MILNEWS.ca News Highlights – July 30, 2012

• “There was an altercation between two Canadian Forces (CF) members at Canadian Forces Base Shilo early (Sunday) morning.  One CF member was treated for a non life-threatening gun shot wound as a result of the altercation. The other CF member was arrested and is in police custody. The weapon has been seized and it is confirmed that it is not a military-issued weapon.  The Canadian Forces National Investigation Service (CFNIS) is currently investigating the incident. No charges have been laid at this time ….” – a bit more here, here and here.
• More from RIMPAC, from “a communications consultant and formerly a national director of the NDP”  “To the young first-time sailor at sea there is no threat more chilling than a cruise missile racing toward her ship, centimetres above a roiling dark ocean, and closing the gap by two football fields a second.  On the bridge — in the green-glow gloom, the piercing klaxons, the roar of the massive naval cannons, the cacophony of bellowed orders, and the constant ping of multiple tracking systems marking the enemy’s relentless progress — the tension is high. But this specially fitted Tomahawk missile will miss as this is an exercise.  It would surprise most Canadians to learn that their sailors were this summer important players in naval engagements such as this, the largest since the Falklands War. They were exercises but as close to real combat as experienced warriors and modern technology can simulate.  As one of a few Canadians invited to observe the opening rounds, I am awed at the scale of the exercise and at the quiet professional determination of every one of the Canadian sailors I meet. Unnoticed by the world’s media, more than 25,000 men and women, on 46 of the most powerful naval fighting vessels drawn from 22 navies, hammered each other day and night off the coasts of Hawaii ….”
• Afghanistan  “The agonizing years of worrying that the Taliban would get him before he could get to Canada are over.  Sayed Shah Sharifi, a former combat interpreter for Canadian forces in Kandahar, arrived in Toronto from Afghanistan Sunday, ending a more than two-year fight to reach safety in Canada.  Philip Hunter, who worked closely with Sharifi, 24, as a combat medic, drove down from Ottawa with his wife, Oana, to welcome his comrade to the new home Sharifi often doubted he would live to see.  “Good to see you, buddy!” said Hunter, relieved but teary-eyed after waiting more than two hours in the reception area of Pearson airport’s Terminal 1, wondering if Sharifi had hit yet another snag ….”  
• Another directorship for former CDS Rick Hillier  ” Canada’s former top soldier has joined Atlantis System Corp.’s board of directors, a coup the firm’s chief executive officer says will give it 35 years of insight into the military’s needs and its future direction.  The Dartmouth defence and simulation company hopes to capitalize on retired general Rick Hillier’s decades-long career in the Canadian Forces, which culminated in more than three years spent as chief of defence staff, Ken Howard said.  …. “His knowledge of (the Defence Department’s) needs from an operational perspective — as well as his understanding of the Canadian government and the procurement process that the defence industry has to work in — is second to none,” Howard said ….”
• “An air cadet injured in a glider accident has been battling the Department of National Defence since 2006.  The department refuses to compensate Pascale Bouchard-Cannon, 22, after a flight accident in which she fractured two vertebrae, leaving her with permanent after effects.  The event took place when she was 16 at the Valcartier base, near Quebec City. The young woman is now asking for $788,000 in compensation.  Bouchard-Cannon’s glider crashed just as she was landing after her 11th flight of the day in September 2006. The wind’s direction suddenly changed, but the control tower did not tell the young woman. The plane’s wing hit a tree before crashing.  ‘‘I look like an 80-year-old lady, I’m [like] a granny with a hunched back… Since the accident, things are worse. I tried a lot of medication, physiotherapists, Chinese medicine, Cortisone for five years,’’ Bouchard-Cannon said, adding she can’t sit nor stand for too long and needs to crack her back all the time ….”
• Khadr Boy (1) “Senior Obama administration officials say they are angered by suggestions that the Harper government was duped into a diplomatic agreement to transfer Guantanamo prisoner Omar Khadr to a Canadian jail.  Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’s request last week for a sealed video interview conducted by U.S. psychiatrist Michael Welner and a report from psychiatrist Alan Hopewell has prompted accusations that the Pentagon withheld vital information.  “Duped my ass,” one Obama administration official told the Toronto Star on the condition of anonymity.  “Is this videotape seriously going to be a revelation? Canadians didn’t know (Khadr) came from a jihadi family?” the official said. “Ottawa knew about this and the fact is, if they’re worried, they’ll have plenty of time to observe him while he serves out his sentence in Canada.”  Others noted that Canadian officials were aware of Welner’s view — as well as contradictory assessments from military psychiatrist Stephen Xenakis and New York child psychologist Katherine Porterfield — and could have requested a copy of the video before entering into a diplomatic agreement.  “To make an accusation like that against a close ally goes to the heart of our relationship and is unfounded,” said a Pentagon source, who accused Ottawa of deliberately stalling the transfer ….”
• Khadr Boy (2)  Columnist on comments from Peter MacKay’s wife on the case  “An Iranian-Canadian human rights activist made headlines across the country last week after she openly called for the repatriation of Omar Khadr from Guantanamo Bay …. Afshin-Jam claims she believed her interview with the Guardian was to be in connection with her book promotion, not her thoughts on Khadr.  That said, and as the old adage “be careful what you wish for” says, the limelight Afshin-Jam seemingly craved as a little-known activist can quickly become a blinding horror in the political arena.  Heck, even Justin Bieber is now racing away from the paparazzi.”
• Syria  Interesting story about an interesting Canadian woman  “A Syrian-born Canadian woman who left Toronto to join the Syrian Free Army (FSA) battling to overthrow the regime of President Bashar al-Assad has criticized the opposition groups for their internal disputes she said have delayed the downfall of the regime.  Thwaiba Kanafani, 41, an engineer and a mother of two, left Canada to enlist in the FSA at the end of June. She announced her arrival to Syria in a video recently circulated on the internet. She told AlArabiya.net that she has been working in Ankaram coordinating between leaders of the armed opposition.  Before travelling to Syria, Kanafani said she attended several meetings by opposition groups in Egypt and Turkey and saw how they were divided over positions and shares of a Syrian cake that is yet to be ripe ….” - more here and here.
  
