Who Are The Terrorists?
Dave Neiwert at Orcinus specializes in domestic US terrorism, and the lack of a firm definition in this country as to who is a terrorist.
This CNN story talks about William Krar and reports that he had collected an arsenal:
“A raid in April found nearly two pounds of a cyanide compound and other chemicals that could create enough poisonous gas to kill everyone inside a space as large as a big-chain bookstore or a small-town civic center.
Authorities also discovered nearly half a million rounds of ammunition, more than 60 pipe bombs, machine guns, silencers and remote-controlled bombs disguised as briefcases, plus pamphlets on how to make chemical weapons, and anti-Semitic, anti-black and anti-government books. ”
He was arrested and afforded all of the protections of the American criminal justice system.
Jose Padilla, a Muslim, was arrested at an airport and only a protracted legal battle has enabled him to receive some constitutional protections. He is reportedly suspected of planning to build a “dirty bomb”, in spite of the fact that he lacked the knowledge and materials to do so, and there is no physical evidence of any crime. An American citizen, he was declared an “enemy combatant” and held without charges by the military. Even the Cato Institute protested his treatment.
The US is not unique in its selective identification of terrorist.
The CBC tells us that Israeli ministers threatened by Jewish extremists. “Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer read a threatening letter to the cabinet. Had it been written by an Arab, the writer would have been jailed, he said.”
And TV New Zealand tells us of right-wing extremists who attempted an attack on Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a wedding.
“Rightists regularly heckled and threatened politicians in the days leading up to the 1995 assassination of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish ultra-nationalist opposed to his peacemaking efforts with the Palestinians.”
For some reason it doesn’t make any difference what you do, it is your ethnicity and/or religion that would seem to determine if you are a “terrorist”.
