Currently viewing the tag: "Terrorism"
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Here is a picture of the charred remains of the residents of Tokyo after the U.S.’s firebombing campaign of 9-10 March 1945, which killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians and left millions injured and homeless.
Last year in the United States a mere 20 Muslims and Arabs were accused of involvement in terrorist plots or association with terrorists, with few actual plots attempted, with many instances of government entrapment and frame-ups reported in recent years (which must be put in the context of a well-funded government war on Arabs and Muslims, including FBI spying and illegal CIA anti-Muslim programs run in conjunction with local police). Aside from the fact that we can’t trust the racist courts of the 1% in these matters, individual plots – - mostly done out of desperate frustration and retaliation against the most violent and racist imperial power the world has ever seen, and sometimes done at that government’s prompting – - are defined by the ruling class as “terrorism”, yet the incendiary- and atomic-bombing of Japan are praised as bringing “peace”. The interested reader can look to Glenn Greenwald’s excellent writings to better understand how meaningless the term “terrorism” is, and how hypocritical its usage.
Someone recently commented that while the attack on Pearl Harbor (a military target) is mourned and remembered, the U.S. government’s mass murder of millions of Japanese civilians, supposedly to bring about “peace”, are ignored – and when they aren’t ignored, they are praised. Mass murder, racist imperialism, and the promotion of fear through atomic and incendiary firestorms are aren’t called “terrorism”, but rather “peace”. Well, look here. This is capitalist ‘peace’!
The Israeli state bombs Iran. So the Iranian government responds against Israel. U.S. troops are in occupied Palestine during the attack. There then exists a direct pretext for U.S. intervention.
Too simplistic? Hardly. “Missile defense” programs are a first strike weapon.
* * *
“Several thousand US troops headed to Israel for ‘unprecedented’ joint missile defense exercise
On Dec 20 Jerusalem Post reported thousands of American soldiers were deploying to Israel to take part in the “the largest-ever missile defense exercise” in Israel’s history. So far, the U.S. media is not covering it, but Iran sure is.”
Four sites in Queens, NY have been fire bombed – “a bodega, the Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Center in Jamaica and two homes”, one of which is used as a Hindu temple – yet the newspapers of the one percent are calling it “arson”, not terrorism (in The New York Times, Fox New York, The Daily News, not even a mention in The New York Post). Violence against Muslims, Hindus, MLK Jr. Day Parades, or other innocent people doesn’t count as terrorism in the newspapers of the one percent.
Like the attack on the MLK Jr. Day Parade in Spokane Washington last January (2011), there hasn’t yet been a word from the Obama White House. No press releases from either the F.B.I. or D.H.S. (the latter’s most recent press release is promoting a “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign with the NHL).
We need a new society. The current one has FBI/CIA programs linked with the NYPD to hunt down Muslims and freedom fighters, yet ruling class media firms that won’t even use the “T” word when this is clearly violence against innocents meant to instill fear and hatred. If a few fringe Muslims use violence (19 people out of over a billion Muslims around the world) – which most Muslims condemn – its called terrorism. If racists use violence against Muslims, its called “arson”.
Apartheid state apparatus fires on Palestinian fisherman off Gaza coast
From the Jordan to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free!
I don’t fish anymore. But I did a ton as a kid. Several times a week during my childhood summers. The thought of a warship coming up and firing on me for fishing is nausiating. Anyone who doesn’t use words like terror and apartheid to describe the murderous, perfidious state-apparatus occupying sacred Palestine – ALL OF IT, not some compromised border – is a scoundrel and a traitor to humanity.
“Gaza Strip, (Pal Telegraph)-A Palestinian fisherman was moderately injured Monday morning when Israeli navy opened fire at his fishing boat off the coast of Northern Gaza Strip.
Adham Abu Silmiyia, medical emergency spokesman, said that the man, 42, was brought to Asshifa hospital in Gaza city to receive medication due to injuries sustained his body.
Witnesses told that Palestinian fishermen who were working there left the sea in order not to be hurt by Israeli gunboats fire.
Palestinian fishing boats are exposed daily to Israeli harassments and attacks that caused financial damages, injuries, deaths, or abductions.”
Fox News had a one-hour special on how “honor killings” in the U.S. “are on the rise.” Of course no special on the attempted mass killing in Spokane, Washington earlier this year at the MLK parade. No special on the firebombing of Planned Parenthood last month. No special on the string of rightwing terrorist attacks from the assassination of Dr. Tiller to the assault on the U.S. Holocaust Museum with the man’s murder of a black security officer. Glad we got our priorities straight…
“How can you make war on terrorism, if war itself is terrorism? … you respond to terrorism with terrorism, and you multiply the terrorism in the world.
