Canada’s Coup-Supporting Corporate Cowboy Diplomacy

Canada’s Coup-Supporting Corporate Cowboy Diplomacy

By Matthew Behrens

            When US Secretary of State John Kerry bloviated last fall about officially ending the Monroe Doctrine (the U.S. belief that God grants only Americans the right to interfere with the internal affairs of other western hemisphere countries), one wonders if Stephen Harper and his foreign affairs pit bull John Baird immediately took the concept on for themselves. Perhaps they also adopted a bit of manifest destiny thrown in for good measure. How else – other than through the lens of someone who truly feels anointed by the heavens – can one begin to understand Harper’s messianic foreign policy, one in which he and John Baird play tag-team John Waynes making the world safe for Canadian corporate profits?

            While it is true that Canada has always had a sense of manifest destiny – the notion that a little bit of Canada goes a long way in “developing” nations, whether that means invading Russia after World War 1, overthrowing the Aristide government in Haiti, or maintaining a genocidal occupation of First Nations – it has not always been trumpeted as loudly as in recent years. Indeed, one can almost hear the alarums playing in their heads as the PM and his trusted sidekick globetrot over to Ukraine, imagining themselves as Churchillian figures standing up against the Russian bear as they support the junta ruling post-coup Ukraine. Needless to say, Ukraine is a pearl awaiting exploitation, as global natural gas producers and investment bankers salivate over this region where Chevron hopes to frack $10 billion of shale oil out of the landscape and the IMF imposes gut-wrenching austerity that will drain away social programs and economic diversity in favour of privatization and evaporation of state funds into the hands of the wealthy few.

            The Ukraine mess is also a boon for weapons manufacturers who, frightened at the slight decline in potential orders as governments try to tighten their belts, now have a new excuse to keep the taps flowing, one as welcome as when the U.S. invited Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait and then, playing bait and switch, rallied the weapons corporations together with massive new funding that most thought would have made for a great post-Cold War peace dividend. Harper’s dispatch of 6 CF-18 fighters to the region (with nary a whisper of outrage from the opposition in Ottawa) is also great PR for a government that will soon use their overseas presence as an advertisement to entice us into supporting the stealth fighter purchase for the purpose of NATO interoperability. For Lockheed Martin stockholders, it’s Christmastime.

            The Ukraine debacle represents the latest in a pattern of Harper/Baird supporting coups and ignoring human rights violations as a nasty but necessary part of doing business. (Though let’s not blame the conservatives too much, for the liberals have a long tradition of supporting gross human rights violations as well. We all too easily forget the war criminality in which Lester Pearson immersed himself over Southeast Asia. Who can forget the Trudeau government’s shamefully immediate recognition of post-coup Chile’s General Pinochet, guaranteeing Canadian mining interests the “stability” they desired to continue business as usual?).

Harper’s psychological apocalypticism

            That Harper can boldly state the Crimea crisis represents the worst threat the world has seen since the end of the cold war reflects what the brilliant U.S. social critic and psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton identifies as “a psychological apocalypticism in which all prior products of the human mind give way to a new collective mind-set” that is “pure, perfect, and eternal.” In the pure and perfect minds of Harper and Baird, there has been no invasion and slaughter of Iraqis claiming over two million lives since 1991, nor the imposition from without of PTSD on an entire nation of people in Afghanistan, drone strikes claiming thousands of lives, genocide in Rwanda and Sudan, or any other horrors that have often been the product of U.S., Canadian, and NATO policies and actions. For Harper, this is his World War II moment, an opportunity in his own pure mind to cement his footprint in history.

            Nonetheless, Harper and Baird’s foreign policy has been touted much of late in editorial pages, picking up on Baird’s idea of a “principled” approach to the world. On March 27, Canada’s foreign affairs minister pounded his podium and declared: “Challenging and confronting those who threaten freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law” is where he wants his representatives abroad to “distinguish themselves.” Of course, such rhetoric is used equally easily by the likes of Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush, and is emptier than a California aquifer in the middle of that state’s record-breaking drought.

            For anyone willing to take even a cursory look at the Harper/Baird record, it is clear that this duo is acting as the advance guard to sell the world Canadian weapons that can be used by repressive regimes and private militias who are defending Canadian mining and petroleum companies from the democratic aspirations of peasants, labour organizers, and journalists who question why their air, water, land, and rights must be despoiled in the interest of Canada’s economic prosperity. Canadian trade officials are now openly embedded into Canadian business organizations and trade associations, such as the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI), which claims half of its $12 billion in annual revenues come from overseas sales http://www2.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/archives/story.html?id=7ac5a3a6-ed4a-4133-9db9-5535727cbafd. Ottawa has made no secret of its desire to grow its arms export market, including to such rights violating countries as the U.S., Mexico, Pakistan, Bahrain, Iraq, and Egypt. In fact, back before he became a convenient whipping post, the Ukraine government of Viktor Yanukovich was the recipient of over $80,000 in weapons, some of which may well have been used in the repression of last winter’s protests.

Canada Supporting Coups

            Canada’s global mining industry similarly presents Canada with an opportunity to support the coups and repressive regimes that host them. In Guatemala, for example, where some five dozen unionists have been murdered in the past five years, favoured trade status with the EU and US is under threat for that government’s failure to investigate these murders. Canada has been silent no doubt because conditions are perfect for record mining company profits (http://www.miningwatch.ca/news/road-justice-speaking-tour-bring-attention-guatemala-mining-conflict-need-remedy-canada)  In the same neighbourhood, Canada supported the 2009 coup in Honduras by opening up free trade talks, while Nobel Laureate Jody Williams noted, “The Canadian embassy remains silent on the human rights abuses committed by mining companies, while playing a prominent role in facilitating high-level meetings for corporations.” (http://www.canadians.org/fr/node/8298) John Ralston Saul writes that some three dozen Honduran journalists have been killed since 2009 with impunity: only two convictions have been registered in these crimes. (http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Canada+should+press+Honduras+free+speech/9719393/story.html)  

