click image to enlarge
Via Chris in Manitoba (there’s a whole page of this stuff).
H/T to Cjunk, where there’s a pretty good related post.
click image to enlarge
Via Chris in Manitoba (there’s a whole page of this stuff).
H/T to Cjunk, where there’s a pretty good related post.
Kate,
You do realize of course that WWI didn’t really have “good guys” or “bad guys”. It was nothing more than an ugly collision of several empires. I can’t remember, but one of the English or French war leaders later admitted that if the general populace knew what the war was really about, they would have refused to fight it.
If you really think labor should have approved of the first great futile slaugther of young men in the 20th century, then you are the purest form of war monger, glorying in it no matter how
stupid or trivial the motive behind. Is there no war in history that you would have disapproved of?
Do you fellow smalldeadanimalians also thrill to bathing in human blood? The Canadian mainstream wants to know!
It wasn’t all bad, as Delegate Willoughby pointed out that “wars educated people, and thus did good.” Would that LumberJack Layton could be as sagacious.
Cheers
JMH
Wars only educate the people they don’t kill, stupid. I’m sure education can be got at a cheaper cost.
If it wasnt for the fact that some would think what I have to say was in such bad taste I would tell biglyingliberano what I real think.
Fascist, anti-semitic, buddy of Castro, admirer of Mao, father of National Energy Policy (NEP) & more: Trudeau… not dead enough. +
Closest friends surprised by Trudeau revelations
Many didn’t know extent of former PM’s involvement in elitist organization
HUGH WINSOR
Special to The Globe and Mail
E-mail Hugh Winsor | Read Bio | Latest Columns
OTTAWA — Some of Pierre Trudeau’s closest friends were not aware of the extent of the former prime minister’s involvement in a fascist-type secret organization in the 1940s until the publication of a book this week, but his participation was a reflection of the dominant intellectual currents in Quebec Roman Catholic circles at the time.
One of the closest of those friends, Marc Lalonde, who was part of the Quebec nationalist ferment along with Mr. Trudeau when both were in their youth, and subsequently one of the pillars in the Trudeau cabinets, said yesterday he was not aware of the organization described in Young Trudeau: 1919-1944, Son of Quebec, Father of Canada until he read the book.
But he was not surprised: “Quite obviously, it was a very small group led by a couple of Jesuit priests,” he said yesterday, but it was fostered in a climate of church-led Quebec nationalism that was quite widespread, especially among the intellectual elites produced by the classical colleges in the 1930s and 1940s.
Mr. Lalonde said the book’s authors, Max and Monique Nemni (who were also editors of the briefly revived Cit� Libre, a magazine that Mr. Trudeau co-founded) have done their homework, had access to all of the documents and have provided an accurate picture of the times.
As a young man, Mr. Trudeau was very much influenced by the Roman Catholic Church, which at that time was very inward-looking and nationalist, Mr. Lalonde said. “They talked about creating La Laurencie [a Laurentian nation] that would be very Catholic, very French and very corporatist. They talked about a kind of perpetual revolution that went beyond the Trotsky notion of revolution,” he added. + more
http://www.voy.com/178771/12014.html
He regarded anyone ‘below’ him with contempt. Look closely at his so called marriage to Maggie. She was nothing more than breeding stock he never cared for her. No wonder she’s crazy today.
Trudeau was a communist. In later life he no longer wanted Quebec as a nation on it’s own…he had bigger plans…he wanted Canada. He said to the separatists of the day…”Why settle for a mere province when WE can have the whole country.” I really believe he saw himself as a God-like idol and it was his dream to be a dictator of a French nation. With Trudeau and his protege Chretien the war was never over. Look around you today at how much power 23% of Canada’s population has…they were winning.
…
…. in 1944 …. wearing his German Nazi helmet and tooling around Montreal while his father’s company … Champlain Oil … delivered fuel oil to homes and gas for cars ….. like the rich little prick that he was … while anglo suckers were volunteering and even being conscripted into the war in Europe …. dying so that Trudeau and his Quebec ilk schemed to control the country …. and that sh!t Pearson started it all …. and now we have a beautifully divided Canada …. a ghettoized Toronto …. and PM Stephen Harper as our last and only hope to keep Canada viable as a nation.