And, of course, the terrorism that governments are capable of by going to war is on a far, far greater scale than the terrorism of al-Qaeda or this group or that group or another group. Governments are terrorists on an enormously large scale. The United States has been engaging in terrorism against Afghanistan, against Iraq, and now they’re threatening to extend their terrorism to other places in the Middle East.” – Howard Zinn
“It’s not right to respond to terrorism by terrorizing other people. And furthermore, it’s not going to help. Then you might say, ‘Yes, it’s terrorizing people, but it’s worth doing because it will end terrorism.’ But how much common sense does it take to know that you cannot end terrorism by indiscriminately dropping bombs?”
“With the indiscriminate nature of modern military technology (no such thing as a “smart bomb,” it turns out) all wars are wars against civilians, and are therefore inherently immoral. This is true even when a war is considered “just,” because it is fought against a tyrant, against an aggressor, to correct a stolen boundary.” - Howard Zinn (24 August 1922 – 27 January 2010)
Its hard to write this because there are really no words to describe how disgusted I am. This guy’s name is Pete King. He’s a “representative” from Long Island, New York. He heads the House Homeland Security Committee which today is beginning a hearing on “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response”.
The timing of this hearing is so telling. On 20 January 2011 I wrote an article entitled “The Terrorist Plot Against the Spokane MLK Day Parade“. There was zero discussion of this story in the media. Someone tried to BOMB a Martin Luther King Day Parade attended by thousands, and no one in the media thought it an important story. Flip on the evening news and we have to sit through 55 minutes of them telling us how bad Black, Latino, and Muslim people are, with one short cat-in-a-tree fairy tale story to break the tension, but the vast systemic violence against poor and working people – including attempted bombings – is ignored. Yesterday the Southern Poverty Law Center announced that the F.B.I. had made an arrest in the case. Of course it turned out to be a white guy – Kevin William Harphan – who was/is a member of the Neo-Nazi group the National Alliance. Why isn’t Pete King holding a hearing on The Extent of Radicalization in the American White Community and that Community’s Response? Crazy, fascist, white people have been bombing and shooting up family planning centers, parades, gay bars, and the U.S. Holocaust Museum for years and it has only gotten much worse since the recession begun and a Black president was elected.
At my first college there were a lot of incidents of oppression and exploitation against Muslims. It was so disheartening. People wrote hateful things in bathroom doors, they threw Muslim holy books in the toilets – lots of really disgusting and dehumanising events. The emotional effect that these oppressive and hateful acts had on my Muslim friends and schoolmates was really difficult to see. People like Pete King want more of that and we can’t let him have his way. We just can’t. We have to stand up against King and speak loudly in defense of our Muslim sisters and brothers.
Make no mistake, this isn’t about terrorism. It is no coincidence that these lunatics are trying to redefine the legal definition of rape, strip family planning centers of their funding, attack the arts, gut education and low-income insurance, take away union workers’ legal right to bargain with their bosses – all in one fell swoop. Its because we in the midst of horrific ecological and economic crises. Their power is under siege in places like Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Iraq, Iran, and Ohio and Wisconsin. They are terrified of losing. They are going all-out in an attempt to divide us one against another: man against woman, black against latino, Christian against Muslim, union worker against non-union worker. We can’t let them. The stakes are too high. We need to unite instead. Wisconsin, Egypt, and Tunisia are the way forward.
Let me close with some poetry from the 13th-century Islamic mystic poet Mowlānā known commonly in the West as Rūmī. His words speak to the absolute breadth and beauty of Islam and the religious yearnings of all people (what Ernst Bloch called “the search for home”). We are stronger together and it is together that we can win a new world:
“All religions, all this singing
One Song.
The differences are just
Illusion and vanity.
The Sun’s light looks
A little different on this wall than
It does on that wall,
And a lot different on this other one,
But it’s still one light.
We have borrowed these clothes,
These time and place personalities
From a light,
And when we praise,
We’re pouring them back in.”
Agree? Disagree? Have questions? Please comment below!
(Thanks Harry!) It should be noted that the size of al Qaeda is likely grossly exaggerated. They certainly don’t have 10,000 members. All the numbers I’ve seen have been under 1,000, most in the low hundreds. So that al Qaeda dot likely isn’t just 10x too big, but magnified 100x or more.
Concept credit Mark Schmidt. Updated graph Technipol. Data The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life 2009 Report.
by Liam O’Ceallaigh
20 January 2011
ON THE HEELS of the January 8th shooting spree in Tucson, Arizona which left 6 dead and over 14 wounded, residents of Spokane, Washington celebrating the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday escaped their own terrorist attack as a MLK Day parade was diverted from a route where a suspicious backpack containing a shrapnel bomb was found. The device was discovered by Spokane city workers “on a bench at the northeast corner of N. Washington Street and W. Main Avenue in downtown Spokane”.
F.B.I special agent Frank Harrill said that the bomb was “by all early analysis, a viable device that was very lethal and had the potential to inflict multiple casualties”. The agency is investigating white supremacist organizations in Washington state, though if Jared Loughner’s rampage or other recent rightwing domestic terrorist attacks are any indication, many of these “lone gunmen” have loose or sometimes no outright connections to the organized right.
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