What I Wrote Earlier About a Terrorist's Ethnicity Is Still Appropriate

When I wrote this earlier, it might look like I'm saying we should hate Angry White Guys because they're as much a terrorist threat as any foreign ethnic.  Well, that's only half-right.  There are Angry White Guys out there and they should be viewed as terrorists when they strike at the American population, but what I was trying to convey is that there was - still is - a double-standard.  When an Angry White Guy commits a terror act - shooting up a movie theater, shooting up a church, piloting a plane into the IRS building, shooting up a school - they get treated like individual whack-jobs and "oh we must not blame their background or environment or their easy access to guns or etc": when an Angry Ethnic/Religious Guy commits a terror act, they get treated like there's a VAST ARMY OF FANATICS WE'RE AT WAR THEY HATE US FER OUR FREEDOMS BOMB IRAN NOW (especially when it's a Muslim doing it).

I was railing against the Far Right who take terror attacks - and will most likely use this terror attack to do so again - as an excuse to bring out The Hate for The Other.

Now that the identity of the Boston Marathon bombers are known - two brothers born of Chechnya but raised in Kyrgyzstan and actually raised most of their lives here in the U.S. - it's practically expected to watch the Far Right explode in a flurry of "we told you so" and "it's a JIHAD WE'RE AT WAR BOMB EM ALL".

But let me refer to Charles King here about this:

...In fact, any “Chechnya angle” to the story is overshadowed by the American one. The Tsarnaevs look much more like other homegrown terrorists—animal-rights extremists, white supremacists, anarchists, and lone-wolf ideologues—than like religious warriors fighting on a faraway and exotic frontier.
First, there is as yet no evidence that the Tsarnaev brothers were part of a network of insurgents connected with Chechnya or other areas of Russia’s North Caucasus region. That area—a land of rugged valleys and plains lying north of the Caucasus mountain range between the Black and Caspian seas—has long been a source of instability and concern for the Russian government...  But connecting the Tsarnaevs with this past—at least at this stage—is like wondering about Timothy McVeigh’s Scotch-Irishness: a true but ultimately irrelevant part of the background of the Oklahoma City bomber...
Second, it is unclear whether the Tsarnaev brothers were even from Chechnya itself. Their family ties, at least in the lifetimes of the two brothers themselves, seem to have been stronger to another north Caucasus republic, Dagestan...
Third, the Tsarnaevs were reportedly naturalized American citizens. The real question at the moment is how they became radicalized, what motivated them to launch the attack in Boston, and whether they are part of any larger conspiracy in the United States or abroad...

The family itself is reportedly of Sunni Islamic faith, but outside of early reports about the older brother Tamerlan talking more radically over the past year there isn't a lot of evidence pointing that way.  There's stronger evidence of Tamerlan being a domestic abuser - he was charged with a domestic assault, which blocked his attempt at getting the naturalized status his younger brother achieved last year - than an active member of a terror cell.  He's got more in common with Angry Guys in general.

But that won't stop the Far Right from railing about Jihad, will it?

Here's what I'm trying to say: not every Muslim is a Jihadist.  Just because there's a handful of them - and yes there's handfuls, at most 10 at a time, not 10,000 - doesn't mean the entire culture/faith is at war with Western culture.  Here's a stat: as of 2009 there's 1.57 billion Muslims.  If they were ALL at war with the West we'd be seeing 1.57 billion Muslims rampaging across the globe.  BUT WE DON'T.  The vast majority of Muslims are more focused on these things - getting steady work, keeping a roof over their heads, feeding and clothing their kids - than on blowing up a Coca-Cola vending machine.  There's roughly 20,000 members of Al Qaeda, the primary terror group obsessed with jihad.  Divide 20,000 by 1.57 billion.  You're not even getting 1 percent of the Islamic faith there.  So painting the entire Islamic faith as being violent?  It's not only racist, it's STUPID.

When we get an Angry White Guy rampaging or committing a crime based on an obvious Hate or bias forged of their religious and cultural background, do we paint their entire religious/cultural identity with the same "THEY'RE ALL TERRORISTS" brush?  The guy who shot up a Unitarian church in Tennessee, he was a Angry White Guy but did we blame the culture or religion he came from?  The guy who shot up a Sikh temple thinking they were Muslims - hint: Sikhs are HINDUS, you morans - was a wingnut supremacist, but did we round up all such supremacists as enemy combatants to be shipped off to Gitmo? 

