THE KENT BROTHERS: ONE SEARCHES FOR THE TRUTH. THE OTHER WORKS FOR THE GUY WHO TRIES TO HIDE IT.

ARTHUR KENT: THE SCUD STUD

AND NOBODY'S PATSY

PETER KENT (on the right), member of the Hijackers government seen here with DON MARTIN, Conservative wordsmith for the now-defunct CanWest Global organization, arch foe of brother Arthur, and cheerleader for Stephen Harper

Arthur Kent is an Alberta boy – born in Medicine Hat and raised in Calgary. Now in his mid-fifties he has had a remarkable career in journalism for more than thirty years. Newshounding runs in his family. His old man, Parker Kent, was a longtime print journalist who rose to become an Associate Editor for the now–bankrupt Calgary Herald back in the days when it was a real newspaper. Arthur also has an older brother who spent some years in the television news business.

Among Kent’s many accomplishments are a prize-winning television documentary about Afghanistan under the warlords produced months before 9/11, winning Emmys for his coverage of the tragedy in Tiananmen Square and the bloodshed in Bosnia, and covering the Rumanian revolution. In Iraq during Desert Storm he was the dashing ‘Scud Stud’ reporting the mayhem nightly on NBC television news, and in 2006 he produced another documentary on the troubles in Afghanistan. He’s covered Pakistan, Russia, China and all of the hot spots all over the world. NBC, CBC, CTV, the Observer are just a few of the news organizations that have given him a pay cheque over the years.

When he worked for NBC in the early nineties he had the guts to sue the corporation for allowing entertainment values to dominate the news. And he won big time. Towing the company line was not his strong suit and so for the past fifteen years or so he’s been a freelance filmmaker, writer, and reporter and has produced an impressive body of work. See: http://www.skyreporter.com/about/

Kent doesn’t take any guff from anybody. If one gets into a pissing contest with him and if he’s right he will let you know. If you persist and try to come at him he’ll sue you at the drop of a hat. Ask NBC or CanWest Global and Don Martin, and they’ll tell you. See: http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:1xrpZJ6p9wIJ:www.news-cruncher.com/2009/09/arthur-kent-v-don-martin-canwest.html+Arthur+Kent+Ed+Stelmach&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca

Kent also tells it like it is. During his ill-fated attempt as a provincial Tory candidate in a Calgary riding in the provincial election of 2008 while running under the hapless leadership of Special Ed Stelmach, Stelmach stood Kent up by not attending a fundraiser as promised. Kent quickly accused the Stelmach campaign of wanting “nothing but my name.”

His criticisms of the Stelmach organization at the time were eerily similar to what Heather Forsyth and Rob Anderson had to say the other day when they bolted to the Wild Rose Alliance. Kent said that people around Stelmach saw Kent and his team “as competitors . . . rather than as partners,” and that the Stelmach people should be more inclusive. He said that the Stelmach’s people “should be asking us what we’re hearing on the doorsteps and where the campaign should go,” and that they did not do that. “One-way communication,” he said, “is not the way to go,” and , “. . . we have to do things differently.” See: http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/columnists/story.html?id=43d6e93c-08b1-4180-8600-302926f66656

Kent lost the election and went back doing what he does best - being a globe trotting journalist.

Yesterday Kent was raising hell again, this time at Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Republican minority government. Kent said the proroguing of Parliament was a hijacking which enables the government to avoid coming clean on the bad news of the Afghan war and the abuse of the detainees. He called Harper’s action of muzzling discussion of Afghanstan the PM’s fatwa, described it as ‘control freakery,’ and accused the government of concealing the Karzai regime’s corruption so as to avoid having to do something about it.

And there was more. Kent also accused the Harper government of ‘smothering’ stories such as the continuing trafficking in heroin and dirty money at the Kabul Airport, the ‘violent crackdown’ on the Kabul press, the disappearance of gazillions of Canadian tax dollars to fake Afghan cops and crooked officials, and Karzai’s nomination as Counter-Narcotics Minister of a widely known corrupt election fixer with criminal associations. See: http://www.skyreporter.com/blog/page/1/20100109_01/

There’s a whole bunch of other juicy stuff you can read on Kent’s blog.

Ah, yes, did I mention that Arthur Kent has an older brother that used to be a journalist? That older brother is none other than Peter Kent, MP for Thornhill who holds the lofty title of Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of the Americas while serving the hijackers that are hiding all of these sordid facts from the Canadian people. As a ‘journalist’ Peter of course is a different kettle of fish than his feisty younger brother. While Arthur was out there putting himself in harm’s way to inform his viewers and listeners of the truth, most of the time Peter distinguished himself as merely a talking head. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kent

Well, bravo to Arthur Kent. He has shown that he has big cojones and that he cares about informing the public.

