Strike said:
We're dividing veterans?
Any group that supports (or shows lack of support) for one political party over any other is the one doing the dividing, because it is telling those veterans who may still consider voting for the non-favoured group that they are not welcome in that club.
I seriously doubt anyone is losing sleep over not being a member of that club. If you like the campaign, you join it. If you don't, you move on. Seems pretty simple to me.
The dividing veterans part comes from the fact that we're 58 posts into the discussion on a mostly military/veteran occupied forum, discussing a group of other veterans (as many as 12,000, but obviously somewhere less due to some of them being civilians), and yet the topic of the thread remains "ABC Veteran clowns". Nice to know that we're all one big happy family! The ABC campaign isn't calling you any names for choosing to not subscribe to the ABC campaign. Doesn't bother me any (the clowns reference), but it's a pretty good example.
And it's not nitpicking. Clarke didn't say that he decided to vocalize his ABC beliefs or use any other wording that would make it seem like an individual effort. The article says he decided to start the campaign.
Definition of campaign as a verb: work in an organized and active way toward a particular goal, typically a political or social one.
And as a noun: an organized course of action to achieve a particular goal.
That certainly doesn't give the impression of one person acting, but more like organizing and encouraging a group of people.
Your reply seems more like nitpicking, whereas the rest of us are taking the FB posts and news articles at face value.
Okay, take this at face value - http://canadianelectionatlas.blogspot.ca/2011/06/conservative-change-08-11.html
There's a reference to an ABC campaign in the 2008 election. Seems Mr. Clarke wasn't the brainchild after all. Now I ask you - what does that change, now that you know that?
Oh, and the claim of union funds comes straight from Clarke's own FB post from June. I seriously doubt he would bring up any sponsorship that was given 3 years ago (which by your reasoning, ABC didn't exist so I don't even know why you brought up that comment) which was likely spent some time ago.
You'll have to refresh my memory if it's been posted already (I don't see it, but I do see Danjanou claiming he saw something about $25K), but which FB post from Clarke in June referred to union funds? The union funds I referred to were over three years ago, from UVAE to CVA for a specific purpose, and I highly doubt UVAE had the foresight to donate funds almost four years before an ABC Veterans campaign.
I think the problem is that people have gotten a little too much sixth and seventh-hand information, and the story's gotten more distorted every time it gets told. How about we stick to what we know and can be proven? The ABC campaign is not affiliated with any other veterans group or union. If having Clarke or Blais as a member of ABC adds up to an affiliation with another veterans group, then I guess I'm affiliated with Mötley Crüe then by virtue of being a member of their FB group. I'll be sure to say hi from everybody here to Vince, Tommy, Mick and Nikki at the show on Sunday night.