Police say they've arrested 3 people after an anti-NATO protest that included two car fires and left some businesses with smashed windows.

Anti-NATO protesters gathered again in Montreal on Saturday to demand Canada withdraw from the alliance, a day after a demonstration organized by different groups resulted in arrests, burned cars and shattered windows.

the purpose of the protest was to demonstrate against what he called NATO’s “complicity with Israel’s military while it’s conducting its genocide in Gaza, … war crimes in Lebanon, Syria” and that “it’s enforcing illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.”

However, Allard rejected accusations of antisemitism. He said the protests were against the actions of the state of Israel and not Jewish people, adding that earlier this week the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

  • @[email protected]OPEnglish
    -60•1 month ago

    Arguing against NATO for the reasons they state just means more people will suffer like the Palestinians do.

    I don’t know why you say this. NATO has been supporting Israel, not Palestine

    • RubberDuckEnglish
      44•1 month ago

      That was not my point. NATO is a stabilizing force. If you remove it, Russia and others will just go on the war path and more people will suffer…

      I acknowledge the suffering of the Palestinians and think that needs to stop. In the past I argued that the war crime angle against Netanyahu should be picked up by the icc… and now they ruled there is enough evidence to issue an arrest warrant.

      But NATO does not support these atrocities. Countries in NATO do… but how does the NATO organisation do that?

      This seems to be of the same mold as “the UN does not do anything but talk” yeah… the UN is a talking organisation… that’s their goal… keep people in dialogue and serve as a platform to hopefully have member countries do stuff.

      NATO is a defense alliance… member countries not actively doing something against Israëls agression does not mean that it would be up to NATO to do something.

      • @[email protected]OPEnglish
        -24•1 month ago

        I’ll try to put things into some historical perspective, as briefly as I can.

        NATO was supposed to be a stabilizing force against the Soviet Bloc. During the cold war that was the rational.

        Some claim that it was a tool to confirm and maintain US military hegemony and I tend to agree with this take. After approx 1993, through its interventions this started to be more and more obvious, especially to those living in the global South.

        • RubberDuckEnglish
          17•1 month ago

          When did NATO go to war outside the Iraq war? I seem to have missed that.

          • @[email protected]English
            3•1 month ago

            NATO didn’t go to war with Iraq, the coalition of the willing did. NATO got involved later on with a mission to train the Iraqi army but that’s a footnote, also, not actual combat.

            Afghanistan was a NATO war, triggered by the US invoking Article 5. NATO also intervened in Yugoslavia. Everyone was pretty much genociding everyone there, massacres left and right, but the Serbs had a disproportionate amount of military resources and were able to do systematic genocide which prompted the intervention. And please for your own sanity ignore anything Chomsky has to say about the thing he’s still calling concentration camps refugee shelters. “CIA says something so the opposite must be true” brainworms.

              • @[email protected]English
                1•1 month ago

                Ok. Let’s see where this goes:

                Was there a genocide, organised by Serbs, against Bosnians. Yes or no.

                And just for the record, yes, I’m trying to get you banned for genocide denial right now. This is a trap. Go on, do your worst.

            • RubberDuckEnglish
              1•1 month ago

              Yeah that’s right… thanks.

            • @[email protected]English
              3•1 month ago

              It’s not a benevolent alliance between partners, it’s a vassal-overlord relationship,

              Why do I only hear that kind of thing from Americans with their penchant for exceptionalism, or vatniks.

              You could see just how much control the US has over NATO by the amount of states telling them to pound sand when it came to Vietnam, when it came to Iraq.

            • @[email protected]English
              0•1 month ago

              Do not forget who empowered the russian fascists or the talibans in the first place.

              Reagan, and the Pakistani ISI, respectively.

            • RubberDuckEnglish
              -2•1 month ago

              Well that’s a constructive answer, and not even a good one. Maybe spend a little less time in your echo chambers and look at all factors of conflicts instead of US bad… rest is irrelevant.

                • RubberDuckEnglish
                  0•1 month ago

                  I think you are a troll…and a badly mannered one at that. Arguing against pax americana just means you have not been paying attention the last 50 years.

                  I’d nuance all this… with it could have been better, the 1st world did a lot of nasty things and and and… but under a USSR victory… everyone would have been way more fucked… just look at the hellholes that modeled after the USSR and evolved from there… but yea… all the US’s fault amirite?

        • @yildolwEnglish
          0•30 days ago

          Is the post-1993 thing NATO stepping in to stop genocide in Yugoslavia?

        • @[email protected]English
          6•1 month ago

          Yes, those are US bootlickers stating their verbal support, but NATO cannot participate in Palestine because to deploy NATO forces article 5 must be invoked by a member country and it must be in response to an attack on said member country. That is the core principle of the treaty. It’s a self defense treaty, of which Israel is not a part of.

          If any country participates in the genocide of the Palestinian people, they do so of their own volition and not at the behest of NATO. Canada leaving NATO or NATO being dissolved would have no bearing whatsoever on the Israeli genocide. The shared NATO membership may foster relationships and cooperation on extra treaty operations, but these are not NATO operations. To be a NATO operation, it has to be an article 5 operation or some operation mandated by the UN, and while the latter has happened, it was highly controversial that it did, as it was beyond the scope of the NATO treaty.

          This protest demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what NATO is or how it works and ultimately even if they got what they wanted, which they won’t, it wouldn’t have accomplished what they were aiming for. The fundamental difference between a NATO operation and an operation of NATO member countries not consecrated in the treaty, is that the former is required to remain in NATO and the latter is completely voluntary.