The Mysteries of History (February 26 Edition)
1993 WTC Bombing; Trayvon Martin / Black Lives Matter
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana, 1905
1993 — World Trade Center Bombing
public domain images from wikimedia commons
On this date in 1993, almost twenty years before “9/11,” the World Trade Center was bombed. Six people were killed and thousands were injured when a group of international thugs exploded a bomb in the bowels of the World Trade Center in New York City.
Not only was the act evil, it was also illogical, irrational, and unjust. After all, is it right — is it excusable or justifiable — to kill “innocent bystanders” because you’re angry with the government under which they live? That would be like soccer fans assaulting spectators cheering on a particular team just because they identify with the other collection of athletes — even though the players they so vehemently “defend” don’t know and probably don’t care to know them, and may not care at all about these rabid “sports enthusiasts,” except that they continue to buy tickets and jerseys to keep them wealthy. Oh, wait, some soccer fanatics and hooligans do act that way towards each other sometimes. But isn’t it blatantly childish?; no, strike that, it’s not childish, it’s mannish. It’s grown men who are usually the perpetrators of such inanities and atrocities as soccer riots and bombings of buildings, not children — and usually not females of any age, either.
Hurting others is not right, and it makes no sense. Getting back specifically to the bombing: What did the violent extremists accomplish? Nothing positive, and even from the perspective of those terrorists behind the despicable act, all they did was make themselves infamous and a stench to all decent people — and all save possibly one of the main participants in the terrorist attack are spending the last years of their lives in prison. The fools sacrificed themselves for nothing! One of them was even enough of a doofus to get himself caught by going back for the $400 deposit he had put on a vehicle used in the attack (the police, of course, were waiting for the lamebrain).
Even the “mastermind” of the attack was careless enough to leave a computer behind in the Philippines which had information on it that implicated him.
Only one of the several men thought to be directly involved in the attack has apparently not yet been captured by U.S. authorities, but even if the miscreant is still alive, he probably lives on chill pills and Pepto Bismol because he has to look over his shoulder everywhere he goes, never knowing whether the current day will be his last, or at least his last as a free man (if he even is a free man, that is, since there are reports of him being held as a prisoner by the Iraqi government).
The following is what I wrote about the 1993 WTC bombing almost twenty years ago, in my book “Still Casting Shadows: A Shared Mosaic of U.S. History — Volume 2: 1914-2006”:
A little after noon on February 26th, in an eerie foreshadowing of an even more catastrophic event that would take place eight years later, thousands of workers were trapped in stalled elevators or had to flee down smoke-filled stairs.
Ramzi Yousef had filled a rented van with twelve hundred pounds of high explosives and parked it next to a concrete wall in the bowels of the World Trade Center. Yousef’s intent was to blow up and take down the entire World Trade Center complex. The monsters behind the attack had wanted to knock one tower into the other and kill everyone in both buildings. In fact, Yousef admitted after being captured in the Philippines two years later that he had hoped to kill 250,000 civilians in the attack.
Yousef and his accomplices failed in that grotesque and grandiose endeavor, but nevertheless killed six and wounded more than a thousand.
In a letter to The New York Times, the “Liberation Army” claimed responsibility and stated that the bombing was in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel. The missive demanded changes in American foreign policy in the Middle East. If the demands were ignored, more terrorist attacks would take place against American targets, in the U.S. and elsewhere.
In a second letter sent by the so-called “Liberation Army,” the writer stated:
Unfortunately, our calculations were not very accurate this time…However, we promise you that next time it will be very precise, and the World Trade Center will continue to be one of our targets in the U.S., unless our demands are met.
Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy rightly ripped into Yousef at the time of his sentencing: “Ramzi Yousef, … Your God is death … I must say that as an apostle of evil, you have been most effective.”
Thankfully, not as effective as he had hoped to be. And Yousef is now completely impotent, no longer in a situation to harm anyone. He is now caged in a Supermax prison near the small town of Florence, in the Colorado Rockies—in fact in the most secure prison in the U.S. Among Yousef’s “neighbors” are Unabomber Ted Kaczynksi [died 6/10/2023], Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols, and—until he was executed on June 11th, 2001—Nichols’ co-conspirator, Timothy McVeigh.
At the top, on the far right, is my paternal grandfather, Theodore Roosevelt Shannon (1902-1979) with two employees of his gyppo logging outfit to his right; at the bottom is my maternal grandfather, Albert Lee Benjamin Kollenborn (1907-1984)
Questions: How many of the men arrested for their involvement in the bombing are still alive? Do you think they consider the “fruits” of their diabolical actions to be worth the whirlwind that they have reaped? What’s wrong with so many men — why are they the demographic that is so often behind the mayhem in the world?
2012 — High School Student Murdered (Black Lives Matter)
public domain images from wikimedia commons
Trayvon Martin was killed on this date in 2012 for daring to walk and wear a hoodie while black. A 28-year-old wannabe cop shot unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon dead after pursuing him through his Florida neighborhood because he thought the teen looked suspicious. Did Trayvon appear suspicious because he was black? Because he was young? Because he was wearing a hoodie?
The killer of Trayvon, George Zimmerman, claimed he had shot Trayvon in self-defense after confronting him. Nobody saw the event happen, so it’s impossible to know exactly how it played out, but even if Martin physically assaulted Zimmerman — perhaps after being provoked, or feeling he was acting in self-defense after seeing that his pursuer was armed — why couldn’t Zimmerman have shot him in the leg to neutralize him, rather than shoot to kill? We might ask ourselves, “What would a sensible, reasonable person do in Zimmerman’s shoes?” And then, “What would a racist do in Zimmerman’s shoes?”
Initially, Zimmerman was not arrested because “there was nothing to prove that his version of events was not accurate.” After much pressure from Trayvon’s parents and then many others, including President Barack Obama, Zimmerman was arrested and tried.
Yet, the jury found Zimmerman innocent. But what was to be expected? How often are white people found guilty of harming black people in the south, even in the “enlightened” times in which we live?
A byproduct of the uproar and protests over the handling of the incident brought to birth the “Black Lives Matter” movement.
Trayvon did not have a police record. Zimmerman does. In fact, he’s been in all kinds of hot water, even since this incident, mostly for beating up on ex-wives and girlfriends. And he’s also been busy painting Confederate flags and selling them for exorbitant sums. Look them up and judge for yourself whether the money paid for his paintings are based on the skill and creativity of his work or rather for his notoriety, and a way of championing his violent and hateful attitudes.
Questions: Trayvon is dead. Zimmerman is free. Was it futile for Trayvon’s parents to pursue justice? How would things had been different if they had just “thrown up their hands” and said, in effect, “What can you do?” Is there any kind of logic in racism, or prejudice of any kind? Full disclosure: I myself am prejudiced — against prejudiced people.
