Don't panic ma'am, they were only white terrorists....

Another story illustrating the essentially racist nature of the War on Some Sorts of Terror and Your Personal Freedoms.

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?menuID=1&subID=815&p=2

Here are some select passages from the article.

Public perception of terrorism is often shaped by selective media coverage, which concentrates exclusively on a particular version of 'terrorism', while ignoring incidents that fall outside this framework.

A revealing example of this process occurred last week when two men appeared separately in Burnley Magistrates' Court, charged under the 1883 Explosive Substances Act with possession of an explosive substance for an illegal purpose.

One of the accused was a BNP council candidate in last May's local elections in Colne, named Robert Cottage. In a raid on his house, police found what they called "the largest amount of chemical explosives of this type ever found in this country".

The other was a retired dentist named David Jackson, who was allegedly found in possession of a rocket launcher and a nuclear biological protection suit.


OK, I'll let that thought sink in. A member of a UK politically extreme party and a dentist had more WMDs then we have found in Iraq.


But what is striking about their court appearance (they were remanded until October 23) is the failure of any mainstream newspaper or media outlet to report it at all.

Thats because it doesn't fit in with where the funding on terrorism is going - towards looking at swarthy folk from overseas who threaten us (despite Al-Qaeda actually recruiting from converts, including Indians, Latinos and Jamaicans) and doesn't fit into the narrative the mainstream media have built up over modern terrorism.

But consider this: who was the biggest terrorist threat in America in the 90s? If you said the Christian Identity Militia movement, then you get a cookie. This movement has even bankrolled far right and violent organizations in this country and carried out the Oklahoma bombings in 96 and a string of lesser bombings, robbery and murder since its explosion onto the world scene in the 1980s, the same time as Shi'a terrorism was making its presence known throughout Lebanon and most of the Crescent and the nutter "Rabbi" Kahane was printing books and founding groups dedicated to essentially genociding Arabs.

Do you see a pattern here? Because I do, and so does noted terrorism scholar Bruce Hoffman. In his book, Inside Terrorism, he gives a precise account of how terrorism since the 1980s has increased in incidence among all three faiths and probably religion at large. What I found particularly interesting was the great lengths the supposedly fractured Christian Identity movement had made in biological and chemical weapons in order to bring about Armageddon. I'll repeat that: biological and chemical weapons in order to bring about Armageddon.

And the losses of the late 90s for the movement (where Clinton did crack down hard on them, despite what Fox News may tell you), research, development and deployment of such weapons is continuing. Here are some choice attacks that nearly happened for you to read over:

In 2003, two antigovernment extremists were convicted of amassing a “huge arsenal of illegal weapons and explosives in Tyler, Texas, including suitcase bombs and a working chemical weapon.” They apparently possessed sufficient quantities of sodium cyanide to kill some six thousand people and had stockpiled half a million rounds of ammunition and sixty pipe bombs.

In March, two members of the Minnesota Patriots Council, a militia group, were convicted of stockpiling enough ricin to kill at least 129 people, allegedly as part of a plan to murder IRS agents, U.S. marshals, and local deputy sheriffs. According to the FBI, ricin is ranked as the third most toxic known substance, behind only plutonium and botulism.

Two months later, a man described as a certified microbiologist—who also had links to the Aryan Nations—was able to order a quantity of bubonic plague agent through the mail from a Maryland chemical supply firm. He had obtained three vials of Yersinia pestis—a bacterium credited with having wiped out one-third of the population of fourteenth-century Europe. In addition to the bacterium, police found in his home a dozen M-l carbines, smoke grenades, blasting caps—and white supremacist literature.

Taken from Pages 106-7 (Chapter 5) of Inside Terrorism by Bruce Hoffman.

Terrorism is not just an issue that affects radical nutcases in the Middle East. Anyone, anyone with a sufficiently radical, all-embracing and apocalyptic worldview can and will tend towards violence in order to bring about their fairy tale versions of the world. Al-Qaeda and Middle Eastern and Islamic terrorism is an issue, it would be foolish to deny it. But they are not the only terrorists and we failed to stop Al-Qaeda BEFORE 9/11 by ignoring them and the threat they present. While the media hypes the threat from "Muslims" (who are no more Muslim than me, unless getting drunk, going to strip joints and dealing drugs is permissible. In which case, I'm in), we have ignored the threat still present from a number of other groups, just as fanatical and insane as Al-Qaeda. In fact, apart from certain geopolitical considerations, I would say there is no difference between the Salafist movement Al-Qaeda represents and the Domionist movement nuts like The Order and the Aryan Nations work in favour of.

By virtue of the irresponsible reporting and scaremongering in offices of power, we could easily be setting ourselves up for a domestic 9/11 - or something far worse. Its time we grew the hell up and started to look at this as sensible adults. But of course, this is not in the interest of the status quo. Still, to anyone who reads the linked article, or even this blog entry, please pass it on to people you know. Knowledge is power and only by a more educated population can we ever hope to change policy.



Edit: Apparently, the BBC have replied as to why they did not give this the coverage it deserved. Here is the text of the email they sent someone who asked them about this, which I got via a forum.

[name deleted],

Thanks for your e-mail and sorry for the delay in replying. We had planned to cover this issue on last week's NewsWatch programme, but unfortunately had to drop the item at the last minute because we couldn't confirm information we needed to make sure our report didn't break the law.

The simple answer is that the national BBC should have covered this but missed the story - it was featured on BBC Radio Lancashire, where the offences occurred, but should have had wider coverage nationally. However, it's also interesting that of the national newspapers, only the Sunday Times carried any mention of the case at all.

I think this is partly down to the way the police locally handled the whole thing - and there have been discussions about the lack of information coming from them.

However, I should point out that much of the information you may have read on various websites goes far beyond what should be reported once people have been arrested and charged, and the BBC could not have given anywhere near that much detail of the case.

But I'm told there will definitely be someone covering next Monday's court hearing in Burnley.

I hope that's useful,

Ian Jolly
NewsWatch

Note: this email was dated the 17th of October 2006. Make of that what you will.