October 5, 2009 - No. 181
October 7 -- 8th Anniversary of
Invasion of Afghanistan
Organize in Your Community to
Bring the Troops Home Now
- Canadian Peace Alliance -
CALENDAR OF EVENTS
• Organize in Your Community to Bring the
Troops Home Now - Canadian Peace Alliance -
• U.S., NATO Poised For Most Massive War in
Afghanistan's History - Rick Rozoff, Stop NATO
October 7 -- 8th Anniversary of Invasion
of Afghanistan
Organize in Your Community to
Bring the Troops Home Now
- Canadian Peace Alliance -
Join us on October 7, the eighth anniversary of the
start of the war, to organize in your community to bring the troops
home now.
What can you do on October 7:
1) Organize a mass leafleting and distribute Afghanistan
factsheets and postcards, available for download on the CPA website: www.acp-cpa.ca. Don't
forget to download some petitions, fill them with
signatures, and return them to the CPA office. Please fax completed
petitions to 416-588-5556.
2) Organize a public forum to discuss the issue of the
war. Host it in your neighbourhood, during a lunch break at work, or on
campus.
3) Organize a banner drop. Help make the public's
opposition to the war more visible.
4) Organize a street poll in your area. Ask people on
the street, "Should we bring Canadian troops home from Afghanistan
Now!" This is a great visual to accompany your outreach.
5) Meet with your local Member of Parliament, or
organize a "phone-in" day to keep the pressure on the politicians.
6) Write a letter to the editor. The newspapers are full
of articles about the war, and anti-war voices are getting a bigger
hearing. Let us know you've sent a letter, and cc cpa@web.ca.
The McChrystal Assessment: More Troops and More War
The top U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, General Stanley
McChrystal, has delivered a bleak assessment of the war in a strategic
document leaked to the Washington
Post. His document contains little
news about the war, but it is nevertheless significant.
Coming from the highest levels of the U.S. military, McChrystal's
document is an explicit call for the U.S. and its NATO partners to send
more troops to Afghanistan.
The main thrust of his argument is that, while the war
is going badly for the West, there is still time to turn it around --
but
with another surge in troops. It is expected that McChrystal will ask
for between 10,000 and 45,000 new troops.
Most observers have known for some years now that the
war is being lost, that the resistance to NATO's occupation is growing,
and that widespread corruption in the Afghan government leaves most
Afghans with little hope for the future. We also know that, with each
new deployment of troops, violence
in Afghanistan increases. In fact, it is the presence of foreign
soldiers that keeps giving the Taliban a new lease on life.
NATO is now in damage-control mode. The recent
presidential election in Afghanistan has been a disaster, and has led
one-time supporters in the West to question the purpose of the mission.
In every NATO country, including the U.S., there is now a clear
majority
of public opinion in opposition to
the occupation. McChrystal's document is a desperate attempt to win
back public support for the war.
But McChrystal doesn't provide any brilliant new
insights. Instead, he rehashes the same old arguments about "staying
the course" and issues a call to pursue tactics that will "win the
hearts and minds" of the Afghan people.
His main argument is that NATO should maintain a
presence in regions that it has conquered -- to "connect with the
people"
and to stop the resistance from re-capturing the territory once NATO
forces leave. Media reports in Canada suggest that McChrystal's
document is a vindication of the so-called
"model village" strategy adopted by Canadian Forces in Deh-e-Bagh.
But this is essentially a call for a larger and deeper
occupation.
Once again, the assessment misses the mark. There is no
new tactical approach that will win the hearts and minds of the Afghan
people, as long as it extends control of a corrupt government dominated
by drug lords and warlords. The Afghan people don't want their land
occupied by foreign troops.
The fact that only one "model village" has been created in eight years
of war renders any triumphalism about this strategy a little premature.
The second major argument is that NATO needs to train
more Afghan police and soldiers, but offers no new plans to overcome
the obstacles that have made such training impossible. The Afghan
police and army have been unable to retain recruits. After their
training, police recruits are sent to remote
outposts, where they become target practice for the resistance. As a
result, more than 60 per cent of them are addicted to heroin.