            Ottawa has treated post-coup Egypt with kid gloves as well, refusing to condemn the overthrow of the democratically elected Morsi government, claiming in retrospect that because Morsi tended toward the autocratic, there was no need to return him to power (an argument one could perhaps use in the case of Stephen Harper as he bulldozes through with omnibus legislation and his “Fair Elections” Act). Canada continues regular relations with Egypt while that country holds Canadian citizen and Al Jazeera reporter Mohamed Fahmy, and pretends all is well as 529 individuals were sentenced to death last month following an in absentia trial lasting less than one hour.  The Egyptian government, meanwhile, has not been held to account for the murder of over 1,200 civilian protesters and the mass jailing of over 16,000 people  (http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/03/24/egypt-shocking-death-sentences-follow-sham-trial), and Canada has increased weapons sales to Egypt by 83% (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canada-exporting-arms-to-countries-with-suspicious-human-rights-records/article15817569/). Not to be worried about the ongoing repression, Canada maintains at least 13 trade commissioners in its Egyptian embassy (http://www.tradecommissioner.gc.ca/eng/find-trade-contacts-list.jsp?cids=304&search=+Submit+)

            Just to the west of Egypt lies the mess in Libya, created with the full cooperation of the Harper government (and its NDP opposition, which had no trouble fully supporting the illegal NATO bombing campaign that ousted the Gaddafi regime). There are no headlines calling out for justice in Libya, where dozens have reportedly been tortured to death, with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights noting that “members of the armed brigades freely admitted, and even tried to justify, the physical abuse of detainees.” http://www.refworld.org/docid/524fe6634.html  These are the same militias who worked hand-in-hand with Canada and NATO, but in the Harper paradigm, it’s a new day in Libya, and the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service declares: “Whether you are looking to export, invest, attract investment, or develop innovation and R&D partnerships in Libya our trade commissioners are available when and where you need them.” The commission’s website does caution about travel risks and terrorism, but not a word about torture. http://www.tradecommissioner.gc.ca/eng/office.jsp?oid=154

            Meantime, Canada and the United Arab Emirates AE have signed a nuclear cooperation agreement even though the government’s own internal briefings shows Ottawa is well aware of human rights abuses, noting “international human rights organizations believe that national security has been used as a pretext by the U.A.E. government to suppress dissent and repress activists asking for democratic reforms.” http://www2.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/archives/story.html?id=1f0c4679-27b5-4e92-b514-8c804fa6fddb

Economic Diplomacy Rules the Day

            Given Canada’s focus on “economic diplomacy” with the world, it makes sense that the profits being made from exporting coal to China (Canada has gone from shipping $13 million in 2007 to well over $1 billion now) cannot be tampered with by speaking out forcefully on behalf of Canadians illegally jailed there, such as Burlington’s Huseyin Celil, a Uighur who continues to suffer in extreme isolation behind bars while Harper welcomes a China Investment Corporation office in Toronto.

            Similarly, for all the self-serving rhetoric about liberating women in Afghanistan as an excuse for the illegal occupation of that country, Canada has been fairly tight-lipped about repression of women in Saudi Arabia, to which $10 billion in light armoured vehicles (which were used to help suppress Arab spring demonstrators in neighbouring Bahrain) are being sent from London, Ontario.

            While President Obama tries to thaw out relations with Iran, Ottawa goes harder on Tehran, even declaring that country a state sponsor of terrorism. Perhaps Canada’s role as a petro state has something to do with the stance, for as the Financial Post baldly stated last September 27, a warming up of relations with Iran means Iranian oil could flood the world market, driving down the price of Canadian petroleum products. And while Syria is now on the backburner (with Canada conceding fewer than ten Syrian refuges have actually made it to Canada), Canada waited until after the Olympics to drive home the point that Russia has continued to support the Assad regime. While Harper was making that point one fine day in September, 2013, the very same day two trade ministers were in Moscow to bolster economic ties with Canada as a “top of mind” partner. Russia was called a priority market, and two-way trade grew exponentially from $179 million in 1999 to over 2.65 billion in 2012. The “evil” Putin was in power most of that time, and invaded other territories (South Ossetia in 2008, Chechnya in the 1990s), but with little sense of outrage from the so-called west.  

            While space does not permit a comprehensive overview of Canadian foreign policy here, the trends are clear. The idea that Canada will be, in the words of Mr. Baird, pressing for human rights, the rule of law, and freedom in its dealings with the world is so Orwellian as to debase the oft-used term. It’s not so much a double standard as it is a single standard, the one that emerges from the state of exceptionalism with which the Canadian government views itself on the world stage. In this pure and perfect world, there is no such thing as contradiction or irony, complicity with torture and human rights abuses, legacies of colonialism and economic strangulation. No, there is only the truth of economic prosperity as tweeted and facebooked by government ministers and regurgitated by a pliant press.

Canadian Weapons Repress Women

            In this cynical game, the problems of the world – torture, refugee crises, poverty, environmental destruction – are an annoying but easily dismissed backdrop best reflected in the rah-rah statement of Jayson Myers, president of Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters. While Human Rights Watch found that “In Saudi Arabia, 2013 was another bad year for human rights, marred by executions and repression of women and activists,” Myers gushed (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canadian-firm-wins-arms-deal-for-saudi-arabia-but-concerns-raised-about-human-rights/article16897175/) upon the recent news that the Saudi dictatorship would be receiving billions in Canadian weapons: “This is an Olympic win for Canada and for Canadian manufacturers. It shows how great people in truly innovative companies like General Dynamic Land Systems Canada can compete internationally and bring home the gold. Like all victories, it’s been the result of a team effort in which the government has played a crucial role. All Canadians should be proud of this record achievement.”

            If that news doesn’t have you running the maple leaf up your flagpole, nothing will.

