George Bush visit

[bubba]

good reply john galt lmao,if i remember correctly didn't alot of americans come to canada to join and go fight the nazis in39,40.don't know exact number,btw kinda nice seeing a peacefull demonstration in halifax instead of a bunch of arsehole's and wingnuts tearin her apart.

 

[Cloud Cover]

I was most impressed with the young man in the wheel chair with the sign that said:

Fortress North America: Not In My Backyard?  
Better than war in my Front Yard.
Thank You HMCS​

If that doesn't sum up the ideological divide, in the most poignant manner considering the character of the sign holder, I don't know what does.

 

[1feral1]

Saved us? The americans fought the japanese... the Russians defeated germany, not the americans. 9 out of 10 germans were killed on the russian front.Also, Canada and England fought germany for 4 years before the americans gave them the time of day.

Mate you need a serious history lesson, but at 18, you got a lot to learn. The victory against the Germans, Italians, and the Japs was a unified front, and without each other it would have been a tough road for us all.

Yes the US was invlovled in lend lease and other stuff prior, including clandestine ops to 07 Dec 41. The US Rangers were even in Dieppe in 42, and died along side us Canadians, but the casualties were less that 50 KIA compared to our 907 KIA, but again one is too many.

From 10 Sep 39 (yes Canada declared war one week after the UK and Australia) to 07 Dec 41 is not four years. The war was fought for a total of 6 yrs. The US were deep in North Africa, Italy, and Europe, plus the Pacific Theatre. The British, Kiwis (Canadians too Wpg Grenadiers) and the Australians also fought hard and endured horrific treatment by the Japs as PoWs.

The Russians, had a full plate, and pushed Germany out of the Motherland, many Russians using US made war materials (planes, tanks etc), and as for Germany, what about the sacrifice of the US 8th Air Force with their daytime bombing missions, followed by our night time bombing of the same cities, etc. Plus D-Day and beyond, not including other battles not mentioned here.

Do you really think we could have managed it all without the USA?. Do you really actually think they had a small role? or are you just doing the flavour of the month style of American bashing? Hummm.

Before you go barking at me, and basically saying I don't know what the frig I am talking about, get your facts straight!    

The USA's involvement did infact halt the war much sooner (the outcome could have been entirely different if the USA remained 'neutral'), and the two A Bombs dropped on Japan on 6 and 9 Aug 45 saved countless 10's of thousands (or worse) of Allied casualties (maybe even your own grandfathers), if infact an invasion of Japan would have happened, and without the bombs it would have.

The USA played a pivitol role in the victory in Europe also, infact in all theatres of operations during the war. I am not pro-American by any means, but I am no stranger to the truth.

It is also fact that without the USA, Australia would have truly been invaded, and New Guinea and other territories and islands would have truly been hopelessly lost and in the hands of the Japs. What about Midway and other battles? Or do you even know what Midway was?

Australia will never forget the sacrifice of American youth and aiding us during such a troubled time and I am sure many Europeans have the same gratitude.

There are suburbs and streets named after them in prepetual remberance even here in Sydney.

It just shytes me to tears with the bitterness ignorance and attitude of people like YOU seem to carry.

You are now authorised to remove your combat boot from your mouth.

Yes mate, you touched a nerve with me too


Cold beers,

Wes

EDITED for spelling and grammar.

 

[a_majoor]

FACT: An official poll statistic states that in a democracy of nearly 30,000,000 87% of polled Canadians were against Bush's re-election.

FACT: None of their opinions count because this was an election in a different country.

 

[NavyGrunt]

FACT: An official poll statistic states that in a democracy of nearly 30,000,000 87% of polled Canadians were against Bush's re-election.

FACT: None of their opinions count because this was an election in a different country.

Oh man I enjoyed that A_Majoor

 

[a_majoor]

Why protest in the first place:

The End of the Left's History
The world has moved on.

The hysterical reaction of the Western Left to the reelection of President George W. Bush is not just a primal scream from politicians and intellectuals deprived of political power. The violent language, numerous acts of violence, and demonization of Bush and his electorate â ” the same as that directed against Tony Blair in Britain, Jose Maria Aznar in Spain, and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy â ” portend a more fundamental event: the death rattle of the traditional Left, both as a dominant political force and as an intellectual vision.

