a Canada that embraces freedom, the rule of law, multiculturalism, and evidence-based policy.
Yeah just ask Marc Emery, amirite?
The Australian fed govt is also trying to push through bullshit new spying laws in response to the alleged threat. It’s like they think we’ve forgiven them or forgotten that the NSA gave them access to all kinds of information on us via xkeyscore.
Can you guys fix this Harper clown already… he’s making your country look like a bunch of jackasses, a-la Bush jr and Australia’s own current shit-headed conservaturd PM. Thankfully our jerk is looking like he’s only got one term in him.
Captain Shirtfront doesn’t even seem to have had one term in him - just a bunch of right-wing talking points flapping about in space. He’s a muppet looking for a firm hand to direct his mouth.
Besides, are you saying that Cpl Cirillo didn’t take a solemn vow to uphold Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to uphold the values that make Canada Canada? Are you saying that , “I, Daniel Cirillo, do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors. So help me God.” somehow excuses Carcillo’s obligations to the Charter? Or to Canada?
Reread the Cory’s text: he doesn’t ‘impute’ anything to Cirillo other than in the first paragraph. The rest of the text concern’s itself with Minister Blaney’s (and Harper’s) betrayal. You should concentrate on THAT.
I really see this attack more as an indictment of our mental health system than anything else. It failed Cirillo and Canada. It’s difficult to feel too much compassion for the shooter himself, but he was turned away even when he asked for help.
Two people died that didn’t need to. They are both victims of the system that was supposed to help. Typical of Harper that improving the one thing that could have prevented this tragedy will be the last thing to be looked at.
Just once, I would love to see politicians use a disaster like this one to highlight the need for better access to excellent mental health care. By focusing on crime, it seems that those in power don’t think there’s anything that can be done to help people proactively and so the only thing we can do is equip ourselves to defend against the inevitable violence.
Are you saying that the soldiers who went to Somalia in 1993 didn’t take the same oath? Are you saying that members of Parliament, including Harper, didn’t also take the same oath (which isn’t an oath to defend the Charter)? Yet we don’t seem to think their oaths mean much when we analyze these people and what they stand for.
Betrayal? but they also took (largely) the same oath as Cirillo. Isn’t it possible that they honestly believe that their actions are defending Canadian values, and are in no way a ‘betrayal’ of those values that Cory choses to focus on?
But that’s beside the point. Cirillo and his death is the focal point of Cory’s piece. He rails at the way the Harper government has politicized his death and used it as leverage to push through their agenda. But Cory politicizes Cirillo’s death to the same extent by claiming that he died for specific reasons. To say that Cory’s points are, in the abstract, legitimate and valid is to ignore that he didn’t present them as an abstract defence of plurality and liberalism but chose to ground them in the specific context of Cirillo and the beliefs and values he supposedly gave up his life for.
It is, crazily enough, seemingly getting harder everyday to achieve this. Fear sells, on par or better than sex apparently.
But this is what I was talking about in another thread. Whether Canada sends more or less troops/jets to a foreign peacekeep/aggression is for me whatever given the relative scale.
It is what these people will do at home that is the primary problem, when a clearly damaged person lone wolf riding under a banner they probably can’t understand commits an act that gives the excuses needed, however flawed, to ram through legislation that moves us further toward the security state & serves to entrench these bastards even further.
No, I would never say something so nuttily black and white in one direction or the other on this or any other subject, excluding discussions about what is black and what is white. Half your protestations are all-or-nothing, either in itself or projected on another. I’ll not be humouring you further.
OK, so what did you mean when you talked about the “[s]tark difference between a reservist performing a ceremonial duty unarmed & professional soldiers engaged in hostilities overseas”? What is the “stark difference” in terms of why they joined and the values they stand for? And why would this “stark difference” somehow make it more likely that the reservists have deeper convictions for plurality and liberalism than full-time enlistees do?
Thanks, my thoughts exactly. It appears to me that this person (like others before and no doubt others after him) used the template of Muslim extremism to shape his paranoid belief-system. That he used that belief-system and it’s hatred for Western values (in this case the outside symbol of Canadian democracy) is neither here nor there.
If this would have happened in Nazi Germany, he might have targeted Jews.
Disclaimer (shouldn’t need to mention this, but I can hear the comments if I don’t): I am not a psychologist and have no more insight into what actually went on his head than anyone else. This is just how it appears to me.
Sorry I wasn’t clear, I was talking about the relative differences btwn what those soldiers are subjected to & how it might colour/affect their behaviour(s). You will see more of the sort of thing your Somalian example highlights in combat zones than otherwise IMHO. The stark differences covered that only.
As for why people join, that can vary but the reasons they swear to do not. I will presume more of them mean what they swear to & thereby if someone wants to say that is what they die for I’ll accept it over saying we just don’t know.
While it’s true that combat conditions may exacerbate tendencies that already exist, I suspect that they do not transform people from liberals to sadists wholecloth. And a strong component of the Somalia affair involved hazing rituals at non-combat training bases.
Well, I don’t think many people join because of the oath, nor does the oath dissuade them if they want to join for reasons not entirely consistent with that oath. As I said, MPs take the same oath (which is an oath to the Queen, and not to the Charter), but I don’t think that anyone believes that politicians’ motivations are defined by their oath (even as a default interpretation).
I would wager a lot of joiners place a lot of stock in such things, or more specifically what they hold them to represent.
Not MP’s so much, though I know some who do agree with all of it except the business of pledging anything to the Queen (in Canada).
But the military… there is more than a few reasons they recruit young people. And while the wording indicates the Queen, few take that as literal, it’s just a symbol for Canada, a stupid symbol but most countries slip God in there too, which is also silly.
People know when they are committing to serve their fellow person or their collective community no matter what symbols are employed to represent those.
There is some traction in efforts to remove oaths to silliness, it will just take forever and a day. Longer now that the CPC has wrapped itself so tightly in both the maple leaf and the Queens knickers.
For clear thinking and finding a positive way forward, the first thing for each of us to do is to forgive everyone we feel anger toward when we read about this incident. Letting go of anger allows us to set a positive agenda for what it is that we actually want. Love your enemies (both foreign and domestic) and pray for those who persecute you (both foreign and domestic) is timeless and universal wisdom we all need more than ever.
