Airshow Mackay and the Red Barons
By Alison@Creekside
Frankly I don’t think we can be expected to write a whole new blogpost every time Flying Ace “Airshow MacKay” and his trusty sidekick Woodstock Kory climb up on top of the Con doghouse to fight off the Red Baron yet again in the Arctic, so this time we’re just going with what David [...]
DND on friendly fire: Wikileaks, US don’t know squat
By Alison@Creekside
One of the Wikileaks war logs released yesterday contained a friendly fire report filed by the 205th RCAG U.S. military unit which states four Canadian soldiers were killed and seven other Canadians and an interpreter were wounded on Sept. 3, 2006, when a fighter jet dropped a guided bomb on a building they occupied [...]
Media mercenaries
By Alison@Creekside
In a 2007 article entitled “The Conference of Defence Associations gets $100,000 a year from the Department of Defence,” CDA executive director Alain Pellerin told Maclean’s John Geddes: “We also have to write a number of op-eds to the press.” Asked if there is any aspect of Tory defence policy the CDA opposes, he [...]
The Colvin e-mails: so unimportant we can’t see them
By Alison@Creekside
Over at the Military Police Complaints Commission, Department of Justice lawyer Alain Préfontaine is trying to prove that diplomat Richard Colvin’s emails flagging abuse of Afghan prisoners were so vaguely worded that the government could not possibly be held responsible for failing to understand what he was talking about.
Colvin and MPCC chair Glenn Stannard [...]
Canada’s next quagmire
By Alison@Creekside
“After 2011, the military mission will end,” said Defence Minister Peter MacKay, repeating the Conservative government’s well-worn line.
“What we will do beyond that point in the area of training, will predominantly be in the area of policing. And that is very much a key component part of security for Afghanistan.”
Training the Afghan National Police. [...]
Where were we? Oh yes. Torture.
By Alison@Creekside
On Friday Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announced the government was appointing Frank Iacobucci, a former Supreme Court judge with no legal hold over them, to determine what documents pertaining to the Afghan detainee issue could be released without compromising national security, national defence, and/or international relations. The scope and terms of Iacobucci’s appointment are [...]
The missing Olympic boycott
By Alison@Creekside
Thirty years ago in 1980, Canada joined the U.S. in a 64-country boycott of the Moscow Olympics to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. On Feb. 15, under cover of wall-to-wall Olympics news, Canada joined 15,000 coalition troops in Obama’s assault on the town of Marjah in Helmand province, the biggest offensive since the [...]
Canada v. Khadr, abridged
By Alison@Creekside
Shorter Supremes :While it is true that the Canadian government violated the Canadian charter rights of a Canadian citizen when it sent Canadian agents to interrogate him in a foreign concentration camp and then turned the contents of that interview obtained under duress over to the owners of that concentration camp, and while it [...]
Richard Colvin’s devastating reply
By Alison@Creekside
On Airshow Peter MacKay’s attempt to discredit Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin by accusing him of not having brought up detainee abuse the one time MacKay met with Colvin in Afghanistan:
He, Colvin, had only been on the job for 10 days and had not met with any detainees yet. And even if he had, protocol [...]
The Cons’ torture blackout continues
By Alison@Creekside
Among the many fakeries and falsehoods foisted on the House on Thursday by the Cons, in their bid to maintain the most secretive and unaccountable government evah, usual frontrunners Laurie Goldie Hawn and Cheryl Gallant got beat out by Gary Goodyear, Minister of Creationism, Science, and Technology. Here he is explaining why the motion [...]
