This petty pace

[pecunium]

I'm stealing time from moving (this is the bookend to the move made in June).

Not that we don't have enough on our plate, but we've got a place, so we aren't grabbing crashspace, while we look... but it means we have a logistical nightmare... animals and plants to get from Maia's mother's, our stuff to get from our present digs, the things in storage from whence we meant to go house hunting (not least among them, the shelves for the herpetaria, and the bed... which wants to be disassembled, and then put back together) all of which has to arrive, and be tolerably assembled in the new place; in time for her to start classes on Monday.

And I have a small slew of trips to make between now and Thanksgiving (a week at a planning conference for a joint Ukraine/California/Army shindig [Peace Shield... been going on for about 10 years, I've been on two of them]) a school in Texas, probably another school somewhere else, and (if all goes well) six months in Monterey.

Plus looking for a job, part-time to fill the gaps between Thanksgiving and the, hoped for, trip to Monterey, and trying to get a stock/art photography business off the ground.

Which is my life.

But letting you all know about my domestic tribulations isn't why I'm stealing this time...

Remember the attack on the abortion clinic, the one that wasn't terrorism (or at least not according to Porter Goss)?

There's more... and this is stuff which the FBI is calling terrorism, but you aren't hearing about (unless you pay careful attention to the NYT).

14 Governors Receive Mail That's Rigged With Matches
By FOX BUTTERFIELD

Published: September 11, 2004


BOSTON, Sept. 10 - Envelopes containing matches that were rigged to ignite when opened have been received through the mail at the offices of at least 14 state governors in the last two days.

The mailings, under investigation by the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security, bear a return address that names two inmates at a maximum-security prison in Nevada. But a Nevada corrections official said it was unclear whether they were the actual senders.

Aides to several governors, including Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, said they had been told by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the case was being treated as one of domestic terrorism, and Jennifer Meith, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Fire Marshal's Office, said that was her understanding as well.

But spokesmen for the bureau declined to comment on a current investigation, although one of them, Joe Parris, said in Washington, "Cases of this nature are generally handled by the local domestic terrorism squads'' - that is, the joint terrorism task forces set up by the F.B.I. in cities across the country.

One is inclined (Dave Niewert is... I agree with him) to think this is getting zip for play because the perpetrators are not leaving Arabic fingerprints on the things. It points more to the (far more dangerous, if you ask me) White Supremecist side of the house.

But those aren't the only non-Arabs being ignored by the press... whatever happened in the investigation of the anthrax, which shut down congress, and killed a couple of people? What about the abortion bomber who has been lionized, when one hears of him, after his capture (which came about after a couple, or maybe three years of eluding the police), or the folks who were arrested with the makings of cyanide bombs, or the... well we know how Porter Goss feels about them... why should the press be any different.

Comments

[ourika.livejournal.com]

You make an excellent point about the anthrax. I was thinking about that yesterday (as I checked the mail) and how it just suddenly disappeared and hasn't been mentioned since. When I read the news, it's very middle-eastern dominated. The stories that I find without digging into a paper are always about terrorists, and they're either here in the US or they're bombing someone in Iraq, etc.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

If I have bugbears on the subject of security (and I do) it's that it has to be effective. Scaring people about hijackings is only of moderate importance (how many planes have been hijacked in the past decade, how many of those were flights in the continental US?). Part of my job is analysing the risks posed by, and way to ameliorate, various flaws in design, implementation and human interaction on military posts.

By focusing on the Arabs who hate the US (or, to more in line with the present version of the "Red Scare" or the "Yellow Peril" the "Radical Islamists") is that the radical groups in the US (a large number of whom are of a stripe of Christianity which is disgusting... and in my arrogant opinion, evil) are able to fly beneath the radar.

Timothy McVeigh was white. He held the record... even with the bombing of the WTC in '93, for deaths in a terrorist act, but many people still won't call it terrorism. It used to be, but now it's just the bombing of the Murragh building.

We leave ourselves open to attack by condoning it, which we do when we don't condemn it.

TK

[ourika.livejournal.com]

There are people who don't call the bombing of the WTC in 1993 an act of terrorism? Holy shit.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I must have had muddy referents... They call the '93 bombing terrorism, but they don't call the McVeigh bombing terrorism... it was a white guy you see, he must have had real grievances to resort to that sort of statement.

TK

[ourika.livejournal.com]

*shakes head* People need to remember that "terrorist" doesn't necessarily mean "middle easterner" and "middle easterner" doesn't necessarily mean "terorrist."

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

It amazes me that bombing abortion clinics or shooting doctors isn't terrorism, but making crank is. (I'm glad the combustible mail is called terrorism, even if it's not "news.)

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

As someone else has pointed out, plausibly: of the crimes that could aptly be termed "Terrorism" in the U.S. during the past fifty years, about 90% of the identified or accused perpetrators were nominally-Christian White/Caucasian males. If we're going to institute Profiling, we seem to have three solid & logical categories to begin with. But if the McVey bombing isn't considered "an act of Terrorism" it looks as though Logic and Reason don't enter into the equation.

Playing with matches?

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

From the information presented in that NYT article, I figured that an envelope containing a few matches, designed to ignite upon opening, was: a clever trick, a stupid thing to do, and on the order of a trivial (though reprehensible) Practical Joke. "Terrorism" it isn't, in my book.

Now, the Marine General who granted "clemency" (not further specified) to the person in his command who has been convicted in a Court Martial of torturing a prisoner in Iraq (and who pleaded that he was "just following orders) might well be charged with something like "aiding and abetting the Terrorist cause.

Re: Playing with matches?

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

The question isn't was it a serious risk to the recipents (though the power in a matchhead isn't actually trivial) but what the intent was. Given the large number (14)of governors, the people doing it have an agenda.

What it is, we don't know, but it seems to be an attempt to persuade people who make policy, by means of fear. That's terrorism.

As for the second... I agree.

Re: Playing with matches?

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Yes, "intent" is a big question ... which seems to be unanswered, as yet. Of course, most people do have an agenda (which I think of as meaning "a list of things to be accomplished or dealt with"). My guess is that high on this particular agenda was something like "get the two prisoners whose names were on the return addresses into Big Trouble". Maybe also "annoy a bunch of Governors" (or their office-workers, considering the low probability that such exalted personages open mail themselves). A real (IRA/CIA-type) mail-bomb, or anthrax powder, I could see as an attempt to "persuade by fear", but the mechanism I visualize from the news description doesn't seem likely to terrify or even frighten (or be intended to do so) anyone as sophistiocated as a modern State Governor. It seems to me more probable that this particular instance is no more than teapot-tempest nutcase stupidity (which should be neither ignored nor overblown).

[anoisblue.livejournal.com]

I'm reading back through some posts I've missed. You are smart. And very interesting.