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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Lucknow Sentinel, 2016-01-27, Page 44 Lucknow Sentinel • Wednesday, January 27, 2016 www.lucknowsentinel.com The Lucknow Sentinel PUBLISHED WEEKLY P.O. Box 400, 619 Campbell Street Lucknow Ontario NOG 2H0 phone: 519-528-2822 fax: 519-528-3529 www.lucknowsentinel.com POSTMEDIA JOHN BAUMAN Group Manager, Media Sales john.bauman@sunmedia.ca JOYJURJENS Office Administrator lucknow.sentinel@sunmedia.ca LINDSAY THEODULE Media Sales Consultant I indsay.theodule@sunmedia.ca MARIE DAVID Group Advertising Director 519 376-2250 ext. 514301 or 510 364-2001 ext. 531024 Publications Mail Agreement No. 40064683 RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO SENTINEL CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT P.O. Box 400 Lucknow ON NOG 2H0 For any non -deliveries or delivery concerns: 519-528-2822 • Iucknow.sentinel@sunmedia.ca SUBSCRIPTIONS Regular one year $40.00 + $2.00 =$42.00 Senior one year $35.00 +$1.75 = $36.75 Two year regular $70.00 + 3.50 = $73.50 Senior two year $60.00 + $3.00 = $63.00 Office Hours: Monday, Wednesday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. All advertising and editorial deadlines: Friday 2 p.m. Changes of address, orders for subscriptions, and undeliverable copies (return postage guaranteed) are to be sent to The Lucknow Sentinel at the address indicated here. Advertising is accepted on the condition that in the event of a typographical error, the portion of the advertising space occupied by the erroneous item together with a reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged for, but the balance of the advertisement will be paid at the applicable rates. The Sentinel is available on microfilm at: GODERICH LIBRARY, (from 1875) 52 Montreal Street Goderich ON N7A 1 M3 Goderich library@huroncounty.ca KINCARDINE LIBRARY, (from 1875 to 1900 & 1935 to 1959) 727 Queen Street Kincardine ON N2Z 1Z9 The Lucknow Sentinel is a member of the National Newsmedia Council, which is an independent ethical organization established to deal with editorial concerns. For more information or to file a complaint go to www.mediacouncil.ca or call toll free 1-844-877-1163. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canadian Periodical Fund (CFF) for our publishing activities. Canada p1 ocna Member of the Canadian Community Newspaper Association and the Ontario Community Newspapers Association Canada must not step back from the war between civilization it ake a breath," said the guy on Twitter, in answer to some- thing I wrote about the logical vacuum at the heart of the Lib- eral government's Iraq pol- icy. Apparently Canada's step- ping delicately back from the war between civilization and an aggressively expansionist pro- gram of genocide, slavery and mass rape should not cause undue alarm. It's all happening so very far away, after all. But I took the guy's advice — long enough to remember the time, in the aftermath of the murder of Canadian diplomat Glyn Berry in Kandahar City, that I saw the effect of a mass - casualty suicide bombing up close. It was a Tuesday in early Febru- ary, 2006. The attack — which had killed Berry, cost Master Cpl. Paul Franklin his legs and seriously injured Pte. William Salikin and Cpl. Jeffrey Bailey — had occurred three weeks earlier. I had been in Kandahar two weeks, as a corre- spondent for the other national newspaper, and was very much a newbie. I had intended to spend that afternoon sorting my files and taking a break. The call from my fixer, Jawed "Jojo" Yazamy — who would be gunned down in downtown Kan- dahar City in broad daylight, three years later, aged 23 — came late afternoon, with a couple hours of Column Michael Den Tandt daylight left. A suicide bomber on a motorbike had crashed into the front gate of the police station and blown himself up. There were many dead and injured. Despite the late hour — there was no guar- antee we'd be let back inside Kan- dahar Airfield if we returned after dark— we decided to go. Off we went down Highway One, me and two journalists from CTV, with Jojo at the wheel of his Toyota Land Cruiser, driving expertly and very fast, as he always did. SHAPE The bomber had attacked a crowd of job applicants — teen- aged boys mostly, who were seeking work as police officers. If successful they'd have earned about $13 a month, to start. Thir- teen were killed in the initial explosion, which was so powerful it knocked the police station's iron gates off their hinges. The injured had been taken to Kanda- har's Mirwais Hospital. As we pulled up to the hospital a group of Afghan civilians were carting a big man's body down the pale concrete steps, which were liberally stained with blood, as though it were an extra -large sack of cement. Rigor had set in and the body, still clothed, was cov- ered in fine white dust. I remem- ber thinking the dead man looked stiff, like Herman Munster, and also wondering if his death might be unrelated to the bombing because he seemed so clean. We rushed through the front doors into