For those living in a cave (or Korea) this is one of several pics by retired army officer Dr. Michel Pilon that ran in the Ottawa Citizen a couple of weeks back.They show this dumb-ass, and a bunch of drunk dumb-ass buddies taking turns urinating on the National War Monument in Ottawa, late at night after the Canada Day ceremonies.
Opinions have run from 'they should be executed' (seriously, I read that one in the Sun) to 'our national education system has obviously failed' to people (even vets) commenting that most people have respect for our war dead and some stupid drunk boys don't constitute a national issue.
thoughts? my interest, specifically, is how this might or might not, reflect our culture of "individualism".
22 comments:
Maybe we should hold them down and pee on them?
This is obscene, and reflects more our general decay than any aspect of individualism. Yet this individualist tendency is clearly party to such a general decay, so this puke's actions are linked in this regard.
Whatever the case, this really steams me up, so so disrespectful, so not treading lightly on the land, so hurting the living earth, so bad.
I am sad for him and his party of goons.
yeah...
i just read a letter today to an editor somewhere or other that also said... "why don't WE piss on THEM?"
they were drunk, though i don't see that as an excuse, really.
and they are young, and we all did some very stupid stuff when we were young.
BUT... i mostly agree w/ C-Dog. i think it's reflective of a certain attitude that has permeated our culture. one which places each of us squarely at the centre of the universe, with everything and everyone else here simply for our pleasure, consumption, or amusement.
sort of the core ideas of western-style capitalism, no?
The slow,incremental erosion of Remembrance Day is what I believe to be most at fault.
I was around when all you could buy was milk and bread. TV and radio were broadcasting ceremonies, and war documentaries all day. Back then you knew why you had the day off. You remembered.
You were drunk too BlueMask!
:)
he prob'ly was drunk, but i like his point.
it used to be that nothing opened, period. 7-11's and gas stations and that was it.
now, by 11:15 or so, EVERYTHING's open, including the malls. and in most provinces, offices don't close anymore, so aside from gov't workers, it's not even a day off.
i would say these two issues/ideas relate--
the erosion of Nov 11 co-incides with the individualist, me-frist approach that would say "yes it's important to remember the wars, but why should that stop me from making money."
also, putting a smiley face behind un-nice comments doesn't make them nice.
positive, constructive criticism has value. let's stick with that.
I`ll reply to anonymous when I sober up tomorrow.....
anonymous merely pointed out another individualist character fault:
the modern day defense.
Innocent by reason of alchohol. No one has to take any responsibility anymore. You can actually get away with murder now.
CHEERS!
Having walked drunk after midnight in Ottawa, I must say that there are few "choice" places to take a piss. Maybe if they put up a porto-pottie or two for public use, drunk people wouldn't need to piss on the monument. Boys love aiming at things when they pee, we just can't pee on a sidewalk or in a field.
And how about that old pervert army vet taking photos of boys with their willies in their hands? He seems to be more of a freak that the pissers.
I agree with Denis, who's the perv taking pictures of guys pissing on the monument, and who's the editor with a slow news day who decided to turn a mole hill into a mountain?
All drunken defenses aside, here's what I think: a couple of kids piss on a war memorial, and all of a sudden everyone is crying foul over not honouring our vets. Could it be that we as a nation have a guilty conscience? What's a little bit of pee?
People who are really insensed by this incident ought to ask themselves when was the last time they took a turn around a cenotaph and said a silent prayer or thank you to the people who have fallen in order to preserve their freedom. In reality maybe these hooligans did us all a favour by giving us cause to think about our vets on a day outside of Nov. 11. What matters is not that a few ignorant kids pissed on a monument, significant as that monument may be, but that we continue to honour the sacrifice of our vets, and their struggle to build a nation of peace loving citizens on their return from the theatre of war. Also, my guess is that among all the fallen soldiers you might find a half dozen or so who would have been more inclined to be sympathetic, or at least amused, by this incident; after all many of them were young men themselves when they went to war.
"People who are really insensed by this incident ought to ask themselves when was the last time they took a turn around a cenotaph and said a silent prayer or thank you to the people who have fallen in order to preserve their freedom."
the last time i walked by a war monument and said a silent prayer was yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, and so on.
i'm pretty incensed by it, simply as disrespect on an individual level just like i'd be upset if i saw someone doing it this afternoon.
is it news? not necessarily. but it's f-ing ignorant, regardless.
No shite!
Are you kidding Wolfy? You're joking right? You never pissed on a building walking home drunk?
I think it is so much worse that Steve Harper and his buddy George keep sending decent human beings to the Middle East to get shot!
My brother in -law is going on his 2nd tour of Afghanistan. He claims that the media only like to focus on the negative.
The Taliban must be stopped. The stories he has told from the locals are horrendous. The overall majority of Afghans support the mission. The women are most greateful for being allowed basic human rights (education, listening to music ect).
To me it still boils down to respecting those who are brave enough to fight for these freedoms.
( and it was the Liberals who sent us to the middle east).
ha ha! ooooh, those liberals, they really make my blood boil! :)
if i did ever piss on a church or monument while drunk (which i may have), then i'm ashamed to have done so. seriously.
and yeah... we keep right on warring, it seems. sadly.
i have no doubt that some very positive things have happened in afghanistan. like most military historians (if i can call myself that) i can respect the human beings who put on our country's uniform, even if i fundamentally disagree with us going to war for pretty much any reason ever. "lions leds by donkeys" is how old winston churchill referred to the grunt soldiers of WW I.
the donkeys, of course, being churchill and his pals.
HOWEVER... perhaps the most pertinent question is, if the taleban must be stopped, as you say, what about the a-holes who put them there in the first place? the people who armed them, trained them, and funded them for many, many years?
oh... wait... that was us.
ditto saddam hussein. a truly evil dude. but in 1984, six months AFTER HE GASSED HIS OWN PEOPLE, old donny-boy rumsfeld was over in iraq shaking hands and having tea with him, and ronald reagan was calling him "our greatest ally in the arab world".
it's too easy to point fingers and say "taleban bad, us good". yes, the taleban sucks, and was possibly the worst, most repressive backwards and dangerous government on earth. but the question remains, then... what the hell are we doing supporting these people in the first place.
you can't play that political/economic/military chess game the U.S. and the U.K. have played with the world for decades, and not expect that, sooner or later, you'll have to sacrifice your queen.
but in any case, god and goddess help us all.
and finally, my friend paul, an 86 year old WW II vet (d-day, france, holland), says that winston churchil is one of the all-time great heroes of history.
Taliban is not a government.
And so it may be that North America armed these tyrants. You seem to suggest that we wash our hands of what monsters we helped to create. Hide in Canada and make peace signs with our fingers?
That`s all I`m doing on this, I`m sick of looking at Mr. Pee.
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