Quotulatiousness

February 19, 2024

The CIA’s covert operations … as inspired by Vladimir Lenin

Filed under: Government, History, Military, Politics, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Along with most people who’ve been paying attention to history since the start of the Cold War, I hold the CIA in dubious regard. They seem to have been involved in so many underhanded escapades in countries around the world — certainly by reputation, if not in reality — that they stand almost in direct opposition to how most Americans liked to think of their country. Jon Miltimore thinks that among their inspirations was the founder of the Soviet Union himself:

I bring all of this up because I recently came across an old document of some significance that I’d never heard of before titled, “The Inauguration of Organized Political Warfare“.

It was authored by George Kennan, the State Department Policy Planning Director who’d go on to be a successful US diplomat, for the National Security Council (which governed the CIA), and the document explained how the US government had to mobilize national resources “for covert political warfare” to combat the Soviet Union.

Kennan was not, in my opinion, a bad man. He had good instincts and sound motives, at least compared to others in the US intelligence apparatus. He was an early opponent of the Vietnam War and later was one of the first diplomatic leaders to warn against the US policy of expanding NATO up to Russia’s doorstep, something he predicted would be “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era”.

That said, it’s clear that Kennan was not appalled by the Soviet Union’s use of covert political warfare. He was impressed by it.

“Lenin so synthesized the teachings of Marx and Clausewitz that the Kremlin’s conduct of political warfare has become the most refined and effective of any in history,” Kennan wrote in the document.

    We have been handicapped however by a popular attachment to the concept of a basic difference between peace and war, by a tendency to view war as a sort of sporting context outside of all political context, by a national tendency to seek for a political cure-all, and by a reluctance to recognize the realities of international relations — the perpetual rhythm of [struggle, in and out of war].


The document is fascinating because it appears to mark the genesis of the US government’s first formal steps into the world of political warfare — a well-documented history that includes toppling governments, assassinating world leaders, tipping elections, and torturing enemies.

All of these efforts, of course, initially targeted external parties and countries to serve “the national interest”.

This is no longer the case. The CIA, NSA, and other intelligence agencies no longer restrict their covert political warfare to foreign states, and I’m not talking about just Operation Mockingbird and other domestic propaganda efforts.

The CIA is clearly putting its thumb on the scales of US elections in ways that should terrify all Americans.

February 18, 2024

“Please, sir, can we have some more Roads?”

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

Every week, Tristin Hopper helps us understand an element of the week’s news by “imagining” the diary entries of the people or organizations involved. This week, it’s the turn of federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, who had a hell of a week even by Trudeaupian standards:

Monday
There was a time when I was naïve enough to think that the climate crisis could be solved with mere emissions reductions or alternative energy. But it becomes more clear every day that Canada can never hope to meet its climate goals unless we’re prepared to remove redundancies from our economic system.

Do we really need to produce any more music? I feel humanity has pretty well covered what a guitar or a trumpet can do; why waste scarce energy to continue heating concert halls or power tour buses? We have a food system that irresponsibly makes no distinction between the carbon footprint of certain foods: We cannot hope to be a climate leader if Canadians continue to eat prawns when a few strips of jicama could suffice.

And above all, this country is positively drowning in unnecessary roads. When the average Albertan starts up his masculinity-compensating coal-rolling monster truck and drives it for hours on a rural Canadian highway without seeing a soul, does it not cross his mind that some resources have been wasted? That man would be fitter, happier and richer if he’d instead been able to make the trip by the eminently more efficient method of bicycle, gondola or monorail.

Tuesday
“Steven Guilbeault wants to ban roads,” they say. But this is not a road ban. Provinces and municipalities can still build all the roads they want. If you and your buddies pool your money for some asphalt and graders — and I decide that it meets all necessary requirements for environmental mitigation, reconciliation and gender-based impacts — then pave away.

We’ve merely correctly decided that roads are a wholly inappropriate concern for a Canadian federal government. The task of government is to focus on the fundamentals such as inclusion initiatives for federally regulated industries and means-tested dental subsidies. Things that could not exist if not done by the state.

Anybody can build a few hundred kilometres of glorified driveway.

