Archive for the 'Politics' Category

Montreal Massacre: Alternate Endings

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

The italicized text below is from the online article at http://www.diarmani.com/Articles/Armani/Alternate%20Endings.htm 

I find it interesting because as I get to know myself better and work on my problems, I wasn’t sure that if in the face of danger would I be one of the 7 mentioned in the article below, or in the group that walked out. In some respects, I have a similar time with what’s left of my marriage. Who are we really – I suppose we only know when put to the test.


Montreal Massacre: Alternate Endings

By Christopher di Armani

Gamil Gharbi single-handledly changed the face of Canadian gun politics. He became the embodiment of everything that man-hating feminists despise. In their horror and fear they lashed out at every Canadian male, and continue to do so today.

Someone said at the time, “The blood of these fourteen women are on the hands of every man”. Complete and utter garbage, but the national media lapped it up.

But what was the real problem in Montreal that fateful December day? Was it a lack of “gun control”? Not according to the Montreal Coroner Teresa Z. Sourour. She said quite clearly the exact opposite, not that anyone in government or the media noticed.

“The issue of firearms control has intentionally not been addressed. With the unlimited ammunition and time that Marc Lépine (Gamil Gharbi) had available to him, he would probably have been able to achieve similar results even with a conventional hunting weapon, which itself is readily accessible.”
Indeed it wasn’t until 2004, a full fifteen years after the event, that we were finally able to get the government to translate her report into English. (see diArmani.com for Ms. Sourour’s full report. [doc format])

Was it the failure of mental health officials? I doubt it. We did not have “thought police” in 1989 (and thankfully do not today either), and until this event, Mr. Gharbi apparently didn’t exhibit much in the way of abnormal psychology.

Was it the failure of police responding to the scene? Ms. Sourour said yes. I disagree. Sure, they formed a perimeter and sat outside waiting until Gharbi offed himself, but that is not the root cause of the high death toll.
The failure that day was with our manhood. Or more to the point, our lack of one. For thirty years or more, men had been “trained” to be obedient, to do what they’re told, to be more “feminine”, less “manly”.
So they did exactly what the lunatic with the gun said. They abandoned their sisters to a sure and horrific death.

They left the room.

I pray that the faces of those fourteen dead women haunt every single male who did as Gharbi ordered, every single night for the remainder of their spineless lives. They were there when it counted. They could have saved the lives of their fellow students and they chose not to. Shame on them all. They failed the woman, they failed themselves, and they failed Canada.

Let’s imagine, for a moment, two alternative endings to Montreal on December 6, 1989.

Let’s imagine that a single one of those men had the courage to say “No!”

Imagine if he had gathered his thoughts and his courage, and simply stormed Gharbi. Sure, he might have been shot, even killed. But his actions would have showed clear leadership, and surely one or two other men would have joined the battle. Gharbi would have been taken down in the very first classroom, with perhaps three or four wounded or dead.

That’s a far cry from 14 dead & 29 wounded.

But wait! you say, That’s never going to happen! Who in their right mind is going to confront an armed madman in a school shooting?

Nobody!

Are you sure?

Because there are 7 young men at the Thurston High School in Oregon who are living proof you are wrong.
Yes, the young man leading the counter-attack, Jacob Ryker, was shot multiple times. He didn’t let that stop him. He continued on until the man with the gun was disarmed, and he lived to tell about it. Not only that, he was awarded the highest honour in the Boy Scouts of America for his bravery and leadership. (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1998/08/11/national/main8610.shtml)

Now let’s look at another scenario, one that seems to disturb so many Canadians today.

Imagine our laws were different.

Imagine that, instead of doing their best to disarm every Canadian, our government believed in our inherent right to defend ourselves. Imagine they had the common sense and the decency to promote lawful concealed carry for any law-abiding citizen that can meet the same proficiency with firearms and use of force training as our police officers.

It’s not that difficult a threshold.

Had there been a single law-abiding citizen with a concealed handgun in Montreal’s l’Ecole Polytechnique that fateful day in 1989, the outcome would have been different. It would have been swift and effective.

Gharbi pulls his rifle out of his duffel bag and points it at someone. He might even get a shot or two off. Then some man or woman with the foresight (and the training) to carry would have stopped him dead.

