The state may be fooled by child murderer Allan Schoenborn’s claims he was crazy when he butchered his children to get even with his wife, but the man who brought him to justice isn’t.

Kim Robinson found Schoenborn “cowering in the woods” 10 days after he left his ex-wife to discover the gruesome remains of his young children that he killed by hand.

Yesterday, it was announced that the British Columbia Review Board ruled he should be allowed escorted day leaves from the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital because he poses “no threat” to the community.

Yes, well, I suppose if you think about it, most people who murder their family probably don’t pose a risk to the community. But whether one poses a risk to society is of little consolation to the three children buried underground right now.

“I’m very disappointed,” Robinson said. “There isn’t a bone in my body . . . that for one minute thinks that that man is insane.

“He knew what he did was wrong. He went and hid. When I found him his biggest concern really was that his wife was still alive. He said to me, ‘She’s not dead? She didn’t off herself?’”

The words of an insane man? Most insane people don’t have the presence of mind to hide from the police or become disappointed when learning their premeditated plan has failed.

The murderer said he just wants to get out and go to the mall for coffee. Even if a person hasn’t committed an atrocity in a legally sane state of mind, it’s practically psychotic to make demands about wanting to go to the mall and drink coffee. Most parents who lose children through natural causes are traumatized for life, and those who kill their children accidentally are left shattered and hollow inside.

Not Schoenborn. He wants a Starbucks.

Review board chairman Bernd Walter has said Schoenborn can go swimming or exercise at a local community centre, with escorts present. I’m sure the people at the community centre are going to be delighted with that idea.

It makes me physically ill to think that a man who murdered his children, and then posed their corpses in the perfect position for his wife to find them, is not at this very moment swinging from a hangman’s noose. But that’s not the sort of society we live in anymore.

Further to this post,

Militants? Insurgents? Nice flipping guys?

Douglas Bland does not speak with forked tongue in the Ottawa Citizen:

Merely stating the obvious
It is quite proper for a military counter-insurgency manual to identify native Warrior Societies as a potential threat to Canadian sovereignty

A masked Mohawk Warrior protests in Kanesatake in January 2004. To suggest that the Mohawk Warrior Society can be viewed as an insurgency is not to label anyone, or any organization, terrorist, argues Douglas Bland.
Photograph by: Shaun Best , Reuters, Citizen Special

The Canadian Forces does not owe the Mohawk Warrior Society or the wider First Nations an apology for references to the society in the first draft of the armed forces manual on Counter Insurgency Operations, or COIN…

The various so-called Warrior Societies proclaim in their several websites that their organizations are armed forces meant to act as a type of militia in the defence of First Nations communities and their rights. They are, arguably, an open challenge to the sovereignty of Canada, unless, of course, Canada surrenders in some fashion its right and responsibility to defend all Canadian territory and all Canadian citizens, including every reserve and all aboriginal people, to the self-appointed Warrior Societies…

…to suggest that the Mohawk Warrior Society can be viewed as an insurgency is not to label anyone, or any organization, terrorist. To suggest that the Canadian Forces prepare its commanders to conduct anti-insurgency operations in Canada, as they did against the FLQ and at Oka, demands no apology.

The entire discussion, however, may be moot given the government’s apparent preference to cede its sovereignty to every First Nations challenge [emphasis added, Dauntless Dalton is no better] – including this one — a policy that will surely inflame disputes and make the Canadian Forces COIN training all the more necessary.

Douglas Bland is chair of the Defence Management Studies Program at Queen’s University and author of the novel Uprising, the story of a future aboriginal insurgency in Canada.

Mark
Ottawa

An honest man talking to the real thing:

…
The cable also reveals how CSIS feels about Canadian attitudes. Former CSIS director Jim Judd went so far as to complain that judicial rulings and public naiveté were paralyzing his spies – specifically lamenting that Canadians were prone to “knee-jerk anti-Americanism” and “paroxysms of moral outrage.”..

