Nonetheless, for someone who has heretofore accomplished little in life he has our leaders waxing eloquent about Canadian values and threats to same. PM Harper warns us about "attacks on our country, on our values. on our society, on us Canadians as a free and democratic people,” but assures us, “We will not be intimidated. Canada will never be intimidated." Mr. Mulcair, too, is resolute in his patriotism, "Canada is shaken today but we shall not waver. We woke up this morning in a country blessed by love, diversity and peace and tomorrow we will do the same. … We will persevere and we will prevail." And from Mr. Trudeau, “we have never bowed to those that mean to undermine our values and our way of life. We have remained Canadians and this is how we will carry on."
Really, gentlemen. Yes, an ugly murder was committed and more were narrowly averted, but the notion that this was a threat to Canada or Canadian values is ludicrous. When we behave as if it was, we play to the intentions of these misguided misfits, elevating their importance vastly beyond what they deserve. What happened on Parliament Hill was simply an act of wanton violence. Let us not give the perpetrator credit for anything more. Let us not build a tragic fool into a threat to the nation.
At the risk of committing sociology, as I see it wandering around the middle east are thousands of young men, unemployed and hopeless and conditioned to years of war, brutality and destruction. Is it any wonder they are acting the way they are. How to stop it. Not with more war I think. And in Canada now there are thousands of young men unemployed or underemployed and hopeless, seeing their jobs taken by temporary foreign workers and not able to get any training. Young men must be given something positive to do.
ReplyDeleteTerrorist attacks are almost never a threat to the state in themselves. They're intended to make the public fearful, wary, and distrustful of the ability of their government to protect them.
ReplyDeleteI'm not fearful or wary. I am,however, less than confident in the ability of the current government giving the killings on Monday and Wednesday.
Our government, Bill, has a substantial surveillance/intelligence apparatus - the RCMP, CSIS, CSEC, border security, etc. - only Harper has seconded a big part of it to the Oil Patch and the pipeline companies - Enbridge, Kinder-Morgan, TransCanada. It operates to identify, monitor and track First Nations and environmentalists opposed to Harper's bitumen ambitions.
No one can say with certainty that these murders would not have occurred had those resources been used against Islamic radicals but, since both of the killers were known to police, they might well have.
What enrages me is that this young corporal was put on what I consider Target Duty at the war memorial with an unloaded weapon just 2-days after the killing in St.Jean, Quebec.
Like Monday's assault perpetrator, Zehaf-Bibeau is just another soldier-of-fortune wannabe hitching his emasculated ego to the organization du jour looks upon murder as a virtue. In another time, they would probably have joined the FLQ, Baader-Meinhof Gang, Red Brigade or even an old school biker gang.
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