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1,000 Canadian troops to join NATO brigade in Latvia
June 30, 2016 - 10:42pm
'Four More Years': Canadian MP Chanting For Obama Draws White House Response
http://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2016/06/30/four-more-years-canadian-mp-...
'It's parliament not a group of 14-year-old girls having a private Justin Bieber concert.'
...Canadian MPs gave him a standing ovation while he was asking for more money from Canada to meet its unreached military spending targets at NATO."
Canada To Send Troops To Latvia For New NATO Brigade
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/nato-canadian-troops-baltics-1.3659814
"Trudeau government agrees to NATO troop deployment in Eastern Europe. Defence Minister Harjit Singh says Canada will take a lead role and establish one of the battle group formations requested by the alliance."
Shame on our silence...
I wouldn't exactly put it in the words of the thread title, but I generally agree that it is unfortunate to have our MPs applauding the author of the most destructive terrorist campaign of the last decade. It is also most unfortunate that our government is willing to contribute to the reckless (and needless) provocation of Russia, with its risk of nuclear war. Shame on us indeed.
oh they are going to try and spin this as a "peacekeeping" activity. no worries about NATO involvement.
Utterly pathetic to see those trained seals bob up and down. And I think little justin should be asked directly if he recognizes nato's actions in Libya as an international crime, among others.
Wasn't this annual meeting nicknamed the Three Banditos Summit a few years ago?
Good for you people!
Is it possible to launch a campaign to talk with our soldiers?
Maybe with some encouragement by a Federal Court action against Canada´s involvement with NATO´s violation of the Agreement with Russia not to militarize the new autonomous republics formerly of the Soviet Union?
Ya, just FWIW, they're not really "new". They existed as their own countries, with their own languages, cultures and governments for centuries, before being annexed and colonized by the Soviet Union.
Given that babble is explicitly anti-imperialist, it might be nice to occasionally recognize that, instead of acting like the Baltic states are some kind of rogue, breakaway malcontents, or for that matter pretending that the "ethnic Russians" living there now are anything but colonizers.
Please read some history okay. Latvia is a good example of the area and the various Empires that have ruled it. Please tell me how its history equates to centuries of its own country.
They definitely have their own culture and history but it was not an independent nation for very long.
Russians have been the largest ethnic minority in Latvia for at least a couple of centuries. Before Canada, 'our home on native land' even existed. And having been here during recent events in Libya, Syria and Ukraine, I see very little evidence that 'babble is explicitly anti-imperialist'. Support for Western warmongering, Russophobia etc. is all the rage here. The trained seals in Ottawa clapping for their evil Yanqui liege-lord shilling for NATO reflect attitudes held and expressed here that are frequently far more 'Right' than 'Left'.
Very well. I totally get that "the official map of Europe", pre-20th century, needed to be drawn on a chalkboard. But the fact that other countries also invaded and occupied the Baltic states over the years doesn't really change my point.
Indeed. Here come some more colonizers, again.
I'm just asking whether it would be incompatible with babble's mandate to acknowledge that the Baltic states (and others) were colonized by the former Soviet Union? And maybe even to look upon that with the same contempt that we look upon other colonial adventures, instead of pretending that the wee little Baltic countries are somehow the big bully now?
Indeed here come the NATO colonizers with an occupation army to ensure that they remain controlled by the Western oligarchy. Back to the original Baltic German status it would seem.
But go ahead and keep up the anti-Soviet hate propaganda because of course only the Soviets in the history of the area were an evil colonizing empire not like the Swedes or Germans or Tsar.
Hate propaganda? Srsly?
I'm just pointing out that the Soviet Union civilized them at the end of a gun.
But I think I've figured out why there's a double-standard with regard to that. Whereas the English and French colonists who came to Canada tried to civilize the First Nations with Christianity and the Magna Carta, the Soviet Union tried to civilize its colonies with Marxism. So clearly they meant well and should not be harshly judged. Amirite?
