I'm sure you guys are intimately familiar with the ghastly mugshot of Mohamed Osman Mohamud, the Somali-born teen who was accused of trying to detonate a car bomb last week during a public Christmas celebration in Portland. His story's been all over the news for the past week, and for many of those that equate terrorism with Islam, this case is yet another in a series of incidents that supposedly make the case for profiling.
On the heels of last month's completely irrational TSA protests[1], Mohamud's arrest seemed to provide even more fodder for morons like Michelle Malkin to typecast all Muslims as terrorists. Go to her site and peep this lovely collection of mugshots. Read the comments (assuming you can stomach that level of ignorance) while you're there.
Lest anyone get it confused, I'm emphatically not defending the alleged actions of Mohamud. This ingrate clearly was intentional in his desire to blow up children and women. Had he actually been able to carry out his plot, a disaster of unfathomable proportions would occurred. I don't buy his entrapment defense one bit. His alleged actions are undeniably those of a terrorist, Muslim or not.
On the flipside, I can't help but contrast the way his story was covered with another incident that also occurred last week on the West Coast. By show of hands, how many of you even heard about this?
Authorities are trying to piece together how — and why — a 54-year-old Serbian emigre acquired large quantities of explosive ingredients that could be used to make the kind of bombs favored by terrorists, including insurgents trying to kill U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.So, let me see if I've got this right.
The work of a squad of local, state and federal explosives experts is being made more difficult because the one-story, stucco house in a leafy Escondido-area neighborhood where the material was found is considered too dangerous to reenter.
Investigators carted off several computers and numerous written documents in hopes of finding a motive for the alleged actions of George Djura Jakubec, a naturalized U.S. citizen, who faces 26 bomb-making charges and two counts of bank robbery, all felonies.
The list of items seized from Jakubec's rental house in the 1900 block of Via Scott and his backyard represents a virtual shopping list for bomb-makers, investigators said. Among the items are several kinds of acid, as well as hexamethylene triperoxide diamine (HMTD) and pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN).
PETN is a plastic explosive that was used by so-called shoe-bomber Richard Reid and is considered by terrorism experts as the weapon of choice of Al Qaeda bombers. It also is one of the main ingredients that the Transportation Security Administration is looking for with its new full-body screening and pat-down procedures for airline passengers.
Also seized at the house just outside the Escondido city limits were homemade grenades, blasting caps, firearms and 50 pounds of hexamine, a bomb-making material, according to court documents.
The bomb investigation began when a gardener was injured Nov. 18 in an explosion when he stepped on something in the backyard. As the gardener was taken to the hospital, sheriff's deputies rushed to the scene of the explosion, which had frightened neighbors.
This guy has what appears to be the largest stash of bomb-making materials ever seized by the Feds. He had a criminal record. He wasn't an American-born citizen.
Why the hell isn't this guy being referred to as a terrorist, and why can't I even find as much as a mugshot of him on the web? Why is his face being blurred out in the arrest video above?
Most news accounts seem to humanize Jakubec by including quotes from his estranged wife. Some suggest that hoarding the bomb-making materials might have just been a hobby of sorts. I've yet to hear any mention of Jakubec's religion.
Folks, I can't help but think that this story is being downplayed, or perhaps just isn't being sensationalized because Jakubec doesn't fit the typical terrorist "profile" or perpetuate a convenient narrative. Namely because he's white.
The irony here is that the sole reason why Jakubec was busted in the first place is because his gardener, who probably would be profiled as an illegal alien, got blown up by one of Jakubec's bombs.
Am I offbase here, or does anyone else get a bad vibe from this story? If both incidents are terrorist in nature, why is one being reported so much differently than the other.
Question: Does there seem to be a double standard in how these two incidents of terrorism were reported?
[1] Boy, did that controversy evaporate overnight or what?
