Bravo Zulu, Cpl. Kate

Leopard tank driver Cpl. Kate MacEachern broke a world record last year walking over 500 kilometers from her post at CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick to her hometown of Antigonish, N.S. to raise $20,000 for injured veterans. In full battle dress with a 22 kilogram kit on her back, she did it on her annual holidays.
DefMin Airshow MacKay was so impressed he walked the last kilometer with her.  
                                                                                In June this year she asked for 20 extra days of unpaid leave in addition to her 25 days of holiday time to make a trek three times longer from Cape Breton to Ottawa to raise $100,000 for vets with post-traumatic stress disorder, which she suffered from herself after a serious spinal cord injury in a training exercise six years ago.

In a truly tone-deaf PR blunder, her request was refused on the grounds that two months was insufficient time to get permission from the deputy DND minister for the extra time off as well as DND funding she hadn't asked for.  So committed is Cpl. MacEachern to her personal mission, which she has called the Long Trek Home after the struggle vets go through after coming home, she has reluctantly quit her 25 year contract with the military after eight years - in what she has called a "gut-wrenching decision" - in order to be able to go ahead with her trek to Ottawa anyway.

I very much liked her sign, although she's not the first to use those words.
We all need inspiration to find the courage to speak up in our own shaky voices.  
Thank you, Cpl. Kate, for yours.
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Combined Defence Plan - So we're a "homeland" now?

Last night DefMin Peter Airshow MacKay announced a pending "Combined Defence Plan" between Canada and the US to "further integrate cross-border military co-operation" :

"This agreement provides a framework for the combined defence of Canada and the U.S. during peace, contingencies, and war," MacKay told the Permanent Joint Board on Defence, comprising senior military officers, government officials and diplomats from both nations. 

"The plan describes the authorities and means by which the two governments would approve homeland military operations in the event of a mutually agreed threat, and how our two militaries would collaborate and share information."

So we're a homeland now? With homeland military operations?

 Canada and the U.S. also will extend the Civil Assistance Plan, which allows for the deployment of troops and equipment from one country to the other in the event of a natural disaster or terrorist attack

In his speech, MacKay called for increased military involvement implementing the Beyond the Border strategy, saying the Canadian Forces and its American counterparts should be supporting civilian agencies monitoring the cross-border security.

Huh. So the increasing integration of Canadian and US economies under Steve and Barry's Beyond the Border deal requires military backup?
Gosh this is sounding more like Security and Prosperity Partnership leftovers reheated and served up again all the time.

Back in March 2008 when Dick Cheney and then Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day both happened to be in Israel, Doris announced from Tel Aviv a new Canada-Israel Declaration of Intent to cooperate on mutually agreed threats like border security, a Canada-Israel border pact. The deal had been leaked months before, when both Israel's Ministry of Public Security and the Israeli press referred to it as "cooperation on homeland security".

"Homeland security" is still not a phrase we normally associate with a sovereign Canada.

Meanwhile the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence has recommended the "Department of National Defence/Canadian Forces consider re-establishing a military presence on the campuses of educational institutions."
The executive director of the DND-funded Conference of Defence Associations, Alain "we have to write a number of op-eds to the press" Pellerin , says he believes the time is right to reinstate the Canadian Officers Training Corps program at universities :

"I think the military is very popular in the public eye," Pellerin said. "I think the universities wouldn't want to be out of step and say we don't want the COTC program."

You know, the one we haven't had since 1968.
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Canada's "shock doctrine" in Honduras

On June 28th, 200 soldiers of the Honduran military kidnapped the president, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, and flew him to Costa Rica. His attempted return 4 days ago was unsuccessful.
The coup d'eat was roundly condemned by the UN, the EU, the Organization of American States, and rather more tepidly by the USA; the EU pulled its diplomats; the World Bank suspended aid; and all called for the return and reinstatement of Zelaya.

Amidst this near-universal condemnation, on Saturday Canada's Minister for the Americas, Peter Kent, recommended that ousted President Manuel Zelaya delay his planned return to the country, saying the "time is not right". When 2 of 100,000 Zelaya supporters waiting for his plane to land at the airport were shot by the military, Kent went on national tv to blame Zelaya for their deaths.

What is he on about?
Corporate interests and the fear of united social reform in Latin America.
After a devastating hurricane destroyed most of Honduras' crops and infrastructure in 1998, Canada offered millions in aid in return for opening up the country to Canadian mining interests.
Canada and the US also took advantage of this disaster/opportunity, as they did in Colombia, to rewrite Honduras mining laws, granting Canadian corporations tax breaks and land rights to mineral extraction over the rights of local communities. Canada is now the second largest "foreign investor" in the country.