Wednesday
I’m honestly appalled at the road-worship exhibited in recent days by my Conservative colleagues. I knew they had a regressive fixation on guns, trucks and plastic straws, but even I did not suspect a mass-genuflection for mere strips of asphalt, gravel and whatever else roads are made out of.

But perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. Where else but on a road can one pursue the right-wing fantasies of unfettered resource extraction or colonialist subjugation? Where is their law-and-order militarism without latticeworks of slick, black tarmac to survey and control the citizenry? When armed capitalistic thugs violently crushed the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919, how did they get there? That’s right; roads.

February 17, 2024

Apparently Confucius “had a based libertarian streak”

Filed under: Books, China, Europe, Food, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

N.S. Lyons points out some very helpful advice from Confucius that pretty much every western government would benefit from heeding:

I was watching a bit of recent footage of some peasants in revolt, as they are at the moment basically everywhere across the West, and was suddenly struck by the recollection that I’d definitely read a wise saying about the general situation somewhere on a fortune cookie. No, wait, I realized, this time it must actually have been from Master Confucius himself! So I went digging through my copy of the Analects …

Lo and behold, right there in Book 12, Chapter 7, is this straightforward lesson:

    A disciple asks Confucius what, fundamentally, it takes to govern a state without it collapsing.

    Confucius says: “Simply make sure there is enough armaments, enough food, and that you have the trust of the common people.” (足食，足兵，民信之矣.)

    “If sacrificing one of these three things becomes unavoidable, which would you give up first?” the disciple asks. (必不得已而去，於斯三者何先?)

    “The weapons,” Confucius replies. (去兵.)

    “If two things?” the disciple asks. (必不得已而去，於斯二者何先?)

    “The food,” Confucius says, because while even death is a part of life “without the trust of the people, a state cannot stand.” (去食. 自古皆有死，民無信不立.)

What is most notable to me from this little dialogue from almost 2,500 years ago is how much, in comparison, our political leaders, in their hubris and absorption in grand projects (and graft), seem to have forgotten the very basics.

Indeed it strikes me that they already failed on maintaining enough armaments (at least in Europe, though even America now seems to be struggling to produce the most basic munitions). More broadly speaking, they can no long provide security for citizens or defend their own borders.

And now they’ve suddenly got the wise idea of going after the food too, which is a plan that will surely work out great.

February 14, 2024

The ARRIVESCAM scandal will probably not matter politically for Trudeau

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

If there’s one thing we should have learned about Justin Trudeau, it’s that he’s got world class Teflon coating when it comes to any kind of scandal that would destroy other politicians. Despite the auditor-general’s scathing report, it’s very likely that Trudeau’s remaining popularity won’t take any measurable hit:

It is into this context that we insert Karen Hogan’s Monday report on the government’s ArriveCan app.

Hogan looked into the government’s troubled COVID-19 ArriveCan app and found nothing.

Actually nothing. The auditor’s exact words: “The Canada Border Services Agency’s documentation, financial records, and controls were so poor that we were unable to determine the precise cost of the ArriveCAN application.” That means the accountant whose job it is to tell taxpayers what the government is spending money on, could not complete her task. Why?

Well, she also said, “That paper trail should have existed … Overall, this audit shows a glaring disregard for basic management and contracting practices.” The auditor general could not tell taxpayers what the app cost, who decided who got paid, who did the work and what the money was ultimately spent on.

Mob contracts have more detail than the auditor general was able to piece together for her ArriveCan report. But, then again, mobsters keep two books.

The Canadian Border Services Agency appears to have burned, lost or had several goats eat pertinent records that pertain to Canadian taxpayers spending tens of millions of dollars on a phone app that never worked, kept no one safe, and has mostly come to symbolize an Ottawa where no one really feels accountable to anyone.

As someone who regularly sat down with the civil service to discuss transfer payment agreements a fraction of the size of the almost $60 million — or more, who knows?! — that is speculated to have been spent on ArriveCan, this fails to pass any kind of credibility test. ArriveCan was a priority government initiative in 2020 and 2021. We were trying to get the border back open. The tourism sector was on the brink. The idea that this was a couple rogue CBSA agents who were just funnelling taxpayer dollars to a firm with whom they had connections is a convenient, but drastically incomplete, telling of the story.