 

Santa Claus Rejects NORAD Escort; May be Placed on No-Fly List

 

December 17, 2013

            In a little-noticed news release emanating from the North Pole, a jolly senior citizen has asked that his image not be co-opted this holiday season by the Canadian War Dept. and NORAD. In addition, the gentleman, who identified himself as Santa Claus, also refused the militarized escort that NORAD said would be tracking his annual flight around the world.

            "I don't want war planes on my tail, and I don't want children to think I am in any way associated with the type of organization that plans for things like nuclear war and space warfare," Claus said in an exclusive telephone interview with rabble.ca. "Your War Dept. misrepresents me the same way the sales of war toys misrepresent me. I don't make machine guns and toy tanks, and I certainly do NOT want an escort from warplanes or to be tracked by an organization which is working to militarize the heavens."

            Claus was particularly concerned that NORAD uses this annual opportunity to glorify warplanes and drones which are used to drop bombs on and mutilate children in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, noting that last week, dozens of people in a Yemeni wedding party were massacred by a drone-fired  Hellfire missile.

            Santa says he is disturbed to again find himself the focus of the annual military public affairs operation, designed to normalize for children the idea that the military – as well as military alliances which plan and constantly threaten life on the planet with nuclear warfare, pre-emptive invasions, and environmental destruction – is a benign outfit.

            “I also don’t need to be tracked,” Claus says. “This is the era where we are learning that CSEC in Ottawa and the NSA are watching every move everybody makes, and it’s getting ridiculous. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer has gotten ulcers out of concern that every time he sneaks into the bushes to do his business, it winds up on some database somewhere and could be used to embarrass him in front of his fellow creatures.”

NORAD LIES ABOUT CLAUS

            The NORAD Tracks Santa website (www.noradsanta.org/‎) is a paean to militarism, inviting young children to play at war and offering videos that are recruitment vehicles featuring martial music more akin to a 1980s Tom Cruise bomb-em-up flick than a period of peace and good will to all. Indeed, one four-minute video making the rounds of community newspaper websites around the globe opens with an image not of Santa but of bomber planes.

            “One of the videos says I did a test flight in cooperation with NORAD, which is a total lie,” Claus said, bemoaning the fact that the tracking site features numerous tributes to an organization that has the power, along with its other “northern command” partners, to commit the ultimate act of nuclear terrorism and obliterate the globe.

            One video features a small child (perhaps the son of US military personnel) stationed in Djibouti, one of over 700 U.S. bases occupying the globe and also the site of a command centre from which drones are launched in countries like Yemen and Somalia. (Djibouti troops do not, notably, maintain a military base protecting their own interests in Florida or Manitoba). While the child talks of going to the beach and riding his bike, it does not mention that one month ago, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights heard evidence on Djibouti’s role in the U.S.-led (and Canadian-supported) rendition to torture and secret detention program. (http://www.interights.org/news/130/index.html)

            The NORAD tracking site also features holiday songs performed by – who else – the Air Force Academy Band.

            “In the same way the militaries of the world try to convince us that humanitarian aid cannot be delivered without sniper rifles or bombing the heck out of a village first, now they are trying to show that Christmas cannot happen without all of their firepower, and that Christmas carols cannot be sung unless by people who’ve been trained to kill,” Claus said. “Well, I have news for them. The trillions spent on war are what deprive most children of happy holidays, regardless of when they celebrate them.”

            Meanwhile, a heavily redacted Access to Information request appears to reveal why NORAD is tracking Santa, and early indicators are it has nothing to do with his protection nor his mission of delivering joy.

CSIS NAMES SANTA SECURITY THREAT

            According to the highly classified document from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), “The Service has reasonable grounds to believe that [name blacked out, but clearly a reference to Claus] is a member of an inadmissable class of persons to Canada based on a variety of associations, travel patterns, and other indicators which constitute a threat to the security of Canada.”

            Among those highly suspect findings, CSIS notes, is Santa’s long beard (“worn in the traditional Muslim fashion that could inspire some radicalized youth to follow bearded individuals such as Osama bin Laden”), his visitation to countries throughout the Middle East and refusal to demonize anyone (“a disturbing inclination towards supporting the human rights of Palestinians,”), his large donations of gifts (“he may be transporting illicit materials that could place him on the United Nations 1267 list, thereby barring him from travelling with goods that could fall into the wrong hands”), past associations (“[subject] did attend at Robben Island prison compound and provide material aid to Nelson Mandela and other members of African National Congress, which Service maintains was, is, or could be a terrorist organization”), has signed petitions urging the release of immigration detainees (including children detained in refugee jails across Canada) and in support of environmental protections (“Service notes subject supports same causes as eco-terrorists trying to block oil sands development”), and his failure to carry a passport.

            “Service also notes that Mr. Claus uses several aliases possibly as a means of avoiding detection, including Jolly St. Nick, Kris Kringle, and, in a special code with woman alleged to be Mrs. Claus, ‘tubby old sock,’ origin for which is still a mystery to Service but further investigation will reveal.” Claus also appears to be under surveillance for carrying of “suspicious” sacks, studious avoidance of customs, and his “religious head gear,” the last of particular concern to Quebec security services attempting to pre-emptively enforce their so-called Charter of Values.

IS PRANCER A CLOSET MUSLIM?

            CSIS also notes with grave concern that at least two of Santa’s reindeer (Prancer and Vixen) have been reading the Koran and allegedly discussed conversion to Islam.

