So, anyone else think these terrorists arrested in Canada are just morons?

[HEyHEY]

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/06/06/cbc-threat060606.html

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they were arrested, cause obviously they DID intend to kill people. And easily could have done that.
But they seem, to me, like a bunch of fool-hardy delusional young men. I mean, come on, they wanted to "Storm Parliament." Like, good fucking luck doing that without getting shot.
Here's what worries me, these were a bunch of hacks. What are the pros doing?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. They are reading Dick's private emails, but he doesn't know it

yet.... heh, heh, heh....

[Philosoraptor]

2. The whole thing stinks, & they just went totally conservative up there.

[HEyHEY]

4. "Totally conservative" Uh, no - they are holding a small minority gov

That could be brought down at any time... I ain't worried.

[tuvor]

3. This a.m. I though I heard something about this being a sting operation.

Heard it on the CBC upon waking up. Haven't heard much since.

Any word on that possibility? This is NOT an incident that should have anything remotely smelling of potentially inadmissable evidence.

[HEyHEY]

5. It was

But, with two years of investigating.. they'll have plenty of evidence. But, what kind of sentence are they facing?

[Redstone]

6. If it was a sting operation, I salute the people who ran it.

They did a damn good job.

Redstone

[Emit]

20. Heard that too. Check out this post from last night

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1370860&mesg_id=1370955

And check out post #29 on that same thread.

[tuvor]

23. Thanks for the links, Emit. n/t

[iverglas]

28. do read all the posts in that thread

I humbly suggest that you pay particular attention to the ones written BY CANADIANS. By Canadians who, as it happens, in some cases, pretty much detest one another and are coming from very different points on the (CANADIAN) political spectrum and have very different analyses of Canadian politics in general.

Pretty much to a person, they (this includes me) are imploring their USAmerican friends and neighbours to stop imposing their own template on our country, and are rejecting all of these weird and baseless attempts to define our reality for us.

[Redstone]

7. Yo: Your last sentence is a meaty one. I hope people read your whole

post so they can see that sentence.

You raise a helluva point, you do.

Redstone

[Minnesota_Lib]

8. When I heard about the plan to storm Parliament and behead Hacker....

..the first thing to come to mind was they are just a bunch of freaking nutty kids. Indeed, except for two over the age of 30, they range from pre-18 to 25 in age. Sound like a bunch of wannbes to me. They were openingly posting on the internet and were then apparently approached by undercover RCMP who offered to sell them the fertilizer (correct me if I am mistaken).

More like the gang that couldn't shoot straight, but the corporate press will try to build them up into a uber-dangerous international terrorist group--with cells just around the block from you LOL.

That said, I am glad these yo-yos were snatched up before they could actually hurt someone (assuming they are indeed guilty and not just a bunch of weekend paintball enthusiasts whom were set-up as today's terrorist dejuor).

[demosincebirth]

12. 'Nutty kids" are also ones who strap explosives to themselves

and kill inocent people. I say hang'um.

[EST]

9. I am of the opinion, ill informed, of course,

that this whole thing, if not a hoax, was a very near hoax.
Two main ideas lead me to this interim conclusion:
1. The current leader is a solid pupil, as nearly as I can tell, of the neoconster masters, here in the US.
These crooks are known for their willingness and ability to cook up catastrophe on demand, suitable for nose-ringing the masses of the less than thoughtful and making co-criminals of roughly half the population.
2. This has been reported as a sting operation. Assuming at least some veracity in the reporting (a reckless assumption,) a sting means that the cops were a part of facilitating, even encouraging, the operation. It also means the cops were the suppliers of something, probably the explosives.

This all means, to me, that, in spite of the hyperventilating of the neo-con msm, there is no surprise.
The plot, with all its ins and outs, the planning, the target selection, all were known in advance, for weeks, months, and maybe even years.

Maybe my substandard foil hat has gotten too tight or my outrage detector has suffered permanent overload, but this is all too convenient.

Lets hope our Canadian brethren (and sisters) are a bit too worldly to be so transparently taken in by the struggling radical right wing extremists who have invaded an otherwise stolid, intellectual people.

[HEyHEY]

13. It was a two and a half year operation

Begun when the Liberals were in power

[demosincebirth]

15. Oh, pleeze spare me!

[HEyHEY]

16. Is that what you want them to yell on the gallows?

[applegrove]

19. Just because your countries news is crap is no reason to assume

our news cannot be trusted. It can. This story is real. Did the subway bombings in the U.K. not happen? Spain? Please.. there is a list and even if Osama isn't checking it twice these days some freak moved from ME to Toronto, hung out at a mall and convinced vulnerable kids to turn themselves into suicide bombers. That is frightening. Terrorism has a way of being that way.

[applegrove]

21. Denying what obviously has facts behind it is mean and nasty. Just

like freepers who deny that there is rendition..when we have much in the way of reports & witnesses that there is that kind of torture.

It really stinks.

[EST]

26. Could you be a little more explicit?

I am not understanding your point. My humble apologies for my density.

[iverglas]

27. explicit: there are facts

There are facts to this case.

The facts are not affected by the nature of the present Canadian government or US government, the past wrongdoings of the US government or Canadian government, the relationship between the present Cdn govt and the US govt, or the price of tea in China.

And they are not affected by anyone's speculation about what they are.