The Swedes and Germans are completely irrelevant in 2016. If 200 Canadian troops head to Latvia, the Swedes and Germans don't lose their shit.
Like, OMFGWTFBBQ, there will soon be 200 Canadian troops in a country half the size of the province of Ontario, with half the population of the GTA, just waiting for the "go ahead" order to lay seige to Moscow. Boy, if that's not provocation for WWIII, what is?
Mr Magoo you are myopic when it comes to NATO aggression. You are very accepting of the "fact" that Canada needs troops in the Baltic states to counter the reality that Russia has an army. That goes along with the widely held belief in the "Free World" that if only every country in the world would accept NATO domination there could be peace in the world. I can't figure why some countries would push back against Pax Americana, can you?
I thought the Soviet Union was a brutal dictatorship and that is why we hated them. I've now come to realize that it was not so much the brutal dictatorship but Russia's insistence on not being dominated by the West that was the real point of contention.
When did Russia get an army? I thought they were the innocent victims in all this aggression on the part of the wee Baltic countries.
I hope it's more than 200 strong, or they're doomed.
Sure I can. And I can also imagine why some countries might look to Russia and say "no, not again".
If NATO is going to launch WWIII against Russia they're going to need a lot more than 200 Canadian troops to do it. So can we put this silly "NATO is starting WWIII" trope to bed? Or does it have to hang over our heads by a thin thread forever, like the Sword of Dumb-ocles?
Apart from any other issues, this thread has perhaps the most over-the-top title in the history of babble. And NO, I am not a NATO supporter.
Also, the most egregious use of caps.
People of our age, Magoo, should remember when Cuba, after being invaded unsuccessfully by the USA, had some Russian missiles installed. I well remember how understanding the USA was. Would there be some reason Russia should look at USA troops in Latvia in a different way?
They might pause to note that a great deal has changed in the last half century.
What of the Latvians, though? Whose flag were they saluting when the Cuban Missile Crisis was happening? Or for the next thirty years? I'm still a bit puzzled as to how Russia is the real victim.
It would appear that the expressed sentiments of our parliamentarians are unsurprisingly reflected in the manifest denial of some here as to the accuracy of the OP. This is consistent with the disturbing pathology of silence, complicity, collaboration, even support for the fascist hegemon, Obama and Canada's junior partner role as the great satan's little helper always at the ready. History will show that in the main, to our everlasting shame, we went along to get along.
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." Mussolini
"...He's opened up more offshore drilling than Bush, expanded fracking, deported more people than any president in history, killed thousands of Muslims (and is currently bombing seven Muslim countries), raised military budgets, cut federal taxes to their lowest levels in 60 years,
cut social programs, spent almost 8 years trying to strike a 'grand bargain' with Republicans to cut Social Security and Medicare (until this week when, in his last months in office, he's suddenly decided we should increase Social Security), worked hard to derail public health care in favor of a program drawn up by a conservative think-tank and first used by a Republican governor,
put troops on the Russian border, beefed up US military presence in Asia to threaten China, supported right-wing coups in Latin America [and Ukraine], gave Wall Street trillions of dollars in bailouts and credits, refused to prosecute any CIA officers for torture, (despite admitting 'we tortured some folks'),
jailed more whistleblowers than any other president, pushed fanatically pro-business trade treaties, and so on. Yet there is a mass delusion that he is some kind of socialist peacenik 'surrendering to terrorists' and giving away 'free stuff' to the lazy poor (when in fact the poor and middle class are sinking, while the rich have never been richer) etc..."
Terror War and Trumpery Take US Into Terra Incognita - by Chris Floyd
http://www.chris-floyd.com/home/articles/terror-war-and-trumpery-take-us...
"Learning From The Best" (Brad Lavigne, Hill & Knowlton) Obama team lectures NDP at Convention
bestest laugh today!!!!!
Why Is NATO So Irrational Today?
