Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

It always amuses me, and somewhat infuriates, that I still receive emails from Global warming naysayers.

Despite the scientific analysis of over 6,000 experts in the field, all of whom say the jury is in when it comes to human carbon emission contributions, despite the clear facts of human environmental impact (effects that we see all around us), despite our own empirical knowledge of pollution and climate change, there is a loud minority of people, (the same who believe man never landed on the moon), that maintain that global warming has two sides to it, that there should be a “debate”, that Al Gore is a phony and that the scientists are all wrong.

The simple fact of the matter is that there is no “opinion” when it comes to scientific method(s). Scientific process is there to achieve quantifiable evidence that is tested. People will say to me “Well, my opinion is that”. But what they fail to realize is that anyone can have a point of view on anything, but that doesn’t make it valid, or even listenable.

Anti-global warmers will try and trot out other “evidence” from researchers (many of whom come from the energy lobby in some form), that points to the opposite notion.

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has more than dealt with the evidence. Moreover, the world scientific body has no axe to grind economically – they do not profit one way or the other when it comes to their conclusions. Certainly, the fossil fuel sectors — the coal, gas, and oil lobbies — have much to gain by playing down the effects of greenhouse gas emissions that traps heat from the sun. They want as much coal and gas and oil used as possible — and these folks are in the world of record profits right now.

The most obvious problem with the nay sayers, is their total lack of scientific understanding. What exists, generally, with these people is newspaper knowledge — no books read; no studies read; no real work — just the internet.

The problem with the internet is that you can find anything about everything: talking dogs, alien visitations, Elvis clones, to the notion that the Holocaust was a hoax. Any view can find reinforcement, no matter how crank-strewn.

But forget the scientists for a moment.

You know when Stephen Harper comes in from the cold on this one that there must be something to it.

For months we have been waiting for some signs of life from the man who wasn’t many Liberals first choice. Having Stephan Dion as Liberal leader is a little like getting the last date when the lights go on.

Now we have life.

That being said, many in this region wonder how punishing coal and heating oil with a Liberal carbon tax is going to translate to their wallets, and will Dion’s proposed tax cuts be enough to offset higher costs elsewhere?

The average Nova Scotian family has two kids and an average combined household income of $50,190. In that case the Liberals will kick back $1,000.00 in tax relief. But will that be enough? Lower income earners get a bigger break and upper middle class will get pummeled, I suspect. Overall, for the region here, I am doubtful that the tax cuts are deep enough.

Deeper tax cuts would have been more comforting.

The Liberals say their “Green Shift” plan will be “revenue neutral” and will, in the process, curb pollution and wean ourselves off dirty, increasingly expensive, fuel. But when was the last time somebody told you “it won’t cost a thing”?

The Conservatives cut the GST because the GST is simple to understand. Now our collective eyes are glazing over with carbon taxes, tax cut calculators, the NDP’s “Cap and Trade system” (companies are issued emissions permits and if they go beyond it they have to buy more credits from companies who pollute less), followed by the Conservative’s ventriloquism of singing the environmental anthem without moving their lips. The whole thing is quite a show.

Unlike the nonsensical Liberal policy in Afghanistan, where a non-combat role was preferred in a war zone and the NDP wanted out entirely with the Conservatives wanting to stay the course, there is now bold policy leadership from Dion.

Today the voters have a clear choice and the NDP are the ones left out. The NDP “Cap and Trade” system is even more arduous to explain and administrate. However, it might be the least costly politically due to its industrial targeting.

But higher costs for businesses always transfer to the consumer, correct?

But how do you ever motivate a company like Nova Scotia Power to change from using coal when they are so profitable and their executives pay themselves more than any other public utility?

Stephan Dion has given voters leadership with a bold plan that moves us into the new age but forces us to examine, and self-examine, and change behavior in the process.

It is not the path of least resistance.

Just a terrific job with special coverage of the Nova Scotia wildfires and the evacuations over the week. I could say just how hard everyone worked and how we really connected with our listeners, the public service we provided and how the station grew ‘again’ this week - instead here are just a few of the many emails we received from our listeners.

Well Done.

Mark

As a resident of HRM, I just wanted to thank your news organization for your fantastic ongoing coverage of the wildfire(s

You are heads and shoulders above every other local news media in providing up-to-date information as well as a forum for people to voice their concerns and ask questions. Your news team is to be commended. I’ll be listening to News 95.7 far more often as a result of this.

