The Boston mooninite Mass-a-cree, part 1

[scooterbird]

A few days ago, I'd assembled a lengthy essay on what happened, contemporarily, in Boston. Unfortunately it became very lengthy and I never finished the stupid thing; however, you can probably guess the point that I was gearing up to make. I hope that I'll complete it sometime in the near future, but for now, I'd like it to be read while it's

Comments

[rotty_0079]

Interesting how 'the terrorists' suddenly become one particular group of terrorists.

Yes, the one terrorist network the United States is under attack by. The United States is not under attack by God's Army (Myanmar), the two National Socialist Council of Nagaland organizations (Nagaland, India), National Liberation Front of Tripura (Tripura, India), the Khalistan terrorists (Panjab, India), ETA (Spain/France), or a litany of other terrorist groups. The terrorists who are directly engaged in a military campaign to win against the United States are the global Sunni mujahideen, who have been at war with us since the 1993 WTC bombing.

The goal of terrorists (in general) is to use fear to manipulate society. Fear grown out of terrorism has certainly influenced the governments reaction to the incident.

Rational people don't contest the fact that our own politicians play to the electorate's fears as a tool to win election or re-election. However, instilling fear in a target population is a means, not a end, and it cannot be said that "the terrorists have won" unless the terrorists at war with the United States have achieved their ends. Since we have a kaffir government able to fund the largest military on the planet and have not renounced support for governments in Dar al-Islam hostile to their goals, the claim that they have achieved their ends is simply not true.

[scooterbird]

I think there may be some families in Oklahoma City who disagree with your assessment of the terrorist threat.

[efbq]

"The terrorists at war with the United States"? I wasn't aware that the United States was currently under attack by terrorists. Yes, there have been sporadic attacks, and yes, that one particular group began back in the 90's. That's not exactly a siege, however.

Certainly there have been deaths caused by terrorists in the United States in the last five years, but I'd say that domestic terrorists are more of a real threat than the Sunnis at the moment.

[rotty_0079]

I wasn't aware that the United States was currently under attack by terrorists. Yes, there have been sporadic attacks, and yes, that one particular group began back in the 90's. That's not exactly a siege, however.

The attacks are only sporadic because there is as yet no Sunni mujahideen organization devoted exclusively to attacks against the United States. You don't believe that al-Qaeda and its affiliates take years off from the jihad, do you?

Here's a map of recent attacks they're thought to have been behind

Certainly there have been deaths caused by terrorists in the United States in the last five years, but I'd say that domestic terrorists are more of a real threat than the Sunnis at the moment.

I'm guessing that by "domestic terrorists", you don't mean American Muslims. If by the term you mean "white people", I'm not aware of any rational basis for such a claim. The Earth Liberation Front, classified by the FBI in March 2001 as the most significant domestic terrorist group in the US, has never killed anyone. The reaction of the anti-government far Right to the Oklahoma City bombing effectively obliterated the "Patriot movement" as a source of domestic terrorism. That leaves, what, Army of God? Is their anti-abortion terrorism what you're thinking of as "more of a real threat than the Sunnis"?

[efbq]

(Sorry for multiple replies, markup hairball caused by insuficcient coffee) terrorism is defined by the US Department of Defense as:

"the unlawful use of -- or threatened use of -- force or violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives."

Take a look a the work the SPLC does some time, and explain to me why all 'hate crimes' are not terrorist acts?

It doesn't take a large, organized group to be the 'biggest threat', it just takes one to be the biggest target. (I did the research a couple of years ago when an otherwise reasonable friend claimed 'not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim'.)

[rotty_0079]

Take a look a the work the SPLC does some time, and explain to me why all 'hate crimes' are not terrorist acts?

I have taken a look at the work the SPLC does. The evidence overwhelmingly indicates that Morris Dees is a profoundly corrupt, deceptive man. He wants you to think that white supremacist organizations that promote violence are ever a huge and growing threat for one reason: to increase his financial assets. A great deal of investigative journalism has been done about him starting with the 9-part Montgomery Advertiser investigation of 1994 (Pulitzer Prize finalist), followed by the 1996 discovery by USA Today of its status as "the nation's richest civil rights organization" ($68 million in assets at that time, $156 million at the end of fiscal 2003, and I confess I don't know how much they're worth as of the end of fiscal 2006), Harper's Magazine (1 November, 2000, "The Church of Morris Dees", Ken Silverstein), and... well, those are the big three that haven't appeared in conservative periodicals.

One of the most damning journalistic indictments of Dees is the Montgomery Advertiser discovery that their $7 million legal settlement from a Klan organization for the lynching of Michael McDonald was boasted of in a fundraising letter that raised several million dollars for the SPLC. McDonald's mother and heir Beulah Mae received only $51,874.70 of the $7 million.

I find it only natural to be skeptical of the assertion that white racists constitute a more severe terrorist threat to the United States than the global Sunni mujahideen on Morris Dees' say so. There is a huge qualitative difference between a group of bigoted people who have never gone out and committed a hate crime (which is true of many of the groups Dees uses to scare up donations) and those that promote such, another huge qualitative difference between organizations that engage in non-violent crimes like vandalism to aid their political goals and those that go out and assault and murder people, and a huge quantitative difference between a Klan or Aryan Nations-style group that condones violent crime against perceived enemies and invariably gets obliterated by the criminal justice system when a single lynching gets traced to them and the global mujahideen network that commits large-scale acts of terrorism such as the use of airliners as suicide bombs and the destruction of skyscrapers.

[efbq]

Your map does not show that the "US is under attack", by the way. The Western Hemisphere doesn't look to be a major target.

US territory, US property, perhaps. But nothing to provoke the kind of paranoia Boston has shown.

[scooterbird]

More to the point: you are still more likely to be killed by a lightning strike than by a terrorist attack in the United States. Unless the city of Boston is planning on closing down the city every time there's a thunderstorm this summer, it can be argued that they went way, way over the top in this matter. And they persist at it.

Any time the actions of a group can damage a society's ability to assess risk to that degree, particularly when the goal is as stated above, then they've reached a significant degree of success, regardless of their point of origin.

[rotty_0079]

Any time the actions of a group can damage a society's ability to assess risk to that degree, particularly when the goal is as stated above, then they've reached a significant degree of success, regardless of their point of origin.

It has to be pointed out, however, that the profoundly damaged ability to assess risk in American politics is a cooperative venture between the Left and the Right. As far as I'm concerned, Al Gore lost all credibility on foreign policy the day he told airport security to "keep up the good work" for screening him as a possible terrorist in June 2002. A sane politician would have asserted that terrorism is a type of warfare, and so terrorists in general are no more a threat to the United States after 9-11-2001 than aircraft in general were after 12-7-1941: the Sunni mujahideen are.