Ottawa shooting.

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SR
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Ottawa shooting.

#1 Post by SR » Wed Oct 22, 2014 10:39 am

Very rare, indeed.

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Hype
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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#2 Post by Hype » Wed Oct 22, 2014 11:19 am

SR wrote:Very rare, indeed.
It's rare that gun violence in Canada gets national coverage, mostly because either it's regular gang-violence in the major cities (which is considerably less frequent than in major American cities) or because it's in some small town and dealt with locally. This case is news because it happened in Ottawa and it was a soldier who was shot, and Ottawa isn't a particularly violent place normally (it's very affluent, whitewashed, etc.)

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SR
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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#3 Post by SR » Wed Oct 22, 2014 11:25 am

Rare too

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wor ... the-world/

I don't this is getting coverage globally because it's a bastion of white calm. This appears political. Though I hope yr right

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SR
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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#4 Post by SR » Wed Oct 22, 2014 12:31 pm

No jokes, eh?

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Lokus
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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#5 Post by Lokus » Wed Oct 22, 2014 12:45 pm

I work in downtown Ottawa and my work takes me on to Parliament Hill on an almost daily basis.

I happened to be on my way to a meeting at a building a little outside of downtown just as the security guard was locking the door (all government buildings went in to lockdown). I had the choice to either come in the building or leave. I made the quick decision to leave as I figured this would take a while and I didn't want to be stuck in a building that was not my office.

I walked around what had become a ghost town and the only buidling open was a mall in the bottom of an office tower. After hanging out there for a couple of hours I decided to walk a few blocks to see if I could get a bus home as I could not get back to my office in the downtown core that was locked down.

Now I'm home just glued to the TV.

People I know are still in lockdown in the Centre Block of Parliament and the identies of those shot and injured in that building have not been revealed, so I'm still worried I may know one of them.

The government/political community in Ottawa is pretty small and "village" like so this hits very close for me. I'm actually still pretty shocked/emotional about this.

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Hype
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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#6 Post by Hype » Wed Oct 22, 2014 12:53 pm

Stay safe Lokus.

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Bandit72
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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#7 Post by Bandit72 » Wed Oct 22, 2014 12:59 pm

Yes take care. Do we know if this is an Islamic "terrorist" incident?

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Hype
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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#8 Post by Hype » Wed Oct 22, 2014 1:10 pm

Bandit72 wrote:Yes take care. Do we know if this is an Islamic "terrorist" incident?
No. And I suspect if it is related at all, it'll be some idiot kid of immigrants who has been "radicalized". Otherwise it's just your standard freak anti-<something> nut.
At the RCMP press conference, Watson expressed condolences on behalf of the city to the family of the soldier who was killed.

“Today is a sad and tragic day for our city and our country,” Watson said. “There’s pain greater than losing a loved one. To have it happen in such circumstances as this morning is beyond expression and underlined by sadness and anger within my heart… our city, Ottawa, has seen and lived through tragedy in the past. This is a different sort of tragedy, (the origins of which) are not yet fully known, causes not yet fully understood. We all want answers.”

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Artemis
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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#9 Post by Artemis » Wed Oct 22, 2014 1:14 pm

It hasn't been determined if this is a terrorist related attack. Two Canadian soldiers have been killed in Canada this week.
I don' know if it is a coincidence but this morning the Canadian fighter jets left to participate in the ISIL combat mission.

Lokus, glad you are okay. Stay safe.. :wave:

A friend of mine works at the Foregin Affairs office...not sure if that is near to where the shooting took place.

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SR
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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#10 Post by SR » Wed Oct 22, 2014 1:16 pm

Yup. The best to you. And them

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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#11 Post by Lokus » Wed Oct 22, 2014 1:36 pm

Artemis wrote:It hasn't been determined if this is a terrorist related attack. Two Canadian soldiers have been killed in Canada this week.
I don' know if it is a coincidence but this morning the Canadian fighter jets left to participate in the ISIL combat mission.

