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Violence knows no state boundaries and respects no one:
“A car explosion and what appeared to be a suicide attack injured two people, killed the apparent bomber and caused panic among Christmas shoppers in Stockholm.
Stockholm police spokeswoman Petra Sjolander said a car exploded Saturday near Drottninggatan, a busy shopping street in the centre of the city. Shortly afterward, a second explosion was heard higher up on the same street, and a man was found injured on the ground He was later pronounced dead.”
People have a hard time understanding empathy and compassion; retribution and revenge though have been internalized quite thoroughly.
“Ten minutes before the blasts, Swedish news agency TT received an email saying “the time has come to take action.”According to the news agency, the email referred to Swedish soldiers in Afghanistan and Sweden’s silence surrounding artist Lars Vilk’s drawing of Muhammad as a dog.
“Now your children, daughters and sisters shall die like our brothers and sisters and children are dying,” the news agency quoted the email as saying.
Define someone as the “other”, marginalize them, strip them of their humanity call them terrorists or fanatics or zealots, it does not really matter. Eventually, because we know revenge and because we know violence it will visit all those involved.
“Two people were taken to hospital with light injuries. It was not immediately clear in which explosion they were hurt.”
Empathy, respect, compassion. Any of the three take more time, courage and dedication than revenge or retribution, and usually produce more amiable results. Retribution makes the infidels/terrorists pay though. It teaches the extremists/unbelievers a lesson that they will not forget.
The problem is that the wrong lesson is learned, and therefore the bloody game continues: an eye for an eye.
Our formal fighting presence is over as of 2011, despite the braying of the addled Liberal party of Canada. I’m glad that Harper runs his government like an uncaring majority, at least on this one issue. The radicalization of dissent in Canada has taken yet another turn as police have arrested a fourth suspect in the Ottawa bomb plot.
“But a police source told CBC News the individual arrested, who was identified as a man, is not likely to be charged. The source told CBC News there does not appear to be enough evidence for a charge and police are unlikely to hold the individual under anti-terrorism legislation.”
It sounds like the forth individual might have only been lightly colluding with the three other suspects in custody. The other three men have been formally charged:
“Authorities have arrested and charged three Ontario men in what the RCMP is calling a conspiracy to commit “a violent terrorism attack.” Earlier Friday, Khurram Sher, 28, of London, Ont., was remanded in custody until Sept. 1 after a brief court appearance. He was charged Thursday with conspiracy to knowingly facilitate a terrorist activity. Two Ottawa men, Misbahuddin Ahmed, 26, and Hiva Alizadeh, 30, were arrested on Wednesday. They appeared in an Ottawa courtroom on Thursday facing the same charge.”
Like the 9/11 bombers, these people are mostly all upper middle class well educated citizens. Educated does not necessarily mean smart though.
“During their investigation, Therriault said, police seized more than 50 electronic circuit boards they say were designed specifically to remotely detonate improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.
CBC News has learned that the RCMP’s Integrated National Security Enforcement Team knew about the circuit boards some time ago — for perhaps months or at least many weeks.
The team obtained a warrant to enter Alizadeh’s apartment and surreptitiously removed the boards, replacing them with look-alikes that were duds. Therefore any attack would likely have failed.
Therriault said they also seized a vast quantity of terrorist literature, videos and manuals.”
Full marks for the RCMP and CSIS for actually getting a job done right for once. I’m pretty sure this was because there was no tasering involved with the situation.
“Their profiles are likely to raise concerns about homegrown radicalism, said security expert Eric Margolis, who said the roots of the radicalism are likely triggered by anger over the involvement of Western governments in countries such as Afghanistan.”
Sad, but unsurprising.The damage we wrought in Afghanistan is coming back to bite us. The families we destroyed, intentionally or not, are crying for revenge and retribution by any means necessary. Unfortunately, that usually means when the gun is pointed at us, instead of comfortably at someone else, a terrorist attack. Canada got lucky with these individuals, they were stupid and relied on unencrypted email to plot their actions.
It is a lesson for Canada and the RCMP, but also a lesson for others who will learn from this groups mistakes.
News from Iraq is coming in fits and spurts. It requires something of this magnitude to break into the press services headlines. This from the CBC:
“Gunmen wearing Iraqi military uniforms raided homes in a Sunni village south of Baghdad, killing at least 24 people in execution-style attacks, officials said Saturday.
An army official said many of the victims, who included five women, were brutalized “beyond recognition.”
At least seven people were found alive, bound with handcuffs, said Baghdad’s security spokesman, Maj.-Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi.”
The violence, of course, is sectarian in nature.
“Many of the dead were members of local Sahwa, or Awakening Councils — one of several names for the Sunni fighters who changed the course of the war when they revolted against al-Qaeda in Iraq and joined the Americans in late 2006 and 2007, officials said. The fighters are also known as Sons of Iraq.”
So we have people who are the American’s allies being slaughtered. More interestingly the article goes and says:
“But the question of what to do with these nearly 100,000 people in the long term remains. The U.S. handed over control last year of the Awakening Councils to Iraq, which pays their roughly $300 monthly salaries.
The violence comes as Iraq’s major political blocs scramble to get enough parliamentary support to form a government after results from the March 7 election gave no single group enough seats to govern alone.”
No Laws, No Morals, No Accountability, NO PROBLEM!
The Iraqi government is paying people some $300 dollars a month to serve as an armed paramilitary presence in Iraq. What are they thinking exactly? Let us take the worst ideas from the US, yes I’m looking at you Blackwater and other mercenary groups, and implement them as civil policy. Nothing can go wrong there, especially when, as the article says, there is extra political turmoil because of the recent elections.
Fighting a fire with gasoline comes to mind.
What happens when an empire is in decline? The natives start getting restless…
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