Ashley Holly at The Tyee : Shame on Canada :

"Currently, Canadian companies own 33 per cent of mineral investments in Latin America, accumulating to the ownership of over 100 properties. Export Development Canada contributes 50 per cent of Canadian Pension Plan money to mining companies, which offered upwards of $50 billion in 2003. Goldcorp alone has received nearly one billion dollars from CPP subsidies.

Although EDC is responsible for regulating Canadian industry abroad, it has been accused of failing to apply regulatory standards to 24 of 26 mining projects that it has funded.

In February 2003, nearly five hundred gallons of cyanide spilled into the Rio Lara, killing 18,000 fish. The mine in San Andres uses more water in one hour than an average Honduran family uses in one year. In that same year, mining companies earned $44.4 million, while the average income per capita in Honduras in 2004 was just $1,126USD."

Zelaya has been moving steadily left ever since his election : doubling minimum wage from $132 per month to $290 ; proposing nationalization of energy production and reforms to make government more transparent and accessible; joining Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Nicaragua and Venezuela in the left-leaning ALBA, formed to counter imperialism in the region; and - oh yeah - banning new mining concessions.

Canada's training of Honduran military personnel through its Military Training Assistance Programme is really paying off for Canadian mining corporations here. According to the MTAP Directorate, officials from DFAIT, DND, and CIDA combine to "promote Canadian foreign and defence policy interests," using "the mechanism of military training assistance to develop and enhance bilateral and defence relationships with countries of strategic interest to Canada."

As this Guatemalan newspaper asks : Will President Colom of Guatemala, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, or President Funes in El Salvador be next?

Zelaya discusses the coup with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now today.
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The "Afghanistan job fair"

is all about attracting more federal public servants to Afghanistan:

"Serving in Afghanistan is a unique and rewarding experience," the memo reads.
"Canadian public servants in Kabul and Kandahar are at the cutting edge of Canada's international work in challenging environments and their contributions will shape Canada's approach to engaging the world for a generation to come."

John Manley's 2007 Afghanistan Task Force advisors, headed by David (no relation) Mulroney and his merry band of 24 experts, are still toiling away at the Privy Council Office and, according to some, sucking all the oxygen out of any other DND, CIDA, or Foreign Affairs project.

Fen Hampson, director of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University explains it's all about Obama :

"Canada's major foreign policy priority is going to be to make inroads with the new administration," he said. "The fact that we are one of the major players in Afghanistan, alongside the Americans, is a very important card and, I would say lever of influence with the incoming Obama administration, Mr. Hampson believed.

"We're not just investing in Afghanistan's future, we're also investing in the Canada-U.S. relationship and partnership. So when you do the accounting you have to include that political calculation into the equation."

No mention of public servants requiring special boots to prevent "blood and fecal matter" from being "tracked into personal quarters" this time round so maybe it could really be fun!

Thanks, Fen!

via Ottawonk whose forays into a possible career change were abruptly brought up short by a question on the RCMP application :
"-Have you ever engaged in bestiality?"
Never mind, Ottawonk. Hey what about Lion Tamer? They must be needing lion tamers in the public service by now.

Pipeline saboteurs in the media... and biblical solutions to WMDs

Experts at a national conference for emergency officials in Calgary yesterday were mightily exercized about last week's EnCana gas pipeline bomb attempts in BC. Well, not so much the actual bomb blasts themselves, but how they would play in the U.S.
The Canadian media played along :

Alberta ripe for attacks: experts - Economic terrorism would rattle U.S

Terrorists target U.S.A. via Alberta - Hitting energy supply seen as strike on U.S

Gas pipelines vulnerable to terrorism: expert

Yikes! Who are these experts and what are they saying?

"Alberta has become a "prime location" for terrorists looking to capitalize on shaky economic times in Canada and the United States, terrorism experts said"
"I think that the alarm bells are going off and that is indicated by the fact that the RCMP are bringing in the people who deal with terrorism to look at this," Mercedes Stephenson, a military analyst, told CTV Newsnet Sunday.
"You don't blow up part of a pipeline and kill lots of people . . . you disrupt the economy," she said.
She said that Alberta supplies more than 90 per cent of California's natural gas supply.
"You are not disrupting just Canada but you are disrupting Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego."

