The Parliament Hill Gunman, and the Madness of the Con Regime

More than four months after Michael Zehaf-Bibeau stormed Parliament Hill, the RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson has finally released the video the gunman made shortly before he was killed.

Or at least most of the video...



Minus the eighteen seconds the RCMP removed, but will not explain why.

And what is only too clear is that while Zehaf-Bibeau was obviously a terrorist, or a murderer with a cause, this was no terrorist conspiracy. 

Michael Zehaf-Bibeau said in a video he was seeking vengeance for Canada's military deployment in Muslim countries before killing a soldier at the War Memorial in Ottawa and storming through Parliament with a rifle.

No matter what the Commissioner says:

“The RCMP believes on the evidence that Zehaf-Bibeau was a terrorist. Anyone who aided him, abetted him, counselled him, facilitated his crimes or conspired with him is also in our view a terrorist and where the evidence exists we will charge them with terrorist offences,” Commissioner Paulson said.

For the crude selfie video made in his car, and the suicidal nature of his charge, shows only a religious fanatic in the grip of some feverish delusion.

It does not back up Stephen Harper's claims that some massive Jihadi conspiracy is at war with this country.



And as Chantale Hebert points out, it does not justify Harper's plans to turn this country into a police state.  

Exhibit A in Stephen Harper’s case for the most comprehensive national security overhaul since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 is a recording so short that it is almost a misnomer to call it a video.

At only a bit more than a minute in length in its entirety, the message Michael Zehaf-Bibeau recorded on his cellphone before he killed a soldier at the National War Memorial on the way to a shooting rampage inside the main parliament building last October does little more than clear up the issue of personal motive.

For Zehaf-Bibeau may not have been drunk, or on crack, or psychotic when he carried out the attack. But it does not prove that he was anything more than a deeply disturbed lone wolf.



What the video shows is that Zehaf-Bibeau was calm when he recorded his message. Based on the autopsy report he was not under the influence of alcohol or drugs. It is also clear that he believed he was invested with a religious mission. But it is not because Zehaf-Bibeau latched on Islamist extremism to justify unjustifiable acts to protest Canada’s foreign policy that he was thinking rationally.

Four months after the attack the RCMP has still not produced any evidence that he was not acting alone.

And what all of the above makes even more clear, is that the way Harper and his Con regime have reacted to the attack is more about politics than terror.



Notwithstanding the Conservative embrace of the video as the ultimate proof that legislation along the lines of their Bill C-51 is urgently needed, the recording provides more political cover than it does policy rationale for the government’s anti-terror agenda.

And the fact that the video was released just days before a committee is to begin studying Bill C-51, speaks volumes about their motives.

And is as Thomas Walkom points out, just another attempt to make terrorism THE issue of the next election instead of the failing economy.

Two issues dominate Canadian politics. One is talked about. The other is not. The one talked about is terrorism. It is the topic of the day.

The issue that is not much talked about any more — at least by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government — is the economy.

Harper's terrorist fixation is just a grotesque attempt to distract us from the real issues facing this country.

This picture, of Canadians doomed to live in a world of precarious work, is deeply depressing. It is also a picture that affects far more people than terrorism ever would. Terrorists killed two people in this country last year. As others have pointed out, lightning routinely kills more — between nine and 10 annually. Yet terror is what we talk about.

Terrorism is important. That’s one reason why Harper and his ministers talk about it. But it is not as important as they make it out to be. It is not the defining issue of our time.

And it leaves us in the same position we were in before that video was released. 

In the  grip of a deranged leader who would do ANYTHING to win the next election...



And is trying to scare Canadians with a vision of a vast terrorist conspiracy, and turn a deranged gunman into a Jihadi army, for crass political purposes. 

Which isn't just evil, it's madness.

But that only makes our mission even clearer and more urgent. For now there can be no doubt.

Or we remove Harper and his foul regime from power in the next election.

Or he will use fear, and the demons in his own head.

To turn this country into a police state...

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