Fluck the Liberats …. may they descend into political oblivion … once all their slime and crime and corruption are revealed…. !!!! +
http://www.voy.com/178771/12020.html
Don’t let me stop you, Tory Boy. If you tell me what you really think, how long can it take? In fact, I can guess what you’re thinking now. Its: “Meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow.”
Some one has neglected to account for the failed efforts of the Socialist International to develop “alternate” solutions to the conflict. And to the less than unified disapprobation with which the labour movement approached the war.
But then the inability to pass the MENSA tests often found in Reader’s Digest can have a deleterious effect on budding intellects. Thus we acquire “progessivity”.
Cheers
meow.”
Posted by bigcitylib at April 8, 2006 12:19 PM
Your buddies, bigcitylib. +
[PDF] Dining with terrorists
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – View as HTML
Genial dinner hosts to Martin and. Minna, Tamil Tigers have been pegged as the. most ruthless and murderous terrorist group. in the world. …
diarmani.com/Articles/Past%20Articles%20of%20the%20Week/Dining%20With%20Terrorists.pdf –
Tamil Tigers outlawed — Group added to Canada’s terror list
National Post ^ | 2006-04-08 | Stewart Bell
Posted on 04/08/2006 6:50:49 AM PDT by Clive
TORONTO – The Tamil Tigers have been added to Canada’s list of outlawed terrorist organizations, the National Post has learned.
The designation was to be finalized yesterday, a day after Cabinet met to accept a recommendation from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
An official announcement was scheduled for Monday.
The Tigers are the 39th terrorist group to be outlawed under the Anti-Terrorism Act, and the first added to the list by the new Conservative government.
The move was spearheaded by Stockwell Day, the Minister of Public Safety, who in opposition repeatedly condemned the Liberals for not outlawing the Tigers.
The decision means it will now be a criminal offence to participate in the activities of the Tamil Tigers, formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, a Sri Lankan separatist group responsible for more than 160 suicide bombings. For example, anyone convicted of financially supporting the Tigers could be imprisoned for up to 10 years.
But while the Tigers were placed on the list, the government stopped short of listing any of the terrorist group’s Canadian front organizations.
The Cabinet order will likely have implications both at home and abroad. It will criminalize the Tiger “war taxes” that have long been paid — both voluntarily and involuntarily — by some Tamil-Canadians. Also, Canada has the world’s largest Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora, estimated at 250,000, and the listing could deal a blow to the Tigers, who are heavily dependent on Canadian and other foreign donors.
“It is estimated that between one and two million dollars are raised annually in Canada, making it one of the largest contributors of funds to the LTTE worldwide,” according to a classified CSIS report circulated in 2000. “The LTTE has traditionally raised these monies through the use of fronts groups.”
The Tigers were formed in the 1980s to fight for an independent homeland for Sri Lanka’s ethnic Tamil minority, but the guerrilla group quickly embraced terrorist tactics.
Buses, trains and office buildings were bombed by the LTTE’s suicide squad, the Black Tigers. The LTTE is considered one of the world’s leading practitioners of suicide terrorism, and has assassinated scores of political opponents, among them the late Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. +
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1611475/posts
bigcitylib:
“the first great futile slaugther of young men in the 20th century”
Tell me was WWII also as futile in your mind? Or are there some things actually worth fighting for?
If more people had listened to labor and not acted like a colony of Britain, tens of thousands of lives would have been saved. The only thing gained from the war was the development of more effective means of killing soldiers. New generations of these advancements came in very handy during WWII.
Labor doesn’t like slaughter under any guise becuse most of those slaughtered are from the working class.
“WW1, no good guys or bad guys”
Looks like someone attended the University in Moscow in the 1960’s, or better yet, is a butt buddy to Ward Churchill or shares bedpans with Castro. Leftist historic revisionism is so much fun to watch.
I gotta get me one of those Che Guevara T’s.
Labor works for Capital
No capital, no work
No work, no labor
No labor = Africa
we need greedy business men to create wealth and jobs for idiots to fund their malcontent.
No matter how many times it’s stated, leftist idiots cannot connect the dots. Maybe that’s why they must labor.
