The US marked the 15th anniversary of its deadliest domestic terrorist attack yesterday amid rising political tensions and anti-government sentiment that have terrorism experts on edge.
The April 19, 1995, truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in downtown Oklahoma City by members of an anti-government militia killed 168 people, including 19 children, and injured hundreds of others. Former US president Bill Clinton, who oversaw the recovery efforts and investigation, warned that there are frightening parallels between the current political tensions and those of the years leading up to the bombing.
Writing in the New York Times yesterday, Clinton said civic virtue could include harsh criticism of the government, protests and even civil disobedience, but not violence or its advocacy.
“Fifteen years ago, the line was crossed in Oklahoma City,” the former president said. “In the current climate, with so many threats against the president, members of Congress and other public servants, we owe it to the victims of Oklahoma City, and those who survived and responded so bravely, not to cross it again.”
There has been a dramatic growth in hate groups and anti-government “patriot” groups in the wake of a deep economic downturn and the election of the first black president, said Heidi Beirich, director of research for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The number of active “patriot” groups nearly tripled last year from 149 in 2008 to 512, said the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks the activities of hate groups. Some 127 of those groups were paramilitary militias, up from 42 a year earlier. The total number of active hate groups grew to a new high of 932 last year, the previous high being 858 in 1996.
One notable case is that of nine members of a radical Michigan-based “Christian warrior” militia charged last month with plotting to kill police then bomb the victim’s funeral in a bid to encourage an uprising against the US government.
A terrorism expert said the national mood is ripe for the resurgence of militia-type groups similar to those that attracted Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted and executed for detonating explosives in a van parked outside the federal building.
“What we’re missing right now is the symbolic catalyst,” said Brent Smith, director of the Terrorism Research Center at the University of Arkansas. “There has always been some significant event that pushed the extreme right over the edge.”
Two catalysts for the rise of the militia movement in the 1990s were the siege by federal officials at the Ruby Ridge home of a radical Idaho family in 1992 and the FBI standoff in Waco, Texas, with the Branch Davidian religious sect in 1993, which left 76 people, including 20 children, dead.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
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Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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