And they are not affected by anyone's misapprehension of what the nature of the "sting" in this case was -- or actually, of what a sting is, in general.

And they are not affected by anyone's inability to see the rest of the world and its institutions and people and history and culture and politics for what they are and not as a reflection of his/her image of his/her own country.

We do not yet know what all of the facts are, but the facts exist independently of whether we know them, and they are not changed or affected or determined by anyone's speculation about them or anyone's beliefs about any other facts.

And that's all quite apart from how just plain insulting it is to Canadians, and the Canadians in this forum in particular, for a whole lot of people who know precisely fuck all about the facts to keep telling us what our reality is and denying our own reality and trying to reshape our reality for us into their own image, and implying pretty clearly that we are just too stupid to know what our reality is.

I hope that's clearer.

[JVS]

10. As though you never wanted to storm parliament!

Don't hate on them for having a dream! ;-)

[HEyHEY]

14. Well, during sweeps week would have been better

These guys are clearly amatuers

[AlCzervik]

11. yup, like the Canadian Guy Fawkes.

[applegrove]

17. They are all a bunch of hacks. That is why it is called terrorism. If

they were not hacks or "cells" but organized and professional.. it would be called an army. The management of these terrorist kids are the ones who are the professionals.. they have plans to live long after the kids have blown themselves and hundreds of innocents up. They are the professionals. You don't see bin Laden blowing his own ass up do you?

That is why it is a cult.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

18. It's hard to say, I read somewhere...

that they were just really upset of something to do with a leaky condo or something.

[iverglas]

22. yes, yes, yes, yes, yes

I don't think I can even bring myself to read what else is in this thread. I was just perusing yet another one where some of our neighbours were going on about how this was just another big Rovian thing. When I hit the one that said "only the Canadians are fooled", I figured I might stop reading.

We Canadians are just so fucking stupid, aren't we?

Well, some of us are. And I think that the bozos with the fertilizer are prime examples.

And as you say, stupid people really can do quite awful things.

And all without Karl Rove ever having looked in their direction.

And it's a good thing when they're prevented from doing them. What these ones are alleged to have been planning, and to have taken steps to carry out, was a CRIME. A very, very serious crime. And the police did their police stuff, and prevented it from happening.

Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.

[jazzjunkysue]

24. I adore canada. My folks own canadian property. I go every summer.

I wish I could relocate to canada. Been going up there all my life. Its a great country with good people.

But, some of them are not exactly brain surgeons, and this bunch really got in over their heads.

Now, before the flames start, I think Ottawa Montreal and Quebec City are beautifully designed cities. Toronto needs a little help, but it has it's points, too. And Niagra is fun.

But I sat and waited an hour once for a coke and it came flat, warm, and at least 3 years old.

Ditto on the worst burger I ever tried to eat. Forget chinese takeout.

They don't always get everything right up there, but they're great people with great hearts and I'd move there in a minute if I could, but my pension is vested in NY so I'm stuck.


From what I've heard, I'm not sure this group was smart enough to ever get anything to combust, but, at least they didn't harm anyone. Thank god.

I'd like to know exactly how they were going to deliver 5 tons of fertilizer to the base of the tower, anyway.....In paper cups?

Anyway, having said all that, can anyone be half as dum as Rumsfeld? Chertoff? Abramoff? Brownie?

There's dumb north and south of my fav border.

See ya in 3 weeks, ontario! Can't wait! Save me a maple doughnut at Tim Horton's!

[TrogL]

25. When I heard 300 tons(?) of explosive I wondered

until I found out it was a fertilizer bomb. You need a LOT of fertilizer to make a decent sized bomb.

The US federal building that collapsed due to a fertilize bomb did not fail primarily as a result of the bomb, but a flaw in its design. The bomb blew out a main structural member and the building collapsed. By no stretch of the imagination did they blow the front off the building.

Granted, that large an explosion could still do a lot of damage, just not the amount 300 tons of dynamite, nitroglycerine or some of the newer explosives could.

[muriel_volestrangler]

29. It was 3 tons of ammonium nitrate

still a lot, but you can fit it in a small truck. 300 tons needs a fleet of trailers. (Actually, a report I saw said the RCMP substituted a non-explosive substance for the ammonium nitrate anyway, but you get the idea of the scale they were thinking of).

[iverglas]

30. heh

Actually, it was 3 tonnes. About 3.3 tons.

;)

The Toronto Star report, cited by CBC for instance, said to be based on information obtained from a source, was that the police substituted another substance for the ammonium nitrate, and that seems to make sense in terms of how the transaction / operation played out. The offence committed by anyone involved in a conspiracy who accepted delivery would be the same regardless of what was in the bags ... or whatever you put 3 tonnes of ammonium nitrate in.

One does wonder why the police/intelligence services didn't just say this in the first place, to clarify how they had run the thing. (I mean, it's how I would just assume they'd run it anyhow, since that's what's done when drug shipments are being tracked to their destination, for the purpose of arresting the recipient, e.g.) And I won't rule out a desire to heighten public concern, but that would just seem a little pointless. I'd be just as concerned about the fact that the police had let the ammonium nitrate reach its destination as about the fact that it had got there!

[ProfessorGAC]

31. Count Me In On That Sentiment

If these guys are typical of the terrorists, i don't think we have much to be afraid of! These guys are buffoons! No wonder they got caught!
The Professor