Tag Archives: Dylann Roof

‘We Have Met The Enemy’ Redux

Posted on by under Global Issues, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

I was disgusted this week as the media strove to turn 23-year-old Mark Conditt, who was responsible for killing two and injuring several others in Austin, Texas over the span of three weeks, into something softer, gentler, and kinder than the evil persona he was.  He was a murderer, a terrorist, and yet if you read the various accounts of him, you might catch yourself thinking of him as a Linus Van Pelt twin.  “Quiet,” “shy,” and “kind” are not words typically associated with a terrorist, and I am offended by the attempts to portray this man as “disturbed”, “conflicted” … almost as if he were the victim.  Oddly, this morning I was reminded by Facebook of a post I wrote exactly a year ago that addresses this as well as I could do so today.  And so, while I rarely repeat my posts, I thought this one as apropos today as it was a year ago.

We Have Met The Enemy And …

Much has been said in the last fifteen years, since 11 September 2001, about terrorism and terrorists.  President George W. Bush used it as justification for the Iraq War, the invasion of Afghanistan, and torture abuses. Trump has instilled faux fears of terrorism into U.S. voters as a part of his campaign effort.  Now he continues to use those fears to justify his ban on Muslim people entering the U.S. in search of a safe haven.  But who, really are these ‘terrorists’ everybody is so afraid of?

They are not the refugees that come here trying to find a better life, a place where they and their children will be safe from the daily bombings that are a part of life in their home countries. They are not the women you see in the market wearing their hijabs.  They are not the people gathering in the local mosque.  So who, then, are these ‘terrorists’?  I think you will be surprised by my answer:

pogo

That’s right … the terrorists in the U.S. are, for the most part, walking among us unnoticed, while we are busy fearing the woman in the hijab or the man with the long beard and olive complexion.  Let us look at a few of these real terrorists, shall we:

  • 51-year-old Adam W. Purinton who shot and killed Srinivas Kuchibhotla, an immigrant from India, for no reason other than he didn’t want immigrants in “his” country.
  • American-born Omar Mateen who killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in June 2016 at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in an apparent hate crime against LGBT people.
  • 21-year-old Dylann Roof who killed nine people, all African Americans, at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015. His reason?  “We already are the second-class citizens. That’s the problem. Y’all raping our women, and y’all are taking over the world.”
  • Jeffrey Allen Burgess, age 54, attacked an Indian man seated next to him at a bar in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, last November for the crime of … again … simply being of Indian descent.
  • Richard Leslie Lloyd, age 64, set fire to a convenience store owned by a U.S. citizen of Indian descent. His reason?  When he was in the store a few days earlier, he couldn’t find orange-pineapple juice, and it was then he noticed the skin colour of the owner, and assumed (incorrectly) that he was a Muslim.
  • Edgar Maddison Welch shot up a pizza parlor last December in Washington D.C., because he believed a fake news story that a kidnapping ring was operating from within the restaurant.

Not a single one of the above were immigrants, none were Muslim. The list goes on … and on … and on.  And there are rallies to promote this brand  of terrorism, venues where they are starting out young:  Earlier this month at a Trump rally in Maricopa County, Arizona, the following comments were said against protestors:

  • “If she’s Jewish, she should go back to her country,” a 13-year-old said of a protester.
  • “This is America; we don’t want Sharia law. Christian country.”
  • “I just want to let them know that I can’t wait for the liberal genocide to begin.”

The people committing these acts and calling for violence are terrorists just as surely as were Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, three of the 9/11 highjackers.  Donald Trump claims it is important to refer to terrorists as “radical Islamic terrorists”, but the reality is that in this country, terrorists are far more likely to be “radical white Christian terrorists”.

These, folks, are the faces of terrorism in the United States.  Take a close look — see any similarities? These people, and others like them, will NOT be kept out of the country by Trump’s travel ban. The people who will be kept out by the travel ban are innocent people seeking refuge, while the real terrorists are already here.