            It is not surprising that Claus would be the subject of concern to “security services,” whose main goals tend toward monitoring outbreaks of democracy and free-thinking inquiry while harassing specific targeted communities using the same vague profiling against, for example, members of this country’s Arab Muslim communities. Santa certainly does have a record of being involved in the same social justice causes that everyone from CSIS and the RCMP to the FBI and CIA have deemed threats to national security. For example, Santa was recently arrested with Walmart workers seeking a decent wage (https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/11/29-1), while the busiest resident of the North Pole also managed to take an anti-drones message of Peace to the Australian military (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=738RSak2yBI). Santa also performed a tripod action for 9 hours in Glasgow this week to protest immigration raids that break down doors and arrest and detain children simply because they are refugees (http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2012/12/504004.html?c=on#c290190)

            While Santa is proud of involving himself in social justice activities, he does get weary of his image being used to glorify war, especially given that he annually views the painful reality that is a result of relying on military might to enforce injustice and resolve conflicts. "We see all the children of the world, the ones who have lost legs and arms and eyes to landmines and cluster bombs, the ones who have watched parents murdered with Canadian bullets and machine guns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the ones whose only wish for Christmas is peace on Earth, or the return of a parent or sibling killed by an aerial bombardment."

            Claus has joined Homes not Bombs members on many occasions through the years as an ambassador of peace through justice and goodwill. As such, he has been arrested by Loblaws for helping distribute food he took from their shelves (to help pay back the tens of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes owed by Loblaws), protesting sanctions against the people of Iraq which killed over 1 million Iraqis (this with the aid of the Canadian military whose warplanes are set to tail Santa), the use of secret trial security certificates, the production of war toys, L-3 Wescam’s production of drone technology in Burlington, Ontario, the Hamilton War Show, and many others.

            "There are so many causes for me to support, and I want to support them all, but half the time I'm busy trying to correct the false information about me and what I stand for that's presented by the military and the media," Claus said. "I barely have time to speak with you, much less all the other media outlets who request interviews."

CHRIST CONTINUES TO BE DETAINED BY CBSA

            Rabble.ca’s interview with Claus was cut off when he received a call from one of Canada’s top immigration lawyers, Barb Jackman, to discuss his travel options given the increasingly tight Canadian borders for refugees and the possibility that he may be on Canada’s no-fly list. Indeed, it is unclear whether agents of the Canadian Border Services Agency – a federal department with absolutely no independent oversight– will allow Claus to enter Canada, and there are still many unresolved questions regarding its recent rejection of Jesus Christ, who was deemed a failed refugee claimant and a threat to national security.

            Lawyers at the time had asked for information about CSIS interviews with Christ, but because CSIS does not record interviews nor make verbatim notes, there was little to go on. "The Service noted that Christ appeared unusually calm when pressed about his possible association with prostitutes, beggars, and lepers," read a short half page of notes which were eventually declassified. “Christ also seemed hesitant when asked whether an individual named Joseph was his father, a sign that he was withholding the true nature of his character.” Christ’s anti-government activities also raised a red flag for Canadian border officials.

            Christ was also deemed to be a security threat because he allegedly uses a number of aliases, including Prince of Peace, Jesus of Nazareth, and the Son of God. He had travelled to Canada, like most refugees, on a false passport, because if he had used his real name on travel documents, Roman authorities may have picked him up before he could have fled the country. Christ was also deemed inadmissable to Canada because of his criminal record; he, like all refugees coming to this country, are considered not worthy of being accepted even if those convictions have occurred in countries where there is no due process or internationally recognized legal system. Worse, refugees who have been convicted of minor offences which would be deemed "summary" (or lesser) offences if convicted here in Canada have their record interpreted as indictable (or more severe) upon their arrival here, regardless of the circumstances.

            In another mark against Christ, CBSA points out one particular incident in which the refugee applicant was "particularly violent, overturning a table used by moneychangers in a temple frequented by Canadian money speculators." Canada's Criminal Code notes that a terrorist is anyone who "damages property outside of Canada because a person or entity with an interest in the property or occupying the property has a relationship with Canada or a province or is doing business with or on behalf of the Government of Canada or a province."

            While Christ remains in detention with hundreds of never-charged  immigration detainees in Lindsay (many of whom are again on hunger strike), Santa will no doubt be writing the phone number of his lawyer on his arm in the event he needs to make that call. If there’s nothing under your tree December 25, you may want to consider posting bail for the latest in a long line of wrongly imprisoned migrants and travellers caught up in the nightmare of Canada’s immigration regime.

           

  

Canada Aids and Abets the Spectre of Nuclear Terrorism

By Matthew Behrens

Earlier this year, Michael Walli made a blunt confession in a Tennessee court. “I was employed as a terrorist for the United States Government,” he told the judge hearing his case. And sure enough, Walli is facing down a potential 35 years in prison for what his prosecutors successfully argued was an action that fit the “federal crime of terrorism.”

            Walli is an army combat veteran of the U.S. invasion of Vietnam, and is certainly  not the first to take some personal responsibility for America’s genocidal occupation and relentless bombing of Southeast Asia  (with at least 3 million murdered). Indeed, as the recent book Kill Anything that Moves reminds us, American military units were committing so many atrocities that the Pentagon opened up its own, secretive war crimes investigation unit. 

            But his participation in such crimes is not what led Walli to that Tennessee court. Rather, it was a peaceful protest against nuclear terrorism and the U.S. construction – in clear violation of the nonproliferation treaty –  of a new generation of nuclear weapons. Unlike Iran, the U.S. has used – and threatened to use – nuclear weapons for almost 70 years, in the form of atomic bombs as well as depleted uranium-coated ammunition that has left a cancerous wasteland behind in Iraq, among other countries where it has been used by U.S. and NATO forces.

            Walli, joined by Sister Megan Rice (aged 82) and Greg Boertje-Obed, all veteran peacemakers, entered the Y12 nuclear weapons site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee on July 28, 2012, cutting through four fences and making their way right to the Enriched Uranium Materials Facility which, as the venerable magazine Nuclear Resister notes, is “the largest storehouse of bomb-grade uranium in the world. They marked the building with blood, painted disarmament messages on the wall and hung banners. Symbolic of beginning to transform swords into plowshares, they also hammered a few chips of concrete from the building’s foundation before being seen by security guards and arrested.”

            It was the latest in a 33-year legacy of scores of similar protests known as Plowshares Actions that have directly confronted militarism in its most physical forms, from pouring blood on B-52 bombers to hammering on nuclear weapons nose cones at a General Electric factory in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. All such actions have been well-planned, almost always involve a faith-based statement, and are committed to nonviolence.