“bigcitylib” – if you persist on that type of comment, you’re not welcome here. Discuss and debate all you like, but I’m getting tired of this petty crap of yours eating up my bandwidth.
I was brought to this country from Britain-at the age of one and a half years, aboard the Aquitania, (fortunately- not aboard her sistership, the Lusitania- some of you know what happened to her.)( My Mummy was a ‘war bride’).
When I walked into that hospital room in Halifax, N.S. where my Dad was, (in the year 2000), he said: “What is that written on your toque, (which I bought from the beer store)?”
I replied: “It sez ‘Canadian’.)!?!
My Dad said: “I do not hear you! Say it louder!”
!?! What the……………
“CANADIAN!”
“Right! And don’t you ever forget it!”
Huh? (Thanks, Dad- I coulda been brung to a worse place!)
I’m pretty sure none of the left-wing reflexively anti-Iraq, anti-bush MSM will be reporting the trend shown in this graphic:
http://icasualties.org/oif/hnh.aspx
Kate, darling, I have never in all my years on the internet run into anyone who was pro WWI, before you. Its astounding! Put my remarks down to utter horror and shock. But your views are your views, and I apologize if my language was impolitic.
I know very little about WWI but I’m under the impression that the “labour” movement in this article is against Canada’s involvement.
It should be noted that the rest of the paper screams such things as “Liege Streets Run Blood”, “25,000 Slain in Battle”, & “Paris-Appeals to the US”, “London Raises Arms” & “neutral ships sunk”.
As usual the “labour” movement is to late, the shits hit the fan already!
Dear Ryan, WWII gets a thumbs up in my book. More recently, so does Kosovo. But I am astounded that anyone could (as Kate seems to do) think of anything but the 1st World War as anything but a futile waste.
Anyone that has any knowledge of the time, that is…
And what would be the point of disapproving of a war that started 90+ years ago?? Other than that warm and fuzzy superior feeling that big city Liberals like to have?
(and here I thought WW1 had ripple effects for the rest of the century, but then I’m not a big city Liberal)
Perhaps you should write an alternate history where Labour cripples the war effort and the Germans win WW1.
Where did Kate suggest she was pro WW I? She just provided a graphic showing how the language and the rationale of the Left hasn’t changed. “Capitalist greed” is the sort of thing you see on the placards of anti-war protesters today, and it’s just kinda funny to see the same old, same old, 92 years ago.
Kate, darling, I have never in all my years on the internet run into anyone who was pro WWI, before you. Its astounding! Put my remarks down to utter horror and shock. But your views are your views, and I apologize if my language was impolitic.
Big City Lib (must be toronto) You make a mistake talking to Kate in these terms. You show great disrepect toward your host here on this blog.
You are a boor and a fool. Kate may be too magnanimous a person to kick you girly ass off of here, so why not grow up and be more respectful in return.
Your demented views will be read and debated, that’s what happens here, but your disrepect toward Kate and others only shows the extent to which the big city has rotted your brain.
Believe it or not … you can change.
Kate implies that Labour was wrong about WWI. They were not.
davie:
Great story. Thanks for sharing it with us.
http://centreofcanada.blogspot.com/
WW1 was like all wars avoidable had sanity prevailed. And almost no other war was as spectacular in its degree and means of slaughtering those involved.
Essentially WW1 can be seen as a European civil war triggered by a Balkan incident and brought to a global scale conflict by the competing imperalist forces and links. The amount of carnage and the ghastly huge numbers who died or were wounded in such wasteful ways as trench warfare and gas attacks can be blamed on the application of pre-industrial revolution military thinking to post industrial revolution military technology.
But there was a good side and a bad side and the good side won in the end. Had the German/Austro Hungarian side won Europe and much of the rest of the world would have fell under the rule of a bloodline dictatorship.
As it turned out democracies were introduced to much of Eastern Europe and the class systems on on both sides were mortally wounded and brought into question. Certainly the versailles treaty and the acceleration of the rise of Communism were to have negative results in the future but it can also certainly be argued that WW2 was in large part round 2 of the euro-civil and that Communism would have taken root eventually with unknowable consequences.
