Van in Toronto drives into pedestrians

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Van in Toronto drives into pedestrians

Postby blehblah » Tue Apr 24, 2018 5:04 pm

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/t ... -1.4632509

The man taken into custody after pedestrians were mowed down on a busy Toronto street Monday has been charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder and 13 counts of attempted murder.

Alek Minassian, 25, was arrested after the white van was driven down a busy stretch of Yonge Street, between Sheppard and Finch avenues, and left a trail of carnage and panic in its wake.

Minassian appeared in court wearing a white jumpsuit on Tuesday morning. He showed little emotion, only giving his name and confirming he understood conditions imposed on him by the court.


https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/ ... ow-so-far/

- Ten people are dead after a rental van mowed down pedestrians in north Toronto on Monday.
- The van drove south on Yonge Street from Finch Avenue for 2.2 kilometres, leaving a wake of destruction behind it before coming to a stop.

[...]

- Suspect Alek Minassian, 25, of Richmond Hill, Ont., is charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder and 13 counts of attempted murder. No motive is yet known.
- A Facebook post moments before the attack – which, according to a Facebook spokesperson, apparently came from Mr. Minassian's actual account – made reference to an "incel rebellion." The term "incel," or "involuntary celibacy," has been used by so-called men's rights activists and is often linked to mass shooter Elliot Rodger, whom the Facebook post mentioned by name. It is unclear whether Mr. Minassian wrote the post himself.
- Officials are not treating the incident as a national-security issue, federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said Monday.


The alleged drive was arrested.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/ ... ct-in-van/

Video from the scene shows a black-clad man quickly and repeatedly drawing and aiming an object at a police officer, shouting at the officer to kill him. The officer ignores the demand and continues to advance slowly with his firearm drawn.

Not a single shot was fired during the dramatic exchange and the officer is being lauded for his cool-headed arrest.


There is a video of the suspect being arrested in that link. Notice the people walking down the sidewalk, unaware of what was happening.

It was clear the guy wanted to be killed. The police officer didn't bite... an amazing job by that officer.

Mike McCormack, president of the Toronto Police Association, said the officer did exactly as he was trained to do.

“The officer would have been doing a continual threat assessment,” he said.

An officer would have been justified in discharging a firearm in such a situation, Mr. McCormack said, “but this officer looked at what was going on and determined he could handle it the way that he did. People are right: This guy is a hero.”


I agree. I don't know how I would have reacted in that situation. This guy displayed everything that police can be, and how to do it. Again, amazing.

The Toronto Police Service’s Employee and Family Assistance Program will provide emotional and situational support to affected officers, Mr. McCormack said. As well, officers will undergo critical incident stress debriefing.

“This is a hugely traumatizing incident for all our members,” he said. “This is unprecedented. Even in my over 30 years, to be on a scene like that − you see it on TV and you think it’s in another place, it’s in Europe, but now it’s here. To see the actual carnage and the bodies lying on the streets of Toronto, I think it’s changed the city forever.”


Good - there are many people, from emergency services to emergency room staff who will benefit from immediate post-trauma help. Nobody involved should be left alone to "walk it off".
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Re: Van in Toronto drives into pedestrians

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Tue Apr 24, 2018 6:07 pm

Perhaps it's time we started taking the manosphere seriously and started locking them up in the looney bin and throwing away the key. It's not like they can ever change given how intense their vitriol can be.
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Re: Van in Toronto drives into pedestrians

Postby Aquila89 » Tue Apr 24, 2018 6:28 pm

Just two weeks ago, there was another attack like that in Münster; vehicle ramming with the perpetrator has no connection to terrorist groups. Will we be seeing more of these?
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Re: Van in Toronto drives into pedestrians

Postby iMURDAu » Tue Apr 24, 2018 9:01 pm

Idk if these truck fuckers have heard of this game series called Grand Theft Auto? You can run over pedestrians until you get sick of it. Doesn't result in any real world consequences. The hookers rarely decline your services and you can recoup afterwards anyway.

So what's the incel play here? They hoping that women just start propositioning them out of the blue? Oh, only the "hot" ones of course because they're not settling for anything less than a bit above their pornographic standards.
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Re: Van in Toronto drives into pedestrians

Postby Delta Jim » Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:13 am

iMURDAu wrote:So what's the incel play here? They hoping that women just start propositioning them out of the blue?


Slightly tasteless joke
Everyone knows that the fastest way to a woman's heart is through a crowd of pedestrians.


