Anti-Abortion Terrorists Still Allowed To Operate in the U.S.

It seems that the “War On Terrorism” really isn't, or is even more selective and hypocritical than that other excuse for political repression and convenient cover for various covert agendas, the “War On Drugs.”

Now an anti-abortion terrorist assassin is being allowed to incite murder from inside prison.

As always in matters involving terrorism (or so-called “terrorism” we should say when referring to protesters, activists, dissidents, and scholars branded with the label) the U.S. displays the most blatant double-standards, hypocrisy, and bad faith. Here we have yet another example of all that, thrown right in our faces.

Scott Roeder is a convicted political assassin currently instigating murder from inside a state prison in Kansas. Roeder is the hitman who assassinated Dr. George Tiller inside Tiller's church, shooting him dead in front of a full house of Tiller's fellow parishioners (he obviously wasn't worried about witnesses) in Wichita in 2009. Roeder (and his terrorist comrades) is now making death threats against the director of the recently reopened clinic he shut down by murdering Tiller. Roeder even targets the clinic director, Julie Burkhart, by name, turning her name into a slur- with a bit of projection I might add, a common psychological tic in reactionaries- calling her “Julie Darkheart” and saying menacingly that she is "kind of painting a target on her[self]." (Nice; blame the next victim for her own impending murder.)

Here's what else Roeder had to say:

     "To walk in there and reopen a clinic, a murder mill, where — where a man was

     stopped, you know, it’s almost like putting a target on your back, saying, 'Well, let's

     see if you can shoot me,’ you know? But, you know, I have to go back to what Mike —

     Pastor Mike Bray [1] said: If 100 abortionists were shot, they would probably go out of business. 

     So I think eight have been shot, so we’ve got 92 to go. And maybe she’ll be —

     maybe she’ll be number nine."

“A man was stopped;” i.e. Roeder murdered George Tiller, some nameless “man.” And those horrible abortionists are taunting the terrorists, “'let's see if you can shoot me,' you know?” says Roeder, imputing a death wish to the next designated victim. Why, those abortionists are just asking for it! Didn't they get OUR message from the previous murders? We want you to stop performing abortions! Do what we demand or we'll have no choice but to murder you. Sounds like any Islamofascist terrorist, doesn't it? Do what we want or we'll kill you. Roeder and his terrorist accomplices don't even feel the need to hide the identity of the Imam- I mean Pastor- egging them on to commit political murders. (Guess how long a Muslim religious leader would be allowed to walk the streets if he spoke like this.) And exactly like their Islamofascist ilk, these “Christians” claim divine religious and moral authority for their murders.

But this is fine with the state of Kansas and the U.S. Government. A terrorist assassin can openly goad his fellow terrorists to kill a named target, as long as it's a terrorist with a politically-approved goal, in this case the termination of abortion rights, the basic human right for more than half the population to control one's own body.

But wait, there's more. The anti-abortion terrorists are so emboldened by the liberal attitude of the state of Kansas and the Federal government towards them that they recorded the terroristic threats of the convict Roeder and posted them online on their own website. The local anti-abortion terrorist leader who did this apparently has no fear of prosecution, since he feels no need to hide his identity. Roeder also names an anti-abortion Holy Man (“Pastor Mike”) as an inciter of terrorism. That also would be used as evidence of conspiracy if the U.S. were inclined to enforce its own “anti-terrorism” laws and the law “protecting” clinics and providers. But the first of those laws are intended as political clubs against designated enemies domestic and foreign, the second as a sop to the part of the duped Democratic “base” that cares about women's rights, indeed the human right to be free of compulsory childbirth.

This isn't the first example of how anti-abortion terrorists are allowed to openly organize and instigate terrorist murders. There was- still is for all I know- a website death list of abortion providers with their names and addresses and other useful information for assassins. Whenever one was murdered, his name would be left on the list with a line crossed through it. Get the message?

The U.S. and state governments refused to lift a finger against this either. Instead it was left to terror victims to sue the terrorists by bringing a civil lawsuit against them. Of course, the terrorists claimed they were only innocently exercising their “right of free speech.” (Anti-abortion zealot Nat Hentoff took the terrorists' side with his usual excoriating arm-twisting sophistry, bludgeoning the victims of impending murder as awful free speech violators and shredders of the Bill of Rights. Over his career he has often taken the reactionary side in various controversies and painted it in civil liberties colors, spreading confusion with his ideological jui-jitsu. He also acted to disrupt and sabotage the ACLU from within. But that's another story that will have to wait its turn to be told.)

