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Canada whips it out...
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| Fir3start3r |
The fact that we have two working ships sailing together must mean the other is for parts...
the fact that we even have a navy is besides the point... :p
| quote: |
Canada sends navy to Arctic north
By Lee Carter
BBC News, Toronto
Canada is sending its navy back to the far northern Arctic port of Churchill after a 30-year absence.
The visit by two warships to the area is the latest move to challenge rival claims in the Arctic triggered by the threat of melting ice.
The move follows a spat between Canada and Denmark, over an uninhabited rock called Hans Island in the eastern Arctic region.
A visit there by Canada's defence minister last month angered the Danes.
Now two Canadian warships, the Shawinigan and the Glace Bay, are on a mission to display what Canada calls its territorial sovereignty over parts of the Arctic it believes are within its borders.
The dispute seems rather odd, when scientists say the region around the island is unlikely to be rich in oil or other natural resources.
But Canada is deeply worried that it has taken what it considers as its Arctic territory for granted.
The islands were not included in border discussions between Denmark and Canada more than 30 years ago.
Warming concern
It is also believed that global warming is causing the rapid melting of the ice across the Arctic, and that could make the legendary North-West Passage linking the Atlantic and the Pacific passable for ships for the first time.
The US has already said it regards the passage as an international strait, not Canadian waters.
Russia, Norway and Denmark also have competing claims to the continental shelf and the natural resources such as gas and oil that may lie beneath the sea bed.
If this all alarms the Canadian government, it upsets environmentalists even more.
They say the Arctic is one of the last of the earth's relatively untouched pristine frontiers and that a rush to exploit it will have a devastating impact on marine mammals and the rest of the fragile eco-system there.
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>>Source<< |
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| josh4 |
| warships? those things look like hooked up yachts |
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| NYCTrancefan |
| hey what did they make those things out of Softwood Lumber reserves that the U.S. is preventing from coming into the country. :) jk |
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| St_Andrew |
| It's so stupid I have no words for it. Yet a great story, keep up the good job Canada :toocool: :rolleyes: |
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| donnybrasco |
| quote: | Originally posted by Fir3start3r
The fact that we have two working ships sailing together must mean the other is for parts...
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LOL!!!!!
A war between Denmark and Canada...cool...it'll will be like watching two girls fight. :tongue2
"The US has already said it regards the passage as an international strait, not Canadian waters."
These:
Versus one of these;
Um, what were you saying about "your" water Canada? |
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| George Smiley |
A hundred US soldiers were on patrol in Iraq when they heard a voice call out from the other side of a sand dune
"One British soldier can fight one hundred American soldiers!"
So they American commander, not having any of that cocky nonesense orders his hundred men over the sand dune to take care of the upstart
After about ten minutes one of the American soldiers comes crawling over the sand dune, covered in blood and bruises
"What happened?" Asked the commander
"It was a trap!" said the injured soldier, "there were two of em!" |
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| josh4 |
^^:rolleyes:
Yeah so back to Canada's crappy navy... |
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| St_Andrew |
| Clearly none of you guys have seen Denmark's army?! I think their only submarine and cruiseship is in Iraq right now... Oh and I forgot, they might have some kind of plane too! Anyway, won't exactly be war of the worlds :p |
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| TheNobleEu |
| quote: | Originally posted by Fir3start3r
The fact that we have two working ships sailing together must mean the other is for parts... |
Actually Canada had the second (some would say third) largest Navy in the world toward the end of, and just after, WWII. We took that tradition directly from the British, and took it very seriously.
Arguably, the Navy has always been the most technologically advanced service branch of Canada's (anyone's?) armed forces. During the recent Iraq invasion, it was Canadian destroyers and missile frigates in the Persian Gulf that were escorting the American carriers (like the one in the picture you see above); moreover the command ship for fleet defense was Canadian, HMCS Iroquois. There's a good reason for this:
During the Atlantic campaign, when American merchant marine shipping to Britian was taking a terrific mauling at the hands of the u-boat flotillas (something the US Navy was powerless to prevent), Canadian technology was called upon to ensure the materiel made it to its destination. Destroyers, destroyer escorts, and anti-submarine warfare patrol hardware and tactics were all developed by Canada, who then trained the Americans in how to build them, and then how to use them to hunt u-boats. This was the foundation of allied victory in the Atlantic campaign, and then the Battle of Britian, and then the European T.O.O.