I mean, how else are you supposed to get laid? Develop a well-rounded personality that makes you an interesting person to be around? Set your relationship expectations to a realistic level, basing it on a mutual, genuine enjoyment of each other's company rather than solely on shallow things like appearance and the other person having compatible sex organs?
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Re: Van in Toronto drives into pedestrians

Postby Anglerphobe » Wed Apr 25, 2018 9:39 pm

I had suspected before that these incel guys would be the ones chopping off people's heads on the internet had they been born in Iraq or Somalia or somewhere like that.
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Re: Van in Toronto drives into pedestrians

Postby DoglovingJim » Thu Apr 26, 2018 2:18 am

Incel, involuntarily celibate right? Isn't that basically anyone who is currently unmarried and single? Regardless I feel that these people such as Mr. Toronto are sick in the head, hopefully that state has the death penalty.
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Re: Van in Toronto drives into pedestrians

Postby JamishT » Thu Apr 26, 2018 6:37 am

DoglovingJim wrote:Incel, involuntarily celibate right? Isn't that basically anyone who is currently unmarried and single? Regardless I feel that these people such as Mr. Toronto are sick in the head, hopefully that state has the death penalty.


As far as I know, those who consider themselves incels aren't just single, but blame everyone except themselves for their singlehood. Also, they range from super whiney to violently discontent with their lack of romance and/or sex.
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Re: Van in Toronto drives into pedestrians

Postby blehblah » Thu Apr 26, 2018 5:10 pm

I caught part of a CBC radio discussion about it.

An interesting point the panelists landed on was that there have always been guys who get turned-down, always been socially awkward people, and misogynists. What has changed is the Internet facilitates people with common views collecting together and reinforcing those views. The echo chambers which result can lead to folks more-or-less radicalizing one another as reinforcement elicits increasing extremes. You know, kinda like just about everything these days.

Of course, various forums, like subreddits, came-up. One panelist noted that quite a few men in those forums self-identify as being on the autism spectrum, or feeling that they are ugly, and often work in fields such as programming. It was also noted that a further troubling aspect is there are guys who are as young as mid-teens who identify with these groups (Alek Minassian is twenty-five).

There's a lot going-on. The Internet is doing what the Internet does; it's really good at collecting and channeling anger. Aspects of this go back to 'pick-up artists' and the like. Pop culture itself isn't helpful (in 2005, I didn't anticipate eventually pondering the social impact of The 40 Year Old Virgin). I wasn't exactly worried about not getting laid at sixteen (long before 2005) because there were generally two types of guys; ones who weren't getting laid, and liars.

Obviously, there's a lot of rage involved. It is primarily directed at women, though it is also directed at men who are perceived to have everything incel's don't.

I don't think it's as simple as blaming the Internet or pop culture. Incidents like this go way back. For example, this happened in Montreal in 1989:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89col ... e_massacre

The École Polytechnique massacre, also known as the Montreal massacre, was a mass shooting at the École Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec, Canada that occurred on December 6, 1989. Twenty-five-year-old Marc Lépine, armed with a rifle and a hunting knife, shot 28 people, killing 14 women, before committing suicide. He began his attack by entering a classroom at the university, where he separated the male and female students. After claiming that he was "fighting feminism" and calling the women "a bunch of feminists," he shot all nine women in the room, killing six. He then moved through corridors, the cafeteria, and another classroom, specifically targeting women to shoot. Overall, he killed fourteen women and injured ten other women and four men in just under 20 minutes before turning the gun on himself.


More questions than answers, and certainly no easy solutions.

We don't have the death penalty in Canada. Despite Alek Minassian's best efforts to commit suicide by cop, a government employee isn't going to be ending his life.
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Re: Van in Toronto drives into pedestrians

Postby Aquila89 » Thu Apr 26, 2018 5:14 pm

I don't think it's as simple as blaming the Internet or pop culture. Incidents like this go way back. For example, this happened in Montreal in 1989


Exactly what came to my mind too, when I read the first part of your post, about commentators blaming the Internet. According to the police, most of the victims of the van attack are women. But a van isn't like a gun, you can't really pick your targets, so that's probably accidental; though Minassian might be happy about it.

JamishT wrote:As far as I know, those who consider themselves incels aren't just single, but blame everyone except themselves for their singlehood.


And what do you call the people who are single but blame themselves for it?
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Re: Van in Toronto drives into pedestrians

Postby sunglasses » Thu Apr 26, 2018 5:19 pm

Aquila89 wrote:
And what do you call the people who are single but blame themselves for it?