We wouldn’t be holding candle-light vigils for fourteen dead women, believing that if we just blame enough men for the tragedy, it won’t happen again. The cold, brutal reality is so completely the opposite.

Look at every school shooting in North America and what do they all have in common? “Gun-Free Zones”. Every school has, as its published policy, no legal firearms permitted.

It didn’t help in Columbine. It didn’t help in Tabor. It didn’t help in Virginia Tech. It didn’t help in Dawson College. And it didn’t help in l’Ecole Polytechnique in 1989. Nor will it help the next time some unbalanced individual with a gun goes on a shooting rampage in the next “gun-free zone”.

The time has come to stop pretending we can light a candle to stop the violence. The time has come to focus on solutions that work.

Guaranteeing the death of our young people is not something we should be proud of, yet that is what we do every time we legislate another “gun-free zone”.

The only people who obey the rules are the law-abiding. People like you and me.

We do not walk into a school or a mall and start shooting people.

Yet we are the very people the state demands be defenseless in the face of evil.

It’s time that changed. It’s time our politicians paid attention to us and the real solution we offer.

It’s time concealed carry was made accessible again.

Yes, I said again.

It wasn’t so long ago that concealed carry was a realistic option in Canada, and obtaining a concealed carry permit wasn’t a big deal.

It’s already legal. The law is on the books. Our bureaucrats simply deny every application that doesn’t meet their “criteria”. (read every application)

Let’s tell our elected politicians we want them to take control of the unelected bureaucracy and make concealed carry accessible to ordinary Canadian Citizens.

Again.

—

Christopher di Armani is a freelance writer and filmmaker who resides in Lytton, BC, Canada, with his wife Lynda and their two dogs, Koda and Tuco.

Christopher can be contacted at christopher(at)diArmani.com or http://www.diArmani.com.

9 year old – excommunicated

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

I read recently that the pope had “excommunicated” the family of a 9 year old who had gotten an abortion.

Quoting the online article from time magazine http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1883598,00.html:

The case of the pregnant 9-year-old was shocking enough. But it was the response of the Catholic Church that infuriated many Brazilians. Archibishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of the coastal city of Recife announced that the Vatican was excommunicating the family of a local girl who had been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather, because they had chosen to have the girl undergo an abortion. The Church excommunicated the doctors who performed the procedure as well. “God’s laws,” said the archbishop, dictate that abortion is a sin and that transgressors are no longer welcome in the Roman Catholic Church. “They took the life of an innocent,” Sobrinho told TIME in a telephone interview. “Abortion is much more serious than killing an adult. An adult may or may not be an innocent, but an unborn child is most definitely innocent. Taking that life cannot be ignored.”

Wow. This article just shocked me.

Driving Miss Sun Crazy

Monday, January 5th, 2009

I have heard that that every time Toyota has a problem with their financial situation they tend to throw the idea of a solar powered hybrid at the consumer. I had looked into purchasing one of these awhile back, but the math didn’t work out.

I still drive my ol 98 Toyota at almost 210,000 miles. It is paid off and I only drive about 30 miles to and from work each day. When I had done the calculations – even gas had gone up to almost $3.50 a gallon and I drove 100 miles a day – it was still cheaper to continue with my non-car payment Toyota. Gas is currently ~1.60 a gallon so…. no Toyota Prius for me. I even looked at the so called Tax Breaks and it wasn’t worth it.

They say on this link http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9725898-1.html?tag=mncol;txt that the solar kit can add as much as 29% additional fuel efficiency. Gosh, if they’d make this in a biodesiel format, drop the price a bit, they’d sell millions of these little bugars if equipped with solar kit.

I guess it has been happening for years though. There is always some story about some guy who invented some magical way to get car to run 100MPG that then gets quietly eaten by the oil companies. In this case, is it just the fear of returned vehicles from damaged

That’s one thing, this may be related to my Alamo plan I had thought of some time ago. Alamo Plan? Well sort of a disaster recovery plan for my self and family.

Really, lots of folks are saying we are running out of time in terms of various 2012 theories, Edgar Cayce earth change theories, and the like. I’m all about preparation, but I want to be somewhat practical as well. The other day I spied two interesting things that could be used in concert to create the ultimate Alamo plan should the Earth get a bit nervous and want to go into upheaval as many have been saying for a couple thousand years now.

