If my memory serves, before it became more acceptable to shit-talk on immigrants, the border security issue was promoted as more of a keep-out-the-terrorists national security type of thing. And certainly terrorists are still brought up as one of the reasons to secure the border. But what about domestic terrorists?

You have to check out "The Terrorists Who Aren't in the News". This is about the incidents of violence and threats by anti-abortion fanatics, specifically an attack that occurred on September 11, 2006, which has not been reported by the mainstream media.

Turns out the guy that bombed a health clinic on 9/11 this year thought that it provided abortions when it in fact did not, but he basically committed an attempted suicide-bombing by crashing his car into the clinic.

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.

So why is this not important to the news media? I believe this is for two reasons. One, women's lives and choices are undervalued, so attacks on them are less important than attacks on the general public (or even property damage on private businesses). Two, if it does not involve a person of color, it's not as big a threat- it's not worthy of calling terrorism, because it does not contribute to the picture they're trying to paint of terrorists (scary dark-skinned, dark-haired people from other countries) that the public needs to be okay with locking away forever if "need be".

The author of the article, however, leaves out one point which is that earth and animal liberation activists are also considered terrorists and do not necessarily fit the profile of the scary terrorist (usually arab) either. So this is not just about race/nationality. But i suppose another reason that this anti-abortion nut's attack is not valued as a news story is because it doesn't threaten big business like the the earth and animal liberation activists do (more on this, see my friend's article, "The Real Eco-Terrorists").

I think this example highlights the media's purpose as a tool of increasing the public's fear of outsiders and brown people, and of people who dare threaten big business, while ignoring whitey who attacks women and their choices.

I'd like to close with a quote from a speech by Joseph Nevins (which can be found here or here as a pdf) because he said it better than i can...

That migrants are constructed as geographically -- in addition to socio-politically -- outside helps explain why fears about terrorists and criminals from abroad translate into a focus on territorial boundaries to a much greater extent than fears about purveyors of violence from within the United States. Consider, for example, the case of Timothy McVeigh, who, on April 19, 1995, bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 167 people and injuring hundreds more. McVeigh was not from Oklahoma City, nor even from the state of Oklahoma. Indeed, he crossed state boundaries to commit his
crime. Had such movement been restricted, it might have been more difficult for McVeigh to do what he did. Nonetheless, his horrific act did not result in any attempt to restrict movement across state boundaries within the United States. The reason why is clear: he was a U.S. citizen (and a native-born one) with the right to unimpeded travel across national territory. He was not an outsider. He was a white male and a military veteran. He was -- in terms of the dominant perception of what an American looks like -- one of "us." Thus, his crime did not involve a perceived geographical transgression even though movement across space was a key element of his act. Given this perception, territorial security -- at least one conceived in any way similar to that applied along the U.S.-Mexico boundary -- is not the response. In the case of threats -- real or imagined -- emanating from south of the border, however, they are perceived as being primarily territorial in nature and thus necessitate a response involving a build-up of physical boundaries. In other words, the territories from where these dangers come are seen as inherently threatening. It is hardly a coincidence that these menacing areas happen to be places where wealth and income is significantly less than that accumulated in the United States and where the populations are largely non-white. In that regard, the divide and conflict is one between a civilized first world and a barbaric third world.