Oh, Carey

(apologies to Steve Perry)

You shouldn't have posted

Knowing how Montrealers feel

And you should've known

Dec. 6 and what it means

Oh, I must've been a dreamer

And I thought you were someone else

'Course you're livin' in a bubble!

Oh, Carey, regarding guns

Hold on, hold your fire

Oh, Carey, "poly" means

Lionizing Lepine

Oh I want to let go

You'll go on hurting this city

You'd be better off alone

If you can't see the misogyny

But you know that there're clauses

Oh, that you can still own guns for hunting game

Can't you feel we're hurting?

On and on

Oh, Carey, regarding guns

Hold on! Hold your fire!

Oh, Carey, the CCFR?!

WTF?! They're using you!

But I should've seen this one

Long ago, far away

And you should've been resting

We hear you've got

Such gimpy knees

Oh, Carey, regarding guns,

Hold fire, on this day

Oh, Carey, get some PR

That was tone deaf

30 years ago but never to be forgotten

Geneviève Bergeron (1968-1989)
Hélène Colgan (1966-1989)
Nathalie Croteau (1966-1989)
Barbara Daigneault (1967-1989)
Anne-Marie Edward (1968-1989)
Maud Haviernick (1960-1989)
Maryse Laganière (1964-1989)
Maryse Leclair (1966-1989)
Anne-Marie Lemay (1967-1989)
Sonia Pelletier (1961-1989)
Michèle Richard (1968-1989)
Annie St-Arneault (1966-1989)
Annie Turcotte (1969-1989)
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (1958-1989)

May they rest in eternal peace. And may they ever remind us of the need to eradicate violence against women, and indeed, hate in general.

- 30 -

Sad Anniversary

Geneviève Bergeron (1968-1989)
Hélène Colgan (1966-1989)
Nathalie Croteau (1966-1989)
Barbara Daigneault (1967-1989)
Anne-Marie Edward (1968-1989)
Maud Haviernick (1960-1989)
Maryse Laganière (1964-1989)
Maryse Leclair (1966-1989)
Anne-Marie Lemay (1967-1989)
Sonia Pelletier (1961-1989)
Michèle Richard (1968-1989)
Annie St-Arneault (1966-1989)
Annie Turcotte (1969-1989)
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (1958-1989)

20 years ago the 14 women listed above were brutally killed, simply for being women, by a depraved, damaged man who was brought up to think of women as being somehow less deserving than men. Somehow less than equal. This is backward thinking and hopefully we can quell it with enough time, and enough unrelenting effort at hammering home the vital message:

women and men are equal

I will never forget. And I will do everything I can to ensure my children learn that message.

It saddens me still to think of how these 14 women died so senselessly, except to serve as a tragic example of how we sometimes fail to learn.

May they rest in eternal peace.

- 30 -

Remembering Dec. 6, 1989: May they rest in eternal peace

Geneviève Bergeron (1968-1989)
Hélène Colgan (1966-1989)
Nathalie Croteau (1966-1989)
Barbara Daigneault (1967-1989)
Anne-Marie Edward (1968-1989)
Maud Haviernick (1960-1989)
Maryse Laganière (1964-1989)
Maryse Leclair (1966-1989)
Anne-Marie Lemay (1967-1989)
Sonia Pelletier (1961-1989)
Michèle Richard (1968-1989)
Annie St-Arneault (1966-1989)
Annie Turcotte (1969-1989)
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (1958-1989)

"Je Souviens" came to mean something more to me on this day than whatever the original intent of using it as the line on our license plates. I am so grateful to have the chance to raise two boys of my own to understand that we need to build a world without violence - towards women or anyone for that matter.

It's the least I can do in their memory. That and to keep singing:



Each time I feel like this inside
There's one thing I want to know
What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding?

Hein vs. Fortier, Barbot and Trudeau in Papineau riding debate this morning

Papineau riding's Green Party of Canada nominee, Ingrid Hein and her riding rivals will be participating in a debate on culture and law & order (the real stuff; not the TV show) on Daybreak, CBC Radio One, Montreal (98.5 FM) today, September 15th, at 7:40 am (EDT).

Host Mike Finnerty and the gang will be broadcasting from a popular local eaterie with the candidates. As of last Friday, the Conservatives were planning to send Minister of International Trade Michael Fortier in to pinch-hit for Mustaque Sarker, effectively denying listeners the chance to hear their actual CPC candidate go toe to toe with his rivals on english radio.

