Strypey
> [Khaled Al-Nobani] claimed police took 20 minutes to arrive. “We are in the middle of the city. The middle of Christchurch. There was no traffic about. You need two-minute [maximum] response.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/15/christchurch-shooting-new-zealand-suspect-white-supremacist-symbols-weapons
This is a very good question, and only one of a number of troubling and unanswered questions about Friday. (1/2)
Strypey
The two mosques that were attacked are on either side of central Christchurch. To get between them quickly, the shooter had to drive down one of only 3 roads that go through or around Hagley Park, and then through downtown, practically right past the central Police Station.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/320/cpsprodpb/17FE1/production/_106037289_christchurch_mosque_attacks_map04_976-nc.png
How the hell did the shooter have enough time leave the first mosque, let alone get to the second one, before Police stopped him? (2/2)
Strypey
I have personally encountered Christchurch Police officers who were shitted out of the decomposing anus of #apartheid South Africa. Could it be that "some of those who work forces, are the same that burn crosses"?
https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=bWXazVhlyxQ
Strypey
Finally, I've been part of groups organizing non-violent direct actions that we tried to keep secret until they happened. We later found out the cops had an informer in our ranks, and knew about everything we were doing before it happened:
http://www.nickyhager.info/crossing-the-line-the-activist-who-turned-police-informer/
So given that the shooter who attacked the mosques in Christchurch was part of a rifle club that had been reported to the Police by worried gun owners, how the hell did they not know what he was planning and stop him before he did it?
Strypey
At best, the #NZ law enforcement establishment are revealed as having a massive institutional bias against lefties (David Small), Muslims (Ahmed Zaoui) greenies and Māori (Operation 8), and dangerous blind spots when it comes to anti-unionists (bombed Trades Hall in 1984), French spies (bombed the Rainbow Warrior in 1985), letterbox bombers (against conservationists in Westport in 2006), and white nationalists.
Strypey
"White supremacist violence has surged in recent years in the United States. During the past decade, attackers motivated by right-wing political ideology are responsible for more acts of violence than any other category of domestic extremist, according to a 2018 Washington Post analysis of data on global terrorism."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/new-zealand-suspect-inspired-by-far-right-french-intellectual-who-feared-nonwhite-immigration/2019/03/15/8c39fba4-6201-4a8d-99c6-aa42db53d6d3_story.html
Strypey
Those who think the solution to white supremacist violence is to have governments crack down on white nationalist speech or political organizing, or militants beat them up in the street, need to be reminded of the words of John F. Kennedy:
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Strypey
Strypey
Organized white supremacist violence in #NZ is hardly a new problem. I'm aware of organizations like #WhitePower and the #NationalFront that were active in the 1990s, and probably existed much longer than this. People I know, myself included, have been the target of that violence going back to the late 1990s, including one gay teenager I knew who was murdered in 1999:
http://i.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/4789046/Killers-release-attacked
Another man, a Korean tourist, was murdered by skinheads in 2003:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10635738
(1/2)
Strypey
White supremacists were smashing up Jewish graveyards and daubing swastika symbols on the homes of Muslim people in the mid-2000s. Then there was this:
"The mosque at the centre of Friday's horrific massacre in Christchurch was previously subjected to the delivery of boxes of pigs heads by Hitler-saluting men who boasted 'Bring on the cull'."
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12214191
The claim that NZ law enforcement had no way of knowing about the risks of white supremacist violence is utterly false.
Strypey
The bottom line is that Muslim have been murdered by the thousands since the white supremacist invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq by the US military, which the #NZ military has been an uncritical partner in. Since then, white supremacist militias and individuals have carried out more acts of political violence against people in the US than any other group. Friday's shooting was part of a well-established pattern of pretending Muslims are a violent threat, and using that as an excuse to kill them.
Strypey
Since 9/11 the left has consistently said that the solution to political violence is *not* to take away our #CivilLiberties, increase #MassSurveillance, or demonize entire minority groups with which violent extremists are seen to be associated. We've said it even though we find the attitudes and practices of militant Islamism abhorrent (as do many Muslims). We must have the intellectual courage to keep saying it if there are attempts to use Friday as an excuse for anti-more democratic reforms.
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