SHARE THIS SHOW:
RELATED CONVERSATIONS:
RECENTLY ON TOL:
TOL Our Town
- A tumblr site dedicated to the people and places that make up Oregon and Southwest Washington.
TAGS:
When a bomb went off in a Woodburn bank in 2008, it killed two police officers, but didn't catch much media attention outside Oregon. Most national media outlets just ran abbreviated stories supplied by wire services. But when a young man was arrested for allegedly attempting to set off a bomb in Pioneer Square late last month (and didn't kill, or even hurt, anyone), it made the front page of the Sunday New York Times.
Though the Woodburn bombing took place two years ago, the two men accused of setting it off — father and son Bruce and Joshua Turnidge — were recently convicted and the sentencing phase of their trial is still ongoing. As a result, both incidents are in the news at the same time. A reporter for The Portland Mercury pointed out in an article earlier this month that most people reporting on the Turnidges have not used the word "terrorism" at all, a word that has been all over the coverage of Mohamud's arrest. Some experts argue that there are very specific legal reasons why the word applies in one case and not the other. Others say it's impossible to ignore the differences in race, religion and ideology when it comes to the accused men in these cases.
What differences do you see in the coverage of these two cases? What difference does it make to you?
GUESTS:
- April Baer: Reporter for OPB News
- Tung Yin: Professor of law at Lewis and Clark Law School
- Sarah Mirk: Reporter for The Portland Mercury
- Doug Card: Local historian and retired University of Oregon sociology professor
Tagged as: law · media · politics · terrorism
Photo credit: Michael Newman / Creative Commons
-
The ringleader of the 1993 WTC attack was an FBI informant named Emad Salem. He rounded up some young men from a Jersey mosque and planned the bombing. At one point he asked his FBI handlers if he could make a dud bomb. They said no, they wanted it to explode.
-
Cascadian, do you have a link to anything that would support your assertion?
-
The Turniges built a device whose sole function was to tear bodies limb from limb, ending life.
A fake bomb could just as easily have been used to extort money, but they built a real one. They may not have been jihadists, but they obviously held to a belief system that required a real bomb where a fake would've been as effective, a belief system that said it was okay to shatter human bodies and kill whomever got in the way.
This was more than extortion. A real bomb is a statement. A concious choice was made to escalate the crime they were about to commit from extortion to potential mass murder. It's the reasoning behind that choice that makes this sound like politically motivated terrorism...
-
Randomguy,
Read the court transcipts. The Turnidges placed a prior phony bomb at another bank. The Bomb Expert knew of this. And made a fatal assumption that the second bomb was also phony.
He cavalierly carry the bomb into the bank and offered to show the police chiefs why they shouldn't be scared. Hey, he is a professional.
Famous Last Words: "Watch This....."
-
If you have a million people, by probabilty there is at least ONE crazy, psychotic, antisocial, sociopath among them. Example is Theodore Kaczinsky aka. the Unabomber. Or Timothy McVeigh. Or Jeffery Daumer. Or Charles Manson. Or John Hinkley. Not many considering this is a nation of 300 million.
As up to 2% of the Population is Schizophrenic, every society has its share of nutcases. They are naturally occuring but rare. Some of them are violent. Some have murderous motives. And some of them are into bomb making.
But by far this is a tiny minority, maybe 2% off the Schizophrenics have violent sociopathic tendencies. And maybe 2% of them like guns. And 2% of them graduate to bomb making.
All societies must deal with these rare black swans.
-
However, Muhamed Mohamed is different. Only 2% of the American population is Muslim. But they have demonstrated a high risk of violent terrorism or jihad. And this is not based on mental illness, but rather transmitted by Culture. Teaching, forums, friday night sermons at the mosque, the internet can multiply the effect of violence that paranoid schizophrenics cannot command.
A small group of young male muslims or cell is the core for most of terrorist attacks. This is using personal networking, social networking, internet networking, texting, email, fax, phones, ease of travel, and overall technology to 'punch above their weight.'
IT is a business venture and a social organization, not a lone wolf tormented by demons. So they can do more sophisticated planning, long term target monitoring, multisite simultaneous targeting, multiple vehicles such as 4 air planes on 9/11, and are working on sophisticated weapons of Mass Destruction like Biological, Chemical and Nuclear weapons. Sorry, not even the Unabomber could make a small fission bomb alone.
