April 16th, 2008
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On the eve of his retirement announcement over beer Monday night, Gen. Hillier nicely framed his military legacy in a single sentence: “We’re one of the big boys now.”
With air, ground and naval equipment upgrades on order or delivered to bolster an extended Afghanistan mission fortified with 1,000 fresh American troops, Gen. Hillier has put the force back into the military. national post
Hillier was and is a strategist. He leaves without the war in Afghanistan won but with the means in hand to win it.
He walked close to the line which divides the military from its civilian masters but he was surefooted enough to win those battles.
He took the Stanley Cup to the ‘Stan and the fight to the Taliban.
I hope his audacity, vision and intelligence are not lost to Canadians. We have a lot of work to do; Hillier is a man who has demonstrated he is a dog for work and a leader without rival in the Canadian government. He is certainly entitled to the potential corporate rewards his service has earned; but if Harper has the brains God gave a goat he will find General Hillier a place where he can continue to serve Canada.
Written by jay on April 16th, 2008 with 4 comments.
Read more articles on CPC and Canadian Bullet and Homeschooling.
I happened in the way of people who buy books by the box at garage sales and thrift stores to have just read Paul Theroux’s “Sir Vidia’s Shadow” on the ferry to Vancouver and back. It is a wonderful, warm, nasty portrait of a great writer by a brilliant writer. Now V. S. Nailpaul’s authorized biography is out and Theroux, whose pen was stilled by Britain’s libel laws, has the opportunity to consider his mentor more accurately.
Now French’s biography amply demonstrates everything I said and more. It is not a pretty story; it will probably destroy Naipaul’s reputation for ever, this chronicle of his pretensions, his whoremongering, his treatment of a sad, sick wife and disposable mistress, his evasions, his meanness, his cruelty amounting to sadism, his race baiting. Then there is the “gruesome sex”, the blame shifting, the paranoia, the disloyalty, the nasty cracks and the whining, the ingratitude, the mood swings, the unloving and destructive personality. paul theroux, the times
Oddly, I can forgive Naipaul his sins on the basis of his non-fiction “Among the Believers” which is flatly the best description of the Islamist lunacy I have ever read and his utterly brilliant, “A House for Mr Biswas”.
But it seems pretty much settled fact that the man was a shit.
Written by jay on April 16th, 2008 with 3 comments.
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The arrival of the RCMP in escort of Elections Canada at the CPC headquarters likely looking for evidence of sharp practice in the last election has, as the pros say, bad optics.
Which would be of no moment were the CPC in some sense in charge in Ottawa. Instead, the CPC governs by the grace of the Liberal Party’s grand gesture to eco-craziness - M. Dion.
The polling is very much in the air but it seems apparent that if an election were to be held today….we’d have wasted several million dollars. It is possible that Dion would win. It is [possible that Harper could pull out a squeaker but neither the Libs nor the CPC have succeeded much beyond reducing the NDP to a laughingstock. A worthy but ultimately irrelevant goal.
So here we are. The party in power is terrified of offending anyone and Her Majesty’s Opposition terrified of actually going to the people.
An election in the near future is, I think, a good thing. I doubt that either the Libs or the CPC will win a majority; but the loser will pick a new leader and that has to be better than woodman v. the boffin.
Politics is, or should be, about setting out real goals and a real vision for a term in office. These dweebs can barely set out a daily to-do list. It is well past time to dump both leaders and bring Canadian politics into a new world. The new world is already here. If the political elites keep pretending it isn’t Canada will be left behind.
To catch up we need to lose both leaders. They are yesterday’s men and should, even at an early age, gently retire to make way for people who understand that the world really has changed.
Written by jay on April 16th, 2008 with 3 comments.
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The only sure defence against tyranny is the maintenance of a free market in ideas, because it in such a free market that bad ideas can be weighed against good and exposed for what they are. Vile ideologies such as those espoused by the Nazis can never succeed in acquiring political power in a society that values above all the free exchange of ideas and opinions. They can only prevail in a society where the range of ideas and opinions that can be expressed in the public square is limited only to those approved by the state. Joseph C. Ben-Ami, Canadian Center for Policy Studies
I am waiting for the Warman/Kinsella tag team to call Mr. Ben-Ami a crypto-Nazi, or a Nazi enabler, or, perhaps, a neo-Nazi. I mean, really, the man has a coherent argument in support of freedom of speech. Out in the swamplands of the Lying Jackal that’s Nazi speak for sure.
But don’t take my word for it…go read the whole, brilliant, thing.
Written by jay on April 16th, 2008 with 4 comments.
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