Canada's submarine fleet was a joke in 2013 - it's only been getting funnier ever since

I was busy mocking our laughable "fleet" all those years ago. If you recall, somehow some very gullible experts decided to buy four obsolete British subs which were otherwise destined for a beach in India. Here you go:***** Saturday, August 31, 2013 Entire Canadian Navy in dry-dock after mishap at sea Both ships of the Royal Canadian Navy were being towed to port yesterday after running into each other. Navy Lt. Raul Pendergast says initial reports suggest that both Captains may have been texting while driving. If that is confirmed it would be a violation of Navy rules of conduct. The RCN only permits the use of smart phones while its ships are at anchor or in dry-dock. One of the most sought after assignments in the Canadian Navy is with the submarine fleet because all four submarines have been dry-docked for the past 14 years. While at one time that fact made the sub fleet something to guarantee death by boredom, the advent of the iPad and smart phone has made it highly desirable. Swabbies assigned to the Halifax dry-dock where the Canadian sub fleet undergoes a perpetual "refit" report that a typical day consists of eight hours sleep and sixteen hours spent surfing the internet. ***** Thirteen years on, it's noteworthy that today gaming skills are considered a bonus in fresh recruits!

Canada's first Hindu cabinet minister is a know-nothing windbag

I happened onto a EuroNews interview with our Foreign Minister Anita Anand this morning. With all the heavy hitters in attendance at the NATO pow-wow in Ankara, somebody had to draw the short straw. Anita made all the right noises. Ukraine has turned the tide, Russia is on the brink of collapse, Ukrainian victory is in the bag, and our fleet of new submarines serves notice to Russia and China that we're serious about protecting our Arctic sovereignty. That's the script, and she's sticking to it. Let's start with a few facts. We have allegedly contracted for a fleet of 12 German-built diesel-electric submarines at an estimated $2 billions per unit. The first four are to be delivered by 2034, six years hence. At the moment, China is building six new diesel-electrics per year. Assuming they don't scale up going forward, that means by the time Canada takes delivery of the last of those German-built vessels around 2040, China will have added at least 80 new subs to its fleet. Do we really think parking half a dozen German submarines at either end of what we call "the Northwest Passage" will keep China out? Our Arctic sovereignty is doomed if we think we'll prevail in a submarine war. That's without even considering Russia's Arctic footprint. Russia has more soldiers on permanent bases above the Arctic Circle than Canada has residents there. Over half of the global pop north of the Arctc circle is Russian. They have by far the world's largest icebreaker fleet. They're serious about their Arctic sovereignty. Canada talks a big game. The reality is Canada's Arctic is defended by our "Rangers," who just had their WWII era Lee-Enfield rifles upgraded to, I shit you not, "state of the art bolt-action carbines with a ten shot magazine!" Then there is the unspoken subtext that German technology is so vastly superior that it's worth paying a premium for. We know from Chinese export deals that were made public that they sell their diesel-electrics in the $300 -400 million range. In other words, we could buy four subs from China for the price of one from Germany. Chinese tech generally, in terms of cars, electronics, and weapons systems are at least the equal to German industry, and are often clearly superior. Why would their submarines be any different? At the end of the day, apparently, it all boils down to "values." Anita stressed that the democratic nations of NATO have them and the bad guys don't. Hmm... let's ponder that for a moment. By far the most crucial enabler of the ongoing genocide in Gaza is NATO boss Uncle Sam. The second is Germany. Alrighty then, values it is!

Carney announces only 9 countries support the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank, 7 of which are bankrupt

Reuters reported today that PM Mark Carney announced the list of countries who have pledged support for this new lender of last resort, to be based in Canada. Ominously, other than Canada, most of the support for this boondogle comes from countries already technically bankrupt. Here's the list: Albania, Belgium, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg, Romania, Turkei, and Ukraine. Take Belgium and Luxembourg out of the mix, and all the support for this so-called "bank" comes from economic basket cases. Not hard to see why any country with a serious economy is giving this stinker a wide berth. There are sound reasons why no commercial bank on planet earth will touch these losers with a ten-mile pole! But here comes the favorite Banker of the Globalist elites riding to the rescue with a made-to-order "public-private-partnership" that will backstop Big Bank loans to them! That's why the Big Bank Bosses all agree this is a Great Idea. In Canada, our legacy media seem to be promoting this as a great idea. The new HQ for this new bank will be based in Canada after all, and will allegedly create 3500 well-paying jobs. Ya, and insofar as that ever comes close to being true, every one of those 3500 paycheques will come from the pockets of the Canadian taxpayer.