In the Afghan army, desertion is commonplace. In a
country where 40 per cent of the men are unemployed, the short-term job
of becoming a soldier provides some stable employment. But after
receiving their training, most soldiers desert and join the resistance.
The Canadian government has yet to announce any plan to
extend Canada's mission -- as the McChrystal document asks. But we know
that Prime Minister Stephen Harper supports continuing the occupation.
Defence Minister Peter McKay has already hinted at a new role for
Canada after 2011, which
would include training members of the Afghan National Army and police.
But that would require a significant military commitment past 2011.
In Canada, the threat of a federal election has shifted
the debate about the war. Both the Liberals and the Conservatives share
the blame for extending the war in Afghanistan to 2011. Not
surprisingly, neither party wants an election in which the war is an
issue. It is up to us in the peace movement
to build that opposition, and to keep the question of the war
front-and-centre for the Canadian public and politicians alike.
Join us on October 7, the eighth anniversary of the
start of the war, to organize in your community to bring the troops
home now.
U.S., NATO Poised For Most Massive War in Afghanistan's
History
- Rick Rozoff, Stop NATO, September 24,
2009 -
Over the past week U.S. newspapers and television
networks have been abuzz with reports that Washington and its NATO
allies are planning an unprecedented increase of troops for the war in
Afghanistan, even in addition to the 17,000 new American and several
thousand NATO forces that have been committed
to the war so far this year.
The number, based on as yet unsubstantiated reports of
what U.S. and NATO commander Stanley McChrystal and the chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen have demanded of the White House,
range from 10,000 to 45,000.
Fox News has cited figures as high as 45,000 more
American soldiers and ABC News as many as 40,000. On September 15 the Christian
Science Monitor wrote of "perhaps as many as 45,000."
The similarity of the estimates indicate that a number
has been agreed upon and America's obedient media is preparing domestic
audiences for the possibility of the largest escalation of foreign
armed forces in Afghanistan's history. Only seven years ago the United
States had 5,000 troops in the country, but was
scheduled to have 68,000 by December even before the reports of new
deployments surfaced.
An additional 45,000 troops would bring the U.S. total
to 113,000. There are also 35,000 troops from some 50 other nations
serving under NATO's International Security Assistance Force in the
nation, which would raise combined troop strength under McChrystal's
command to 148,000 if the larger number of
rumored increases materializes.
As the former Soviet Union withdrew its soldiers from
Afghanistan twenty years ago the New York Times reported "At
the height of the Soviet commitment, according to Western intelligence
estimates, there were 115,000 troops deployed."[1]
Nearly 150,000 U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan would
represent the largest foreign military presence ever in the land.
Rather than addressing this historic watershed, the
American media is full of innuendos and "privileged" speculation on who
has leaked the information and why, as to commercial news operations
the tawdry world of Byzantine intrigues among and between American
politicians, generals and the Fourth Estate
is of more importance that the lengthiest and largest war in the world.
One that has been estimated by the chief of the British
armed forces and other leading Western officials to last decades and
that has already been extended into Pakistan, a nation with a
population almost six times that of Afghanistan and in possession of
nuclear weapons.
Two weeks ago the Dutch media reported that during a
visit to the Netherlands "General Stanley McChrystal [said] he is
considering the possibility of merging...Operation Enduring Freedom
with NATO's ISAF force."[2] That is,
not only would he
continue to command all U.S. and NATO troops, but the two
commands would be melded into one.
The call for up to 45,000 more American troops was first
adumbrated in mid-September by U.S. armed forces chief Michael Mullen,
with the Associated Press stating "The top U.S. military officer says
that winning in Afghanistan will probably mean sending more troops."[3]
Four days later, September 19, Reuters reported that
"The commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan has drawn up a
long-awaited and detailed request for additional troops but has not yet
sent it to Washington, a spokesman said on Saturday.