Mercedes Stephenson : 27 year old media/think tank whiz kid, has worked for the Pentagon, the Cato Institute, US Army Headquarters, and the Fraser Institute. A Koch Fellow, a master's student at the University of Calgary's Centre for Military and Strategic Studies where she wrote a thesis published by the Department of National Defence about the importance of Canada embracing the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defence System, a frequent military analyst for CBC, CTV and Global News.

Note : According to Steve Staples of the Rideau Institute, U of C's Centre for Military and Strategic Studies is one of 12 university programs funded by the Department of National defence to "churn out 6oo articles a year which have to toe “a particular view” that subscribes to larger spending on the military."
“It’s not about scholarly journals, peer reviewed articles that they have written—it’s really about appearing in the mainstream media. What you tend to get as a general trend, is a steady stream of hawkish opinion from academics that are all linked together through Department of National Defence funding,” says Mr. Staples.


Alrighty then. Next expert :
"Longtime international foes of the United States are closely watching that nation's sharp economic decline, said Igor Shafhid, a world expert in nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
Financial instability causes panic and fear, said Shafhid, founder of Global Strategic Resources, which develops and teaches emergency-preparedness courses in the U.S. and Russia.

"Those are things terrorist states or countries will take advantage of," he said. "If it goes towards recession or depression in the United States, I suspect some activities might start happening in the next few years in the form of biological, radiological or who-knows-what-else terrorism."

However, he said there's no need to fear the world will be destroyed."

Igor Shafhid : author of "Inside the Red Zone", "his personal journey within a godless Russia to the classified operations of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Force where he trained as a military doctor in WMD deployment. Using his own life experience Dr. Shafhid brings answers to Russia's fascination with WMDs, the need for a solid civil defense program, and the importance of maintaining the Biblical foundation America was founded on."
Featuring "Biblical solutions to remain a safe-guarded nation under God"


Dear CanWest, CTV, Calgary Herald.
It would have killed you to include a little bio info on these experts to go along with your fear-mongering Terror! Terror! Terror! headlines?

For shame. Besides, where's your sense of fun?

Not one of you mentioned a single word about biblical solutions to WMDs .


OK, we'll provide our own expert then :
Here's Andrew Nikiforuk, author of "Saboteurs: Wiebo Ludwig's War Against Big Oil".
He dismissed the RCMP's description of the saboteur as an eco-terrorist and said he doesn't believe the saboteur meant to hurt anyone.

"This is not the work of eco-terrorists, for God's sakes. This is the work of a pissed-off landowner who's probably a property-rights advocate, who doesn't like the fact that either his health has been damaged, or his property has been devalued by sour-gas developments."

"Whoever did this wanted to make the headlines, they didn't want to kill people. If you want to kill people up there with sour gas, it would be very easy to do. There are thousands and thousands of pipelines, wells, and scores of sour-gas plants up there," he said
"Whoever did this planned it very well, picked the locations very carefully, and seems to have been either skilfully adept at not rupturing a pipeline, or skilfully inept at not rupturing a pipeline -- and I suspect there are signs here of skilful adeptness."

It's a long shot, I know, given that Nikiforuk fails to make any mention of San Diego or biblical solutions to WMD, but I'm leaning towards his analysis here.

h/t Toe at Bread 'n Roses

"Lethal, survivable, supportable, affordable"

That's what it says on the Joint Strike Fighter logo which I'd normally post up here but for this advisory on the JSF website : "Note, individuals utilizing the JSF logo for purposes other than that which is determined to be in the best of interests of the program may be prosecuted."***

Via Paul Graham, who isn't happy about it :
"The big news in the Peg this afternoon is the federal government’s $43.4 million loan to Bristol Aerospace of Winnipeg, part of a $120 million upgrade that will allow Bristol to help develop the F-35 Lightning II fighter jet. According to the Winnipeg Free Press, this investment could yield $3 billion in revenue over the next 25-30 years."

Bloomberg : "The U.S. and eight countries are collaborating on the development of the aircraft in the largest international weapons program ever."

The largest evah! Vroom, vroom!

Dept of National Defence in 2006 : "The Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program is a United States-led multinational effort to build an affordable, multi-role next generation, stealth fighter aircraft.... There are defined needs for more than 3000 aircraft over the course of the program with an estimated value of over US$276 billion. An additional 3000 aircraft could be sold to other allied buyers."

