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News Anti-Abortion Terrorists Attack in Austin

Posted by on April 27 at 11:47 AM

Media says: Yawn.

Granted, the Austin American-Statesman did a really good, thorough job with its story about yesterday’s attempted bombing at a South Austin abortion clinic (the device, which contained explosive powder and nails, would have caused “substantial harm” if it had detonated, which it was capable of doing, according to Austin police). But national media, including the AP (380 words, generally truncated to fewer than 100) CNN (300 words) Reuters (195 words) and Fox (350 words) treated it as a virtual nonstory.

Because obviously we can’t call it “terrorism” when women are the victims and right-wing lunatics are the culprits.

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1

You can't call it terrorism unless the culprits have dark skin and wear towles on their heads.

2

Time to ship them to GITMO and start the 24/7 waterboarding.

After all, that's what we do with such people.

3

oh fuck! fox news must be ALL OVER this! nervous soccer mom's everywhere must be stockpiling toilet paper and duracells!

4

Another fine example of Christians who value human life so much that they would try to kill a bunch of them.

5

That's terrorism, full stop. The kooks at Fox News don't want to admit that they're ON THE SAME SIDE as the Islamofascists.

6

how dare you compare soldiers for christ to terrorists like those evil teachers at the NEA? we can only save such a powerful term for the worst of the worst, rigth?

7

Dinesh D'Souza was right Islamists and Fundies are fundamenally allies.

Though I really hate the word Islamo-fascist, they are not really connected to the ideology of fascism. you can desire a totalitarian theocracy without tapping into that vein of political thought

8

Wired got it right:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/04/ied_found_outsi.html

Also troubling most other media outlets calling it a "bomb scare". A bomb scare is when someone phones it in. A headline reading "attempting bombing", albeit a little sensational, is closer to the truth in this case.

9

"Attempted", sorry.

10

The bombers weren't brown or Muslim enough.

11

The existence of such a double standard might also go a long way towards explaining why the E.L.F., which endorses property destruction but explicitly opposes taking human life (and which to my knowledge, never has) is considered by the FBI to be the nation's top terror threat, while right-wing organizations like the Army of God and the Ku Klux Klan, both of which advocate killing as a legitimate political tactic and whose members have been convicted on numerous occasions of doing exactly that, occupy positions much further down that list.

But at least we caught the anthrax senders. Right?

12

Remember when the ANC was considered a terrorist group, the government never uses those labels arbitrarily.

13

So yes, the people who did this are terrorists and all that. No disagreement there, at all.

But.

This:

Because obviously we can’t call it “terrorism” when women are the victims

Bullshit. The reason this got hardly any press is because nothing bad happened. Like that thing a couple of weeks ago, where the crazy guy was wandering around the CD waving an assault rifle? Not much reporting around that, because nobody died.

But nevermind all that. By all means, continue to smear reality out across your two-dimensional worldview. The rest of us will do our best to take you seriously.

14

this action is a serious threat to each one of us. thank you, ecb, for doing your part in giving this more exposure.

15

One man's crusade is another man's religious persecution.

16

@13 No, bullshit to you. As someone pointed out, this was not a "Bomb Scare," where someone calls in a bomb threat but there is not actual bomb. There was a bomb, it just didn't work. They intended to kill people, specifically women and their doctors (and fetuses inside the women, presumably).

ECB's article should have read "women were the intended victims," but other than that, this was terrorism. If ELF had done the exact same thing and it had failed to go off, it would be news.

(ELF is also awful, I am not in any way saying they are better. I'm just pointing out the difference in media coverage).

17

and just to be clear, i was not being sarcastic. while some might consider the press focusing on a story like this sensationalistic -- and they might be right -- it would seem a far more beneficial story than learning some unbalanced guy in virginia may have had sex with an escort a couple of weeks ago (for example). this story illustrates both an actual problem in our country regarding a form of terrorism, and demonstrates that certain biases clearly exist in the media. both of these problems will continue if we do not actively oppose them, something we cannot do if we are unaware of them.

18

#13---Nothing bad happened? Just because someone didn't get killed or hurt? Intimidation, threats...these don't victimize as well? Bullshit back to you.

19
No, bullshit to you. As someone pointed out, this was not a "Bomb Scare," where someone calls in a bomb threat but there is not actual bomb.

No, double bullshit to you. The crazy-man-with-gun incident was not a "gun scare" where someone calls in a gun threat but there is no actual gun. There was a gun, there was a crazy man wearing body armor, it all could have gone horribly wrong-- but didn't.

Pretty much like the incident in Texas.

20

Remember that Bush is protecting Luis Posada Carriles, who is living freely in Florida despite having blown up a Cuban airliner and killing all 73 people on board. He's not a "terrorist", he's a "freedom fighter", apparently. He was in jail on charges of illegal entry to the US, but he was released a few days ago. Another of the bombers was pardoned by Jeb Bush.

Republicans don't give a shit about terrorism. It's all lip service.

21

The mainstream media has either ignored or downplayed right-wing domestic terrorism pretty consistently for the past few decades (the blog Orcinus, co-written by Seattle journalist David Neiwert, contains plenty of examples).

Moreover, while the media tends to hold left-wing causes culpable for the actions of their more extreme followers (someone from the Sierra Club always seems to be hauled out and forced to apologize whenever the ELF does anything), the same standard doesn't apply for right-wing causes and their extremists (I don't expect to see Phyllis Schlafly on TV tonight apologizing on behalf of the maniac who planted this bomb).

I think one of the most glaring examples of this double standard is to compare the media's treatment of John Walker Lindh, the supposedly-liberal "American Taliban" to that of Chad Castagana, a self-described conservative Republican who sent letters filled with fake anthrax powder to Nancy Pelosi, Charles Schumer, Jon Stewart, and Keith Olbermann, amongst others.

When Lindh was captured, and it turned out he was raised in a left-leaning household, there was extensive hand-wringing among the mainstream press over whether his defection could be attributed to liberal culture (never mind the fact that joining up with a bunch of woman- and homo-hating, militant religious fundamentalists wasn't exactly the act of a committed liberal). This of course culminated in Ann Coulter's infamous statement that Lindh should be executed, "in order to physically intimidate liberals" because "otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors."

Meanwhile, when Castagana was arrested, despite the fact that he was a member of FreeRepublic.com, a right-wing message board where violent revenge fantasies involving liberals are commonplace, and a professed admirer of Coulter (who seemingly can't go more than a month without publicly wishing death on a liberal), there was little-to-no speculation within the mainstream press about whether his actions were the result of conservative culture. Even the very fact of his arrest was pretty much a non-story. (I'm guessing there are some Slog readers who hadn't heard of him until just now).

So the fact that the media is treating this attempted bombing as less-than-newsworthy is just more of the same.

22

@13

"The reason this got hardly any press is because nothing bad happened"

Kinda like the Aqua Teen Hunger Force promotional stunt?

23

22: I was just about to point out Ignignot was not full of nails or explosive powder, but did generate quite a bit of publicity. However, his god is an Indian who turns into a wolf, so the situations are obviously not comparable.

24

...where the crazy guy was wandering around the CD waving an assault rifle?

I'll be sure to keep this filed for the next time one of the CD Apologists blows up after someone calls their neighborhood out for what it is.

25
I'll be sure to keep this filed for the next time one of the CD Apologists blows up after someone calls their neighborhood out for what it is.

Which is what? The neighborhood where we keep our crazy people?

In the 30 years I've lived in Seattle, something like this has happened in pretty much every part of the city at one time or another. It doesn't say anything in particular about the CD.

26

Oh, hey, there you are.

27

"The reason this got hardly any press is because nothing bad happened."

May I point out the new, tighter airline restrictions, after some jackass group got busted for maybe-almost-starting-to-plan a liquid explosive incident on a plane? Now we can't fly with liquids (or at least, we couldn't for a long time?). Nothing happened then; indeed, nothing even started to happen, as they were still in the planning stages. It's not like they had a basement full of gatorade bottles just ready to be exploded with a flick of the watch.

But now I'm forced to buy bottles of water at the airport (or, at least, empty them out before going through security, and then filling them at waterfountains).

28

#27--Thank you. Exactly the example I was going to use, as I was in the air and airports from Britain that day last year-- parched, bookless, clutching the plastic baggie which had replaced my carry-on. For some 40 hours. All because an unworkable terror plot which British officials had been monitoring closely the entire planning time went down exactly as the British officials planned it?

If the news was consistent, there'd be 24-7 reports on how simple supplies such as nails and fertilizer can be used to make bombs, and Homeland Security would be recommending a ban on these dangerous tools of destruction.

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