Since that's the case, I wonder: Will the Liberals' Justin Trudeau impress us avec ses abilites to change back et en avance dans la same sentence jusqu'au le point of headache-inducing distraction? Will the Bloq's Vivian Barbot and the NDP's Costa Zapirofolous show up? Tune in to Daybreak, 98.5 FM and find out.

Well Ingrid Hein will certainly be there. Listen in on the live feed here.

Should be interesting.

- 30 -

Live Free to Die: U.S. Gun Lobby

We're all looking for
The right kind
Of live free or die
--Jay Farrar (Son Volt)

The phrase, "Live Free or Die" first entered my vocabulary as a child. Whether I was first exposed to it watching U.S. of Archie or from a car trip to Santa's Village in Jefferson, New Hampshire (it appears on their licence plates), I had it seared into my consciousness by the time Rene Levesque put "Je Me Souviens" on our Quebec plates - or at least before I was ten.

The 1995 Son Volt song above asks what I think is the great question of America. What is the right balance? While the phrase was apparently derived from the writings of a U.S. Revolutionary War general, I think it has now morphed into a question that we ask ourselves whenever mass murderers carry out their hideous University of Texas Tower Massacres, their Columbines, their Dawsons and now their Virginia Techs. How free do you need to be?

If anyone is clamoring to answer that, it's the U.S. Gun Lobby, and their answer is: "Free enough to die." For only a gun lobby group could look upon the massacre of a week ago today and see a golden opportunity to - get ready for this - relax the restrictions on carrying concealed firearms in the state of Virginia.

"This is a huge nail in the coffin of gun control," said Philip Van Cleave, president of the gun rights group Virginia Citizens Defense League.

"They had gun control on campus and it got all those people killed, because nobody could defend themselves," he told AFP.

"You want people to be able to defend themselves -- always," he said.

Van Cleave said the tragedy could give a boost to a years-long effort in Virginia to pass legislation allowing students to carry weapons on campus -- especially since existing laws failed to prevent Cho's murderous rampage.

"Gun control failed. That student under university rules was not to have a gun," Van Cleave said.

I'm not even going to weigh in on the twisted logic of gun-control being the culprit in the Virgina Tech massacre, except to say that in the context of a heavily-armed U.S. population, it may not sound as stupid to them as it does to me. My male Texas co-workers (quote: "I'm white, so I vote Republican") all own guns and consider them as normal an accessory as a wristwatch or cellphone. When you believe everyone else around you is packing, and that they may very well try to get the better of you, you need to know where your gun is so you can defend yourself. And for many Americans it's a measure of their freedom that they can do so unfettered.

At least that's how one middle-aged (white) church-going Texan described it to me.

To which my response was that in my neck of the woods, the assumption is no one else you bump into is likely to have one, and therefore why should you go to the trouble? And who would want to pull a gun on you anyway? Unless you're connected to the criminal underworld, it's really a non-issue.

But that's not the only response, because my American friends, when pressed, don't have a good answer about what happens on the day they do find themselves in the gunfight they've so diligently readied themselves for (not unlike their dusty Y2K bunkers)? Cause once the guns are out and being fired, I don't think it's going to end like a James Bond or Die Hard movie.

Anyone who thinks otherwise may be prone to other illogical fantasies - like that invading and occupying a country halfway around the world will provide them with freedom. Or that Jesus will save the believers on the Day of Reckoning. Or that deregulation can solve our problems because the companies care about people more than governments. Or that your society can carry on polluting and consuming with reckless abandon as an exercise of your God-given freedom to enjoy "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness". The prospects of our planet sustaining human life in two generations be damned!

That's living. The American Way.

- 30 -

Another Sociopath turned Psychopath

The silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload
And nobody’s going to go to school today
She’s going to make them stay at home
--The Boomtown Rats

In lieu of yesterday's shooting spree at Dawson College, I couldn't agree more with the Amazing Wonderdog's conclusion that to have or not to have a long-gun resistry is not the question.

The real issue is how this nutcase slipped through the background checks and obtained this weapon. All the registries in the world are useless if they can't do what they're designed to, which is to control who can own guns.

That's certainly what I was thinking. I also can't believe the jerk's web host allowed all the crap he posted to stay up, until today anyway. Nor can I believe that a video game re-enacting the Columbine shootings even exists, and is available on the market (sorry but I can't bear to put up a link to that right now).

