Massive World Protests Tomorrow

[KrazyHorse]

With the level of our peacekeeping and NATO commitments, BTW, any further offensive activity is very difficult for Canada to sustain. Which is why the announcement of 2000 men or so going back to Afghanistan for 12 months makes it almost impossible for us to send anything to Iraq.

Sort of clever, that.

He can point to Afghanistan and tell the US he's helping in the war on terror while not having to actually make a decision on Iraq. If he went he'd piss off most of the country. If he said he wasn't going he'd piss off the US.

p.s.: all bets are off if the US was somehow to mirculously get an explicit authorisation of force from the UNSC. In that case there's less of a downside at home and more of a downside with not sending troops...

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Frogger
p.s.: all bets are off if the US was somehow to mirculously get an explicit authorisation of force from the UNSC. In that case there's less of a downside at home and more of a downside with not sending troops...

The upside is that Canadian troops won't be killed by US friendly fire in Iraq.

[DinoDoc]

We still have troops in Afghanistan, IIRC. We should be able to get a few more rounds of target practice in.

[notyoueither]

There is still the Air Force, Frogger. That is all we really committed to Gulf War 1. Also, the Navy is already there. Doesn't take too long for them to assist operations in a limited fashion.

[Sava]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
We still have troops in Afghanistan, IIRC. We should be able to get a few more rounds of target practice in.

Plenty of weddings to bomb, I'm sure.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
I can't wait until the war has been successfully won and all the dumbass protestors have to look back and think about all the time and energy they wasted defending a brutal tyrant...

We aren't defending Saddam, we are defending the Iraqi people.

Blowing the country up and killing tens of thousands of people to install a new dictatorship isn't going to make their lives any better - just a whole hell of alot worse.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by notyoueither
There is still the Air Force, Frogger. That is all we really committed to Gulf War 1. Also, the Navy is already there. Doesn't take too long for them to assist operations in a limited fashion.

The Navy will probably be engaged in a support role, doing what it's already doing (stopping and searching suspect vessels around the Horn of Africa and in the Gulf proper)

The Air Force would have a hard time putting a squadron together to go to Iraq right now.

AFAIK there's a whole bunch of maintenance issues currently...

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Big Crunch


The upside is that Canadian troops won't be killed by US friendly fire in Iraq.

If they're in Afghanistan anyways then the same risks apply.

It doesn't really seem to matter if there's any enemies nearby or not...

[KrazyHorse]

i.e. what DD said

[axi]

This thread has gone totally off-topic. This is a thread for peace protestors. Warmongers go away!

The demo in Athens was HUGE, by far the biggest one in town, since the 17N demos in the 70's. I didn't see it begin nor did I see it end, since it was larger than the total length of it's course, on a six lane boulevard. I've heard estimates of 200.000 from the media and various demonstrators, but nobody is certain for the size, since there are no standards to compare. In Thessaloniki the demo had more than 40.000 (50.000-70.000 as per some estimates) people.

The worst thing about the demo was the attitude of the police. In the beginning of the demo, anarchists burned a bank and some cars and the police started gassing the huge crouds gathered nearby. Towards the end othe demo, anarchists attacked the police outside the US embassy, but they, instead of going after the anarchists, strated MASSIVE gassing of the huge crowd, aiming to make them regret joining the demo.

Some estimates about the demos globally:
Melbourne: 200.000
Rome: 2.000.000
Raris: 350.000
Berlin: 350.000-500.000
Lndon: 1.000.000-2.000.000
New York 500.000
Barcelona: 1.300.000-1.500.000
Madrid: 1.000.000
Brussels: 100.000
Oslo: 60.000

more to come

[KrazyHorse]

Montreal and Toronto were relatively small demos apparently.

I didn't go for the same reason a lot of people didn't: it's cold as **** right now.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Frogger
Montreal and Toronto were relatively small demos apparently.

I didn't go for the same reason a lot of people didn't: it's cold as **** right now.

The number was 40,000 (I think) at the start of the Toronto march, but it droped down alot as they got to the rally and everyone started crowding inside coffee shops.

I left at the end of the march aswell, I was starting to freeze.

[DinoDoc]

Axi: Are those official estimates or organizer estimates?

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by axi
Some estimates about the demos globally:
Melbourne: 200.000
Rome: 2.000.000
Raris: 350.000
Berlin: 350.000-500.000
Lndon: 1.000.000-2.000.000
New York 500.000
Barcelona: 1.300.000-1.500.000
Madrid: 1.000.000
Brussels: 100.000
Oslo: 60.000

more to come

The 2,000,000 for London is the organisers estimate. Police sources say it was at least 750,000. A million is probably not far off the mark.

I was sorely tempted to go along, just to see the crowds.

[KrazyHorse]

Well, the police estimate for London was 750 000 according to CNN and the organiser estimate was 2 million. Axi gave as 1-2 million, which isn't terribly far off of those two figures...