For the most part, the Left only wins elections nowadays when their candidates run on their opponents' platform (Clinton and Blair) or when panic overwhelms the political process (Zapatero and Schroeder). Under normal circumstances, leftists running as leftists rarely win, proving that their ideology â ” the ideology that dominated political and intellectual debate for most of the last century â ” is spent. When their ideas were in vogue, leftist advocates took electoral defeat in stride, as they were confident that their vision was far more popular â ” because far more accurate â ” than their opponents' view of the world. History and logic were on their side. But no more. Incoherent rage and unbridled personal attacks on the winners are sure signs of a failed vision.

Ironically, the Left's view of history provides us with part of the explanation for its death. Marx and Hegel both understood that the world constantly changes, and ideas change along with it. The world they knew â ” and successfully transformed â ” was a class-bound society dominated by royalty and aristocracy. They hurled themselves into class struggle, believing it to be the engine of human history, and they fought for liberty for all. Successive generations of leftists preached and organized democratic revolution at home and abroad, from the overthrow of tyrants to the abolition of class privileges and the redistribution of both political power and material wealth.

In true dialectical fashion, they were doomed by their own success. As once-impoverished workers became wealthier, the concept of the proletariat became outdated, along with the very idea of class struggle. Then the manifest failure and odious tyranny of the 20th-century leftist revolutions carried out in the name of the working class â ” notably in Russia, China, and Cuba â ” undermined the appeal of the old revolutionary doctrines, no matter how desperately the Left argued that Communist tyrannies were an aberration, or a distortion of their vision.

Thus the ideology of the Left became anachronistic, even in western Europe, its birthplace and the source of its historical model. But the biggest change was the emergence of the United States as the most powerful, productive, and creative country in the world. It was always very hard for the Left to understand America, whose history, ideology, and sociology never fit the Left's schemas. Even those who argued that there were class divisions in America had to admit that the "American proletariat" had no class consciousness. The political corollary was that there was never a Marxist mass movement in the United States. Every European country had big socialist parties and some had substantial Communist parties; the United States had neither. Indeed, most American trade unions were anti-Communist. As Seymour Martin Lipset and others have demonstrated, the central ideals of European socialism â ” which inspired many American leftist intellectuals â ” were contained in and moderated by the American Dream. America had very little of the class hatred that dominated Europe for so long; American workers wanted to get rich, and believed they could. Leftist Europeans â ” and the bulk of the American intellectual elite â ” believed that only state control by a radical party could set their societies on the road to equality.

The success of America was thus a devastating blow to the Left. It wasn't supposed to happen. And American success was particularly galling because it came at the expense of Europe itself, and of the embodiment of the Left's most utopian dream: the Soviet Union. Even those Leftists who had been outspokenly critical of Stalin's "excesses" could not forgive America for bringing down the Soviet Empire, and becoming the world's hyperpower. As Marx and Hegel would have understood, the first signs of hysterical anti-Americanism on the Left accompanied the presidency of Ronald Reagan. The resurgence of American economic power and the defeat of the Soviets exposed the failure of the Left to keep pace with the transformation of the world. The New York intellectual who proclaimed her astonishment at Reagan's election by saying, "I don't know a single person who voted for him," well described the dialectical process by which an entire set of ideas was passing into history.

The slow death of the Left was not limited to its failure to comprehend how profoundly the world had changed, but included elements that had been there all along, outside the purview of leftist thought. Marx was famously unable to comprehend the importance of religion, which he dismissively characterized as the "opiate of the masses," and the Left had long fought against organized religion. But America had remained a religious society, which both baffled and enraged the leftists. On the eve of the 2004 elections, some 40 percent of the electorate consisted of born-again Christians, and the world at large was in the grips of a massive religious revival, yet the increasingly isolated politicians and intellectuals of the Left had little contact and even less understanding of people of faith.

Unable to either understand or transform the world, the Left predictably lost its bearings. It was entirely predictable that they would seek to explain their repeated defeats by claiming fraud, or dissing their own candidates, or blaming the stupidity of the electorate. Their cries of pain and rage echo those of past elites who looked forward and saw the abyss. There is no more dramatic proof of the death of the Left than the passage of its central vision â ” global democratic revolution â ” into the hands of those who call themselves conservatives.
History has certainly not ended, but it has added a new layer to its rich compost heap.

â ” Michael Ledeen, an NRO contributing editor, is most recently the author of The War Against the Terror Masters. He is resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute.