The left opposed the war for its own narrow motives. And that, as Kate notes, is unchanged today.
maz2:…thanx for adding another book title to my “must read list” and for your post. Your post contains factual information that has been known/speculated, by some, for a long time. Not all have been prepared to believe it. I look forward to reading the afore mentioned book to see what is revealed.
Only Kate would know, bcl, but I don’t see any indication on her part that Labour was wrong about WW I, just that their rationale is always the same.
Consider, more recently, a famous Leftist who refered to the US’s “new imperialist war”, stating that it was undertaken with “deception, falsification and misrepresentation”. Who made the statement? James Cannon, the founding leader of the Socialist Worker’s Party of America, in the 1940’s — refering to WW II.
steve d. said: “If more people had listened to labor and not acted like a colony of Britain, …
Labor doesn’t like slaughter under any guise becuse most of those slaughtered are from the working class.”
The above is total, unadulterated, socialist lies/propaganda & bs.
From socialism has sprung the isms: communism, nazism, fascism, islamist terrorism, anti-Americanism, with a huge dollop of anti-semitism included.
“On August 4, 1914, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) fraction in the German parliament voted in favour of war credits enabling German imperialism to go to war.”
Blood trumped socialism.
The socialists betrayed their own “supporters”, the so-called “working-class”.
Down with socialism.
Long live freedom and democracy. +
Ninetieth anniversary of the German SPD voting for war
August 4, 1914, and its consequences
By Peter Schwarz
6 August 2004
This Wednesday marked the ninetieth anniversary of the most fateful date in the history of German social democracy. On August 4, 1914, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) fraction in the German parliament voted in favour of war credits enabling German imperialism to go to war. With the notorious statement of its chairman Hugo Haase, �We will not desert our fatherland in its hour of need,� the SPD placed itself firmly behind Kaiser Wilhelm II and his government in what was to emerge as the bloodiest mass slaughter in human history until that time.
The vote in favour of war credits represented an unprecedented betrayal of everything the SPD stood for. The German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg described the betrayal as follows: �Never before in the history of class struggles, since there have been political parties, has there been a party that, in this way, after fifty years of uninterrupted growth, after achieving a first-rate position of power, after assembling millions around it, has so completely and ignominiously abdicated as a political force within twenty-four hours, as Social Democracy has done.� And she concluded: �On August 4, 1914, German social democracy abdicated politically, and at the same time the socialist International collapsed.�
For a period of more than four decades, the SPD had educated the working class on the basis of international solidarity and hostility towards imperialism. In November 1912, the party had played a leading role at the congress of International Socialists in Basel, which expressly called upon the working class to resist moves towards war.
The manifesto drawn up and agreed upon at the conference by all the major European socialist parties declared: �This congress…calls upon the workers of all countries to oppose capitalist imperialism with the power of the international solidarity of the working class.� The manifesto threatened the �ruling classes of all nations� with revolutionary consequences in the event of war and warned: �It would be insane should governments not realise that the mere thought of the monstrosity of a world war would evoke the outrage and anger of the working class. The proletariat regards it as criminal should they be forced to shoot at one another in order to further the profits of capitalists, the ambitions of dynasties or in order to honour secret diplomatic treaties.�
The declaration in favour of �defence of the fatherland� represented a radical departure from these principles. Applied to the International as a whole, it meant that the workers of every country were obliged to participate in the slaughter of workers from other countries in order to defend their own �fatherland.� The decision represented a death blow for the Socialist International.
The support for �defence of the fatherland� meant that the SPD had shifted into the camp of German imperialism. The party went on to suppress any opposition to the war. Along with the vote in favour of war credits went a commitment to a social �cease-fire��a halt to the class struggle in all its forms so long as the �fatherland� was in danger. Following the declaration by SPD leader Haase, the German chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg, was able to state with satisfaction and to the furious applause of the right wing that the German people �united down to the last man� were behind the German army and navy. Social democratic party organisations and the party�s press switched to disseminating propaganda for the war and conducting a venomous and chauvinist campaign.
The SPD had been transformed from an opponent of the ruling order into one of its props. Just four years later, the party took over responsibility to rescue anything and everything that could be saved from the ruins of the Wilhelmine Empire�its military elite, which it embraced as an ally against the revolutionary working class; the dilapidated army units (Freikorps), which later became the backbone of Hitler�s stormtroopers (SA); the authoritarian state and its legal system based on officialdom; the aristocratic large-scale land owners (Junkers); and the capitalist private property of the major industrial barons, banks and trusts.