Roeder, shortly before he was allowed to murder Dr. Tiller, was caught red-handed by a clinic worker gluing the locks to their doors. Roeder was known to them. He'd been harassing and threatening them for some time, along with his terrorist collegues. The clinic reported this latest violation of the Federal clinic “protection” law to the local FBI agent. The agent brushed them off and told them it was a matter for the local county prosecutor, a known ally of the anti-abortionists. Of course enforcing Federal law is a Federal responsibility.

So just as the FBI aided and abetted the KKK by looking the other way when they committed their terrorism, so does the FBI studiously fail to enforce Federal law against anti-abortion terrorists.

To head off any possible embarrassment after the assassination, immediately following the murder of Tiller the image-obsessed FBI planted simultaneous puff pieces about themselves in both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. (This is an old police trick. The NYPD did the same thing to divert the NY Times from pursuing a negative story about them by planting that bogus tale about the murder of Kitty Genovese (that falsely painted her neighbors as indifferent bystanders) with A.M .Rosenthal, a notorious propagandist. Thus was born a zombie myth that can't be killed. [See “The Witnesses That Didn't,” transcript or audio, On The Media radio show, WNYC.] (2)

And the terrorist Roeder is not only allowed to communicate freely from within prison, he is allowed to goad people to commit more murders.

Contrast that with the treatment meted out to people the U.S. labels terrorists, which it refuses to do with anti-abortion terrorists. (The anti-abortion terrorists may not be terrorist, but the Occupy Movement is, says the FBI.) Consider the case of the “blind Egyptian sheik,” Omar Abdel-Rahman. Or rather, that of his former attorney.

It isn't enough to satisfy the U.S. to hold Abdel-Rahman incommunicado for life. The U.S. imprisoned his lawyer, Lynne Stewart, on a ten year sentence, for circumventing the blockade of her client by passing a press release to Reuters, with a message aimed at his followers in Egypt, to reconsider their “truce” with the U.S. client dictator and torturer, Hosni Mubarak. (Since overthrown, no thanks to the U.S.) Stewart is now being left to die of cancer in a U.S. dungeon in Texas. Her crime? “Conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism.” (3)

Meanwhile Roeder is allowed to call for the murder of an abortion clinic manager. And there won't be any prosecutions or ten year stretches in the pen for the terrorist leaders and Christian Holy Men for passing his message on to domestic terrorists, not to mention for openly inciting murders and bombings right here inside the U.S. Meanwhile, the terrorists work their way down their list of 100 murder victims.

Let's see if they now even block Roeder from continuing to incite murder from within prison, or so much as restrict his privileges in any way.

And what do you suppose the Federal and local “authorities” will do to protect Burkhart, the one “with a target on her back”? Why, they'll go and warn her that her life “may be” in danger. As if she doesn't know that. And then they'll leave this part unspoken: You're on your own, toots.

Thanks a million, officer.

Roeder's threat in and of itself is evidence of conspiracy and intent, a clear piece of evidence of a premeditated, calculated plan to murder 100 abortion providers for the political purpose of ending abortion by violence. Yet this is allowed in the U.S. Contrast that with the man recently sentenced to 17 years in prison for translating Al-Qaeda statements he accessed online, and only for doing that, not for any “links” or “connections to” Al-Qaeda, which weren't even alleged by the Government.

What's that you say? That's different? Al-Qaeda terrorists threaten the lives of millions of Americans? That's a bit of an exaggeration. Al-Qaeda threatens the lives of millions of Americans the same way that lightning threatens the lives of millions of Americans- as something that might theoretically strike anyone. But anti-abortion terrorists do impinge on the rights of millions, and are now threatening to end those rights for millions. That is actually a far more substantial threat than what Al-Qaeda poses to people in America. (4)

But it's not just the destruction of the rights of over a hundred million people that is the political goal of the anti-abortion terrorists. Anyone forced to get an illegal abortion is at significant risk of death. So in actual fact millions of lives will be put at some risk when these terrorists achieve their goal, and thousands of women will die if- or when- the anti-abortionists achieve their victory through terror.

There have been countless acts of terrorism against abortion clinics and workers over the past few decades. Almost none have ever been prosecuted. There are many more acts of intimidation, and even more of harassment, and against patients too.