I wonder if the brothers spend their Christmas Holidays together.

HAVE CANADIANS BECOME NEOCON LEMMINGS? OR ARE THEY JUST PLAYING POSSUM?

DOES THIS REPRESENT THE CANADIAN PEOPLE?

OR DOES THIS?

As I look at recent current polls the increasingly nagging question that keeps reverberating in my brain is, Has Harper already changed Canada in his almost four years of power?

There are many indications that perhaps he has. Canadians appear to have been sucked in by negative swiftboat tactics that destroy the reputations of good people. They have ignored Harper’s history as a far-right tub-thumper while he was head of the National Citizens Coalition, and that he had his nose so far up George W. Bush's ass he could see Tony Blair. Canadians seemed to pay little attention to Harper's fascistic attempted coup to destroy opposition parties by cutting off their funding last December, and they even seemed to fall for the canard that the evil was not the threat to democracy but the threat of a coalition.

Canadians gave Harper a pass during the last federal election when he tried to hoodwink the whole country into believing the big lie that there was little wrong with the economy. They seem to pooh-pooh his spending of gazillions of stimulus largesse only in Conservative ridings.

Neither do Canadians seem to recognize or care about Harper’s foreign policy gaffes and screwups that damage our international reputation and business relationships and put Canadian lives at risk. Canadians do not seem to have given a hoot about the confinement and torture of Islamic Canadian citizens abroad on trumped up charges brought by third world gestapoes, while Harper either does nothing, or worse yet, throws roadblocks in front of the efforts of those confined to extricate themselves.

Canadians seem to be ignoring or paying little heed to lies repeatedly fed to them by their government about Afghanistan – lies such as, that the allies are making headway, or that Karzai is an honest and decent man, or that we are bringing the Afghans the rule of law, or that we are making headway training Afghan police and soldiers. They have shown little concern for the Canadian lives lost and the cost to our national treasury in what most certainly is to become one of the West’s great lost causes.

Despite the Harper spear headed character assassinations, despite his government's dismal record in domestic and foreign policy or in protecting Canadian citizens abroad, and despite his government's lies and obfuscations, Canadians don’t seem to care. What the hell is going on? Has Harper already turned this country into a nation of sheeplike neocons like himself? Have we become a bunch of unthinking conservative lemmings?

Or are Canadians just playing possum? ‘Playing possum’ means to convincingly pretend you are dead so that others leave you alone. In boxing the definition is much more Machiavellian and lethal. It means pretending you were dead or asleep until your opponent gets careless and leaves an opening so you can deliver the knockout punch or move in for the kill. The famed middle-weight champ Jake La Motta (above, bloodied but unbowed) was good at playing possum. He won a lot of important fights that way.

Let us hope the Canadian people are just playing possum. Or perhaps just in the process of giving Harper enough rope as the saying goes for his lynching later on. Otherwise, this country is going to change, and not for the better.

SACHA TRUDEAU: CALLING IT AS HE SEES IT

Trudeau: Calling it as he sees it

I noted this weekend that both The Globe and Mail and The Calgary Herald editorial page took shots at Alexandre Trudeau for his recent comments on Afghanistan. See http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080823.wetrudeau23/BNStory/specialComment/home
and http://digital.ottawacitizen.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

He had recently stated that Canada should end its “aggressive military operation in Afghanistan.” He thought that the Pashtun people should be left alone because they had “extremely different values than ours, values we may not agree with.” In his view we “have no reason to tell . . .how to live their lives,” and that “It’s not our business to try to teach them lessons.”

The Globe first of all pointed out that the Pashtuns was only an ethnic minority in the country, with about 42% of the population. Whether it is 42% or 50% as said by some observers, the Pashtuns are by far the largest ethnic group. The other six major ethnicities in the country are ranging between 3% (Turkmen) of the population, to 18% (Tajik). But I quibble.

The Globe’s editorial then resorted to the usual emotional and graphic rhetoric that we have come to expect from the supporters of the war. It said the Taliban were oppressors and were the “champion of the global league of utterly odious societies,” who, if returned to power, would “resume exporting abroad the venom that fuelled its barbarity.”

The Globe acknowledges that the mission “is far from perfect,’ and that progress towards secular democracy had been erratic – a very rosy description given the view of many on-the- scene observers who would say that progress has been non-existent and is now in considerable retreat.