All the anti-democratic forces and institutions, which would later be described in tones of angry criticism by some social democratic historians, were only able to survive thanks to the support of the SPD. The SPD garbed these institutions with the mantle of the Weimar constitution and allowed them to fester until they shifted into the camp of National Socialism in the 1930s. +++
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/aug2004/spdd-a06.shtml
Gord, the Left opposed the war then and was right to do so, however “narrow” its motives. Bit like the Iraq War now. Looks like Labor was two for two, so far.
EBD– exactly right,
BCL– regardless if war is right or wrong, i for one thank my family & 80,000+ Canadian’s that had the guts to volunteer to put there life on the line so that you may voice your opinion.
there will always be debates on the subject & 9out10 the left will disagree & argue against any sort of conflict, as long as they have their cozy little world to live in.
Speaking of the First World War, and anti-war leftists, it’s worth recalling this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Jaures
And don’t forget how socialist saint and Anglo-assimilationist, JS Woodsworth was the only Canadian MP to vote against going to war against fascism in the Second World War
Left liberal socialists have allied themselves with Islamist terrorists in Iraq & elsewhere in the world.
Socialism: the religion of nihilism & losers.
Down with socialism. +
Iraqis mourn victims of Shiite mosque attack
Canada.com – 7 hours ago
Iraqi mourners walk through the streets carrying a coffin containing the body of Ahmed Ali, an engineering student who was killed in Friday’s suicide attack on a mosque Saturday April 8, 2006 in Baghdad, Iraq. …
Shiites condemn mosque bombing, remember Shiite cleric Monsters and Critics.com
Explosions at mosque leave 79 dead in Baghdad Globe and Mail via googlenews +
Belmont Club: Wretchard:
Eggplant said…
I find much of this beyond comprehension:
First, think of the cowardice this represents, i.e. a moslem man dressed as a woman in a burka using a suicide belt to kill other moslems in a mosque on the moslem sabbath. Wow!
Secondly, think of the amazing hate this represents, i.e. the suicide bomber committed murder against innocents in a way having almost no hope for redemption in his imaginary afterlife. Wow!
How can a mere human have such insane hate? +
whit said…
eggplant asked:
“How can a mere human have such insane hate?”
It’s so simple even the morons can do it.
Step 1:
Indoctrinate the children in the misogynistic, intolerant theology of the death cult. This indoctrination may be initiated at a very yound age beginning with cartoons and coloring books. The real payoff comes in the fine secondary education afforded by madrassas for the footsoldiers or various Saudi universities for the expediters, handlers and finaciers.
Step 2:
Identify and cultivate potential death cult martyrs. Potential martyrs may be loners, shamed women, sisters of prior martyrs, the mentally retarded, etc. Occasionally, it may be necessary to convince a martyr by puting his family in “protective custody.”
Step 3:
Await orders, record martyrs video, escort martyr to target and if necessary, detonate.
Of course, The Palestinians perfected the process. +
http://www.paulding.net/bin/url.cgi/13246.10
bcl – all you do is assert your conclusions.
Assertions are not explanations and provide no proof of the validity of those assertions. All they do is ‘assert’. Any propagandist does that.
Your subsequent assertions about that, and other wars, are all similar. Assertions. When someone has a different opinion, quite possibly based on data and logic, you assert that they are morally and/or intellectually deficient.
But – that is all you do. Assert. No data, no evidence, no analysis, no logic, no proof.
Heck – that’s the simplest rhetorical tactic in the world. It’s also completely fallacious but..
After all, I could do the same with any topic. I could argue that aliens have taken over the world, secretely injected their minds into the minds of Only Americans and Non-Socialists..etc, etc.. Using your tactics, all I’d need to do would be to ASSERT this idea. No data, no argument, no analysis. And, to prevent rebuttal, I’ll simply ASSERT that anyone who doesn’t agree with this – is ignorant, amoral, blah, blah.
It’s easy.