The State government of Kansas happens to be controlled by anti-abortionists. And the anti-abortion movement and its terrorist wing shelters under the protection of right-wing Protestantism. Christianity is politically powerful in America, just as Islam is powerful in other countries. Indeed, many of these Christians overtly lay claim on the right to control America, claiming that it is a “Christian” country, that the Christian nature of the U.S. is embedded in the U.S. Constitution. (It isn't, but no amount of pointing this out stops these fanatics from bellowing this falsehood as undisputed fact. As Reagan once said in a convention speech, “facts are stupid things.” It is higher ideological “truth” that matters and that trumps mere facts every time.) Apparently envious of their counterparts in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and increasingly Israel, they are trying to turn the U.S. into a theocracy- using as cover claims of “religious freedom” and spurious history about the foundation of the U.S.

Nor is the attack on women's right to control their own bodies an isolated case of an establishment-sponsored reactionary “backlash” (recrudescence of “popular” repression). Rather, it is one of the clearest examples of the establishment's assiduous attempts to roll back the human rights gains in the U.S.- gains that came about as a result of social resistance and ferment over roughly ten years from the early 1960s to the early 1970s. The ongoing assault on abortion rights has been aided and abetted by the U.S. establishment every step of the way. It has always thrown its weight behind the anti-abortionists and left those providing the service out on a limb, isolated and alone. The very fact that abortion, a medical procedure, is forced to be provided in stand-alone clinics, instead of in hospitals or gynecologists' offices, sets it apart from the medical establishment (which is totally craven about abortion) and makes it vulnerable to attack by anti-abortion fanatics.

The anti-abortion movement and its terrorist wing has been very successful in gradually strangling abortion rights in the U.S. 48 out of 50 states now have fewer abortion providers than in 1978- 35 years ago, when the U.S. population was considerably smaller. And the number of physicians and clinics providing abortions have fallen by 25 percent since the 1990s. Some states are down to a single abortion provider in the entire state, such as Mississippi and North Dakota, which are repressive states to begin with. The providers in those states are in their death throes as their GOP state governments strangle them with anti-Roe laws and regulations.

Now that the Republican Party has seized control of the majority of state governments, they have saddled women with scores of repressive laws designed to make obtaining abortions more onerous and to drive clinics out of business. Planned Parenthood, most of whose activities consists in providing vital gynecological and cancer screening for poor women (since the feckless state and Federal governments refuse to serve the needs of the people they reign over) is under fierce assault in primitive states such as Texas, including having its funding cut off.

The anti-abortion movement is buttressed by the backing of the GOP, the Catholic Church, fundamentalist Protestant ministries and organizations, right-wing democrats, and looked on with sympathy by the reactionary-dominated secret police and corporate media.

Publicly the establishment media either poses as a disinterested bystander in the losing struggle to defend abortion rights (while hiding and minimizing the viciousness of the assault) or openly acts as megaphones for anti-abortion propaganda in the case of “conservative” (i.e. openly reactionary) media mouthpieces. Politicians basically can be grouped into three camps: reactionaries who rabidly oppose abortion rights; jellyfish who are indifferent and basically float on the prevailing political tide (the corporate media obfuscate the nature of this type of pol by mislabeling them “moderates,” a meaningless term that implies reasonableness with the implication of unreasonableness by “extremes” to the “left” and right of the “moderates”); and a small group from areas with large constituencies who oppose state-enforced childbearing, typically tagged as “liberals,” which in U.S. political discourse has been turned into an epithet thanks to 30 years of intentional political propaganda by the corporate oligarchy's media.

A clear example of the establishment's support for anti-abortionists is the permissive attitude of the power structure towards the terrorism of the anti-abortionists. The terrorists are allowed free rein until they actually murder someone. Then only a single individual is ever imprisoned- the triggerman. Most of the time they aren't sentenced to death. The network of co-conspirators and supporters who aid and abet and harbor the murderers is never touched. They aren't prosecuted. They aren't hauled before Grand Juries (at least that I've ever seen reported) and forced to divulge what they know. They aren't infiltrated (that we know of, and we probably would by now). No conspiracy cases are brought.

In short, no attempt is made to quash the anti-abortion terrorist movement. (5) It's activities are largely ignored by both the corporate media and the police. Instead the people who do the screaming outside clinics is presented to us as a morally committed “pro-life” movement.