Tens of millions of dollars disappearing in a matter of weeks-to-months, and no one in the civil service asked a question? No one in the minister’s office got a briefing on the app’s progress? There isn’t a single PowerPoint deck anywhere in the government? The civil service — especially the federal civil service — issues CYA memos to cover bathroom breaks but no one had any earthly idea what tens of millions of dollars going out the door on a priority government initiative were being spent on?

It is to laugh.

February 12, 2024

QotD: The Golden Rule of Canadian Politics

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

But we forgot the golden rule of all Canadian politics: The voter will demand all manner of lofty principles from his government, provided he never has to sacrifice or pay for it in any noticeable way whatsoever. Name any popular high-minded pursuit of government — from stream rehabilitation to famine relief — and it all comes crashing down tomorrow if you start making it an itemized charge on everyone’s utility bill.

Tristin Hopper, “‘Stick a fork in me; I’m done’: Inside the thoughts of the carbon tax”, National Post, 2023-11-11.

February 9, 2024

His Year: Julius Caesar (59 BC)

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

Historia Civilis
Published Jul 5, 2016
(more…)

February 6, 2024

On gender issues, “Progressives may even find themselves — dare we say? — on the wrong side of history”

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

In the portion of The Line‘s weekly dispatch that’s visible to freeloaders, the editors discover to their horror that they have to weigh in on the gender fracas:

So to be clear, we really don’t have any problem with Alberta restricting elective gender-related surgeries on minors under the age of 17. While we are rather concerned about the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones among minors, we also suspect that trying to ban these drugs for absolutely everyone under a certain age represents an overreach by the state.

Also, bluntly, we don’t think that in an ideal world, the state should be involving itself in most of this stuff at all. We want to exist in a country in which sports leagues, doctors, schools and teachers can be trusted to make sensible, evidence-based decisions on a case-by-case basis.

Take sports, for example: does a rec-league pickleball tournament need to have the same rules around trans participation as a competitive women’s rugby league? And do we really want any state regulation bulldozering over the people who are actually on the ground, and best understand the physical and cultural realities of that sport?

Or take puberty blockers.

Should we really be treating a 12-year-old who has displayed severe and crippling gender dysphoria since the age of three with the same treatment protocol as a depressed 14-year-old boy who comes into the gender clinic for the first time attached to a Munchausen-by-Proxy mom documenting every moment of her child’s transition for TikTok? Do we want politicians in Edmonton writing the precise rules that will be faithfully applied in both those situations?

Sigh.

We understand how we got here. Any discussion around trans issues is now highly insane; in a hyper-polarized, borderline hysterical moment, we actually can’t trust our institutions to possess the requisite reserve and dispassion needed to make credible and defensible decisions. These institutions are, or are perceived to be, too ideologically captured to be trustworthy.

For an example that just happened to cross our path today, take this quote from Dr. Simone Lebeuf, a pediatrician in Edmonton who specializes in gender-diverse youth. In it, she notes that restricting puberty blockers to children over the age of 15 effectively makes the treatment useless, as they would be administered at an age well past the onset of puberty.

“It’s done. The window has passed,” the doctor told City News. “And we really look at puberty blockers as an option for kids to have some space and time to make decisions about their future selves and who they might want to be as adults. Their puberty is not benign, it is not a nothing process to go through. The physical changes with puberty are permanent.”

Right off the bat, a statement like this ought to raise eyebrows, and not only because it’s a talking point we’ve already heard dozens of times on TikTok. This doctor — a physician who is actually treating children — is conflating the harms caused by artificially delaying a natural process with the apparent harms caused by the biological process itself. That logic is not sound. There is a clear difference between, say, permanent loss of sexual function and bone density caused by interfering in the natural course of puberty, and the harm of allowing a child’s body to grow an Adam’s apple despite that individual feeling like a woman.

