Terrorist Attack in Ottawa

Shockingly today in Ottawa, an armed man shot down a soldier on guard and ran towards the Parliament and somehow got deep inside the building where meetings where taking place before getting fatally shot and falling dead. Its sort of nerve racking for me at least since I live so near where this attack occurred.

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/10/22/canada-under-attack-by-homegrown-terrorists

Thats what you get when you align yourself with the USA's "freedom" adventures in the middle east.

That is a troubling event. But it would be ludicrous to descend into persecution or acts of aggression.

The US and Canada probably need to recommit to funding mental health services.

TheCupboard said:

That is a troubling event. But it would be ludicrous to descend into persecution or acts of aggression.

The US and Canada probably need to recommit to funding mental health services.

They should also re-evaluate their stances on the middle east, and specially the USA should re-evaluate its undivided support of Israel.

Is that a terrorist attack? We've had 2 of those guys get into the whitehouse now.

Yeah it was pretty chaotic downtown today. I was supposed to work an evening shift but they ended up cancelling it with this e-mail:

"Concerning the 3:00 PM - 10:00 PM shift on 10/22/2014

MESSAGE:
--------------------------------------
Hello,

Your shift for this evening has been cancelled. At the request of Ottawa Police and the RCMP we have asked all staff NOT currently inside our downtown Ottawa office to not come into work.

Due to the dynamic and fluid situation our evening shift has to be cancelled tonight without pay.

Thank you for your understanding through this challenging day."

At least the alleged terrorists chose to target members of the military and the government directly (so rather high in the hierarchy), rather than lashing out on random bystanders.

If you wonder why I'm saying that this is a "good" thing, ask yourself if collective responsibility/blame exists in a democracy. Kinda like a reverse Nuremberg, are citizens (in a democracy) responsible for the actions of their leaders? After all, they elected them, it's not as if some insane tribal leader, crazy king or dictator did stuff without asking them....right?

Keep in mind that Jihadists do consider Western citizens responsible for the actions of their leaders. The reasoning goes somewhere like this:

Are G.W. Bush, Obama, Abbot, Cameron etc. bombing my country and killing my people? Well, they didn't get in power by killing their rivals in a tribal war, they were elected by their own people with this weird thing called "democracy", and in this thing elected leaders do what people tell them! So if their leaders are bombing my country, it's because their people wanted them to, so they are legitimate targets

But, just like the actual Nuremberg defense ("I was following orders", used to kick responsibility upwards), the reverse Nuremberg defense ("I did just what my electors/followers wanted", used to kick responsibility downwards) are often used selectively to justify a judgement or outcome. E.g. in the case of Greece, collective responsibility of the people for having voted politicians that expedited careless spending and bankruptcy is often cited to justify "umbrella" measures (and totally accepted by our creditors, supposedly heading pro-democratic institutions and countries), so even in functional (?) democracies, there are some cases where responsibility is kicked downwards. Why shouldn't Jihadists use the same "standard"?

I don't think your logical adventure applies here, Maes. The guy was a Canadian born and bred, might have been a bit mental and it seems he converted and radicalized himself after he hit a rough spot in his life. He was a domestic terrorist and if he was avenging a country getting bombed, it wasn't his own.

Here's different food for thought: Why is it so appealing for the poor and the struggling to accept an insane branch of a foreign religion/philosophy/mindset? There are common patterns here and in the story of that Murcan guy who beheaded his colleague.

Maes said:

elected leaders do what people tell them!

If only that were true. Your hypothetical jihadi have much to learn about how western democracy is practiced.

Congress votes. President takes the heat. Free Icecream Day couldn't even happen without a scoop of bullshit.

Because insane religious doctrines can make insane promises - it's as simple as that. Oh, your life is a never-ending shitstorm? Don't worry, sign up for our crazy doctrine, sacrifice everything for us, and we absolutely promise you'll be rewarded in the afterlife. And even better, put us in charge, and we'll reward you in this life, too! The only reason your life is crap, after all, is 'cause other religions are screwing things up for you.

I mean hell, you might as well ask why the downtrodden waste what little money they have on lottery tickets. Many religions propagate by exploiting the poor and convincing them that they can ease their suffering. I don't mean to suggest we should abolish religion or anything, sorry if this comes across too negatively, but that's the gist of it.

dew said:

He was a domestic terrorist and if he was avenging a country getting bombed, it wasn't his own.

