Victoria BC, where I live, is a pretty quiet city on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, and also lays claim to being the provincial capital. It seems pretty far away from terrorism, Al Qaeda, or anything like that. Sometimes I think we really don’t know how lucky we are to be where we are and to lead the privileged lives that we do. Oh sure, nothing’s perfect, but I digress…
On the morning of this past July 2nd, spokespeople from the RCMP held a news conference announcing that they had stopped a terrorist plot and had arrested two people who had planted pressure cooker bombs on the lawns of the legislature. It was pretty shocking.
The next thing you knew, the premier was holding her own press conference, exclaiming in somewhat dramatic fashion how we were not going to be changed by terrorists, how we would carry on with our lives as normal so the terrorists don’t succeed in doing what they want to do—scare the crap out of us. Well, she didn’t exactly use the word “crap”. But you get the drift.
Over the past week, we’ve learned a few more things about these terrorists. They are a couple who live in a basement suite on the mainland, both having had trouble with drugs, the male having also had several arrests and charges mainly for petty crimes. They don’t have Muslim names, but apparently became enamoured with that religion over the past year or two via a family that befriended them. They did not belong to a mosque, nor was there any evidence that they had ever had any connections or interactions with terrorists groups on line. The pressure cooker “bombs” had been made inert before they ever got to the legislature lawns, so no one was actually in danger.
Do you know where I’m going with this? It was the RCMP themselves who used the words “inspired by the Al Qaeda ideology” and “self-radicalised” at the initial press conference. This begs the question, who is trying to scare who? They apparently spent months following these two as they allegedly taught themselves how to make bombs, they must have known everything there was to know about them; they had little money, the woman was on a methadone treatment program, they guy had his run ins with the law, the fact that they DIDN’T have any connections with ANY terrorist groups. Should I say that again?
Honestly.
And our premier was too soon caught up in the hype too…trying to be “presidential” in her dramatic speech at the legislature. Come on. Could you have found out more about it first before you did your Bush-like mount on the 9-11 rubble?
Don’t use those kinds of words. Especially when they aren’t true. These two were idiots, that’s all. Why they did what they did (if they actually did it), is anyone’s guess.
THAT’S what we have to stop; pretending that everyone who does something stupid is somehow “Al Qaeda” inspired.