How about a little data, evidence, causal analysis..and logic? No ad hominem, no accusations that anyone who doesn’t agree is somehow degenerate or lacking half a brain. No patronizing comments. Just hard facts and logic.
You might find that wars are not as ‘stupid’ as you consider them. And sometimes, they must be fought. That included the first World War, which was actually an aspect of the Second.
You, for example, are a beneficiary as the wars against fascism and communism. We are now fighting Islamofascism. And there are good reasons to fight Islamofascism.
Facts? Don’t confuse moi with the facts. Here are some facts about socialism.
Socialism: The ideology of euthanasia, aka Death, aka Thanatos. +
Belgium to Consider Legalizing Under-18 Euthanasia
Posted by wagglebee
On 04/08/2006 12:26:54 PM PDT � 17 replies � 205+ views
LifeSiteNews ^ | 4/7/06 | Gudrun Schultz
BRUSSELS, Belgium, April 7, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) � The government of Belgium is considering a proposal to legalize euthanasia for children and youth up to age 18.The Flemish Socialist party, a member of Belgium�s coalition government, has called for an extension to the country�s euthanasia laws to give teenagers under 18 the right to choose assisted suicide, and parents of younger children the right to �choose� it for them.Euthanasia was legalized in Belgium in 2002. Under the current law, a patient must be over 18, terminally ill and in constant suffering in order to qualify for euthanasia. The country has… +
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/browse
BCL:
Unless you think that the wrong side won in WW1 then the left was wrong in that instance.
As for the Iraq Conflict, we have yet to see the final result. Go look at the link I posted above and try and out assert yur way into saying that the tide it seems is turning in the coalition’s favour.
More importantly the left is wrong for the same reasons you are: You oppose without proposing solutions.
bigcitylib,
Can I hear you explain how Hitler and Mussolini weren’t socialists but really right-wing capitalists in disguise. I’ve heard over lefties explain, but I laugh every time.
bigcitylib,
Could you explain to me how Hitler and Mussolini weren’t really socialists but right wing capitalists in disguise? I’ve heard it before from other lefties, but I laugh every time.
HAving trouble with my internet, please forgive me repeating myself.
Labor’s views are always the same: Capitalist, western society bad… period. Labor is communist, marxist, and socialist utopian, and it never takes the side of free market economies, even when those economies thrive primarily in democracies and have provided labor with…. labor. During WW1 labor unions were heavily infiltrated with communists and by WW2 in North America unions were primarily fronts for the communist party. That is why labor opposed WW2 until Stalin was attacked… then all of labor in North America couldn’t get into the war fast enough. It opposed Korea though (wonder why), and opposed any involvement in China post WW2. It’s so trasnparant a blind monkey could see it.
If you view the opinions of labor or the NDP, through the simple prism of Capitalist versus Worker… everything these socialists do and says makes sense. Democracy, humanrights, freedom, free speech, etc. mean nothing to these latter-day-communists; it’s all about opposeing the free market economy.
bigcitylib and others on this thread demonstrate their incredible lack of WW1 knowledge. They’ve read so little, that they confuse two different concepts, as expressed by most historians. The once concept argues that the battle tactics during WW1 were incredibly wasteful of human life; which is true. But, this is a tacticle military structural debate.
The other concept deals with causes of the war and potential fallout had the Allies not won.
These are two different concepts, but the “read the headlines only” boobs commenting don’t understand the difference.
To think, that the allied forces fighting against German, Austro, Hungarian enemy, were fighting simply as a result of clashing empires is so simplistic, and Socialist, that it’s laughable. I recommend they bone up on their history, and not rely on what Noam Chomsky, or their high school teachers “told” them.
There was an obvious agressor, and obvious defenders, and even more obvious unwilling participants who entered only as a last resort to save Europe. The only thing missing was Hitler’s saddism on the part of the Austro-Hungarian-German enemy, which was the aggressor in the west; and had been for decades prior.
Thank You Debris Trail.
You saved me from posting a long screed on the whys & wherefores, of the first World conflict of the 20th Century.
If one reads Hemingway, he figured it was the socialist , communist ravings of it being the munitions makers for profits. There is a play he wrote. The name escapes me now. I have seen the production a few times. Its very true. Leftists despised any war with Hitler while he had a pack with there great leader Stalin to portion out Poland like a mutton chop.
