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Thursday, February 18, 2010

Arthur Kent Spills

Arthur Kent, brother of Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Peter Kent, lays on a pounding on the Harper government over an Afghanistan story you may know nothing about--Hamid Karzai renaming Zarar Muqbul to his cabinet after the disgraced former minister presided over the embezzlement of up to one-third of Canadian aid dollars donated under the U.N.’s Law and Order Trust Fund (LOTFA):

In naming Zarar Muqbul as his new counter-narcotics minister, Karzai delivers a forehand smash into the court of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who is already under fire for proroguing Canada’s House of Commons - in part to avoid a parliamentary committee’s probe into the Afghan government’s mistreatment of battlefield detainees.

The siphoning off of Canada’s LOTFA contributions is arguably a more flagrant abuse of trust than the issue of prisoner abuse. The financial support is intended to strengthen the National Police and kick-start Afghanistan's rule of law.

[...]

Zarar Muqbul’s story was broken here on Skyreporter in May of 2007, and in greater length in an article for the July/August 2007 edition of Policy Options, the journal of Canada’s Institute for Research on Public Policy.

Stephen Harper’s PMO refused any comment at the time, and duly muzzled Foreign Affairs, the RCMP and Canada’s embassy in Kabul. Two of the same officials who censored diplomat Richard Colvin’s reports on detainee abuse similarly blocked Skyreporter’s queries about Zarar Muqbul: Afghan Task Force chief David Mulroney and former ambassador to Kabul Arif Lalani.

See, when you're young and your younger brother is smaller and weaker than you, you beat them up repeatedly until they learn not to cross you. Peter Kent obviously didn't do that, and now look what's happened?

2 comments:

  1. "See, when you're young and you're younger brother is smaller and weaker than you, you beat them up repeatedly until they learn not to cross you. Peter Kent obviously didn't do that, and now look what's happened?"

    That has to be the best paragraph I've seen today. I say we send this off to Kent's parliamentary e-mail. Call it helpful advice!

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  2. Thanks for reminding us of this slap in the face. Not a new one but one worth repeating. BTW, I tweeted the Sky piece w/o giving you any h/t. Sorry. Dang 140 character limit.

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