MILNEWS.ca News Highlights – 11 Nov 11

• Be sure to remember.  And not just today.
• Remembering (1)  Different generations remember different things (but aren’t entirely different). “Gus MacGillivray spent four years on Canadian and British ships in the North Atlantic during the Second World War, hunting submarines and fighting off the navy of one of the world’s most powerful militaries. Mat Belear served two tours of duty in the desert of Afghanistan, trying to push back the Taliban’s guerrilla army and give the Afghans a fighting chance at establishing a democratic government. The experiences of these two men illustrate just how much warfare has changed over the decades and the extent to which the notion of veteranhood is being steadily redefined. But when they met for the first time, at the Amherstview Legion near Kingston, they had a lot of things in common ….”
• Remembering (2a)  One Afghan vet’s remembrance of how he remembered while in Afghanistan.
• Remembering (2b)  Words from Afghanistan.
• Remembering (2c)  Remembering in Kabul (via CF Info-Machine).
• Remembering (2d)  Wounded warriors remember those who didn’t return.
• Remembering (2e)  Defence Minister Peter MacKay drops by Kandahar for 11 Nov - more here.
• Remembrance (3)  What happens down the road?  “Approximately 10 per cent of the one million Canadians who fought in the Second World War are alive today, and according to Veterans Affairs Canada, they’re dying at a rate of about 50 every day. Factor in their average age of 87 years old — which tops the average Canadian’s life expectancy of 79 years for men and 83 for women — and at that rate, the numbers suggest the 125,000 surviving Second World War veterans will be gone soon — very soon. When the “Greatest Generation,” as they are known, has disappeared Canadians will lose the faces and voices most closely associated with Remembrance Day ….”
• Remembering (4)  Remembering on a reserve where Aboriginals fought for both Canada and the U.S. since the Civil War.
• Remembering (5)  Words from the Veterans Ombudsman.
• Remembering (6)  Words from the PM.
• Remembering (7)  Ceasefire.ca, again, trying to re-brand Remembrance Day.
• Scumbags!  “Members of a veterans’ group in London, Ont., say they’re stunned after someone stole 10 poppy donation boxes from the group’s office. Officials say the suspect or suspects broke through a window at the Canadian Corps Association on Dundas Street last Sunday night and stole the boxes. It’s not clear how much money was lost ….”
• Afghanistan (1a)  Canada’s cenotaph at Kandahar Air Field is coming home – to someplace in Ottawa.  More in the backgrounder here, and from previous discussion here on where it should go at Army.ca.
• Afghanistan (1b)  Animated map:  where Canada’s fallen came from - more here.
• Afghanistan (2)  Cookies to Kandahar.
• Afghanistan (3)  More from the CF Info-Machine on packing up in Kandahar.  “In October 2011, the Mission Transition Task Force (MTTF) fielded a team of specialist technicians to service the airfield lights on the civilian side of Kandahar International Airport. Mounted on poles in banks soaring to 75 feet, the lights help ensure safe landings for aircraft and their crews and passengers. None had seen any maintenance in more than a year ….”
• Afghanistan (4)  Military police officer gets dinged for trying to mail weapon magazines and a weapon scope home.
• Employers still not entirely convinced that military service (even in a war zone) can be a positive asset in a potential employee.
• “The federal government spent more than $569 million arming the country’s soldiers, RCMP officers, fisheries officials and airport workers in the last fiscal year, according to government documents. With the war in Afghanistan and ongoing training at home, the Department of National Defence spent $562.7 million on weapons and ammunition between April 1, 2010 and March 31, 2011, the most of any of the nine federal departments or agencies that had arms spending, according to the government’s record of annual accounts ….”
• Not entirely surprising, given the physical nature of most military work.  “Physiotherapists in the Canadian Forces treat injured soldiers on the battlefield through to rehabilitation back in Canada. An estimated 25 per cent of Canadian Forces personnel access physiotherapy services each year, and many require long-term rehabilitation programs ….”
• What’s Canada Buying?  Veterinarian services for military poochies working out of Ottawa, Petawawa and Richmond, Ontario (more from bid document excerpt – 4 page PDF – here), scientific support to improve merging of IR and other imagery for better target acquisition and more work on high-tech target acquisition as part of the “Soldier Integrated Precision Effects (SIPES) weapon prototype interface”.
• More on Cherry & RMC.  “…. One teacher is not the principal villain here. The fault lies with RMC’s leadership for not rallying with a fighting spirit to defend its decision. One hopes that RMC has sufficient battlefield courage to see off the fabrications of a lowly French teacher. It was likely the motion of the faculty board, comprising all the professors and chaired by the principal, which cowed the administration. That poses a rather more disturbing question. Does the faculty board motion accurately express the professoriate at RMC? If so, our future officers are being trained by those significantly out of step with the Canadian people and the rank-and-file members of the armed forces ….” Good questions.
• “Lone-wolf terrorists, cyber thieves and meddling foreign states are among the biggest threats to Canada, a top spy official has warned in a rare public speech. “The threat is not just one of foreign terrorists invading our borders, but of violent extremists developing from within,” Andy Ellis, an assistant director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, told a security conference in Ottawa on Wednesday. But he added that CSIS is going abroad to counter threats, and continues to dispatch spies to Afghanistan ….”

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