Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Homeland Security ad campaign ignores the most common perpetrators of domestic terrorism



There is a Department of Homeland Security ad campaign featuring a poster offering "rewards for justice,” displaying the photos of non-white kids, Arabic, Asian, African and Latino. "Stop a terrorist...and save lives" according to the poster. It is asking these kids to “snitch” on an adult they believe is planning a bad act. The principle problem with this is, of course, the “suggestion” of racial profiling. 

But the Boston Marathon bombers were whites who happened to be practicing Muslims—not surprising in that the Caucasus region they immigrated from was a place where conversion for "practical" reasons occurred during the Ottoman Turks’ centuries long rule; the elite Janissary corps originally was constituted of Christian military recruits who converted to Islam. Why were the perpetrators ignored by federal agencies despite warnings from Russian authorities? Because they didn’t “fit” the racial or ethnic stereotype?

Terrorism has been committed in the U.S. since the country’s founding. George Washington’s Christmas Eve raid on Trenton could be construed as a “terrorist” act. The Ku Klux Klan’s activities were certainly “terrorist” in nature. The following are terrorist acts committed on U.S. soil that have one “peculiar” thing in common:

May 4, 1886: In Chicago, a labor rally at the Haymarket Square is the scene of a bomb explosion after police forced the dispersion of the rally. Seven policemen were killed or would die from injuries from the blast. However, four workers were killed by the police and 70 wounded in subsequent gunfire; most of the police officers who were wounded by gunfire was likely by “friendly fire.” Eight anarchists were convicted in a plainly prejudicial setting that failed to prove that any of them had actually thrown the bomb. 

October 1 1910: 21 people were killed when a dynamite bomb was set-off near The Los Angeles Times building, causing part of it to collapse. The bombing was blamed on the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers union, in retaliation for the virulent anti-union stance by Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis.

July 22, 1916: 10 people were killed by a bomb during a Preparedness Day parade in San Francisco; the now defunct “holiday” was supposed to honor the country’s readiness for potential entry into World War I. Anti-war labor activists were charged with the act.

April and June, 1919: A series of bombings—some of them through the mail, most of those failing to detonate—in at least six cities. The bombings were blamed on followers of the anarchist Luigi Galleani.

September 16, 1920:  Nearly 40 were killed and 300 wounded when a  bomb in a horse-drawn wagon exploded near Morgan Bank in Manhattan. Although no one was actually brought to account for the crime, it was generally believed that anarchists were behind it. 

May 18, 1927: 44 were killed by explosives in a school in Bath, Michigan. A man named Andrew Kehoe, apparently angry at his defeat in a local election and an impending foreclosure on his farm, killed his wife, and set off explosions on his farm. Apparently Kehoe had already planted explosives at the school, which a timing device set off off at the same time of that which occurred at the farm.

Nov.1 1955: 44 people were killed when a United Air Lines DC-8 was bombed by a man named John Graham in an insurance scam; Graham’s mother was among those killed.

Jan. 6, 1960: In fact, at the time many airlines offered temporary life insurance policies that one could purchase from a vending machine, at least for the duration of a flight.  On this day, 34 people killed when a National Airlines flight was bombed in what was believed to be another insurance scam. 

August 1, 1966: 19 people were killed by Charles Whitman during a sniper shooting rampage from the observation deck of the Tower of the University of Texas, on the Austin campus. Whitman, who was believed to have serious mental health issues, perhaps due to a tumor in his brain, had already killed his wife and mother. He had told others that he was “hearing” voices telling him to act in “bad” manner.

Dec. 29, 1975: 11 people were killed when a bomb exploded from a locker at La Guardia Airport; no one was brought to justice for it, although Croatian nationalists were thought to be likely suspects.

April 19, 1995: 169 died in the federal building bombing in Oklahoma City. Timothy McVeigh was charged and executed for the crime. Evidence that a white supremacist group aided McVeigh in carrying out the act was never followed-up on.

July 27, 1996: Two dead and 111 wounded at the Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta. Security guard Richard Jewell was originally blamed for the bombing, but it was subsequently found that the real perpetrator was Eric Robert Rudolph, an anti-abortion fanatic who was responsible for three other acts of domestic terrorism.  

April 20, 1999: 13 killed at Columbine High School in Littleton, CO; the shooters, both students at the school, subsequently committed suicide. This act was just one of many that have occurred in recent years where “touched” persons have resorted to mass shooting in “revenge” for some perceived personal slight by the society at large.

What do all of these terrorist acts have in common? The perpetrators were white, and this is just a fraction of the total that occurred in the past. Time and time again, these terrorists have gone unnoticed by authorities, and even after the acts most of them are just seen as mentally-challenged without examining their motives. Jared Lee Loughner, who shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, AZ in 2011 was simply locked away and out of sight, forgotten. They are “Americans,” and no one need be the wiser about them; the “others” are not “real” Americans, after all, with less "understandable" motives.

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