The reality is that most terrorism by Middle-Easterners is committed against those in the Middle East, not the west.  The U.S. has not, with the exception of 9/11, seen large-scale terrorist attacks and we are not a primary target of Daesh, no matter what Mr. Trump tells us.  But his rhetoric played well with the masses who, apparently, wanted to believe in an identifiable threat that was not themselves.  But when we are looking for that threat, when we seek to identify the real terrorists in this nation, we need to look inward rather than outward, for in the words of Pogo, we have met the enemy and he is us.

We Have Met The Enemy And …

Posted on by under Global Issues, Social commentary

Much has been said in the last fifteen years, since 11 September 2001, about terrorism and terrorists.  President George W. Bush used it as justification for the Iraq War, the invasion of Afghanistan, and torture abuses. Trump has instilled faux fears of terrorism into U.S. voters as a part of his campaign effort.  Now he continues to use those fears to justify his ban on Muslim people entering the U.S. in search of a safe haven.  But who, really are these ‘terrorists’ everybody is so afraid of?

They are not the refugees that come here trying to find a better life, a place where they and their children will be safe from the daily bombings that are a part of life in their home countries. They are not the women you see in the market wearing their hijabs.  They are not the people gathering in the local mosque.  So who, then, are these ‘terrorists’?  I think you will be surprised by my answer:

pogo

That’s right … the terrorists in the U.S. are, for the most part, walking among us unnoticed, while we are busy fearing the woman in the hijab or the man with the long beard and olive complexion.  Let us look at a few of these real terrorists, shall we:

  • 51-year-old Adam W. Purinton who shot and killed Srinivas Kuchibhotla, an immigrant from India, for no reason other than he didn’t want immigrants in “his” country.
  • American-born Omar Mateen who killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in June 2016 at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in an apparent hate crime against LGBT people.
  • 21-year-old Dylann Roof who killed nine people, all African Americans, at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015. His reason?  “We already are the second-class citizens. That’s the problem. Y’all raping our women, and y’all are taking over the world.”
  • Jeffrey Allen Burgess, age 54, attacked an Indian man seated next to him at a bar in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, last November for the crime of … again … simply being of Indian descent.
  • Richard Leslie Lloyd, age 64, set fire to a convenience store owned by a U.S. citizen of Indian descent. His reason?  When he was in the store a few days earlier, he couldn’t find orange-pineapple juice, and it was then he noticed the skin colour of the owner, and assumed (incorrectly) that he was a Muslim.
  • Edgar Maddison Welch shot up a pizza parlor last December in Washington D.C., because he believed a fake news story that a kidnapping ring was operating from within the restaurant.

Not a single one of the above were immigrants, none were Muslim. The list goes on … and on … and on.  And there are rallies to promote this brand  of terrorism, venues where they are starting out young:  Earlier this month at a Trump rally in Maricopa County, Arizona, the following comments were said against protestors:

  • “If she’s Jewish, she should go back to her country,” a 13-year-old said of a protester.
  • “This is America; we don’t want Sharia law. Christian country.”
  • “I just want to let them know that I can’t wait for the liberal genocide to begin.”

The people committing these acts and calling for violence are terrorists just as surely as were Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, three of the 9/11 highjackers.  Donald Trump claims it is important to refer to terrorists as “radical Islamic terrorists”, but the reality is that in this country, terrorists are far more likely to be “radical white Christian terrorists”.

These, folks, are the faces of terrorism in the United States.  Take a close look — see any similarities? These people, and others like them, will NOT be kept out of the country by Trump’s travel ban. The people who will be kept out by the travel ban are innocent people seeking refuge, while the real terrorists are already here.

The reality is that most terrorism by Middle-Easterners is committed against those in the Middle East, not the west.  The U.S. has not, with the exception of 9/11, seen large-scale terrorist attacks and we are not a primary target of Daesh, no matter what Mr. Trump tells us.  But his rhetoric played well with the masses who, apparently, wanted to believe in an identifiable threat that was not themselves.  But when we are looking for that threat, when we seek to identify the real terrorists in this nation, we need to look inward rather than outward, for in the words of Pogo, we have met the enemy and he is us.

