Friday, July 30, 2010

Santa is Canadian if you want him to be

Today, Kory's Kapers, formally know as the Toronto Sun newspaper, has a picture of a jet and a headline, Ruskies Sent Packing and then an article asking Are we prepared to defend the north? This piece of political propaganda is nothing more than an imaginary argument to justify the $9 billion, F-35 purchase and ramp up the so called Tim Hortons crowd who believe the crap that governments and in particular this government puts out.

Regardless of whether Russia plants a flag at the bottom of the arctic ocean or DenMark opens a weather station in the arctic or Harper moves the elite forces of the Van Doos north to surround Santa's village, the decision on which country owns which part of the arctic and more importantly the possibly resource rich Lomonosov ridge will be decided by the proposals put forth to the UN by each country making a claim.

Of course none of that is explained in Kory's Kapers. 

The good thing about blogging is that you end up reading a lot of articles and sometimes actually discover facts. The bad thing about blogging is the frustration you feel when you realize that the so called real journalists ignore or conveniently leave those facts out for either their own biasses or more likely in this case to keep kindred with Kory's kabuki.



Willy

4 comments:

Brian said...

You can also read McKay quoted in the Toronto Sun saying

" NORAD fighter jets have intercepted between 12 and 18 Russian bombers per year since 2007."
http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2010/07/30/14874221.html
So in other words for the past three years it hasn’t been newsworthy until the announcement of F-35. These bombers have been intercepted over the Arctic Ocean which is no place for a single engine fighter. The Liberals have also stated that we need more than the 65 aircraft of whatever type that the Cons are planning on ordering. How could this possibly be embarrassing for Ignatieff?.

I’m waiting with baited breath for the cause of the F-18 crash in Lethbridge. As a pilot and former CC-130 Flight Engineer it does sound like the cause could be engine failure. Of course according to McKay engines on F-35s will never fail, even over the Arctic Ocean.

WILLY said...

Hi Brian

I am trying to cut back on both double doubles and reading that rag and pretty near all press releases coming indirectly from the PMO in whatever format or medium they are delivered to me.

You may be correct about the ability of fighters to handle the arctic and the politicians may be right about our need for an air force.

Although it seems somewhat redundant when you consider the size of the military and fleets of aircraft (if military planes are called fleets) of the countries that surround us. If it came to repelling an aggressor we would certainly be out gunned by the sheer volume alone, unless of course our planes are only going to be bought and used to create an international incident.

To me it is more like the military wanting the latest iPod when the old ones can still play the tunes or in this case, eventually get shot down.

As for Iggy, sadly he and/or his handlers seem to be grasping for that old LPC centrist position. Foolishly in my humble opinion.

Harper on the other hand is out to ruin my country.

Anonymous said...

@Brian

Single engine jets have no place over the Atlantic? Oh really?

You should let the Brits and the Americans know. They should probably ditch the Harrier. You should also tell the yanks, the Norwegians and the Danes to stop operating F-16s in and around the Arctic Circle. And pass the memo to the Swedes who operate hundreds of single engine Gripens as well.

As for the crash, doesn't that kinda prove the point that two engines might not necessarily get you home any safer than one? Aside from the Lethbridge crash, read up on the Hornet that slammed into suburban San Diego. He didn't make it home on his second engine either.

Cost wise the JSF is the second cheapest of all the contenders we would look at (Gripen NG, JSF, Super Hornet, Rafale, Typhoon).

Just look at the Aussie purchase of Super Hornets. US$ 2.2 billion for 24 jets and US$ 2.4 billion for 10 years of support. Extrapolate that to 20 years and 65 jets and we'd pay $6 billion to buy those planes and $13 billion for 20 years of support. That's $3 billion more than we are paying for our $9 billion purchase and $7 billion for 20 years of support.

There's only one plane that's cheaper: the Gripen NG. And that plane had its first flight 8 years after our Hornets came into service. Lipstick on a pig.

WILLY said...

Well, thank you Anonymous from the Defense Research Establishment at gc.ca, Your commercial googlebot went thru at about 10:30 from Mountainview and assume that you didn't get around to placing a comment here until after lunch.

Just a sugestion here, this is what you would call a very obscure, low traffic blog, and really not worth the effort to refute the foolishness that is usually being posted or as in this case, the more informed comment by Brian.

Besides you are getting paid on my dime, so get back to work doing something else, like I don't know, defending the country..

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