Secondly, Dr. Lebeuf isn’t addressing the core concern with puberty blockers, above and beyond their physical side effects. The majority of children who present with gender dysphoria are not trans. Most of them turn out to be simply gay — a fact they discover via the process of growing up and sexually maturing. By delaying or denying a gender dysphoric child the opportunity to experience normal puberty, critics of these treatment protocols fear that a doctor may be preventing the very process by which gender dysphoria would resolve itself without medical intervention. Most — certainly not all, but most — gender dysphoric children would otherwise grow up to be at ease with their natal sex. But once kids start with the puberty blockers and then cross-sex hormones, this process of medical transitioning may be psychologically self reinforcing, pushing physically healthy minors into pursuing more and more unnecessary and invasive interventions with serious lifelong consequences.

In short, puberty blockers are not magic cures for gender dysphoria. They might be appropriate for some kids with lots of supports and monitoring. But they could be disastrous for others, and we have no foolproof way to know in advance which kids will fall into what camp.

This stuff is complicated, and it’s made more so because it’s difficult to study objectively in ideologically captured environments dominated by activists on all sides who muddy the waters with emotionally charged rhetoric, and confuse good science with bad. If you want to understand why people are turning to Danielle Smith instead of the Alberta Medical Association to address their fears, quotes like the one above are a prime example.

And, by the way, we include “The Media” writ large as having failed on this file. The lack of skepticism and neutrality that the media has demonstrated on even the most maximalist and unpopular positions on gender and sexuality has — to our mind — significantly contributed to the radical decline in its collective credibility.

February 5, 2024

Sitzkrieg on the southern border

Filed under: Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds on the stand-off between Texas governor Greg Abbot and President Joe Biden over the flood of illegal immigrants coming across the US-Mexican border:

So the war over the border between Texas and the Biden Administration is now in the “Sitzkrieg” stage. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has essentially declared war on illegal immigration. He invoked Article I Section 10 of the United States Constitution, which forbids states from declaring war except when “actually invaded” (or in such imminent danger as to admit of no delay) and, by implication, allows them to declare war when that happens. He also invoked the Guarantee Clause of Article IV, which requires the federal government to protect the states against invasion.

Abbott’s legal argument is that since he’s being invaded, he’s entitled to respond, and since the federal government is defaulting on its obligations it has no business – it’s basically stopped from – complaining. There was a lot of huffing and puffing at the time, with members of Congress calling on President Biden to federalize the Texas National Guard and the like, but basically, nothing happened. The Supreme Court vacated an injunction forbidding the Border Patrol from cutting the barbed wire that Texas had installed along the border, but – contrary to many media reports – didn’t rule that what Texas had done was illegal, or order Texas to stop policing the border.

Now not much is going on. The big complaints about immigration are mostly coming from outside Texas, places like New York City where illegal immigrants beat police with impunity, being released without bail after being arrested. (The usual endgame for this sort of thing in other societies has been death squads, organized either by police or by police-adjacent groups, taking out those whom the legal system cannot or will not control; we’ll see what happens in New York City.)

But next month Texas’s law allowing the state to apprehend and effectively deport illegals will go into effect, and that’s when the sitzkrieg is likely to end. Following are my (very) preliminary thoughts.

To me what’s astonishing is how unpopular with everyone the immigration policies of the Administration – and a good chunk of the GOP – are. Open borders are unpopular with blacks, whites, rural and urban voters, and, really, just a vast bipartisan majority. But like “climate change”, another priority of the ruling class without matching popular support, the borders stay open.

Why? Because our ruling class seeks, in Bertolt Brecht’s famous phrase, “to dissolve the populace and elect another”. As Elon Musk tweeted:

Musk’s comments met with the usual outrage, but Democrats have pretty much touted this as the plan for years. Indeed, it goes back to Ruy Teixeira’s “Emerging Democratic Majority” strategy, though it’s been accelerated in recent years. (And Teixeira himself has retreated from that plan). Sure, naturalization takes years – though they may speed that up, as it’s just a matter of statute – and there have also been some moves to allow non-citizens to vote anyway. Think that’s unlikely? Maybe, but how many things are happening these days that seemed impossibly unlikely a few years ago? And it’s a long game; a bunch of Democratic voters in 5 or 6 years will suit them fine.

February 4, 2024

“[L]et’s face it head-on: you’re a social and political outlier, a dangerous extremist”

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

You, yes you are exactly the kind of dangerous extremist that mature and sensible journalists at all the right media outlets have been warning us about for years:

You’re very weird.

