Hidden Costs of Harpers War

The Harper government does not release the numbers of Canadians wounded in Kandahar.

Now most injuries not reported

A new policy has clearly emerged. Deaths are still reported but injuries are not, unless one of two scenarios exists. The first is if the injury is so severe, it may very well result in death. The second is if journalists already know about it. If a journalist happens to be in a convoy that is hit and sees the injury, they’ll obviously know about it.

Injuries are increasingly frequent these days. As many as four roadside bomb strikes happen each week. Soldiers are being injured in the process, some of them seriously. Some of them will lose limbs. Others will have their lives irreparably damaged. We won’t know. Whether we should know is another question.

So what’s changed? There is the argument that politicians — fearing a further loss of public support for this mission — don’t want to reveal the true number of injuries. Another school of thought is that the injuries have become so routine, the military doesn’t view them as a “new development” and thus not newsworthy (or publicly releasable). A final argument is that there is now so much violence, the deployed soldiers’ would prefer to reduce the publication of bad news that will further worry their families back in Canada.

As the medevac crew was launched on one medical mission after another, we repeatedly saw Canadian soldiers being loaded and unloaded.

The point is this: soldiers have died in this place, but many more have been injured. The United States, which is engaged in its own largely unpopular war in Iraq, still releases injury statistics. Canada does not.

The long term impact of this war is veterans returning with post combat syndrome. Once upon a time it was called battle fatigue, and those who suffered from it were often summarily executed in the field during WWI. We have come a long way since then. Hardly it remains a hidden injury of war and like other injuries occurring to our troops it is to be covered up from the public according to the Harpocrites.

Nearly 400 of 2,700 Canadian soldiers who have served in Kandahar province might have come home with mental health problems, according to a report by the office responsible for the health of deployed troops.

The heavy toll that the war in Afghanistan has taken on the minds and bodies of Canadian troops has been revealed in data, documents and interviews provided by the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command.

In addition to the 63 Canadian soldiers who have been killed in Afghanistan since February 2006, 243 have been wounded, according to the data.

Waiting lists are stretching from a few weeks to months for Manitoba soldiers seeking psychological help, say officials at a Winnipeg clinic.

Referrals from the Canadian Forces are up 78 per cent over last year, officials at the Operational Stress Injury Clinic in Winnipeg said Friday.

Operational Stress, sometimes known as combat stress, is the term used to describe any persistent psychological problem resulting from military service, including post-traumatic stress disorder.

SEE:

Harpers War Costs Another Canadian Life

Kandahar

Afghanistan

War



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Contracting Out Harpers War

Canada quietly has expanded the use of contracting out and privatization of military operations for Harpers War. Not only is Tim Horton's a private contractor working at taxpayer expense in Kandahar so is SNC Lavalin.

It is Canada's version of Bechtel and Halliburton. And like them it too has been rocked by scandals.But unlike them it is also a war-profiteer making weapons systems and small arms. It processes depleted uranium for weapons use in Iraq and Afghanistan. And your pension dollars help support them.

As this article points out if you want the real date that Canada will remain in Kandahar till, try 2012.

Since Canadian troops deployed to southern Afghanistan in the spring of 2006, the number of contractors working in support and logistics roles has more than doubled to nearly 200.

The privatized support dates back to Canada's multiple deployments in the former Yugoslavia in the late 1990s. Anticipating more overseas mission in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the federal government turned to defence-engineering giant SNC Lavalin, which won a five-year, $500-million contract that has renewal options running until 2012.

The federal government has already quietly opted to renew the contract, which has set renewal dates of 2007, 2009 and 2011.

In Afghanistan, for example, SNC Lavalin-PAE was given a five year, $400 million contract by the Canadian Department of Defense to build and maintain Camp Julien and provide laundry, food and other services to Canadian occupation forces there. And to meet the increasing demand for Quebecois bullets, SNC is building another artillery testing range on Cree land in Waswanipi, Quebec. Opposition to the project is rising in Waswanipi because the range will disrupt an important trap-line used by Cree hunters.