But the most glaring, misleading statement of the editorial was the statement that there was a question as to whether NATO could defeat an insurgency without “a substantial reinforcement.” The Globe has excellent people on the ground reporting on the war. They must know that the use of such a benign term as “a substantial reinforcement” to describe what NATO needs to win in Afghanistan is further evidence – if any was needed – of a continuing deception on the Canadian people. If the Globe had said, NATO has 50,000 troops in Afghanistan but needs 300,000 to 400,000 fighting men and women - at least! - to win the day and establish democracy, that would have been a true statement. But the Globe didn’t come clean.

At least Trudeau told the truth as he, and many other observers who have hunkered down in alien cultures with bullets whizzing past their heads, sees it. In his opinion, this is not a good war, and its best we get out.

The Herald as is its wont these days, now that it has relegated itself to being a mere pamphleteer of neocon causes, accused Trudeau of uttering ‘defeatist remarks.’ It took issue with his description of Canada’s role as “aggressive” and conveyed astonishment that Trudeau seemed to consider that Canada was part of a 19th century ‘Great Game’ for dominance in central Asia. Well, its not such a hare-brained idea. No doubt the Herald writers – boneheads as most of them are these days – did not know that it is widely rumored that President Karzai was a consultant for Unocal (since taken over by Chevron) regarding the proposed but now stalled Trans-Afghanistan Gas Pipeline to transport gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan, thence to Pakistan and India. Chevron, in fairness, is no longer part of the deal. In fairness to Karzai, he denies the rumor. However, in judging the veracity of the rumor it should be kept in mind that Karzai is not popular in the country, is distrusted by most of the people and his government is corrupt.

Then, in a character assassination worthy of the infamous Senator Joe McCarthy, the Herald poses the thought that Trudeau’s use of the word “aggression” to describe the NATO Afghanistan operation exposes Trudeau “to the suspicion he does not wish the military mission well.” Get it? He doesn’t support the troops. Warming to the subject, the writer describes Trudeau’s words as “a slap in the face to every Canadian who grieves a fallen soldier.”

We’ve heard this cowardly stuff before, during the war in Viet Nam and more recently during the Iraq war. The people making the war and their cheerleaders say, you must support the war, and if you don’t, well, then you obviously don’t support the troops – and if you don’t support the troops you are unpatriotic, perhaps even a traitor, etc. That’s what they said about Muhammed Ali when Uncle Sam tried to throw him into the slammer for failing to go to Viet Nam.

The fact is that there are times – and I believe this is one of them – that to advocate getting the hell out of the war, you do support the troops. Our NATO partners are not pulling their weight. Things are going backwards not forwards. There are still bumper crops of poppies, and plenty of corruption. And the Taliban are using our troops for target practice. The Herald ignores all of that. It continues its mindless jingoism and tries to assassinate the character of a young man who dares to tell the world what he thinks and sees as the truth.

HARPER'S AFGHANISTAN: A FINE MESS

I have predicted for some time that the perfect political storm likely to engulf the Harper government is Afghanistan.

Canada began its participation there for the right reasons. We agreed to help rid the world of the terrorists who organized 9/11 and the government that supported them - the Taliban. At the same time, we wanted to help the development of the country, to help children get an education, and assist in bringing about some semblance of the rule of law to the country. Good intentions. But as Samuel Johnson once wisely said 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions.' Afghanistan is turning out to be indeed a road to hell - for NATO troops there and the politicians of the countries who sent them.

The reasons for this international nightmare are plainly evident. Now that at least some of us have read some history of the region (the Prime Minister excluded, it seems [see, DARRYL RAYMAKER BLOG, July 5, 2007, 'Harper Gets Ready To Cut and Run - Again'] ), we realize that this war is an attempt to bring order to one of the wildest countries on earth. For more than 2000 years Afghanistan has proved itself to be a tough and well-nigh impossible nut to crack by powerful invaders and occupiers. From the era of Alexander the Great to modern times this mostly lawless country has always left their opponents either lifeless on the battlefield or beating a hasty, bloody, and disorderly retreat. Even vast and well-equiped armies from far more sophisticatred empires have failed to subdue the war-like propensities of the Afghan people. Alexander the Great didn't stay long. The British Army at the height of its Empire was routed there. And more recently, the Russians left in failure after racking up 15,000 dead Russian soldiers as part of the lost cause (See DARRYL RAYMAKER BLOGS, July 5, 2007 and March 18, 2007, 'Gordon O'Connor - In Over his Head').

The Kandahar region of southern Afghanistan is particularly difficult. For centuries it has been home turf to Pashtun tribes who roam the mountainous and lawless border region of Pakistan-Afghanistan. To the people who live there, life is cheap. Islamic religious fanatics abound. Added to this holy mess is the timid and weak NATO offering to the project - a scant 35,000 troops scattered throughout the country. Neither is there any great enthusiasm among NATO nations to relieve or help Canadians who, with so far 66 troops killed in action, are taking the worst of it.

