One is reminded of the phrasing of Peter Ustinov: that a poor person’s war is called terrorism; whereas a rich person’s terror is called war. Nations can drop bombs and use drones to kill but somehow this story is not said to be part of the terror”ism” narrative. Prisoners are unjustly detained in Guantanamo and presently on a hunger strike and are forced fed and yet this too remains outside the single story line about terror”ism”.

 … It is significant that the bombing in Boston is seen as a national tragedy while the explosion in West, Texas, was barely mentioned in the mainstream news. What is the single story here? It is too simple to say that Boston is about the America everyone wishes to embrace - educated, healthy marathoners and the privileged - because Boston is also poor and working class and underserved. But West, Texas, does not even make it into the single story of the American Dream, even if more mythic, than real today.

The greatest terror threat today that interweaves with the varied and multiple stories being written and lived across the globe is the veracious appetite of greed that is causing endless suffering and hunger and poverty for millions of people everywhere. The bombs and explosions and rape might just lessen if we hold the real criminals and killers accountable.

THE CLOSE-knit Texas town of West, population 2,800, was shaken to the core, literally and symbolically, on April 17 when the West Fertilizer Co. facility exploded with the force of a small earthquake, killing 14 people and injuring more than 200.

Today, West resembles a war zone. As many as 75 homes and buildings were destroyed, including the local high school and a 50-unit apartment complex that was reduced to a skeleton. A nursing home near the facility was also damaged—133 residents had to be evacuated during the explosions and fire that followed. Subsequently, the majority of the town was ordered to evacuate.

Flying shrapnel injured people as far as two miles away. The blast was so intense that the U.S. Geological Survey registered it as comparable to a 2.1 earthquake on the Richter scale. People in towns as far as 50 miles away felt the earth tremble.

Most of the 14 people who died were volunteer firefighters who rushed to the scene after a fire broke out at the plant. The 200 people injured by the blast were rushed to nearby hospitals and makeshift facilities to have their wounds treated. Among the wounded, dozens sustained serious injuries, including broken bones, head trauma and burns.

Immediately following the explosion, ordinary people from around the area opened up their homes to the victims or contributed in other ways. Emergency responders from neighboring towns rushed to help, and volunteers from across the state asked about what they could do to help with cleanup.

 …The bosses at West Fertilizer deserve the blame for the explosion that took so many lives, but they aren’t alone. While Congress, the White House and the national security state are focused on the “war on terror,” the fact is that 33 individuals have died as a result of terrorist acts since the September 11 attacks. Over that same time span, roughly 50,000 people have died in workplace “accidents”—accidents that might have been prevented if OSHA had enough staff to inspect more workplaces and if the pressure to produce more in less time with fewer workers wasn’t so constant.

In his first statement in response to the Boston bombings, President Obama said that “Michelle and I send our deepest thoughts and prayers to the families of the victims in the wake of this senseless loss.”

In the his first statement in response to the explosion outside Waco, Texas, President Obama said that “our prayers go out to the people of West, Texas in the aftermath of last night’s deadly explosion at a fertilizer plant.”

In his statement on Boston, President Obama said that “any responsible individuals, any responsible groups will feel the full weight of justice.”

But when it came to the explosion in Texas, President Obama said nothing about responsible individuals, responsible groups or the full weight of justice.

Why not?

Because when it comes to street crime, President Obama is the top cop.

When it comes to apparent corporate crime and violence, he’s the enabler in chief.

Don’t forget the other tragedy of the last few days, a horrendous catastrophe that has destroyed a town, killed over a dozen people, all so a small number of people could make more money by cutting safety standards

Wow. Yes, free-market capitalism kills.

How about all the cops currently engaged in racist and ineffective stop-and-frisk programs targeting poor people of color, be reassigned and retrained to do some actual policing of criminally negligent business owners who murder thousands of workers every year?

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In the wake of the deadly explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant, reporter Mike Elk of In These Times magazine joins us to discuss the plant’s safety record and the troubling regulatory environment for workplaces in Texas and nationwide. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has not inspected West Fertilizer Co. in five years, and the EPA fined the plant in 2006 for failing to have a risk management plan. Elk says OSHA is understaffed and underfunded nationwide, across all industries.

If one thing has been proven, viz., the horrific explosion of the West, Texas, fertilizer plant — which had been fined in 2006 by the EPA for lax environmental safety measures — is that the GOP is right: clearly there are far too many meddlesome health and safety regulations placed upon corporations in this country … SMH …

fuck. of course. charge the owners with negligent homicide!

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The West Fertilizer Co factory of Texas, which exploded late Wednesday, was fined in 2006 by the Environmental Protection Agency for not having a risk-management plan. The same year the plant reported it posed ‘no risk’ of fire.

A friend writes:

“Toxic fertilizer (b/c your lawn really needs to be green) + volunteer fire fighters (b/c who wants to use taxes for them in a small town?) + no local hospital (b/c rural areas have less resources/people) = not terrorism, just another day in America”

The contrast between the attention paid to one explosion and another really makes you think. Hundreds injured, number of dead unknown. And where’s the war on employer terrorism? Is there an FBI dragnet out for the owner of this factory? Will the media launch a witch-hunt of local bosses, and will the cops mount searches of all the premises of local factory owners looking for signs of cost-cutting jeopardizing safety standards? Will we get close details of all those injured or killed?