We even have our own version of Blackwater happening in Kabul.

Canada's diplomats in Kabul and visiting high-value targets like Prime Minister Stephen Harper are protected by a group of heavily armed gunmen hired by Saladin Security, a British firm with a long history of secretive and clandestine operations.

Department of Foreign Affairs officials in Ottawa are tight-lipped about the deal struck with Saladin, whose gun-toting employees provide perimeter security, operate checkpoints, serve as bodyguards and form a heavily armed rapid-reaction force designed to move quickly to thwart an attempted kidnapping and rescue survivors of suicide attacks or car-bombings in Kabul.

The department won't even confirm that Saladin's most recent contract - which ended in June of 2007 - has been renewed, but observers of the Canadian embassy in Kabul say Saladin employees remain on guard. Some Saladin guards, in baseball caps and paramilitary uniforms, openly patrol the road outside the Canadian diplomatic compound in Kabul.

But details of the extent of Canada's reliance on a private firm for diplomatic protection are even more scant than the now-controversial U.S. deal with Blackwater Security, the American firm whose hired gunmen killed 17 Iraqi civilians last month while protecting a diplomatic convoy.

Saladin Security, Ltd. is a private military company based out of London and headed by industry veteran Maj. David Walker. The company was orginally established as a subsidiary of Keenie Meenie Services, and financed by John Martin Southern of Blackwall Green, Ltd., in 1978 to handle local contracts. As KMS disappeared from the global stage, Saladin began taking on contracts in the Middle East and Sri Lanka.

They provide military training, weapons procurement, logistical support, post-conflict resolutions, commercial property security, and risk analysis.

Saladin trains the Omani troops and runs their airforce which is flown and maintained almost completely by British personnel. RAF bases in Oman were used as launching pads for American flights into Afghanistan. Saladin, along with KMS, aided the CIA and British Intelligence in arming and training the Mujahideen in the war against Soviet imperialism.

Saladin is currently operating in Iraq.

In 1984, KMS was approved by the British government to train the Special Task Force arm of the Sri Lankan military against the Tamil rebels. The STF was widely reported to have been committing atrocities against the Tamil population and by 1987 KMS had moved their two hundred personnel to Latin America. The British press had reported, though the company denied it, that employees for KMS were quitting their jobs because the Sri Lankan troops were out of control.

During the Iran-Contra investigations, KMS was accused of repeatedly carrying out sabotage operations in Nicaragua that included mining the Managua harbor and destroying enemy camps, buildings and pipelines.

On November 22, 1987 the London Observer's Simon de Bruxelles published a three page proposal from KMS to the CIA suggesting sending small teams of instructors into Afghanistan to train rebels in "demolition, sabotage, reconnaissance and para-medicine."

KMS was accompanied by Saladin Security (a subsidiary) and Defence Systems Limited in their training programs in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Oman.

KMS closed down in the early 1990s, and Saladin began operating more internationally.

The BRITISH ASSOCIATION OF PRIVATE SECURITY COMPANIES (BAPSC) works to promote the interests and regulate the activities of UK based firms that provide armed defensive security services in countries outside the UK.

A Fistful of Contractors: The Case for a Pragmatic Assessment of Private Military Companies in Iraq," by David Isenberg
BASIC RESEARCH REPORT 2004.

Speaking of Blackwater they are used for training Canadian forces used in Afghanistan as well as to train the secret JTF-2 special forces, which have seen action in Iraq.

Select Canadian soldiers have been sent to Blackwater U.S.A. in North Carolina for specialized training in bodyguard and shooting skills. Other soldiers have taken counterterrorism evasive-driving courses with the private military company now at the centre of an investigation into the killings of Iraqi civilians and mounting concerns about the aggressive tactics of its workers in the field.

Canadian military police trained by Blackwater operated in Kandahar last year in support of coalition special forces. Members of the Strategic Advisory Team, which operates in Kabul, also underwent counterterrorism driving training, according to a military official.