One of the things the media wingnuts like to do is group all of the feared ethnic group - in this case, Muslims - and lump them all into one stereotype: for example, all Muslims are violent.  Their faith preaches violence.  They're not peace-loving like us Christians...

To that I ask: "How many Muslims were involved in the St. Bartholomew Massacre?"  I also ask "How many legions of Islamic troops marched through the Germanic kingdoms of the Thirty Years War?" Actually, the answer is about 60,000 Ottoman cavalry supporting Bohemia during the Polish-Ottoman War, one of the side-wars of the main war: but this is out of millions of Christian combatants leaving behind about 8 million casualties in a roughly Protestant vs. Catholic war.  And it's not exactly viewed as part of a jihadist movement.  And then let's also look at the religious pogroms of the Spanish Inquisition under Torquemada that killed and tortured thousands of Jews and Moors (Muslims).  

As for the Christian faith being peaceful... our first Testament (I don't like calling it the "Old" Testament anymore, I think calling it the "Hebrew" Testament is more appropriate: thusly the "New" Testament should be called the "Christian" Testament) is filled with battles and persecutions and bloodshed aplenty, from which a lot of Christian sermonizing about "just" warfare gets derived.  The Christian Testament itself contains contradictory symbols to where violence in defense of the faith could be justified.  Christianity does NOT come to this argument with clean hands, people.

For every mad zealot of one faith or culture being disparaged I can easily point out a mad zealot of the culture that's disparaging that other faith.  For every extremist of violence claiming to be Muslim or a persecuted nation, there's an extremist of violence claiming to be Christian and persecuted themselves.  Think of the man who killed Yitzhak Rabin: an extremist Israeli killing another Israeli, an Angry Guy killing someone he felt was the source of all his anger.

Screw the ethnicity of the terrorist.  Screw the religion of the terrorist.  The key cause of terrorist action: they're Angry (insert skin color or religion here) Guys, killing to make themselves powerful in their wrath.

Let's rail against that, shall we?  The threat here isn't the skin color or the religion: the threat here is the Angry.  This IS what I'm trying to say.

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I'm Calling It: Third Craziest Week In American History

UPDATE: The second bomber reportedly captured alive.  This is important.  Alive means we get answers.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE (9:35 pm EDT): Andrew Sullivan at his Dish site linked an Onion article that is 5000 times funnier than what I wrote here but yeah, the sentiment's about the same.  Oh man, the Onion got that article out yesterday... Lord knows what Friday's crazy would have made that article...

As a student of history, moments like these stir the need to look back at other times to compare and contrast.  To be fair, there's been a lot of crazy days, and there's been weeks and months of bad/good/violent/weird things happening, but narrowing it down to the Craziest of the Crazy takes some doing.

For this week of April 15 - April 20 2013, this is the evidence at hand.

Monday April 15: the tragedy of the Boston Marathon Bombings.  The media and social media - Twitter and Reddit especially - go into overdrive covering this all week long.  It builds up in the background until late Thursday night.

Tuesday April 16: A Senator gets mailed a letter laced with ricin, a lethal poison that's favored by low-grade extremists, usually militia types.  Other letters - especially one to President Obama - get intercepted with ricin as well.  Authorities are quick to point out this has nothing to do with the bombings in Boston.

Wednesday April 17: A fertilizer plant in West, Texas (the comma is not a misprint) catches on fire and explodes, killing at least 14 (most of them volunteer firefighters).  Rumors of arrests or imminent arrest buzz about Boston.  An attempt to get a gun control measure setting near-universal background checks fails to clear a Cloture vote.  An arrest is made on the ricin letters: the suspect is a third-rate Elvis Impersonator with a conspiracy obsession.  (What does it tell you when a Elvis Impersonator attempting ricin terror attacks is the THIRD-most talked about story of the week?!)

