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Have you ever experienced (somene else) showing up at a party of people you don't know well but were hoping to meet and impress, only to find yourself-- I mean the other person-- showing up attired in something completely inappropriate? And the taxi is gone. And you brought a bottle of wine to a Temperance group? And you showed up at what is in fact not a party but a funeral? Yeah, sometimes all the clues just go straight over your head, all the information you thought you got is obviously wrong, and you show up looking like an utter fool. I mean, not you, someone else. Then imagine you're a Canadian 'feminist.' You show up with your picket sign, your India cotton dress and granny glasses with burning bra in hand to protest and emote in public about the constant and unrestrained rampage of indiscriminate murder of women in Canada-- to find out your at the wrong party. You're ten years too late. What were you thinking? I mean not you-- not you, that other person. Like the 22 year old, six foot, 200 pound kid in the line-up to buy a ticket to the concert of his favorite heavy metal rock band. He looks around to find all the others in the line-up are skinny 15 years olds. He can't believe the band has sold out to kids. He's loved that band for years. Now look! They play for 15 year olds. What an outrage they that they sold out. Check this out, this part by Tamara Cherry writing in the Toronto Sun. First some background.
Marc Lépine (October 26, 1964 – December 6, 1989), born Gamil Gharbi, was a 25-year-old man from Montreal, Quebec, Canada who murdered fourteen women and wounded ten women and four men at the École Polytechnique, an engineering school affiliated with the Université de Montréal, in "the Montreal Massacre", also known as "the École Polytechnique massacre".[1]
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Gamil's father had contempt for women and believed that they were only intended to serve men. [4]
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Gharbi legally changed his name to Marc Lépine in 1982 at the age of 18.[8]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
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Mark Steyn reprises Gamil Gharbi
M. Lepine was born Gamil Gharbi, the son of an Algerian Muslim wife-beater, whose brutalized spouse told the court at their divorce hearing that her husband "had a total disdain for women and believed they were intended only to serve men." At 18, young Gamil took his mother's maiden name. The Gazette in Montreal mentioned this in its immediate reports of the massacre. The name "Gamil Gharbi" has not sullied its pages in the 12 years since.http://hallsofmacadamia
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OK, knowing what you know now, here's the cynical view of what happened. This is the view of one who shows up and just doesn't get it. But that's just fine, because according to the writer below it's not really about the girls killed in Montreal. It's about the writer's emotional response, her outrage, and her pose. Maybe I'm the one who's clueless. Judge for yourself:
Violence against women 'pervades our whole society'
Toronto gathering commemorates Montreal Massacre
By Tamara Cherry, Sun Media
It's not just about the 14 women killed on that fateful day at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique 18 years ago.
It's about the one or two women killed by their partners every week in Canada. The 50% of Canadian women over 16 years old who have been victimized by at least one act of physical or sexual violence.
It's about the 23 women and children murdered in Ontario as a result of domestic violence this year alone.
"Let's not kid ourselves," Lesley Parrott told a packed auditorium at Women's College Hospital today during a ceremony to commemorate the Montreal Massacre's 14 victims who were targeted Dec. 6, 1989 solely because of their gender. "A female baby born in this hospital today is already at risk just because she's a female."
Over the years, Dec. 6 has come to symbolize a day of empowerment for all women victimized by violence and abuse -- women like Parrott, whose 11-year-old daughter, Alison, was raped and murdered in July 1986.
"When so many women -- women like you, women like me -- are being affected, it pervades our whole society," After the ceremony, which saw 14 red roses placed in a vase, as well as one white rose symbolizing this year's women and children victimized by violence, Parrott said, "I think they (the Montreal victims) are the beacons that say, 'Look at this issue.'"
Lia Grimanis was physically abused by her father and uncle 18 years ago as a teenager. A year later, she sought help in a shelter.
She has since mended the relationships with her family and moved on to a successful career and life of philanthropy.
"Today symbolizes the empowerment of women," Grimanis said today. "We need to know that we can live with integrity and that the very fact of our sex will not put us in danger."
Today's event was one of several ceremonies, marches and vigils throughout the city and Canada to mark the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.
At the Montreal school where Marc Lepine stalked the hallways, dividing men from women before unleashing a hail of bullets, a white rose was put on each of the 14 stainless steel monuments in the square named in the memory of his victims, while 14 white ribbons were tied around nearby trees.
Flags on all federal buildings were lowered to half-mast.
Dozens of women in Halifax held a moment of silence and unfurled a clothesline containing blue panels made by abused women. Many had messages about their experiences at the hands of their assailants, with one listing the grim emotions linked to their abuse: pain, guilt, confusion and isolation.
