[UPDATED with name of shooter]
By David Futrelle
Last night, a young man opened fire on people enjoying a night out in Toronto’s Greektown neighborhood. Numerous people were hit; two of his victims died — an 18-year-old woman and a 10-ear-old girl.
The shooter, identified as 29-year-old Toronto resident Faisal Hussain, was found dead shortly after a gunfight with police; it’s not clear if he was killed by the police or if he took his own life.
As of yet, we don’t know the shooter’s motive, but given his choice of targets — people out socializing on a summer night in a neighborhood known for its many restaurants — it’s hard not to wonder if he was inspired by the incel van attack that killed ten pedestrians and injured many more on a busy street in Toronto in April.
On the Incels.me message board — where many have made heroes of incel mass killers like Elliot Rodger and the Toronto van killer — some of the regulars are openly celebrating the shooting, with some taking special pleasure in the death of the ten-year-old girl.
Someone called /pol/cel, with more than 1499 comments to his name on the site, kicked off the celebration by declaring how glad he was that the shooting took place in Toronto:
“IT” is a reference to the IncelTears subreddit. devoted to mocking incels.
After one commenter took offense at /pol/cel’s glee over the murders, prolific Incels.me commenter Getlooksordie took the discussion into an even darker direction:
And things got worse from there, with much of the rest of the discussion centered around the alleged crimes-against-inceldom committed by the murdered “8 year old girl” (who was actually ten).
Somehow the discussion managed to get even more grotesque.
While a few commenters pushed back against the celebration of the murders, or simply dismissed their comments as the work of “edge lords,” the regulars who weren’t giddily joking about the murdered ten-year-old were much more worked up about one commenter who referred to the shooting as taking place in “America.”
These are men who insist they are “involuntarily celibate” — yet who are choosing of their own volition to be such utterly reprehensible human beings that no decent person of any gender would want to have anything to do with them.
Thanks for your thoughts all 🙂
Another memory of mom, and a “trip” we took, a rather short one this time ..
I wanted a new blanket for my bed, the one I had was so threadbare as to have large holes. Yes, mom taught me to be frugal too. (My other bed things include pillow cases my friend made for me out of old sheets and a comforter, or bedspread, that I got at a garage sale.)
Yes, mom taught me to be frugal 🙂
Mom and grandma.
I looked online for the sort of light cotton woven blanket I wanted. And they’re in the $100 range now? :/
I kept looking. Mom said she had a Kohl’s coupon so I looked there online. And I found a blanket I liked and with the coupon it would come to like $30. Looked very nice in the pix, I decided to get it, but there weren’t any at the Kohl’s stores around here. Props to their website people because you could check various stores inventory easily.
In doing this I found the one I wanted at a Kohl’s store in Countryside, a SW burb here. Mom knew how to get there and said ok we’ll go there, came and got me, with all her various coupons, and we got my new blanket YAY! 🙂
And we would do these things, something to do for mom when she retired. She liked to get out and just go do something, me too, let’s just take a ride there and see, get out of the house, something to do.
Well anyway I was just reminiscing about shopping in that area with mom, and today I saw this ..
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/07/white-man-went-racist-starbucks-rampage-says-hes-not-racist-cops-finds-kkk-hood/?comments=disqus
Nazis have popped up in this same area!
And now including ventriloquist’s dummies.
o0
Here’s another story about it, with more info:
https://patch.com/illinois/oaklawn/alleged-neo-nazi-charged-hate-crime-countryside-starbucks
Not exactly ‘my area’ but it’s not all that far away, either. And this must be in the same shopping areas that me and my mom went to ..
They’re creeping closer, even in these (mostly) liberal areas …
One of the above articles says he has a history of domestic violence. Wow. What a surprise.
🙁
Yikes
@happy cat
Oh, don’t get me started on bullying. I could go on for days about what a bunch of crap the public perception of bullying is. It is not “kids being kids,” it is not harmless, it does not “make people strong,” and no, it isn’t something only boys are victim to. I hope you didn’t have to endure the “oh, he’s just doing it because he has a crush on you” bullshit.
I notice the right-leaning media outlets are scarcely giving this incident a mention (yes, I have an in-law who watches Fox, etc.). They want to tamp down the obvious point that incels pose a genuine threat to public safety. They’d rather hold pity parties for Elliot Rodger and his chums while screeching about Muslims.
Don’t be stupid! Having the little girl survive wouldn’t hurt or take rights away from any adult women, not like banning abortion would. And having the little girl die means that women who love her will suffer!
You can easily identify the incel-preferred outcome of any situation by identifying which result will cause the most pain and suffering for women (and also, to a lesser extent, ‘normies’). Whether this outcome will improve the incel’s life any is irrelevant at best and actually a detriment in some situations, since the entire lifestyle is based around being as miserable, awful, and hateful as possible.
