Vox Sentences: What you need to know about the Canadian parliament shooting

1. The shootings at Parliament Hill

Parliament Hill and National War Memorial site, the locations of the shootings. (Mike Carroccetto/Getty Images)

• Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a 32 year old Canadian, killed a soldier, Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, guarding the National War Memorial in Ottawa before entering the Parliament building and firing multiple shots. He was shot and killed while inside.

  [NYT / Ian Austen and Rick Gladstone]

• Here's everything we know and don't know at this point. We have no idea why Zehaf-Bibeau did what he did, or if there were, as some reports stated, multiple shooters.

  [Vox / Max Fisher and Zack Beauchamp]

• While Cirillo is the only confirmed death, Ottawa Hospital says it admitted three people injured in the attack.

  [Toronto Star / Les Whittington and Joanna Smith]

• Anonymous sources tell the Globe and Mail (one of Canada's best newspapers) that Zehaf-Bibeau was "recently designated a 'high-risk traveller' by the Canadian government and that his passport had been seized."

  [Globe and Mail / Josh Wingrove, Steven Chase, Bill Curry, and Jill Mahoney]

• Those are similar circumstances to those surrounding a separate attack Monday, in which Martin Rouleau-Couture ran over two soldiers, killing one, at a strip mall in what authorities classified as a terrorist attack.

  [NYT / Ian Austen]

• Canada raised its terror alert level after the Rouleau-Couture attack.

  [AFP / Michel Comte]

• Canada has considerably stricter gun laws than the US, including mandatory licensing for gun owners. A requirement that rifles and shotguns be registered was repealed two years ago.

  [Christian Science Monitor / Arthur Bright]

• Just this month, the Conservative government unveiled new legislation meant to streamline (or, critics would argue, weaken) gun regulations.

  [CBC / Kady O'Malley Janyce McGregor]

• Here is a good rundown of past Canadian terror attacks. The most infamous is probably the October Crisis of 1970, in which Quebecois separatists kidnapped a member of Quebec's cabinet and a British diplomat, killing the former and causing Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to claim war powers.

  [USA Today / Alan Gomez]

2. Blackwater down

On September 24, 2007, an Iraqi woman walks past a burnt car on the site of the Blackwater shooting incident. (Ali Yussef/AFP/Getty Images)

• Four former Blackwater contractors were convicted in connection with the 2007 killing of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad — one of murder, three of manslaughter.

  [NYT / Matt Apuzzo]

• The contractors claimed they were ambushed, but an FBI investigation the year of the incident concluded the shooting was unjustified (and a jury has just confirmed that judgment).

  [BBC]

• A few weeks before the incident, a State Department team arrived to review Blackwater, and the company's top Iraq official told one of the investigators, "that he could kill me at that very moment and no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq."

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• But others in that department apparently had better relationships with the company: "There was evidence that State Department officials had gathered shell casings after the shooting to try to protect Blackwater."

  [NYT / Matt Apuzzo]

• Iraq tried to prosecute the contractors at the time …

  [NYT / James Glanz and Sabrina Tavernise]

• … but contractors were immune from Iraqi law at the time.

  [Politico / Ryan Grim]

• Under the 2009 Status of Forces Agreement, contractors for the US military are subject to Iraqi criminal law, meaning future cases like this will be prosecuted in Iraqi courts.

  [NYT / James Risen]

• Under an agreement signed last month, Afghanistan has jurisdiction over US contractors in that country, but not actual troops.

  [Radio Free Europe / Charles Recknagel ]

• Now known as Academi, Blackwater is still working as a contractor for the US in Afghanistan, and is in the middle of a potentially lucrative merger.

  [Foreign Policy / Kate Brannen]

3. Is Amazon evil?

Has Jeff Bezos become death, the destroyer of worlds? (David Ryder/Getty Images)

• Is Amazon a power-hungry monopoly that needs to be stopped? Frank Foer made the case earlier this month.

  [New Republic / Frank Foer]

• Annie Lowrey countered that it's not really a monopoly — and it's unclear what harms Foer thinks it's really causing, either.

  [NY Mag / Annie Lowrey]

• Paul Krugman argues that Amazon isn't a monopolist it's a MONOPSONIST (the buyer in a market with many sellers but only one purchaser), and that gives it undue power over which books become popular.

  [NYT / Paul Krugman]

• Tyler Cowen's skeptical that the cost of consumers of Amazon wielding that power is minimal.

  [Tyler Cowen]

• And Ryan Avent doubts it has that degree of power over book buzz at all.

  [Ryan Avent]

• Matt Yglesias argues Amazon's using it power for good in at least one case: "Here's a little real talk about the book publishing industry — it adds almost no value, it is going to be wiped off the face of the earth soon, and writers and readers will be better off for it."

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• Mathew Ingram compares what Amazon's doing to Apple's intervention in the music business — which, he argues, was nothing but good for consumers.

  [GigaOm / Mathew Ingram]

• Tomas Hirst counters that Amazon isn't destroying publishers so much as promoting monopolies amongst them — itself a troubling consequence.

  [Business Insider / Tomas Hirst]

• Ben Branstetter disagrees with just about everyone: Amazon is worth fighting, he argues, but it holds less power than publishers, which should use theirs to crush it.

  [The Daily Dot / Ben Branstetter]

4. Misc.

• A doctor working in Sierra Leone and Guinea, a Sierra Leonean aid worker, and the daughter of the first Liberian doctor to die of Ebola tell their side of the outbreak.

  [Vox / Julia Belluz]

• Next week, the Fed will probably end a policy that's been crucial in supporting the economic recovery. That would be a mistake.

  [New Republic / Danny Vinik]

• Electing judges is stupid and dangerous and states should stop doing it.

  [Bloomberg View / Jonathan Bernstein]

• San Francisco's rents keep surging higher — and its homeless residents are being left behind

  [Vox / Tracey Lien]

• Martha Coakley is behind in a statewide Massachusetts election she was expected to win easily. Again.

  [RealClearPolitics]

• Has campaign finance reform made political polarization worse?

  [NYT / Thomas Edsall]

• Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer is running an experiment that will try to shrink terminal cancer patients' tumors by having them live like it's 2003. Really.

  [NYT Magazine / Bruce Grierson]

• Thousands of legal immigrants are being forced to work against their will

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• Pakistani legislators are working to finally criminalize cannibalism (it's not banned as such in the US either).

  [Washington Post / Tim Craig]

5. Verbatim

• "You probably don't believe me, but I didn't kill Harry."

  [Scott Kratlian to LA Weekly / Hillel Aron]

• "Society delivers a constant and consistent message to women: You do not look right. You should look different."

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

• "The research showed that inclusion of minorities in power-sharing in local government contributed to higher levels of violence."

  [Quartz / Nikhil Sonnad]

• "The point is pretty clear—society is more offended by decorative profanity than it is economic discrimination or sexual assault."

  [Dangerous Minds / Amber Frost]

• "They come in thinking they don't have to follow local laws because they're from the internet."

  [NY Mag / Jessica Pressler]

Correction: This post originally stated that a Blackwater official made a death threat against a State Department investigator after the shooting in 2007. The incident happened a few weeks before the shooting.

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