            On June 20 of this year, Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama, according to an Associated Press dispatch filed from Berlin, appealed “for a new citizen activism in the free world” to reduce nuclear stockpiles and confront climate change. Yet his Attorney General has piled on the charges against the Plowshares activists who were engaging in just such citizen activism. All are scheduled to be sentenced in September. While lengthy prison sentences have often been the fate of those confronting the nuclear state, the equation of nonviolent protest with terrorism is consistent with what critics have long argued is one of the main purposes of so-called anti-terrorism legislation: squashing dissent.

            In his usual unctuous fashion, Obama’s dishonest speech in Berlin belied the facts of nuclear weapons development. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), at the start of 2013 eight states possessed approximately 4,400 operational nuclear weapons. Nearly 2,000 of these are kept in a state of high operational alert. SIPRI also notes that if all nuclear warheads are counted – operational warheads, spares, those in both active and inactive storage, and intact warheads scheduled for dismantlement – the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan and Israel possess a total of approximately 17,270 nuclear weapons. As SIPRI indicates in their 2013 annual report, the five leading nuclear weapons powers “appear determined to retain their nuclear arsenals indefinitely.” Last year, NATO concluded that nuclear weapons would remain a core component of their arsenal and strategic planning (with no peep of protest from Canada).

            Canada’s response to this reality is, among other activities, a secretive working plan to ship large amounts of bomb grade uranium from Chalk River through the Ottawa Valley and to the United States for “reprocessing.” Anyone who thinks this uranium will not wind up in a new nuclear weapon might be interested in some oceanfront Arizona property. Until 2008, Canada had mined more uranium than any other country in the world – including the raw materials for those first flashes of unforgettable fire that decimated two of Japan’s civilian cities during World War II – and now accounts for over 15% of worldwide production. Among its largest clients are countries that continue to violate the non-proliferation treaty. At the same time, those who are front-line victims of the chain of nuclearism are indigenous people who have mined the uranium and had its waste dumped on their lands.

Worldwide war spending, including for nuclear weapons, now tops $1.75 trillion, an amount perhaps so infinite that it becomes meaningless. As hunger and other social ills plague billions of people, few in the political world dare question this massive waste of resources,  including the over $20 billion annually flushed down Canada’s own rathole of militarism. Indeed, the official NDP opposition last ran on a platform of equaling the Harper government’s war spending.

            As we approach the landmark days in August marking the anniversaries of the murderous use of atomic weapons against the undefended cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is a good time to not only reflect on the nature of nuclearism, but militarism itself. We must also remember the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden, the napalming and carpet bombing of Southeast Asia, the NATO terror bombings of the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq – clearly war crimes as defined at Nuremberg – as well as all atrocities supposedly committed in the name of religion, freedom, and democracy.

            Militarism creates its own state of permanent exception: anything done in the name of “national defense” is above the law, any calls for accountability are laughed off as unpatriotic, and resistance is treated as heresy. While eminent scholars Richard Falk and Robert Jay Lifton once argued that nukes were “indefensible weapons,” perhaps it is time to shift our frame to the whole business of war as not only indefensible, but completely incompatible with democracy. Shifting the language might help as well, reminding people that War is Always Terrorism.

 Canada’s own War Department, it was recently revealed, is so bloated, so over-funded, that it has been sitting on a pile of over $2 billion in unspent cash. While social programs suffer, the homeless die on Canadian streets, and women cannot find shelter from male violence, the War Department remains a sinkhole of taxpayer monies, the largest single use of discretionary federal spending and one that is increasingly immune to oversight given its refusal to share details – even with officials such as the Parliamentary Budget Officer – of its operations and spending plans. Indeed, the Ottawa Citizen reports that former CSIS head Richard Fadden, now a deputy minister at the War Department, has recently written to say he will not provide Parliament with any details on new warships, armoured vehicles, and other unnecessary purchases.

            All this serves as part of a long-standing trend in which democracy is sacrificed on the altar of a war economy.  Whether it is the clear deception that the Harper government continues to employ to try and sucker Canadians into spending scores of billions on stealth fighter bombers, shutting down Parliament to prevent hearings on Canadian complicity in the torture of Afghans, or the secretive plans to ship by truck highly radioactive uranium down Highway 417 along the Ottawa River so the U.S. can continue to upgrade its nuclear weapons, it is clear that the objections of citizens have  been pushed to the side as an unwanted annoyance.

            This is, of course, not new. Indeed, shortly after the passage of Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act, resisters against militarism, who were holding weekly vigils in 2002 to transform Toronto’s Moss Park Armoury into housing for the homeless and underhoused, found "Security Zone in Effect” signs around the perimeter, language coming directly out of the Anti-terrorism Act and clearly aimed at the organizers from Homes not Bombs. Similarly, at Hancock Air Force Base in New York State, special injunctions seeking to bar peaceful protesters from the entrance have been issued to maintain the silence around the drone strikes that are launched from within. At protests outside Canada’s drone manufacturer of choice, L3 Wescam, protesters were threatened with civil action for nonviolent trespass. 

            The antidote for such diseases as militarism and the secrecy that undergirds it is democratic participation, perhaps through education, boycott and protest. For others, it may take the form of direct interference with the tools of global genocide via Plowshares Actions or the nonviolent civil resistance action that last week saw 23 people arrested at a Honeywell plant in Kansas City, where key components for that new generation of nuclear weapons are being developed.

