More news on the double-standard front. In March of last year, the feds arrested somebody who had the components for both hand grenades and ricin in his basement. The perp lived in Hyattsville, Md, just a few miles from the DC border:
The manhunt, according to court documents and investigators, led last year to a suburban home in Hyattsville, Md., its basement stocked with parts for makeshift hand grenades and ingredients for ricin, one of the most potent and lethal biological toxins….. has since pleaded guilty to charges of extortion and possession of toxic materials. [NYT]
How deadly is Ricin?
If injected or swallowed, the toxin penetrates the body’s cells. It then knocks out the cells’ protein production machinery, leading to cell death. If ricin is inhaled, acute respiratory collapse occurs as the fragile lining cells of the air passages and lungs are destroyed. Once a person is exposed to ricin, there is no known antidote. Minute quantities of ricin are lethal, and they vanish from the victim’s body in hours with barely a trace, making it a notorious stealth murder weapon. [cite]You’d think this would have been front page news instead of the middle of a long article about cyber extortion in the NYT Magazine. A dangerous criminal was arrested a stone’s through away from the nation’s capital with the precursors to a biological weapon! This guy was more of a threat than Jose Padilla: ricin is more dangerous than a dirty bomb, and he was far closer to creating a WMD than Padilla ever got.
However, this guy wasn’t brown. His name was Myron Tereshchuk. He was a 43 year old white guy, a tech entrepreneur. If his name had been Sandeep Patel, with the same profile and biodata, you can bet that his mug shot would have been plastered all over the evening TV news shows. As is, it got buried below the fold.
Yes, it is true that Tereshchuk was an extortionist not a member of a terror group. While this does make some difference, it’s unclear to me how much. Why were we more scared of the Beltway snipers when we thought they were terrorists rather than extortionists? Aren’t the victims just as dead no matter why? It seems we would be far safer if we worried more about capacity and less about intent when it comes to issues of WMD.
In the end, the lesson is simple. If you’re going to get caught red handed with weapons of mass distruction, reach for the Fair & Lovely.
i don’t follow this stuff as closely as you guys, but wouldn’t be more accurate if the name was “samir pervez” or something like that? my impression is that the mainstream media get’s really embarrassed when the brown is obviously not a muslim. usually, my impression is that there is a misreport about a “middle eastern looking man” and later they announce the name, and if it’s muslim they keep speculating, but if it is a.j. sing or tamil reallonglastname they pretend like they didn’t fuck up but move on….
Razib, I think the bigger problem would that those in the mainstream media don’t really know how to even differentiate the names.
I think the bigger problem would that those in the mainstream media don’t really know how to even differentiate the names.
do you really think so? all of my friends who were raised in large urban areas are quite aware of muslim vs. non-muslim brown distinctions. most national reporters have been abroad, with higher ups spending a lot of time in muslim and non-muslim lands. i can believe that the stringers at the AP might be a little muddled about it….
but in any case, i simply suspect that someone with a muslim name is far more likely to get pulled from the line because their names are likely to be on a “watch list.” ie; imagine a ‘ahmed khan’ on a terrorist watch list, there must be a lot of regular joe muhammed’s with those name combinations.
anyway, a minor point, i don’t know really, just curious other ppl’s opinions on this issue.
The media has already beaten to death the ‘crazy white man’ story. The Unabomber, the overwhelming majority of serial killers, the countless child molesters and murderers who “always seemed like the quiet type” and “usually kept to himself.” But the story of the Muslim man who is a potential terrorist still sells newspapers.
of course, the upside to this story appears to be that while our chattering press classes may sensationalize the Brown Menace, our law enforcement officials don’t seem to suffer as badly.
now, the classic problem that this difference in reportage introduces is that it makes it really hard for us to prove claims of widespread police bias – instead of pursuing brown dudes more harshly than others, perhaps the diff is that we only hear about the brown dude chases more?
Yup, I do. Urban or not, I’ve run into too many people who know very little about differentiating those names. Hell, my name is on an EMAIL address and people still misspell, from very different backgrounds. I have a coworker that I’ve know for 5 years, who’s seen my nameplate, has sent me countless emails and still spells it wrong. I don’t know what kind of poll you could or where, but I bet number of people that easily recognize names, and non necessarily muslim vs non-muslim, I think would score very low.