the main lobby, where a tired -looking middle-aged man in a white coat waved us towards a stairwell offhandedly, as though such occurrences were routine, and it were no big deal for West- ern journalists to barge into his desperately under -equipped hos- pital as it coped with a mass -cas- ualty bombing. Up we went to the bum ward. There they lay, three survivors, every inch of their bodies except the whites of their eyes charred black with third-degree bums. They rested on filthy cots, too ago- nized to make a sound, their arms outstretched as though frozen in place by the burning. I could see they were alive, because they blinked. The smell of their burned flesh filled the room and the hall- way outside. Their relatives milled nearby, some weeping, others smoking. We got the details we needed and quickly left I could not stop thinking, as we raced back towards KAF, that someone had done this to these boys deliberately — had conceived, planned and executed it with such ferocity and zealotry that they were happy to die them- selves in the act. The story I wrote that night was trimmed for length and buried in the next day's back pages. No Western troops had died, making this attack of second- ary news value. Just like, one can't help but remark, the slaughter of fellow Muslims by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Of course, ISIL is not the Tali- ban of a decade ago. As I've argued previously, it's worse. Unlike the Taliban, who were content to massacre their own, ISIL is an exporter. "Caliph" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's claim to legiti- macy, within the addled confines of radical Islamist dogma, rests on his holding territory. He will continue exporting death and maiming, it stands to reason, until ISIL is destroyed and its ter- ritory taken away. The current best effort to achieve this, led by dovish U.S. president Barack Obama, is by Western air power in support of local ground troops. Prime Minis- ter Justin Trudeau can struggle, as he did again Wednesday in Davos, to explain why the as -yet -unde- fined expanded training mission is more within the scope of Cana- dian capability than flying bomb- ing runs that protect Canadian allies. He can struggle, but he can't succeed — because the policy makes no sense. Breath taken. Reader describes ordeal of being stranded, saved in snowstorm Dear Editor, On Wednesday, Jan. 13, I was scheduled to race at Western Fair Raceway in London. I picked up the two horses in St Helens and arrangements were made to pick an Amish family (friends) and take them to Uni- versity hospital to visit a member of their family who is very ill. We made the trip and I dropped them off at the hospi- tal and continued to the race- track and with the help of Eddie Durbridge, raced the horses and picked up two modest cheques. With Eddies' help I was able to load the horses and get back to University hospital to pick up my Amish friends and head for home. The weather was just fair, snowing fairly heavy but visibil- ity was not too bad. We made it to Clinton, then to Auburn. This is where our trouble began. North of Auburn, where by now, about 12 inches of snow had fallen and because of not being able to tell where the road was we went into the ditch I had my cell phone and phoned home to get CAA phone number. The person at CAA was very courteous and I was told help was on the way. A later call from CAA told us assis- tance was within 20 minutes. This was now 1 a.m. I received a third call from CAA telling me that all vehicles were off the road and no help was coming. One of the Amish ladies remarked that "maybe this was a test of our patience". Resigned to probably waiting till early morning for the snow- plough and starting the truck occasionally for warmth, we began waiting. At 2 a.m. I phoned CAA and got a phone number for an acquaintance in St. Helens. I phoned him and told him of our dilemma and he immediately offered to come to pick us up. Very soon he arrived in his four- wheel drive truck. and took the ladies home. I decided to stay with the truck and horses to wait for the snowplough. My Amish friend, Henry, stayed with me. We made ourselves as comfort- able as possible and began our wait for the snowplough. The horses were warm and blanketed in the trailer. I could start the truck when we started to get cold. After not too long, we saw lights coming down the road towards us. My acquaintance, Ron, had delivered the ladies to their home then went to his home and brought his tractor and blower back to rescue me, Henry and the horses. He blew a path around the truck and trailer. I hooked the chain on and Ron proceeded to pull us out. We followed him 10 or 12 miles then took the horses to the barn and unloaded them. I then took Henry home and I went home to Wingham. By this time it was 5:00 a.m. Many people, no doubt, have had similar experiences but my reason for writing this is to rec- ognize Ron Snowden who cer- tainly did more to help some- one in trouble than one could reasonably expect Thanks Ron. Dennis Jewitt, Henry, Ella, Katie & Rebecca Stutzman