Regards,
Yvette Fraser

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Thank you so much for your news coverage this weekend. I am a resident of Candy Mountain Road currently vacationing with my daughter in Winnipeg. My husband and our nephew were evacuated Friday afternoon. I can’t tell you how comforting it is to be able to stay updated so many provinces away. Thanks again for your hard work.

Colleen Dafoe

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You were a BIG comfort today for a lot of people, I told my sister how to get on line, she’s docked in NFLD on the navy ship, with a guy who lives on Candy mountain and could not get any info.

Thank you.
Tamara Barker Watson

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Thank you sooooooooooo much for your coverage! We spent the whole night trying to get info. All that we heard was word of mouth & not very accurate. You can’t know what it is like when your loved ones are in danger & all you can get are rumors. All we want is INFORMATION.It was Juan all over again & its not over yet. Thanks so much. What you did was HUGE!

V. Young
East Petpeswick

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Would like to congratulate yourself and NEWS957 for your terrific coverage, we really need more coverage from all news organizations!!

Hard to believe that we can’t get any other live coverage on television etc!!!!!!!!

Again a big thanks for keeping us informed as to what is happening!!!!!

Bruce Hartlin

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My husband and I are listening to you and Richard with your excellent coverage of the fires on the Eastern Shore. We are presently in South Carolina, but have our computer tuned into your show, so that we can know what is happening at home. We wonder if there is any knowledge as to how the fire started. Thank you.

Carol-Anne and Lorne

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Thanks so much to you Andrew, Richard and all your news crews for coming on today to keep us all informed. I just arrived home from work, hungry for news on the fires and was thrilled to hear your voice when I turned on the radio. Thanks again to 95.7 for your continuing great news coverage and of course for you Andrew. Once again you guys all prove to me why I listen to your station every day.

Lynn, Enfield

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Hi Andrew, I’m tuned in listening your broadcast today. This is something we are used to listening to on CNN.

I’m here in Toronto but I’m from Nova Scotia, Annapolis Royal more specifically but I have family around the area of the fire.

Thanks for taking the time to keep everyone up to date. It’s a very important service you and Richard and the team are doing keeping everyone on top of the situation.

Regards,
Eric

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Hi;

Just think it’s great that your station is keeping people informed about the fires. Your staff deserve a huge thanks for providing this extended coverage……

Wayne Boudreau

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Great job this weekend.

Shows that radio can do more than entertain. it can inform, it can educate and bring people together….I know there are people who are desperate for info, probably feel quite lost but are getting info from you guys… Very important job…well done to you, Richard and everyone else…

Mike Savage, MP

Steve Coll is the Pulitzer prize winning author of  “Ghost Wars” (The Secret History of The CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion To Sept 10, 2001), and, now, “The Bin Laden’s  — An Arabian Family In The American Century

Without America, there would be no Saudi Royal family or Bin Laden riches. The jet-setting internationalism of their champagne-strewn lifestyle wasn’t just paved with American customers; it was cultivated with custodial geopolitics.

American military protected Saudi royals and their confederates (the Bin Laden family being one of them), after the British stepped away from the Middle East post WW2. Since then, Prince Bandar, and various other Saudi Princes and businessmen have been in the Washington corridors of power more often than any other nation; more so even than the Israelis — because the Saudis write the cheques.

Because the Saudis don’t ask for money, like other American allies, they lend it and spend it and they have bought and paid for that access. They also don’t lobby the way others do either. The Saudis just open their wallets.

But the good times came to an end on Sept 11^th 2001.

As Steve Coll writes, days after the event the Bin Laden family were gathered up and flown out of the U.S., crying and chain-smoking. It was a new world. It still is.

But had Osama’s older brother, Salem, not died prematurely in a plane crash, Author Steve Coll told me, there would probably never have been a 9/11. Salem was the family leader, the Patriarch following their Father’s passing. And while he flew arms and cash into Afghanistan to support Osama when he was fighting the Soviets, Salem would have prevented Osama’s extremism against America. Osama respected his brother. He looked up to him, even in disagreement.

Steve Coll also discussed this week the latest Al Qaeda terrorist plot that was thankfully foiled by British intelligence. Similar to the event planned from Manila by Ramzi Yousef (now in Colorado’s Super Max prison and considered the creepiest inmate, by the way), in the early nineties where many airliners were to be downed by high explosives in mid-flight simultaneously, a similar plan was being cooked up for transatlantic flights despite new airline security measures.

