Pascal Lacoste suffers from painful symptoms his doctors say is heavy metal poisoning from depleted uranium.
NATO
Babblers discuss the battle for Tripoli
Join our open discussion forum, babble, as the war in Libya continues.
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Libya violence and Canadian political silence
Editor's note: This article was written before Saif al-Arab Gaddafi, the youngest son of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, was reported killed in a Nato air strike on April 30, 2011. Three of the elder Gaddifi's grandchildren were also reported killed by the strike on the family compound in Tripoli.
As Canada enters the final days in 2011 election campaigning, politicians streaking across the country have offered little more than resounding silence on Canada's military role in Libya.
Afghanistan: The crucible for reorienting Canadian foreign policy
Operation Apollo, Operation Athena, Operation Archer, Operation Accius, Operation Altair... since Canada first entered the war on Afghanistan in 2001 the list of extensions, renewals and "spin-offs" has gone on and on and on. Originally scheduled to end in 2003, Canada's involvement in this imperialist aggression threatens to continue until 2014 if Prime Minister Stephen Harper gets his way.
Afghanistan has been the central preoccupation of Canadian foreign policy over the past decade. It has also been a main focus of peace movement activity. Mobilizations against the war in Afghanistan have not been nearly as spectacular as those against the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The build up was slower, and it took more time to locate a basis of unity upon which to build mobilizations.
The Afghan War diary data -- an initial look
Wikileaks allowed us to map Afghan war deaths. A pattern has emerged.
Related rabble.ca story:
The Afghan War diary data -- an initial look
An initial look at the first 76,000 records in the "Afghan War Diary" leaked by Wikileaks yields some important information, much of which has been known or suspected by analysts for years. Given the sheer size of the database, there is a great deal more to be learned, but here are some initial findings.
Casualty data
The first impression is one of an extremely lopsided war, like all wars of occupation, where occupied casualties are vastly higher than those by the occupier.
They are fanning the flames of the Iran war option
How many times have we heard in recent weeks either outright threats to attack Iran mainly emanating from Israel or the more muted posture adopted by the United States that leaves ‘all options' on the table including ‘the military option'? What has Iran done to justify this frantic war-mongering in a strategic region that is sorting out the contradictory effects of the long Arab Spring and is the contested site of energy geopolitics that has replaced territory and minerals as the core issue of world politics?
Dying to be remembered: Poisoned peacekeeper considers hunger strike
As a Canadian paratrooper in the former Yugoslavia, Pascal Lacoste learned to hold in his pain. But even today, sometimes the pain is just too great.
"I need someone now," he writes on his Facebook profile one summer morning, leaving his address and phone number for the world to see. "I'm half-conscious."
He gets $50 a week from the Canadian government to pay for homecare, and for the rest he must rely on his friends. "It's hard for my social life, because my friends say, 'Pascal always wants something from us.'"
He wishes it didn't have to be that way.