The world after WWI and WWII had extreme anti-war sentiment. Canada's culture was one of voluntary disarmament. When the fighting was over after WWII, the fleet was mothballed, and most of it was sold to the US Navy, and the rest were ripped apart for scrap iron (swords into plowshares). It's useful to understand why Canada disarmed.
The real tragedy is how the Liberal government single-handedly destroyed the Canadian military, and then treated our tradition of military excellence so blithely and dismissively, first with their lack of funding, their abuse of the core cadre, and then with their ideology of "peacekeeping" (no such thing).
And then of course you have Canadians that hop on the wagon and do the same thing...
There's no legitimate question of Canada's sovereignty over the artic. The real reasons there are:
1. Massive (industrial quality) diamond deposits discovered in the Northern Northwest Territories. Certain parties now want certain sections of the NWT and the NW passage to be declared "international" so they can be commerically exploited;
2. American shipping cost would be substantially reduced to Asia if the NW passage could be used and used toll-free, relative to the sail all the way down to Panama.
-N |
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| St_Andrew |
| quote: | Originally posted by TheNobleEu
The real tragedy is how the Liberal government single- handedly destroyed the Canadian military, and then treated our tradition of military excellence so blithely with their ideology of "peacekeeping" -- and then of course you have Canadians that hop on the wagon and do the same thing... |
I tend to think quite the opposite, militairy in a small modern western country is complete waste of money. There is no threat to Canada, why waste billions upon billions on an army then?! |
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| DaveSZ |
| I used to play with RC boats like those when I was a kid. |
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| TheNobleEu |
| quote: | Originally posted by St_Andrew
I tend to think quite the opposite, militairy in a small modern western country is complete waste of money. There is no threat to Canada, why waste billions upon billions on an army then?! |
This is very European attitude.
In many ways Canada is much more European than North American (something I'm not sneering at). And there is a leftist culture in Canada that does argue, as you do, that spending money on an army to make war in a time of peace is backward planning, barbaric, uncivilized.
This is a very real component of the equation in Canada, and I daresay, in many Euopean countries as well, when we share a culture of anti-war, anti-imperialist, anti-aggressionist sentiment.
The topic to hand in this thread is a good reason why a strong military is needed:
1. To enforce one's national sovereignty and make a presence in said territories (on this Canada rightly deserves ridicule, as on this it has been woefully derelict);
2. Operational and security reaction to insurgency/counterinsurgency;
3. Operational and security reaction to terrorist threats;
4. Rapid operational reaction to international situations of crisis demanding peace enforcement and/or civil defense;
5. Emergency response to pandemic, natural disaster, industrial accident or other national domestic crises;
6. Development of new and maintenance of already established domestic and military intelligence networks;
7. Assistance to allies in their times of the above need.
The military also provides international security for summits, the government, important government buildings, and trains all the personal bodyguards for all diplomats, foreign and domestic.
One of the primary problems experienced by all militaries is the degredation of the quality of the individual soldier and his training once time progresses and those with practical wartime experience begin to die off. If serious training for war (and not "peacekeeping") during peacetime is not continually maintained, if the development of subsequent generations of highly trained cadre in order to perserve the benefits of practical wartime experience is not an operational goal, a gang of civilians in uniform being called an "army" results. Training an army to last on a battlefield from this foundation is almost impossible -- I direct you to the difficulties experiences by many nations at the beginning of WWI and WWII.
A very important reason to maintain an army is therefore maintenance and advancement training/technology of all branches of military personnel, for the time when an army could or would be needed again. There is much to be said about the psychology of the above readiness for operational action, and its ability to ensure that those called upon to serve the national need are competent to do so. Nothing need be said about the deterrence-factor of the above either.
More on this later.
-N |
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