The Ottawa-based counterterrorism unit, Joint Task Force 2, has also maintained ongoing training links to the company.

Military officials did not have further details on why Blackwater would be hired, but promised to provide those. Later, however, they did not comment on the matter.

Canadian Forces spokesman Lt.-Col. Jamie Robertson said the military does not discuss its special forces training. But he noted that Blackwater and other firms have been contracted to provide services for other units.

And the Afghan security forces used to protect the PRT in Kandahar are hired guns, euphemistically called contractors, mercenaries by any other name. And they are under the control of warlords.

So what is an occupying army, huddled behind the wire, supposed to do? Well, if you are NATO then you go ahead and pay some trustworthy locals to fight for you. That is, you hire mercenaries. Under the headline, "British hire anti-Taliban mercenaries", the Times of London reports on "newly formed tribal police who will be recruited by paying a higher rate than the Taliban."

Canadian forces, too, are getting in on the action. "For five years Col. Toorjan, a turbaned, tough-as-nails, 33-year-old soldier, has been working alongside U.S. and Canadian forces in Afghanistan as a paid mercenary commander," reports Canada's National Post. "Today, his militia force of 60 Afghan fighters guards Camp Nathan Smith, the Canadian provincial reconstruction team site (PRT) in Kandahar, and guides Canadian soldiers on their patrols outside the base." Toorjan and his armed men "wield significant influence in Kandahar's complex security web", making him a treasured ally, though before 9/11 he was "in effect a warlord", said the second-in-command of Canada's Provincial Reconstruction Team.

The use of mercenaries, it should be noted, runs counter to the International Convention on Mercenaries (1989). Canada, however, along with the USA, the UK and many others, is not a signatory to that treaty.

And the contracting out continues even when our vets retire an go looking for a new job.

OTTAWA, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Oct. 25, 2007) - The Government of Canada today announced new measures to help retiring Canadian Forces Veterans make the successful transition from the military to new civilian careers. The Honourable Greg Thompson, Minister of Veterans Affairs; Laurie Hawn, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence; and Bram Lowsky, General Manager, Right Management, formally launched the national contract for the Job Placement Program.

The value of the contract with Right Management is for up to $18.5 million over the next four years.

Right Management is a subsidiary of Manpower Inc. the temporary placement agency that has benefited from government and corporate downsizing. The Conservatives continue the policy of the Liberals of Reinventing Government by downsizing departments and contracting out. When you contract out you no longer have to worry about staffing costs like benefits, pensions, nor pesky union grievances.

Right Management is a career transition and consulting firm operating in more than 40 countries.

Founded in 1980, Right Management was at the forefront of “inventing” the outplacement industry, and expanded globally to match the footprint of its multi-national clients.

Beginning in 1996, Right Management extended into consulting services to help clients address human resource and organizational consulting needs.

Right Management was acquired by Manpower in January 2004.

Manpower Inc. operates under five brands: Manpower, Manpower Professional, Elan, Jefferson Wells and Right Management.

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The Dialectics of War

Hegelian dialectics influenced Clausewitz as much as Marx. Both used his historiography as the basis of their analysis.

Clausewitz after 9/11

The Prussian master's brilliant analytical method in On War provides richer insights into the contemporary wars against terrorism than anything his glib critics have come up with.
by James Woudhuysen

Clausewitz thought of war in a framework that included his formula, but went way beyond it. That framework, known as the trinity, is usefully re-translated in Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century by Christopher Bassford, editor of the Clausewitz Home Page (4). In Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century, Bassford has Clausewitz, in the famous final section of chapter one of book one of On War, keeping his theory ‘floating among’ three ‘tendencies’, as ‘among three points of attraction’. The three tendencies from which war is composed are:

1. the blind natural force of primordial violence, hatred and enmity
2. the play of chance and probability, within which the creative spirit is free to roam
3. the element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to pure reason.

Bassford’s direct translation of Clausewitz goes on: ‘The first of these three aspects concerns more the people; the second, more the commander and his army; the third, more the government.’