"We will not forget those 14 young women who were so tragically, so suddenly taken from this world, from their friends, from their families and from the bright futures that lay ahead for each one of them," Premier Dalton McGuinty said in Toronto. "We will not forget any of the women who are victimized by violence in this country everyday. And together, we vow to stop this terrible violence."
"It's not about today," said Parrott. "It's about what we do on an ongoing basis."
http://torontosun.com/News
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Below is a short excerpt from John Orth:
John Orth, "My Thoughts on the Montreal Massacre"
December 7, 2004 (Addendum, November 20, 2005)
It is time once again for our annual exercise in self flagellation - the Montreal massacre memorial. As the media suggests, this event does indeed reveal a great deal about Canadian society, but it is not what they are telling you....
[T]here is one critically important fact regarding the Ecole Polytechnique shooting that has been deliberately excluded from virtually every news report of the past fifteen years - the murderer's true name was Gamil Gharbi.
Mr. Gharbi was the son of an Algerian Muslim. His father was a convicted wife beater. His mother testified at their divorce hearing that he had "a total disdain for women, and believed they were only intended to serve men." Mr. Gharbi changed his name to Marc Lepine when he was eighteen. Of course, the liberal media does not want you to know this, because it would reveal that their entire analysis of the massacre is complete nonsense. For fifteen years we have been told Mr. Lepine was a product of North American culture, and this culture is to blame for his hatred of women. Mr. Lepine's violent misogyny was merely a more extreme manifestation of attitudes present in most Canadian males, so the feminist theory goes. The truth is, Mr. Lepine was a product of North African culture. Canadian males in general resemble Mr. Lepine about as closely as we do the September 11 terrorists.
To the best of my knowledge this information has been mentioned only four times in a Canadian newspaper - in the Montreal Gazette the day after the massacre, in a 1999 Toronto Star article, and twice in the National Post in 2002, in articles by Diane Francis and Mark Steyn.
http://vaxxine.com/scon
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Tamara Cherry missed the game by quite a few seasons and no one told her to find a new game. So she shows up in last year's ridiculous fashion while others look foolish in this year's fashion. Tamara, honey, this year it's all about Global Warming. Shed some baggage and get hip. Climate change. That's what it's all about. Dead girls? No, no, no. Climate change. Are you paying any attention at all?
1 comment:
It's often hard to be the first person to leave a comment at a blog post, sort of like being the first boy to get up and ask a girl to dance. I'm not so shy, to my discredit sometimes.
The occasion for this, belated as it is, comment is that such Muslim gynocide is back in the news, today's case being the Kingston, Ontario site of a woman and three teen-age girls murdered, (so we think so far at least, and plausibly so,) by mom, dad, and little brother. It's a family affair.
Yes, it's a family affair, and it's more than that: it's a matter of how the people of Canada, in this case, respond to a murder-- or four here-- of children by their family. Is it somehow not so terrible if the killers come from a nation with a culture that commands such murder for reasons of family cohesion ans social unity? I can make a very good case for the culturally adaptive argument of killing teenage girls. It has indeed good effects in a community insofar as there is social peace and family equity over the generations. It "works" for society at large. If we know the argument's form we can fit the girls into it and show that killing them is a socially responsible action on the part of the rest of the family. So too with Gamil Gharby killing girls, so long as we fit it all into the Islamic paradigm. So long as we have no concerns for Human life of individuals qua individuals. Arithmetic tells us clearly that the individual is not important compared to the whole group. It's a significant argument.
Do we respect it? Will we tie ourselves in relativistic knots to show each other how intellectually sophisticated and culturally adept we are? Some will. Some will show off by claiming it's a matter of culture that we, as outsiders, don't have access to as "Outsiders." We who might condemn such murders out of hand will find ourselves condemned in turn for racist feelings, for cultural insensitivities, for being bone-head stupid and red-necked.
What kind of nation will we have should we turn our mind to the Islamic and the collective? Islamic and collective, of course. For those of us who prefer a nation of freedom, of democracy, and individualism, a nation where our laws support the person rather than the culture, that being a large part of the culture, what do we have for us in store if the culture we live in turns against us? What if this case finds its way to the bottom of a watery grave? if the girls killed are buried? forgotten so as not to harm or enflame the passions of others? Will our culture turn next on us? And could we dare complain or protest in favor of our rights to live?
If Islam is let off the hook once again, then where will we stand next time? In a corner? Silent? Afraid? Shot?
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