@Dormousing_it
Yeah, they’re powerful losers, nerdy bad boys, ugly loners, edgy dukes of dork* before anyone else had even discovered the edge.
They’re super brilliant and logical, but don’t ever, ever look for consistency in their arguments. That’s for loser-losers, not incel-losers (losers who win by losing).
* Thanks to my boyfriend for conferring this noble title upon these hateful idiots.
So that scene in “Gangs of New York” was fairly accurate then?.
@Alan Robertshaw
Apparently, this model of fire protection goes way back. I have a friend who likes to talk about one of the richest Roman citizens who owned one of those private fire brigades. He and his crew would show up at a blaze and negotiate the price for service before getting to work. Hence being so rich. Marcus Licinius Crassus. And if the homeowner wouldn’t agree to the price, they’d let it burn to the ground, then Crassus would buy the property at fires sale prices. I suspect our word “crass” is derived from his business practices.
@Freemage
Apparently, that Roman entrepreneur was not afraid to create a demand for his services. And actually this kind of self-interested work creation continues to happen still today. I used to be a wildland firefighter, and I was on at least one fire that was rumored to be started by a firefighter who wanted some overtime. That fire got much bigger than he expected.
@Freemage
Here’s a link to representative news coverage at the time of the fire:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/39516346/ns/us_news-life/t/no-pay-no-spray-firefighters-let-home-burn/
And here are some items that discuss the systemic economic issues involved in fire protection for this particular county:
https://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2026445,00.html
http://www.truecrimereport.com/2010/10/gene_cranicks_house_burns_down.php
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/10/firefighting-obion-county/
I haven’t found anything about a lawsuit, but I know the man’s son went to the fire station the next day and punched the Fire Chief.
This stuff is challenging, because emergency services are expensive! And pretty much always terribly underfunded in terms of regular budget. Places like the National Park Service have started charging the costs of search and rescue to the people they are trying to save in some instances because the park’s annual budget can’t cover the expense of multiple incidents like that.
Look at the numbers for those municipal fire departments in Obion County Tennessee: one has an annual operating budget of $8000, yet investment in an individual firefighter (gear, training, etc) easily reaches $27,000, plus the very expensive vehicles, all the specialized equipment, overhead costs, etc. They probably can’t really afford to respond to dispatches within the municipality, much less out into the rural areas.
We certainly need a better system.
@ solecism et al
Ooh, an opportunity to natter about Ancient Rome,
Yeah, people got a bit pissed off with the private fire services, so Nero nationalised the service and brought it under the auspices of the Vigiles.
The Vigiles did stuff like the city watch. The fire brigade element was organised along military lines.
What I find particularly interesting is we have the duty roster for one of the divisions, listing the names of everyone and their origin. The eight people in charge were from all over the place (Europe, the Middle East, North Africa) which shows just how cosmopolitan Rome was at the time.
The fire brigade had a motto which translates as “Where danger is, we are”; which apparently is still the motto of the Rome fire brigade to this day.
This may be (depending on how evil is defined), but we are still lagging way behind on violence of all kinds. If I was stranded anywhere I know I am going to feel (and statistically be) safer meeting a group of women than a group of men.
I saw Nannette yesterday (YOU NEED TO WATCH IT, PEOPLE!).
Hannah Gadsby had much the same sort of trauma as the incels, and chose to do something very, very different with it.
Being gay isn’t a choice, but being an asshole is.
@ Z&T
I’m sorry for your loss. What will survive of us is love, and it sounds like you and your Mom shared a lot of that – not to mention resourceful survival strategies and humour.
The Starbucks carpark racist story is awful but also, slightly, hilarious. I see he’s claiming not to be racist. Just a Nazi, and we all know how anti-racist they were / sarcasm.
Having been terrified at an impressionable age by a film called Dead of Night in which a ventriloquist is tormented, and finally taken over, by an evil dummy, I am fully expecting that to form the basis of his defence. It was the dummy dun it.
One more child sacrificed on the altar of patriarchy. We will never know what she would have been able to be and do, making us all poorer.
I grieve for her and for the people who loved her.
This kind of thing will not stop until we make the well-being of all children the core of our societies. Not the well-being or the wealth or the desires or political/religious ambitions of men, but the health and happiness of our children.
@Samantha Kaswell
So well said!
In contrast to the incels, who celebrate a young girl’s death, Elin Ersson refused to sit down on a plane in order to save the life of a man being deported back to Afghanistan. She faced hostility from some other passengers, including one who yelled at her (“I don’t care what you think . . . I don’t care what you think”) because she was, according to him, frightening the children on the plane. (Good going, English guy! I’m sure your argument made sense to you. Or not. Whatevs.) She didn’t give an inch, though, and the Afghan man finally got to leave the plane. Sadly, Swedish authorities say they’ll deport him on another date.
