Canadian Arms Sale Promotes Misogyny, Royal Repression
[ http://www.globalresearch.ca/canadian-a ... on/5377929 ]
By Yves Engler Global Research, April 15, 2014
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper claims to take “strong, principled positions in our dealings with other nations, whether popular or not.” But, even the most ardent Conservative supporters must wonder what principled position is behind the recent government-sponsored arms deal with Saudi Arabia that will send over $10 billion worth of Light Armoured Vehicles to one of the most anti-woman and repressive countries in the world.
Saudi Arabia is ruled by a monarchy that’s been in power for more than seven decades. The House of Saud has outlawed labour unions and stifled independent media. With the Qur’an ostensibly acting as its constitution, over a million Christians (mostly foreign workers) in Saudi Arabia are banned from owning Bibles or attending church while the Shia Muslim minority face significant state-sanctioned discrimination.
Outside its borders, the Saudi royal family uses its immense wealth to promote and fund many of the most reactionary, anti-women social forces in the world. They aggressively opposed the “Arab Spring” democracy movement through their significant control of Arab media, funding of authoritarian political movements and by deploying 1,000 troops to support the 200-year monarchy in neighbouring Bahrain.
The Conservatives have ignored these abuses, staying quiet when the regime killed “Arab Spring” protesters and intervened in Bahrain. Worse still, the Harper government’s hostility towards Iran and backing of last July’s military takeover in Egypt partly reflects their pro-Saudi orientation. In a stark example of Ottawa trying to ingratiate itself with that country’s monarchy, Foreign Minister John Baird recently dubbed the body of water between Iran, Iraq and the Gulf states the “Arabian Gulf” rather than the widely accepted Persian Gulf.
Ottawa hasn’t hidden its affinity for the Saudi royal family. Baird praised a deceased prince for “dedicat[ing] his life to the security and prosperity of the people of Saudi Arabia” and another as “a man of great achievement who dedicated his life to the well-being of its people.”
“I am very bullish on where the Canadian-Saudi Arabian relationship is going,” Ed Fast told the Saudi Gazette in August. On his second trip to the country in less than a year, Canada’s International Trade Minister boasted about the two countries’ “common cause on many issues.”
Fast is not the only minister who has made the pilgrimage. Conservative ministers John Baird, Lawrence Cannon, Vic Toews, Maxime Bernier, Gerry Ritz, Peter Van Loan, and Stockwell Day (twice) have all visited Riyadh to meet the king or different Saudi princes.
These trips have spurred various business accords and an upsurge in business relations. SNC Lavalin alone has won Saudi contracts worth $1 billion in the last two years.
As a result of one of the ministerial visits, the RCMP plan to train Saudi Arabia’s police in “investigative techniques.” The Conservatives have also developed military relations with the Saudis. In January 2010, HMCS Fredericton participated in a mobile refueling exercise with a Saudi military vessel and, in another first, Saudi pilots began training in Alberta and Saskatchewan with NATO’s Flying Training in Canada in 2011.
The recently announced arms deal will see General Dynamics Land Systems Canada deliver Light Armoured Vehicles (LAVs) to the Saudi military. Canada’s biggest ever arms export agreement, it’s reportedly worth $10-13 billion over 14 years.
MORE:
[ http://www.globalresearch.ca/canadian-a ... on/5377929 ]
Canadian Arms Sale Promotes Misogyny, Royal Repression
3 posts
• Page 1 of 1
Canadian Arms Sale Promotes Misogyny, Royal Repression
by Oscar » Wed Mar 25, 2015 3:17 pm
- Oscar
- Site Admin
- Posts: 9103
- Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 3:23 pm
Re: Canadian Arms Sale Promotes Misogyny, Royal Repression
by Oscar » Wed Mar 25, 2015 3:20 pm
Blood Money: These Companies and People Make Billions of Dollars from War
[ http://www.globalresearch.ca/blood-mone ... ar/5438657 ]
By Lily Dane Global Research, March 25, 2015 The Daily Sheeple 24 March 2015
Theme: Militarization and WMD, US NATO War Agenda
More than 50% of US Government Spending Goes to the Military
War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it. – George Orwell
[ http://www.amazon.com/1984-Signet-Class ... amazon.htm ]
The late United States Marine Corps Major General Smedley D. Butler is perhaps most famous for his post-retirement speech titled “War is a Racket.” [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket ]
In the early 1930s, Butler presented the speech on a nationwide tour. It was so popular that he wrote a longer version as a small book that was published in 1935. [ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/092291 ... 0922915865 ]
Butler points to a variety of examples, mostly from World War I, where industrialists whose operations were subsidized by public funding were able to generate substantial profits essentially from mass human suffering.