Never mind earth changes – what about plain old economic collapse? Perhaps we should look at the ol’ USSR as a model. It took them a good 20 years and it is still a bit of a mess.

So my plan basically consists of acquiring at some point:

1. A Truck / Van with Biodiesel / Vegetable Oil Capability
2. If it is a truck, getting one of those cool little campers on the back.

The idea is fanned by a couple of requirements. No matter what happens I would still need transportation somehow, and I’d need somewhere somewhat secure to lay my head.

I don’t want to live in a tent and I’d like some fuel diversity. This is a plan forming in my mind so it needs some work. I’ve been practicing taking cold showers for bathing, so hopefully I won’t need a hot water heater in my planned disaster recovery portable home.

Another option is to get a pop up trailer / camper, but I expect that it would be cost prohibitive as a Personal Disaster Recovery option.

Interesting… Politics and Slavery

Monday, August 25th, 2008

Interesting …

Posted: August 25, 2008
1:00 am Eastern

By Samuel Blumenfeld
© 2008 

History is not taught very well in today’s public schools, and that is why the history of the Democratic Party is totally unknown by the American voting public. Believe it or not, the Democratic Party was inspired by those Southern delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 who forced all of the other delegates to accept the institution of slavery as the price of their participation in the new government. That is why the Southern states were able to count each slave as three-fifths of a person in determining the number of representatives the state could send to Congress.

Although the Constitution called for ending the importation of slaves by 1808, the Southerners were compensated by Section 2 of Article IV, which stated: “No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.”

The word slavery was not mentioned in the Constitution because such men as Washington, Madison, Franklin and others had hoped to abolish slavery, but were forced into the compromises that made it possible for the Southern states to join the union. They expected that the Southern states would phase out this undemocratic institution over a period of time.

But the opposite happened, and the Democratic Party, which was formally organized in 1831, became the pro-slavery party. While the importation of slaves was forbidden, the population of slaves grew dramatically because of deliberate slave breeding. The children of slaves were automatically considered slaves. Many a white slave owner could thereby increase the value of his slave property by impregnating his female slaves.

Opposing the Democrats was the Whig Party, organized in 1839. But because the party contained within its ranks both pro-slavery Southerners and anti-slavery Northerners, the party was too divided to be effective. They were gradually overshadowed by a new political group, the Republican Party, manned by determined abolitionists. The contest between North and South now became far more bitter and well defined.

The National Democratic Convention met at Baltimore in June of 1852. Among its resolutions were the following: “All efforts of Abolitionists or others made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of Slavery” will “endanger the stability and permanency of the Union.”…”Resolved, That the Democratic party will resist all attempts at renewing, in Congress or out of it, the agitation of the Slavery question, under whatever shape or color the attempt may be made.”

At the Democratic National Convention in Cincinnati in June, 1856, the party reiterated its repudiation of all attempts by abolitionists to interfere with the institution of slavery, which, if not stopped, “must end in civil war and disunion.”

Meanwhile, agitation for secession on the part of the South had been growing to the point where most Southerners saw no solution to the problem other than seceding from the United States. Sen. Iveson of Georgia, in an 1860 address to his constituents said: “Slavery must be maintained in the Union if possible, out of it if necessary; peaceably if we may, forcibly if we must.”

In other words, the South had decided that it preferred preserving the institution of slavery over preserving the United States of America. Slavery was more important than union.

The election of Democrat James Buchanan as president in 1857 gave Southerners the opportunity to plan secession with the help of Buchanan’s Southern members of his cabinet. For example, John B. Floyd, secretary of war, managed to transfer huge amounts of military stores and equipment from Northern armories to Southern ones in preparation for war. As a result the North was rendered defenseless.

When the Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln for president in 1860, the slave states decided that the time was ripe for quitting the Union, setting the stage for Civil War. The Southern Democrats, so totally imbued with their own power to destroy the Union, did not know what they were up against in the person of Abraham Lincoln. By 1865, by the time the Civil War was over, the South lay in ruins and slavery had been abolished. The Democratic Party then became the part of racial segregation and Jim Crow.

And what is the Democratic Party today? It is the party of left-wing socialism, dumbed-down public education, defeat in Iraq, amnesty for illegal immigrants, abortion on demand, gay marriage, more taxes for everyone, bans on oil drilling and “change you can believe in?” As the French say, “plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose,” the more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.


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