Al Qaeda’s method is to return to their old haunts: airlines, embassies, big buildings (they attacked the World Trade centre twice, the first time in 1993. So, the plan went like this: liquid explosive that looks like Gator Aid matched up to electronic detonators made from digital cameras and assembled mid-flight. Testing on the captured material from the foiled revealed a hell of a bang. The attack involved 15 planes.

Imagine, Steve Coll said, if 15 airliners were suddenly blown out of the sky in a span of 20 minutes.

At that point, the U.S. would invade the ungovernable tribal regions in Pakistan which house both Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden himself that border Afghanistan (and which only NATO recognizes, the tribesmen don’t care); and the area from which the Taliban in Afghanistan are also supplied.

The reaction within Pakistan to an American invasion would be horrific: riot, demonstrations, and martial rule – perhaps revolution. With nuclear weapons, a fanatical, angry, fundamentalist
Pakistan is not a good thing.

They would then all risk being martyrs.

Be careful what you ask for.

And the Bin Laden’s are chain smoking still.

The announced retirement of Halifax MP Alexa McDonough from politics occurred Monday in the Lord Nelson. The century-old muscular Edwardian Hotel in Halifax where she started her career and celebrated many political victories was the home to her short goodbye. She told us on the air the next day that she retired when a dear friend died of cancer. It caused her to refocus. Life is short.

However, politically, life has been long for her: as a Federal leader for the NDP, as well as a Member of Parliament, and she has been nothing less than a trailblazer in that longevity.  

The biggest moment in the last Federal election occurred when Peter Mackay told Alexa Macdonough to “Stick to her knitting” in response to her challenge of Peter winning his own riding. As an older person, and as a woman, it was McDonough marginalizing. If it was a guy, Peter would not have involved the word “knitting” — unless he was taking a swipe at the sexuality of Scott Brison. (If he had said that to Scott, Brison would’ve had a good laugh. In the past, Peter has referred to Scott Brison in the House of Commons as “Mr. Fancy Pants”).

And while both Peter Mackay and Scott Brison are good sports and solid public servants — gay or straight residing in the comfort of their gender dominance — the gender issue of Alexa McDonough is something not discussed, but ever present. Politics is a boys club still; but whether or not the partial success of Hillary Clinton and the life long work of Alexa McDonough will translate into encouragement/activism for other women remains to be seen.

Yet, more and more women are graduating ahead of men. This gender disparity is especially true in United States. It still does not mean real power because we won’t let them into the halls of power in adequate numbers. Men are in denial about this.

In Ontario politics in the 1990s, Lyn McLeod was the Liberal leader who was eclipsed by the Mike Harris “Common Sense” Conservative revolution because she was a woman. Had the Liberals positioned a man as leader many feel the outcome would have been different. Harris was behind in the polls significantly at the outset. McLeod’s gender caught up with her.

Kim Campbell, who was PM for 15 minutes suffered from the disease of Mulroneyitis and was devastated in the Jean Chrétien landslide with her party reduced to two seats.

In Nova Scotia recently, Diana Whalen had a good shot as Liberal leader but was eclipsed by Stephen McNeil.

Sheila Copps was Deputy PM and for her public service received scads of hate mail because she was considered “abrasive”. Yet, the public elected the street fighter from Shawinigan to 3 majorities. Jean Chrétien’s abrasiveness was considered a needed strength against the separatist hordes.

Here’s the old canard: “it isn’t because she is a woman, it is because of her personality”.

It is politics. And in politics women, the few that there are, act like politicians.

And we don’t like them for it.

Afghanistan has more women in their government than we do here. Of course, we forced them to over there. Maybe we should try the point of a bayonet here too.

Gentlemen, of what are you afraid?

In Homer’s epic, the Odyssey, the ancient protagonist, Odysseus, asked his ships’ crew to tie him to the mast head and blindfold him, but keep his ears free to hear the Siren’s song, the embodiment of temptation itself, where the Siren’s womanly attributes and heavenly songs drove ships toward them — only to perish into the rocks. For their part, the crew was instructed to wear wax in their ears to protect them from the call of the wild.

Knowing neither Greek oral history nor common sense, (or paying heed to the history of his paramour Julie Couillard), former Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier dated her anyway – very publicly. He even brought her with him to the United Nations.