Normal
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Re: Van in Toronto drives into pedestrians

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Thu Apr 26, 2018 6:20 pm

Aquila89 wrote:
And what do you call the people who are single but blame themselves for it?

Victims of a Wizard's curse, obviously. I mean,it's not like I'm an awkward wreck with trust issues, social anxiety, and gender dysphoria. No, it's definitely a wizard's curse. *sigh* Why did I have to swipe that drȳ's plum pudding during that weird time travel incident in '09?
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Re: Van in Toronto drives into pedestrians

Postby blehblah » Thu Apr 26, 2018 7:36 pm

I briefly tried to find the CBC radio bit I caught part of, but didn't find it.

There is this:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/w ... -1.4633893

There is a lot in there, but I found this nugget interesting:

The origins of the word "incel" can reportedly be traced back to the 1990s and a Canadian woman known in the media by only her first name, Alana.

Alana told Elle magazine in 2016 that she came up with the term while trying to find a label for her own sexual solitude and create an inclusive online space for people who didn't fit the conventional pattern of adult experiences and relationships.

"I was trying to create a movement that was open to anybody and everybody," she told the magazine.


NB: I added the link to the Elle article from the CBC article in the above quote - it's an interesting read.

We live in a world where the impact of unintended consequences often overtakes best intentions. It has always been that way, but seems to occur at an accelerating pace, and enjoys richer documentation, than a few decades/centuries/millennia ago.

I'm not sure where to take that line of thinking, other than to an off-the-grid log cabin. What's the worst that could happen?
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Re: Van in Toronto drives into pedestrians

Postby cmsellers » Thu Apr 26, 2018 9:10 pm

I used to find incels to be some of the funniest people on the internet. Sure they idolized the Isla Vista shooter, but he didn't seem directly connected with them, and they're so absurd that even though I know consciously that they're completely serious, my subconscious could never believe it. Deep down I think I believed before the Toronto attacks that this all has to be an elaborate troll, right?

They're a group of people who define themselves by sex, don't see women or non-virgin men as people, and project so hard you could play them on the moon. They're the very embodiment of affluenza: incels never seem to come from poor backgrounds and they idolize not working. They don't believe that men can be raped, and make an analogy to forcing someone to take money at gunpoint. A significant number of them seem to be gay or pedophiles in deep denial, given they way they talk about "Chads" and underage girls. A surprising number of them fantasize about sex with female relatives, mostly sisters but sometimes mothers. They idolize ISIS for putting women in their place and have threads for sharing nasheeds in preference to decadent western music.

Incels also include some of the most ... special ... individuals on the entire internet. One asked his mother to sleep with him and demanded the government hire prostitutes. One made a hobby of catfishing attractive women online in an attempt to make them understand what rejection feels like. One has a fetish for "acid-facing" women, and cannot understand why his ex-therapist got a restraining order after he said he wanted to do that to her. A subculture of "escortcels" insists that that having sex with hookers still leaves you a "cultural virgin." (They also use the "-cel" suffix more liberally than the little blue Belgian communists use "smurf.") And that's just what I remember off the top of my head.

After typing all that, well I'm a horrible person and still find it funny (just like I find ISIS and Nazis funny), but mirth is now vying with horror as I finally realize that holy fuck, these nuts really are for real. They constantly encourage people to "go ER" or "be an hERo," in reference to the Isla Vista killings, and it looks like one of their members finally took them up on that. You can bet that right now they're circlejerking at how sweet "normie tears" taste.

And even if they never commit another mass killing, which now seems unlikely (until the Toronto attack I thought they were all just talk), it's finally sinking in how toxic their crab-in-the-bucket mentality is WRT their less-insane members. They treat everything that makes life worth living as a "cope," discourage their members from trying to improve themselves, and the moment one of their own manages to improve his personality enough that he "escapes inceldom," the rest of the group throws a tantrum about "fakecels" and ban him.
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Re: Van in Toronto drives into pedestrians

Postby iMURDAu » Thu Apr 26, 2018 10:28 pm

Deathclaw_Puncher wrote:
Aquila89 wrote:
And what do you call the people who are single but blame themselves for it?

Victims of a Wizard's curse, obviously. I mean,it's not like I'm an awkward wreck with trust issues, social anxiety, and gender dysphoria. No, it's definitely a wizard's curse. *sigh* Why did I have to swipe that drȳ's plum pudding during that weird time travel incident in '09?


Was it worth it?
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