9/11-the first act of terrorism in this land?

Today, Media Monitors Network has published an essay entitled "The Terrorism in my Homeland: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives" by Frank M. Afflitto. The focus is on the genocide of Indigenous Peoples in the Americas.

Most Indigenous Peoples understand that terrorism did not begin on September 11, 2001. Our histories contain stories of genocide and the extermination of our relatives. This is a history that isn't well received by your average U.S citizen. So it's refreshing to see people like Frank Afflitto taking an honest look at the history of the U.S and the historical amnesia of "terrorism" prior to Sep 11.

An excerpt

Frank M. Afflitto
(Thursday 01 July 2004)

"It has often been parroted that the September 11th attacks were the "worst terrorist events on U.S. soil", etc. The propagandists claim that never before had such violence, on such a scale, been conducted on U.S. soil. I heartily disagree and here's why..."

Defining Terrorism

While I won’t go into defining terrorism, saving those long-winded thoughts for an academic article that I am working on, it is important to note that there exist well over one hundred definitions based in academic, political-governmental, human rights and law enforcement literatures. In the most recent twist, the U.S. has claimed that the attacks of September 11th were, in fact, terrorist because they were acts of violence, primarily aimed at civilians, when no war was, in fact, officially declared. This weak definition, though I don’t argue against the qualifying of the September 11th acts on the World Trade Center as abominations, allows, perfunctorily, for the killing of civilians en masse from bombers and shooting and shelling, as long as there exists an officially-declared state of war.

Thus, like many definitions of terrorism, the one currently in vogue by Federal powers of the Bush regime allows the U.S. governmental forces to escape prosecution or admonition while engaging in anti-civilian slaughter, qualifying it as “collateral damage”, unintentional and lamentable, as long as it takes place in the course of somehow declared hostilities. The Israeli regime has pretty much the same take on the matter.

If one were, however, to concentrate on the mass extermination, or threatened extermination, or generation of fear of extermination, of civilians, one would have to, forthwith, come to the conclusion that terrorism in the U.S. has a long history. Such terrorism does not need to be instantaneous… it can be slow, over extended periods, as I am about to claim and hopefully demonstrate.

The First Peoples

The First, or Original, Peoples, of the North American continent, forever misnomered Native Americans, or American Indians, have been, arguably the worst victims of terrorism in this country. Such terrorism continues today, in many sordid forms and manifestations.

For example, we all know that many nations of original peoples were simply exterminated in what is now the United States of America. Their extermination in many cases, or near-extermination in some cases, for the historical record, included:full article