milk Dud” Scheer:

Andrew Scheer, paid tool of Big Dairy, chugs some milk during a Press Gallery speech in 2017. I’ve called him the “Milk Dud” ever since.
Screencapture from a CTV video uploaded to YouTube.

The Liberals know they are going into the coming federal election with their leader, Justin Trudeau, weighed down by the heavy baggage of the SNC-Lavalin debacle and the India Tickle Trunk Tour, amongst many other embarrassments. So the Conservatives had to expect some desperation moves to cast their leader, Andrew Scheer, in what the Libs consider an equally bad light.

And right on cue, the Libs unearthed a 2005 video of Andrew Scheer explaining to the House of Commons why he was personally opposed to the legalization of gay marriage.

We would do well to remember that the words Scheer spoke then constituted the belief system of 99% of the planet earth, including Barack Obama, who flipped on the issue when it became politically safe to do so. Gay marriage wasn’t even on the horizon of most countries in the West, nor is it legal yet in many western countries. (And as former NDP leader Thomas Mulcair pointed out in a CTV interview, Canadians would also do well to remember that in 1995 Ralph Goodale didn’t believe gays should even have the right to civil unions, let alone marriage.)

Scheer has no intention of revisiting gay marriage politically. It’s settled law, and he has given no indication that he considers it less than settled. Bringing up what he had to say in 2005 may be politically advantageous as a distraction, but it is unfair, while Conservative attacks on Trudeau for gaffes he has made and is still making as prime minister are perfectly fair comment.

August 20, 2019

Jonathan Kay listened to the whole SNC-Lavalin report so you don’t have to…

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

Update: Apparently the Thread Reader App only picked up the first couple of entries (it worked fine when I queued it up for publication yesterday). Here’s the text version:

I just listened to the entire ethics commissioner’s report on the SNC-Lavalin scandal while driving back from Maine. I loaded up the text in my VoiceAloud app, hit play, and the audio kept me going for 3 hours, all the way into central New York State, along the I-90….

As with any narrative, you begin to identify with certain characters. In my case, it was @Puglaas. I found it especially maddening the way everyone around her kept babbling about finding a “solution,” which was their settled euphemism for bullying her into helping SNC…

The level of condescension exhibited by everyone in and around the PMO toward @Puglaas was breathtaking. These Liberal dudes always kept pretending that they just wanted to make sure she had enough “information,” as if she were a law student, not the AG of a G7 nation …

At the same time, it was breathtaking the way SNC Lavalin was essentially able to turn the entire PMO, and major ministries, into its personal lobbying operation. Texts, emails, calls, in-person visits… it was like SNC-Lavalin had Trudeau’s PMO on retainer, like a law firm ….

I hadn’t realized SNC was able to mobilize, or attempted to mobilize, not one, not two, but THREE former SC of Canada justices on its behalf. This is the sort of blurring between corporate & govt operations that u expect in banana republics (or in the Irvings’ New Brunswick)…

The fact trudeau & those around him still pretend this is about “jobs” is…I don’t even know the word for it. The ethics comm essentially called it a lie. This was about partisan politics. How can JT say he “accepts” the report without coming to terms with this core finding?

When this scandal & election is done, we need an inquiry that gets to the bottom of the larger issue here: how a single quebec corp, one heavily impugned by its own action, was able to essential create legislation to help itself, got trudeau to ram it thru on a budget omnibus…

And then spent weeks pulling every lever in ottawa to try to override our constitutional system of govt so they could get off the hook for alleged crimes, culminating in the actual reconstitution of cabinet. SNC turned our govt into a joke. And trudeau still sez it’s about “jobs”

If yr attitude is that u dont want to educate yourself about this scandal, bcuz the only thing that matters is hating @AndrewScheer (an attitude some ppl have candidly expressed) pls reconsider. Even if u vote Liberal, the scandal exposed problems in our system that need fixing

Conservative governments have no doubt been equally solicitous to big well-connected firms. Leftists *especially*, the same ones dismissing this scandal bcuz it interferes with their elxn narrative, should be horrified that corporations are treating @Bill_Morneau & PMO as puppets