But it gets worse. The NATO forces, together with the Karzai government are looking the other way while the poor Afghan farmers cultivate their only significant cash crop - poppies. This year there is a record harvest of poppies in Afghanistan. That harvest will be turned into the production of opium, which will thereupon provide nearly 90% of the world's supply of heroin - heroin that continues to poison the minds and lives of millions of people throughout the world. Most of the heroin users reside in western member nations of NATO - rich nations - whose citizens are rich enough to support a heroin habit. So Canada and other NATO nations involved in Afghanistan are not only pursuing a lost cause with little support. They are tacitly supporting the production of heroin which fries the brains and ruins the lives of millions of people - mostly westerners, and many Canadians.

And according to all credible reports, the whole situation there is getting worse by the day.

Once again Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor and the Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier are tripping over each other as to where Canada goes from here. Two weeks ago, O'Connor gave the sunny prediction - contrary to everybody else who knows something about what is happening in Afghanistan - that over the next four or five months Canada would take on a reserve role. He said that when Quebec's Royal 22nd Regiment - the Vandoos - had completed their rotation in Afghanistan, there would be 3000 Afghan Army personnel operating in Kandahar and that "we will continue to withdraw" as more Afghan army personnel are trained. He said that it would mean a reduction in Canadian combat duties.

A few days later, Hillier contradicted O'Connor, saying that the training process had just started and it would be a long time before the Afghans could do the job themselves. O'Connor tried to recover this past weekend at the Conservative caucus meeting in Charlottetown, by saying he and Hillier were on the same page and that he did not know how long it would be before the Afghans were capable of taking the pressure off of the Canadian troops.

This latest O'Connor/Hillier difference of opinion, when added to their misleading and contradictory statements on other embarassing issues surrounding the Afghan adventure, seems to have been the last straw for Harper. There is now strong speculation that O'Connor is on his way out in a very merciful and immediate shuffle to Veterans Affairs. Deputy PM Jim Prentice is widely predicted to replace the hapless O'Connor.

Chalk one up for Hillier. However the General, who has never met a microphone he doesn't love, may be next on the list for the secrecy obsessed Harper.

And if Harper doesn't wake up to the futility of it all soon, he too will be a victim.

THE HONORABLE GORDON O'CONNOR: OUR VERY OWN DONALD RUMSFELD

Yesterday, our Defence Minister said that Afghanistan was a 'success story,' 'improving,' and that Canada will have a presence there until the progress made cannot be reversed by Taliban extremists. He said that he would watch the progress this year to determine whether the Afghan mission needed to be extended beyond its existing mandate - i.e. Canadian troops there until 2009 and millions of dollars in aid until 2011. He did not mention the billions more required in military expenditures.

This was consistent with the statements of happy warriors Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and Treasury Board President Vic Toews. Earlier in the week while in Afghanistan they announced further aid to the Afghan police. Proudly sporting their bullet proof jackets and strutting about in the style reminiscent of General Patton, they used their photo-op to declare that Canadian assistance would not only help Afghanistan develop a professional civilian police force that would fight crime, but also promote Canadian values such as the Rule of Law and human rights.

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission monitors carefully the goings on in Afghanistan. This is what Ahmad Zia Langari a commissioner of the AIHRC has to say about the Afghan police that our Government is trying to bolster with our money. He said, "There is not a very strong rule of law and the government is not keen to follow the law. Also, in the criminal court there is not a very strong and clear code for prosecuting police action." . . . "The main problem in Afghanistan is the culture of impunity. The government is not powerful. When a Governor, for example, has committed violence or he has been very corrupt, he is not prosecuted. The President just changes his position."

A recent joint report by the Pentagon and the US State Department said the Afghan police was 'far from adequate' at carrying out even conventional responsibilities. The report stated that recruits were illiterate and there was pervasive corruption.

Nicholas Kristof, a prominent American Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times journalist and
columnist as well as an expert on the history and politics of Asia and the author of several books on the subject recently interviewed President Karzai in Afghanistan. Karzai accused Pakistan of aiding the Taliban so as to turn Afghanistan into a colony of Pakistan. In Karzai's mind the NATO forces had focused on the wrong targets in seeking to wipe out terrorists. Instead of attacking villages, they should have stopped Pakistan from harboring and financing the terrorists. In other words, NATO should have been fighting the source of terrorism - namely, Pakistan. Karzai said that terrorism in his country was surging because of the Pakistani policy of turning a blind eye on the Taliban.