After the media’s complete horseshit of a performance today in peddling false information about suspects and arrests pertaining to the Boston bombings, my ability to trust these fools’ numbers and facts about any tragedy is now strained.

Yet, if this is accurate, then this is so fucked. The first question that comes to my mind is, okay, how many health and safety violations did this company have prior to their whole fucking plant exploding? Any company conducting a business in which 60 people could be instantaneously killed over an “accident” is a company that should be held liable for mass murder, in my opinion.

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A fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, north of Waco, killed as many as 60 or 70 people and injured hundreds according to KWTX, which spoke with West EMS Director Dr. George Smith.

Meanwhile, the residents of the town of 2700 are being asked to evacuate the town Wednesday evening.

Firefighters were already on scene responding to a fire at West Fertilizer, when the explosion occurred.

Emergency crews from central and north Texas have been called in to help respond to the injuries and destruction from the explosion.

As of 10 p.m. fires were still burning in the area, and strong south winds blowing at 30 miles per hour are fanning those flames.

A hotline (254-202-1100) has been set up at Hillcrest Hospital for family and friends to check on loved ones.

Anywhere between 40 and 60 patients have been admitted to the hospital ranging in age from babies to elderly.

Triage was initially set up at the local high school football field, however it was being moved to a nearby softball field because of a strong odor in the area.

Texas has the highest number of executions of any state in the country. With that in mind, hundreds of protestors took the streets of Austin to make a change, but not everyone is happy to see them there.

Hundreds marched through downtown Saturday, protesting the death penalty and the governor they say supports it.

Marchers chanted, “Rick Perry you can’t hide! We charge you with homicide!”

“We just saw the 250th execution under Governor Perry and that includes some controversial executions,” said organizer, Lily Hughes.

Protestors allege that innocent people have been executed in Texas during recent years and brought up controversial executions like that of Cameron Todd Willingham. Willingham has already been executed, but family is trying to exonerate him from charges that he murdered his three young children. Protesters are also hoping to stop future executions like that of Darlie Routier, the Rowlett, TX mother convicted of murdering her two children in 1996. Her family is reportedly working to retest forensic evidence that they say will prove Routier’s innocence.

ON AUGUST 7, Texas killed Marvin Wilson—the 484th person the Lone Star State has executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977. Wilson’s execution became national news because he was mentally retarded: his IQ had been measured at 61. He was also my client.

When I first met Wilson nearly seven years ago, he was soft-spoken, almost shy. His reading and writing skills were around the level of my son’s, who was 5 at the time. He told me getting convicted of murder was good because it gave him an opportunity to learn a lot of things. I asked him what he meant. He said, “You know, how to live on your own and things.”

In 2002 the Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that it was unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded. You might think that would have ended the execution of the mentally retarded, but you would be wrong.

Why? Because Texas executes the mentally retarded anyway, and the federal courts don’t seem to care. In a 2004 decision the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued a decision called Ex parte Briseno, which basically said it is OK to execute people who are mentally retarded, so long as their retardation is “mild.”

That is not what the Supreme Court said in Atkins. In fact, it is pretty much the opposite of what the Supreme Court said. Without putting too fine a point on it, doing the opposite of what the Supreme Court says is what is known as being lawless. Which raises the question: If you do something over and over again, and court after court appears not to care, is it still lawless?

Something just doesn’t add up here. He was apparently a good student with a loving family. And why would he have pointed a pellet gun at police? A more logical series of events is that the police rushed in, the kid was probably shouting at them trying to explain that it was only a pellet gun, and the police, as notoriously racist as they are in Texas, probably just saw a brown Hispanic teenager and figured they could get away with shooting first and asking questions later. 

Who knows. At the very least, one has to wonder why this always seems to happen with black and brown kids. Especially since whites make up the majority of those committing violent crimes, why is it always non-white youths getting summarily gunned down by police? 

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BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) — The parents of an eighth grader who was fatally shot by police inside his South Texas school are demanding to know why officers took lethal action, but police said the boy was brandishing — and refused to drop — what appeared to be a handgun and that the officers acted correctly.

The weapon turned out to be a pellet gun that closely resembled the real thing, police said late Wednesday, several hours after 15-year-old Jaime Gonzalez was repeatedly shot in a hallway at Cummings Middle School in Brownsville. No one else was injured.

“Why was so much excess force used on a minor?” the boy’s father, Jaime Gonzalez Sr., asked The Associated Press outside the family’s home Wednesday night. “Three shots. Why not one that would bring him down?”

His mother, Noralva Gonzalez, showed off a photo on her phone of a beaming Jaime in his drum major uniform standing with his band instructors. Then she flipped through three close-up photos she took of bullet wounds in her son’s body, including one in the back of his head.

“What happened was an injustice,” she said angrily. “I know that my son wasn’t perfect, but he was a great kid.”