"He said General Stanley McChrystal completed the
document this week, setting out exactly how many U.S. and NATO troops,
Afghan security force members and civilians he thinks he needs."[4]
The Pentagon spokesman mentioned above,
Lieutenant-Colonel Tadd Sholtis, said, "We're working with Washington
as well as the other NATO participants about how it's best to submit
this," refusing to divulge any details.[5]
Two days later the Washington Post published a
66-page "redacted" version of General McChrystal's Commander's Initial
Assessment which began with this background information:
"On 26 June, 2009, the United States Secretary of
Defense directed Commander, United States Central Command
(CDRUSCENTCOM), to provide a multidisciplinary assessment of the
situation in Afghanistan. On 02 July, 2009, Commander, NATO
International Security Assistance Force (COMISAF)/U.S.
Forces-Afghanistan (USFOR-A), received direction from CDRUSCENTCOM to
complete the overall review.
"On 01 July, 2009, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe
and NATO Secretary General also issued a similar directive.
"COMISAF [Commander, NATO International Security
Assistance Force] subsequently issued an order to the ISAF staff and
component commands to conduct a comprehensive review to assess the
overall situation, review plans and ongoing efforts, and identify
revisions to operational, tactical and strategic
guidance."
The main focus of the report, not surprising given
McChrystal's previous role as head of the Joint Special Operations
Command, the Pentagon's preeminent special operations unit, in Iraq, is
concentrated and intensified counterinsurgency war.
It includes the demand that "NATO's International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF) requires a new strategy....This new
strategy must also be properly resourced and executed through an
integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency campaign....This is a
different kind of fight. We must conduct classic counterinsurgency
operations in an environment that is uniquely complex....Success
demands a comprehensive counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign."
McChrystal's evaluation also indicates that the war will
not only escalate within Afghanistan but will also be stepped up inside
Pakistan and may even target Iran.
"Afghanistan's insurgency is clearly supported from
Pakistan. Senior leaders of the major Afghan insurgent groups are based
in Pakistan, are linked with al Qaeda and other violent extremist
groups, and are reportedly aided by some elements of Pakistan's ISI
[Inter-Services Intelligence].
"Iranian Qods Force [part of the nation's army] is
reportedly training fighters for certain Taliban groups and providing
other forms of military assistance to insurgents. Iran's current
policies and actions do not pose a short-term threat to the mission,
but Iran has the capability to threaten the mission in the future."
That the ISI has had links to armed extremists is no
revelation. The Pentagon and the CIA worked hand-in-glove with it from
1979 onward to subvert successive governments in Afghanistan. That Iran
is "training fighters for certain Taliban groups" is a provocational
fabrication.
As to who is responsible for the thirty-year disaster
that is Afghanistan, McChrystal's assessment contains a sentence that
may get past most readers. It is this:
"The major insurgent groups in order of their threat to
the mission are: the Quetta Shura Taliban (05T), the Haqqani Network
(HQN), and the Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin (HiG)."
The last-named is the guerrilla force of Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar, the largest recipient of hundreds of millions (perhaps
billions) of U.S. dollars provided by the CIA to the Peshawar Seven
Mujahideen bloc fighting the Soviet-backed government of Afghanistan
from 1978-1992.
While hosting Hekmatyar and his allies at the White
House in 1985 then President Ronald Reagan referred to his guests as
"the moral equivalents of America's founding fathers."
Throughout the 1980s the CIA official in large part
tasked to assist the Mujahideen with funds, arms and training was
Robert Gates, now U.S. Secretary of Defense.
Last December BBC News reported:
"In his book, From
the Shadows, published in 1996, Mr
Gates defended the role of the CIA in undertaking covert action which,
he argued, helped to win the Cold War.
"In a speech in 1999, Mr Gates said that its most
important role was in Afghanistan.
"'CIA had important successes in covert action. Perhaps
the most consequential of all was Afghanistan where CIA, with its
management, funnelled billions of dollars in supplies and weapons to
the mujahideen, and the resistance was thus able to fight the vaunted
Soviet army to a standoff and eventually force
a political decision to withdraw,' he said."[6]
Now according to McChrystal the same Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
who was cultivated and sponsored by McChrystal's current boss, Gates,
is in charge of one of the three groups the Pentagon and NATO are
waging ever-escalating counterinsurgency operations in South Asia
against.