If he took the Islamic State's proclamations verbatim (which he probably did), then every True Muslim's allegiances must lie solely with the Islamic State, no matter where one was born. Just like the only acceptable Law for a True Muslim is Islamic Law or Sharia. Besides, spies and traitors have existed since forever...

dew said:

Here's different food for thought: Why is it so appealing for the poor and the struggling to accept an insane branch of a foreign religion/philosophy/mindset? There are common patterns here and in the story of that Murcan guy who beheaded his colleague.

Some of the poor and disadvantaged, as well as many freaks and losers, are likely to try and identify with any group of people that they perceive as powerful and respectable, in order to "get back" at life.

This may include legit stuff like political parties, various pressure lobbies, trade unions etc. but also criminal gangs, violent political groups (red or fascist, it doesn't matter), football hooligan firms, and yes, even militant Islam.

All those groups offer the same cult-like "teachings" to some extent and have similarities in their organization. Their members are no longer isolated losers or weirdos, but part of a powerful organization which can exercise at least local control, whereas before they had none. It's hard not to see the appeal in that.

Now, which one to choose (if you really have to...) depends on a lot of factors. Islam has one other advantage vs most other organizations and religions: it's not racist at all, and accepts practically everyone. It's also a very egalitarian religion (it doesn't even have a privileged clergy, unlike organized Christianity), and it offers not only spiritual guidance, but also a complete set of laws. Furthermore, it's "pitched" as a religion of dogmatic absolutes, which is exactly what the lost, the losers, the poor, the desperate etc. are seeking. All the thinking that there is to do has already been done, for them, and it's all in the Qu'ran.

Not unlike the mindset of some Christian fundies, if you think about it....

GreyGhost said:

If only that were true. Your hypothetical jihadi have much to learn about how western democracy is practiced.

You are right, of course it's a flawed argument, but in principle going to war and killing someone because your elected president asked you to, must be somehow different than going to war and killing someone because your crazy dictator or kaiser forced you to, right? Then there's that whole Democracic peace theory, which (also) relies on the grounds that in a democracy, it shouldn't be possible to have irreconcilable differences between the peoples' will/sentiment and the actions of their leaders.

I'm surprised that you didn't cite the most common reaction to any suggestion that collective responsibility exists within a democracy: "But I personally didn't vote for this guy X who did Bad Thing Y! Therefore I should be spared from any retaliation or from being held accountable for his actions! Only X's voters should be held accountable!"

Yeah, but there's a problem: once a government is elected, and thanks to voter's secrecy, it's a bit hard to see who voted what. Imagine e.g. if certain laws only affected voters of specific parties, positively or negatively, or if voting preferences were public data, and everybody had to carry a badge identifying them officially with one specific party...then that wouldn't be a democracy anymore. Besides, if a significant part of the citizenship doesn't recognize the authority of the official government over their matters, then it's probably time to split the country (like it's happening in Eastern Ukraine).

So the "easy" way out is to simply hold everybody responsible (which is already done anyway for things like fiscal deficits, bank bailouts, etc.).

geekmarine said:

I don't mean to suggest we should abolish religion or anything, sorry if this comes across too negatively, but that's the gist of it.

Please, don't apologise. Just reading the sentence reminds me that we at least have hope..

Obviously I'm not directing this at the Christian guy next door or the Jew down the street, but a world without extremist religious nutters? Sounds like our only hope of a future as good as TNG depicts..

I suggest we abolish religion the same way we're already doing it: slowly and peacefully. Let it die, don't let it encroach on governments anymore than it has, steer people away where possible. There is no unique thing about religion that offers a net benefit to humanity.

Trying to increase the pace with force or harsh laws will just create more of these guys. Yes, I realize that what I said doesn't work without a society willing to support people through their rough spots. Most nations in the West™ are sadly still rather poor at that.

geo said:

Is that a terrorist attack? We've had 2 of those guys get into the whitehouse now.

Did they fire weapons? Did they injure or kill people?

Maes said:

At least the alleged terrorists chose to target members of the military and the government directly (so rather high in the hierarchy), rather than lashing out on random bystanders.