In fact, let’s face it head-on: you’re a social and political outlier, a dangerous extremist. Your views put you firmly on the fringe, and that fringe is becoming a real problem. For example, the Premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith, has just embraced a bunch of radical fringe policies about parent notification and consent regarding schools and transgender children, simultaneously limiting the ability of young children to have their bodies medically altered to match their declared gender — and some pretty disturbing people are supporting this crazy stuff. Look how appalled normal Canadians are by these extremist maneuvers to keep parents involved in the lives of LGBT children:

See the whole poll here, if you can stand the disgust from seeing extremist material, or see a detailed report on a poll of Californians that offers similar results.

Fortunately, the responsible mainstream leaders of the Liberal Party and NDP are standing strong with the 14% in the majority who want parents out of the lives of transgender children, rejecting the fringe views of the 78% who live at the extremist edges.

At the same time, the New York Times has just published a remarkable opinion piece on the growing concern among longtime transgender advocates, including transgendered clinicians, about the casual and rushed process by which American pediatric gender clinics are pushing children into gender transition. The essay centers on detransitioners, trans youth who change their minds and accept their biological sex.

This being the New York Times, the author is compelled to mention the true danger: “The real threat to transgender people comes from Republicans who wish to deny them rights and protections.” Ahh, but watch what comes next:

    But the doctrinal rigidity of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is disappointing, frustrating and counterproductive.

    “I was always a liberal Democrat,” one woman whose son desisted after social transition and hormone therapy told me. “Now I feel politically homeless.”

    She noted that the Biden administration has “unequivocally” supported gender-affirming care for minors, in cases in which it deems it “medically appropriate and necessary.” Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, told NPR in 2022 that “there is no argument among medical professionals — pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent medicine physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, et cetera — about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care.”

Democrats are doctrinally rigid, and a top health official in the Biden administration says proudly that there is no debate. See, everyone believes the same thing, except mean Republicans, but that’s also now understood to be a sign of excessive ideological rigidity. Then the same piece in the Times also says a whole bunch of things like this:

    Studies show that around eight in 10 cases of childhood gender dysphoria resolve themselves by puberty and 30 percent of people on hormone therapy discontinue its use within four years, though the effects, including infertility, are often irreversible.

I’ve removed the links from the quoted paragraphs, because they don’t work well after cutting and pasting, but you can find them all at the link to the non-paywalled opinion piece.

Well, I guess the secret’s out:

QotD: American railroads and the Interstate Commerce Commission

Filed under: Business, Government, History, Quotations, Railways, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The railroads [in the decades immediately following the U.S. civil war] saw advantages to regulation. Unstable prices, disliked by rail customers, could also be detrimental to the railroads. A recession in 1884 led to the failure of a number of railroads, and the railroads wanted to undertake pooling arrangements for their mutual profitability. Thus, the railroad industry, which was very competitive, wanted the ICC [Interstate Commerce Commission] to stabilize rates, regulate routes, and protect their profitability. Essentially, the ICC cartelized the industry, allowing it to be more profitable than it could have been in a more competitive unregulated environment.

Randy Holcombe, Liberty in Peril: Democracy and Power in American History, (2019).

February 3, 2024

The climate alarmists long ago gave up honest scientific reporting

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

Tom Knighton says he used to fully buy in to the climate alarmist message, but eventually realized the fix had been in for years, especially when it came to the predictive ability of all the climate change models … as in, their total lack of predictive ability:

When Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth came out, I watched it. I was terrified by the world being described, and since I was still pretty liberal and sort of an environmentalist, I took it all to heart.

Over time, as my personal politics shifted, I still had concerns regarding climate change. After all, it is what it is, right?

Until I came to look deeper into the issue and the one thing that shattered my belief in the whole concept: The fact that not a single climate model has ever panned out as predicted despite pretty much none of the draconian measures we’re told we need in order to avert disaster ever coming to fruition.

Science is supposed to be predictive. If it can’t predict something in its models, then scientists need to back up and figure out what the problem is. Instead, they seemingly just keep doubling down.

[…]

Let’s be clear here, the idea of taking measurements in heat islands is freshman year stuff. There’s absolutely no way they’re unaware the effect that’s having on their readings, even as most of their instruments are subject to heat bias.