The fact that all of these Libs can bleat “jobz jobz jobz” with a straight face isnt just a symptom of the amoral cynicism of politics (tho it is that). It reflect the fact that we canadians expect that big corps will get coddled like this. We need to end it

If youre @AndrewScheer or @theJagmeetSingh, it’s fine to rake the Libs over the coals for lying to us. But all politicians lie. Tell us how you’d fix the system structurally to ensure that the PMO isn’t acting as a pro bono hanger-on to a major corporation

And if you’re a progressive activist of a certain age, go back & look at all the things @NaomiAKlein @Sheila_Copps Judie Rebick etc warned us about during the free trade battles…corporations dictating terms to elected govts. Well, guess what ? That’s what’s on display here…

In fact, one of the most tragicomic subplots here is the Libs running around in full panic bcuz SNC was about to have a board meeting the next day… Yes, that’s right: Trudeau’s PMO prioritized important legal decisions on the basis of some company’s board meeting.
Because Jobz.

What’s more, the full-court press on @Puglaas in the shadow of these meetings was itself based on another lie: Libs knew SNC HQ couldnt abandon quebec (till 2024) bcuz of representations made to Caisse in regard to purchase of a UK sub. Bullshit layered on bullshit
#BecauseJobz

I keep coming back to @Puglaas, & how she must have felt. How many cdns have been in a job where yr boss & his minions tried to pressure u to find an unethical “solution,” to help the boss keep his own job? then when u did what was right, u get turfed 4 not being a “team player”

This isnt just about Trudeau. One galling episode described is a meeting in which @Bill_Morneau pontificates to @Puglaas about how she doesnt have enuf “information” about econ effects of possible SNC crim conviction. @Puglaas asks Morneau if he’s done a study on it. Answer: no.

We talk a lot about toxic workplaces for women. hard not to see how the dudes who Trudeau assigned to push @Puglaas around on this file aren’t guilty of this. Their strategy was to make her feel ignorant bcuz she did the right thing. The PMO gaslit their own justice minister

There are several female Liberal MPs whom I have come to know and respect, such as @juliedabrusin @cafreeland @JulieDzerowicz. It is mortifying to watch them being forced to line up in defence of this.

As for SNC itself, I don’t really blame it for doing what it did. If u were running a company and knew you could dictate terms to a govt, why not? The lesson to other CEOs would be that if youre accused of a crime, just threaten to lay ppl off and move your HQ. Problem solved.

final note…u can see y the Libs are going hard with demagoguery about @AndrewScheer being white supremacist-adjacent. A traditional leftist claim was that Tories would sell out to corporate interests. That’s a hard claim for Libs to make now. bcuz the Libs have already done it

It’s been a day since I wrote this thread, & some commenters are saying the SNC scandal shows Trudeau & the Libs are unscrupulous people. But I dont think that’s it. I have met some of these protagonists, and have found them to be *more* public-minded than the average citizen…

As noted in a response to @staceylnewman, the problem is that politics changes ppl. There’s a chilling quote in the report, from a meeting, where a Lib says to @Puglaas (paraphrasing here) “It doesn’t matter how great our policies are. We need to get re-elected to implement them”

To me, that sums everything up: The means justifies the ends, bcuz the ends (the “good” side wins power, & the “bad” side loses) are taken to have existential importance. That’s the myth that leads all politicians astray. If JT just admitted this, I bet many would forgive him

August 18, 2019

The SNC-Lavalin affair was “unethical and contrary to law”, but “relatively above board”

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

The initial affair itself, that is. Andrew Coyne:

It is the element of deception that raises the conduct described in the ethics commissioner’s report from the merely unlawful to the potentially criminal.

Until now what we had thought we were dealing with was only a sustained and mounting campaign, by the prime minister and by those acting at his direction, to pressure the former attorney general of Canada to set aside the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, a company with a long history of corruption and even longer history of contributing to the Liberal party, for reasons that explicitly included considerations of partisan advantage.

All of this was vastly improper on its own. Prosecutorial independence is one of the bedrock principles of our system of law, as fundamental as judicial independence. It is settled law that the attorney general, in consideration of a particular prosecution, may not be pressured by anyone, least of all the prime minister, for any reason, least of all partisan gain. Yet Jody Wilson-Raybould was, repeatedly, to the point of being threatened with dismissal if she did not capitulate.