Muslims leaverage their social groups, tribe, fellow worshippers making it a more effective tool. It is the difference of a single entrepreneur compared to a mid sized company with dozens of employees with specialized skills. And there is a terrorist university. And a world wide conglomerate of resources. And its own banking and wire services. Internal corporate communications. It is no different than the Coca Cola Corporation.
NOT ALL MUSLIMS ARE TERRORISTS.
But as today, 10 years post 9/11,
ALL TERRORISTS ARE MUSLIM.
In any society, 90% of violent crime is caused by males. And police target males since they are the likely troublemakers. And 90% of crime is caused by the young and juvenile(under 35yo).
And now we have young, male, muslims being involved in world wide jihad. In an Era of Limited Time and Money, then RACIAL PROFILING IS JUST COMMON SENSE.
We can say that muslim terrorism is no more common than Christian fundamental terrorism. But read today's front page. (London Cell busted). And Yesterday's paper( Palestinian prematurely denotates bombs in Stockholm). And Last Week's(PDX Bombing). And Last Month's. And Last Year's. And the Last Decade. Last 20 years.
We must reconcile the facts of World Wide Terrorism. It is Epidemic. And likely to last for GENERATIONS. Together with muslim leaders, we have to make this fact obsolete.
IGNORING THE FACTS WILL NOT MAKE THEM GO AWAY.
-
The way I understand the coverage of News and what becomes "news stories" is that someone else has already deemed them news-worthy, and assigned them into categories, and then they are fed to us through the usual channels: the wires, radio, internet, TV, newspapers.
To think that we are hearing reporting of the All the Actual happenings of our communities, nation, or world in an unedited manner would be naive. There are plenty of important events taking place that never hit the media.
For example, five elderly persons broke into the Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific at Bangor, where the nuclear warheads for the Navy’s Trident subs are stored. They were put on trial in federal court in Tacoma, Washington and on Monday, December 13, 2010 were found guilty on all counts. The five were charged with trespass, felony damage to federal property, felony injury to property and felony conspiracy to damage property.
The five defendants, called the Disarm Now Plowshares, challenged the legality and morality of the US storage and use of thermonuclear missiles by Trident nuclear submarines at the Kitsap-Bangor Naval Base outside Bremerton Washington.
In their defense the peace activists argued three points: the nuclear missiles at Bangor are weapons of mass destruction; those weapons are both illegal and immoral; and that all citizens have the right and duty to try to stop international war crimes from being committed by these weapons of mass destruction.
The media chooses not to cover this, because no one was harmed, not was that the intent of the five intruders. Yet, our nation's defense is at risk, is it not?
-
It makes little sense to talk about terrorism without talking about war in general. The US has used terrorists in the past. Bin Laden once worked with the CIA.
Why is a car bomb worse than a bomb dropped from the air? They both kill the innocent.
History didn't begin in 2001, or 1993. It's like coming into a movie halfway through. You see one man shoot another and think he's the bad guy. When you see the beginning of the film, you see the victim kill the bad guy's brother.
During World War One the allies, in the person of Colonel T E Lawrence, promised the Arabs freedom if they defeated the Ottoman empire. After the war, the Brits and the French carved up the Middle East and then the US joined in.
That betrayal is what the jihadists are responding to.
Now the US is killing people with drones, which is a cowardly way to fight. The drone jockey sits at a console in Nevada and kills people on the other side of the world. Then he goes home and has dinner with his family.
Americans may not give this much thought, but you can be sure that people in the rest of the world do.
-
Cascadian might benefit from reading bin Laden's Fatwa Against Jews and Crusaders. In it, bin Laden states the reasons for his jihad, and they're nothing like what Cascadian says they are.
The jihadists are the ones who deserve blame for their depraved acts of terrorism, regardless of what anyone else has done. And we're drifting perilously far from the actual topic, the difference in coverage of the two events involving bombs.
-
Cascadian asks why a bomb dropped by us is different from a terrorist car bomb. The answer is, the terrorists intend to kill innocents. We, on the other hand, are aiming at the jihadist terrorists, not innocents.
-
Michael Trigoboff asks for a link supporting my assertion regarding the 1993 WTC bombing. Here it is: New York Times, Oct 27, 1993 Section A, page 1, by Ralph Blumanthal.
