Usually when you go into the comment sections of an article, announcement... you see mostly negativity, criticism or blame.
Canadian retailer London Drug had a cybersecurity breach and announced it was temporarily closing its stores...interesting how most customers had positive comments on facebook:
Time is like a river. You cannot touch the same water twice, because the flow that has passed will never pass again. Enjoy every moment of life. As a bagpiper, I play many gigs. Recently I was asked by a funeral director to play at a graveside service for a homeless man. He had no family or friends, so the service was to be at a pauper's cemetery in the Nova Scotia back country. As I was not familiar with the backwoods, I got lost and, being a typical man, I didn't stop for directions.
I finally arrived an hour late and saw the funeral guy had evidently gone and the hearse was nowhere in sight. There were only the diggers and crew left and they were eating lunch. I felt badly and apologized to the men for being late.
I went to the side of the grave and looked down and the vault lid was already in place. I didn't know what else to do, so I started to play.
The workers put down their lunches and began to gather around. I played out my heart and soul for this man with no family and friends. I played like I've never played before for this homeless man. And as I played "Amazing Grace", the workers began to weep. They wept, I wept, we all wept together. When I finished, I packed up my bagpipes and started for my car. Though my head was hung low, my heart was full.
As I opened the door to my car, I heard one of the workers say, "I never seen anything like that before, and I've been putting in septic tanks for twenty years.""
Westslope, you sound like another sad, misguided, Roger Waters. As a Canadian having lived for many years in the past in the US I will tell you that your characterization of US and NATO involvement in Ukraine is lazy and highly reductive. Has the US often been a bad actor in international affairs? Yes. History. But Putin's Russia and Xi's China are brutal, genocidal regimes - in comparison to the current Biden administration in the US. I will take Democracy (even a deeply flawed one like the US) over Authoritarian regimes any day. And I can assure you that the Ukrainian people will fight to the end for their fledgling democracy. I don't think that we as Canadians, with our own flawed democracy, would just lay down and let a genocidal regime roll over us. I am not in favour of war. But I will also defend my family. Sometimes that requires an armed response.
Westslope, you sound like another sad, misguided, Roger Waters. As a Canadian having lived for many years in the past in the US I will tell you that your characterization of US and NATO involvement in Ukraine is lazy and highly reductive. Has the US often been a bad actor in international affairs? Yes. History. But Putin's Russia and Xi's China are brutal, genocidal regimes - in comparison to the current Biden administration in the US. I will take Democracy (even a deeply flawed one like the US) over Authoritarian regimes any day. And I can assure you that the Ukrainian people will fight to the end for their fledgling democracy. I don't think that we as Canadians, with our own flawed democracy, would just lay down and let a genocidal regime roll over us. I am not in favour of war. But I will also defend my family. Sometimes that requires an armed response.
What about the countries that chose to join Nato due to the existential threat of Russia? Are they not sovereign countries? Don't that have a say? If they would have let Ukraine join do you think Russia would be invading now?
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Sure the do. Are you familiar with the concept of social dilemmas? You might know the concept better as a prisoners' dilemma or The Tragedy of the Commons. Individual rational decisions lead to bad outcomes (overfishing, freeway congestion, arms races, etc.).
Let me use another metaphor. Would you allow a small child or an adult under your care to wet their fingers and stick them in an electrical socket? Do not adults have a personal right to not wear a seat belt?
Europe has a long history of successful armed neutral nation states. Sweden and Switzerland kept out of WW II for the obvious benefit of the people living there. Finland has defeated Soviet advances in the mid-20th century. All three of those states have maintained close intelligence and security relationships with other rich western nations.
If the honest to God security of people living in East Europe was the primary objective and not US agricultural and weapon systems exports to those countries, for example, then denying official NATO membership while forging closer security and economic ties would have been the way to go.
The USA plays this game with China and Taiwan without too much difficulty. Unless diverting US public opinion from thorny challenging US domestic economic and social problems is the objective.
Do you believe that the USA has a right to place nuclear weapons in NATO member countries close the former Soviet Union and possibly now Russia?
How do you explain the US discomfort at nuclear weapons placed in Castro's Cuba? Did not Cuba have a sovereign right to choose Soviet missiles in its own country? The USA was clearly very hostile to the regime.
