Tagged: Stephen Maher
How Colvin got to Kandahar
Contrarian is relieved to report that whoever kidnapped Stephen Maher and published Saturday’s bizarre column under his byline has released him. His column this morning offers a useful reminder of the circumstances under which Richard Colvin went to Kandahar in the first place.
In January 2005, Canadian diplomat Glyn Berry, the political director of the provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar, was killed in a suicide bombing that wounded three Canadian soldiers.
After Mr. Berry’s death, while the Foreign Affairs Department was struggling to find diplomats to serve in the dangerous and challenging country, Richard Colvin volunteered to go to Kandahar to do Mr. Berry’s job for several months in 2006.
This is the man Peter MacKay portrays as a patsy for Canada’s enemies. Some patsy.
The whole column is worth a read.
Herald scrivener adjudicates T-J flap
The Chronicle-Herald’s estimable Stephen Maher adopts Harper’s view of the wafergate flap (”a low moment in journalism… a terrible story, and a ridiculous story, and not based on anything”), offers mild criticism of the odd gaps in the Telegraph-Journal poo-scarfing apology, and provides a useful ultra vires catalog of episodes in which the Irvings’ business interests trumped their journalistic values (a list that, he concedes, includes the wafergate apology).
Interestingly, Maher has K.C. scion and T-J publisher Jamie Irving fired outright, not simply suspended for 30 days, as others have reported. Doesn’t say what he bases this on.