Thursday April 18: Boston remains on edge as reports get louder that enough pictures and video have been found of the suspected bomber(s).  Obama comes to town to join in memorial services for the three killed on Monday.  That afternoon law enforcement releases official photos of the two men they suspect planting the bombs.  By 10:30 pm there's a shooting at the MIT campus, the bombers rob a 7-11, they carjack somebody, get chased out to Watertown - a suburban town west of Boston - where a prolonged shoot-out ends with one of the bombers dead and the other fleeing into the night.

Friday April 19: The entire nation is abuzz.  Boston goes into lockdown mode - people advised to "stay in shelter" - as a massive man-hunt for the second bomber gets underway.  News about the bombers get out: they're brothers, immigrated nationals from Kyrgyzstan but with Chechnya parentage, the oldest (the one shot) a wanna-be Golden Glove/Olympic boxer the other (19) a college student.  They'd been in the United States legally since 2002 when they moved here with their parents, having gained permanent resident/naturalized status.  As of 7:45 pm EDT, the 19-year old is still on the loose.  EDIT: Just as I post this, there's a shoot-out at a boat on the river in Watertown which may involve the second bomber.  May.  News is breaking constantly right about now...

So there you have it for this being the Third Craziest Week in U.S. History.  There's still Saturday to go...

My Number Two candidate is the week of October 14 to 19th in 1987: although it starts Wednesday and goes into Monday, it's long enough to count.  During which we had the Baby Jessica "down a well" saga, an increase in hostile action between the United States and Iran where the US Navy blows up two Iranian oil platforms, and the stock market crashes on one of its worst Black Mondays ever.

For the Number One... I have to go with the craziness that started on Tuesday September 11 2001, but in some respects that was one huge day and everything else that came after - invading Afghanistan, occupying Iraq, the use of torture and prolonged detention - one big ongoing thing.

I've had a fellow Horder on Anibundel's site - efgoldman - suggest the week of March 31 to April 6 1968, during which LBJ announced he will not seek a second elected term as President, Reverend King is assassinated which stirred nationwide riots, and a sporting goods gunpowder explosion killed 51 in Indiana.  Got to admit, that's a lot of stuff.  It might be Number One.

There's also the time period between July 1 to July 4th in 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, when Vicksburg fell and the Union army stood at Gettysburg.  But as part of a massive event like the Civil War itself it might not count: and such events are intense, but not truly crazy (albeit war itself a crazy and messy deal on its own).

I'd put it to all seven of my readers here: which week truly deserves the Craziest Week in US History title?  Is there another contender?  Please comment.  Seriously.  I live for commentary... :whimper:

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Is The Skin Color Of Our Terrorists Important?

(UPDATE 4/19: Read below)
Yes.

Because if anything it gives us the right to tell the racist morons - most often the shrieking fear-mongers on the Far Right - jumping to conclusions about the Boston attack and the Ricin Mail attack that they are SO VERY GODDAMN WRONG.

Lessee... in the last 20 years or so, our terror attacks/mass murders have been for the most part - I'd say 92 percent of the time - committed by Angry White Guys lashing out at any the best convenient targets - innocent people who had nothing to do with those Angry White Guys being angry.

I'm with Sirota on this:

