A Commentary by Doug Draper
Sometimes you have to wonder what it is that is so destructive and ugly about we humans as a species.
Martin, Richard, the youngest of three fatalities so far in the Boston Marathon bombings, who was there to cheer on his father running in the marathon. His sister has lost a leg in the attacks and his mother underwent brain surgery in the hours following the bomings. At least 175 others were wounded in the blasts.
I have tried and have not always been successful, as a journalist in this hacked-up and vanishing profession, to appeal to our better hearts – to stand up for peace and tolerance, and for the protection of the natural resources we need for our survival on this earth.
Then, just as I am trying to begin to appeal to that side of ourselves for an Earth Day commentary I’ve been working on for later this week, I turn on the cable news on CNN and MSNBC this Monday, April 15th to horrific explosions in a place I love and respect for the friends I have there – in a place called Massachusetts that my family and I will be visiting again this May – a state I have close friends in and know to be place of peace-loving, progressive-minded people, and a world-class city of Boston.
All I could think of as this wonderful place was so violently violated was, to borrow a line from Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ about the darkest side of our nature was; “the horror, the horror.”
Then, as I began following more closely the news of the terrible assault that happened here, I was drawn to the brighter side. There was the vow from this the leaders of this city that the Boston Marathon, which has always been a welcoming mat for residents from around the world, would always remain so. And there were words from Boston-based journalists like Mike Barnicle and others saying that “there are far more good people in this world than evil people,” in referencing to the number of strangers who ran into the smoke and fire to help people who lay bleeding who were their strangers.
One of the deadly explosions at the Boston Marathon this Monday, April 15
What I think we all have to remind ourselves of is that regardless of what anyone’s grievances may be with the government of the United States or the government with Canada or of any other government, indiscriminate violence against is not the answer.
We need more people on this earth who are inspired by the non-violent movements of Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and not the psycho-murderous actions of a Hitler or an Osama bin Laden. To quote words that the late U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy said on the evening, 45 years ago, of Martin Luther King’s assassination; “Let’s dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago – to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.”
Let’s all dedicate ourselves to that and send our blessings to the people of Massachusetts – a state of people that has a long history as a history of being a centre for the movement to abolition slavery in the decades leading up to the American Civil War a century and a halt ago, and a state where Henry David Thoreau and his Walden Pont set a stage for the environmental movement.
Let’s all find it in our hearts to send them our love and support, and make a promise in the community of communites where we live to work together to make the world better, not through violence, but through thoughtful, peaceful means.
(Niagara At Large invites you to join in the conversation by sharing your views on the content of this post below. For reasons of transparency and promoting civil dialogue, NAL only posts comments from individuals who share their first and last name with their views.)
Niagara At Large 
With all due respect to your heartfelt response to this tragedy, sympathy and revenging the victims will do nothing to bring an end to terrorism. Not even history is going to tell us if this was a terrorist attack or a false flag event, needed to unite the nation behind a tougher foreign policy or war. The never-ending media repetition indicates the latter.
Terrorism is the war of the weak designed to aggravate the population and attack the targeted economy. Unfortunately it is the covert war of powerful imperialist nations to weaken targeted countries by destabilizing and collapsing the economy to the point they are vulnerable to a coup d’état.
How can the world expect to have sympathy with regular drone attacks killing innocent civilians along with combatants? Pilots in America killing people on the far side of the world. Or the U.S. organized and supported terrorist attacks on targeted nations around the world?
Right now, in Florida, running free is Posada Carriles, an ex-CIA man and co-conspirator in the bombing of a Cuban airliner, out of Barbados in 1976. The hirelings who set the bombs have served their sentences and live free in Venezuela. Carriles was responsible for the bombings of several hotels and restaurants in Havana in 1997 killing an Italian from Montreal. Carriles was arrested and convicted for conspiring to bomb the stage on which Fidel Castro would speak before thousands of students, at the University of Panama in 2000 . Panama’s outgoing president pardoned him in 2004.
In all cases Carriles explosive of choice was the highly controlled C – 4 plastic explosives. That alone tells me he was getting all the under-the-table support he needed.
Terrorist organizations like imperialist states have a specific purpose when directing their attacks. In the case of Boston, to affect and disrupt all large summer events in the U.S. and NATO Nations. Thanks to Harper, Canada has now become a target.
While Boston is on all minds, let’s reflect on the 50 people in Iraq that died when a car bomb exploded two days ago. Or Gaza where Israeli bombs rain on civilians at will. To not value those lives as much as American lives is racist.
A Response to Mr. David Thomas Sr. from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper – In all due respect to Mr. Thomas, I was toying with the idea of not posting his comment but I know that there are a number of variations on a theme that says – ‘why are we spending so much time feeling bad for them when their government has engaged in acts that have resulted in deaths in other regions of the world. There was a letter to the editor in The Globe and Mail this April 17 that Bostonians – there is a large population of Irish Catholics whose ancestors immigrated to the U.S. during the potato famine in Ireland in the 180ss – have had a history of supporting, through donations of money, the Irish Republican Army, considered a terrorist group in many circles. The writer of this letter concluded that it was at least “ironic” that Bostonians have now experienced a taste of what the IRA was dishing out in its “war” against the Brits over the past century.
I suppose that we could go on and on with this; ‘well we did this to them and no they did this to us,’ and going so far as to imply that perhaps an eight-year-old child in Canada might get blown up with a bomb, as young Martin Richard was as he was waiting for his dad to finish his run at the Boston Marathon, because of the policies of Canada’s Stephen Harper.
I would suggest that kind of airchair rhetoric or whatever one might want to call it, is far easier to engage in if the eight-year old child is not a child or grandchild, or nephew or niece of one’s own.
I trust that many who have followed Niagara At Large for the past three years, and any of my earlier columns for other publications in this region, knows that I have always been an advocate for peaceful means of advancing human causes, although I understand that there have been times in human history when fighting back against a Hitler, for example, may be the only option left. That is why I referred to the non-violent movements inspired by Martin Luther King and M. Ghandi in my post on Boston.
In summary, this site has not often shied away from encouraging discussions and debates on actions U.S. and Canadian governments have taken in other parts of the world that have resulted in disaster for others. It wasn’t that long ago that we had that kind of of discussion on the 10th anniversary of the U.S. Bush/Cheney administration’s invasion of Iraq – an invasion and war that not only destroyed thousands of American lives, but resulted in the violent deaths of more than 100,000 Iraqi citizens.
There are times for such discussions where they may move the needle forward on convincing more of our fellow citizens to oppose foreign policies that favour military actions over peaceful diplomacy. But I don’t think that now is the time to, in effect, having that discussion while standing outside the funderal home where that eight year old boy is resting or when a community is still wiping the blood up off the streets of Boston and experiencing the shock and sadness of what has occurred at an event that has always been venue for international frienship.
– Doug Draper, publisher, Niagara At Large
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Terrorism is not a tool of the weak. Terrorism is the reflection of reformism. It is a reflection of disorganization and attempts at disorganization and distraction. Do these young men not think of what is taking place on Monday. The US and DPRK are on the verge of a nuclear war because of an illegal occupation of a small country by at much larger one. What is Canada’s position on the history of the Korean War which resulted from this occupation? An attempt to glorify it as an important page in Canada’s military history. Shame. What about the OFL which released a “People’s Budget” for Ontario on Monday? Why is this not the centre of discussion and deliberation? Because, in the first place, terrorism, like more benign forms of anarchist self-serving behaviour is a block to serious organizing for real change and we all know there is a necessity for change.
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