Master Cpl. Chris Downey and Cpl. Alexandre Beaudin D’Anjou will represent Canada at the South Pole Allied Challenge – a 320 km race to the South Pole that involves and raises money for ill and injured military personnel.
Downey and D’Anjou will be on a Commonwealth team alongside two Australian colleagues in November.
They’ll compete against a British team led by Prince Harry, a military helicopter pilot, and an American team in the challenge expected to last up to a month. Read more…
Canada’s operational submarine fleet will soon be two U-boats stronger, Defence Minister Peter MacKay confirmed.
“We’ll have three by next fall that will be in operation,” MacKay said Monday.
By fall, HMCS Windsor will be fully operational in Halifax, while HMCS Chicoutimi will return from deep maintenance to take on her duties.
HMCS Victoria is already in full operation on the West Coast. Read more…
In response to the gathering storm caused by North Korea’s insane belligerence and nuclear weapons program, abetted by its only real ally the People’s Republic of China, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon just deployed the biggest weapon he has, his mouth, and declared that the “crisis has already gone too far.” Oh well then I guess everyone will just stop. I mean now that we hear those words…
In case that gum-flapping merely seemed useless, Ban followed it up with an attempt to do harm by offering an inane misdiagnosis of the problem: “Nuclear threats are not a game,” he said. “Aggressive rhetoric and military posturing only result in counter-actions, and fuel fear and instability.”
Note that this assessment implies blame lies equally with both sides, too atavistic to break out of the spiraling cycle of mistrust. As opposed to it being the fault of North Korea’s insane dictator and tyrannical political system.
This misdiagnosis is not just useless. For if it’s really a cycle of misunderstanding, deterrence contributes to the problem and appeasement is called for to deescalate tensions. Whereas if the crisis has its origins in the psychotic belligerence of Pyongyang, threats and mobilization of military assets are clearly essential.
Oh well. Probably no one is listening anyway.
So now the plane we sent to help the French military mission in Mali for a weekmonth will be staying indefinitely. But any further expansion of our non-mission to Mali will be not happen unless it does.
For as the PM just assured us, we are “not looking to have a combat military mission there,” and ”our long-term engagements are still the subject of discussions.” With whom? Over what? Will we be told ahead of time about the next step?
Stay tuned.
Ooops. According to the Ottawa Citizen, the Harper administration’s about-face on defence spending, from promising to raise it toward nearly adequate levels to suddenly chopping it, is going to leave CFB Petawawa with fancy new facilities for a recently created Chinook helicopter squadron and for the Canadian Special Operations regiment that it, um, won’t be able to afford to operate.
Gosh. Budgeting is hard, isn’t it? It’s just so easy to make shiny promises and bask in applause, and just too much like hard work ensuring there really is money for it down the road.
Oh well. Back to drafting self-congratulatory press releases employing the latest in carefully contrived messaging technology. That we can do.
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