Coalitions OK say Conservatives

For the bombing of Libya

Canadian general to take command of NATO mission in Libya

But not to be government.

To be sure, the Harper Conservatives are already circulating talking points to their candidates that refer disparagingly to the "coalition opposition." And you can expect to hear more about the evil coalition as the election campaign unfolds in the weeks ahead.

Why a Canadian?

First because we were the only country in NATO whose Parliamentary parties, left, right, centre and separatist voted unanimously to support the No Fly Zone.

Second because the Canadian General is also a NORAD commander, making this still an American mission.

Bouchard, a native of Chicoutimi, Que, had been deputy commander of NATO's joint forces command, based in Naples, Italy. The former Canadian air force commander has been a member of the Canadian Forces since 1974 and graduated as a helicopter pilot in 1976. He has worked at key posts within Norad operations and has served at U.S. military bases on several occasions. He was awarded the United States Legion of Merit in 2004

And well, because we are after all polite....even in war.

Two Canadian CF-18 fighter jets took part in a mission over Libya on Tuesday morning, but returned to base without attacking their target because the risk of collateral damage was too great.

"Two CF-18s were tasked for a ground attack mission against a Libyan airfield," Lawson told a news conference in Ottawa.

"I can confirm for you that the air crew returned not having dropped their weaponry. Upon arrival on the scene of the target area the air crew became aware of a risk they deemed too high for collateral damage."

Lawson said the risk was not related to any threat to the CF-18s, but rather potential damage to civilians or important infrastructure such as hospitals, on the ground.

Lawson said the decision was in compliance with the rules of engagement that NATO forces have been given, and proves "the system works."

Why Canada is in Libya; F-35

Even Harper's original Political Military advisor Derek Burney questions Canada's role in bombing Libya. Burney is also a lobbyist for the Military Industrial complex in Canada so if he doesn't know why we are bombing Libya he is either being disingenuous or he no longer has the confidence of the PMO.

The man who once led Stephen Harper's transition team is questioning the government's military entanglement in Libya.

"We have jumped into Libya with our eyes wide open but does anyone know where it will lead or why Canada is so directly engaged?" Derek Burney, who headed the transition team when the Conservatives took power in 2006, writes in a new paper for the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute.

"The emotions and humanitarian instincts to do 'something' are understandable but so, too, are arguments advocating prudence."

Burney, one-time chief-of-staff to prime minister Brian Mulroney and former ambassador to the United States, even wonders whether the Harper government committed air power to Operation Odyssey Dawn to regain global ground after last year's embarrassing loss in the bid for a seat on the UN Security Council.

"Is it because we were snubbed for a Security Council seat and want to re-establish our credentials for 'peacekeeping'?

"Is it because we regard ourselves as an architect of the (UN) Responsibility to Protect concept?" which obligates states or the international community to protect civilian populations.

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Canada+Libya+role+questioned/4486176/story.html#ixzz1Hc4evjgh

Well the straight forward anwser is that it might have something to do with the Harper Government (c)(tm)(r) wanting to buy F-35's which are stealth combat planes, not really what Canada needs for Defense of its claims to Arctic sovereignty, or for its defense of North America. But certainly what would be needed to change our role from Peacekeeping, to 'peace-making' which is simply Orwellian Harper speak for war making.

Only a handful of fighter interceptors remain of the many U.S. and Canadian squadrons once available. NORAD’s founding raison d’être, standing by to fight a vast air defence battle, is also gone. Long gone. Those arguments for retaining NORAD are not strong, though, and it is even harder to argue that NORAD is functionally essential for Canada-U.S. defence co-operation. In other words, Canada does not need to be part of a binational aerospace defence command. Nor is a binational homeland defence command necessary.

As Canada uses its outdated CF-18's to bomb Libya it gives the Harpocrites justification to say that they need to upgrade to F-35's.

The other reason is that it is good for his masculine tough guy image. Just as he did in 2006 after first getting elected, he donned his Khaki's and went to Afghanistan for a photo op.