To make matters even more intriguing, former British
foreign secretary Robin Cook -- as loyal a pro-American Atlanticist as
exists -- conceded in the Guardian
on July 8, 2005 that "Bin Laden
was...a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security
agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by
the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian
occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally 'the database,' was
originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were
recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians."
Russian analyst and vice president of the Center for
Political Technologies Sergey Mikheev was quoted in early September as
contending that "Afghanistan is a stage in the division of the world
after the bipolar system failed. They [U.S. and NATO] wanted to
consolidate their grip on Eurasia...and deployed a
lot of troops there. The Taliban card was played, although nobody had
been interested in the Taliban before."[7]
Pentagon chief Gates' 27 years in the CIA, including his
tenure as director of the agency from 1991-1993, is being brought to
bear on the Afghan war according to the Los Angeles Times of
September 19, 2009, which revealed that "The CIA is deploying teams of
spies, analysts and paramilitary operatives
to Afghanistan, part of a broad intelligence 'surge' that will make its
station there among the largest in the agency's history, U.S. officials
say.
"When complete, the CIA's presence in the country is
expected to rival the size of its massive stations in Iraq and Vietnam
at the height of those wars. Precise numbers are classified, but one
U.S. official said the agency already has nearly 700 employees in
Afghanistan.
"The intelligence expansion goes beyond the CIA to
involve every major spy service, officials said, including the National
Security Agency, which intercepts calls and e-mails, as well as the
Defense Intelligence Agency, which tracks military threats."
U.S. and NATO Commander McChrystal will put the CIA to
immediate use in his plans for an all-out counterinsurgency campaign.
The Los Angeles Times article added:
"McChrystal is expected to expand the use of teams that
combine CIA operatives with special operations soldiers. In Iraq, where
he oversaw the special operations forces from 2003 to 2008, McChrystal
used such teams to speed up the cycle of gathering intelligence and
carrying out raids aimed at killing or capturing
insurgents.
"The CIA is also carrying out an escalating campaign of
unmanned Predator missile strikes on Al Qaeda and insurgent strongholds
in Pakistan. The number of strikes so far this year, 37, already
exceeds the 2008 total, according to data compiled by the Long War
Journal website, which tracks Predator strikes
in Pakistan."
Indeed, on September 13 it was reported that "Two NATO
fighter jets reportedly flew inside Pakistan's airspace for nearly two
hours on Saturday.
"The airspace violation took place in different parts of
the Khyber Agency bordering the Afghan border."[8]
Two days later "NATO fighter jets in
Afghanistan...violated Pakistani airspace and dropped bombs on the
country's northwest region.
"NATO warplanes bombed the South Waziristan tribal
region....Moreover, CIA operated spy drone planes continued
low-altitude flights in several towns of the Waziristan region."[9]
The dramatic upsurge in CIA deployments in South Asia
won't be limited to Afghanistan. Neighboring Pakistan will be further
overrun by U.S. intelligence operatives also.
On September 12 a petition was filed in the Supreme
Court of Pakistan contesting the announced expansion of the U.S.
embassy in the nation's capital.
"Pakistani media have been reporting that the United
States plans to deploy a large number of marines with the plan to
expand its embassy in Islamabad."[10]
The challenge was organized by Barrister Zafarullah
Khan, who "said that Saudi Arabia was also trying to get 700,000 acres
(283,400 hectares) of land in the country."
He was quoted on the day of the presentation of the
petition as warning "Giving away Pakistani land to U.S. and Arab
countries in this fashion is a threat for the stability and sovereignty
of the country" and "further added that the purpose of giving the land
to U.S. embassy was to establish an American military
base...there.
"He maintained that such big land was enough even to
construct a military airport."[11]
Intelligence personnel and special forces are being
matched by military equipment in the intensification of the West's war
in South Asia.
On September 10 Reuters revealed in an article titled
"U.S. eyes military equipment in Iraq for Pakistan" that "The Pentagon
has proposed transferring U.S. military equipment from Iraq to
Pakistani security forces to help Islamabad step up its offensive
against the Taliban...."