Kristof, an acknowledged Asian expert, who has witnessed the troubles in Afghanistan first hand, described conditions in southern Afghanistan as 'a catastrophe.'

In fact, the only optimists around talking about progress in Afghanistan is the Conservative Government of Bush's pal Steve Harper together with his Rumsfeldian Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor (a character right out of Dr. Strangelove, to be sure) and two dim-witted Ministers, Stockwell Day and Vic Toews. All of the feel-good talk about our commitment to Afghanistan is likely to continue only until the election is held. Then, whichever Government takes power, it will be truth time. No more photo-ops with bullet proof vests for campaign pamphleteering ballyhooing pointless and toothless assistance to a corrupt and violent Afghani police force. No. Then we will have a painful reassessment of our Afghanistan policy, the result of which will be to high-tail it out of there and pronto.

GORDON O'CONNOR: IN OVER HIS HEAD

I had occasion to meet Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor just before the the calling of the last Federal Election. The circumstances were pleasant enough. We sat beside each other on a Toronto to Calgary Air Canada Business Class Flight and had a couple of drinks together during a congenial conversation.

Even though he wasted no time after introducing ourselves to take the Feds to task on a host of issues, he was certainly not an unpleasant man. Although he was and looked to be in his mid sixties, with his full head of neatly combed straight white hair, angular and alert face, and lean body, he obviously was a man who had taken care of himself, as might be expected from the retired General that he was.

Early in our conversation he disclosed to me that he was the Tory Defence critic, and made no bones about his view that the Canadian Government had for too long ignored its Armed Forces
and that if he was elected, which he quite confidently predicted, Canadians were going to see a far more aggressive Defence policy.

His partisanship and enthusiasm for his job and future plans struck me that he would be shaking things up should he be made Defence Minister. It also left me with the impression that he was so steeped in the view that our Armed Forces had for too long been ignored and that Canada had not done its fair share of international heavy lifting in military actions, that he lacked objectivity and would probably proceed with wild-assed determination quite recklessly.

His performance on the job has proved that my initial impressions were correct.

When it comes to soldiering O'Connor, like Chief of the Defence Staff General Rick Hillier, is one tough hombre. As Minister, he has pursued his objectives, fearlessly and showing absolutely no doubt as to their correctness. This can be a great quality for a General in a theatre of war, as well as a Government Minister pursuing his policy objectives. Provided that they are right. Because if one is not right, disaster looms over the next hill.

It is evident that O'Connor has demonstated both a lack of thoughtfulness as well as a lack of historical perspective, in respect to what will likely be the biggest military issue for Canada over a period of at least a decade: Canada's role in Afghanistan.

He and the Harper Government have allowed the Canadian contingent of 2200 or so men and women to fight it out in the toughest part of the country - the Kandahar Region - which has been known for centuries to contain the most warlike of tribes as well as the greatest number of religious extremists in the whole country.

The Government of Canada has so far spent something approaching 6 billion dollars on the operation. 44 Canadian personnel have died. The Taliban, who are supposed to be the forces of darkness that are out to oust President Karzai (who is supposed to be the good guy) are gaining strength, the poppy fields are rife with the raw materials to serve the heroin market the world over, and NATO forces number only about 36,000 to impact on the whole country.

Contrast this to the Russian experience, the last major effort to tame that wild Central Asian Republic. They were there for a little over 9 years, ending in February 1989. A total of 620,000 Russian military personnel served - between 80 and 120,000 at any one time. 14,500 died. In addition, the Russians lost 150 tanks, more than 300 helicopters and 118 jet planes before they hightailed out of the country. When they left, the civil war got rolling in earnest.

Add to that sorry history, the fact that Afghanistan has never been subdued by a foreign invader or occupier for very long, whether it be England, Russia, or Alexander the Great, and that there is a tradition of both ferocity and independence amongst its people.

The fact is that the NATO participants, and particularly the United States, are not interested in shedding too much blood in this battle. By all reports our allies, the forces of the existing Afghanistan Government under President Karzai, are fighting at best, a stalemate with the Taliban. Indeed, many observers report that the Taliban are winning.

Soon, the Canadian people are going to twig to this. At the moment, out of support for our troops, questions have been muted. But just as the Iraq experience in the United States little by little finally entered the consciousness of the American people, so to will Afghanistan amongst Canadians. At that point, questions will be raised respecting the futility of it all, and many will pay a political price. At the top of the list will be Gordon O'Connor - clearly a Rumsfeldian, who in his blood thirsty impulsive sabre rattling, did not think through our involvement in Afghanistan. Neither does it seem that he bothered to read much, if any, of its violent history.