Police say explosion outside American Reproductive Centers fertility clinic was ‘an intentional act of violence’
At least one person is dead after a car exploded near a reproductive facility in Palm Springs, California, according to local authorities.
Palm Springs Police spokesperson Mike Villegas told reporters the car explosion was “an intentional act of violence” but the investigation is ongoing.
Officials did not immediately say whether or not the person who died was associated with the car, but a facility official said all of the building’s staff were safe and physically unharmed.
At least also five people were injured in the explosion, ABC7 reported, citing law enforcement sources.
That sounds suspiciously like they’re avoiding calling it ‘an act of terrorism’… which is even more suspicious being that lighting a Tesla on fire or spray painting a Tesla dealership would immediately be called terrorism, but this hasn’t been. Hmmm.
Edit: the FBI has determined that it was an intentional act of terrorism at this point.
The subtitle in the article clearly calls it terrorism
The article has been updated to include that since the posting and my original comment.
Something tells me you never visited the article itself and only read the first four paragraphs OP posted on Lemmy. If you had, you would’ve seen this:
They’re not suspiciously avoiding anything; they may literally not know yet, and immediately jumping definitively to terrorism while they work out what happened is irresponsible, because “terrorism” isn’t just an epithet: it’s a real, actual, specific crime.
No, I did. My point is that they’re passively skating around it in this case, but in the case of the Tesla incidences that I’m referencing they very actively come out with ‘terrorism’ first.
Didn’t this just happen less than four hours ago? And ostensibly the perpetrator is dead? The police aren’t lawyers and have more leeway with what they accuse people of (let alone a dead(?) person), but domestic terrorism has a specific criminal definition. In four hours, the police have responded, gotten people to safety, made sure the attacker was dead(?) and there were no others, and started to investigate the scene. And you surmise that during that investigation, they’ve so far found compelling evidence this person whose corpse(?) may not even be identified yet was motivated by one of the intentions in Criterion B?
Also, who’s “they” who very actively came out with terrorism first? Trump and Musk? Because literally of course the fascists did. I’d like to see what the police said in the first few hours of those attacks. Moreover, why do you want to whataboutism to alleged bad police behavior elsewhere to explain why the police should behave badly here?
Edit: here’s how The Guardian covered a story about an incendiary device at a Tesla dealership two months ago. Notice how it’s fascist Trump mouthpiece Pam Bondi talking about “terrorism” so immediately, while the police statement mentions nothing of the sort.
They’re happy to call it an intentional act of violence, so they’ve ruled out a lot of the explanations for an exploding car. The bar for “terrorism” is pretty low - they charged an Atlanta student with is for tossing bottles of water and dry ice out his window.
Regardless, it’s definitely a journalistic choice whether to quote the police lieutenant’s very careful, and possibly technical statement, or to quote the business owner (Musk) or US President speculating. And maybe it just turns out that it’s carefully ethical journalists reporting on potential right-wing violence, and usually unethical hacks reporting on possible attacks on the corporatocracy, but it sure does feel like a pattern.
That’s Criterion A and the first part of Criterion B* of domestic terrorism. There are three criteria, and the second part of Criterion B is the hardest.
The bar for terrorism is as defined in what I just linked, and specifically Criterion B is where most of the uncertainty would lie.
The Guardian is a UK-based center-left newspaper with a generally good track record of journalistic integrity. Yes, quoting the police lieutenant is a choice here, because it’s the correct one. They currently have the most information about the situation. This isn’t rhetorical, I genuinely don’t understand: do you want them quoting Trump’s unhinged rant about this bombing that I don’t think he’s even put out yet?
Dude, it’s The Guardian. Here’s how they recently covered Tesla dealerships if you care to explain how it’s biased compared to this story.
* By “first part of”, I mean the phrase “appears to be intended”. What it appears to be intended to do is the hard part.
Do you get so excited when someone says, 'My house was robbed"? Houses, of course, can’t be robbed. They can be burgled; only people can be robbed. Legally. Colloquially, we all know what they’re talking about.
Maybe “The Technician” does, but insisting that people be very carefully precise with language outside of the specific technical domain is a form of sealioning.
I don’t know what you want except to make yourself look like a jackass who can’t learn from their mistake when gracefully given the opportunity.
Don’t come at me with facts when it ignores my feelings.
I’m not going to rag on NJSpradlin or tburkhol; I tried to debunk what they said on a factual, dispassionate basis. Their comments to me are examples of what happens when one side is never held to account for and is constantly rewarded for taking the easy path and spreading disinformation that makes them feel better, while the other side is punished with more lies to correct and is never rewarded for enduring the other side’s firehose of falsehoods, tediously researching their points, and speaking up for truth. These well-meaning comments are made by victims of their environment.
Now more than ever, everyone needs to be a vanguard of the facts, but it’s not hard to see why that’s become so difficult.