            Not everyone is prepared to risk jail for their conscience. But at the very least, we can support those who, with love in their hearts and a passion for justice that burns brighter than any weapons flash, continue to push back against the state of exception called militarism. One thing everyone can do is write a letter to members of Transform Plowshares now looking at being jailed until 2048 – essentially life imprisonment –  for their simple act of saying “No.”. They are also encouraging people to send letters to the judge who will sentence them in September. More information is available at http://transformnowplowshares.wordpress.com/

           

  

              

              

Canadian Vets Victimized by National Security State

Canadian Vets Victimized by National Security State

By Matthew Behrens

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper chose this year to spout his annual Remembrance Day propaganda half a world away in Hong Kong, the symbolic nature of his distance from a growing number of Canada’s alienated and neglected veterans seemed quite apropos.

            Indeed, while war veterans have never enjoyed the support they required, the gap between “support out troops” rhetoric and the miserable reality of countless veterans’ lives has become increasingly wide in the Harper years. The list of scandalous treatment is voluminous, including high rates of untreated post-traumatic stress disorder (at least one in four Afghan vets suffers from PTSD), homelessness among former soldiers, clawed-back benefits, refusal to pay proper funeral expenses, and increased rates of alcoholism and drug abuse, along with huge increases in violence committed against loved ones, significant governmental invasions of privacy, and demonization of any vets who dare speak up for their rights.

            Numerous vets have remarked on the irony that the biggest battle they ever wage is with the government whose uniform they wear, with some of those epic struggles lasting decades. “We shouldn’t have to fight on Canadian soil,” declared wheelchair-bound veteran David Desjardins in 2011 after four years of struggling to get his benefits.

            Times and rhetoric may change, yet soldiers remain the cannon fodder of the national security state. They serve as a useful symbol of the virile values celebrated by the War Department and all of Canada’s “mainstream” political parties. Trained to dehumanize and kill their opponents, most never overcome the natural inhibition against murder and torture, and suffer the debilitating consequences on their return to a society that raises its eyebrows at their failure to “adjust”.

            Once home, they are ultimately abandoned by those who sent them to the front lines, a disconnect perhaps best illustrated by the image of Conservative MP Rob Anders snoozing through a hearing on veterans’ concerns (and his subsequent comments attacking the vets who spoke up in protest). Then there’s veteran advocate Sean Bruyea, whose file at Veterans Affairs grew to some 14,000 pages, with his confidential medical and financial files seen more than 4,000 times by over 850 people. One Veterans Affairs memo famously advised staff that it was time to take the gloves off with Bruyea, who subsequently told the Ottawa Citizen  “to be accused of being an enemy, that shocked me.”

            While the War Department’s top-heavy PR team pumps out stories of amputees who “come back” by taking part in events like the Army Run (now the fastest-growing marathon in Canada), they work in equal measure to hide the stories of departmental incompetence and neglect.

            Perhaps that’s because the presence of soldiers who do not return in one piece physically or psychologically – whether survivors of horrific injuries or self-medicating addicts dealing with psychic pain – remind us that war is not glorious and noble, but a brutal reality whose truths need to be hidden from the next generation of recruits. Harper announces a program for rehiring of veterans, but veterans complain they don’t get a fair shot and are passed over. Could part of that be fear that the appearance of a double-amputee co-worker might prompt others in the workplace to remember that war is not the clean, bloodless video game it’s so often made out to be?

            This is not a new story. Every year, regardless of who holds power in Ottawa, we read Auditor General reports, ombudsman conclusions, medical analyses, and individual accounts of armed forces members who are struggling to survive with the horrors they participated in and which were inflicted upon them. Family members travel to Ottawa to plead their cases, news headlines report that veterans’ concerns are falling through the cracks, ancient veterans are sitting in courts trying to have class action lawsuits settled from half a century ago, while beribboned generals do luncheon talks about how warriors never leave anyone behind.

            The abuses that soldiers suffer when they seek compensation from the Canadian government are similar to how the government treats everyone from torture survivors and targets of racial profiling to First Nations activists and environmentalists. All are viewed as enemies, and attempts to seek justice are met with a stonewalling bureaucracy that employs the tools of secrecy, deception, surveillance, harassment, and demonization to dismiss their concerns while upholding the image of military and spy agencies as “honourable” institutions incapable of doing any wrong.

            And so the list of those who suffer grows. Looking back over the past few years of government indifference, perhaps we should remember the children of Petawawa, whose anxiety and stress disorders when a parent was deployed overseas were described by the Ontario ombudsman as a crisis, with many children considering suicide. The Ontario and federal governments dickered over who should pay for counseling, leaving the children and their loved ones as bereft political footballs. Then there were the soldiers suffering PTSD who were simply shipped back to Kandahar. Unforgettable as well was the response of the War Department to countless cries for help from PTSD-sufferers who were waiting many months, despite suicide attempts, to see a psychologist: that help came in the pathetic form of a self-help video borrowing the wisdom of Star Wars character Yoda that “if you believe, you will achieve.”

            Even if soldiers do find health care, the Auditor General pointed out in 2007 that the military fails to keep track of whether its medical staff have the requisite licences and certifications. In 2008, then veterans affairs ombudsman Mary McFadyen found a military health care system stretched to the limit, with CFB Petawawa, home to 5,000 troops, served by only one psychiatrist and one psychologist.  Four years later, another report stated the situation at Petawawa was still a “crisis”, with the War Department cutting medical doctors involved in suicide prevention and treatment of PTSD.

            It’s hard to rile up the population to head off to new wars when the human damage done to soldiers is apparent (not to mention the civilian cost we never hear about in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other places where Canadian Forces have wreaked havoc). These inconvenient facts are simply not part of Remembrance Day. Harper doesn’t want us to remember that in August, 2012, the Ottawa Citizen reported that families of soldiers are being denied basic benefits and supports by a hugely bureaucratic system. Equally unpleasant was the finding last February of Veterans Ombudsman Guy Parent that legally required, clear explanations for rejection of benefits have not been delivered, and that “the appeal processes available in case of objection are formal, time-consuming, inconvenient, often intimidating to veterans and may be very costly.” That Auditor General had previously identified this in 1998, as had the Veterans Affairs Department itself in 2004 and 2010, but nothing has changed.

