"I had to do something": Mosque shooter said he acted to prevent terrorism.
Reading the various media reports on the shooter and murderer Alexandre Bissonnette, you see a story emerging of a "troubled" young man. Dealing with anxiety for a long period of time. This is what caused him to get an assault rifle, stalk out a place of worship, enter, shoot 48 times at people who were praying, walk over to those laying injured and shot them point blank in the head to ensure they were dead. That is something. No malice just worried and wanting to prevent a tragedy in the future. How can we blame this guy? He is a saviour and prevented mass killing.
At least this seems to be the narrative being played out. Quite the contrast between this crime and the crime that occurred in Ottawa 2014. Muslim shooter Michael Zehalf-Bibeau went and killed a solider and tried to kill others in Parliament. The media was quick to label it terror and gave us details of a brutal and violent attack. Of course no one can defend the actions which took place. Obviously it was ugly, and it was a murderous attack. The terrorist killed a solider in cold blood as reported by CNN. It just seems strange the descriptions of the shooters in the two murders are so different?
I do think Bissonnette's "reasoning" is quite interesting. He stopped future terrorism from happening by taking action now (at least that is his claim). I saw a movie like that with Tom Cruise and the actions called "pre-crime". It is not that far a stretch to think this is happening. We know the pre-crime thoughts are out there in government intelligence. You hear about it all the time with "pre-emptive" strikes or first strike scenarios discussed by various military and political pundits. The weird thinking also made me think about the "go back in time" exercises people play all the time. Like would you go back in time and kill Hitler? Would you stop someone before they commit the crimes they did?
Just in our lifetime we have witnessed and are witnessing so much horror. We have leader in Russia who locks up his political opponents, bombs an apartment block to start military action, uses radiation to poison political foes and makes journalists disappear. We watched (only a little) the genocide taking place in Rwanda. In 100 days more than 800,000 Tutsi were killed by Hutu's. Serbia took part in "ethnic cleansing" (a nice sounding term which describes genocide) against the Bosnian's. Now in my grand-children's life time we witnessed the "Arab Spring" (western media term) of a complex series of events in the Middle East. As we watch on television and internet news feeds, we are seeing children being poisoned with different lethal gas attacks. Bashar al-Assad the President of Syria has denied the use of chemical weapons on Syrian citizens ( I don't say "his People"). These few examples make us think what could have been done if there was a pre-crime action? Could pre-crime action even really exist? With the benefit of history we see who the criminals are. We now know President George Bush and Vice-president Dick Cheney committed war crimes. I wonder how history will see the current President, Mr. Trump? Will someone think about pre-crime action today?
The absurdity of pre-crime action is exactly that, absurd. The actions of Bissonnette were criminal and an act of terrorism. The notion of him being nothing more than a "troubled, suicidal depressed man" is typical of a main stream media marketing and sales pitch. If the sales pitch continues you might actual have more pre-crime individuals out there trying the same excuse for their killing sprees.
The story the media tells seems to always give benefit of doubt to the main stream society (dominant) while many times portraying People of Color as bad, wrong or evil. As it plays out we have young white man who was depressed and worrisome. The underlying current is that he was not evil. His intent was to save his parents from evil. In some other world his actions could almost be justified.
The narrative is all too familiar. We see People of Color as haven't done something to cause their anguish despite the facts. In Detroit a retired Fire-fighter attempted to kill a 14-year old boy, an African American boy, a Black boy. His wife went into a frenzy as the boy rang their door-bell seeking directions. The Fire-fighter is getting bail and saying the "full-story" has not been told. Two Black men were sitting in a Philadelphia Starbucks waiting for a colleague when the staff called police on them. The staff apparently did not think two Black men could sit in a coffee house without causing some type of trouble. The police came and arrested the two for sitting in a coffee house. Police Chief said the arresting officers did not wrong. New York police shoot and kill a Black man for pointing a bathroom pipe. A man in the backyard of his Grandparents was shot multiple times in the back. The list of wrong doings seems endless.
It's like the attitude of Bissonnette is prevalent in society; police are fearing for their lives. Fire-fighters are fearing for their lives. Baristas fear for their lives. In many cases the determining factor is the "victim" is White, while the so called aggressor is Black or a Brown person.
"It's not wrong, what I did. Like I told you, people have been saved, my family has been saved." Alexandre Bissonnette, killer of six people who were sitting and praying.
Alexandre Bissonette regrets not killing more people.
Bissonnette is a killer, a terrorist and a monster. Paint him as a tortured soul but there are many tortured souls out there and they are not carefully planning to go a killing spree.
No comments:
Post a Comment