David Pugliese, "Up in the air" the Ottawa Citizen,
Saturday, May 29, 2010.
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Up+in+the+air/3086570/story.html
Although this article mentions CANSEC, it deals with "Defence" plans to buy
new war planes to replace Canada's CF-18 fighter jets. The article fails to
mention obvious words like "war," "peace" or "Afghanistan," but does manage to
squeeze in 14 different examples of the euphemistic adjective "defence."
The article refers to "defence officials," "defence strategy," "the defence
community," "defence dollars," "defence spending," "defence industry," "defence
policy," etc., etc. The author interviewed self-described "defence analyst"
Steve Staples of the Rideau Institute "think tank" who expresses his belief that
CF-18s "are more than capable of defending Canada for years to come.")
Unfortunately, the article fails to include interviews with ANY peace or antiwar
activists who might begin to counter the government's "war on terror" or to
suggest that the billions of "defence dollars" earmarked for new warplanes
should instead be spent on socially-useful health, education or environmental
programs. Instead the article states that:
"Critics of the proposed purchase [of new warplanes] agree on the
threat of terrorism, but argue that defence dollars should be used to boost
coastal and border surveillance. "Do we really need to spend billions on a
stealth fighter to shoot down a hijacked aircraft?" asks Steve Staples,
president of the Rideau Institute in Ottawa."
Contrary to such assertions, the new warplanes desired by the government
will NOT be used for "defending Canada" or to "shoot down hijacked
aircraft." Instead, Canada's new warplanes will be used to aid and abet US-led
wars. This should be plain to peace and anti-war activists: War planes are
for waging wars. The only things that warplanes can "defend" are
the profitmaking activities and bank accounts of the war industries contracted
to produce them, and all the other corporate interests that profit from the wars
and regime changes that require warplanes.
Read about Canada's "investments' in the new JSF (F-35) warplane in the section
on "Bristol Aerospace," on pp.14-15, of COAT's magazine issue called "CANSEC:
War is Business."
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/64/64_3-21.pdf