RIP Johnny Hirtle

They say somewhere inside anybody celebrating their 70th birthday, there's a 17 year old wondering what the hell happened. You gotta admit that it's really hard to deny your age when it starts with the number seven. As it happened, it was just a few months after my 70th I was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, and it was just a few months before his 70th that Johnny was diagnosed with lung cancer. Almost seems like our meters are running down about the same rate. Which should not come as a surprise. We are, after all, descended from the same hardy Prussian gene pool. Technically, we were second cousins, his family emmigrating from the same Bavarian village a year or two after mine (if your wondering how Prussians ended up in Bavaria you've got some reading to do). For the first year or two we all shared the same roof, first on Derry Street, and then on Neeve Street in the Ward. The Derry place was a rental, and new immigrants had to do what they do to this day; stall the landlord at the front door while spiriting a dozen non-existent guests out the back door whenever he stops by for a look! In due course the Hirtles found themselves out of the Ward and in a new house in the northern 'burbs. My family became the country bumpkins, or at least that's what I thought, whereas my cousins were sophisticated urbanites! When we all hit driving age it was only natural I'd be hanging out in town more. In the first few years I spent many winter hours playing pick-up hockey at the rink behind the local school. It was nothing for Johnny to spend eight or twelve or even more hours every day with his skates on in those years. Of course, playing hockey on an outdoor rink past midnight wasn't the only urban temptation city life offered. Wasn't long before Johnny and his peer group were eagerly experimenting with the cornucopia of new recreational drugs that were flooding the market. In fact, Johnny and Tim McIvor were my tour guides on my first-ever LSD trip! You cannot imagine a more loving pair of shepherds helping a neophyte through an entire night of utterly bonkers hallucinations. Ya right... anyway, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger... As we outgrew the worst excesses of our youth, Johnny and I married aound the same age, bought houses around the same time, started families around the same time, and suffered marital collapse around the same time. By that time life had taken us in radically different directions. Johnny stuck with GE-Westinghouse-ABB till the bitter end, and the end truly was bitter. On the other hand, I had the dumb luck to transfer to a teaching career. I figured it would be awhile before they could move teaching jobs to Mexico, whereas most of our industrial base was already gone. Ironically, I recently read an article about the difficulties facing America's re-shoring of heavy transformer production, because the dumbfucks have realized Mexico and China cannot be relied on. One of the critical bottlenecks is the absence of skilled core-winders. Imagine that! An entire craft tossed in the trash as redundant, and then back in high demand when it's too late! That was a workforce that had been under threat for so long I think many convinced themselves it would never happen. Just months before the shit hit the fan I recall Johnny telling me he'd switched to steady day shift so he could spend more time with Kellan and Kari. He was planning his life around the job right untill the day his employer destroyed his livelihood. I know it's pointless to go over the might-have-beens once somebody's gone, but my late father, who spent way too much time haunting any arena where his sons might be playing, to the point where he was an unofficial hockey scout, often saw John play, and opined regularly that Johnny could have gone places. Indeed, Johnny played in a Guelph beer league packed with guys who had played Jr. A or professionally, so who knows? Till well into his 50's Johnny was more than holding his own against ex-Jr A guys half his age. That all ended with a detached retina, and at least I can admit he beat me to that milestone by about ten years! I'd only seen John intermittently in recent years, usually on the rare occassion when he attended a family get together. I was shocked when I was forwarded an email from his sister Reg last September announcing John could be in hospice in a matter of days. The last time I saw Johnny was a few days after I got that email. I arrived unannouned and rang the buzzer a half dozen times, to no avail. I go knock on his patio door. "Hey Dieter! Great to see you! Come on in!" For a guy who was hospice bound, he was remarkably cheerful. He was busy changing the bandages on his legs. He was looking forward... to the Blue Jays game that night, to the Raptors season, to the Leafs, to tomorrow's cross-word puzzle in the Globe, because he'd already done that day's... I left him that afternoon convinced a guy with so much to look forward to had a few years left, for sure. Sorry I was wrong. Happy trails to ya, Johnny! I'm hoping someday we'll get together again with a 500 horsepower SuperBee and a straight stretch of road. Love you, bro!

How CBC fuels the residential school denialism they pretend to fight

A headline at the CBC's Front Burner program this morning asks the rhetorical question;"What's fueling residential school denialism?" The story leads off with a photo of the Kamloops Residential School. The caption under the photo repeats the same brazen lie CBC first broadcast to the world in May of 2021; "The remains of 215 children were discovered buried near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School." That's the sort of slovenly reportage that gets skeptics asking why taxpayers are subsidizing this nonsense to the tune of $1.4 billion per year. The original whopper had an element of plausibiliy about it, but more than five years on, surely everone in Canada knows exactly zero remains of any children have been found. Recycling old lies won't win the anti-denialist activists many allies.

