CANADA - Secret Saudi Arabia Arms Deal

SOURCE http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/harper-assured-details-of-saudi-arms-deal-would-stay-under-wraps/article26105853/ Harper assured Saudi Arabia details of arms deal would stay under wraps STEVEN CHASE OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail Published Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2015 3:00AM EDT Last updated Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2015 6:26AM EDT Ottawa is contractually obliged to keep secret the details of a controversial $15-billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia – a transaction that Stephen Harper personally assured the country’s monarch will be guaranteed by the Canadian government, documents say. Foreign Affairs e-mails obtained by The Globe and Mail under access-to-information law indicate the Saudis have made excess publicity about the sale of armoured fighting vehicles a deal-breaker. Officials were scrambling behind the scenes in January, after media coverage of the arms deal, to determine the consequences of publicly releasing the terms of the Saudi contract. Aliya Mawani, a Canadian diplomat based in Riyadh, the capital, told Foreign Affairs colleagues on Jan. 21 that “we [the government] would be breaking the terms of the contract” with Saudi Arabia if details were made public. “The contract is under a Canadian government guarantee in terms of fulfilment,” Ms. Mawani wrote in a Jan. 21 exchange with colleagues on why Ottawa couldn’t make the terms public. “This was confirmed in writing by our Prime Minister in his letters to the King,” she said, speaking of Mr. Harper and the late Saudi King Abdullah. A cloak of secrecy surrounds this agreement, first announced in 2014, with Ottawa refusing to divulge any substantial information on the vehicles Canada is selling to the Saudi regime – or how it justifies the sale to a nation known for human-rights abuses. A federal agency responsible for sales to foreign military, Canadian Commercial Corporation, is actually the “prime contractor” for the transaction even though it is General Dynamics Land Systems Canada in London that manufacturers the vehicles. Records obtained by The Globe offer a great deal of insight into Ottawa’s role in brokering the transaction, which supports more than 3,000 jobs in Canada. In another government e-mail exchange in January of 2015, Brigette Walenius, deputy director with Foreign Affairs' Middle East-Maghreb Commercial Unit, cited General Dynamics officials who spoke of a “confidentiality clause in their contract with the Saudis” and how Riyadh “could terminate [the] contract if too much info is released.” Nonetheless, senior Canadian officials were delighted at the deal behind the scenes, e-mails show. Mr. MacDonald, Canada’s envoy in Riyadh, gave Ottawa early notice that the deal was coming together as far back as 2012. In an October, 2012, e-mail with the subject line “GDLS lands the Big One,” Mr. MacDonald informed Foreign Affairs staffers, referring to General Dynamic Land Systems. The Canadian ambassador ends this e-mail with a jubilant expression “Gotta LOV the LAV!” but not before sketching out some bare-bones details. He wrote that General Dynamics “have been chasing” the contract since 2009 and it’s a boon for the plant in London, Ont., because the company’s work on LAVs for Canada’s mission in Afghanistan was wrapping up as the Canadian combat mission ended in 2011. These new orders will “replace the decline from Canada’s Afghanistan withdrawal,” Mr. MacDonald said in his e-mail. The ambassador wrote that the LAVs “are going to be ‘fully loaded,’” that they would be the “most advanced ever made” and that delivery would start 38 months after the contract was signed and last another 108 months, or nine years. A separate January 21, 2015, e-mail from an official in Foreign Affairs’s export-control division said documentation received from General Dynamics to date suggests the vehicles could possibly include turreted LAVs “equipped with automatic firearms.” The Canadian government is nevertheless taking care to play down the Saudi connection. In one case, Foreign Affairs appeared to have struck references to Saudi Arabia from speaking notes prepared for a cabinet minister’s media event at the request of the Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC), which is handling the LAV deal. An official from the government agency previewed speaking notes for Minister of State Lynne Yelich before a January 9 media event to celebrate a Saskatchewan-based company’s role as a sub-contractor in the LAV sale. “Thanks for letting me know what the speaking notes are,” Lina Seto, then a CCC official, wrote Foreign Affairs. She asked for “the removal of one of the mentions of the buyer country,” adding this was “important to the supplier,” meaning General Dynamics. “We are sensitive to the Saudi Arabia references, due to confidentiality,” Ms. Seto explained in an e-mail to Foreign Affairs on January 7, 2015. A final version of these speaking notes obtained by The Globe under access-to-information law contains no reference to Saudi Arabia as the buyer. Several years ago, the Conservative government in Ottawa refocused international relations to make “economic diplomacy” in service of private industry the centrepiece of Canadian foreign policy. SOURCE http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/harper-assured-details-of-saudi-arms-deal-would-stay-under-wraps/article26105853/ ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- COMMENT Canada has dispensed with democracy, transparency, and accountability, in favour of "economic diplomacy" IN THE SERVICE OF PRIVATE INDUSTRY. Wow. This is huge. Canada is a corporate dictatorship. This article illustrates why the press generally, why whistleblowers, and why whilstleblower publishers/journalists like WikiLeaks, are so important to keeping government open, accountable, representative and therefore closer to democratic than government would otherwise be, were those in government permitted to run their own show, without question. ꕤ