Lokus, glad you are okay. Stay safe.. :wave:

A friend of mine works at the Foregin Affairs office...not sure if that is near to where the shooting took place.
Foreign Affairs is a little outside the downtown core, but all federal buildings were locked down, but the lock down has been lifted in most buildings now.

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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#12 Post by Lokus » Wed Oct 22, 2014 1:40 pm

The soldier who was shot was standing on ceremonial guard at the War Memorial, beside the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. His post has already been replaced.

Image

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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#13 Post by SR » Wed Oct 22, 2014 1:43 pm

I'm surprised at the length of complete uncertainty here. :noclue:

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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#14 Post by Hype » Wed Oct 22, 2014 3:47 pm

SR wrote:I'm surprised at the length of complete uncertainty here. :noclue:
Last I heard it was because there might be other people involved (a second shooter?), so it makes sense not to release details until they've figured it out.

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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#15 Post by Artemis » Wed Oct 22, 2014 4:00 pm

I think CBC did a good job of reporting. It would have been very easy to cause panic and spread speculation as fact.

http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/ ... cable-news


The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation today gave a master class in calm, credible breaking news reporting.

Anchored by the unflappable Peter Mansbridge, news of the shootings in Ottawa unfolded live on the CBC much like they do here in the United States: lots of sketchy details, conflicting reports, unreliable witnesses, and a thick fog of confusion. All of that was familiar. What was less familiar was how Mansbridge and his team managed that confusion, conveying a concise and fact-based version of fast-moving events to viewers across Canada and the world.

This live bit of level-headed reporting by Mansbridge, from around 11:10am Wednesday, should be given to journalism students around the country. It basically contains everything you need to know about why CBC did its audience proud:

MANSBRIDGE: And so, the situation is, as we say, tense and unclear. And it's on days like this—we keep reminding you of this and it's important—it's on days like this, where a story takes a number of different pathways, a number of changes occur, and often rumors start in a situation like this. We try to keep them out of our coverage, but when they come, sometimes from official sources, like members of Parliament, you tend to give them some credence. But you carefully weigh it with what we're also witnessing. It's clear that the situation is not over. It is clear the police are in an intense standby situation and continue to be on the lookout, and until somebody blows the all-clear on this we will continue to stay on top of it and watch as the events unfold.

The broadcast was deliberative and deferential to the facts even when they were sparse. Exacting and painstaking, but never slow or boring, Mansbridge weighed the credibility of every detail, constantly framing and reframing what we knew and, most crucially, how we knew it. He literally spoke the news as it happened, using his experience not to opine nor fill the gaps in his knowledge, but to provide the necessary support for his team's reporting.

Getting things wrong during fast-moving live coverage is, of course, common. Coverage of the Washington Navy Yard shooting last year got the details wrong early and often: It misstated the perpetrator's name, age, and how many guns he had. Following the Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013, there was false coverage about the identity of the bombers, and anonymous sources leading journalists to nonexistent bombs and arrests. On The Media's handy "breaking news consumer's handbook" is a great round-up of the reporting errors that get repeated every time there is a mass shooting.

No newscast, especially live news, is immune to mistakes, and during the initial haze of leads and counter-leads, it's easy to point fingers. But for the six-some hours of CBC broadcasting I watched off-and-on (mostly on) today, I never once felt lost in the wall-to-wall speculation that has characterized so many recent breaking news broadcasts in the United States.

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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#16 Post by SR » Wed Oct 22, 2014 4:43 pm

No doubt. With very few exceptions the editorials from Canadians both present and otherwise is dignified and measured. One thing that seems universal is the unrelenting support and confidence in the officials handling the crisis. Everyone is deferential to them and refuses any conjecture or speculation.

One young reporter, however, said Canada had lost it's innocence and would wake up tomorrow a different country. :noclue:

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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#17 Post by Lokus » Wed Oct 22, 2014 5:03 pm

Lokus wrote:The soldier who was shot was standing on ceremonial guard at the War Memorial, beside the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. His post has already been replaced.

