The prime minister said he supports the latest U.S. attacks on Iran, calling it an “appropriate” response.
Fuck that. Grow a fucking spine.
What's going on Canada?
🍁 Meta
🗺️ Provinces / Territories
🏙️ Cities / Local Communities
Sorted alphabetically by city name.
🏒 Sports
Baseball
Basketball
Curling
Hockey
Soccer
💻 Schools / Universities
Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.
💵 Finance, Shopping, Sales
🗣️ Politics
🍁 Social / Culture
Rules
Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca
The prime minister said he supports the latest U.S. attacks on Iran, calling it an “appropriate” response.
Fuck that. Grow a fucking spine.
He gave a great speech at Davos using anti-union, anti-leftist rhetoric, but while he did acknowledge 'the sign' he never took it down. He just pointed to it and said that despite it always being 100% bullshit, he will only give occasional opposition to US annexation while doing his best to maintain business as usual with the US and increase cooperation with US corporations working directly with the US military and intelligence on Canadians, such as continuing to share information on Canadian with US authorities and Palantir, and allowing facebook to arbitrarily block Canadians from accessing news sources.
Of all the things to criticize Carney for, which there are plenty, I don't really think this is one of them.
NATO has a spending target, we committed to it, so we have to do it. The fact that the worst human being in power ever is pressuring to fulfill that commitment doesn't really change the fact that we do have to do it. The thing we should be pushing on is how to spend it: award those contracts to European suppliers instead of the USA.
The prime minister said he supports the latest U.S. attacks on Iran, calling it an “appropriate” response.
This is the part that is messed up and should be the lightning rod for criticism.
There are tens of agreements by most countries on earth pledging to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to reduce global warming.
The atmosphere's greenhouse gas content has not yet reached its peak.
Why is the NATO spending target more important than fixing global warming?
Because it makes a few people rich and allows the complete dismantling of democracy.
Countries and politicians commit to a lot of things that they later back out of due to various reasons. Agreements without penalties are optional.
In this case, Turnup being an unpredictable self-centered loser in charge of a large and dangerous military is considered a sufficient reason to bend the knee for now. If he fails his coup we will may stop spending. If he succeeds, then I think we will continue spending.
Sure, Obama and Biden exercised a good deal of parsimony which allowed the Trudeau government to underspend for years. But of all the things the USA is terrorizing the world right now, holding NATO accountable for the spending commitments is the least egregious one, they're not really in the wrong here, they're just being real dicks about it. Demanding it to be raised to 5%, however, is where this demon is really manifesting, and having Carney agree to that increase is another place where I think it's fair to criticize him, I think Carney is just banking on the fact that Trump is not getting reelected.
Mostly by making credible threats to invade former allies.
You're 100% correct. I don't think I would frame it as "Trump won the argument on NATO spending" so much as "Trump highlighted a weakness in NATO by turning the US into a potentially hostile force"
The former implies that Trump had the goal to increase NATO spending from member nations, which is not at all true. Instead it was more that Trump will do almost anything he is asked if the order comes from someone he respects. Be that Putin, Bibi, or some GOP mastermind.
It is true. That was a goal. Maybe not the one he was aiming for with his actions.
that is the one point Trump has on NATO. no one but the USA has fulfilled their obligations on military spending.
fair enough, let's ramp it up. Lord knows the world is getting more volatile
Let's not gloss over the fact that the US was just fine with it that way for decades because of the soft power it gave them.
so they tolerated it for a while. should they have tolerated it forever?
doesn't change the fact that we didn't hold up our end of the deal
They didn't tolerate it, it was by their design. Why do you think the US put bases everywhere?
Force projection allowed the US to gain tremendous power. They wanted everyone else to be dependent on them. It's what made them a superpower.
The US President was called by many, "the leader of the free world". How the fuck do you think they were in that position? It wasn't because everyone thought they were cool, it was because the US military offered protection in exchange for using the US dollar as reserve currency, the US having a guiding hand in NATO and the UN, the US powering global banking and having a disproportionate amount of control of the world order.
So no. The US never "tolerated" the rest of NATO not paying their target. They actively pursued a position of military dominance in NATO.
And the more recent demands that we start paying more are not some critique of us not keeping up our end of the bargain. It's a shakedown for protection money.
Not to mention shortsighted and stupid. In one year they burned away the entirety of their soft power. Relationships with them are now viewed as a liability, not a benefit.
Europe needs to stop defence spending 1 out of every 2 euros on american weapons...
If you don't buy American weapons to subdue your dissidents America will give said weapons to your dissidents for negative monies.
Elbows down, ass up.