But I can believe a sociopath like this can be produced in a place like Laval. And that not so long ago in Beaconsfield - where I happened to spend my teenaged years - four screwed-up teenaged kids beat their elderly next door neighbours to death with a baseball bat.

Suburbia tends to breed more than its share of bored, screwed-up kids. And it will keep doing so, especially when the parents / guardians don't love their kids enough to goddamn pay attention to them and listen to them. Like Marilyn Manson said:

Michael Moore: Do you know that on the day of the Columbine massacre, the US dropped more bombs on Kosovo than any other day?

Marilyn Manson: I do know that, and I think that's really ironic, that nobody said 'well maybe the President had an influence on this violent behavior' Because that's not the way the media wants to take it and spin it, and turn it into fear, because then you're watching television, you're watching the news, you're being pumped full of fear, there's floods, there's AIDS, there's murder, cut to commercial, buy the Acura, buy the Colgate, if you have bad breath they're not going to talk to you, if you have pimples, the girl's not going to fuck you, and it's just this campaign of fear, and consumption, and that's what I think it's all based on, the whole idea of 'keep everyone afraid, and they'll consume.'

Michael Moore: If you were to talk directly to the kids at Columbine or the people in that community, what would you say to them if they were here right now?

Marilyn Manson: I wouldn't say a single word to them, I would listen to what they have to say and that's what no one did.

Even though Gill was reportedly a Manson fan himself, it seems he didn't get the message somehow. So don't try to blame Manson - or the goths, for that matter. They aren't the problem.

Instead, look in the mirror and think about what kids you pick(ed) on in school. Think about who you humiliated just to get a cheap laugh and a high-five from your friends so you could try to boost your own fragile self-esteem. Think about the strange co-worker you joke about behind his back because he's an oddball. And most of all, if you're a government bureacrat issuing gun ownership certificates, please - for all our sakes - think about that silicon chip that might be inside that person's head, and how the last thing we all need is for it to switch to overload when they've got access to deadly weapons.

- 30 -

Shoot him, throw a shovel off, there you go

"When the IEDs went off, the ...practice was to basically shoot up the landscape - anything that moved. That kind of thing would happen a lot."
--Michael Blake, U.S. Iraqi war veteran (BBC airdate: March 29, 2006)

US military prosecutors plan to file conspiracy and murder charges against seven enlisted Marines and one Navy corpsman for the alleged murder of an Iraqi civilian and subsequent cover-up on April 26 in Hamandiya,...
--The Jurist, June 2, 2006

"Keep shovels on your truck, or an AK (rifle). If you see anybody out here at night, shoot him, and if they weren't doing anything, throw a shovel off (like) they were digging an IED or whatever... Shoot him, throw a shovel off, there you go."
--Jody Casey, U.S. Iraqi war veteran, describing his training instructions from other U.S. soldiers upon his arrival in Iraq (BBC airdate: March 29, 2006)

"Criminal investigators are hoping to exhume the bodies of several Iraqi civilians allegedly gunned down by a group of U.S. Marines last year in the city of Haditha, aiming to recover potentially important forensic evidence, according to defense officials familiar with the investigation. The possible evidence was disregarded at first because the slayings originally were not treated as crimes."
--The Washington Post, June 2, 2006

"I scraped dead bodies off the pavement with a shovel and threw them in trash bags and left them there on the side of the road, and I really don't think the anti-war movement is what's infuriating people... The only thing that kept (my morale) up was the fact that people were at home talking shit on the wrongs that I had to commit for this government."
--Joe Hatcher, U.S. Iraqi war veteran (BBC airdate: March 29, 2006)

"...the United States military does everything that it can to avoid civilian casualties, to limit the impact of any military operations on the civilian population and, most importantly, to take action where our soldiers do not follow the rules."
--Tom Casey, U.S. State Department spokesman, June 2, 2006)

"We acted inhumane; and a lot of soldiers down there are very inhumane. Total disregard for human life. That's why they call (Iraqis) Hajji. You've got to desensitize yourself to (the Iraqis). They're not people - they're animals. Then you watch it get covered up and shoved under a rug and you know: 'Oh, that didn't happen'. I seen innocent people being killed. IEDs go off and you just zap any farmer that's close to you... They basically jam into your head: 'This is Hajji, this is Hajji...' You totally take the human being out of it and you make them a video game, a target... If you start looking at them as humans,... how are you going to kill them?"
--Jody Casey, U.S. Iraqi war veteran (BBC airdate: March 29, 2006)