The report was written in the summer of 2008, as Mr. Judd sat down with Eliot Cohen, a U.S. State Department official. The Bush administration appointee’s entourage took notes…

Mr Judd was of course right on target about many Canadians’ attitudes:

1) The US:

Raging anti-Americanism, or, the Canadian mental disorder/Inferiority complex Update

2) Moral outrage (selective, not honest):

Corruption? What stinking corruption? Part 2

I referred in 2006 at Daimnation! to “delusional Canadians, reeking of our moral self-importance”. Indeed. Far to many of us still want to be…

Boy scout of the world

That remains an urge that will not be stilled, regardless of reality (maybe the urge needs a cross, garlic and silver bullet):

Why the Globe and Mail is not a newspaper, Part 2 (Congo section)

Mark
Ottawa

Further to this post,

Afstan: US not cutting and running…

an excerpt from Foreign Policy’s “AfPak Daily brief”:

…
Afghan President Hamid Karzai gave an interview to the Washington Post over the weekend in which he called for the reduction in military operations in Afghanistan and the end of night raids (Post). Excerpts of the interview are here (Post). NATO officials said Karzai’s remarks frustrated Gen. David Petraeus, top commander in Afghanistan, and that NATO had received assurances that Karzai was on board with the coalition’s strategy (AP, AFP). Karzai’s spokesman said the comments were a sign of a “maturing partnership” (Post).

At the NATO summit in Lisbon at the end of this week, the Obama administration will reportedly present a plan to begin transferring control of certain areas of Afghanistan to Afghan security forces over the next 18 to 24 months, with the aim of keeping U.S. combat forces there until 2014, a date originally set by Karzai (NYT, Post). By the end of 2014, though combat forces could be withdrawn if conditions permit, “tens of thousands” will likely remain in training roles [emphasis added] (NYT). Obama administration envoy to the region Amb. Richard Holbrooke said, “From Lisbon on, we will be on a transition strategy with a target date of the end of 2014 for Afghanistan taking over responsibility for leading the security” (Reuters).

Gen. Petraeus is reportedly upping efforts to increase Afghan police forces drawn from local villages in southern Afghanistan, with the help of former mujahideen commanders to aid the recruiting efforts [in other words local militias] (NYT). NATO commanders hope to raise at least 30,000 local officers in the next six months. The Obama administration is also seeking to halt the flow of ammonium nitrate, the main ingredient in roadside bombs in Afghanistan, into the country, though is facing trouble from Pakistan, “where the police routinely wave tons of ammonium nitrate shipments across the border into Afghanistan despite that country’s ban on imports of the chemical” (NYT)…

Update: Canadian angle:

Teaching Afghans more important than combat: army trainer [see this also]

Upperdate: The German government, for its part, doesn’t want to change its mission for a while:

…
The German government does not plan to start reducing German troop levels in Afghanistan until 2012, a decision which could result in a dispute with the center-left Social Democrats, the largest opposition party in Germany’s parliament.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and the interior and development ministers agreed in a meeting at the Chancellery to renew the existing parliamentary mandate for an upper limit of 5,000 troops plus a flexible reserve of 350 at the start of 2011…

The Bundeswehr moreover has been seeing more action recently:

Blitzkrieg in Kunduz

Mark
Ottawa

Further to the previous post,

F-35: Lockheed Martin ‘fesses up/A “wink and a nod” Update

please read this post at L’actualité.com (Google translation here). Haven’t seen anything like it in the English media so far.  Via Spotlight on Military News and International Affairs.

Mark
Ottawa

Who’d a thunk it?  Good pitching beats bad hitting.

First since 1954.  Love Lincecum (a new Warren Spahn?), Renteria rules.  No McCovey/Richardson hardest-hit ball of all time moment (at least as I saw it on TV).  I’ve always been a Mays man, The Catch.  1951.

Mark
Ottawa

Lisa LaFlamme, I think, said, whilst doing a panel with the Inimitable Ibbitson and Craig Oliver on CTV’s Power Play (can’t find the video):

Potash has never been so exciting.

A great province, country, whatever.

Mark
Ottawa

Hardly.  We are not even mentioned in this Daily Telegraph leader:

New blood at the UN Security Council

Back home, Inimitable Ibbitson of the Globe and Mail, and a fellow “reporter”, go predictably (‘crying “humiliating” or things similar, which many will do’) hysterical on the front page:

The humiliating rejection of Canada’s bid to win a seat at the United Nations Security Council Tuesday presents Stephen Harper with a choice: acknowledge this rebuke from the global community and rethink how his government presents Canada to the world, or ignore it and accept an outsider status unique in this country’s history…

What kind of a “news” story is that? It’s a bloody editorial. And in fact the paper’s formal editorial sensibly concludes:

…If Canada’s failure to win a Security Council seat is a result of Conservative foreign policy, then it says more about the UN than it does about Canada.