This passage is vital. Andreas Herberg-Rothe treats his formula’s nuances – war as both a continuation of politics and as involving other means – with the careful thought they deserve in the prologue to Clausewitz’s Puzzle . But Clausewitz revisionists do not stop their vulgarisation of the man with his formula. No: Clausewitz revisionists reveal a much wider crisis in bourgeois thought about war.

Clausewitz’s dialectical method

Clausewitz’s method in relation to military affairs will always remain relevant because of his grasp of the importance of polar opposites, and of change, to the totality of interactions that comprise war. Thus Clausewitz both hated and admired Napoleon. His famous concept of friction defined it as ‘the force that makes the apparently easy so difficult’ . As the British historian Michael Howard likewise pointed out in 1983, Clausewitzian dialectics embraced the relations between means and ends; moral factors and physical forces; historical knowledge and critical judgments made in the field; absolute, or ideal, war and real war; attack and defence, and tactics and strategy . In their different books, Herberg-Rothe and Beatrice Heuser fret, as Germans tend to, that Clausewitzian theory inevitably leads to militarism à la Adolf. But they make an even bigger mistake, again in the manner of modern Germans, when they dismiss the way in which Clausewitz’s theory is underpinned by the dialectical philosophy of Georg Hegel (1770-1831).

In his admirable opening chapter to Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century, ‘Clausewitz and the dialectics of war’, Hew Strachan points out that the vitality and longevity of On War derive ‘in large part from its refusal to embrace fixed conclusions’. In this chapter too, and in the editors’ joint introduction, a long-needed counter-attack is mounted on Mary Kaldor. Back in 1999, her New and Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era used the Yugoslav conflicts of the 1990s, as well as war in Rwanda, to distinguish between ‘old’ wars, involving nation states and political motives, and ‘new’ ones, which also involved organised crime and large-scale violations of human rights. In Strachan and Herberg-Rothe’s indictment, then, New and Old Wars turned Clausewitz into ‘not the analyst of war, but the representative fall guy for “old wars”’.

What the critics themselves miss out is that Clausewitz, like Marx, pretended to be neither an encyclopaedist nor a Nostradamus. Both men, rather, encouraged people to think carefully, creatively and self-critically about laws of motion, whether they pertained to capital or to war. Indeed Marx himself, so often written off as an economic determinist, had this to say about ‘economics’ and war. War, Marx wrote in his economic notebooks, ‘developed earlier than peace; the way in which certain economic relations such as wage labour, machinery etc develop earlier, owing to war and in the armies etc, than in the interior of bourgeois society. The relation of productive forces and the relations of exchange also especially vivid in the army.’

Although war generally grows out of the dull relations of peaceful political economy, Marx knew that it could have its own effect precisely on those relations. Clausewitz, as Strachan’s book reminds us, was invigorated by the ideas of the German Enlightenment; he ‘knew full well that policy can expand war as well as limit it’. For both men, the dialectical relations of society were the key thing. No picking of holes, or told-you-so reference to posthumous events, can take away from the insights that still follow from applying their method.

The COMPLETE translation by
Colonel J.J. Graham
published by N. Trübner,
London, 1873

Posted to the web by

SEE:

Dialectics, Nature and Science

Commodity Fetish a Definition

Libertarian Dialectics

A Philosophical Dilemma

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Military Waste

All capital invested in the military is waste as Veblen and Galbraith have pointed. It is the creative destructive aspect of capitalism as Schumpeter called it. Military spending destroys capital, both excess production and workers.

And government waste rises with the increase in investment in military spending. Investment in social programs on the other hand are attacked by the right as spending and waste rather than what it really is investment in social capital.

How much happiness does big money buy the military? A lot less than it hoped.

Even after Liberal and Conservative cash injections, the forces are struggling to rebuild and renew while fighting a very different and difficult 21st century war. Equally worrying for the department, the consensus that led successive governments to boost spending to modern highs is cracking as other political priorities emerge.

Senior government officials and academics confirm entrenched problems aren't evaporating with a budget that will top $18 billion next year, some 27 per cent higher than before 9/11, according to a report released this week.