Racism at its Finest … Charleston, South Carolina 2015

Posted on by under Rants, Social commentary

I had almost completed a humorous post for this blog about Donald Trump’s bid for the presidency and had planned to post that today. However, I am afraid that I don’t feel very humorous today in light of yesterday’s tragedy at the historic African-American AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, and I think it would be inappropriate and nearly a sacrilege to mock and make jokes today. Instead, I want (need?) to voice my opinion about yesterday’s horrific tragedy.

I watched Jon Stewart’s monologue about the tragedy and several things he said really resonated with me, but one in particular took my breath away with the truths he told. He said “… I’m confident, though, that by acknowledging it, by staring into that and seeing it for what it is, we still won’t do jack s—. Yeah. That’s us.” And he is so right. This could segue into a commentary on gun control vs gun rights, but that is a topic for another day. This post is simply about what happened in Charleston and what it says, not only about the southern states, but about the nation as a whole.

To any who cared to listen, I have been saying for about the past year that our society is going backward toward a return to the racism and bigotry of the 50’s and 60’s. Many have pooh-poohed this notion and told me I was making a federal case out of a few minor incidents, a mountain out of the proverbial molehill. Still think so? Who among you remember the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 15th, 1963? I remember it well. Four young girls were killed, and many others injured in what would today be called a “terrorist attack”. Are there parallels to the 1963 bombing and yesterday’s shooting? Sure there are. Both are a result of the murderous actions by those who think of themselves as “white supremacists”, who think themselves better than others simply because of the colour of their skin! Make no mistake: this was a racially-motivated hate crime. This, my friends, was racism rearing its ugly, ugly head again nearly 52 years after the Birmingham church bombing, nearly 51 years after the Civil Rights Act was signed into law.

Twice in the past 24 hours, somebody has accused me of “playing the race card”. WHAT???? When a young man, a child really, goes into a church stating he’s there to kill black people because, in his words, they “… are taking over our country.” He claimed that he was “on a mission”, a “mission” that he almost called off because the people in the church were “… so nice to me.” So how in hell am I playing the “race card” when I state that this was a racially-motivated hate crime? And why do I keep reading that he was a “smart kid”, a “normal kid”, and a “typical American kid” who was simply “mentally ill”? No, this was an evil, malignant individual who had been planning this act, according to a former roommate, for some six months and intended to “start a civil war” and then kill himself. Make no mistake, mental illness or not, this was a deranged and evil individual. He has confessed with no sign of remorse. I do not ordinarily support the death penalty, however in this case, I will make an exception. Or perhaps I would prefer that this “all-American, smart kid” be tossed into prison with a bunch of rapists and murderers and left to rot for the next 70 years or so.

Where did this boy get these ideas? Well, he was raised in one of the most racist states in the union, South Carolina, where the confederate flag is still revered and the streets are named after confederate generals from the Civil War. But I think we must look closer, to the parents. Parents are the ones who teach children their values, or lack of. Nine times out of ten, a young person will tend to follow the same political views are his/her parents, believe in the same social norms, ascribe to the same religious beliefs. Racism is more open and more prevalent in the southern states, but make no mistake, it exists in every single state in this nation and until we unite to confront racists, to shun them, we will not conquer this national cancer.

What have we learned in the last 50 years? 100 years? Apparently nothing. Today we are experiencing a return to an era where white supremacists walk freely among us, where the KKK is making a concerted effort to increase its membership, where racial profiling is the norm in police departments in every state, and where those of us who protest police killing unarmed young black men willy-nilly are called “agitators”. I am only one voice and my voice is not heard by many, but believe this: I will make sure that my voice is used to fight racism and every other form of bigotry in this nation for as long as I live.