September 21, 2005

There’s an old saying that, “When nothing is happening, something is happening.” America is being shaken right now, but you probably haven’t felt the tremor yet. That’s because the big story about the Saint Patrick’s Four is being under-reported by the “mainstream” media (MSM). And, it would be fairly easy to keep the story quiet, because one local newspaper is almost the only publication to cover the story — until now.

In the southern tier of Upstate New York, the smallish city of Binghamton has only one daily newspaper: the Press and Sun-Bulletin. When I lived there, I often referred to the Left-leaning, Gannett-owned (of course) paper as the Pravda and Some Bolshevik. Up until the mid-1970s, Binghamton had two daily papers. Then, the morning Press (Gannett) bought out the locally owned, more conservative, evening Sun-Bulletin, and local coverage was never quite the same again. And, the story you are about to read is a great example.

The Saint Patrick’s Four (SP4) is a group of anti-war protesters. On 17 March 2003 (St. Patrick’s Day), just prior to the American invasion of Iraq, they went into a military recruiting station in Ithaca, NY, and poured their own blood on the walls, posters, windows, and a US flag. Ithaca is about forty miles west-northwest of Binghamton. It might as well be forty light-years. The college-centric city is known in the conservative Southern Tier of NY as “the People’s Republic of Ithaca”, because of its openly Socialist government and local culture. (Students that attend Cornell University there, for example, get at least as much indoctrination as they do education.) Military recruiters in Ithaca should at least get foreign duty pay, if not a combat-zone tax exemption, because they are definitely assigned to an alien and hostile culture.

So, if the blood-pouring incident was destined to happen anywhere in America, Ithaca was on the short list of likely locations. The protesters planned on being arrested, and they were. They were originally charged in a NY State court on charges of felony criminal mischief. That trial ended in acquittal, after a hung jury. Normally, that would be the end of a matter such as this.

But, the case has now moved to Federal court, and the SP4 are being charged with damaging government property and conspiracy to impede an officer of the United States. Those charges carry harsher penalties if they are convicted. Because they are charged under different statutes, in a different court system, the new charges do not violate the “double jeopardy” doctrine of the Constitution.

News about the case itself has mostly been reported only in Socialist publications. Only one major MSM outlet, the New York Times has reported the story. (Of course, they are not-so-openly Socialist themselves.) Why has the MSM been so mum on a story in which “ordinary” Americans have been charged twice because they stood up for their beliefs? Well … maybe it’s because they’re not so ordinary. Or … maybe it's because it would expose the duplicity of the MSM and their Socialist connections. How? Read on.

MSM outlets require their writers to adhere strictly to the New York Times Style Book. In that authoritarian (was I supposed to write “authoritative”?) manual, the murder of an innocent unborn baby becomes the exercise of “abortion rights”. In the utopian world of the NYT, a word that originally meant “light-hearted, cheerful, or festive” is euphemized into a description for a lifestyle that is anything but cheerful. And, like the euphemism for convenience-murder, the word “gay” has the word “rights” injected after it as often as possible. (Ha! As if a newspaper can determine right or wrong in the place of God.) So, despite their claims to the contrary, it is obvious that the MSM shills of Socialist subversion really do have a common agenda. And, sometimes, their agenda requires them to under-report certain stories — lest the public at large should learn about the details that the Socialists would prefer to slip in unnoticed.

“ordinary” Americans?

What details? There are several. First of all, these are not “ordinary” Americans by any stretch of the word. Two of the four have been jailed previously for similar protests. Clare Grady was a member of an anti-military group called the Plowshares, who snuck into Griffiss AFB near Rome, NY, in 1980. There, they hammered the radome of a B-52 bomber, and poured blood upon it. (If the intrusion had not been detected, and the radar damage not discovered, then the crew could have been killed while practicing their low-level flight maneuvers — which depend heavily upon special radar. That is the Left’s duplicitous idea of a “non-violent” protest.) I happen to know the man that was assigned to protect the hangar where the B-52 was parked that night. He was on a latrine break at the time of the incident, and his career was nearly ruined because of it. Of course, they probably consider that mere “collateral damage”. Thank God that I was off-duty that night. But, I saw the aircraft a couple of nights later.

People like that have a family history of such activity. Teresa and Clare Grady are two children of Vietnam-era anti-war protesters. Their father was part of the “Camden 28”, who stole and destroyed draft records during that war. So, just as many families have a military tradition, a few families have an anti-military tradition. What a coincidence: a main goal of Socialism and Communism is to weaken America — especially our military might — so that they can take over our country without having to fire a shot. But, the MSM would like you to believe that there is no long-term agenda. (Ha! They also want you to believe that Cindy Sheehan is “just a mom”, and not a willing shill of her Socialist handlers.)

hate crime?

Another way that the Left shows its duplicity is by wanting to bring the full force of law against anyone that disagrees with them, while being free to commit the same acts — or worse — against the majority of the population. For example, the Left wants to enact “hate crime” laws against people that don’t like homosexuals. Laws against assault, they say, are not enough. Now, they want laws against what an assailant was thinking — if the assault victim was a homo.

