roundtable: Bombs-R-Us
roundtable: Bombs-R-Us
Bombs-R-Us
Vigdor Schreibman - FINS (fins@access.digex.net)
Mon, 16 Jun 1997 11:44:47 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 11:44:47 -0400 (EDT)
From: Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>
To: roundtable@cni.org
Subject: Bombs-R-Us
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.96.970616114258.10419C-100000@access2.digex.net>
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FINS: Communicating the Emerging Philosophy of The Information Age
FEDERAL INFORMATION NEWS SYNDICATE
Vol V, Issue No. 11 (165 lines) June 16, 1997
CLOSING THE "VALUES-GAP":
Bombs-R-Us
By Vigdor Schreibman
The "Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum," is constructed on
the Web. URL: http://www.mnsinc.com/SkyWriter/WacoMuseum.
This website depicts in great documented detail, the barbaric
fate of the religious community called Branch Davidians
located near Waco, Texas. The story is of especial relevance
to an understanding of the subsequent bombing of the Alfred P.
Murrah Federal Building, in Oklahoma City.
As depicted at the Waco Museum, the incident began with a
military-style raid of the Branch Davidian compound, on
February 28, 1993, complete with helicopter gunships. Then
followed a 51 day siege. Finally, on April 19, the US
government sent tanks to GAS the building where the people
lived. The tanks drove into the house, and knocked down whole
sections of the building. A fire broke out as the tanks were
driving about. The fire became an inferno, lasted 40 minutes
and burned the house to the ground. Approximately 80 men,
women, children, and babies died in the flames including 4
agents of the US Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) (reportedly working undercover!).
Expressing their outrage, the Waco Museum charges that, "By
this crime, the US government proclaimed itself to be the
enemy of the people. When the executive branch of government
turns to murdering the citizens, what redress do the citizens
have? Who will arrest and try a murderous general, and who
will arrest and try a murderous attorney general?"
A grisly response to those questions came on April 19, 1995,
the second anniversary of the inferno at the Davidian
compound. On that day a Ryder rental truck armed with home-
made explosives drove up and detonated a terrorist bomb attack
on the Murrah Building, at Oklahoma City, where many federal
offices were housed. One-hundred-sixty-eight people were
killed. Hundreds more were injured.
Timothy McVeigh, a 29-year Persian Gulf war veteran with
good military record and an excellent reputation among family
and childhood friends, was convicted of the Oklahoma bombing,
June 2, after a 5-week trial. On June 13, McVeigh was
condemned to death by lethal injection.
Prosecutors asserted that McVeigh was driven to bomb the
Murrah Building, in retaliation for the 80 Davidian deaths.
The death penalty was sought by the prosecutors against
McVeigh, in retaliation for the 168 Oklahoma deaths. Although
McVeigh pleaded "not guilty" to the charge, during the
sentencing phase of the trial, McVeigh's lawyers tried to
spare McVeigh from the death penalty by arguing that the
outrage he felt over Waco motivated the bombing, maintaining
that it was a "political" crime. The jury rejected that
plea, subject to legal appeals yet to come.
One renown constitutional scholar has already raised doubts
about the adequacy of the trial defense. The Washington Post,
June 14, quoted Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz in a
post-sentencing comment. "This was an awful, awful defense
... His lawyers seemed to be more interested in their own
reputations," Dershowitz observed.
After being condemned to death by the jury, McVeigh mouthed
the reassuring words, "it's okay," to his family. He then
also gave a small wave of three fingers to the seven-man,
five-woman jury, as marshals escorted him from the courtroom.
Next up on the docket comes the trial of a Harvard-educated
mathematician, Ted Kaczynski, identified as "the Unabomber" in
a hand written manifesto, "Industrial Society and Its Future."
URL: http://www.pathfinder.com/pathfinder/features/unabomber/
index.html. The Unabomber claims that the industrial-
technological system in which we live is a social,
psychological and environmental "disaster for the human race."
He calls for a popular, "revolution against technology."
Kaczynski claims responsibility, in the manifesto, for
killing 3 and injuring 23 others by mail bombs, sent over a
period of sixteen years. He described his bitter resentment
of "the way techno-nerds ... are changing the world," in a
letter to one of his victims, Dr. David Gelernter, professor
of computer sciences at Yale University, who suffered
extensive wounds to his abdomen, chest, face and hands in the
June 1993 bombing. Ironically, Gelernter agrees with the
Unabomber's basic complaint. Gelernter described in an
interview, the likely "cultural and intellectual disaster,"
stemming from computer glitz [Fins-NC4-24].
At the heart of this looming "disaster," is the "Knowledge/
information age," which paradoxically, is largely without any
collective inquiry and action designed to foster, "Knowledge
Organization for the Betterment of Humankind." My article on
that topic was selected by the International Federation of
Library Associations, Universal Dataflow and Telecommunica-
tions Core Programme (IFLA UDT Occasional Paper) (April 1997).
<URL:http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/ifla/VI/5/op/index.htm>.
The actions of the Unabomber and the Oklahoma bomber were
appalling, acts of terrorism, but also expressions of
political outrage demanding redress from the violence and
political abuse by the governing powers. Moreover, these
bombing incidents were not merely isolated events. Explosives
incidents have been rising sharply during the past decade,
according to official reports. Improvement in the moral
integrity of the governing forces, not just more police, are
essential prescriptions for a viable response.
At the end of the Cold War, starting in 1989 with the
Russian troop cut in Eastern Europe, citizens anticipated a
turn toward rejuvenation of the social fabric, which was all
but abandoned during the half-century of East-West rivalry.
Instead, American political leaders and their industrial
clients have turned to a war against the people.
The United States Government now has a harsh and unworkable
welfare reform policy, a nasty surplus labor strategy, an
obscene distribution of income, an unjust crime strategy, and
an unsustainable environmental policy [Fins-NC5-05,07]. This
new public policy is designed to insure economic supremacy,
while disregarding the essential interdependence between the
economic, social, and ecological components of reality.
The legal and economic consequences of human transactions
cannot be disconnect from the larger, spiritual or natural
sources from which they spring. Despite contrary claims under
the fictions of law and economics, "We can have no true moral
judgment except as we live our life with others." Citizens
cannot be expected to compliantly sit on their heels in the
face of murderous conduct against their brothers, or impending
technological disasters; particularly, when the sovereign
democratic powers of the people have been usurped by
privileged groups to lock the needs of the people out.
What this all adds up to is the immutable fact that, "The
power to shape the world does not derive ultimately from
rulers or their monopoly of the means of violence," as
Australian John Keane wrote in his biography of Tom Paine,
published in 1995. Instead, Keane observed,
Rulers surrounded by spies, police, jurists, tax
collectors, generals, and administrators cannot rule
for very long. Power ultimately emanates from below.
Rulers can rule only insofar as they have the tacit or
active support of the ruled. Without it, they become
impotent in the face of citizens acting together in
solidarity for the achievement of their own common goals.
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PEOPLE POWER * RISE UP LIKE LIONS AFTER SLUMBER * WE ARE MANY, THEY ARE FEW
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Federal Information News Syndicate, Vigdor Schreibman, Editor & Publisher,
18 - 9th Street NE #206, Washington, DC 20002-6042. Copyright 1997 FINS.
Internet: fins@access.digex.net. Browse Fins Information Age Library at the
inforM system of the University of Maryland HTTP://www.inform.umd.edu/FINS/.
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