Putin doomed, public support collapses, regime change imminent

That was the gist of a story I ran across at the Ukraine Today website this morning. Like most Ukrainian news outlets, they are kept alive only by the generosity of taxpayers in the West who have fully embraced Zelly's pivotal role in saving Western Civ from the predations of Bad Vlad. Unfortunately, all of them exhibit a marked tendency to slant things a certain way.Imagine my disappointment when I realized that the only evidence presented for a "catastrophic collapse" was in Putin's polling numbers. Yup, it's a disaster alright; Putin's approval rating has catastrophically collapsed... from 74%... all the way down to 69%. Wow! Vlad might as well pack his bags! Meanwhile, the EU's got the three dorkshits, Stormer, Schmertz, and Micron, spearheading what's left of the "whatever it takes for as long as it takes" crowd. Every one of these champions of democracy is labouring with approval ratings in the teens! Starmer's already been deposed and the other two won't survive their next elections. Every one of them will be replaced by politicians who put their own country's interests before those of Ukraine and NATO. So it looks to me like the odds against Ukraine surviving until their Western sponsors have rebuilt their indusrial capacity to begin fulfilling the empty promises they've been making these past four+ years are getting slimmer by the day. That's why we're being absolutely inundated with bullshit stories about how "the tide has turned" and "Putin is on the back foot." We've been seeing plenty of this crap in Canadian media. Today CBC informs us that "some Russians are turning against Putin." Then the sub-head; " 'Not only are they not winning, but the war is coming closer', says Pulitzer-prize winner Anne Applebaum." That's fairly typical. What they're studiously avoiding is any reference to what's actually happening on the ground, which is that for the past two weeks the Russian army has over-run the last of the "fortress cities" that were holding out in Donbas. We mocked Putin when he demanded Ukraine hand over the last Donbas real estate. What? He can't take it from us, so he expects us to give it away! OK then... now he's taken it. Are you happy? The CBC of course neglects to mention that Anne Applebaum is a one-trick pony who has literally built her entire career on Putin-bashing. Nor did they mention her husband, the rabid Russophobe Sikorsky, Polands former Defence Minister, who famously held up a sign reading "Thank-you USA" in the Polish parliament the day after the Nordstream pipeline mysteriously blew up. The only other "expert" CBC quotes in their story is a guy named Michael Kimmage, a historian at the Catholic University of America. I'd never heard of it, but they are in fact a real school, rated 169th in university rankings. While I'm not familiar with Professor Kimmage, he appears to be another academic who's built his entire career around Bad Vlad. Of course, just because I've never heard of the guy or his school doesn't mean he isn't a font of profound insights into the Ukraine war. Maybe. On the other hand, guys like Jeffrey Sachs (Harvard, ranked number 1) and John Mearsheimer (U of Chicago, ranked no. 6) argue convincingly that Ukraine doesn't have a hope in hell. That opinion guarantees you'll never see them on mainstream media again. Finally, let me point out yet again what a fool-hardy trajectory my country, Canada, is on. Since assuming office a little over a year ago, Carney has either confirmed or approved new military purchases that will add at least 500 billions to our deficit, because every penny comes from money we must borrow. This spending spree is justified because it is, according to Carney, essential to meeting our NATO commitments, preserving our freedom, etc. Sounds good, but it's mostly bullshit. We're spending this money because Donald Trump told us to, and we wouldn't want to upset him, elbows up or not. What is the real deal? A hard-nosed assessment would conclude that most of these purchases are for obsolete technology. With the possible exception of ice-breakers, everything else is being replaced by drones. We're making a multigenerational financial commitment to obsolete junk. The F-35 is a prime example. We're absolutely desperate to replace our 40 year old fleet of CF-18s. The availability of these antiques for missions ("ready rate") has sunk to an unacceptable 40%. Thank God we got those brand-spankin'-new F-35s on their way to save us from Putin. Paying $40,000/hr operating costs, as opposed to the Swedish Gripen at $12,000/hr, is a small price to pay to preserve our way of life. Except for one thing... according to USAF, the ready rate for F-35s is... 25%!

A solitary buzzard's been circling overhead for days...

Seems to be keeping an eye on me. Normally, you don't see these guys flying solo. Where there's one, the rest of the gang is never too far away. Here's my theory. The crew spotted me long ago while out on their daily hunting trips. No, they're not "hunting" in the conventional sense, they're just hunting for roadkill or a reasonable facsimile. That's how I came to their attention. I'm obviously not roadkill, but I'm only 150 feet off the road, and I'm sure they've noticed me inert in my lawnchair on the stoop often enough they may have thought I was ready for dinner! I figure this solo scout's job is to keep an eye on me and, when I finally do expire, to sound the dinner bell for the rest of the gang. Then they'll be eating like kings for at least a week!