A U.S. armed forces publication a few days afterward
wrote that "U.S. hardware is moving out of Iraq by the ton, much of it
going straight to the overstretched forces in increasingly volatile
Afghanistan" and "The U.S. military has already started moving an
estimated 1.5 million pieces of equipment -- everything
from batteries to tanks -- by ground, rail and air either to
Afghanistan for immediate use...."[12]
In the middle of this month "U.S. military leaders
infused Gen. Stanley McChrystal's ideas of how to win the war in
Afghanistan" by conducting a large-scale counterinsurgency exercise in
Grafenwoehr, Germany.
"Dozens of Pashtun speakers joined more than 6,500 U.S.
troops and civilians in an exercise for the Afghanistan-bound 173rd
Airborne Brigade and Iraq-bound 12th Combat Aviation Brigade. It was
the largest such exercise ever held by the U.S. military outside of the
United States...."[13]
The Pentagon and NATO have their work cut out for them.
"A security map by the London-based International
Council on Security and Development (ICOS) showed a deepening security
crisis with substantial Taliban activity in at least 97 percent of the
war-ravaged country.
"The Council added that the militants now have a
permanent presence in 80 percent of the country."[14]
The United States is not alone in sinking deeper into
the Afghan morass.
On September 14 U.S. ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder, in
celebrating the "resilience and deep-seated support from our allies for
what is happening in Afghanistan," was equally enthusiastic in
proclaiming "Over 40 percent of the body bags that leave Afghanistan do
not go to the U.S. They go to other
countries...."[15]
Daalder also gave the lie to earlier claims that NATO
troop increases leading up to last month's presidential election were
temporary in nature by acknowledging that "Many of the extra troops
that NATO countries sent to Afghanistan for the August presidential
elections would stay on."[16]
Leading up to the Washington Post's
publication of the McChrystal assessment, NATO's Military Committee
held a two-day conference in Lisbon, Portugal which was attended by
McChrystal and NATO's two Strategic Commanders, Admiral Stavridis
(Supreme Allied Commander, Operations) and
General Abrial (Supreme Allied Commander, Transformation) which
"focused mainly on the operation in Afghanistan and on the New
Strategic Concept."[17]
The 28 NATO defense chiefs present laid a wreath to the
Alliance's first war dead, those killed in Afghanistan.
Earlier this month the Washington Post
reported that "The U.S. military and NATO are launching a major
overhaul of the way they recruit, train and equip Afghanistan's
security forces," an announcement that came "in advance of expected
recommendations by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal."[18]
The article quoted Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the
Senate Armed Services Committee:
"We're going to need many more trainers, hopefully
including a much larger number of NATO trainers. We're going to need a
surge of equipment that is coming out of Iraq and, instead of coming
home, a great deal of it should be going to Afghanistan instead."[19]
According to the same report, this month NATO will "will
establish a new command led by a three-star military officer to oversee
recruiting and generating Afghan forces.
"The goal is to 'bring more coherence' to uncoordinated
efforts by NATO contingents in Afghanistan while underscoring that the
mission 'is not just America's challenge'..."[20]
Contributing to its quota of body bags, NATO has
experienced losses in Afghanistan that have reached record levels.
"According to the icasualties website, 363 foreign soldiers have died
in Afghanistan so far this year, compared to 294 for all of 2008."[21]
This month Britain lost its 216th soldier in the nearly
eight-year war. Canada lost its 131st. Denmark its 25th. Italy its
20th. Poland, where a recent poll showed 81 percent support for
immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, its 12th.
Russian ambassador to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov, who had
been in the nation in the 1980s, was cited by Associated Press on
September 12 as reflecting that in 2002 the U.S. had 5,000 troops in
the nation and "Taliban controlled just a small corner of the country's
southeast."
"Now we have Taliban fighting in the peaceful Kunduz and
Baghlan (provinces) with your (NATO's) 100,000 troops. And if this
trend is the rule, if you bring 200,000 soldiers here, all of
Afghanistan will be under the Taliban."
Associated Press also cited Kabulov's concern that "the
U.S. and its allies are competing with Russia for influence in the
energy-rich region....Afghanistan remains a strategic prize because of
its location near the gas and oil fields of Iran, the Caspian Sea,
Central Asia and the Persian Gulf."