The siren in question, Julie Couillard, and her problem isn’t her past criminal associations, it is her street fighting present, her sense of entitlement, her malice. When trying to appear as a non-opportunist, for example, Julie says: “Everyone knows it: A minister earns $250,000 dollars per year. What’s left after taxes: $125,000, $130,000? I am constantly with businessmen who make a lot of cash. A minister has no money.”

What a wonderful act of social and sexual charity for Julie to deign to lower herself to Federal Cabinet status!

Hers is an interesting and telling statement from a woman who has never earned that much money, a woman who lost a house, has no professional or educational pedigree, who operated a “casting service” for wannabe actors and models (most of those operations are specious at best) and who describes herself as an “actress”. Now, she claims to be in real estate — although the company she has been associated with denies it (?!)

Wasn’t it singer Billy Joel who, in his song The Piano Man, characterized these types of people with unachievable pretensions as “real-estate novelists”?

With a Daddy who, himself, has a criminal past with drugs, it appears that her abandonment issues with an absentee Daddy plunged herself, and her neckline, into the arms of the Hell’s Angels (I guess they made more money than Max). I also guess she considered them “businessmen” as well.

The old line about lying down with lions or swine applies here.

The facts are the facts: two of Couillard’s former husbands are dead by violent means; a third man is in witness protection. The link to organized crime enforcers, or operatives, has been consistent. There is a long pattern. Moreover, her style is still from the street: knowing that she had destroyed the career of her former boyfriend Bernier when she went on Quebec TV to reveal that he had stupidly left Government documents regarding Afghanistan at her place, she continued with the media the next day saying “He was spineless” and “Should have protected me” from revelations about her past.

But shouldn’t she have known herself that her past would come out when she dated such a political figure and met President George Bush?

Julie Couillard did not find her way in life because of her brains or because of her character.

And as far as her Hell’s Angels association goes, she is even rumored to be a police informant in that regard, or a past one. It sounds familiar: no rules, no loyalty. Just like the street.

The only true love of her life Julie Couillard says was Montreal crime figure Gilles Giguere who was shot three times in the face and left in a ditch three months before their wedding.

If Maxime Bernier had any brains at all, which he obviously doesn’t, he would have listened to Homer and worn wax plugs in his ears like Odysseus’ crew or would have had someone tie him to the mast.

It is much more honorable to live a life loving those who play it straight instead of those who play the angles. That principle applies to both Julie and Maxime.

Julie knows that too. Deep down, she knows who, and what, she is.

Today we learn of the proposed rate increase of 12.1 per cent — that, following a progression of hefty, steady, increases. This one, justified by the familiar, tedious refrain of higher commodity prices and world markets (the same stuff we hear every weekend at the gas pumps by the multi-national oil companies where the big boys play the victim and we pay for it). It reminds me of terrorists that highjack your plane and then complain to you about how they are forced into their actions by vile circumstances and a misunderstanding public.

What particularly irks the power punters of Nova Scotia is the announcement of record $57-million profits for the first quarter alone! A quarter of a billion dollars in profits in one year from a monopoly on the backs of the taxpaying customers of Nova Scotia who want to keep their lights and take a shower, is unpardonable. What is worse is that the Provincial government makes more tax dollars off of the increase!

Nova Scotia Power’s spokeswoman, Margaret Macmillan, no stranger in stepping up to the media plate when it comes to public relations problems for the company, reminds us that when the government gave it over to the private sector a few years ago it also gave up on a $4-billion dollar bill the Province owed.

Meantime, N.S. Liberal leader Steven McNeil said on-air today that the government is not in the power business, it is not what government does. In fact, government frequently screws up such businesses with bloated bureaucracies and top-heavy administrations, he added. But if you can’t run a business I retorted, how can you run a Province?

As it is, Nova Scotia Power is government regulated and their 12 per cent increase request (which translates into about $20 a month per Nova Scotian) is probably higher than they need. A higher number is pitched and they settle for a lower number is how that game is played. And so it goes.

You get what you pay for. And if you listen to Nova Scotia Power, we are lucky.

Since power is a necessity, and Nova Scotia Power is a monopoly, why not cap corporate profits and limit the actual salaries and pay-outs to an over-compensated, corpulent senior staff? Let them become one of us.

Government’s role is to look after essential services. Power is one of them. It should never have been sold off. It should never make a profit. If it does, it should be channeled back into public revenues.

Passing the buck is never popular with the public — because the buck stops here.