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/30/why-is-nato-so-irrational-today/
"Why is the new tension rising in Europe between US/NATO and Russia so manifestly dangerous and - with the exception of the Cuban Missile Crisis worse than during the First Cold War?"
That, and it would be a far more effective resistance tactice to withhold the physical contact in question from the person described in the title.
What they did in Eastern Europe, horrible as it wasm, had nothing to do with "Marxism". It was Stalinism(Great Russian Nationalism pretending to be revolutionary), and there was nothing in the original, liberating ideas of Marx that had anything to do with that, or with anything at all that happened in the USSR after 1921 or so(when the suppression of the Krondstadt rebels marked the end of anything radical or transformative in the Soviet Union). Stalin was not a Marxist-He was an egomaniac with superior surveillance technology and killing power at his personal disposal. If the Romanovs had stayed in power after the war, they'd have likely matched Stalin in the body count. Even Kerensky, if he had somehow hung on, would probably have been forced by the aristocratic reactionaries he always depended on for day-to-day political survival to let the Tsarist troops kill millions in exchange for their agreement to let tiny bits if "reform" occur.
Do the Babble moderators have any control over the titles of babble threads? This topic is important, and there have been some excellent posts, but the title trivializes the issue. A little too much 70's Trotskyist hyperbole?
The language in the title sounds more Maoiist than Trotskyist.
Though I actually made TWO typos in my comment about it. ;)
You misspelled Maaooiist.
Because the intended target of NATO aggression is not Latvia, or Ukraine, or whoever else NATO decides to destabilize to help achieve their ends. The target is Russia. That is because Russia is one of the only countries in the world that has the potential to stand in the way of the 'Project For A New American Century'.
And you might pause to note that very little has changed on that front in the last half century. US desire to be the sole arbiter of what's right and what's wrong based on the interests of US capital has not changed one iota.
The fact that some here think the title is hyperbolic simply indicates they have not been paying attention or are in deep denial as to what has transpired under this evil war-criminal's watch. (see #17) He is indeed a mass murdering fascist emperor. The Canadian parliament is indeed servile and collaborationist. And they are not alone in this unfortunately.
US Mayors Blast Obama, NATO: War Games on Russia's Border Endanger Humanity
http://sptnkne.ws/bAHV
"The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM), the official non-partisan organization for city leaders administering populations greater than 30,000, moved to condemn NATO's ANACONDA War Games on Russia's border as increasing the threat of nuclear conflict.
'The largest NATO war games in decades, involving 14,000 US [and Canadian] troops, and activation of US missile defences in Eastern Europe are fueling growing tensions between nuclear-armed giants', said the USCM warning in the lead-up to the military alliance's summit on July 8-9 in Warsaw Poland.
The US Conference of Mayors went on to criticize President Obama for capitulating to the defence establishment and 'laying the groundwork for the United States to spend one trillion dollars over the next three decades,' on the so-called nuclear modernization effort that will result in a net increase in America's atomic stockpile in contravention to the spirit of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)..."
As it happens, the word "fuck" used to be verboten.
I'm certainly not in denial because I don't want our board to use the anti-imperialist equivalent of language to be found in the Sun or the Daily Mail.
And yes, when posting (obviously not when delivering work for $€£ etc) I seem to be making a lot of tpyos, as skdadl called them. I have to face facts and wear glasses while typing.
The title is fair comment. The words are carefully chosen, accurate and my own. Amazing what some people find objectionable on this 'progressive site'. And what they don't...
"It is not my feeling that the readership of rabble will drop over like a bunch of Tennessee fainting goats at the sight of the word 'fuck.'
Old Goat (from Magoo's link above)
I thought the German Foreign Minister hit the nail on the head, and showed a deep sense of the history of his own country, when he said (or wrote) that a Panzer Parade on the eastern border of the "alliance" (i.e., NATO) is not going to improve security for anyone.
This stuff is just so obvious.