• Foreign Minister:   We’re Keeping an Eye on the Maldives  “Canada is deeply concerned with the ongoing political tensions in Maldives. I call upon all sides to this dispute to demonstrate restraint and restore calm.  It is clear that the arrests of senior officials of the Nasheed government are politically motivated. Such actions are completely unacceptable and must be reversed.  The threats of the present government to arrest its opponents, including former President Nasheed—the only democratically elected president in the last four decades—so as to prevent his candidacy, undermine that government’s credibility and violate its undertakings to the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group. They also fly in the face of the core Commonwealth values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law ….”  And what’s up with Maldives?  It’s a vacation spot where the Afghan Government and Taliban have denied meeting here, here and here.
• “A former high-ranking intelligence officer in the Philippines army is fighting to stay in Canada claiming he will be killed by a terror group if sent back home.  Ernie Villegas Lumocso was a former sergeant and team leader in the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAP), who arrived here to study English in 2007 as part of military training program.  He is accused of taking part in crimes against humanity.  Lumocso, who once lived in Toronto but now resides in Montreal, filed an unsuccessful refugee claim and subsequent appeal to the Federal Court of Canada that was dismissed on July 20.  Federal immigration officials alleged the former soldier and radio operator “had participated, as an accomplice, in crimes against humanity committed by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).”  Lumocso argued he faces death from members of a Abu Sayyaf separatist group for the 2003 arrest of their leader, Galib Andang, who is also known as “Commander Robot.” ….”
  
• War of 1812  “The federal government is chipping in $130,000 to help pay for a $500,000 makeover and expansion of the Battle of Stoney Creek soldiers’ memorial across from Battlefield Park.  And (Hamilton) city officials say the project is going into high gear so it can be completed in time for the 200th anniversary of the battle next June.  The money from the federal War of 1812 commemoration fund comes after decades of controversy about the mistreatment of soldiers’ remains at the site known as Smith’s Knoll, where the pivotal battle took place. The mass grave for an estimated 24 to 40 soldiers has been disturbed numerous times and even plundered for skulls for quack science research ….”
• “The wind was fierce and the waves were surging on Josephine Vibert’s wedding day, 70 years ago in Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan, a small fishing village on Quebec’s north shore.  In 1942, the village became the site of an emergency airstrip on the U.S. military’s so-called “Crimson Route,” a strategic air corridor to Europe through Maine and Newfoundland.  Late in the afternoon on Nov. 2, 1942, not long before the wedding reception, Vibert and most of the village stopped to watch a U.S. Army seaplane taxi from the harbour.  But the plane — a PBY Catalina — struggled to clear the water. Vibert recalls the towering waves of the Gulf lashing at the cockpit during its second take-off attempt.  “I counted five waves, but there may have been more,” she says from her home, still in Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan. “After the last one, water started entering their plane.”  The town’s fishermen braved the frothing waters to find four crew members clinging to the fuselage.  Just moments after the survivors were hauled aboard the local fishing boats, the plane, along with the five remaining crew members, slipped beneath waves, never to be seen again.  That is until 2009, when underground divers from Parks Canada found the barnacled, upside-down fuselage of the Catalina some 40 meters below the surface ….” - more from American media here.