The Ishaqi investigation concluded that the allegations of intentional killings of civilians by American forces are unfounded.
--Un-named Senior Pentagon official, paraphrased by ABC News, June 2, 2006

- 30 -

We must never forget

Geneviève Bergeron (1968-1989)
Hélène Colgan (1966-1989)
Nathalie Croteau (1966-1989)
Barbara Daigneault (1967-1989)
Anne-Marie Edward (1968-1989)
Maud Haviernick (1960-1989)
Maryse Laganière (1964-1989)
Maryse Leclair (1966-1989)
Anne-Marie Lemay (1967-1989)
Sonia Pelletier (1961-1989)
Michèle Richard (1968-1989)
Annie St-Arneault (1966-1989)
Annie Turcotte (1969-1989)
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (1958-1989)

It was 16 years ago this evening.

From the CBC archive:

For 45 minutes on Dec. 6, 1989 an enraged gunman roamed the corridors of Montreal's École Polytechnique and killed 14 women. Marc Lepine, 25, separated the men from the women and before opening fire on the classroom of female engineering students he screamed, "I hate feminists."

We, who abhorred this violence 16 years ago, if we didn't call ourselves feminists before, Marc Lepine, we surely became feminists on that day.

May your victims know eternal peace.

- 30 -

"Shoot to Kill"

Shoot to thrill, play to kill
Too many women with too many pills
Shoot to thrill, play to kill
I got my gun at the ready, gonna fire at will
--AC/DC

Cathie from Canada has a lot of good stuff on the sad sad situation in New Orleans. In particular, this outrage about how the Red Cross still has not been allowed into the city by the apparently Orwellian-named Dept. of Homeland Security.

As Wes Clark noted, there's still a real lack of leadership. I don't understand why I seem to be able to get a better read of the situation just from clicking around the internet than those guys making the decisions, with all the tools they have at their disposal.

Last night on CTV news, Jed Kahane did a live stand-up from NOLA. (He's an excellent reporter, BTW, who only a few weeks ago let it be known that Homolka's scumbag ex-boss had tried to sell him his juicy "scoop" on her, days before the Toronto Sun broke the story.) Anyway, Kahane looked shaken as he signed-off noting that the military that sloshed in yesterday had "shoot to kill" orders.

Well I'm sure that will be of great comfort to the starving, thirsty thousands who are feeling the grave with one foot as surely as they're smelling the fetid rot of the city around them.

You can easily see how frightened they are. They tell the cameras at every opportunity. They've been left to their own devices. Their survival is all up to them whether they have the means or not.

If I was in that Convention Center and my son hadn't had any milk or a bath or anything to eat for three days, I'd be a disgrace as a father if I didn't smash open the local grocery store and take whatever I could for him. The fear of not knowing what the hell is going on drives people to very desperate acts; and when people are dying for want all around you while "property" is nearby, the rules of what is yours to take go out the window pretty fast.

Thank God it never got like that here in the 1998 ice storm. It's (an imperfect analogy, I know, but it does have some bearing, I think.) I remember there was leadership from our officials; they took their responsibilities very seriously, and let us know what was happening. They gave us a sense that they were on top of a bad and unpredictable calamity, and they made sure people were looked-after and aware of where to get shelter and basic provisions.

There was no looting to speak of, although the opportunities abounded. I ventured into the "closed" city at my boss's request - right downtown to Peel and Ste. Catherines, in fact - where I had to sit for hours in a windowless office with a rotary phone in case the other employees called wondering about their jobs & shifts, and what was happening.

Lots of folks were holed-up in hotels or staying with friends; many had to scramble to find a place to stay where there was power and heat. The downtown streets were almost completely abandoned. There was just the occasional police car roaming around, and thankfully for me, I happened across a hot-dog & fries pick-up truck type operation parked near McGill.

One thing no one put in place was any "shoot to kill" directives. That is very, very warped and I can only imagine things getting worse before they get better. These are troops who are primarily trained on killing the enemy. That kind of order just sets the tone for them, and sets the table for a lot of bloodshed. Another awful decision to pile on the mound of Bushco's legacy.

If you treat people like savage animals, they will respond by acting like savage animals. Post-invasion Iraq proves that, and anyone can see it - anyone who does think of them as human beings in the first place that is. But do they? I have to think not; that's the only way I can make sense of "Shoot to Kill" orders in this situation.

The United States has lost even more of its soul than I ever thought possible.

- 30 -