Strange journalism indeed when one find duelling editorials from supposed reporters and actual editorial writers in the same paper. The Ottawa Citizen’s editorial also soundly ends:

Not worth the price
…
The tyrants, thugs and revolutionaries who wield power at the UN might not like Canada much these days because Canada has become one of the strongest voices against extremism, terrorism and illiberalism. A seat on the UN Security Council would have been nice, but not at the cost of betraying Canadian values.

Mark
Ottawa

At least in terms of capabilities envisaged in 2004 (when the first ship was supposed to be delivered in 2011) and until fairly recently. The June 2006 capabilities are listed here, note the ships were to be 28,000 tonnes.

Now what the Navy looks like getting is essentially an oiler (Auxiliary Oil Replenishment vessel–AOR) with a greatly reduced on-shore support capabililty.  Both the possibilities below are some 20,000 tonnes, considerably smaller than the 2006 model–which Canadian industry simply could not build for the money the government was willing to offer.  See “Aug 22/08″ here at this comprehensive account of the perishingly slow program from Defense Industry Daily.

From Milnews.ca:

This today in MERX (highlights mine):

…. The Government has approved a new procurement approach whereby National Defence will explore adapting the designs of recently built naval fleet replenishment ships that are operating with other NATO Navies.

Based on information available in the public domain and information received from Allied Navies, National Defence has concluded that the following designs are the only candidates for adaptation:

· The Berlin Class
· The Cantabria Class

The Government intends to award two separate contracts, one to ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems Canada Inc. (TKMS) and the other to Navantia, S.A. (Navantia), to conduct risk reduction studies to ascertain the feasibility of adapting these designs to meet Canadian requirements, to provide the historical cost of building these ships, and to deliver a proposal for the development of suitable modifications to their respective designs and the delivery of a data package for use by a Canadian shipyard to build the ships, a technology transfer agreement and the right for Canada to use the design and all data for the construction, use and in-service support of these ships.

If one of these designs is selected for the JSS, Canada will amend the contract with that designer to implement its proposal.

Accordingly, you are hereby notified that Canada intends to solicit bids from and negotiate contracts with TKMS and Navantia as described above. ….

More on:
- Berlin class replenishment ships here (usual Wikipedia caveats apply)
- ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems Canada Inc. here and ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems here
- Pantino/Cantabria class replenishment ships here
- Navantia S.A. here…

This is what the JSS was to look like in 2004:

The Berlin class (Upperdate thought: if we buy this, our ships should be called the Kitchener class):

Pantino/Cantabria:

Yet the government in certain cases still insists only the best available will do for the CF:

New fighters, Joint Support Ships, and Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships: What’s good enough?..

In fact its policy of insisting that Navy ships be built in Canada (which any other government would follow too) practically means those ships, for cost reasons, cannot be the best:

Canadian shipyards can’t competitively build large civilian vessels–but the government insists they build naval ones

But at least the government has accepted that a foreign design may be necessary to reduce costs.

Predate: And as I wrote earlier:

…
Upperdate: I also blame the Navy for wanting a ship that was neither fish nor cetacean, as it were. An all-singing, all-dancing vessel that tried to do too much…

Mark
Ottawa

That policy remains: all Canadian Forces out next year.  Yet in August 2009 the Liberal, very left, Toronto Star editorialized:

…
Subject to Parliament’s approval, Canadian troops and police might still play a useful role mentoring their Afghan counterparts, with a view to working themselves out of a job. We can protect aid projects. And perhaps provide transport aircraft and helicopters, as well as surveillance drones, to assist our allies…

Over the last few months the Liberals have indicated a willingness to consider a post-2011 role in Afstan for the CF (e.g. a non-combat mission training the Afghan National Security Forces). So why the Conservatives’ so obdurate insistence on “troops out” next year?

Perhaps because, against all hopes, they are a little party, a silly party (scroll down here to “T.E. Lawrence: So long as…”; ignore for current purposes the “barbarous, and cruel”).   Are the Conservatives now a party mainly interested in (and overly accustomed to) the accoutrements of political power rather than one actually trying to achieve concrete, changing, things domestically?  For example, health care.  And a party utterly averse to taking real risks to achieve something serious elsewhere?

Continuing the good fight abroad, at home, even a little bit?  Hah!  Rather cutters and runners when the going gets tough and the kitchen gets hot.  All hat, no helmet.  And no skillet neither.

Update: The post is in the National Post’s “Full Comment“:

Upperdate: Also in the Spotlight on Military News and International Affairs:

…
Canadian Commentary
…

Mark Collins — National Post
When the going gets tough – More
…

Mark
Ottawa