Still, if unethical and contrary to law, this was relatively above board, in so far as the pressure on the attorney general was direct and undisguised: a scandal, to be sure, and grounds for more resignations than those submitted to date, but not, as the cliché has it, a crime. That, of course, is not the standard we should expect of public office holders — that they should merely avoid committing crimes — but it is at least a standard.

Whereas the conduct unearthed by the ethics commissioner may have fallen below even that line. What we have learned is that senior government officials were not just pressuring the former attorney general to interfere in a criminal proceeding, by the unprecedented means of overturning a decision of the independent director of public prosecutions: they were deceiving her.

They did so not only by keeping important information from her, but by providing her with misleading information. They acted, not only in concert with each other, but with officials at SNC-Lavalin, and they carried on this conspiracy to, in the commissioner’s words, “circumvent, undermine and ultimately attempt to discredit” the authority of the attorney general even as the company’s appeal of the DPP’s ruling was before Federal Court — a proceeding to which the attorney general, via the DPP, was a party.

August 17, 2019

The “remarkably worthless” Sea Sparrow missile launchers on RCN Iroquois-class destroyers

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Earlier this week, Tyler Rogoway posted a fascinating article about one of the original weapon systems installed on Royal Canadian Navy Iroquois-class destroyers. It was developed specifically for this class, and was eventually replaced with modern Mark 41 Vertical Launch Systems during the ships’ mid-life modernization refits:

Image posted to the Reddit r/WarshipPorn subreddit by u/Admhawk.

From manually aimed box launchers, to automated ones like the Mk29 still in use today, to vertical launch variants, the Sea Sparrow was adapted for many different launching methods. Yet the strangest had to the one found on Canada’s Iroquois class. About seven years ago, someone who had worked with RIM-7s on U.S. Navy vessels told me about how nuts the Canadian launch system was that he had seen demonstrated in the late 1980s. In fact, he said it was so clumsy and slow reacting, that it largely defeated the main purpose of the missile system, at least in a multitude of circumstances. “Remarkably worthless” was the way he described it. I had long forgotten about this exchange until recently when pictures of this exact system popped up on the always lively Reddit page r/Warshipporn. At first, when I saw the images I was flabbergasted as to how weird the setup was, then the memory of the conversation hit me. This is what my contact was talking about!

Four Iroquois-class destroyers were commissioned between 1972 and 1973 and all served until 2005, with the last example being retired two years ago, in 2017. They featured the MKIII Sea Sparrow system fitted inside their forward deckhouse, with doors that opened up on each side and overhead swing-arm launchers carrying four missiles each (eight in total, four on each side) that extended out from their garage-like enclosure that hung out off the side of the ship strangely when at the ready. The whole arrangement looks like something far from conducive to high sea state, not to mention rocket blast from the missiles, or a combat environment, for that matter. 32 missiles were carried in all, with twelve at the ready on each side, but reloading the system as a whole was a slow process.

In addition, it’s said that the Hollandse Signaal Mk22 Weapon Control System wasn’t really up to the task and just deploying the missiles and warming up their guidance systems could take minutes or longer. All of this is far from ideal for what is supposed to have been a fast-reacting point defense system capable of quickly fending off sea-skimming anti-ship missiles that arrive with little warning from over the horizon.

HMCS Iroquois (DDG 280) at Port of Hamburg, near Övelgönne, after mid-life refit replaced the Sea Sparrow launchers (via Wikimedia Commons)

August 15, 2019

Amtrak is considering reviving at least one Chicago-Toronto passenger train

Filed under: Cancon, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Lauren O’Neill reports on an Amtrak service extension proposal:

Amtrak P42DC locomotive #29 with a Blue Water or Wolverine train waits on a siding for a train in the opposite direction to pass in Comstock, Michigan.

The largest passenger railroad service in U.S. is considering a proposal that, if approved, would see trains running directly from Chicago to Toronto and back.

As discussed at the Michigan Rail Conference in East Lansing last week, Amtrak wants to extend its Wolverine line — which currently sees trains moving back and forth between Pontiac, MI, and Chicago, IL, three times per day — all the way up to Canada’s largest city.

A presentation slide shared by an official Michigan Department of Transportation Twitter account on Thursday shows that Amtrak wants to extend “at least one” Wolverine train into Ontario, “where it could continue as a VIA Rail Canada corridor service from Windsor/Walkerville to Toronto.”

It won’t happen overnight, and there’s plenty of work to be done in order for the train service to work, including the construction of a new border processing facility.

August 12, 2019

News consumption in Canada according to a new report from the Digital Democracy Project

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

Ali Taghva summarizes some of the more interesting findings from a new study of how Canadians get their news in the internet age:

Earlier this month, the Digital Democracy Project (DDP), a joint initiative led by the Public Policy Forum and the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University, published their first report in a series aimed at studying the Canadian media ecosystem in the lead up to the 2019 election.

The results are reaffirming for anyone who believes the nation’s media do not require ethically worrying government funds to continue operation.

In less than two years, The Post Millennial has become one of the largest media organizations in the country. According to DDP’s survey results, roughly 12% of respondents viewed our content in the last week.

The above chart indicates that our digital viewership equates roughly to one-fourth of the reach held by CBC.

While the CBC and others continue to spend hundreds of millions to compete, we continue to grow and remain cash-flow positive on a budget less than 1/100th the size of our mainstream competitors.

Another interesting graphic from the PDF research memo is this representation of the distribution of online link sharing by candidates of the major parties:

The following directed network graph shows the relative frequency of linked news sites among the six main parties. Each media outlet is represented by a circle, the size of which reflects the frequency at which candidates link to the site. A large circle thus indicates multiple parties frequently sharing content from that outlet. The width of the lines that the parties to the outlets is based on how often candidates from that party share content from that outlet.

August 11, 2019

“Saying ‘Donald Trump is not my president’ is like saying that your stepfather isn’t your real dad and slamming your bedroom door”

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Colby Cosh looks at the oddly immature and childish meme of “Not my President”/”Not my Prime Minister” declarations that seem to be ubiquitous these days:

If you sent me back to grad school I would love to do some proper research into the history of the “Not My President”/”Not My Prime Minister”-type statements that are everywhere now. They do seem especially popular with liberals, although they are not exclusive to them. A strong memetic influence was obviously the multi-city “Not My Presidents Day” protests that followed Donald Trump’s inauguration. But the indignant, huffy insistence that Trump is “not my president” obviously had to gain traction in the first place.

The theme has been taken up internationally: if you Google “not my prime minister” most of the top hits are Boris Johnson-related (no doubt the “Theresa May: not my prime minister” T-shirts and buttons will sell in the online shops at a significant discount now), and the theme has become a formal slogan of street protest in the U.K. Adding “Trudeau” to the search string reveals a few comment threads. The Canadian politician who gets the most “Not my X” action is certainly Doug Ford. In Alberta, Rachel Notley and Jason Kenney have been getting roughly equal helpings of “Not my premier!”, presumably not from the same people. Who knows, maybe there’s someone out there who feels that his real premier is still Harry E. Strom.

In analyzing this emerging cliché, I suppose one could interpret it as a small act of libertarian or even anarchist rebellion. Is anybody really deserving of being “my” prime minister? Should we not all, in the glorious Utopia, be the prime ministers of ourselves? But the psychological force and intention of the statement that Joe Blow is not “my prime minister” or “my president” is not really anarchistic. The implication of the assertion is always that someone else might really deserve the title, or that there existed past statesmen nobody was ashamed to follow and identify completely with. Saying “Donald Trump is not my president” is like saying that your stepfather isn’t your real dad and slamming your bedroom door.

Meanwhile, of course, your stepfather is probably covering the mortgage and cleaning the eavestrough. “Not my X!” is a defection from democracy more than it is a challenge to the idea of the state. Donald Trump is definitely the lawful, constitutional president of the United States of America, and anyway possesses the powers thereof; those who say it ain’t so are making an incantation, trying to will a state of affairs into existence. If enough people say it, maybe it sorta automatically comes true. There is a lot of this kind of attempted magic going around these days.

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