Speaking of incitement, the noxious demagogue Bill O'Reilly, one of the creatures in the Murdoch-Ailes stable of braying agit-propagandists, spent the week before Tiller's assassination instigating his murder by calling him a murderer. (Ever notice how fascists and reactionaries are constantly inverting reality, and also projecting onto others the traits and behavior of themselves they wish to disown?) (6)

The coddling of the terrorist arm of the anti-abortion movement isn't unique. Anti-abortion terrorists aren't the only U.S.-protected terrorists who are A-OK because the U.S. approves their cause- the “anti-Castro” CIA-mentored Cuban exile fascist terrorists based in Florida and parts of New Jersey are another notorious example.

Or take the KKK, out of favor lately, which was allowed to operate for decades and involved in the execution of several thousand blacks who were lynched or murdered in “vigilante” violence. (Since when are sheriffs, their deputies, and state and local government officials, who were all involved with Klan terrorism and were even members of the Klan, “vigilantes”? This is governmental action, state terrorism, hiding behind the hoods of the Klan, a convenient terrorist front organization.)

Seems that state sponsored or coddled terrorism, domestic terrorism, is a U.S. habit. And that's leaving aside U.S. sponsorship of state terrorism abroad in Indonesia (Suharto), the Phillippines (Marcos), Iran under the Shah, Nicaragua under Somoza, Pinochet in Chile, Guatemala since 1954, Argentina, El Salvador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Peru...the list can cause the eyes to glaze over. That's the trouble. It's so much to absorb, to learn about, that there's too much information to crack the wall of chauvinistic propaganda that most Americans have built into their brains. Let's stick to what happens within the citadel walls of the U.S. empire.

I wonder why the “alternative” media does not make these connections, highlight these obvious contradictions and blatant double-standards, and denounce the establishment for its de facto support of actual domestic terrorism? Making people aware of aspects of reality they are unconscious of is what we call consciousness-raising. And consciousness-raising is the first step in forcing real change in the benighted heartland of this evil empire.

If the alternative media actually wants to change things, it needs to engage in consciousness-raising in a systematic way. Not just try to “make a difference,” a namby-pamby pseudo-goal that bespeaks a craven fear of the power establishment. (“Don't worry, we don't really want to change anything. We just want to make a tiny mark of a palliative sort that no one will object to”- no one except fanatical reactionaries of course, those barking ideological junkyard guard-dogs of “free market” capitalism- i.e. anything-goes capitalism.)

Until there is a rekindling of militancy, the terrorists, their reactionary backers, and most of all the establishment power structure, will continue to inexorably squeeze abortion rights (and all our other basic human rights) until those rights are snuffed out entirely. The key element that is missing here is the outrage and militancy and commitment to fight that gained the advances in human rights in the first place. An attitude change on the part of activists and as broad a section of the public that can be aroused is step one. One has to get angry first.

1) I needn't say anything about the Holy Man's name- Bray. I'm sure he does what his name indicates. A novelist might pick that perfect name for such a character.

2) But maybe the FBI simply has its hands full trolling for angry, naïve, not too bright young men from Islamic backgrounds who they can groom and goad for a year until they inveigle them into “terrorist conspiracies” with FBI undercover agents and informers, create an FBI theater piece with a fake bomb and detonator as props, hand it to their pigeon, and arrest the angry young fool as a “jihadist terrorist” with a splashy announcement in the media. There go those intrepid G-Men again, protecting America from attack! I'm so grateful, aren't you? Interestingly, those little political theater productions are getting increasingly tepid reviews from the corporate media.

3) Before some nitpicker argues that I'm an idiot who doesn't understand the difference between the Federal Government and a state government like Kansas, and that Stewart is a Federal case and Roeder a state case, three points: Roeder committed a Federal crime too when he murdered Tiller, and could have been prosecuted under Federal law. (And still could be- the statute of limitations for many Federal crimes is ten years. And no, double jeopardy doesn't apply for charging someone for the same act in both state and Federal courts. The Supreme Court settled that issue years ago. And it happens. For example, after the acquittal on state charges of the Los Angeles cops who brutally beat Rodney King and were videoed doing it- the only reason they were charged- there was a major riot lasting several days, and the LAPD ran off the streets with their tails between their legs. This political situation forced the Federal government to then prosecute the cops, and they were convicted. Maybe women need to riot over this? Oops! Watch my mouth! The Federal Government will indict me for “incitement.” Not Roeder, not Bray, not any of the anti-abortion terrorists.) But don't expect the Obama regime to take any action. Obama doesn't give a rat's ass about abortion rights. He'd rather persecute whistleblowers and cut Social Security- and cozy up the GOP, if only they'd let him.

