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Well, I'm moving east this summer and intend to continue to vote for Harper. I guess that, in a sense, i will get to cancel out one the Liberal votes on this forum

   

Peacemaking? Been reading a lot of Orwell lately, Mr. Euphenism?

I'm not talking about disengaging from the rest of the world. I'm talking about bowing out of these overblown photo-ops.

   

Snap!

   

Not at all, peacemaking is the general term used to describe Afghanistan. And from your response you made it sound like you didn't care about our image internationally, and whether you like it or not, 'photo-op' events like these do matter when it comes to how other nations (and their governments) judge Canada internationally.

If you think China (or India or Russia or Brazil to name just a few countries) wouldn't judge us differently if we weren't there - part of the G-8, you obviously haven't looked at how Belgium's or the Netherlands or Sweden's level of international awareness recently. We matter in large part because we are part of the G-8.

The G-8 is like being part of the NHL, pretty much everyone else in the minors aspires to get here. 'Photo-ops' like this is the price of admission, much the same way a giant hockey arena is in the NHL. It may not be as useful as envisioned when it was built, but it still serves a purpose.

   

I've never heard the term peacemaking applied to war before (excepting Orwell's 1984). It's like that American soldier from Vietnam "In order to save the village, we had to destroy it." I think I give Canaidans a lot more credit than you do--I don't think that theya re going to buy this "peacmaker" euphenism over the actuality of war. And I don't think they care about image more than substance.



Again, you seem to imply that because I'm not into billion dollar summits, I am somehow opposed to international cooperation. Nowhere have I said or implied that.

While you seem to accept this massive waste of money as "necessary" I am not resigned to that. I like to think that there is a way we can co0ntinue to cooperate with other nations without photo-ops like this that increase in cost by an order of magnitude every time they are held.

   

Given the actions of the anarchist mob I'm going to give the Ontario Liberals a well-deserved for making what turned out to be an outstanding act of wisdom and foresight.

   

It was reported that any agreements they come to at these summits are worked out months in advance. The summit itself is just a stage to make a grand announcement "we're going to cut slash deficits at our own pace" Yawn. There is not need for all this grandstanding and making a whole city grind to a halt. How much did that cost? I'm sure it's good if the leaders of the G20 can meet each other as a group - but make it at a low key location, keep the media out until they're ready to make an announcement.

But Bootlegga doesn't seem to have met a public expenditure of this type that he doesn't like. He thought the Olympics were great, and spending 55 times more than the last summit was a good idea to him too. Notice he never lives in the cities that are impacted by this crap.

   

I didn't read all the thread but I heard someone who went there who said that the lake (that is actually more the size of a big fountain) cost 57k. The 2 millions was for all the media centre that was there.

   

The lake:

   

Peacemaking has been in vogue for years describing Afghanistan (as well as other recent UN missions simply because peacekeeping doesn't always describe it accurately). If, you don't believe me, just type peacemaking and Afghanistan into Google...better yet, I'll do it for you. Here's just a few off the first page of Google.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Report ... eacemaking

http://ruxted.ca/index.php?/archives/12 ... e-day.html

http://www.nupi.no/Publikasjoner/Boeker ... ordination

http://www.peacekeepers.asn.au/

If you want to call it war that's fine, but peacemaking is a legitimate term used by a lot of people.



I'm not implying that, I'm saying that this IS part of international cooperation, just like sitting on the Security Council or attending the Kyoto Accords. From your statements, you seem to disagree with that. If I'm mis-interpreting you, then I apologize.

To me, a world conference on AIDS, the global economy, military alliance, or free trade are all relevant aspects of foreign policy for Canada. As a minor power, we should be attending as many as possible, not picking and choosing them. I feel we need to have our hands in as many pies as possible to at least try and ensure that global agreements are not to the detriment of Canada or Canadians.

I may not like the cost of this conference, but I see the necessity to participate in it.




And that's where we disagree. To me, 90% of international politics is simply showing up. If we're not there, why should anyone care about us? Look at NATO. We had a fair amount of influence in the organization when we still had troops in Europe. Now that we don't, not so much.

Again, if we want other countries to care about (or at least understand) what's important to our citizens, we need to attend the conferences. And sometimes that means hosting them and footing the bill. Besides, if the G-8 morphs fully into the G-20, then we'll host this event even less and the potential upside increases for us.

   

Maybe its your vote that I'll be cancelling out.

   

Looks like the media guys liked it....

   

While in country, the G-20 was all the chatter around campgrounds. All we heard were people saying it was a waste of money. One lady said an internet conference would have been much better and made more sense.

   

Heritage.org? Puh-leeze. The articles you link actually prove my contention--they link to think tanks who try to persuade public opinion. They are engaged in active propaganda, trying to bring the term "peacemaking" to public prominence.



Legitimate is meaningless in this context--you are certainly legally free to call it what you wish to call it. When there are large groups of people ritually shooting at each other, I call it war. It's a simple, three-letter word that nicely conveys that large groups of people are ritually shooting at each other. "Peacemaking" can't lay claim to that virtue.

It should be pointed out that shooting at one another is not in the wiki definition of "Peacemaking." As for common use, "Peacemaking afghansitan" got me just under a million results in Google. "War Afghanistan" yielded some 164 million. So perhaps the term is not as widely used as you'd like. Maybe heritage.org needs to get more pamphlets out.




I have no issue with participating in international fora. My issue is spending a billion in taxpayers money to host them. I wouldn't mind if the cost were more reasonable, but, to my mind, we host too many of these things. This year alone we spent a billion on the Olympics and a billion on the G20. That's too much money in my books. To add salt to the wound these things just turn into big political photo-ops for those that attend, and relatively little gets done. You provided the perfect example yourself with the Kyoto Accords. What a collosal waste of time and money that whole effort was. Like Fake Lake.

   

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