One can also find more references in Wikipedia under Emad Salem.
Trigoboff also suggests I read Bin Laden's fatwa, which I did. In it, Bin Laden speaks about the "Crusaders," the US occupation of the Arabian Peninsula and other Arab lands.
Bin Laden has also said elsewhere that he wants the US to bleed itself to death by fighting an endless war. But that's another topic.
Trigoboff also raises the issue of intent. If one drops a bomb, car or aerial, in a crowded neighborhood it's no good to say one didn't intend for innocents to be killed. It's called criminal negligence, if not worse. This issue has also come up in the Woodburn case, where the defendants seemed to be saying that the bomb was not intended to explode and blaming it on the victim.
-
Not enough information to find article on NYT web site. I searched the entire free database of NYT articles for October 1993 and did not find the article you mentioned. You need to provide a URL.
-
Can the 12 year old daughter file a suit saying that a death sentence for her father is cruel and unusual punishment for her and hence unconstitutional.
-
The attempted bombing on Pioneers Courthouse Square was orchestrated by a man who was attempting to sync with a much larger organization of terrorists and murderers. The goal was to kill the thousands that would be present that night. You have to assume that the man was acutely aware of the fact that families and children would be prominent. The two incidents are not comparable in my book.
-
Terrorism Defined - The calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear.
The most basic difference between the Woodburn bombing and the attempted bombing at Pioneer Courthouse Square, aside from the scale, is the intent. Bombing a bank in the manner of the Turnidges, while clearly criminal in nature, hardly constitues terrorism. Where Mohamud's attempted bombing clearly fits the definition of terrorism.
-
The most basic difference between the two cases is this:
Mohamed Mohamud intended for his large bomb to go off and kill large numbers of innocent people. His motive for this was jihad.
The Turnidges did not intend for their bomb to go off. They didn't intend to kill anyone. Their motive was to extort money from the bank.
The Turnidge case was not terrorism.
-
I was walking on the Pioneer Square site admiring the City Tree this past weekend. And other people were enjoying the season as any other Christmas.
But I could not suppress the potential tragedy that might have happened. On this open square with a amphitheater wall, placing a shaped charge with 300 lbs of metal nails and shrapnel would have decimated a packed square.
Probably deaths approaching 100. Casualties including amputations, blindness, and lifelong facial scars affecting 10 times as many. And a whole city plunged into darkness of Depression and PTSD during the happiness time of the year. How do you wash the blood off the brickwork? Or would it have to be demolished--physically and psychically.
Instead of rushing from party to party during the celebrations. We would all be going from funeral to funeral. Memorial services would be daily. Candlelight vigils. No singing, laughing or smiling. We would have worldwide media camped out on Pioneer Square for the last month. We would all be interviewed by the BBC, care packages would be sent from NYC, Counselors would be made available on the street.
The NORTHWEST 9/11.
And a lot of the most forgiving liberal views would have been polarized to opposites. I am glad we escape this one. But what about the next attack? Keep a sharp eye for suspicious behavior and be safe. Even Portland is in Target Sights.
-
A couple of Anti-Government Conservatives plant a bomb at a Bank and kill two police officers, yep, that's terrorism in my view. They did the same thing as the Conservatives Timothy McVeigh and his partner did but just on a smaller scale.
The question is why do Conservatives get a pass by the media, police, and the FBI, they are attacking the US just as much as extremist Muslims!
-
The Turnidges are not the same thing as Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh's intention was to kill large numbers of people. The Turnidges' intention was to extort money from the bank. They didn't necessarily even intend for their bomb to explode.
-
Think about Ruby Ridge and Branch Dividians all condemmed by press and all there were deaths without trials thanks Janet Reno
-
The coverage of these cases are different because of America's denial of its contemporary religion, Capitalism. They are the same acts, attempted or completed, Murder for the highest reward. Money for Capitalists, Glory for Islamists.
-
How does blowing up the World Trade Center help capitalism???
-
The release based of the FBI have been working on this case for longtime from his father, this is way different than the Bank Bombing.
I don't agree with both side and I don't agree with the governement either on the way the handle many cases but I don't have any right to kill other people to proof my point.