The work is divided into five chapters:
1.War is a racket
2.Who makes the profits?
3.Who pays the bills?
4.How to smash this racket!
5.To hell with war!
It contains this summary:
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people.
Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
What Butler was candidly describing was later referred to as the “military-industrial complex”[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E ... al_complex ] by Dwight D. Eisenhower, who warned Americans of its existence in his farewell address in 1961: [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower ... ll_address ]
WATCH VIDEO: 2 min. 31 sec.
[ http://www.globalresearch.ca/blood-mone ... ar/5438657 ]
By Lily Dane Global Research, March 25, 2015 The Daily Sheeple 24 March 2015
Theme: Militarization and WMD, US NATO War Agenda
More than 50% of US Government Spending Goes to the Military
War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it. – George Orwell
[ http://www.amazon.com/1984-Signet-Class ... amazon.htm ]
The late United States Marine Corps Major General Smedley D. Butler is perhaps most famous for his post-retirement speech titled “War is a Racket.” [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket ]
In the early 1930s, Butler presented the speech on a nationwide tour. It was so popular that he wrote a longer version as a small book that was published in 1935. [ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/092291 ... 0922915865 ]
Butler points to a variety of examples, mostly from World War I, where industrialists whose operations were subsidized by public funding were able to generate substantial profits essentially from mass human suffering.
The work is divided into five chapters:
1.War is a racket
2.Who makes the profits?
3.Who pays the bills?
4.How to smash this racket!
5.To hell with war!
It contains this summary:
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people.
Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
What Butler was candidly describing was later referred to as the “military-industrial complex”[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E ... al_complex ] by Dwight D. Eisenhower, who warned Americans of its existence in his farewell address in 1961: [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower ... ll_address ]
WATCH VIDEO: 2 min. 31 sec.
- Oscar
- Site Admin
- Posts: 9103
- Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 3:23 pm
Re: Canadian Arms Sale Promotes Misogyny, Royal Repression
by Oscar » Sun Dec 20, 2015 7:31 am
" GR Editor’s note - This article first published in January 2015 is of utmost significance. "
= = =
We Sold What? Canada Signs Billion-Dollar Weapons Deal with Saudi Arabia
[ http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/01/23/Ca ... pons-Deal/ ]
By Jonathan Manthorpe Global Research, December 19, 2015 The Tyee 23 January 2015
Canadian-built Light Armoured Vehicles III, pictured above, are equipped with multiple weapons. Source: Government of Canada.
Saudi Arabia is the main provider of weapons to “Islamic terrorists” inside Syria including Al Nusrah and ISIS.
Are Canadian weapons being supplied to Syria based terrorists via Saudi Arabia. The matter requires investigation.
* * *
Turns out, Saudis to use our military vehicles to protect against dissenters.
This much you know: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has sealed a multi-billion-dollar deal to buy light armoured vehicles from Canada.
Here’s what you might not know: The Saudi regime is buying these vehicles not to defend the nation from foreign threats, but to protect the regime from Saudis — from internal dissent and demands for reform.
Although both the Canadian and Saudi announcements of the deal early last year — which is being offered up by Ottawa as a triumph for Canadian manufacturing — were shy on detail, various reports say the LAV III light armoured vehicles, made by General Dynamics Land Systems Canada in London, Ontario, are not for the Saudi Arabian Army.
According to reports in a variety of specialist military publications — including Jane’s, the UK-based group of defence industry publications — the LAV IIIs are for the National Guard (SANG), a 100,000-strong force of Bedouin tribesmen and Wahhabi religious zealots whose prime task is to protect King Abdullah and the royal family from domestic opponents.
