A boy goes in to a shopping mall and proceeds to shoot and kill as many people as possible, before being killed by police.
Another boy duct tapes some sparklers together and throws them on somebody's lawn.
For $25,000 and a trip to Hawaii, pick which boy being called a domestic terrorist.
We don't know why Sulejmen Talovic decided to start shooting up the local mall, so it would be inappropriate to mention domestic terrorism, primarily because Talovic is a Muslim and you can't call Muslims terrorists, especially if they are because you might offend other Muslims who aren't terrorist, and who might express their injured feelings by kinapping and beheading a random bystander, and that kind of thing just gets in the way of diplomacy, doesn't it? Nick Lay, on the other hand, isn't a Muslim, so it's OK to throw the label of terrorist around in his case.
We've officially gone insane in this country. We can't call a guy who goes to a mall for the express purpose of killing as many people as he possibly can a terrorist; heck, we can't even identify him as a Muslim. The kid in question is my nephew, by the way. That's how I know that the "explosive device" in question was a bunch of sparklers.
In the name of "Homeland Security" my nephew is facing felony charges that could put him in jail for 5 years.
For sparklers.
Good thing he didn't have any actual firecrackers. He'd be in Gitmo by now.
UPDATE: Michael Silence pointed out that I didn't address the issue of the charge of domestic terrorism. I wanted to talk with my sister to make sure she and Nick were comfortable with this post and to make sure I had all of the facts straight before giving out too many details. The account in the Mountain Press contains several inaccuracies and omissions.
Surprise surprise.
First, They neglect to mention that Nick turned himself in once he heard that there was an investigation. He didn't wait to be identified. Second, the sparklers were placed on the lawn, not the porch. Third, the people who own the house are not pressing charges.
When Nick turned himself in, the arresting officer, Sgt. Garner, who is the guy in the Sevierville PD responsible for Homeland Security, told Nick he could be charged with domestic terrorism for the sparkler bomb. As it stands right now, the charge is Prohibited Weapons: Explosive Device, a felony that can carry a prison term of up to 12 years, not 5 as we previously thought. Sgt. Garner told my sister he had to think long and hard about going with the felony charge rather than a misdemeanor charge, but that he was under some pressure from the FBI to make an example of Nick in order to discourage other kids from doing the same thing. Apparently, sparkler bombs are a national craze right now, fueled by YouTube, the internet, and adolescent stupidity. I can neither confirm nor deny (DHS and the FBI may be reading and you can't be too careful these days) that I experimented with fireworks when I was a teenager. And I can neither confirm nor deny that two years ago, through an unforeseen combination of events, I set off almost a pound of fireworks instantaneously, resulting in a huge fountain of sparks, flame, and many many loud noises.
But I never faced felony charges, and the FBI never got involved.
Not that I know of anyway. Maybe I should file a FOIA request to see my file...
Anyway, back to Nick. His arraignment is in early March, and f this silliness goes to trial, it should be in the end of March. Now don't get me wrong; Nick made a mistake by putting the sparklers on somebody's lawn, but it's no different than egging or rolling a house. It's mischief, not malice and should be treated accordingly. Probation and hefty community service is the right answer, not a felony conviction and 12 years in jail.
Now, to the main point of the article, comparing Nick's treatment to that of Sulejman Talovic. SayUncle says:
The more accurate (and politically incorrect) question is: At what point do we label something Islamic Terrorism?
Tgisch responds to Uncle's question this way:
Sometimes, of course, it is purely religious in nature — witness Shia vs. Sunni, or the whole North Ireland Catholic-vs.-Protestant thing — but most of the time, it’s not, with religion simply being used as a motivator for political violence (9/11, for example).
There are a lot of mistakes in that short passage. Northern Irish terror had/has a very strong political component that is arguably much more divisive than the religious component, at least according to those folks I've talked to. Remember, that Sinn Fein's goal was not the conversion of Protestants, but the rejection of British rule.
That's pretty political.
Then there's his characterization of 9/11 as a political act only tangentially related to religion. This reveals a total ignorance of Islamic fundamentalism, which admits no difference between religion and politics. It's as if tgirsch never heard of Sharia, or the Taliban. For Islamic fundamentalists, there is no difference between the law and religion. If you don't get that, then you lack even a basic understanding of the motivations of Islamic fundamentalist terror.
Let's make this really simple, because it is. If you go out to kill a lot of people who never did anything to you in order to make some kind of point, you are a terrorist; the particular variety can be debated later.
So Talovic is a terrorist, regardless of whether his religion played a part in his motivation.
By the way, one more point to illustrate how the press works to color our perceptions of a story. Notice that even though Talovic and my nephew are both 18, Talovic is referred to as a teen, while Nick is a man. I'll leave the motives behind the differing references as an exercise for the class.
Posted by Rich at February 15, 2007 12:42 AM | TrackBack