Image
I was wrong about this photo. The guy on the left is actually the one who was killed. It was taken this morning.

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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#18 Post by Hype » Wed Oct 22, 2014 8:10 pm

SR wrote:No doubt. With very few exceptions the editorials from Canadians both present and otherwise is dignified and measured. One thing that seems universal is the unrelenting support and confidence in the officials handling the crisis. Everyone is deferential to them and refuses any conjecture or speculation.

One young reporter, however, said Canada had lost it's innocence and would wake up tomorrow a different country. :noclue:
There's a really weird Globe and Mail editorial that is for the most part very good and very quintessentially Canadian, but it's got some subtle claims in it that could be read as endorsing fairly radical changes (under the guise of "not panicking"...): http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-de ... d/follows/
October 22, 2014
Globe Editorial: After the attack, we're still Canada
It has been a difficult, sad week. One Canadian soldier murdered by a vehicle turned into a weapon on Monday, another gunned down at the War Memorial in Ottawa on Wednesday, and the armed assailant later killed while roaming the halls of Parliament

It has been a difficult, sad week. One Canadian soldier murdered by a vehicle turned into a weapon on Monday, another gunned down at the War Memorial in Ottawa on Wednesday, and the armed assailant later killed while roaming the halls of Parliament. We do not yet know to what extent the two incidents are connected. We do not know if they were in any way planned in concert, or to any degree directed from overseas. What appears far more likely is that they are connected only by a thin thread of ideology: a pseudo-religion that dreams of purification through violence, and whose only commandments are death, death and death.

There's much the public doesn't yet know about the men who carried out these two attacks. At the time of this writing, sources tell The Globe that the Parliament Hill shooter, identified as Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, intended to travel abroad, but had not been able to secure a valid travel document from federal officials. Monday's killer, Martin Rouleau-Couture, had his passport taken away because he was believed to be trying to leave the country to join a jihadist group in Syria. In both cases, questions are rightly being asked about why these men, considered sufficiently high-risk to be denied the right to travel, were never charged. There will be questions about whether police and prosecutors made the wrong call, and why, and whether the law could or should have allowed them to do otherwise. There will be questions about whether we need heavily armed security and security cordons around major public buildings like Parliament. There will be questions about whether our laws need to change. There will be questions about whether Canada needs to change.

And yet, we kind of like Canada the way it is. We suspect that you do too. You can't just walk into the Parliament Buildings without some security screening, and that's as it should be. But, for example, the lawn in front of Parliament is an open, public space. On a nice day, people are out playing frisbee, doing yoga, taking pictures, sometimes protesting and generally enjoying the freedom of life in Canada, the freest of countries. The same goes for our various provincial legislatures. This is the land of peace, order, good government – and freedom.

Canada is also a place where the vast majority of public figures and even ministers of the Crown move about like normal citizens. Unlike the neighbours to the south, most of our government officials are not surrounded by phalanxes of armed guards. They are not riding in motorcades of black SUVs. They don't usually have any police accompaniment at all, and they haven't needed it.

But Canada is no country of naïfs and innocents. Canada isn't Hobbiton. We understand that there are threats, and always have been. We understand that we live in a dangerous, bloody world – and always have. We fought two world wars; more than 110,000 Canadians gave their lives. We have contended with terrorists bent on political murder before – from the killing of Father of Confederation Thomas D'Arcy McGee, Canadian history's only federal political assasination, to the October Crisis and the FLQ's murder of Quebec cabinet minister Pierre Laporte. And in recent years, it has been well understood that Parliament, home and symbol of our democracy, would be Target no. 1 for fanatical men wishing us ill. In 1989, a man hijacked a Greyhound bus and had it driven to Parliament's front lawn, demanding the release of political prisoners in the Middle East. And less than a decade ago, a group of men were arrested and convicted of plotting numerous acts of mass murder, including a plan to storm Parliament Hill, take hostages and behead the prime minister.