But, by engaging in a long-term pattern of anti-military crimes, members of the Saint Patrick’s Four have clearly demonstrated an attitude of hatred against members of the military as a class. And, in this age of concerns about AIDS infection, it seems to me that there is plenty of legal precedent for a charge of attempted murder against the Saint Patrick’s Four. (Just as a bank robber can be charged with armed robbery for using a toy gun — if the teller thought that the gun was real — a legal argument could be made that the recruiters in the targeted office could have thought that the blood was infected. And, if they thought that, then pouring the blood in their proximity is attempted murder.) The last time that I checked, committing attempted murder was evidence of hate. Thus, the SP4 should be charged with hate crimes against the recruiters.

the coldest cut of all

I’m strongly opposed to abortion, and make no secret of it. Most members of the Left perceive abortion to be a “right” — one that is to be exercised as frequently as possible, in the eyes of some. Oddly enough, though, the Saint Patrick’s Four have used exactly the same legal argument in their defense as anti-abortion lightning rod Randall Terry used whenever he was arrested. And, the tactics used by the Saint Patrick’s Four are almost identical to that used when Terry tried to hand an aborted fetus to President Bill Clinton as he jogged in Central Park in 1998. Remember how the MSM cried “foul” over that tactic? (And, I was at Randall Terry’s campaign office when a staffer admitted that it was not really an aborted fetus. It was a plastic fetus, in a plastic bag with some beef blood from the grocery store.) So, the Left thinks that Terry was way out of line for chaining himself to abortion machines — to prevent the murder of innocent babies — but think that the SP4 are heroes for using a similar tactic to prevent America from toppling a government that has given significant aid to terrorists that attack us.

Two side points need to be made here. First, during a break between my two different active-duty military tours, I was a Deputy Sheriff in the Broome County Jail in Binghamton. There, I met a fellow a little younger than myself. He had been arrested for trespassing. It was his second offense. The normal sentence for trespassing is three days. He was given sixty days. While he was in jail, a child molester was sentenced to 45 days. During the first inmate’s term in jail, the administration routinely allowed other inmates to spit in this man’s food. Whenever a fight erupted, the man was transferred into that section, in the hope that he would be beaten in any aftermath fight. The treatment of that man by the staff of the Broome County Jail caused two things to happen. One was that I saw first-hand the virulence and lies of pro-abortion people. That convinced me to rethink the abortion issue, and conclude that abortion is wrong. (I used to be a liberal, but liberals convinced me to become a conservative.) The second thing that happened was that a book was written about the injustices. The book was called Operation Rescue. Randall Terry told me later that I’m described in the book, but not mentioned by name. (We’ve since had a falling out over some issues. But, I still admire his ability to put the abortion issue on the front page instead of the back burner. I just disagree with some of the things that he’s done along the way.)

Here’s the second side point. The Left likes to claim that the war in Iraq is not justified, because Iraq never did anything to the United States. Oh, really? Well, you might recall that a fellow named Abu Nidal had been given safe haven in Iraq for a long time. (Some news reports claimed that Saddam Hussein had personally picked Nidal’s apartment.) Do you remember Abu Nidal? He was so influential in the terrorist world that a group was named after him. Do you remember what they did? One of their acts was to hijack a cruise ship named Achille Lauro, and demand that Israel release hundreds of imprisoned terrorists in exchange for the passengers’ lives. To show that they were serious, the Abu Nidal gang grabbed an elderly American man named Leon Klinghoffer. He was wheelchair bound. The terrorists tossed him, and his wheelchair, overboard. The event was videotaped, and later broadcast to the world. The Abu Nidal terrorist gang was also responsible for a random machinegun attack upon passengers at the Rome airport. (Among the passengers in the terminal at the time was a family from Binghamton, NY.) I don’t know about people on the Left, but I’d like to be safe from machinegun attacks. So, if toppling Saddam Hussein put an end to his support of people like Abu Nidal, then that was justification enough for invading Iraq. Safety from terrorists is in our national interests — regardless of United Nations “permission”.

So, not only were the Saint Patrick’s Four wrong about their opposition to the war, but they used the same tactics that the Left often condemned when those tactics were used to prevent the murder of unborn babies. They used the same legal defense, also — except for one key point.

international law?!

Now we come to the truly big story within the story of the Saint Patrick’s Four. In their legal defense, the SP4 are primarily citing international law to support an acquittal. Are they in an international court? Then why are they citing international law?

But, if the judge allows them to make their defense argument by citing international law, then it will establish certain legal precedents inside the borders of the United States. Those precedents could pave the way for an international court to come into the United States and try to tell American citizens what they may and may not do.

I’ve made this point in previous columns, but it bears repeating here. Nikita Khrushchev, who was then Premier of the Soviet Union, told the United States, “We will bury you.” He did not say, “We will destroy you.” The goal of Socialists is to weaken the US to the point that they can come in and take over. One way to weaken America is to undermine the court system that is supposed to be protecting our rights and freedoms. Right now, a pro-Socialist group is trying to bring international law into an American court — for an incident that is simply a heightened form of trespassing. And, if they succeed, it could be the beginning of the end of our current system of protecting our rights, freedoms, and national sovreignty.

The above should’ve been banner-headline news in every publication in America. Instead, you read it here first in MensNewsDaily.com. This writer will keep you posted.

Tom Kovach

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Tom Kovach lives in Nashville, and is a former USAF Blue Beret. He ran for Congress in 1994 (NY-26) and in 2004 (TN-05, write-in). To learn more about the author, click: www.Tom.Kovach.com