            While some soldiers are remembered, others are swept aside, such as Canadian Paeta Hess-von Kruedener, who while working in a clearly marked UN observer post in Lebanon in 2006 was killed with three others by a 500 kg Israeli smart bomb. The inquiry into his death was a whitewash, Canada’s alliance with Israel clearly deemed of greater importance.

            And then there’s the story that reeks of the worst aspects of Canada’s war culture: secrecy, dishonesty, deception, abuse and the reckless neglect that led to the suicide of a young Canadian soldier in Edmonton.

            During the spring and summer of 2012, a remarkable battle of wills played out in a small commission room in downtown Ottawa, home to the rarely convened Military Police Complaints Commission. The grieving parents of Canadian soldier Stuart Langridge wanted to know answers, but were met with denial, cover-up, and threats from some of Canada’s most powerful institutions. 

            Attendees at the commission hearings were struck by the presence of Stuart’s mother, Sheila Fynes, sitting in the front row as the most intimate details of her son’s 28 years were revealed, cross-examined, doubted, and attacked by government lawyers. Her strength, resolve, and courage, taking on the power of the military – the War Department had even ordered her not to contact them because of her relentless search for truth – was reminiscent of Peg Mullen, a similarly strong-willed mother whose efforts to find out what happened to her son in Vietnam were documented in the book and movie, Friendly Fire.

            For Fynes, this commission was the follow-on to three previous investigations which appeared designed to absolve the military of any blame in Stuart’s suicide. Witnesses to the inquiry revealed the story of a bright and humorous young man who began changing after deployment to Bosnia and whose personality underwent a severe about-face after his return from Afghanistan, with a half dozen suicide attempts, drug and alcohol abuse, night terrors, and an inability to access the help he needed from the military.

            Throughout the summer, the family agonized as government lawyers claimed confidentiality prevented them from releasing key documents. These might show that the military took extreme steps to cover up the details of Stuart’s case, rewriting the narrative to remove any connection between Stuart’s PTSD and the failure to properly treat him, leading to the eventual tragic outcome. Indeed, it came out that officials censored and slashed a report that revealed Stuart was on suicide watch.

            As a final insult, War Minister Peter McKay, the self-proclaimed friend to military families, refused to allow this family access to the interim report of the commission, which will only be seen by one side of the case (the military). Their full access to its preliminary findings will allow them the kind of input that may assist in the whitewashing of their role.

            Stuart’s father, Shaun, a former RCMP officer, did not mince words when he testified at the inquiry.

            “My son is dead because he didn’t get the proper care,” he declared.  “It’s disgusting what they did to my son. He was killed by the military.”  He added that Stuart didn’t “fall between the cracks, he was stuffed between the cracks,” and rather than being cut down after his body was discovered, was left hanging like a slab of meat for five hours.

            As the Fynes anxiously await the outcome, wondering if they will at last get not only answers, but also the kind of recommendations that will help others with PTSD, thousands of families deal with the daily horrific consequences of war on the home front. While McKay warns the military ombudsman not to be an advocate for veterans, families are forced to undertake the kind of extreme measures employed by Greg Woolvett, a father who, after his son’s two suicide attempts, literally kidnapped the soldier from CFB Petawawa for treatment in Windsor.

            All of which leads us to the conclusion of David Snyder, the father of a Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan, who told CTV in 2008, “War is stupid. Everybody knows that. Well, no they don’t. The politicians don’t know that.”

            Something to remember year-round.

(This piece appeared on rabble.ca as part of a monthly series of columns called Taking Liberties)

War Dept. Drones on With Summer Splurge

War Dept. Drones on With Summer Splurge

By Matthew Behrens

With student activists away for summer vacation, it was the perfect occasion in late July for Carleton University to celebrate a new $40 million war training contract. In partnership with war manufacturer CAE, Carleton’s Visualization and Simulation Centre will enable Canadian Forces to better practice, in the coarse but memorable phrase of former Canadian warlord Rick Hillier, the fine art of killing people.

         In a moment that would have done Orwell proud, Carleton President Roseann O’Reilly Runte gushed: “This is about saving lives. This is about saving money.” On hand for the announcement was foreign affairs minister John Baird, who boasted this war training partnership will advance  “Canada’s security interests and…Canadian values around the world.”

         If such values are so great, one wonders why they need to come out of the barrel of a gun. But that’s a non-issue in a national security state: when everything comes down to the rhetoric of “saving our way of life” from some unknown threat, and protecting “our soldiers” from the threats we often arm to begin with, everything becomes justified, from transfers to torture to starving the poor of billions to pay for the War Dept.’s high-tech toys.

         Such announcements regularly occur on Canadian university campuses, but hopefully it will spur at Carleton the kind of protest that shut down similar attempts to exploit bright young minds for nefarious purposes (such victories occurred at OISE and the University of Toronto (http://www.homesnotbombs.ca/battellebooted.htm.)

         The Carleton University contract was one of numerous  boondoggles announced during summer break by a Canadian War Department that’s busily seeking our new enemies and new rationales to shield the lion’s share of a $23 billion budget that is unquestioned by all major political parties. The military is so awash in funds that last March, their expenditures jumped 14% and no one could explain why.

         In May, Canada’s Parliamentary budget watchdog remarked that the Harper government had deliberately misled the public on the costs of the F-35 stealth bombers (a deception built upon bureaucrats within the War Dept. also ignoring their own internal warnings that the bomber project was  plagued by serious troubles).

         Shortly after, we also learned that War Minister Peter MacKay had also low-balled government figures by almost seven times when he discussed how much it cost to drop bombs on the people of Libya (over $350 million at last count). Needless to say, the Libyan “mission,” as it was delicately called, was an important benchmark for MacKay and the generals, who got to play with new equipment and push for new weapons programs as a result.

