Freedom Rider

Torturing White America

by BAR Editor Senior Columnist Margaret Kimberley

“Everyone loves torture if the intended victim is brown.”

Anyone who aspires to be even moderately civilized opposes torture. Yet these are not good times for the civilized in America. Objections to acts that were recently considered barbaric are scorned, and met with hypothetical scenarios from movie thrillers.
The argument for debasement usually goes along these lines. Suppose Mohammed Atta was arrested on September 10, 2001 and was suspected of plotting a terror attack. Should he have been tortured? The same question could be asked about Timothy McVeigh. If he had been arrested on April 18, 1995, should he have been tortured? The justification to save lives through torture is rarely raised in his case.
Law school professors like Alan Dershowitz give a hearty “Hell yes” whenever torture is the issue du jour. Most politicians say yes. Hillary Clinton says it's OK in the ticking time bomb movie scenario. "I have said that those are very rare but if they occur there has to be some lawful authority for pursuing that. Again, I think the President has to take responsibility. There has to be some check and balance, some reporting. I don't mind if it’s reporting in a top secret context. But that shouldn’t be the tail that wags the dog, that should be the exception to the rule." To make a long story short, a future President Clinton will gladly give the thumbs up to the thumb screws. If over baked bad movie plots are now the basis of deciding right and wrong, so be it. We need not even look to Hollywood for help. Because America is full of home grown terrorists, there are some real life scenarios that can guide public policy now that civilized behavior has become passé.
“A future President Clinton will gladly give the thumbs up to the thumb screws.”
A Californian named Chad Castagana sent white powder and threatening notes to Jon Stewart, Keith Olbermann, David Letterman, Senator Charles Schumer, and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, among others. His note intended for Jon Stewart read “Do you know Alan Berg? You should. Death to demagogues.” Alan Berg was a Denver talk radio host who was murdered by white supremacists.
The white powder wasn’t anthrax or anything lethal, but it surely was meant to frighten and intimidate the recipients. The letter meant for Jon Stewart that alluded to Berg should clearly have been seen as a death threat. If Dershowitz, Clinton and company are correct, Castagana should have been tortured when he was arrested.
Everyone loves torture if the intended victim is brown. A student at UCLA, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, was stunned five times with a taser when he refused to show ID in a library. Tabatabainejad didn’t threaten anyone, didn’t have a weapon, and was attempting to leave the premises when he was stopped. He got the stun gun treatment anyway.
 Nancy Pelosi was not yet House Speaker when she received Castagana’s missive but she was a leading member of Congress already entitled to Secret Service protection. A threat sent to her or Senator Schumer fits the Patriot Act definition of domestic terrorism:
(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;  
(B) appear to be intended--  
(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping…
 By the new standards of the day, Castagana should have been tortured until he cracked. He didn’t get a taser stun or a whipping with a wet noodle. He is out on bail, walking the streets with the rest of us.
Castagana has plenty of company. Anti-abortion terrorists have been at work for many years using violence and the threat of violence. Since 1977, anti-abortion terrorists have committed 7 murders, 17 attempted murders, 3 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.

“Anti-abortion terrorists have been at work for many years using violence and the threat of violence.”

White terrorist David McMenemy doused his car with gasoline and drove into a women’s health clinic in Davenport, Iowa. He thought the clinic was an abortion provider; it wasn’t, but who has time to research when there is killing to be done. Torturing him may have saved lives. He might have had tales to tell about his violent cohorts. Hopefully someone in law enforcement is working on the rendition orders right now.
McMenemy didn’t even rate news coverage in a major newspaper or television network. White domestic terrorists rarely do. They are in fact encouraged by some in the media. Castagana described his muses this way. “Ann Coulter is a Goddess and I worship Laura Ingraham and Michele Malkin.”
Coulter has advocated murder on more than one occasion. Ingraham encouraged her radio listeners to jam phone lines on election day so that Democrats could not report voting problems. Malkin is a self-hating dark skinned Filipina who thinks that internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was a great idea. All three advocate torturing terror suspects who are Muslim or Arab. Of course, if they truly believe what they say, they would have turned themselves in for a water boarding session. We have to find out if they inspired any other would be killers. It would only be fair. Margaret Kimberleys Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.Com. When sending email, please remember to replace the (at) with @. You can read more of Ms. Kimberley's writings at freedomrider.blogspot.com.