People and media are affected with what is hot currently.
I’ve hear people (Indians/Muslims) ranting about how they have to go through tedious ‘random’ security checks at aiports as against white men/women.
I wouldn’t blame the countries either, because brown men or ethnic muslims are statistically more likely to be terrorists than caucasians.
This is not rhetoric. It is pure statistics. A great deal of the worlds terrorists have something to do with Islam. Afghan types were the hottest terrorists in the market. Sadly that extended towards the Indian subcontinent and now brown people (Indian, Pakis, Bangladeshis) are in the spotlight and are paying for the sins for some rotten apples amongst them
Thusly, it is easier to pin an ‘evil’ or a ‘terrorist’ tag on a person of middle eastern / south asian / ethnic muslim descent, because recent happenings heavily favor the same.
People aren’t very enthusiastic with the idea of caucasian terrorists. Something tells me Zahir is right
Err, the above “Zahir” was me.
I read Zahir’s comment and absentmindedly keyed in my own name as Zahir
Sorry Folks
Vinod, you and Zahir, have I think pretty hit on the head here. I remeber during the bruhaha about the three medical students that were going to Florida, that the law enforcement officers were telling the media that knew nothing and had no concrete information. Yet in their pursuit of the “muslim terrorist” they didn’t listen and subsequently helped create the hysteria with unsubstantiated claims. I remember listening to Drudge on the Radio (ugh, how awful) how helped pushed some of this crap, and actually taking some of the blame and then saying how awful it was for the media to do what it did – yet never realizing that him and ilk had helped create the media monster that it is today.
Prove it. Where are the statistics.
http://www.terrorism.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=TGroups&file=index
Sluggo,
Just count
Vulturo:
1) That is just a list, and it is a list of all known terroist groups, not just those that are ideologicaly linked to Islam.
2) It’s not statistics.
Do you have the statistical data?
Vulturo, I agree with Sluggo. Besides, try looking past the “A” section on the list. You’ll find a lot fewer Islamic sounding groups.
Sluggo, and VS – I checked all the pages from A to Z before posting that link
A disturbingly high number of world’s terror groups are Moslem backed. That is only common sense. I think you guys have taken political correctness too far
The point I was making is: a) Given that a great deal of Terrorists are Muslims b) The current terrorists in vogue are brown
… The media is obviously influenced.
I was agreeing with Zahir’s point (with which you guys agreed) but at the same time stating that there are statistics to back people’s fears – and the media plays on people’s fears, and will obviously cater to people’s tastes. Everything is not hunky dory in this world.
Razib: my point was that a brown face alone would have sold the story, even if he was also a plain extortionist. You’re right to point out that Muslim guy who’s an extortionist would have sold the story even better, but I’m hunting for necessary conditions and would set the threshold lower than that.
It’s an interesting question you raise and i would believe that there’s some merit to arguments that sensationalism plays a role in coverage because the American media is currently not so great at doing its job.
I’m not sure if you’re implying that there’s structural or deliberate bias on the part of the media, but there’s well documented evidence of pervasive bias in the criminal justice system, from the likelihood of black people to get sentenced to the death penalty to the use of the number of mosques in an area to determine how many FBI counterterrorism resources to allocate in the area. Let alone policies that overtly profile like Special Registration, the Absconder Initiative, Operation LibertyShield, and others (overtly on nationality and immigration status (and in some cases gender), secondarily on ethnicity, class, and perhaps race).
And beyond that, there are all the striking anecdotal examples of police bias–in New York alone, there’s Amadou Diallou, Abner Louima, and the Bangladeshi man who was murdered in May in Brooklyn and the police didn’t bother to take eyewitness testimony down or investigate it really. And of course that scene in Harold and Kumar 🙂
So the burden of proof, if you’re going to make this claim, lies on you to show that either a) there’s systematic bias in the media that makes it likely they underreport law enforcement abuses against White people/citizens/straight people/poor people/criminals/etc. or b) law enforcement operates fairly.
Ennis, a few months ago, a white guy from Pennsylvania made the news (tv and papers) when he was arrested in Houston for trying to sell his services for making explosives. He was not brown, though the story had an Al-Qaeda affiliation.
