Peace, order and good government, eh?: Flattened?

Kandahar brass confident insurgents have been ‘flattened’ The commander of Canada’s last combat mission in Kandahar arrived home Friday, confident that his soldiers had "flattened" insurgents and put the troubled region on the path to stability. "Afghanistan still has its challenges but we feel that there is significant improvement in the fight against the insurgents," said Brig.-Gen. Dean Milner. "I’m guardedly optimistic that things are moving in the right direction." I would have thought a "flattened" insurgency would mean fewer violent attacks. So how to explain this report (pdf) from the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO) which tells a somewhat different story? ANSO tracks attacks by Armed Opposition Groups (AOG) and this is from the summary and refers to all of Afghanistan, comparing the second quarter of 2011 with the same quarter in 2009: By the end of June 2011 … the Q.2 attack total has grown by 119% to a staggering 7,178 operations (p.7) or approximately 40 per day. Conflict related civilian fatalities have grown by nearly 106% over the same period, with approximately 1,856 people killed in the first six months of this year alone. Security for aid workers has inevitably deteriorated in lock-step with 73% more incidents…

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Peace, order and good government, eh?: So when will they put the logos on the Legislative Assembly?

You know how big name musical acts often have specific corporations sponsoring their tours? Welcome to politics in the 21st century. Twenty-six organizations invested between $5,000 and $50,000 to sponsor the two-day premiers’ meeting in Vancouver this week. The list of sponsors include companies from the gas and oil, transportation and pharmaceutical industries. It’s claimed that corporate sponsors aren’t paying for special access and my reply to that would be: they already have special access. How else do you explain the fact that it’s corporations who have all the money but they’re the ones who keep getting their taxes cut? And even if this is just for advertising purposes, since when is government a vehicle for advertising? Why don’t they just have "Property of Exxon Mobil" stamped on their foreheads and have done with it? In politics, perception is everything. And the perception this encourages is that our elected officials are bought and paid for. On second thought, maybe I should applaud them for finally being open about it….

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Terahertz: “Not an inch of space”

Never mind that Europe is supposed to be all metric all the time, here’s a quote relating to yesterday’s tragedy: "That the perpetrator apparently comes from the far-right scene shows once again how dangerous racist and anti-foreigner ideologies are," Germany’s opposition Greens said in a statement. "We must not allow them an inch of space […]

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Michael Coren blames Norwegian victims as “socialist children” “who showed no empathy at all for Jewish suffering”

I thought the Washington Post was grossly irresponsible for keeping up a hate column by Jennifer Rubin blaming Muslims for the Norwegian tragedy but this bit of hate speech from Michael Coren is one of the most disgusting bits of unapologetic enmity dressed up as ‘irony’ as I have ever encountered.

It is . . . → Read More: Michael Coren blames Norwegian victims as “socialist children” “who showed no empathy at all for Jewish suffering”

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