Indeed, the SANG acts as the king’s personal army, is not administered by the Ministry of Defence and is commanded by his son Miteb. One of the SANG’s main duties is to protect the monarch from military coups. Another is to guard the country’s Muslim religious sites.
MORE:
[ http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/01/23/Ca ... pons-Deal/ ]
= = = = =
Saudi arms sale “unprecedented”
[ http://www.ceasefire.ca/?p=19228 ]
Posted on July 22, 2014 by Ceasefire.ca in Blog
Canada’s deal to equip Saudi Arabia with armoured vehicles is even larger than previously thought, according to official data obtained by Project Ploughshares through an Access to Information request (Kenneth Epps, “New facts confirm unprecedented size of Canadian arms deal to Saudi Arabia,” Project Ploughshares, 22 July 2014). [ http://ploughshares.ca/2014/07/new-fact ... di-arabia/ ]
Information gathered from the Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC) indicates that the two contracts awarded by the CCC to General Dynamics Land Systems Canada to sell military equipment to the Gulf monarchy totaled $14.8-billion.
“These contracts are unprecedented in the history of the CCC, a crown corporation in Ottawa that arranges back-to-back contracts between Canadian suppliers and foreign governments,” says Kenneth Epps, senior program officer at Project Ploughshares. “Each contract dwarfs recent CCC awards for military exports to other Canadian-based contractors.”
Combined, the deals account for the lion’s share of the $15.5 billion in military contracts awarded by the CCC during fiscal year 2013-2014.
In fact, “this latest total is an order of magnitude greater than equivalent annual totals for the majority of years in this century,” said Epps.
The deal is so big that the Gulf kingdom has displaced the United States as the largest annual benefactor of CCC-brokered military export contracts. Canadian military exports to the U.S. shrank to $592.2 million during 2013-14.
“The new contracts change the norm, making Saudi Arabia the alternative major recipient of Canadian arms exports for years to come,” notes Epps.
Based on information provided by the government in February, Epps estimates “that they will span at least 10 years, with average annual shipments worth at least $1-billion. This means that Saudi Arabia is slated to be a major, if not the largest, recipient of Canadian military exports for the next decade or more.”
The CCC hasn’t been neglecting other military clients, however. Back in 2010 the CCC chose a Director of Global Defence Sales to advertise Canadian military exports in untapped markets. Recent export figures point to the success the corporation has obtained, especially in the global South.
The data released to Project Ploughshares indicate that the crown corporation secured contracts with various Canadian companies appraised at $36.2 million for Mexico, $18.8 million for Argentina, $10.9 million for Peru, and $2.3 million for Norway.
Beyond the significant scale of the armoured vehicles deal, the Saudi contracts raise important questions about the efficacy of Canadian export control standards, which are supposed to “closely control” arms exports to human rights violators and regions at risk of armed conflict:
The Saudi government’s abysmal human rights record is well documented. In directing a crown corporation to actively seek out the contracts, the Canadian government has ignored the high risk that Canadian vehicles will become tools of repression. The risk will escalate if Saudi Arabia experiences an “Arab Spring” movement calling for basic rights and freedoms.
Saudi Arabia also boasts the largest military budget in the Middle East, the world’s most militarized region. Huge military expenditures by the Saudi regime provide perhaps the single clearest example of the ‘excessive and destabilizing accumulation of conventional weapons’ warned about by many international agreements to which Canada is a party.
= = =
We Sold What? Canada Signs Billion-Dollar Weapons Deal with Saudi Arabia
[ http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/01/23/Ca ... pons-Deal/ ]
By Jonathan Manthorpe Global Research, December 19, 2015 The Tyee 23 January 2015
Canadian-built Light Armoured Vehicles III, pictured above, are equipped with multiple weapons. Source: Government of Canada.
Saudi Arabia is the main provider of weapons to “Islamic terrorists” inside Syria including Al Nusrah and ISIS.
Are Canadian weapons being supplied to Syria based terrorists via Saudi Arabia. The matter requires investigation.
* * *
Turns out, Saudis to use our military vehicles to protect against dissenters.
This much you know: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has sealed a multi-billion-dollar deal to buy light armoured vehicles from Canada.
Here’s what you might not know: The Saudi regime is buying these vehicles not to defend the nation from foreign threats, but to protect the regime from Saudis — from internal dissent and demands for reform.