In other words, I can’t accept this is a good faith error.

No, I believe this to be malicious.

Climatology isn’t exactly a field of science that would ever be considered sexy. Before all the climate alarmism, research grants were likely few and far between. People weren’t overly worried about the climate because it simply ways.

Then scientists started screaming that we were all doomed. The end is nigh, they told us, screaming at the top of their lung and acting just shy of wearing a sandwich board in Times Square.

With that came money and prestige.

Suddenly, climatologist could get recognition and write bestselling books. They could get grants from everyone and their brother to fund their research. The thing is, they had to keep up the charade. People had to believe that we were going to die if we didn’t do something.

Maybe they actually want the draconian measures they suggest, measures that pretty much amount to going back to living in mud huts, but with solar- and wind-created electricity so we won’t need to burn wood to survive.

Or something.

February 1, 2024

Newfoundland – “We used to be a country”

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

In The Line, James McLeod outlines a difficult period for the Dominion of Newfoundland which ended up narrowly voting to join Canada rather than resume self-rule that they’d had up to 1934 when the Newfoundland House of Assembly abolished itself:

Great Riot of 1932 in front of the legislature, the Colonial Building, in Newfoundland.
Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador (Reference PANL A2-160), via Wikimedia Commons.

Before 1933, Newfoundland was proudly a dominion within the British empire. Under the Statute of Westminster, Newfoundland had the same legal status as Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the Irish Free State.

Newfoundland was its own country. But it was a country in rough shape.

A year before the Amulree Report was published, a mob of about 10,000 people had gathered outside the Colonial Building in St. John’s. Families were living in destitution on six-cents-a-day government dole, and the government’s finance minister had just resigned and accused Prime Minister Richard Squires of personally lining his pockets with government funds.

The mob turned into a riot, which ultimately barged into the government building. Notably, the rioters briefly paused to observe a respectful silence when a brass band began playing “God Save The King”, but then they went back to rioting.

Squires fled on foot and went into hiding, and then emerged to call an election, which he lost in a landslide. During the campaign, one of his longtime allies, the prominent leader of the Fishermen’s Protective Union, openly wished for fascism.

“What is required for Newfoundland and what is most essential for the present conditions is a Mussolini,” said William Coaker.

Months later, with a new government, Newfoundland was on the verge of defaulting on its debt, and the British stepped in.

The vastly oversimplified version is that the British government was concerned that a member of the British Commonwealth defaulting on its debt could have major implications for the whole empire. So the British government bailed out Newfoundland, on the condition that a commission would be struck to investigate the island’s political and economic affairs. Lord Amulree, a British politician, was appointed as chair.

A year later, with the Dominion still teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, the Amulree Report was delivered. It contained this passage, with my emphasis added: “That it was essential that the country should be given a rest from politics for a period of years was indeed recognised by the great majority of the witnesses who appeared before us, many of whom had themselves played a prominent part in the political and public life of the Island.”

Amulree considered the possibility of some sort of national unity government, but could not get past the conclusion that, “Even if a National Government could be established on a basis which led to a suspension of political rivalry, the underlying influences which do so much to clog the wheels of administration and to divert attention from the true interests of the country would continue to form an insuperable handicap to the rehabilitation of the Island.”

In 1934, the Newfoundland House of Assembly voted itself out of existence. It was replaced by a “Commission of Government” which was just six unelected men, appointed by the British. Fifteen years later, Newfoundlanders narrowly voted to join Canada, although to this day conspiracy theories still linger about how democratic the referendum really was.

I am not a Newfoundlander, and I’m hesitant to make any sweeping statements about how Newfoundlanders relate to their own history. But for a decade, I worked as a journalist in St. John’s, covering politics and public affairs. The collapse of democratic self-rule in the 1930s still looms large in the collective identity of the province.

January 30, 2024

How did Justice Mosley manage to avoid mentioning the huge pachyderm in the room?

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

Donna LaFramboise on the amazing ability of people in power here in Canada to avoid noticing or acknowledging the most salient facts of a situation:

“The Elephant in the Room” by BitBoy is licensed under CC BY 2.0 .

In the recent court ruling against Justin Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act, the elephant in the room was once again ignored.

Justice Richard Mosley is well aware that the Act is intended to be “a tool of last resort.” He says so twice in his decision, on pages 78 and 86. He also does a conscientious job of describing the arguments each side presented during various stages of the court battle.

Yet there is no indication, not even the slightest hint, that the bloody obvious received five minutes of the court’s attention: No government can claim to have exhausted all other avenues if it hasn’t even had a conversation with protesters.

It doesn’t matter who is doing the protesting, or what their cause happens to be. If you haven’t arranged a meeting, if you haven’t sat down and listened to people’s concerns, if you haven’t even tried to negotiate a resolution, it is not OK to reach for a last resort, nuclear option. That is beyond unreasonable. It is absurd.

In India, between November 2020 and November 2021, farmers protested three new pieces of agricultural legislation that were eventually repealed. Justin Trudeau publicly criticized the Indian government during that time. So let us compare and contrast.

According to the Indian Express, farmers unions called for a march to Delhi, the national capital, on November 26th and 27th. Delhi police said protesters wouldn’t be permitted to enter the city due to COVID restrictions, but the farmers came anyway. Water cannon and tear gas were used against them, but they eventually arrived in the north-west part of the capital.

On November 28th a cabinet minister “offered to hold talks with the farmers as soon as they vacate Delhi borders”. The farmers didn’t budge. The first round of talks with government took place, nonetheless, on December 3rd — a week after the Delhi protest began. Two days later, more talks took place. By December 30th, six rounds of negotiations had taken place.

In Canada, the government treated the truckers like mangy dogs rather than citizens. Not a single cabinet minister pursued dialogue. Not a single representative of the federal government met with the truckers between the time they began arriving in Ottawa on January 28th, 2022 and when police violently shut down the protest on February 18th and 19th. Get lost, peasants! was the government’s official position.

January 27, 2024

Flashpoint: Texas

Filed under: Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Theophilus Chilton wonders if you’re ready for a full-blown Constitutional crisis:

I’m sure that by now, we’re all aware of what is continuing to take place down in Texas. Far from backing down in his standoff with FedGov over the seizure of Shelby Park in Eagle Pass and subsequent expulsion of federal agents, Gov. Abbott has directed the state’s National Guard to continue interdicting illegal immigrants. Indeed, in response to the recent SCOTUS decision allowing the Feds to dismantle the razor wire Texas installed, they’ve simply installed more, in direct defiance of the wishes of the Regime. The Regime has now responded by giving Abbott and Texas an ultimatum — restore control of the park to the Federal government by the afternoon of January 26, or … well … something. Whether the governor ultimately continues to tell the Feds to get bent remains to be seen, but so far the trend is looking pretty good.

Of course, it helps that — for once — Republicans across the country have actually found a little courage to support doing what’s right. As of writing this, the Republican governors of 25 other states have all issued statements of support for Texas’ position. Hence, there are now an outright majority of states whose executives (who control their various National and State Guards) are publicly backing Texan efforts to secure our border. Many of these governors have explicitly cited the Biden administration’s continued abandonment of the federal government’s constitutional duty to protect the several states from invasion and the constitutional right of the states to act in their own defence as sovereign entities in their own right.

Needless to say, this is a constitutional crisis that would not have been conceivable even twenty years ago (well, except for this one movie that seems to have been amazingly prescient). Since 1865, the doctrine of absolute federal supremacy has been in force and the balance of power between the state and national governments has inexorably trended in Washington, DC’s favour. Occasional spurts of opposition to the contrary, most of the previous incipient talk by states about “reining in the federal government” generally proved to be all words and no action. On a few things (e.g. marijuana legalisation), the Regime allowed states to “oppose” federal policy if these were policies that the Regime wanted to change anywise but couldn’t “officially” at the federal level. But on anything that was a true Regime priority, FedGov brooked no dissent. So it is now, but the calculus has changed. What would have been impossible in 2003 is now on the verge of happening in 2023.

