{"id":34196,"date":"2018-05-12T07:33:32","date_gmt":"2018-05-12T12:33:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=34196"},"modified":"2018-05-12T07:33:32","modified_gmt":"2018-05-12T12:33:32","slug":"shining-light-on-scurrilous-stories-who-is-really-undermining-canadian-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=34196","title":{"rendered":"Shining Light On Scurrilous Stories: Who Is Really Undermining Canadian Democracy?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Shining<\/p>\n

Shining Light On Scurrilous Stories: Who Is Really Undermining Canadian Democracy?<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n

Canada is a very pleasant country, if you don\u2019t mind being cold for long periods, and in\u00a0The Economist\u2019s<\/em>\u00a02017 Democracy Index is\u00a0described approvingly<\/a>\u00a0as ranking sixth of the 167 countries examined. It \u201cscores highly in the electoral process and the functioning of government categories, and also for civil liberties. Freedom of expression and religious and cultural tolerance are championed…\u201d<\/p>\n

Regrettably, there has been recent movement towards disapproval of freedom of expression, largely because of a campaign against Russia, which seems strange, because Russia poses no threat whatever to Canada.\u00a0 Certainly there is a Canadian battle group deployed in Latvia in accordance with the Pentagon-NATO\u00a0policy of<\/a>\u00a0\u2018Enhanced Forward Presence\u2019 which involves stationing warships, combat aircraft and troops to confront Russia as close as possible to its borders, but this is just one of the public relations fandangos aimed at justifying NATO\u2019s continuing existence.<\/p>\n

On May 2 Reuters reported the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute\u2019s\u00a0findings that<\/a>\u00a0\u201cwhile global military spending rose one percent to $1,739 billion last year, Russia\u2019s fell 20 percent in real terms to $66.3 billion.\u201d\u00a0 Reuters also noted that \u201cPresident Vladimir Putin has also called for higher living standards and higher spending on social infrastructure, such as healthcare and education,\u201d which is hardly the leitmotif of a someone intent on military expansion and domination.<\/p>\n

But Canada\u2019s anti-Russia crusade is perversely individual rather than objectively logical, which brings us to the country\u2019s foreign minister Ms Chrystia Freeland, who appears to have a personal axe to grind in regard to Russia and Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n

It is intriguing that Canada\u2019s Prime Minister, Mr Justin Trudeau, has chosen to vilify Russia on the grounds of allegedly supporting the media in revealing that Ms Freeland\u2019s grandfather, a Ukrainian, worked for Nazi occupation forces in Eastern Europe during the Second World War.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shining Light On Scurrilous Stories: Who Is Really Undermining Canadian Democracy? Canada is a very pleasant country, if you don\u2019t mind being cold for long periods, and in\u00a0The Economist\u2019s\u00a02017 Democracy Index is\u00a0described approvingly\u00a0as ranking sixth of the 167 countries examined. It \u201cscores highly in the electoral process and the functioning of government categories, and also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[12435,103,204,326,8203,821],"class_list":["post-34196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-brian-cloughley","tag-canada","tag-democracy","tag-foreign-policy","tag-strategic-culture-foundation","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34197,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34196\/revisions\/34197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}