 

[vangemeren]

I'm just curious about where you got the article from. It was an interesting read. Personally attacking the President is not going to help their cause. Saying how you would do things better is the way to. Saying that the electorate is stupid is no going to win votes (not mine anyways). Attacking a store/resturant that is locally owned and operated is not going to change what the head of office in New York is going to think and how they operate. Clashing with police and getting thrown into jail is not going to solve problems or get your message accross. All the news will report is that some (dumb) protestors got thrown into jail. It's not like we live in a police state. We have a democratic process. I wonder how many of these people vote in elections, I mean insteading of wasting peoples money to destroy things, (a lot of times government money which could go to better use) how about getting informed about the subject and run for office.

Just 2 cents from a lefty that just does not understand how violent protseting will solve anything and finds it a waste of time and money

 

[a_majoor]

I'm just curious about where you got the article from.

Sorry, the article was from the National Review On Line (NRO) from Dec 2 04.

 

[Infanteer]

It doesn't help that "The Left" has had two of their main intellectual underpinnings - Marx and Keynes - undermined and largely proven as unworkable throughout the 20th century.

 

[Peace_Keeper]

Really, the allies would lost WWII without either one of these countries

Britian (Canada basically did what they did) They held the front while the US sat back and squeezed all the moeny they could out of them (yes those "supplies" you spoke of had to be paid for, which is basically normal transactions) And had hard times as Germany tried to destroy them. they played a huge part in North Africa too.

Russia - Face it, they defeated Germany really and who here thinks they wouldn't crack at Japan after they finished Germany? The fought the Germans from moscow to Berlin inflicting much damage to German troops amounts and wearing down their supplies.

USA - Joined late yet, fought most of the pacific war. Keep Japan at bay for the war and finished them off with the Atomic bomb. They were the other major force in North Africa, along with Britian. Americans took did plenty of work in italy, and finally freed most of southren france after D-day.


The westren front was not a nessicity to defeat GERMANY. The reasons for the front were

1) the obvious, to help get another front on Germany to end the war quicker by taking out Germany supplies going to The eastren front.

2) To stop a possible Russian take-over in Europe. If the russians were to defeat Germany, what would stop them from walking into France and other Nazi invaded countries, and then not leave? America would be the only threat left and If russia took the oil feilds, Certain Europian, and Asian conquest would be delivered......so....

 

[Infanteer]

Britian (Canada basically did what they did) They held the front while the US sat back and squeezed all the moeny they could out of them (yes those "supplies" you spoke of had to be paid for, which is basically normal transactions)

Obviously, you fail to understand Allied economic arrangements in the Second World War.  Spare us the lesson.

Russia - Face it, they defeated Germany really and who here thinks they wouldn't crack at Japan after they finished Germany? The fought the Germans from moscow to Berlin inflicting much damage to German troops amounts and wearing down their supplies.

To an extent, yes.  But was Russia helped by the fact that Germany was engaged in a two-front war?  As well, I remember reading a paper that pointed out that a huge percentage of German industrial production went to building fighter aircraft, flak, and other measures to resist Allied bombing - industrial production that would have went to fitting all those 19th century horse-drawn divisions on the Eastern Front with mechanization.  Maybe the Western Allies weren't as innocuous as some would like to believe.

USA - Joined late

Officially yes, unofficially no.  Perhaps your perception of history isn't as deep as you would like us to believe.  Look up Japanese-US relations in the Pacific prior to December 7, 1941.

yet, fought most of the pacific war

If you're approaching the war from a Naval standpoint, ok.  But look at the number of troops tied up against the British in Burma and the Chinese on the Mainland.  Saying that the US deserves ALL the laurels is a bit unfair.

Keep Japan at bay for the war and finished them off with the Atomic bomb.

Kept Japan at bay from what?

The westren front was not a nessicity to defeat GERMANY. The reasons for the front were

1) the obvious, to help get another front on Germany to end the war quicker by taking out Germany supplies going to The eastren front.

2) To stop a possible Russian take-over in Europe. If the russians were to defeat Germany, what would stop them from walking into France and other Nazi invaded countries, and then not leave? America would be the only threat left and If russia took the oil feilds, Certain Europian, and Asian conquest would be delivered......so....

Are you sure about this.  Perhaps you fail to understand the strategic dimensions that the geopolitical situation of a two front war presented to the German High Command.  For an example, look at the fears of an invasion of Norway and the resources that went into "repelling" it.

Work on your spelling and grammer.  Your attempts to deliver a history lesson to us collapse under juvenile writing.