-
the difference between the woodburn bomb plot and a pioneer square bomb plot is that the woodburn bomb plot was a real threat with a real bomb. the pioneer square plot was a made for tv fabrication created by the fbi for public consumption. Moments after the pioneer square plot unfolded computer graphics and detailed summarys were released to the news organizations. the only conclusion I can reach is that the pioneer square plot was designed to put fear into the hearts of portlanders.
-
The comments of one of your studio guests indicates that she is confused and as usual pointing out that the right wing is treated differently, what she is not considering is three cases involving the "Right Wing". Ok city,Branch Dividians and Ruby Ridge. In two of them the "perpetrators" were executed by the government without trial under Bill Clinton. Criminals are indeed treated differently ie burning churches is not a hate crime if it is a "white" church attacked by black extremists but vice versa induces huge reaction. They are all criminals and deserve the same fate. The only difference between the two being discussed today is that you won't find thousands of people in a small bank. In the end the innocents are all dead!
-
I understand the argument for not using the term "terrorist" in the courtroom during Turnidge trial, but is the term "terrorist" even a legal term in any case?
The Turnidges, who have been convicted of their crimes, and Mohamud, if he is convicted, are terrorists - it is impossible to separate the Turnidge's extremist anti-government beliefs from their actions. I don't see how anyone who followed the unfiltered coverage of their trial could imagine their actions absent their lifelong, "anti-establishment" view of the world. Their beliefs clearly equipped them to self-justify their violent actions.
Hatred for the U.S. Government and modern American society motivated both the Woodburn bombers and the intended Courthouse Square bomber.
-
I think a mountain of difference between the Turnidges and Muhamed is the reward at the other end: 72 shapely virgins with almond eyes.
To plan a homicide is one thing. To be part of a Murder-Suicide is a whole different ball of wax. The Turnidges with their plea deals are not such radicals that they will give up their lives. They are petty criminals after money.
Blood thirsty terrorists want CARNAGE and MAYHEM. Not a new flatscreen TV and the latest electronic smart phone.
Suicide Bombings occur every day. And they are nearly impossible to stop. And today they are nearly all muslim.
-
Very interesting comment.
Are you saying that the fact that the Turnidges physical desires IE: flatscreen TV and smart phone. Makes their crime more justified? I guess it is easier for most of us to understand that kind of motive. But I personally know several Christian people who say that they would gladly die for their faith. I guess the difference is that American Christians have not had to make that kind of choice for quite a while.
Right or wrong the extreme Islamic groups feel that their way of life and belief system is under threat from the west. Add to that the sad bloody history of the crusades (which are well remembered in the middle east) and suddenly their motives don't seem so outlandish. Keeping in mind that it is a tiny fraction of Muslims that share this extreme view.
-
I am saying that convicting and catching a murder who commits suicide is impossible. Justice will NEVER be delivered.
Catching a murder who tries to escape is possible. Justice has a chance.
If we are so NIHILISTIC that nothing on this earth interests us, then we will do anything including nuclear annihilation, bombing, unleashing viruses, cannibalism or run of the mill murder.
-
Michael Trigoboff wants a URL for the story on the 1993 WTC bombing. Here's how to find it: Google "Emad Salem" and go to the Wikipedia entry. At the bottom of the story is Bibliography which has a link to the NY Times story, plus several others.
-
OK thanks. Here's what you said about the article:
The ringleader of the 1993 WTC attack was an FBI informant named Emad Salem. He rounded up some young men from a Jersey mosque and planned the bombing. At one point he asked his FBI handlers if he could make a dud bomb. They said no, they wanted it to explode.
Here's a quote from the article you mentioned:
Federal officials have acknowledged in the past that they dropped Mr. Salem as an informer sometime before the trade center bombing over what they said was his reluctance to wear a body recorder, as well as other disagreements. They said he never provided detailed information of the attack in advance...
(My emphasis added.)
What point do you think this material makes?
-
The LA Times article, which they took from Reuters, says that Salem was wearing a recorder when he spoke with the FBI handlers. So it looks like the FBI may not have been truthful when they said they dropped Salem because he wouldn't wear a recorder. Unfortunately this article is from the LA Times archive and you have to pay to get the whole thing.
Why not do a little digging? There is information out there. I have a small file and could send you copies if I had your address.