And we are power-less.

The recent controversy over the contention of municipalities to ban certain dog breeds (you know who you are) due to aggressiveness, provoked predictable outrage from doggie debaters who fear a repeat of Ontario’s reaction to dog related near death expeiences. Ontario has banned pit bulls.

The axiom, that there are no bad dogs, only bad dog owners, came under particular scrutiny on my broadcast this week. The postulate falls short when it comes to the nature of the ramifications of bad dog ownership: if you mistreat, or otherwise brutalize a poodle, the consequences are marginal; kids don’t die of poodle dog mauling.

The same isn’t true of Pit bulls, Doberman’s, and their ilk.

Say whatever you want, how can you really argue with my logic regarding ramifications?

If even one child is saved, or if even one person is saved from being maimed, isn’t it worth it to give up on certain breeds? Remember, specific dog breeds are not fundamental to human survival or to quality of life. It is an aesthetic choice, analogous to hand gun ownership.

I enjoy target shooting with pistols but I would give it up knowing that fewer handguns in circulation means less access. Period.

So, what about the black market in banned breeds or firearms for that matter? At least it is marginalized and subject to prosecution, despite the fact that a black market in animals means more abuse of the animals themselves.

I never did understand the over-emoted approach many have to their breed loyalties. For many, it supersedes their human affections.

All it will take is for one serious mauling or dead kid for the public to turn, as they have in Ontario.

Do you remember that tacky example of extreme kitsch that is that bizarre 1870 painting by Cassius Coolidge? Well, dogs don’t play cards. Not even Poker.

But, for many, George Orwell’s Animal Farm is something to be desired.
In that one, dogs vote when pigs rule.

George Orwell, in 1984, has his dystopia, the story’s ruling elite, reducing the dictionary word count every year in order to reduce the means of expression and qualification – thinking itself. You take away language and you take away meaning and critical thinking; without language there is no soul, no opposition, and no humanity — but boy, if you are government, do you get great poll numbers!

Today, we awake to Globe reporter Steven Chase who reveals that the NDP, through freedom of information act access, have revealed that the Department of National Defense sets quotas for how many times a year a military think tank it subsidizes must appear in the news media. The verb “appear” really means engaging in state sponsored propaganda.

The “Conference of Defense Associations” is one such organization. The March 2007 government contract sets out “13 expected results” including:
Attain the publication of a minimum of 15 opinion pieces (including op-eds and letters to the editor in national or regional publications (including programs like mine). Attain a minimum of 29 media references to the CDA by national or regional journalists and reporters – including talk radio. This includes taping and making transcripts of my program.

I have had, in the past, the uniquely eerie experience of encountering a senior military member who told me that he never has a chance to listen to my show very often but he enjoys reading the transcripts! (We never provide transcripts.)

Media are also monitored by government organizations for their approach and political proclivities.

Even the Executive Director of the CDA, Alain Pellerin, is embarrassed by the media quotas revealed today and thinks they are a ridiculous measuring stick. The reason: they were found out.

The quotas were put in place in 2002 by a consulting firm because the government wanted, and the Defense department wanted, more measurable results. By results they meant better propaganda. Make no mistake about it — and it doesn’t matter if the Liberals or the Conservatives are in power because they both play the same game. The difference this time is that the government is actively trying to sell the Afghan war, and lives are on the line.

Meantime, Prime Ministerial powers, in both Canada and the U.K., are getting stronger and have already eclipsed, in relative terms, the power of the U.S. Presidency.

Consolidation of power is a reaction to both increased media scrutiny and an enlarged
Bureaucratic class that slows things down by the nature of its glacial ponderousness and red-tape loving ways (you know the kind of people in the office who love “meetings.”)

Consolidating power allows things to get done faster, but it also means an erosion of the democratic process.

Donald Savoie is worried about this; despite the fact he thinks things are bureaucratically top-heavy. He currently holds the Canada Research Chair in Public Administration and Governance at l’Universite de Moncton. He has been advisor to many Prime Ministers, and talked to me about them, most notably, for me, Pierre Elliot Trudeau (“He was painfully shy, but if you bit him he would bite back”).

Professor Savoie was speaking to me today about his new book Court Government and the Collapse of Accountability (in Canada and the United Kingdom). By “Court Government”, he means a King’s Court.

Prime Ministers these days, whether a Minority Government or not, are like Kings.

