upset
 

whenever i read the newspaper on both the local and international sections... it all looks so wrong...

(But its curious that I get more upset with the small scale tragedies (like a murder) than large scale catastrophes (like natural disasters or the consecuences of putting into practice the doctrines of the ultraneoliberals and ultraconservatives (with an added good dose of subjacent bad will for good measure...) )

anyways...

i read this evening one small article, one that mentioned one data (which i cant fully believe) and that im not sure the author of the article fully understood its possible consecuences(as it was a tangential data not the focus)...

as i have found no way of confirming it (but it is from one of the two major newspapers of spain) it would be nice if someone could tellme if its true or false( and on what he bases that)

what i read on the newspaper was that 28% of the soldiers of EEUU are SOF, or "contractors", or "problem solvers" or "paramilitay" or whatever you want to call it (except mercenarys which are banned because of the Geneva convention), incorporated on Private Military Contractors. And that there are plans for that percentage rising up to 50%...

is that true?

Are you sure they are soldier? Or just working for the army as civil contractor or specialist?

I had a friend who was working for the army as a translator (arabic to english). He wasnt a military, just a contractor. Needless to say, after the 911 I couldnt see him online much.

So maybe the article was talking about these civils... I find it hard to beleive too... I dont like army / war (except in games and films) but I rather like the soldier to work for an ideology than money. It just seems to be a trouble magnet...

The liberal media loves ther consperacies don't they? Well there are a lot of civilian like truck drivers, engineers, mappers weatherman , analysist and so on. The millitary does contract out work and run somewhat like a business. Like the old joke, Mechnical engineers make bombs while civil engineers make targets. In other words, that is prabably true but if the article did not break it down with sources and where these "poelpe" come from I would somewhat disregard the artcle as someones attempt to shock and get published.

Not saying the conservatives do not have their heads in the sand sometime also.

Mantat:
i dont know, but i would be interested on looking some official statistics about the matter... if someone knows in what place to look for and find em...(probably those gross stats are free info and webpublished by some government branch?)
(i have actually seen some offficial yearly gross budgets of Spain,EEUU,France and Germany... so it is that i just dont know where to look for those data in particular...)

edit:
textual translation:
"28% of the weapons platforms depending on PMC personnel, with plans to make it up to 50%"

Rick:
the point of the article was not about a conspiracy or stuff and it wasnt on against the EEUU and didnt elaborated much on that, just a little enumeration... but then 28% of the military being paramilitary (contractors, wether if they wear a rifle or not are still paramilitary on the definition of the word) with plans to make it 50% actually catches my eye (and even if the author of the article just mentioned it tangentially and didnt said its oppinion on the matter its very significative, a sign of (at the very least) a big change... maybe if we could see if it is true or false and if it is true more detailed data, we could think about if for better or worse?
(but yes... in principle, privatizing 50% of the army (even if it were just all the non combatant personnel) looks odd to me for a series of reasons i can think by myself without being a conspiration theorist and without squeezing my brains too much)

PS.: It was on the center/right paper... i like to cycle the lies of both sides, also on tv... plus see bbcworld and cnn and euronews from time to time (and specially when the news are important)

btw, i always wondered: if liberalism in economy means the politics that actually do the republicans(which are close to center/ right) why do you call it to democrats?
and
why democrats and republicans if whoever governs it is still a democracy?

heh, rick now im starting to get the buzz of progresist media in britain and EEUU about that little matter of having more security guards belonging to PMCs than british soldiers... (but i still cant find official data)

...it is curious that here still that buzz hasnt reached the progresist media(at least not the big newspaper)... but instead that it was a conservative newspaper the one that actually said something about the PMC and considered em like the most normal thing on the world...