Word: training
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Harvard-Epworth's Ophule festival. The Shadow Catcher, at the Welles, sounds real interesting. About Edward S. Curtis and the Native Americans he photographed and filmed at the beginning of this century. With narration by Donald Sutherland and Patrick Watson. Showing with it is Thomas Edison's The Great Train Robbery (1913). The Phantom of the Opera. This must be the 1925 Rupert Julian American version with Lon Chaney and Mary Philbin (the best version), because Harkness Commons is featuring a live piano player. Too bad there can't be an organ there for the Phantom pumping away at Toccata...
...international trade in nonnuclear arms now tops $18 billion annually?up from a mere $300 million in 1952, and a jump of more than 550% since 1964.* Moreover, this represents only a fraction of total military expenditures: in 1973 the nations of the world spent $240 billion to train, equip and maintain their armed forces. Until a few years ago, nations usually
What upset the pair, along with a good many others, was the disclosure by Associated Press Correspondent Peter Arnett that the Pentagon has hired a U.S. company to train Saudi Arabia's 26,000-man national guard. The company, the Vinnell Corp. of Alhambra, Calif, has already begun recruiting among former U.S. military veterans the 1,000 men it will need to do the three-year job in King Faisal's oil-rich desert nation. The suspicious immediately dubbed the task force "mercenaries" and wondered if Vinnell was a CIA front, and double-helix theories multiplied about what...
According to the Pentagon, the case is considerably simpler: the Vinnell Corp. contract is merely the first example of a cost-cutting Pentagon policy change laid down in 1972. Ever since World War II, the U.S. has been using regular military personnel to train the forces of countries round the world. But with shrinking U.S. force levels and the advent of the volunteer army, U.S. soldiers have become too scarce and expensive to use for such purposes. Thus three years ago, the Pentagon decided that in the future, wherever possible, it would hire civilian contractors to train friendly foreign armies...
...fear that Vinnell's men might become involved in a Middle East war or be drawn into an internal Saudi conflict seems highly exaggerated to recruits for the training jobs. Said one former U.S. Army officer after signing on: "We are not mercenaries because we are not pulling the triggers; we train people to pull triggers." Another officer laughed and added: "Maybe that makes us executive mercenaries...