"In 2001, the U.S. Department of Defense selected Lockheed Martin as the Prime Contractor for the JSF Program. Pratt and Whitney US and General Electric have been selected to design and develop engines for the JSF.
Canada's $US160 million contribution to JSF includes funding from both the Department of National Defence and Technology Partnerships Canada (TPC). TPC promotes the participation of Canadian firms, especially small and medium-sized enterprises.
As a result of Canada’s participation in the JSF program, 54 Canadian companies, universities and research institutions have won 154 contracts to date valued at approximately CDN$157 million."

So what is Canada's current rank in the echelons of world arms dealing? Still sixth, are we? Or has this latest investment rocketed us into the Top 5?

And are our pension plan contributions still being invested in these arms dealers? Yup, there they are at the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board website, who report a good return last quarter.

War is a racket.

***JSF do however permit the logo to be used as a nice screensaver, if you're interested.

Bombing them back to the throwing stones age

CRAWFORD, Texas (AFP) - "The United States expressed regret Sunday for any civilian deaths from US-led military operations in Afghanistan, without confirming reports of nearly 90 killed in one incident this week.
"We regret the loss of life among the innocent Afghanis who we are committed to protect," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said as US President George W. Bush spent time on his Texas ranch."


Initially "US-led coalition forces denied killing any civilians" in Thursday's airstrike.
The next day they thought there might be five.
An Afghan minister who visited the area put the civilian death toll at 90, a human rights group at the scene estimated it at 78 and the Interior Ministry reported 76 noncombatants dead, including 50 children.

The attacks sparked angry protests on Saturday from locals, who set fire to a police vehicle and waved banners reading “Death to America”.
A school principal and police official said Afghan soldiers tried to hand out food and clothes Saturday in Azizabad — the village where the U.S.-Afghan operation took place Thursday. But villagers started throwing stones at the soldiers, who then fired on the Afghans and wounded up to eight.

Karzai responded by firing two top Afghan commanders for "negligence and concealing facts". The operation was led by Afghan National Army commandos with air and ground support from the coalition, including a US C130 gunship overhead.

Meanwhile, as reported over at The Hill Times, in an article you should really read in full ...

The Sunday Times reported on Aug 17 that the U.S. is planning an 'Iraq-style troop surge' after Americans take over the Afghanistan mission in January.

Janice Gross Stein, director of the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto : "What the United States is talking about is integrating the missions. They recognize that there are serious difficulties arising because there are two separate missions in Afghanistan now, and have been from the beginning: Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), and the International Security Assistance Force. Right now there are two Americans in command of both, and what they are talking about is integrating the bulk of the American troops, who are in Operation Enduring Freedom."

Chris Sands, a senior fellow at The Hudson Institute, a Washington, D.C., [rightwing]think tank (italics mine):
"Canadians are rather conflicted about why they're in Afghanistan. Some people saw this as an apology for not going to Iraq [and] some people actually genuinely think that being in Afghanistan is about helping the Afghan people, and if that's your position then I'd think this is all good, because it's going to be more help and more substantive help."

Some people actually genuinely think it's about helping the Afghan people, he says.

Mr. Sands goes on to explain that the Americans will bring "U.S. professionalism" and "some of the success from Iraq into the Afghan theatre as well".

NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar said he "believes an increased American presence will have "disastrous" results on the ground that will have long-term implications for the people of Afghanistan" due to "the American tactic of aerial bombings where there are civilians" because "that's the way they do things".
He also expects "the Conservative government to "lowball" the degree of American involvement."

"The Hill Times inquired with communication shops at both the Department of National Defence and the Department of Foreign Affairs about an increased American presence in the NATO-led mission, however neither responded.
Conservative MP Deepak Obhrai (Calgary East, Alta.), the Parliamentary secretary to the Foreign Affairs Minister, and Conservative MP Wajid Khan (Mississauga-Streetsville, Ont.), a member of the House Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, were also contacted, but staff for both MPs said they were unavailable for comment."

But in Calgary, Harper had a statement :

"I join with Canadians who stand proudly in support our men and women of the Canadian Forces as they courageously risk their lives every day to bring peace and security to the people of Afghanistan. Their sacrifice will not be forgotten. We will honour their sacrifice by continuing on with this vital mission. Canada's commitment to peace and security in Afghanistan remains resolute. We will not allow the Taliban to deter us from continuing to help Afghans rebuild their country."

Or bombing them back to the stone age.
How long are we going to let Harper get away with this charade of pretending to be one of the fools who "actually genuinely think that being in Afghanistan is about helping the Afghan people"?