A way with words

Christie Blatchford, in Kandahar, writes a very moving tribute to a fallen soldier and his "brothers in arms".

Too bad Christie didn’t stay with the ‘Post’.

[via The Torch]

Gordon O’Connor’s remarkable legacy

If all you had to go on was opposition criticism and day-to-day MSM coverage of defence issues, you would probably conclude that Gordon O’Connor was pretty much a flop as Minister of Defence. But if you were to take a closer look at his list of accomplishments during a very short tenure you could come to a much different conclusion.

In today’s National Post, Douglas Bland, in his article "Gordon O’Connor: A distinguished defence minister", reviews the upside:

By any criteria that matters to Canada's national defence, Gordon O'Connor's brief time in office was an outstanding success. In less than two years, he reversed more than 10 years of Liberal neglect of the defence policy and the Canadian Forces.

He wrote the ... defence platform ... guided it through a defence establishment that at times fought vigorously against it. He wrestled a commitment of $20-billion for new military equipment to rebuild the Canadian Forces from Cabinet and a reluctant Finance Department bureaucracy.

On Aug 10th the first of four new Canadian CC177 heavy-lift aircraft landed in Canada ... It would have been noteworthy if Mr. O'Connor had only forced the notoriously dysfunctional defence procurement system to consider buying such major new equipment. The fact that he has the aircraft ready to fly operational missions in a mere 18 months is remarkable.

New artillery weapons, drones and armoured vehicles are today in the field protecting Canadian soldiers.

Medium lift aircraft and helicopters are about to be ordered.

Most astonishing of all, a new fleet of the most modern tanks are on the way to Canada, a country usually allergic to the very idea of owning such a "war-like" capability.

Damian Brooks over at ‘The Torch’, offered a more mixed review, pointing to Mr. O’Connor’s poor performance in handling the external politics, the media and the message to the public.

Granted, the government’s communications strategy on Afghanistan often seemed somewhere between non-existent and seriously flawed. But in my opinion, that can’t be blamed entirely on O’Connor. Everyone, including the PM, the PMO, the ministries of external affairs and international development, among others, had a role to play in that failure.

The mentality of the left

The crack young staff at THMQ, using Hugo Chavez as an illustration, examines the totalitarianism, hypocrisy and contradictions of the American ‘Hard Left’.

It’s also a decent estimate of what’s likely going on between-the-ears of the ‘rabble’ afficionados rabble.

Canuckistan’s ‘world-class’ medicine

While this widely covered story had a happy outcome for a Calgary family, what struck me was:

A rare set of identical quadruplets were born this week to a Calgary woman after she was sent to give birth in Montana because of a shortage of neonatal beds in Canada.

The naturally conceived baby girls ... were born Sunday in Great Falls, Mont., to Calgarians Karen and J.P. Jepp.

"There wasn't space anywhere in Canada, so we had to turn to our friends in Montana," [a spokeman] said.

Jepp was transfered by air to Montana on Friday - the fifth Alberta woman to be transfered to Great Falls this year because of neonatal shortages in Calgary.

That’s quite astounding. The medical system of an entire, supposedly ‘advanced’, industrial nation with a population of 33 million can’t come up with the spare capacity to accommodate one additional unusual birth. So an expectant mother has to be sent to a podunk American city of 57,000 in a small state of fewer than a million people.

It’s not as if this situation arose out of the blue - that quads were on the way was known for months. And this is the fifth time this year that Alberta has done this. I also know that BC regularly sends cases south and it follows that every other province does the same.

"World-class'? Make that 'third-world'.

Update: Mark Steyn weighs in on this at The Corner. And again here.

Scrap CIDA

Peter Foster, in today’s ‘Post’, gives a number of excellent reasons for killing the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). In my estimation the most compelling of these is - and I didn’t know this till now - "CIDA was created in the late 1960s by Maurice Strong". Anything that Maurice Strong is involved in has to be deeply suspect. In Peter Fosters words:

[Strong] the self confessed socialist master-manipulator behind ...Kyoto, sustainable development and global governance.

...deliberately installed a vague agenda and loose controls over CIDA

...agenda to promote activist, leftist NGOs in the development field

Mr. Foster’s latest exposé follows columns (here and here) detailing CIDA and NGO interference with various mining operations around the world. His column today calls for CIDA to be dumped:

CIDA should be a candidate for the scrap heap, not because it has been ineffective in promoting development, but because it has become a prime factor in stopping it.

The solution to poverty is trade, investment and the rule of law... NGO activists ... should have less influence inside the gates of Ottawa.

I think I’ll write to the Minister responsible for CIDA and urge her to give it the axe.

Related

Letter to the editor from Kairos (CIDA funded NGO) chairman Father Paul Hansen protesting Peter Foster’s earlier column.

Also in today’s FP ‘Comment’ section along with Mr. Foster’s column is a letter from an Ecuadoran indigenous group to Mining Watch (funded in part by Kairos) protesting its anti-development activities which are helping to keep poor people in poverty.

Every tyrant has his buffoon

________der Fuhrer____________________Il Ducé_______



_____But it's not always easy to tell which is which.____

Nailed!

This is nuts!

Near Victoria yesterday, a construction worker, accidentally nailed in the forehead by a nail-gun, was rushed to a nearby hospital by the site first-aid officer.

On the way to the hospital they were stopped by a police speed trap. So, how did the cop deal with the situation? You’d think he’d see it as a medical emergency. Nope:

"We showed him the nail sticking out of my forehead but he didn't care at
all," Docherty told A-Channel news yesterday.

"He was dead set on getting some tickets," said Docherty.

The police officer followed the two to the hospital and once there issued a seatbelt ticket.

The police chief supported his officer:

The police chief suggested the pair should have called an ambulance.

"I think the officer used his discretion...," Hames said.

"My concern is for the safety of the public at large," he said.

Bullshit! The cop should have provided a high-speed, lights and siren escort to the hospital emergency door. Instead he just followed intending, not to help, but to issue a bloody ticket for an ‘offense’ that shouldn’t even be on the f***ing books!

Such behaviour certainly doesn’t boost respect for or confidence in the police. It does the exact opposite.

This case is reminiscent of law enforcement’s attitude towards citizens who attempt to defend themselves on their own property. People are actively discouraged from doing so and face charges should a perp be hurt in the process. This is not a healthy trend.