The story that the Roman Emperor Caligula wanted to appoint his horse to the Senate is apocryphal, but it is a sad fact that Canada’s own quasi-Emperor has appointed 36 unelected horses (or posterior portions thereof) to the Canadian Senate in just the past four years. And on Tuesday the Prime Minister’s stable of equine […]
Archive | Blog
RSS feed for this sectionGovernment confirms Afghanistan extension
The Harper government has confirmed that it is extending Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan until 2014 (Jane Taber, “Conservatives bump Afghan withdrawal date back three years,” Globe and Mail, 16 November 2010). Approximately 950 Canadian soldiers, to be based mostly in the Kabul area, will be assigned to training Afghan forces under the new plan: […]
NATO's upcoming summit
NATO heads of state and government will meet in Lisbon on the 19th to the 21st of November. On the agenda: approval of a new Strategic Concept document for the Alliance, including a rewrite of NATO nuclear policy; a decision on European NATO missile defence; discussion of the war in Afghanistan; relations with Russia; and other issues. The […]
Is Remembrance Day too much about war, and not enough about peace?
Do you feel that Remembrance Day has become a commemoration of war, or does it remain a time to think about peace? Leave your comments below.
Refusing to acknowledge the costs of war
A week-long series in the Toronto Star reveals some of the true cost of Canada’s war in Afghanistan. Friday’s article (Bruce Campion-Smith & Allan Woods, “Tories’ secret Afghan casualty list reveals intensity of combat,” Toronto Star, 5 November 2010) describes how the Conservative government and the Department of National Defence have refused to talk about […]
Harper floats Afghanistan trial balloon
Possibly hoping to extend its record of foreign policy blunders, the Harper government is considering continuing Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan past the scheduled mid-2011 end of the mission. According to the Toronto Star (Bruce Campion-Smith, “Troops may stay in Afghanistan as ‘trainers’,” 6 November 2010), “a senior government official” has confirmed that a military […]