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Shooting At Canadian Parliament
CBC reports that a man pulled up to the War Memorial in downtown Ottawa, got out of his car, and shot a soldier with a rifle. The Memorial is right next to the Canadian Parliament buildings. A shooter (reportedly the same one, but unconfirmed) also approached Parliament and got inside before he was shot and killed. "Scott Walsh, who was working on Parliament Hill, said ... the man hopped over the stone fence that surrounds Parliament Hill, with his gun forcing someone out of their car. He then drove to the front doors of Parliament and fired at least two shots, Walsh said." Canadian government officials were quickly evacuated from the building, while the search continues for further suspects. This comes a day after Canada raised its domestic terrorism threat level. Most details of the situation are still unconfirmed -- CBC has live video coverage here. They have confirmed that there was a second shooting at the Rideau Center, a shopping mall nearby.
Canada raised their terrorism threat level, just before this happened. Clearly they were right. It's time to panic!
Unless they meant something else by "raising the domestic terrorism threat level" -- maybe they meant increasing the number of domestic terrorists, in which case the program appears to have been successful. Here in the US such a thing would energize the Republican base, so it's not unlikely that some politicians benefited greatly from this. Any Republicans in Canada?
Or, maybe in this case correlation does suggest causation. If they raise the threat level again, will another crazy guy shoot at Parliament?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Speaking of facts, what I find most shocking so far is "This comes a day after Canada raised its domestic terrorism threat level". I'd like to know more about a terrorism warning system that might be based in reality and not propaganda/lazyness (ours was "orange" for most of its existence IIRC).
....to not overact.
Could be some IS wannabe loser(s), maybe domestic terrorist or a person with mental health issues. We do not know yet.
What I do know is the country is NOT in mortal danger (not even close), no they are not coming for you women and children.
We do not need to give up more civil liberties, no lock-down is required.
Wait for the facts to surface, then deal with it accordingly.
If we give in to fear and hysteria....well they win...
Uh, no. You assume that making the country an even larger police state would help. But I'm sure the Canadians already had about as big a police state as it needed.
And the fuss over incidents involving two persons? Out of millions that live in and travel through Canada each year? Seems like their police apparatus is working pretty well from my point of view.
You talk as if we could bring an end to the threat of someone doing something nefarious, if only we just did something (think of the chil... soldiers). But you know what? We're doing enough. The actual count of terrorism deaths compared with just about any other cause should convince just about anyone of that. But when your argument is emotional, I guess facts don't matter (but still we try...).
So, no, neither Canada, nor the US, nor does just about any developed country need a bigger police, monitoring, border-controlling, etc. apparatus. They should probably try a bit harder to make sure that wealth and opportunity are distributed a bit more equitably and that people have a bit more say in what's being done for/to them and that might be a bit more cost-effective, but it's also a tangent along which I will not proceed further.
What is clear is that freedom is built on acceptable losses. You can debate acceptable loss levels, but the fact of those losses never go away. Talking about acceptable levels and what is needed to achieve those levels might generate a fruitful discussion but, somehow, I don't think you want to talk about things that way.
That is all.
...This smells like false-flag propaganda designed to incite more hatred of the Muslim and Arabic peoples and draw Canada into another BS war in the middle east. This whole thing reeks. Peace.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Outlawing the world's second largest religion in a few select countries ("western democracies") would not work in practice
Why wouldn't it work in practice? It would be easy enough to shut down all mosques, ban the Koran, ban Muslim symbols, etc. It would be easy enough to hamper travel to Muslim countries, and in particular ban the Hajj.
would violate basic principles of democracy
Not true. It's okay to ban organizations in a democracy, which is why the Nazis have been banned in Germany for some time. The US made membership of the KKK illegal (note: membership, not engaging in crimes).
and would also be immoral according to the high moral standards of western democracies, in which laws against thought crimes are generally frowned upon.
What? I don't get it. Practicing a religion is not thought, it's practice. If people want to think about something illegal, they can currently do that, and they can continue to do that.
France (a Western democracy) has gone down that path long ago, where they started placing restrictions on *display* of religion. You can think what you want, but you can't necessarily share it or act on it.