Secondly, most if not all states did what the Federal Government did, and used the 9/11/01 attacks as a golden opportunity to pass yet more repressive legislation, hopping on the “War on Terror”^TM bandwagon and eagerly following in Congress' footsteps with their very own “anti-terrorism” laws. Kansas no doubt has these. Thirdly, no American prison authorities anywhere are helpless to punish and control prisoners even for doing nothing, much less for instigating felonies while in custody.

The larger point of course is that some terrorism doesn't count as terrorism, some terrorists are allowed to operate, whereas other political tendencies (including violent ones) are prosecuted as “terrorism” even when they're wholly non-violent, or the “violence” consists of arson or even mere vandalism. Roeder and his comrades meet even the ostensible U.S. definition of terrorism, namely politically-motivated violence intended to affect people's or Government's behavior. The political motive is overt. And the goal here is stated quite openly- to permanently force the closing of abortion clinics by violence. Legally it would be a slam dunk for prosecutors. Law is not the reason these terrorists are allowed such leeway. Politics and ideology is.

4) As it gets harder and harder to press people's panic buttons by flashing an image of a burning World Trade Center tower in front of their faces for the ten zillionth time, there's always that surefire tactic of invoking “weapons of mass destruction” to make Al-Qaeda seem very very scary. Or should I say, “WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION!!” By the way, the FBI just entrapped an American who was fighting the Assad regime in Syria for “using a weapon of mass destruction” there- a rocket propelled grenade. So hold on to your wallet when you hear that term.

And since Al-Qaeda is this diabolical global menace, it thus follows that it's very words must be suppressed, by force, including harsh imprisonment for unauthorized disseminators of those words, because all of us must be prevented from hearing what they think, be prevented from understanding them better (understanding is NOT the same as “condoning” “supporting” “sympathizing with” etc., much less siding with or joining, contrary to what the secret police, delegated to monitor us, believe) lest a few people exposed to those words agree with them and even attempt to join their cause. The U.S. insist on this. And their word is law, literally, enforced by a massive police state.

And it's not just Al-Qaeda's words that are dangerous to touch. So are the Taliban's. And Hamas'. Also Hezbollah's. And those of various Iranian state bodies. And of “associated forces” (whoever they are, and you won't know until you're indicted, arrested, and imprisoned for quoting the wrong one). Oh, and the FARC's. And whoever else the U.S. doesn't like today, and puts on the “terrorist” shitlist, even if they're secretly negotiating with them (Taliban) or will hail tomorrow (MEK, ANC, for two examples of ex-terrorist organizations, formerly the blackest of evil people, now given a clean bill of health by the U.S.). Or, for that matter, current puppet outfits like the PLO, who were “terrorists” until they were turned into stooges of the U.S. and Israel.

Of course you'll still be in prison anyway. So be careful who you quote or translate. Be very very careful! Why, they might even indict you for quoting yesterday someone they put on the list today.

“Can they do that?” They've made much bigger stretches than that, my friend, when they target someone.

5) While turning a benevolent blind eye to the thuggery and terrorism of the anti-abortion movement, the establishment has proven quite motivated to crush the Occupy Movement, the black militant movement, the Puerto Rican independence movement, and going farther back in time, the anarchist movement, the opposition to World War I, the socialist movement, the Industrial Workers of the World, the attempts to crush the labor organizing movement, the civil rights movement, the anti-slavery movement, and whatever other movements I left out. They seem to be able to squelch even sizable movements when they want to, much less terrorist gangs.

6) While Bill O'Reilly can freely incite murder, protesters considered leftists (aka “terrorists” in police and secret police lingo) are routinely arrested on spurious “incitement” charges. Incitement to violence, incitement to disorderly conduct, incitement to littering, anything will do, and does, as an excuse to break up political opposition through fraudulent arrests.

Of course, O'Reilly and his co-conspirators Murdoch and Ailes are “protected” by the First Amendment, unlike Occupy Movement demonstrators, or anti-G8 or anti-World Trade Organization or anti-NATO protesters. O'Reilly et al have First Amendment “rights.” Actually, that's wrong. They have First Amendment privileges. If it was a right, the protesters would have them too.