40th Canadian soldier died in Afghanistan, NATO confirms

A 40th Canadian soldier died in Afghanistan after a NATO patrol was hit by a roadside explosive on Saturday in the Panjwaii district west of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, a military spokesman said.

Journalists killed in Afghan ambush

Gunmen ambushed and killed two German journalists traveling in northern Afghanistan on Saturday, Afghan officials said.

Contractors in Afghanistan are making big money for bad work

A highway that begins crumbling before it is finished. A school with a collapsed roof. A clinic with faulty plumbing. A farmers’ cooperative that farmers can’t use. Afghan police and military that, after training, are incapable of providing the most basic security. And contractors walking away with millions of dollars in aid money for the work. The Bush Administration touts the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan as a success story. Perhaps, in comparison to the violence-plagued efforts in Iraq and the incompetence-riddled efforts on the American Gulf Coast, everything is relative. A new report “Afghanistan, Inc.,” issued by the non-profit organization CorpWatch, details the bungled reconstruction effort in Afghanistan.

Taliban Revived In Southern Afghanistan

A sweating man wanders into a crowd and blows himself up, leaving a dozen bodies lifeless on the street. A few blocks away, a car bomb pulverizes an armored Humvee, killing two U.S. soldiers and 14 civilians. The kind of anonymous insurgent violence that is convulsing Iraq has migrated 1,500 miles east to plague Afghanistan five years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban regime.

Canada now seems out of step on Afghanistan

One of the more bizarre aspects of the Afghan war is how little Canada seems to have learned from the experience of others.

Afghanistan: Wrong Mission for Canada

In March 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said: “Canadians don’t cut and run at the first sign of trouble.”

Yes, indeed. But surely we’re beyond the “first sign of trouble” now?

It’s not real bullshit unless it’s Absolut.

Welcome to the first Absolut Bullshit Award. This week’s award goes to the rightwing absolut bullshit issue of US/Canada border security.

Why does this issue win? Because as I’ve pointed out before, nobody actually cares about this issue beyond its value for Republicans to browbeat Canadians into accepting further militarization of our nation, its ability to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment in both countries or its use as a club to beat the left over the head with.

Further evidence that this is the case comes to us from this article outlining how the US/Canada border seems to have disappeared.

After years of neglect and under funding by Washington and Ottawa, the International Boundary Commission admits it can no longer identify large swaths of the Canada-U.S. border, particularly in heavily forested areas overrun by dense shrubbery and sprouting trees.

“I can send you places where you just can’t find the border,” says Dennis Schornack, the U.S. commissioner for the boundary agency, the bi-national organization which maintains the 8,890-kilometre border.

“In the worst spots, it looks like you are in some kind of primeval forest.”

Now if US/Canada border security were a real issue that needed addressing one would think that a clear demarcation of the border from sea to sea would be a first priority. But it isn’t. Nor is adequately staffing border crossings. Many of the border crossing points on the US side still remain unstaffed and only rely on border crossers to report to a customs office–some of which are located up to half a mile away–on their own recognizance.

The right has been hemming and hawing about the state of security on the US/Canada border ever since the attacks of 9/11. The lack of any real action to deal with it however–particularly from the American side–betrays their conviction and exposes this issue for what it is; a talking point used to provide cover for implementing the right’s real agenda.

Apparently we are and have been for quite some time.

Tonight we are hearing, on CBC’s The National at least, General Rick Hillier say that not only are negotiations on-going with the Taliban in Afghanistan they always have been. Take that Peter MacKay!

Once again, Jack Layton’s viewpoint is vindicated.

So now that the last nail has been hammered into the coffin of the infantile rightwing talking point against negotiating with the Taliban can we finally get down to the serious business of finding a resolution to the militarily unwinnable conflict in Afghanistan?

This clearly proves that Catholicism is incompatible with western democratic society.

A former Roman Catholic priest has been sentenced to three years in prison for sexually assaulting 47 girls over the span of four decades.

The victims were between the ages of nine and 14 when they were abused by Sylvestre while he served as a parish priest in Windsor, Sarnia, London, Chatham and Pain Court.

So that works out to jail time of about 3 weeks per victim. Funny how the rightwing noise makers, who never miss an opportunity to shriek about lenient sentencing, are deafeningly silent on this one.

Update: These guys are too predictable. Pedo priest gets off with a mere 3 years for 47 sexual assaults on children…yawn. Jean Brault gets out after only serving 5 months of his 30 month sentence…shriek! Shriek! More shrieking certain to follow.