In light of this week, Canada may have to change. But whatever changes we choose to make should be done carefully and calmly, with an understanding of the limited scale of the threat, and the nature of the tradeoffs between freedom and safety. Any changes made, from security at public buildings to a long-standing system of laws that criminalize action but not thought, should be done only for the benefit of millions of law-abiding Canadians – and not as a panicky reaction to a very small number of men who, unlike some dangers that Canada has faced before, pose no threat whatsoever to the survival of Canada. They are murderers, but their delusions are shared by few. They are not an existential threat to the Canada we cherish. They cannot destroy our society. Let us take the true measure of the danger and respond appropriately.

As news of the attack on Parliament came out on Wednesday morning, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen tweeted, "When Canada goes, it's all over." That provoked a backlash – a very Canadian backlash – on Twitter. A backlash against exaggeration, hysteria and despair. A backlash against overreaction and in favour of calming the hell down.

Canada isn't going anywhere. Nothing about what makes us, us, is "over." We have had a bad week. There is much loss to mourn. But we are still here. We are still standing. The True North remains, strong and free.

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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#19 Post by SR » Thu Oct 23, 2014 5:55 am

In a small way that article and the dignified response by most has reminded me of the people of NY after 9-11. No I am not comparing the tragedies, but there remains a confidence in resiliency that transcends both.

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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#20 Post by Artemis » Thu Oct 23, 2014 7:09 pm

Cpl. Nathan Cirillo's dogs waiting for him to come home. :nyrexall:


Image

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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#21 Post by Artemis » Fri Oct 24, 2014 3:57 pm

I don't know how the other Canadians on this forum feel, but I feel a little, um, uncomfortable with all the Canadian nationalism the last couple of days. The only time I see so many Canadian flags and 'Go Canada' is during Olympic hockey. I'm not diminishing the events of the last few days or anything like that, it's just not normal for us.

Pics of people gathered on the procession route ' Highway of Heroes'.

Image


Image

Image

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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#22 Post by Hype » Fri Oct 24, 2014 4:25 pm

Artemis wrote:I don't know how the other Canadians on this forum feel, but I feel a little, um, uncomfortable with all the Canadian nationalism the last couple of days. The only time I see so many Canadian flags and 'Go Canada' is during Olympic hockey. I'm not diminishing the events of the last few days or anything like that, it's just not normal for us.
I think it's right to be concerned about it, because feelings like this, left to get out of control, can easily turn into the bad kind of nationalism -- the kind that starts separating people out into "us" Canadians vs. "them" (including people who are de facto, by right and citizenship, Canadian, as well as those who are mere landed immigrants but who don't *look* like they are "with us").

It's also the case that given who is currently in power in this country, events like this could easily be used to push things even further away from what Joe Clark calls "the Canada we recognize", toward something that looks increasingly like a miniature America that even America has already moved away from.

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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#23 Post by Tyler Durden » Sat Oct 25, 2014 11:29 am

I just moved back to Ottawa in August...

I have to say, I'm very angry. My anger is not directed at the gunman, per se (it appears that he was a mentally ill, homeless person). The attitudes I have heard from people, the media spinning propaganda, and how this will help "The Harper Government"'s narrative when it comes to justifying Canada's actions overseas is what pisses me off.

I can't stand the romanticizing of killing people within the context of militarism....it's the epitome of dehumanization. Imperialism/racialization at it's worst. "As long as it happens over there, why cares? It's just a bunch of 'evil' brown people".

This, in particular, really grates on me...

Image

What about this?...

Image

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SR
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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#24 Post by SR » Sat Oct 25, 2014 11:39 am

Is this a photo everyone should recognize? In any event, be clear with your sanctimony.

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Re: Ottawa shooting.

#25 Post by Tyler Durden » Sat Oct 25, 2014 11:43 am

SR wrote:Is this a photo everyone should recognize? In any event, be clear with your sanctimony.
The second photo is an example of the many causalities ("collateral damage") from NATO airstrikes in Afghanistan.

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