And with a pending federal election being a tough guy internationally helps his tough guy image at home. Of course that means he probably won't be wearing sweater vests this election campaign, unless they are Khaki.

Libya A Diversion

The civil war in Libya is acting as a convenient cover for more repressive American backed regimes in the Middle East to continue their oppressive regimes and attack their citizens who are protesting. By focusing on Libya the silence of the International community is deafening when it comes to these attacks on legitimate protests.

Violence in Bahrain, Yemen; Oman's ruler cedes some power

Police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of anti-government demonstrators blocking access to the financial district of Bahrain's capital on Sunday, as sectarian tension escalated in this tiny island kingdom.

The Persian Gulf kingdom, home to the headquarters of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, has seen weeks of demonstrations led by Shiites, who make up a majority of the population but say they are discriminated against by the Sunni royal family.

The confrontations Sunday were among the most violent since the military killed seven protesters on Feb. 17. They followed similar clashes Friday when security forces fired what protesters said were rubber bullets, and pro-government gangs armed with sticks beat back several hundred protesters near the royal palace.

At least one person was killed and scores were hurt on Sunday when Yemeni police fired live rounds and tear gas at protesters in Sanaa demanding an end to President Ali Abdullah Saleh's 32-year rule, medical sources said. Meanwhile, protests continued in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman.

Four people, including a 12-year-old boy, were killed in protests around Yemen on Saturday, bringing the total number of dead during two months of unrest to above 30.


Yemeni security forces also fired tear gas and live ammunition for a second day in a bid to force students to vacate a protest camp near Sana'a University. Eyewitnesses say police and pro-government supporters also used wooden clubs and knives to attack the protesters. Dozens of casualties were reported.

Al-Jazeera TV reported that protesters in the southern Yemeni port city of Aden attacked and set fire to a police station for the second time in 48 hours. Al-Arabiya TV reported anti-government protesters also clashed with police in the city of Taiz, north of Aden, injuring several.

Yemeni protesters across the country have been demonstrating since mid-February, amid calls for the resignation of veteran President Ali Abdallah Saleh, who has offered sweeping concessions to the protesters.

In Lebanon, tens of thousands of supporters of the anti-Syrian March 14th coalition turned out in Beirut’s Martyr’s Square to commemorate the 2005 Cedar Revolution that forced Damascus to withdraw its troops from the country.

- Morocco's King Mohammed VI promised sweeping constitutional reforms, including real powers for a popularly elected prime minister instead of a royal appointee, as well as a free judiciary.

In his first speech after uprisings across the Arab world and less than a month after protests erupted in Morocco for more social justice and limits on royal powers, the king Wednesday pledged to draw up a new draft constitution.

The live broadcast was the first time the king has delivered an address to the nation since thousands of people demonstrated in several cities on February 20 demanding political reform and limits on his powers.

There have been other peaceful rallies since then, including in the capital Rabat and the country's biggest city Casablanca, with young activists campaigning for greater democracy using the Facebook social network to call for new demonstrations on March 20.

Six people were killed in unrest that erupted after demonstrations on February 20, including five found burned to death in a bank set ablaze by people whom officials labelled vandals.

Another 128, including 115 members of the security forces, were wounded in the violence and 120 people were arrested, the interior ministry said.

Dozens of vehicles and buildings were also damaged or set alight.

Charlie Gadhafi

Has anyone noticed that the news has been taken up recently by nonsensical rants from these two guys who sound a lot alike when it comes to self deluded self indulgent babbling.

"It's perfect. It's awesome. Every day is just filled with just wins. All we do is put wins in the record books," the 45-year-old actor said. "We win so radically in our underwear before our first cup of coffee, it's scary. People say it's lonely at the top, but I sure like the view." The embattled actor opened up his Beverly Hills home, which he now shares with his two girlfriends and his twin sons with soon-to-be ex-wife Brooke Mueller, to ABC News this weekend.


Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi appeared Monday either to not know that demonstrators in cities throughout Libya are calling for an end to his rule or not accept it, according to excerpts from the interview "No demonstration at all in the streets," he told ABC News and the BBC in a joint interview carried out at a restaurant in Tripoli, excerpts of which were posted on the BBC's website.Gadhafi, wearing sunglasses and clad in brown tribal clothing, refused to accept the reporter's assertion that they were not. "No. No one against us. Against me for what?"

Mind you at least the reporters talking to Gadhafi challenged him unlike the reporters who pandered to Charlie Sheen. Maybe Qaddafi should consider moving to Hollywood, where he would get the fawning respect of the entertainment industry that masquerades as news.

When Rossen said that Sheen was seen as crazy as he talked about being a warlock with tiger's blood, Sheen shrugged. "It's entertaining as hell. I'm laughing. ... Did they expect it to be a normal interview - conventional, boring? No, we're shaking a a tree. We're shaking all the trees."

Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi has told the BBC he is loved by all his people and has denied there have been any protests in Tripoli.

Col Gaddafi said that his people would die to protect him.

He laughed at the suggestion he would leave Libya and said that he felt betrayed by the world leaders who had urged him to quit.

SNC Lavilin Building Prison In Libya

The Harpocrites failure to rescue Canadians from Libya, follows on their failure to rescue Canadians in Egypt.

My husband and I were two of the many Canadians left behind at Cairo airport that evening when the Canadian evacuation flight left half full. The airport was in chaos, the conditions rapidly unsanitary and embassy staff next to impossible to find. Had staff at the Canadian embassy answered the phone, or at the least put on a voice mail message directing Canadians to the correct terminal, much of the chaos could have been avoided and the plane to Frankfurt would have left full.

However, during business hours, the voice mail message said the embassy was closed (it was not, as we learned later; some Canadians had managed to get to the embassy through Tahrir Square that day) and the only voice mail message said: “for an update on avian flu, press 8.” Avian flu? What about an update on how to access Canada’s voluntary evacuation flight? How difficult could that have been?

Incorrect information was given to our tour company with the result that while we were in terminal 4 with no information and no embassy staff and no way to contact them, the plane was leaving from terminal.

The Harpocrite government has so emasculated our Foreign Affairs department that when emergencies arise abroad we are beholden to others to rescue our own people.

Now it is revealed that Harper's reluctant sanction speech on Friday night may have more to do with SNC Lavalin, headquartered in Montreal, than with principles. In fact SNC Lavalin is building a prison in Libya, a prison which the dictator would have used to continue to illegally detain his opposition and torture them, but heck we only build it, we don't care how its used.

One Canadian engineering company confirmed Friday it was forced to halt work on a new prison in Libya and evacuate its workers after the security situation collapsed.

Montreal-based international engineer SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. reported it had begun work on a $275million jail in Tripoli under a contract with the Gadhafi government.

The prison contract was not publicly announced, though it is mentioned in the company's coming annual report, said Leslie Quinton, vice-president of corporate communications. It is one of thousands of projects the company is working on, she added.

Read more: http://www.leaderpost.com/news/Evacuation+sparks+confusion/4352074/story.html#ixzz1F7rkmLPw

Another reason for the Harpocrites reluctance to sanction Libya, would be that of course this prison like the prisons they propose is a P3, private public partnership. And guess who will be building the new prisons the Harpocrites will need once their tough on crime bills pass...why can you say SNC Lavalin.

After all SNC Lavalin is the also the contractor responsible for maintaining government buildings in Ottawa, while also supplying our troops in Afghanistan and American troops in Iraq with weapons systems.

Canada's SNC-Lavalin company that was at the centre of a headline-grabbing bribery scandal in Kerala is now under scanner at home for allegedly overcharging in government building maintenance. Canadian Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose Thursday ordered an independent auditor to review a building maintenance contract given to SNC-Lavalin after allegations that the company charged $1,000 to install just a doorbell and $2,000 to buy two plants. The Montreal-based company has a $6-billion, multi-year contract to manage 320 Canadian government buildings.