In Canada it was England who was hated by the communists & leftists of the day. That is until after ww2, & America took over from England, as the Canada’s Protector de-jure .England was broke. The Empire dying. With cheers from leftists on the sidelines.
America became the champion of civilisation as Briton declined. To Despotic ideologies like the left this was intolerable.
Those interested in why the war was fought can apply themselves at this site or others.
http://www.firstworldwar.com/origins/causes.htm
I don’t pretend to know the exact causes of WW1, and none of the historians seem to either, though they all have their theories.
Kate is right about one thing, Communists haven’t changed their tactics.
I grew up in a small town on the prairies, in the 50’s and 60’s. My dad was a veteran of WW2, grandfather a highly decorated veteran of WW1. Every able bodied man, in both my mother’s and father’s families served in the World Wars.
Just about every adult I knew back then had served and I grew up listening to their tales. The veterans of WW2 told funny stories, always accentuated the humourous side of war. The veterans of WW1 never did, those poor bastards were still in shock 40 years after it ended.
I cannot imagine the horror they lived through, and in respect of their memory, I would never question their effort.
All I know about WW1, apart from the many versions of history I’ve read, is that my home town lost too many of our best young men, and so many who came home were grieviously wounded, and died long before their time.
In gratitude, the Government of the day did as little as possible for the returning veterans, and tried especially hard to screw the Indians out of any benefits they were due. That is why my Grandfather, and his fellow veterans, joined their various service organizations (Great War Veterans, British Empire Servicemans League, etc.) to form the Royal Canadian Legion. I wish everyone on this blog could talk to the people I’ve had the privilege of knowing, who served in both those Wars, you’d get a much different insight into what it means to go to war.
You would also hear about the Governments’ lack of interest in the veterans after the fighting is over, after both Wars.
Most of the veterans did come from the “working classes”. Who in hell did you think did the fighting, lawyers and CEO’s? Most of the men from my home town had never been more than forty miles from home in their lives, dirt poor farmers mostly, who answered the call because, we were told, Gavrilo Prinzip shot the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo.
In my heart of hearts, I wish someone had said, “well if it bothers you so much, go fight them yourself”.
I will never be satisfied with “official theories” on why we had to join the Great War, all I know is good men from places like Gruber, Fork River, Elbow, Sifton, had to go a long way from home and die.
Twenty-one years later we had to go through the same fucking exercise again, and we lost the cream of another generation.
Most of those little towns dried up and disappeared, their lifes’ blood spilled all over foreign soil. My uncle, who I’m named after, was killed at 19.
Sometimes we have to go to war, but when we do, the people must hold Governments responsible for their failures that led to war. And we have to hold the ungrateful s.o.b.’s to their promises to look after the returning veterans and their families, and the families of those who never return.
o thrill to bathing in human blood? The Canadian mainstream wants to know!
Posted by bigcitylib at April 8, 2006 12:03 PM
Is this the best your pathetic mind can come up with?
You have demonstrated a total lack of comprehension of history, but then being a Liberal , we shouldn’t be surprised,
Dou you vere wonder why you blog has no traffic and SDA has lots ??
Its because nobody gives a flying foo-foo what you thnk because you, and your “thoughts” are trivial, pathetic and of no consequence.
You just don’t matter, you aren’t worth the typing time to respond anymore.
You are, like all Liberals, a waste of time and enegy, condemmed to the the ash heap of useless ideas and comments.
However, your comments are mildly amusing in a childish sort of way.
Too bad about your blog.
Too bad there is no traffic.
Too bad you don’t matter.
dmorris: Well said. Compared to the way the USA government treated its WW2 vets, Canada was an embarrassment. The GI Bill of Rights in the USA gave many returning vets wonderful opportunities to start over. It wasn’t perfect, but much much better than anything Canada had.
The prairie provinces in particular were bled dry by the First World War. Prairie boys volunteered by the thousands, and died by the thousands. Keep in mind that the population was tiny. Then, for those who came back, they were often given stony pathetic tiny parcels of land… as a gift. Most of those “settled” regions ended up back as crown land afterwards because they were not capable of sustaining farms.