         Meanwhile, the drawdown in Afghanistan – where Canadians fired off almost 5 million bullets in one 20-month period – is making some Canadian soldiers itchy. In one Ottawa Citizen interview, a Kingston sergeant explained that garrison life on the home base “really discourages a lot of guys. The question becomes, ‘When do we go next?’ Adrenalin is a drug and they need the heart-pumping excitement and that level of unknown to keep them happy now.”  (http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Just+what+next+Canada+warrior+spirit/6681564/story.html). Thus, war is an experience we must incessantly provide to those trained to be warriors, finding new enemies and places to bomb so we can keep our soldiers happy.

         Some of the boys apparently got what they wanted when millions were wasted last month as a Canadian contingent of 1400 soldiers were shipped off to Hawaii to take part in the U.S.-led Rim of Pacific war exercises, an attempt to remind China of who’s boss on the world stage (and perhaps to reassure Canadian mining firms that help is not far away when Asian locals agitate over poor working conditions, toxic spills, or the murder of their union leaders).

         The irony here is that at the same time we are preparing for war – if necessary – with China –  the busy Mr. Baird signed a deal to export increasing amounts of Canadian uranium to the nuclear weapons-holding government of Beijing, a slap in the face to nuclear non-proliferation.

         And while the Pacific was being pounded with ordnance, we also learned the Canadian Forces are working to establish bases in the Caribbean, East Africa, Europe and Southeast Asia. This allows Canada’s military to “project combat power/security assistance and Canadian influence rapidly and flexibly anywhere in the world,” according to a memo signed by Canada’s top soldier, Walter Natynczyk. (July 20, Ottawa Citizen)

         Part of that power projection will be done not so much with  human beings who – despite thorough indoctrination in home-grown training camps to eliminate their sense of empathy with those they are commanded to kill or transfer to torture – remain vulnerable to the twinges of humanity that lead to afflictions like post traumatic stress, depression, and suicide. Rather, the path forward is the remote control warfare that has become de rigeur over the past decade.

         Indeed, the eagerness of War Minister Peter MacKay and his cronies to grab their joysticks and bomb from the safety of five thousand miles away in Playstation fashion is clearly palpable. The U.S. and Israel have long dominated in the global use of drones (unmanned aerial vehicles), but now most countries are getting in on the act because of cost savings (especially relative to multi-billion contracts like the F-35 stealth bomber) and the relatively lower political costs (no troop deployments, no body bags from “our side,” no embedded media who might step outside the boundaries and inspect the “collateral damage” on the ground).

         And so we have also learned that Canada’s poor will have to sacrifice an additional $1 billion so that armed Predator drones and their Hellfire missiles will be part of Canada’s growing arsenal.

         The drones are also touted as vehicles by which Canada somehow “saves lives,” but this equation always leaves out the lives at risk on the ground. Over 3,000 souls have been slaughtered from the skies in the not-so-secret and clearly illegal drone war waged by Obama and his minions in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the rapidly evolving technology is also being used to prevent refugees from finding asylum and to target political demonstrations. Drones represent the ultimate tool in a 24/7 surveillance and punishment society: the forces of control can always monitor us and, when convenient, vaporize us, without any sense of transparency or accountability.

         They’ve been used extensively by Obama in his targeted assassination program, and are increasingly privatized to take them out of the already limited loop that would provide any measure of accountability. Indeed, private mercenary firms like Blackwater are deeply involved in arming and conducting drone strikes, thus privatizing larger portions of what’s known as the “kill chain.” Ironically, by the rules the Pentagon plays, such use of private mercenaries creates a whole new army of “unlawful combatants” who, if captured by the Taliban, would have no rights under the Geneva Convention. But such a scenario is unlikely, since the Taliban cannot invade the safe sanctuaries in New York and Nevada in which drone “pilots” sit in air conditioned comfort and fire the missiles.

         The usual rationale for anything military these days is being touted in the drone PR: it is to protect “our Arctic” (and the precious resources that we stole from First Nations) from anyone who’d steal them from us. But even the War Dept. knows this is a red herring, as an internal assessment revealed in late June concluded Russia poses no threat to the region (http://www.canada.com/news/Russia+move+protect+Arctic+interests+threat+Canada/6831454/story.html)

         But corporations like Northrup Grumman are not letting logic or the facts get in the way of a good profit, and so in June pitched the Canadian government at the annual Ottawa weapons bazaar, CANSEC. War merchants have until September 28 to submit their tenders to provide the Canadian War Dept. with a fleet of Hellfire-armed Predators.

         In addition to the direct damage caused by drone strikes, they play a huge role in projecting psychological torture on those who live beneath them.

            Last year, Pakistan’s Foundation for Fundamental Rights, in conjunction with UK human rights group Reprieve, brought together 350 people to discuss the traumas of life under the drones, which many reported seeing ten to 15 times a day. The anxiety of never knowing when the hovering drones will strike is unimaginable: war by drone is a form of torture, an indefinite death sentence hanging over the heads of villagers that can be executed at any time of the day and night. And the victims never know what hit them, as Hellfire missiles travel faster than the speed of sound. In addition, after a drone strike, villagers often face death squads who believe someone in the village provided targetting data. Kidnappings and torture ensue, a convenient extension of the “kill chain” that begins back in a Nevada bunker.

         The social justice group Homes not Bombs has long protested at the site of Canada’s largest drone profiteer, L-3 Wescam, located right next door to a private elementary school in Burlington, Ontario. The group conducted their first attempted weapons inspection of the plant in late 2002 and numerous direct actions have followed, but such challenges have, unfortunately not slowed the relentless search for newer targetting systems (though one employee informed the group of a resignation, spurred to leave when s/he discovered the true nature of their work).
         L-3 Wescam announced last month at the UK’s annual Farnborough weapons show the launch of its MX™-10D electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) imaging and designating turret, with their equipment showing, in the lifeless language of murder, “exceptional performance in all modes of flight throughout the HELLFIRE operational envelope.”
         Canadians concerned about remote control murder, the rights of refugees, and freedom to associate would do well to resist Canada’s new generation of drone warfare: with this technology, the wars have truly come home.