If you wonder why I'm saying that this is a "good" thing, ask yourself if collective responsibility/blame exists in a democracy. Kinda like a reverse Nuremberg, are citizens (in a democracy) responsible for the actions of their leaders? After all, they elected them, it's not as if some insane tribal leader, crazy king or dictator did stuff without asking them....right?

Keep in mind that Jihadists do consider Western citizens responsible for the actions of their leaders. The reasoning goes somewhere like this:

Are G.W. Bush, Obama, Abbot, Cameron etc. bombing my country and killing my people? Well, they didn't get in power by killing their rivals in a tribal war, they were elected by their own people with this weird thing called "democracy", and in this thing elected leaders do what people tell them! So if their leaders are bombing my country, it's because their people wanted them to, so they are legitimate targets

But, just like the actual Nuremberg defense ("I was following orders", used to kick responsibility upwards), the reverse Nuremberg defense ("I did just what my electors/followers wanted", used to kick responsibility downwards) are often used selectively to justify a judgement or outcome. E.g. in the case of Greece, collective responsibility of the people for having voted politicians that expedited careless spending and bankruptcy is often cited to justify "umbrella" measures (and totally accepted by our creditors, supposedly heading pro-democratic institutions and countries), so even in functional (?) democracies, there are some cases where responsibility is kicked downwards. Why shouldn't Jihadists use the same "standard"?

They exactly do that. It's retarded all this talk in this thread about the jihadists and their extreme views and theyre all crazy because of their crazy religion. They're pissed that this Western countries invaded and attacked several countries in the middle east. And they do hold the citizens of those countries responsible, because they supported their leaders that went to attack and invade those countries. The us,british,spanish,canadian citizens showed a disgusting indifference at the consequences of their leaders' actions. That's why Madrid and London were bombed in 2004 and 2005. Because Blair and Aznar supported Bush's illegal little war in Iraq. The brits re-elected Blair, after that prick went against their wishes to attack Iraq, because hey, the economy was doing well, so who cares. Apparently they only react when they the consequences of their undivided support to their warmongering leaders are brought home.

dew said:

Here's different food for thought: Why is it so appealing for the poor and the struggling to accept an insane branch of a foreign religion/philosophy/mindset? There are common patterns here and in the story of that Murcan guy who beheaded his colleague.

That may explain why Islam took off like wildfire and conquered most of the planet in a record amount of time. Even when it's leader died the mentality and conquest lost no momentum.

CSIS took the dickhead's passport because they felt he was at risk for committing jihad overseas. Same deal with the dickhead that ran over a soldier in Montreal.

Frankly, I'd love for them to just let these idiots fly over there and deny them return entry. I know the moral implication of simply giving the enemy more resources (didn't stop us assisting them with arms) but I'd relish the poetic justice of a bunch of pampered westerners getting treated like shit in Syria or possibly dying by Western support.

I just hope this shit doesn't ad support for more civilian monitoring and profiling.

Maes said:

I'm surprised that you didn't cite the most common reaction to any suggestion that collective responsibility exists within a democracy: "But I personally didn't vote for this guy X who did Bad Thing Y! Therefore I should be spared from any retaliation or from being held accountable for his actions! Only X's voters should be held accountable!"

That reaction's a cop-out, but understandable. Between election campaigns, voters almost become the forgotten people, especially if they're in electorates held by opposition members.

TimeOfDeath said:

Did they fire weapons? Did they injure or kill people?

I think one was riding an elevator, wouldn't be the least surprised if it was George Fiffy. :D

Technician said:

Frankly, I'd love for them to just let these idiots fly over there and deny them return entry.

That's pretty much my attitude. There might be the occasional "exporting terrorism" complaint, but that could be offset by keeping the jihadi's opponents well supplied with weapons and ammo.

Technician said:

Frankly, I'd love for them to just let these idiots fly over there and deny them return entry. I know the moral implication of simply giving the enemy more resources (didn't stop us assisting them with arms) but I'd relish the poetic justice of a bunch of pampered westerners getting treated like shit in Syria or possibly dying by Western support.

Eh. Denying them reentry would surely feel like sweet revenge, but keep in mind the guys did barely any damage (pardon my cynicism). One death in an under-armed outburst in each case, over-reported by media, because it's mooslim terrism at yur doorstep.