Fast forward: After Bosnia and Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the Canadian government gave very poor support to troops suffering from PTSD. I don’t know what it does today, but there was a stubborness to recognize that troops in Peace Keeping could get PTSD. We now know that peace-keepers who are not allowed by crazy UN rules of engagement to intervene on the behalf of civilians being slaughtered, suffer PTSD at rates higher than combat forces. Yet, our government did not to spend significant funds to help Canadian Forces victims. Thank the Liberal Socialist mentality in this country.
Let’s hope that under Harper, a new sense of responsibility will prevail.
ps: Don’t let me get started on the Indian Vets. Canadians should be very very ashamed of the way they were treated.
Keerist … I just checked out BCL’s blog.
It’s so juvenile, I was embarrassed to be there.
BullshittyLiberal, you are critiquing inane rock bands that haven’t a clue what real music is but then you are clueless yourself so I can see the conection.
You are either very young or old with brain damage.
You have no business here pissing with the big dogs.
Go get your government job if you don’t already have one and take your place in grey line.
The light is far too bright here for a vampire like you.
WRT WW1 being “good” or “bad”. It may very well be true that WW1 was bad (whatever that means). To me the issue is that the “left” or “labour” are against using arms at any time. Even if they are “right” on this, they have no credibility here. It’s like someone being right about a hockey game being bad, when they hate hockey. Wars are not nice (understatement), but force is sometimes necessary. Appeasement only encourages monsters like Hitler and bin Laden, and they use this weakness to convince those they hate (non-arians and infidels) to not oppose them. History has shown us the price of stopping monsters now will invariably than the later cost. If Hitler had been stopped in 1936, I doubt as many millions would have died. As far as WW1 is concerned, it is difficult to see merit, though people thought they were fighting against German authoritarianism (remember, they did invade Belgium and France). I guess life is easier for the Chomsky crowd if they simply view the West as racist and ethnocentric. I think, however, it is the foes (haters) of the West who are those things. It’s funny how the left calls others ideological, followed by some slogan. In my opinion, the “left” is bigoted, ethnocentric and hopelessly naive and malleable. Before bin Laden, the world was making excellent progress in the search for peace in the ME, particularly in Israel. Notice I’m not saying the people of the ME fit this mold; they are quite happy buying western goods/services. It is a cop out to say one hates western leadership but not the people (you know the ones in the WTC). Bin Laden set that course back; he is the one with blood on his hands.
steve d., bigcitylib: Perhaps it might have been better if the British Empire (which, as you may or may not remember, in 1914 included Canada, automatically at war if Britain was–though up to Canada to determine the extent of our participation) had not gone to war with Germany and A-H. At least then, without the defeat of the Central Powers, there would have been no victory of Bolshevism/Communism in Russia and no Hitler in Germany.
But I doubt if that is the sort of counter-factual that would ever occur to you.
Bang, bang.
Mark
Ottawa
steve d., bigcitylib: One could also argue that the victory of the allied and associated powers in WW I gave freedom to the oppressed Slavs of Central, Eastern and Balkan Europe; and eventually to the Arabs from Ottoman rule.
Whether or not those have been good developments, on the whole, is something that Chou En-lai might consider it too early to judge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhou_Enlai
Mark
Ottawa
Of course we can point to wars where the Left took the wrong stance. We can also do the same with respect to the Right. For example, the Reform Party or CRAP or whatever they were called at the time (mid 1990s) had all sorts of reservations with respect to the old Yugoslavia, which now seem the result of sheer cowardice. The Republicans down South were also quite disgraceful in that regard.
BCL has changed the topic…
Gord,
BCL has responded to an earlier string of posts not posted by you. It isn’t personal. Do try and read the whole thread, though.
bigcitylib: I await your comment on this article:
http://www.varsity.utoronto.ca/archives/119/apr08/news/camp.html
On the other hand, one can hardly be proud of Reform in this instance:
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1ARTM0010534
The attitudes of that time certainly seem to resonate today, do they not?
I think the common ground is that Canadian students and politicians simply approach things with the attitude that one must me be against whatever those we don’t like are supporting. Without any serious consideration of the facts or the principles involved.
Intelligence lite. Canada, so to speak.
Mark
Ottawa