Donald Savoie mentioned to me that when in Charlottetown recently, Prime Minister Harper was asked about increased powers and government accountability and transparency and increased powers within his office, all things he complained about as opposition leader. In essence, what he said was that when in opposition you see things one way, and when you are inside of government other things become clear.

What really becomes clear is power: its accretion, assemblage, and execution.

The only complaint is when you don’t have enough.

On my broadcast today I had international relations expert Eric Margolis as well as Scott Taylor, publisher of Esprit de Corp magazine. Both weighed-in on the announcement yesterday by Stephen Harper to increase funding for the military.

It was a strange media event. The national media virtually ignored it too. It seemed to be a warmed-up previous announcement. There were no specifics regarding procurement — only generalities and extreme 20 year timelines and the earnestness of our PM highlighted by men and women in camouflage standing obediently behind him as stage props. The point Harper was making was that after years of neglect, the needs of the Canadian forces were being addressed. The truth is, there is a lot of catch-up to play and, at the end of it, with inflation etc, we will not be much better off really – even in 20 years and 20 billion dollars in.

The Afghanistan adventure is quickly eating up resources (8 billion) with costs rising. While the Federal Liberals have been callous and ruthless with military budgets over the years, the Conservatives are still not spending enough to cover what we are churning and burning through – not to mention lives.

I’ll come back to Afghanistan in a minute.

There is reason why, historically, we have been so cavalier about defense spending in Canada: the foreign ownership of all sectors of the Canadian economy, more than any other developed country according to Mel Hurtig (also on today) the author of “The Truth about Canada”. We have progressed from being a former British protectorate to being an American protectorate. Most of what we have to defend in Canada belongs to others anyway, and outsiders have no reason to take — or attack — what already belongs to them.

Now, here we sit, in May of 2008, with growing public disaffection with the whole
Afghanistan adventure, according to Mario Canseco, Director of Global Studies for Angus Reid. Calling from Vancouver, Canseco detailed the Angus Reid survey regarding our robust role in the Central Asian state where most of us are just saying “what the hell”?

So, what happens if we leave Afghanistan?

Shockingly, nothing happens.

The Pashtun tribes people (Taliban) will fight the Warlords. There will be some kind of arrangement (the same thing that has happened for hundreds of years), and Afghanistan will go on.

What about Al Qaeda? Won’t they be threat and plan another 9/11?  Answer: no.  

The Taliban leadership never knew that Osama Bin Laden was planning the September 11 attacks until they happened. They knew that the U.S. would retaliate. Small scale attacks on U.S. Middle Eastern or African embassies or other assets were one thing, but an attack on New York on such a scale? No. Don’t forget, the West had been doing business with the Taliban. Heroin production was extremely low during this period too.  

Right now, Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden himself, as well as his top lieutenant Al Zawarhi, are hiding out in the tribal areas of Pakistan (our ally) and are operational. Afghanistan is unneeded as a haven. Bin Laden and co. has a new one. Moreover, the stinking cesspool of terror that is the Sudan in Africa (Osama’s former home before he packed up and moved to Afghanistan because we pressured him), is still operational; the Muslim extremists and anti-American warlords in Somalia (remember “Black Hawk Down”?) are still very much there, as are the terrorists in Lebanon that killed US troops with a massive truck bomb in the 1980’s are still there. In fact, Reagan left Lebanon right afterwards.

The sky didn’t fall in.

Nor did we invade Somalia (again) or the Sudan, or Libya, or Saudi Arabia where they grow, or Pakistan where they hide, or any number of countries that are part of the “terror” process. What “we” did do was invade secular Iraq which had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, and, of course, Canada in Afghanistan.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but we will never win in Afghanistan as long as the Pashtun tribesmen and Taliban are supplied from Pakistan – and they will always be. It is their home, their region. They have nowhere to go and are highly motivated. When we beat them back they just crawl back across the border and reconstitute. Manpower is unlimited. It costs them nothing. They have nothing — and nothing to lose.

So, what about us?

There is no military solution. The issue of bringing women the vote over there and reformation of their tribal society is pure Canadian propaganda nonsense.

While we waste money, resources, and, especially, lives in Afghanistan, the world keeps turning, ignoring our tokenism, our folly and our ignorance of Afghani history; our grand, white, arrogance.

And the old brown hills, and the lonely, cold mountain ranges of Afghanistan look down, like a wise old man does upon a child he can no longer help, and with whom he can no longer speak.