Although both the Canadian and Saudi announcements of the deal early last year — which is being offered up by Ottawa as a triumph for Canadian manufacturing — were shy on detail, various reports say the LAV III light armoured vehicles, made by General Dynamics Land Systems Canada in London, Ontario, are not for the Saudi Arabian Army.
According to reports in a variety of specialist military publications — including Jane’s, the UK-based group of defence industry publications — the LAV IIIs are for the National Guard (SANG), a 100,000-strong force of Bedouin tribesmen and Wahhabi religious zealots whose prime task is to protect King Abdullah and the royal family from domestic opponents.
Indeed, the SANG acts as the king’s personal army, is not administered by the Ministry of Defence and is commanded by his son Miteb. One of the SANG’s main duties is to protect the monarch from military coups. Another is to guard the country’s Muslim religious sites.
MORE:
[ http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/01/23/Ca ... pons-Deal/ ]
= = = = =
Saudi arms sale “unprecedented”
[ http://www.ceasefire.ca/?p=19228 ]
Posted on July 22, 2014 by Ceasefire.ca in Blog
Canada’s deal to equip Saudi Arabia with armoured vehicles is even larger than previously thought, according to official data obtained by Project Ploughshares through an Access to Information request (Kenneth Epps, “New facts confirm unprecedented size of Canadian arms deal to Saudi Arabia,” Project Ploughshares, 22 July 2014). [ http://ploughshares.ca/2014/07/new-fact ... di-arabia/ ]
Information gathered from the Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC) indicates that the two contracts awarded by the CCC to General Dynamics Land Systems Canada to sell military equipment to the Gulf monarchy totaled $14.8-billion.
“These contracts are unprecedented in the history of the CCC, a crown corporation in Ottawa that arranges back-to-back contracts between Canadian suppliers and foreign governments,” says Kenneth Epps, senior program officer at Project Ploughshares. “Each contract dwarfs recent CCC awards for military exports to other Canadian-based contractors.”
Combined, the deals account for the lion’s share of the $15.5 billion in military contracts awarded by the CCC during fiscal year 2013-2014.
In fact, “this latest total is an order of magnitude greater than equivalent annual totals for the majority of years in this century,” said Epps.
The deal is so big that the Gulf kingdom has displaced the United States as the largest annual benefactor of CCC-brokered military export contracts. Canadian military exports to the U.S. shrank to $592.2 million during 2013-14.
“The new contracts change the norm, making Saudi Arabia the alternative major recipient of Canadian arms exports for years to come,” notes Epps.
Based on information provided by the government in February, Epps estimates “that they will span at least 10 years, with average annual shipments worth at least $1-billion. This means that Saudi Arabia is slated to be a major, if not the largest, recipient of Canadian military exports for the next decade or more.”
The CCC hasn’t been neglecting other military clients, however. Back in 2010 the CCC chose a Director of Global Defence Sales to advertise Canadian military exports in untapped markets. Recent export figures point to the success the corporation has obtained, especially in the global South.
The data released to Project Ploughshares indicate that the crown corporation secured contracts with various Canadian companies appraised at $36.2 million for Mexico, $18.8 million for Argentina, $10.9 million for Peru, and $2.3 million for Norway.
Beyond the significant scale of the armoured vehicles deal, the Saudi contracts raise important questions about the efficacy of Canadian export control standards, which are supposed to “closely control” arms exports to human rights violators and regions at risk of armed conflict:
The Saudi government’s abysmal human rights record is well documented. In directing a crown corporation to actively seek out the contracts, the Canadian government has ignored the high risk that Canadian vehicles will become tools of repression. The risk will escalate if Saudi Arabia experiences an “Arab Spring” movement calling for basic rights and freedoms.
Saudi Arabia also boasts the largest military budget in the Middle East, the world’s most militarized region. Huge military expenditures by the Saudi regime provide perhaps the single clearest example of the ‘excessive and destabilizing accumulation of conventional weapons’ warned about by many international agreements to which Canada is a party.
- Oscar
- Site Admin
- Posts: 9103
- Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 3:23 pm
3 posts
• Page 1 of 1
Return to MILITARIZATION OF CANADA
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest