2006 Christian Terrorist plot not covered by conservative main street media

[Thorgrim]

On September 11, 2006, the fifth anniversary of the terror attacks that devastated our nation, a man crashed his car into a building in Davenport, Iowa, hoping to blow it up and kill himself in the fire.
No national newspaper, magazine, or network newscast reported this attempted suicide bombing, though an AP wire story was available. Cable news (save for MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann) was silent about this latest act of terrorism in America.

Had the criminal, David McMenemy, been Arab or Muslim, this would have been headline news for weeks. But since his target was the Edgerton Women’s Health Center, rather than, say, a bank or a police station, media have not called this terrorism — even after three decades of extreme violence by anti-abortion fanatics, mostly fundamentalist Christians who believe they’re fighting a holy war.

Since 1977, casualties from this war include seven murders, 17 attempted murders, three kidnappings, 152 assaults, 305 completed or attempted bombings and arsons, 375 invasions, 482 stalking incidents, 380 death threats, 618 bomb threats, 100 acid attacks, and 1,254 acts of vandalism, according to the National Abortion Federation.

Abortion providers and activists received 77 letters threatening anthrax attacks before 9/11, yet the media never considered anthrax threats as terrorism until after 9/11, when such letters were delivered to journalists and members of Congress.

After 9/11, Planned Parenthood and other abortion-rights groups received 554 envelopes containing white powder and messages like: “You have been exposed to anthrax. . . . We are going to kill all of you.” They were signed by the Army of God, a group that hosts Scripture-filled Web pages for “Anti-Abortion Heroes of the Faith,” including minister Paul Hill, Michael Griffin, and James Kopp, all convicted of murdering abortion providers, and a convicted clinic bomber, the Reverend Michael Bray. Another of their “martyrs,” Clayton Waagner, mailed anthrax letters while a fugitive on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list for anti-abortion related crimes.

“I am a terrorist,” Waagner declared on the Army of God’s Web site. Boasting that God “freed me to make war on his enemy,” he claimed he knew where 42 Planned Parenthood workers lived. “It doesn’t matter to me if you’re a nurse, receptionist, bookkeeper, or janitor, if you work for the murderous abortionist, I’m going to kill you.”

That’s textbook terrorism, defined by the USA Patriot Act as dangerous criminal acts that “appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or “to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.”

Which brings us back to car bomber, McMenemy. According to the Detroit Free Press (the only newspaper in the Nexis news database that reported his crime), he targeted the women’s health center because he thought it provided abortions. It doesn’t. (Oops!) It provides mostly low-income patients with pap smears, ob-gyn care, testing for sexually transmitted diseases, birth control, and nutrition and immunization programs for women and children.

The attack caused $170,000 in property damage and left poor families without health care for a week. But long after Edgerton’s water-logged carpets are removed, scorched medical equipment replaced, and new doors reopened to the public, a culture of fear will linger among doctors, nurses, advocates, and patients across the country, who will worry they could be next. Some frightened workers will quit their jobs; some women will be too scared to get the health care they need.

Every fresh incident of anti-abortion terrorism is a reminder that women’s health supporters are not safe in a country where abortion is legal but mobilized zealots believe Jesus has empowered them to kill to prevent women from choosing it.

Is McMenemy a lone nut case, or a member of that network of violent extremists? We don’t know, because journalists haven’t investigated.

Nor have they reported that just last year, nearly one in five abortion clinics experienced gunfire, arson, bombings, chemical attacks, assaults, stalking, death threats, and blockades, according to the 2005 National Clinic Violence Survey. Additionally, 59 percent suffered intimidation tactics such as photo and video surveillance.

Federal efforts to hunt down these terrorists improved with the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act in 1994 and the National Task Force on Violence Against Health Care Providers, established by the Department of Justice in 1998. The feds have taken over McMenemy’s case, charging him with arson against a business affecting interstate commerce. Yet as of October 5, no news outlet on Nexis reported this, despite a second AP story.

As we continue national debates on how to keep America safe from terrorism, journalists do us — and especially women — no good pretending that the threats come only from radical Muslims outside our borders.

Quiet warfare - News - The Phoenix


Typical double standard how we've never discussed Timony McVeigh or radical right wing militia groups in the uppper midwest/rocky-west

NBC covered several times videotape of Hezbollah *gasp* selling cigarettes across state lines for money, yet despite the fact that Hezbollah has lived peacefully in America for decades, we have no undercover investigations into christian movement that formed the backbone of the groups that formed the minds of people like Timothy McVeigh

Why? Corporate ownership of major media outlets and conservative tilt of upper management editors who believe America doesn't want to hear such stories because they are overwhelmingly Christian of some denomination (even if they don't all agree which denomination is 'really' Christian)

[JaJae]

It's amazing that people equate the current "threat" of Christianity to radical Islamic terrorists like Hezbollah. Some of the comments to this article are the funniest I've seen in a very long time...

Dear Jennifer, It sounds to me like we're stuck in an unwinnable quagmire of a war with these fanatics and we should immediately redeploy all of our abortion providing assets to Okinawa where they'll be safe from harm.

Keep in mind the title: Few have been paying attention to that other ongoing terrorist threat and the source JENNIFER L. POZNER when coming to conclusions of this article.

I guess I should link the recent animal testing laboratory that was attacked and call liberalism the "other ongoing terrorist threat." Both are equally nonsense.

[ballz2wallz]

Is any threat by anybody white and non-Muslim considered 'Christian'? Given that our country, the USA, is 70% Christian, does that mean everyone in this country that commits a crime is partaking in a 'Christian terror plot'?

[Thorgrim]

Originally Posted by JaJae

It's amazing that people equate the current "threat" of Christianity to radical Islamic terrorists like Hezbollah. Some of the comments to this article are the funniest I've seen in a very long time...

Dear Jennifer, It sounds to me like we're stuck in an unwinnable quagmire of a war with these fanatics and we should immediately redeploy all of our abortion providing assets to Okinawa where they'll be safe from harm.

Keep in mind the title: Few have been paying attention to that other ongoing terrorist threat and the source JENNIFER L. POZNER when coming to conclusions of this article.

I guess I should link the recent animal testing laboratory that was attacked and call liberalism the "other ongoing terrorist threat." Both are equally nonsense.

Timothy McVeigh killed over 185 people in OKC as a registered Republican and member of many right-wing groups as he developed

Not only were many of those groups Christianists, but he specifically was Christian and believed in God as he admitted after his capture
TIME.com Print Page: Nation -- A Look Back in TIME: Interview with Timothy McVeigh

Show me an accurate list of all the "liberal terrorist murders" in the US in the past 25-odd years I am sure it doesn't come anywhere near 185 by McVeigh, 17 by anti-abortion christians, and all the others by christian fanatics

Let alone if we went into the past and found tens of thousands of murders by Christian terrorirsts, the KKK has killed far more americans than Al Qaeda could ever dream

Even in the middle east, groups identified soley by their christian belief participated in atrocities against muslims in Lebanon during the 80s

BTW b2w the people mentioned in the article directly call themselves christians and their motivations linked directly to christianity

[Thorgrim]

Last month, an east Texas man pleaded guilty to possession of a weapon of mass destruction. Inside the home and storage facilities of William Krar, investigators found a sodium-cyanide bomb capable of killing thousands, more than a hundred explosives, half a million rounds of ammunition, dozens of illegal weapons, and a mound of white-supremacist and antigovernment literature.

"Without question, it ranks at the very top of all domestic terrorist arrests in the past 20 years in terms of the lethality of the arsenal," says Daniel Levitas, author of "The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right."

But outside Tyler, Texas, the case is almost unknown. In the past nine months, there have been two government press releases and a handful of local stories, but no press conference and no coverage in the national newspapers.

The terror threat at home, often overlooked | csmonitor.com

It's all over the place, you just have to search hard because the MSM buries it because their corporate agenda suits a muslim bias and knows their would be a backlash if their christian audience thought they themselves had terrorists in their midst

[RMNIXON]

Originally Posted by ballz2wallz

Is any threat by anybody white and non-Muslim considered 'Christian'? Given that our country, the USA, is 70% Christian, does that mean everyone in this country that commits a crime is partaking in a 'Christian terror plot'?

He is a nut. This is such a non story. But the "Conservative mainstream media" did get my attention!


As soon as the many Millions of Christians get organized and start killing by the thousands give a call?

There is a point to this even though our thread author missed it. The media does get terrorist happy. Remember the plane that hit the building in New York with the baseball pilot at the controls? The first media reaction was "is this terror related!" I saw much of this just after 9/11. Anything bad might have a terror link, but it has nothing to do with fantasy conservative bias.

[RMNIXON]

Originally Posted by Thorgrim

Timothy McVeigh killed over 185 people in OKC as a registered Republican and member of many right-wing groups as he developed

Actually he was kicked out of a number of right-wing survivalist groups for being too nutty!

As for his being a registered Republican, so obviously any if not all Republicans are behind him, I demand a record of all party registration of all felony convicted criminals of the United States to be headlined posted with any story because this has some relevant importance to the public at large.

[Thorgrim]

There are millions of muslims terrorists? news to me

And I believe there are millions of christians who are organized and killing, its called the coalition of the willing...it may not be terrorist but it fits your description

The NY media went hyper because of 9/11 and planes, thats the only reason is caught on, it was not because there was simply a hint of possible terrorism...if a boat had crashed into people in charleston it would have gotten the same attention

Ofcourse planes hitting buildings in NY will forever get attention, so that point is moot

[Thorgrim]

Originally Posted by RMNIXON

Actually he was kicked out of a number of right-wing survivalist groups for being too nutty!

As for his being a registered Republican, so obviously any if not all Republicans are behind him, I demand a record of all party registration of all felony convicted criminals of the United States to be headlined posted with any story because this has some relevant importance to the public at large.

He was a right-winger with a christian background who talked time and time again about his belief in the Christian Diety "God"

That's a Christian terrorist attack on American soil, again, not to mention how Christian terrorists have killed many many times more Americans than any other group

[RMNIXON]

What century of news coverage is the topic here?

I will correct myself if you think my mischaracterization unfair. You only need a few thousand fanatical Muslims to be a clear threat. We have seen the evidence of this. Certainly not to condemn the many millions of peaceful Muslims. But obviously this one or two nut self-proclaimed Chirstians represent the whole and are a major organized threat? This seems to be your implication and worth a major media story? So many such attacks have happend since Oklahoma City? If you really want to make the case that Fanatical Christians are a greater threat than the Islamic ones (made by such intellectual giants as Rosy O'Donnel) then be my guest.

[Thorgrim]

You only need a few dozen, as was seen by 9/11...the plot was thought up by one man, and the monetary amount needed was meager...a few dozen men could easily have pulled it off

If you look at news reports, there are certainly more than a few dozen christian terrorists in America

Islamists are the greater threat, but only for now, in the 1920s the much bigger threat was Christian terrorism, now Islamists are a threat, but it remains to be seen how much of one...several portions of the 9/11 report read as though it was a combination of luck by the planners and complete negligence of US counter-terrorism...the latter problem has been radically changed and the threat may be many times smaller than what is thought it common culture

[Diamond Cross]

Originally Posted by Thorgrim

He was a right-winger with a christian background who talked time and time again about his belief in the Christian Diety "God"

That's a Christian terrorist attack on American soil, again, not to mention how Christian terrorists have killed many many times more Americans than any other group

Why don't you just admit you hate the GOP, conservatives, and Christians. You're the one on this forum that does the single most bashing of them and you are overly critical of them and blame them for everything that goes wrong. You belong in the Democratic Underground, not here for your extremist views.

[ballz2wallz]

Originally Posted by RMNIXON

You only need a few thousand fanatical Muslims to be a clear threat. We have seen the evidence of this. Certainly not to condemn the many millions of peaceful Muslims.

We certainly have to worry about the silence of the majority as well.

[Thorgrim]

Originally Posted by Diamond Cross

Why don't you just admit you hate the GOP, conservatives, and Christians. You're the one on this forum that does the single most bashing of them and you are overly critical of them and blame them for everything that goes wrong. You belong in the Democratic Underground, not here for your extremist views.

Maybe beause I don't...

Chafee was a standup guy, Hagel is too, many republican friends, never talk politics

True Eisenhower conservatives I think are great

And many many democrats I admire are devout christians

[RMNIXON]

Originally Posted by Diamond Cross

Why don't you just admit you hate the GOP, conservatives, and Christians. You're the one on this forum that does the single most bashing of them and you are overly critical of them and blame them for everything that goes wrong. You belong in the Democratic Underground, not here for your extremist views.

?

[RMNIXON]

Originally Posted by ballz2wallz

We certainly have to worry about the silence of the majority as well.

Is it intimidation? Well in some places I agree. But by others is it sympathy? But we don't want to ask these questions do we.

[ballz2wallz]

Originally Posted by RMNIXON

Is it intimidation? Well in some places I agree. But by others is it sympathy? But we don't want to ask these questions do we.

I certainly hope it's fear over sympathy.

That would at least give them SOME excuse.

[RMNIXON]

Originally Posted by ballz2wallz

I certainly hope it's fear over sympathy.

That would at least give them SOME excuse.

I think it depends on where you live. Obviously American Muslims and most in Europe have no excuse!