-
Nihilism?
Let's remind ourselves that most Conservative Christians (Republicans) pray for "The Rapture", which is the death of this planet and every living thing on it, while they somehow ascend to some "heaven" that is somewhere else.
I agree, religion and religionists are the problem.
How about a church of reality instead?
-
There are many more religious people who are "the solution" than "the problem." I think that demonizing religion is a fundamental mistake.
-
MichaelTrigoboff
Religion is self-demonizing, I just recognize and point out that fact.
That emperor has no clothes.
-
I grew up in the area of the Turnidges and my family’s farm has been in our family since 1915. I was a Turner Lamp Queen at Cascade High many years ago. I am witness to many bad changes in the attitudes of the populace in this area. The Turnidges are the tip of the iceberg. There are many anti blacks, overboard gun rights, confederate flags and other racial anti American behavior out here in the Turner/Jefferson area that were not so when I was a child living in this area. I bet my blog will be removed because I will remind you that Cascade High had a near Columbine hardly 2 years ago and livestock before that have been shot in the High School’s barn and the Principle is THIRD generation there!! There seems to be a tight control of who and what is welcome and who and what is not welcome. We simply MUST not sweep under the carpet Cascade’s near Columbine or people like the Turnidges. They are the new terrorists and they are your Church members and neighbors. These are people who go to Church and in Jesus name carry guns. I’ve seen it. We have this new generation of anti thinking living next door us now in a new home. This young man tried to get us to leave our family’s farm with threats, floodlights, and false police reports because we were different. We need to understand the Turnidges and realize they are the new terrorists and from what I have experienced, are the tip of the iceberg.
-
I think that your "blog" will be allowed to stay here, and I'd suggest that you make your very valid points in other places where you might actually be paid attention to.
Keep shining your light and exposing the bad guys.
-
Would somebody please explain the difference between a "terrorist's" bomb killing innocent people and a "bank robber's" bomb doing the same thing? In the end, the innocent are dead. Its a false classification system to segregate crimes by someone's perceived intent. Dead is dead, and those that kill deserve punishment, not that it would bring anyone back to life. ;-(
-
Some of the differences:
- intention: Terrorists intend to kill innocent victims; the Turnidges were pulling an inept extortion plot and may not have intended to kill anyone.
- scale: Jihadist Mohamed Mohamud wanted a bomb big enough to blow up an area the size of Pioneer Square and kill thousands of people. The Turnidges' bomb was small, and would not have been capable of creating mass casualties.
- ideological motive: Mohamud wanted to kill thousands of innocent people in the name of Islam. The Turnidges were acting out of a desire to extort money from a small bank.
-
Really now. One builds a bomb, puts it in a public place where it will obviously be seen and authorities brought in to investigate, and no one was intended to be killed? So the difference is that on the one hand, the authorities triggered the bomb and on the other the perpetrator was going to? Dead is still dead, and by the actions of the bomb builder. No bomb equals no dead people.
-
I agree that terrorists intend to kill innocents, on the other hand, target the jihadi terrorists, not innocent.
massagem tailandesa
-
Comments are now closed.
The differences in coverage are appropriate.
The Turnidges were lone criminals attempting to extort money from a bank. They were after money, not mass casualties. They were not motivated by a global belief systen. If their small bomb had not sadly killed two police officers, the Turnidges' claim to fame would have been multiple appearances on "dumb criminal" cable TV shows.
Mohamed Mohamud, on the other hand, wanted to kill large numbers of innocent victims with a huge bomb. Mohamud was perfectly willing to include children in the death toll. His motive for this act of terrorism was jihad.
America faces a deadly threat from jihadists. We've been under attack from the jihadists since at least 1993, when the World Trade Center in New York City was attacked for the first time. Unfortunately, America did not really wake up to this threat until the tragic events of 9/11.
Most Americans are now awake. Since 9/11 there have been a string of other jihadist attempts to wreak mayhem upon America and its allies. Most of those attempts failed, but unfortunately not all of them. Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 US soldiers and wounded 30 others at Fort Hood not long ago. Jihadist attacks have caused mass casualties in London and Madrid.
Jihadism is a deadly threat against all of us, and therefore warrants the attention of all Americans. Mohamed Mohamud's attempted jihadist attack was something that all of America needed to hear about.