When you let them join the jihadists, you are not solving terrorism, you're just throwing it on someone else's head and washing your hands over it. Sure, they might get killed in an airstrike on day 1, but it's more probable they'll survive for a while. They'll get trained by the IS instructors in combat and terror ops (in case they got home). They'll rape a bunch of non-Sunni local women, behead and crucify a couple of villagers, then reinforce an attack on the Kurds somewhere, helping to tip the balance on the front.

I'd say it's dangerously short-sighted and even more exploitative of the Middle East to fan the flames of the conflict like that, no matter how many guns you provide to the good guys to offset the fact that you provide men to the bad guys.

Crackhead shoots one guy for crackhead reasons, Coopersville's security agency suddenly gets a bunch of jobs overnight. Thanks crack!

dew said:

Eh. Denying them reentry would surely feel like sweet revenge, but keep in mind the guys did barely any damage (pardon my cynicism). One death in an under-armed outburst in each case, over-reported by media, because it's mooslim terrism at yur doorstep.

When you let them join the jihadists, you are not solving terrorism, you're just throwing it on someone else's head and washing your hands over it. Sure, they might get killed in an airstrike on day 1, but it's more probable they'll survive for a while. They'll get trained by the IS instructors in combat and terror ops (in case they got home). They'll rape a bunch of non-Sunni local women, behead and crucify a couple of villagers, then reinforce an attack on the Kurds somewhere, helping to tip the balance on the front.

I'd say it's dangerously short-sighted and even more exploitative of the Middle East to fan the flames of the conflict like that, no matter how many guns you provide to the good guys to offset the fact that you provide men to the bad guys.

Who are the good guys? And who are the bad guys? And who defines which one is which? Because those terms change constantly. The Russians were one time good, back when they fought the nazis. Then they were bad during the cold war. Al-qaeda was good when they were trained by the CIA to fight off the soviets, now theyre bad.

Western democracies had no choice but to trust the Soviets and treat them as friends when fighting against autocratic fascism. The US had fears after the defeat of a common enemy that the Soviets would take advantage of a power vacuum by swallowing Europe. That ended up never happening, even though the Soviet Union had a large sphere of influence in parts of Asia and Eastern Europe. The Soviets and the US competed over a bunch of probably frivolous conflicts because they were have a giant pissing contest, whose ideology was strongest, whose science was most ingenious, whose guns were the most deadly. Eventually the whole thing got out of hand and both countries spent a ridiculous amount of money on military expenditures and creating puppet governments that backed up either a version of "authoritarian capitalist economy" (rich develop capital, exploit the markets and the poor) or "socialist command economy" (ruling party takes significant economic rights from individuals and distributes resources). In the end, it wasn't really about what was right or wrong, just who got to be in charge.

Reactionary Islam is an expression of discontent with the current world order in which there is no "2nd option" for people to organize their societies. Al-Qaeda was never good, ever. The US should never have given them weapons and training. US policy has been full of absolute ludicrous behavior throughout the country's history. It's a long and bloody process that comes about when you think you're doing God's work by getting the heathen to do your bidding in order to make more money for yourself. If you have any reasonable grasp of US history, you will begin to see a trend that the US has become engaged less and less with determining the politcal realities of other countries. There is nothing left to be gained in economic terms that open markets have not already accomplished. It's kind of a grim world, but at least it's stable and we're not all fucking dying of disease, starvation, or nuclear winter.

doomgargoyle said:

Who are the good guys? And who are the bad guys? And who defines which one is which? Because those terms change constantly. The Russians were one time good, back when they fought the nazis. Then they were bad during the cold war. Al-qaeda was good when they were trained by the CIA to fight off the soviets, now theyre bad.

This is the first interesting thing you've said in the thread - and yes, I agree. By good guys I meant the Kurds, but say that in front of a Turk, heh.

And bullshit legislation begines...

Sigh.

I live in Ottawa and ya that was a truly horrifying event. Thankfully I wasn't there when the crime happened that day.

doomgargoyle said:

They should also re-evaluate their stances on the middle east, and specially the USA should re-evaluate its undivided support of Israel.

Won't happen the Israel gov is far to intrenched in the American government and the media has done a great job convincing the American public that no matter what Israel does, they are the good guys.