This all highlights the fundamental illegitimacy of our current federal government. There is no moral or legal case to be made to justify the actions of the Biden administration. The federal Constitution both enjoins the federal government to protect the states from foreign invasion (which being overrun with millions of foreigners breaking our laws most certainly counts as) and also grants the states the right to protect their own borders and sovereignty. Instead of doing this, the Biden administration has been purposefully inviting hordes of migrants to enter this country. Indeed, this is being encouraged in contravention to statutory federal law as well. Further, if Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is correct (and he almost assuredly is), the administration has even been partnering with criminal cartels to smuggle illegals into this country. All in all, there is absolutely no justification to be credibly made for the Regime’s actions and anyone who supports them are in opposition to the Constitution, the laws, and the people of this land.

Despite the fevered ravings of various progressive “Christians” on social media, the moral argument for allowing the Regime to throw the gates open is nonsense. Indeed, the whole attempt to craft a “biblical” argument for open borders is simple-minded and ignorant of the relevant scriptural and historical context. Simply put, the Bible’s approach to “the stranger” falls into line with common ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean modes of hospitality that were meant to “tame” the foreigner and integrate him into a society, thus preventing him from causing disruption to that society. If that couldn’t be accomplished, then the “inhospitable foreigner” was either to be expelled or eliminated. Needless to say, this applied only to individuals or small family groups — large masses of foreigners attempting to enter an ancient country would have been rightly recognised as an invasion and dealt with accordingly.

However, the illegitimacy of the current Regime and its actions alone can’t explain why the Republicans have closed ranks so precipitously. After all, Republican politicians are not exactly known for their intestinal fortitude when faced with opposition of any kind. Yet, even Northeastern moderate squishes like New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu have signed onto supporting Texas in this. Something changed that has caused the GOP, almost as a whole, to support this, either openly or tacitly.

January 26, 2024

Canada’s sooper-sekrit warship program

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

David Pugliese on the cone of silence the federal government seems to have pulled down over the Canadian Surface Combatant shipbuilding program as it steadily escalates in total cost to the taxpayer:

An artist’s rendition of BAE’s Type 26 Global Combat Ship, which was selected as the Canadian Surface Combatant design in 2019, the most recent “largest single expenditure in Canadian government history” (as all major weapon systems purchases tend to be).
(BAE Systems, via Flickr)

National Defence has brought in a new and unprecedented shroud of secrecy around a controversial warship project now estimated to cost taxpayers more than $80 billion.

After withholding documents for almost three years, the Department of National Defence has released nearly 1,700 pages of records that were supposed to outline specific costs and work done so far on the Canadian Surface Combatant program.

But all the details of what taxpayers have so far spent and what type of work has been done by Irving Shipbuilding for that money have been censored from the records.

“I pretty much got nearly 1,700 blank pages,” Ken Rubin said of the access to information request he filed to National Defence in April 2021 about the warship program. “I have never seen this level of secrecy or lack of accountability over a project that is costing so much.”

Rubin, an investigative researcher who has used the access law to obtain federal documents for decades, said there was not a single cost figure contained in any of the 1,700 pages. One page noted that Irving was required to perform 19 specific tasks, but all details were censored. Others pages listed numerous amendments made to the CSC program, but all details were blacked out. Information about the annual profit Irving has made so far on the CSC project is censored.

Irving declined to provide comment, referring this newspaper to National Defence.

Defence Minister Bill Blair’s office sent this newspaper a statement noting the “minister believes strongly in openness and transparency, and expects the Department of National Defence to respect the rights of Canadian citizens, permanent residents and persons or corporations present in Canada, to access records of government institutions that are subject to the Access to Information Act“.

National Defence noted in a statement that, since some of the records involved Irving Shipbuilding, government officials consulted with the firm to determine if the records contained proprietary information of the firm. Irving objected to the release of information, the department added.

But Rubin pointed out that National Defence was not required to follow Irving’s orders on what records could be released to the public. The amount of tax dollars spent on the surface combatant and how that money was being spent shouldn’t be secret, he added.

In addition, National Defence originally claimed in a statement to this newspaper that the long delay in providing the documents was because Rubin had asked for 20 years of records. But, when challenged on that claim, the department acknowledged it wasn’t true. It did not, however, provide an explanation why it had provided false information to this newspaper.

The Canadian Surface Combatant project will involve the construction of 15 warships for the Royal Canadian Navy at Irving on the east coast.

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