Hope this story sets the threshold lowered. Although, I, too, am surprised that the ricin incident has not garnered more attention.
Let’s not forget why Padilla made such a big splash despite such flimsy evidence – it’s because the Feds called a national press conference about his arrest. Now consider Tereshchuk – I’m pretty sure they didn’t get the A.G. on national TV to talk about him, did they?
If we see bias in the media’s coverage of crime, one place to look might be the government’s efforts to publicize the cases.
First of all, media is all hype and hoopla and whats hot for the hour (as mentioned by some earlier). Secondly, it servs what the majority wants to read. And what majority wants to read is that there are more brown/muslims/al-queda linked terrorist arrested for with explosives with grand plan of attacking this country than a psycho white guy molesting a child.
Though I would not want to justify this attitude, I think I understand the reasons behind it.
Nothing new here. Please move on.
Well the way global society is nowadays governments and armies are no longer the first line of defence. It’s odd though, almost reminiscent of the Middle Ages when battles and wars were localised.
Squared:
This isn’t a white guy molesting a kid, it’s a white guy building WMD, basically in DC.
As a nation, we’re worried about WMD and terror right?
Shouldn’t we worry about all people who are building such weapons?
I apologise again. The wrong post was deleted. Please delete #22 instead. The full post is below. Thanks!
Agree with Razib. Most Americans think that Hindu-Muslim relations are analogous to Jew-Muslim relations India-Israel vs Pak-Palestine. They may not know the nuances of the problems or the finer points of hinduism, but DO think that hindus and muslims dont get along well with each other. At least thats how the media has portrayed the issue (and thankfully so). I do whatever I can to project a very Indian perspective to the Kashmir problem and get as many converts as possible. 🙂 And seeing what radical muslims are doing around the world, the convincing has been rather easy. So, bottom line is – the Americans are increasingly understanding the wide schism (real or imagined) between Hindus and Muslims. And therefore, Americans are intelligent enough to understand the differences in the names.
Non sequitur. Plus I don’t buy your premise that much, especially when Sikhs and Hindus are continually attacked, assaulted, verbally abused, etc.
Nobody contests that a lot of the world’s terrorist organizations are Muslim in make-up. Maybe even the majority.
The point is that the media circus around them loses sight of other dangerous groups and people. That is not only unfair to suspected Muslims, but is also unsafe.
Its sort of similar to the profiling issue. The problem lies when all the hypes goes around correlating Muslim/Brown with Terrorist.
There is no differentiation between Muslim and Brown in popular culture and to a lesser extent, the media. This leads to 2 unhappy results:
A) Browns get undue and unfair scrutiny and suspicion, whether Muslim, Al-Qaeda, Hindu, Sikh, Atheist or whatever.
B) It leads to a MORE unsafe situation because non-brown terrorists (such as the dude in DC) pass under the nation’s radar. And calling him a mere extortionist is a big time eupehmism. Point is he wanted to spread terror. So what if it was for money.
The guy in PA is just another example of the media fixation on browns, I certainly heard nothing about him, and the link is to a cached verion of some podunk online paper. Certainly not the same level of scrutiny that went on the desi arms dealer who was caught in a similar way.
Vulturo, although we agree on media problems, you have made some diametrically opposing statements.
Your initial statement:
When I asked you to prove it, you linked to a web site that just showed a listing of all known terrorist groups. Your opposing statement to more provable statistics was:
It’s not political correctness to ask you to prove what you stated – that was there are statistics that prove a majority of terrorist groups are linked ideologically to Islam.
It’s not a given because you haven’t proved it. What your saying is much of what we are saying in terms of how much of the media ‘hypes’ up the Islam=Terrorist angle these days. In the last four years terrorism has surged much more than the last 40 years, a majority of it in Eurasia, Asia, and S. America. Yet none of these are reported in the media (at least not in the US) unless said terrorist ares not linked somehow to Islam.
And now comes your diametrically opposing statement:
You can’t have it both ways.
No kidding Sherlock. It wasn’t 10 secs ago, 1 day ago, 1 week ago, 1 month ago, 1 year ago, 10 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 500 years ago, 1000 Year ago, 5000 Year ago, 1 million year ago……and it never will be, get used to it.