...This has been most obvious in the context of recent mass shootings. In those awful episodes, a religious or ethnic minority group lacking such privilege would likely be collectively slandered and/or targeted with surveillance or profiling (or worse) if some of its individuals comprised most of the mass shooters. However, white male privilege means white men are not collectively denigrated/targeted for those shootings — even though most come at the hands of white dudes.
Likewise, in the context of terrorist attacks, such privilege means white non-Islamic terrorists are typically portrayed not as representative of whole groups or ideologies, but as “lone wolf” threats to be dealt with as isolated law enforcement matters. Meanwhile, non-white or developing-world terrorism suspects are often reflexively portrayed as representative of larger conspiracies, ideologies and religions that must be dealt with as systemic threats — the kind potentially requiring everything from law enforcement action to military operations to civil liberties legislation to foreign policy shifts.
“White privilege is knowing that even if the bomber turns out to be white, no one will call for your group to be profiled as terrorists as a result, subjected to special screening or threatened with deportation,” writes author Tim Wise. “White privilege is knowing that if this bomber turns out to be white, the United States government will not bomb whatever corn field or mountain town or stale suburb from which said bomber came, just to ensure that others like him or her don’t get any ideas. And if he turns out to be a member of the Irish Republican Army we won’t bomb Dublin. And if he’s an Italian-American Catholic we won’t bomb the Vatican.”
Because of these undeniable and pervasive double standards, the specific identity of the Boston Marathon bomber (or bombers) is not some minor detail — it will almost certainly dictate what kind of governmental, political and societal response we see in the coming weeks. That means regardless of your particular party affiliation, if you care about everything from stopping war to reducing the defense budget to protecting civil liberties to passing immigration reform, you should hope the bomber was a white domestic terrorist. Why? Because only in that case will privilege work to prevent the Boston attack from potentially undermining progress on those other issues.
To know that’s true is to simply consider how America reacts to different kinds of terrorism.
Though FBI data show fewer terrorist plots involving Muslims than terrorist plots involving non-Muslims, America has mobilized a full-on war effort exclusively against the prospect of Islamic terrorism. Indeed, the moniker “War on Terrorism” has come to specifically mean “War on Islamic Terrorism,” involving everything from new laws like the Patriot Act, to a new torture regime, to new federal agencies like the Transportation Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security, to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to mass surveillance of Muslim communities.
By contrast, even though America has seen a consistent barrage of attacks from domestic non-Islamic terrorists, the privilege and double standards baked into our national security ideologies means those attacks have resulted in no systemic action of the scope marshaled against foreign terrorists. In fact, it has been quite the opposite — according to Darryl Johnson, the senior domestic terrorism analyst at the Department of Homeland Security, the conservative movement backlash to merely reporting the rising threat of such domestic terrorism resulted in DHS seriously curtailing its initiatives against that particular threat... 

We have a terrorist organization in the United States.  It's called Angry White Guys.  It is not a rock band.  It's a loose coalition of Anglo-European descended males feeling privileged and authorized to hate and hurt anybody they want.  And they attack sometimes solo, sometimes in teams, using such methods as shooting up malls and schools and movie theaters, or driving armored bulldozers through a town, or piloting planes into the nearest IRS building, or killing corrections supervisors and court prosecutors, or blowing up federal office buildings in Oklahoma City.  And worse of all they tend to blend in, except for when their neighbors and co-workers get interviewed after the rampaging and they all say "Well, there was always something off about that guy..."

And don't worry: I don't fit the profile for Angry White Guy.  Oh, sure, I'm of Anglo-Irish-Germanic descent... and male... and over 40... and sexually frustrated... and occasionally railing against the oligarchy that's killing our jobs market... and... and...  why are you on the phone to the FBI?!  Wait!  Relax!  I'm trying to tell you I'm UNITARIAN!  I don't fit the full profile!  I'm clean, I SWEAR...

Here's the Update: Law enforcement released the photos of the two guys - White Ballcap and Black Ballcap - and within the next 12 hours located them on the MIT campus, they tried robbing a 7-11 gas station, got involved in a shootout with grenades getting thrown about, the Black Ballcap guy got shot and died from the wounds, and right now (6:52 am EDT) White Ballcap is on the loose in one of the outlying towns of Boston (apparently not a "suburb", they hate being called "suburbs" to Boston).  The two suspects were/are apparently brothers and foreigners on student visas - although not sure yet if they were MIT students.  Current report has them as Chechnyans where there's an ongoing insurgency after Russia re-took control after a second civil war there in 2009.  As there's a Islamic influence in the Chechen fighting, we're gonna get hit with the Evil Mooslums crap some more...  I still stand by my Angry White Guy rant, though.  And considering, like I said, that the wingnuts are gonna go crazy about these bombers possibly being Sunni Chechens still proves Sirota's point: when it's foreign ethnics, the entire ethnicity (or their religion) gets blamed, but when it's an Angry White Guy ohhhh it's just an individual the whole group doesn't deserve blame.

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In Boston

Tragedy on the streets of Boston today, echoing across the nation and the globe.

Why this happens, we've already figured out: there's a small group of assh-les on the planet either working in unison or individually who want to make themselves feel powerful by killing innocent people who have nothing to do with why said assh-les are truly powerless.

The trick is figuring out the How we can stop this madness from happening again.  Welcome to the sad truth of the eternal struggle of good people to stop evil from flourishing.

Take care of you and yours tonight, all.

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