Sir David Amess, Conservative MP, Assassinated at Constituency Meeting in UK | Hacker News Reader

Sir David Amess, Conservative MP, Assassinated at Constituency Meeting in UK

bbc.com

52 pointsgraderjs17 comments

@dang: original title without editorialization is "Sir David Amess: Conservative MP stabbed to death"

It's easy to imagine this was an assassination, and it might very well be — counter-terrorism specialists are investigating the murder in order to find out whether it was — but there's no evidence of that as of now.

Really aren't most public and targetted killings of a politician considered assassination attempts by default regardless of the motivation? At least connotationally.

John Hinkley shot Ronald Reagan not out of some statement against his policies but because of a deranged Jodie Foster obsession and bizzare belief that it would get her attention. Granted Hinkley himself also referred to it as an assassination.

Assassination means murder of a prominent person.

merriam-webster.com largely agrees with you.

Definition of assassination 1 : murder by sudden or secret attack often for political reasons : the act or an instance of assassinating someone (such as a prominent political leader)

Yep title definitely needs an update

Where and how it occurred provides a bit of context, as far right extremist attacks have happened in the area before.

Given who and where, it's not unreasonable from a bayesian perspective to be highly certain this was a politically motivated murder. That region has had neo-nazi problems for many years

> That region has had neo-nazi problems for many years

Source? I lived there for nearly 40 years, and can’t say I ever experienced such problems any worse than other places.

The Daily Telegraph disagrees with this analysis (you may have opinions on why this is the case)

The venn diagrams for terrorist and assassination definitely overlap, and even more so with the loosened definition of terrorism these days. I may be wrong in assuming the politics of the attacker, but the event doesn't seem to be random - the mp was targeted at a scheduled event, so that ticks all the boxes in my mind - someone specifically targeted and murdered for political reasons was assassinated.

Have a link for the daily telegraph article in question? Or at least, some more detail?

The Telegraph, along with the bbc now, are saying the arrested man is British of Somalian heritage. So unlikely to be a neo-Nazi.

Barring a Clayton Bigsby parody irl, I'd have to agree that neo-nazi probably isn't his affiliation.

>That region has had neo-nazi problems for many years.

I would wager inhouse power dynamics or foreign influences as a more likely motive.

> She was killed outside a library in Birstall, West Yorkshire, where she was due to hold a constituency surgery.

What is constituency surgery...?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surgery_(politics)

A scheduled meeting with constituents i.e people from the district the MP represents.

In British English, a physician's or dentist's office is called a surgery. Thus, for Britons, going to the surgery just means visiting the doc; it does not have the same connotations of going under a knife that it has for Americans.

This is not related to the medial meaning of the term. In this case, it's closer to "office hours", a specific time when constituents can come and ask questions.

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