He also said "Russia has questions about NATO's
intentions in Afghanistan, which...lies outside of the alliance's
'political domain'" and "Moscow is concerned that NATO is building
permanent bases in the region."
The concerns are legitimate in light of this month's
latest quadrennial report by the Pentagon on security threats which
"put emerging superpower China and former Cold War foe Russia alongside
Iran and North Korea on a list of the four main nations challenging
American interests."[22]
At the same time a U.S. military newspaper reported on
statements by Pentagon chief Robert Gates:
"Gates said the roughly $6.5 billion he has proposed to
upgrade the [Air Force] fleet assures U.S. domination of the skies for
decades.
"By the time China produces its first -- 5th generation
-- fighter, he said, the U.S. will have more than 1,000 F-22s and
F-35s. And while the U.S. conducted 35,000 refueling missions last
year, Russia performed about 30.
"The secretary also highlighted new efforts to support
robust space and cyber commands, as well as the new Global Strike
Command that oversees the nuclear arsenal."[23]
To add to Russian and Chinese apprehensions about NATO's
role in South and Central Asia, ten days ago the U.S. ambassador to
Kazakhstan, which borders Russia and China, "offered to Kazakhstan to
take part in the peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan."
At the opening ceremony of the NATO Steppe Eagle-2009
military exercises in that nation envoy Richard Hoagland said
"Kazakhstan may again become part of the international NATO
peacekeeping force in Afghanistan."[24]
Radio Free Europe reported on September 16 that NATO was
to sign new agreements with Kyrgyzstan, which also borders China, for
the use of the Manas Air Base that as many as 200,000 U.S. and NATO
troops have passed through since the beginning of the Afghan war.
On the same day NATO' plans for expanding transit routes
through the South Caucasus and the Caspian Sea region were described.
"[T]he air corridor through Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan is the most
feasible.
"This route will be best suited if ISAF transport planes
fly directly to Baku from Turkey or any other NATO member....Moreover,
it [Azerbaijan] is not a CSTO [Collective Security Treaty Organization]
member, which allows Azerbaijan more freedom for maneuver in the region
when dealing with NATO."[25]
Just as troops serving under NATO command in the war in
Afghanistan and Pakistan now include those from almost fifty countries
on five continents, so the broadening scope of the war is absorbing
vaster tracts of Eurasia and the Middle East.
America's longest armed conflict since that in Indochina
and NATO's first ground war threatens to not only remain the world's
most dangerous conflagration but also one that plunges the 21st Century
into a war without end.
Notes
1. New York Times,
February 16, 1989
2. Radio
Netherlands, September 12, 2009
3. Associated Press, September 15, 2009
4. Reuters, September 19, 2009
5. Ibid
6. BBC News, December 1, 2008
7. Russia Today, September 7, 2009
8. Asian News International, September
13, 2009
9. Press TV, September 15, 2009
10. Xinhua News, September 12, 2009
11. Ibid
12. Stars and Stripes,
September 19, 2009
13. Stars and Stripes,
September 13, 2009
14. Trend News Agency, September 11, 2009
15. Reuters, September 14, 2009
16. Ibid
17.
NATO, September 20, 2009
18. Washington Post, September
12, 2009
19. Ibid
20. Ibid
21. Agence France-Presse, September 22,
2009
22. Agence France-Presse, September 15,
2009
23. Stars and Stripes,
September 16, 2009
24. Interfax, September 14, 2009
25. Jamestown Foundation, Eurasia
Daily Monitor, September
16, 2009
Calendar of Events
Fredericton
Rally at MP Keith
Ashfield's Office
Friday, October 9 -- 12:15
pm
23 Alison Blvd
Senda a message to Harper and Ashfield that it is time to bring the
troops home now.
Need a ride from downtown or campus? Can offer a ride? Contact:
info@frederictonpeace.org
Windsor
Peace Alliance Weekly
Anti-War Demonstration
Saturdays -- 11:00 am to 12:00 noon
Market Square (On Ottawa Street, near the enterance for Market Square.)
Vancouver
Anti-War Demonstration
Saturday, October 17
-- 2:00pm
Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby at Robson Street
Organized by: Mobilization Against War & Occupation
(MAWO)
Read The Marxist-Leninist
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Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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