The firm manages a number of major buildings in Quebec and Ontario, including the CBC broadcast centre in Toronto and Complexe Guy- Favreau, a sprawling federal government building in Montreal.

ProFac, a division of Montrealbased SNC-Lavalin, also maintains several provincial government buildings in Alberta and Ontario and helped to build Camp Julien, a Canadian military base in Afghanistan.

KANDAHAR, January 11, 2009 — Today, the Honourable Beverley J. Oda, Minister of International Cooperation, launched the next phase of Canada’s Dahla Dam Signature Project in Afghanistan. She met in Kandahar’s Arghandab Valley with the Governor of Kandahar, Tooryalai Wesa, and representatives of the SNC-Lavalin/Hydrosult joint venture, the firm selected to lead repair efforts to Dahla Dam.

It is a Quebec company, a province that the Harpocrites need to get votes from. And it is a private monopoly engineering management firm that benefits from preferential government support. If the government sells off Atomic Energy Canada, SNC Lavalin could be a contender.


In other words a private corporation that benefits from public funding for private profit, while imposing its own management over public access to public buildings we pay for.....

Locked doors at the Yukon’s federal building signal it is now under the management of a Quebec-based multinational.

“I tried to get in the back door yesterday, but it was locked,” said a longtime employee on Thursday.

SNC-Lavalin ProFac was awarded the property management contract for the Elijah Smith Building on August 1st.

The corporate construction giant has offices in 30 countries and is working in 100 different countries around the world.

In 2004, SNC-Lavalin was given a $1.5-billion property management contract to maintain 319 federal buildings across Canada.

Its recent property management contract for the Elijah Smith Building is not part of that deal.

SNC-Lavalin is taking over a lot of federal buildings across the country, said Elijah Smith commissionaire Michael Roy, when asked about the recent changes.

SNC-Lavalin’s decision to lock the back door was made “to control access,” he said.

The multinational is also planning to shut down the public bathrooms and take out the public phone, said Roy, confirming reports the News received from other disgruntled employees.

Plawiuk Does Hitchens On Libya

It is not up to the United States or President Obama to respond to Libya's civil war, declared on the people of Libya by the Qaddafi ruling family. It is up to NATO as the European allied military force to enforce rule in the oil exporting country they most rely on. Europe by far gets more oil and gas from Libya than anyone else.But instead of being the force to counter Libya's dictator they shy away from their military political responsibility.

NATO Not Planning to Interfere in Libya

UN Security Council struggles over action in Libya

Former Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy has been cited by NATO Watch as one of the leading international voices urging NATO and the EU to take measures to guarantee peace, security, and human rights in Libya.

In an article entitled "Responsibility to Protect in Libya: Calls for Intervention Intensify", NATO Watch stresses that calls by civil society to halt mass atrocities in Libya, where the regime of dictator Muammar Gaddafi faces a popular uprising, have been on the rise.

And it can be done easily, blockading Tripoli and all major ports with NATO's Mediterranean Navy and as asked for by Libyan UN delegates, a no fly zone over Tripoli, stopping the air attacks on civilians. And lets not forget Tobruk in the East which would welcome international support to protect their free zone from Qaddafi's counterrevolution.

The region was quiet for the first few months of the war, until Fascist Italy declared war against France and Britain on June 10, 1940. It remained a major active theatre for two and a half years until the British Commonwealth Eighth Army crossed the border from Libya into Tunisia. In February 1943, command of the Eighth Army passed from the Middle East Command to the Allied Joint command for the Mediterranean, AFHQ. The Middle East Theatre remained quiet for the remainder of the war.

If gunboat diplomacy was ever needed it is today in Libya, if ever NATO was going to fulfill its self appointed mandate of being Europe's enforcer, then it must respond to this historic moment and fulfill its historical reasone detre, to be an armed force for imperialist goals and objectives. And last time I checked at least one of those reasons was to promote and protect democratic movements.