‘Espionage Den'

‘Espionage Den' Westerners can see a Hollywood re-enactment of the early days of the hostage-taking, “Argo”, the wildly popular but very inaccurate docudrama, winner of 2012 Best Picture Oscar ... In addition to Canada’s cloak-and-dagger role during the siege, the visit is made especially piquant because of the “conspiracy” surrounding the Stephen Harper’s decision to cut all diplomatic relations with Iran in 2012. Harper’s personal crusade to demonize Iran reached a bizarre high/low point when Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird announced the severing of relations with Iran in 2012 just hours before “Argo” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. “Life imitates art” takes on new meaning. The Tehran embassy had indeed been a ‘nest of spies’, as the Shah was the most reliable US ally in the Muslim world, along with Turkey’s Kemal Ataturk the only Muslim leader who recognized Israel, and it was only natural that the CIA made the US embassy in Tehran ‘mission control centre’ for all US espionage activity in the Muslim world. Officially, the US has since admitted that there were at least three bona fide CIA agents among the captives. The six diplomats rescued by Taylor were consular workers, so they probably were not CIA agents. No money changed hands as a result of the siege, and there were no American casualties, except for eight Marines who died when their helicopter crashed in the Iranian desert in Carter’s first bungled rescue attempt in April 1980. The 52 hostages were flown to Algeria January 20 1981, 20 minutes after Reagan concluded his inaugural address, the first move in what came to be known as the Iran-Contra affair. Reagan’s foreign policy team had secretly agreed to exchange arms-for-hostages with the Iranians, now at war with Iraq. Since 1979, the United States government has officially had no dealings with the Iranian government, and is represented in Iran by the United States Interests Section of the Embassy of Switzerland in Tehran. This is belied by the hostage crisis itself, as Reagan swore his oath of allegiance in 1980, resulting in their release, and by the subsequent Iran-Contra Affair, when Reagan authorized selling arms to Iran to fight Saddam Hussein (who of course also received US arms and much more to fight the Iranians), funneling the proceeds to the Nicaraguan contras in Reagan’s own personal jihad against the socialist Sandinista government. With reality this bizarre, who needs fiction? The visit to the embassy was bittersweet. Clearly Iranians are now of two minds about this time warp into their anguished past. The museum is generally closed, and visits require special arrangements for both foreigners and Iranians. Iranians uniformly want to restore relations with the US. Yes, in the siege, the US was reaping the fruits of decades of imperialist intrigues, notably its involvement in the overthrow of the Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 and the reinstalling of the Shah, who kowtowed to the US and Israel, and presided over a ruthless and unpopular dictatorship, turning Iranians against the US. At the same time, Carter, who lost the 1980 election to the trigger-happy Reagan primarily due to the hostage crisis, was America’s most liberal president, now revered as a humanitarian. Reagan’s foreign policies were far more militaristic, leading to Bush and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, hardly policies that were favorable to Iran. RANDOM EXTRACTS ARTICLE BY:   Eric Walberg SOURCE  http://www.eurasiareview.com/03012015-espionage-den-american-ghosts-tehran-oped/ COMMENT Really enjoyed this article.   These are only random extracts.  Full article is on link above.