A few weeks ago, the Justice Department caught the attention of cable news programs by announcing the indictments of eleven "eco-terrorists" in Oregon. Their terrorist activites? Arsons and property damage, in which no one died. Now, I'm not coming even close to condoning their actions, but I don't think the fear of your local meat processing plant burning down in the night counts as a "vast eco-terrorist conspiracy".
For if these actions did constitute terrorizing the public, certainly those responsible for the ten church burnings in Alabama would also be labeled "terrorists". Indeed, two reasons come to mind why the actions in Alabama are worse than those in Oregon/Washington. First, churches are much closer to people's heart and minds than industrial plants, and thus the church arsons give people more of a reason to fear. Second, ten church burnings have occurred in a matter of weeks, while the radical environmentalists spread their activities out over five years.
But the media has completely ignored this incongruity. Personally, I don't think either of the said groups are terrorists--they aren't trying to kill or scare civilians. Someone who should have been labelled a terrorist, but wasn't, was that Tampa teen who flew a plane into a building and said he had sympathy for Bin Laden. Of course, he was neither Arab nor a lefty, so we should just forget the incident ever happened.
Leave a comment