Possible terrorist event in Ottawa

[james_davis_nicoll]

Parliament Hill came under attack today after a man with a rifle shot a soldier standing guard at the National War Memorial in downtown Ottawa, before seizing a car and driving to the doors of Parliament Hill's Centre Block nearby.

MPs and other witnesses reported several shots fired inside Parliament, and a gunman has been confirmed dead inside the building, shot by the House of Commons sergeant-at-arms, according to MPs' eyewitness accounts.

Comments

[graydon]

Certainly don't assume that it has anything to do with Islam.

Since, so far as we now know, the guy involved in isn't whatsoever. Narrative isn't your friend; facts might be useful, but a story won't be.

[veritas_poet]

LOL! You just keep telling yourself that.

Sources: Ottawa gunman had ties to jihadists

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/23/world/ottawa-shooting/

[graydon]

CNN? Please.

If quartering yourself on a mosque without permission or prior arrangement is "ties to jihadists", Richard I Lionheart had "ties to jihadists".

Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was a (certainly) homeless (probable; he said he was) drug addict with a whole pile of personal issues who said and claimed a lot of things. It's not obvious any of them were factual. (It's not obvious the 2011 court-ordered psych assessment was a jewel of accuracy, either.)

Me, I'd kinda like to know how the homeless drug addict with no income got a rifle. I'm pretty sure the investigators are interested in that, too, so how about not deciding you know what's going on until there's some actual facts in the case? It's much better for the digestion than either CNN or frightening yourself with Islamic bogey-men.

[veritas_poet]

You'd think I would be used to it by now, but I'm still left shocked.

We've got an ideology based in a book that has nothing but hatred on nearly every page. (You'd know that if you'd bothered to read it. But you have not, and you will not.)

That ideology was begun by a warlord child rapist. Again, you'd know that if you'd read their other texts on the life of Mohammad.

We've got people following its commands every day, all over the world. They refer to their book, they refer to their prophet. Sometimes they even quote chapter and verse, WHILE they're doing their slaughter.

And STILL people like you refuse to admit this is Islam.

Contrast this situation with the few incidents there have been in America of people killing abortionists. In that case, you'd be calling them a Christian from the start and not waiting until any facts were known. (Though there are no facts to support such a thing, since Christianity neither commands nor condones such acts.)

To this day I still see ‎Timothy McVeigh referred to as a Christian, when there is ZERO evidence that he professed any such thing, and when there is ZERO evidence that the Bible commands or condones such acts.

But here? Nope. Nothing to do with Islam!

Remarkable. As I said, I ought to be used to it by now. But the willful blindness of people even in the face of blatant reality still shocks me.

[graydon]

I'm an atheist. I don't see people's religion as especially relevant to their behaviour, though it is likely to be relevant to their rationalizations.

Fear, though, fear is definitely relevant to behaviour because fear makes you stupid.

You're ostensibly selling fear, but you're also selling additional stupid; the idea that there's a billion people out there with this one thing in common and it makes them all the same is risible from first principles.

I'm not buying.

[veritas_poet]

"I'm an atheist."

So?

"I don't see people's religion as especially relevant to their behaviour, though it is likely to be relevant to their rationalizations."

What were your thoughts in this regard when you read the Koran?

Oh, wait. You've never read it. Right?

You know NOTHING about Islam. You care NOTHING about the facts regarding Islam.

And yet you will excuse and defend it and rationalize it until the day you die - even if it's at the hands of someone who is giving you chapter and verse on why they are slitting your throat.

It's simply remarkable how people continue and continue and CONTINUE to deny the obvious, while at the same time REFUSING to read the Koran or any of the hadith.

[graydon]

You missed my point -- I don't think people do what their holy book says they should do. I think people sometimes use a convenient holy book as a source of rationalizations for what they want to do anyway. From this viewpoint, saying ISLAM is about like saying BREAKFAST; it's a concept lots of people have.

It doesn't matter what's written in the Koran. (Or the Bible, or the Rig Veda, or various Sutras, or any such thing.) It matters what people want to do. That controls the stories they tell themselves about themselves.