Its highest since World War II and more than 100 times higher than federal spending to combat homelessness.

While our troops are fighting the war in Afghanistan, the defence department spent $32 million last year on -- furniture

Ah the joy of being part of the NATO Military Industrial Complex.


SEE

The Tory Nanny State

Canada Celebrates Star Wars

The Budget Item Flaherty Forgot

State Capitalism Quebec Style

Defense Lobbyist Now Minister

Derek Burney Voice of America

Contracting Out Is A Crime

Guns and Butter for Conservatives

Liberals Military Heritage

Canada's State Capitalist Success

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Environmentalists Caused Wildfires

So said Mike Brown, ex-head of FEMA during the Katrina debacle, on FOX News. He blamed the California wildfires on environmentalists; he claimed they opposed selective burns of brush and bush areas. While he stated that it is only natural for people to want to move into wilderness areas, including those prone to wildfires. Talk about Republican spin.

Yep environmental issues are behind the wild fires but not environmentalists. As Californian's are finding out that old adage Think Globally (warming ) Act Locally (put out wild fires). And the excuse that the fires were arson does nothing to halt the fact that they were fueled by Santa Ana wind's and as a result of climactic changes brought on by Global Warming.

Al Gore though art avenged.


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Black and White

Blaming Others

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Aliens and American Politics

It seems that aliens have become a theme in American Presidential politics. And I am not talking about Mexican migrant workers.

Democrats see them and Republicans are ready to blast them out of the skies.

It is the difference between libertarian and Law and Order approaches to politics.

Did Congressman Dennis Kucinich see a UFO?

A new book soon to be released says he did.

The book is written by one of Kucinich's closest friends, actress Shirley MacLaine, who attended his wedding in Cleveland in 2005.

Giuliani: Preparedness is key (even if aliens attack)

Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani yesterday said preparedness will be key for all crises, even an attack from outer space.

During a town hall meeting in Exeter, a young questioner asked the former New York mayor about his plan to protect Earth.

"If (there's) something living on another planet and it's bad and it comes over here, what would you do?" the boy asked.

Giuliani, grin on his face, said it was the first time he's been asked about an intergalactic attack.

"Of all the things that can happen in this world, we'll be prepared for that, yes we will. We'll be prepared for anything that happens," said Giuliani, who spent the day campaigning in the key early voting state.

SEE:

Libertarians for U.S. President

Iraq; The War For Oil

Telus About UFO's

Horse and Carriage

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Broken English

"Never a government fall down because of a throne speech."

Mike Duffy Live: Liberal Leader Stephane Dion explains why his party did not vote against the throne speech

But they fall down laughing when the Leader of the Opposition speaks.

See:

House Divided

Does Bilingualism Matter?

Should Liberal Leader Be Bilingual

Dion Sucked

Kennedy And Dion

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Another BT Bites The Dust

Bad week for Blogging Tories first Canadian Blue Lemons closes up shop now so has Dust My Broom. Too bad, so sad.



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Troops Out Now!

Day of Action Against the Wars - Saturday, October 27

Canada Out of Afghanistan and U.S. Out of Iraq.

Gather at Corbett Hall at 1:00 p.m., march down Whyte Avenue to TransAlta Arts Barns.






SEE:

Afghanistan




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Labour Rally Today

AUPE and other unions are calling for changes to the labour laws in Alberta in favour of workers.

October 26, 2007
There will be a rally on Friday October 26 at the Alberta Labour Board at 3PM (10808 99 ave) AUPE along with many other concerned Albertans will be presenting the Albertan Government with thousands of letters asking the government to change Alberta's antiquated Laws. Please help spread the word and most certainly bring family and friends
www.albertasolidarity.com

Abolishing the Labour Relations Board would be one solution.

"The employing class and the working class have nothing in common."
Preamble to the IWW Constitution

See:

Alberta's Padrone Culture

Temp Workers For Timmies

Labour Shortage = Union Busting

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