So in contradiction to the vehement, repeated assertions of men’s “rights” “activists,” this (young and beautiful) woman went way out of her way to help a man. This doesn’t count, though, because (a) the man is brown; (b) he’s Muslim; and (c) he’s not them.
Swedish student’s dramatic plane protest stops man’s deportation ‘to hell’
Elin Ersson refused to take her seat on flight at Gothenburg airport until man being sent to Afghanistan was removed
https://youtu.be/ZSJ7du-EC9w
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/25/swedish-student-plane-protest-stops-mans-deportation-afghanistan
Er, an adult woman was killed by this shitstain, too. Which is no less a tragedy than the little kid.
Don’t get me wrong, children absolutely deserve to be protected. But I don’t think that adults are any less deserving of happiness and well-being, either. There are plenty of vulnerable people who are older than 18.
@Z&T, Marshmallow Stacy Maximal – While it’s awful that the guy was spreading racist propaganda, some of the comments on the article made me laugh. One person wrote:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/25/swedish-student-plane-protest-stops-mans-deportation-afghanistan
Beat THAT, trumplings!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@Catalpa:
Yes. Both names were just recently released: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/danforth-shooting-girl-markham-julianna-kozis-1.4760538
There was a fair bit of talk on the radio this morning about this, obviously.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/danforth-faisal-hussain-shooting-greektown-1.4760344
The shooter was known to police previously, and probably obtained the gun from his older brother’s stuff, who got it from the U.S. Brother has been involved with gang activity, and is currently in a coma.
Unfortunately, the mental health issue is getting a lot of play in this one; apparently he actually was being treated for issues, or had been at some point. Obviously the details aren’t public.
@Jenora
He was from Thorncliffe, huh? Yeah, had an old buddy from junior high that went to Marc Garneau. Heard it was kind of a rough school; a lot of kids in poverty in that area of town.
I’ve also noticed the mental health aspect getting all the headlines, which is troubling, but also has me wondering why that’s the first thing released about this guy. It’s like in our demand for answers, somebody out there in the police services or whoever informed the press of these details let that information out and figured “Eh, this’ll explain it enough.”
No, it takes more than bipolar disorder, depression or schizophrenia to make somebody homicidal. Plenty of people have those and are no danger to anybody.
I did find this column interesting though: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2018/07/24/how-to-dam-torontos-river-of-guns.html
Apparently, since Harper’s scrapping of the long-gun registry, gun trafficking is being done more by Canadians than Americans as they were when the registry was in place. And a lot more of them are moving around. Almost as if that registry was a key component for law enforcement tracking firearms and scrapping it was a reckless and dangerous thing to do.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/07/stand-your-ground-laws-in-markeis-mcglockton-killing-why-michael-drejka-gets-police-level-impunity.html
I wonder… if the black man had shot the white man because he feared for his life… would the “Stand Your Ground” laws protect him?
No, actually I don’t wonder that… I KNOW
And of course we have the case of Marissa Alexander, the black woman who was denied protection under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law and sentenced to 20 years in prison, even though:
a) she didn’t actually shoot her attacker (her husband at the time), but rather fired to scare him off, and
b) her attacker admitted in court that he would have harmed her if she hadn’t shot at him.
Thanks for those statistics from the Urban Institute study. I hadn’t seen those before; I’ll have to follow up on that.
OT: I’m threadrupt, but I don’t *think* this has been posted yet, and it’s too good not to share. Lindsay Ellis plus ContraPoints on Transformers, Marxism, and film theory! With an anarcho-syndicalist catgirl!
@Moggie: OMG! Thank you!
I just stopped by to add an Iain M. Banks (RIP) quote I thought very apposite:
Amen.
@Katamount:
The CBC Metro Morning show this morning had a gun shop owner and a gun control activist both interviewed; the gun shop owner’s attitude more focused on ‘actually enforcing the rules we already have might be better than just adding new ones’. But yes, one of the things discussed was that there’s been a shift over the years and nowadays guns on the street in Toronto are quite likely to have been bought locally by someone picked for having a clean record, as opposed to having been smuggled in from the U.S.
And when Harper as the supposed ‘Law and Order’ candidate was scrapping the Long Gun registry against the wishes of the RCMP (and then forbidding provinces from keeping any of their locally collected data), well…
I had some friends who went to Garneau myself. One of whom apparently had joked about building nuclear reactor chambers in shop class. He ended up spending time as the ‘voice of reason’ at one of the local Maker spaces because he was a lot more familiar with just how much can go wrong than a lot of the other more enthusiastic sorts.
@Dormousing_it:
Consistency was never their strong suit…unless it concerns somehow tormenting and/or killing feeeeemales. (Oh sorry, femoids/foids.) They’re less concerned with anything or anyone that might conceivably improve their lives, because they’re all about pissing all over someone else’s, especially if that someone is (or could grow up to be) a sexually active “Stacy”. Male supremacists with a vast inferiority complex are still male supremacists, when all’s said.