Domestic terrorism is on the rise in the US. A few days ago, luxury houses were set ablaze by members of Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and last night, a military recruiting station was bombed. Radical liberals also known as domestic terrorists have become emboldened to the point of acting in the manner of their 60s forefathers in groups like Weather Underground***. This blogger suspects radical anti-war activists in the bombing.

From FoxNews.com:

NEW YORK — An explosive device caused minor damage to an empty military recruiting station in Times Square early Thursday, shaking guests in hotel rooms high above.

Police blocked off the area to investigate the explosion, which occurred at about 3:45 a.m., shattering the station’s glass entryway. No one was injured.

“If it is something that’s directed toward American troops than it’s something that’s taken very seriously and is pretty unfortunate,” said Army Capt. Charlie Jaquillard, who is the commander of Army recruiting in Manhattan.

He said no one was inside the station, where the Marines, Air Force and Navy also recruit.

Witnesses staying at a Marriott hotel four blocks away said they could feel the building shake with the blast.

“I was up on the 44th floor and I could feel it. It was a big bang,” said Darla Peck, 25, of Portland, Oregon.

“It shook the building. I thought it could have been thunder, but I looked down and there was a massive plume of smoke so I knew it was an explosion,” said Terry Leighton, 48, of London, who was staying on the 21st floor of the Marriot.

Members of the police department’s bomb squad and fire officials gathered outside the station in the early morning darkness, and police cars and yellow tape blocked drivers — most of them behind the wheels of taxicabs — from entering one of the world’s busiest crossroads. Police began allowing some traffic through around the start of rush hour.

Though subway cars passed through the Times Square station without stopping in the early hours of the investigation, normal service was soon restored, with some delays.

The recruiting station, located on a traffic island surrounded by Broadway theaters and chain restaurants, has occasionally been the site of anti-war demonstrations, ranging from silent vigils to loud rallies.

In October 2005 a group of activists who call themselves the Granny Peace Brigade rallied there against the Iraq war. Eighteen activists, most of them grandmothers with several in their 80s and 90s, were later acquitted of disorderly conduct.

The recruiting station was renovated in 1999 to better fit into the flashy ambiance of Times Square, using neon tubing to give the glass and steel office a patriotic American flag motif. For a half century, the station was the armed forces’ busiest recruiting center. It has set national records for enlistment, averaging about 10,000 volunteers a year.

Police said it was too early to say if the blast may have been related to two other minor explosions in the city.

In October, two small explosive devices were tossed over a fence at the Mexican consulate, shattering three windows but causing no injuries. No threats had been made against the consulate, and no one took responsibility for the explosion, police said.

At the time, police said they were investigating whether it was connected to a similar incident at the British consulate on May 5, 2005.

In that incident, the explosions took place in the early morning hours, when Britons were going to the polls in an election that returned Prime Minister Tony Blair to power.

In both cases, the instruments were fake grenades sometimes sold as novelty items. They were packed with black power and detonated with fuses, but incapable of causing serious harm, police said.

This is a developing story. I hope to have more later in the day.

UPDATE:

New York Police are saying that a suspicious person riding a bicycle wearing a hood and a backpack was seen in the area shortly before the device exploded. No one however saw anyone plant the device which caused minor damage to the entry of the recruiting station. A police spokesman stated that in spite of the fact that it was an unsophisticated device it could have caused serious injury or death.

That’s terrorists for you campers, they don’t give a hoot who gets hurt or killed as long as attention is brought to their cause. The cause suspected? Anti-war.

THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND*** – 1960s AND 1970s. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the radical left-wing Weather Underground, a splinter group of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), carried out some twenty-five bombings across the country. Among their targets were the New York City Police Headquarters in June 1970, the U.S. Capitol Building in March 1971, the Pentagon in May 1972, and the U.S. State Department in January 1975. In March 1970 an explosion ripped through a Manhattan townhouse where members of the group were making bombs, killing Theodore Gold, Diana Oughton, and Terry Robbins, all members of the Weather Underground. The bombs being made were antipersonnel weapons loaded with shrapnel. By the late 1970s the Weather Underground had turned to bank robberies to finance its operations. Along with members of the separatist Black Liberation Army (BLA), it was involved in the October 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored car in Nyack, New York, in which two policemen and a Brinks security guard were shot dead. Among those convicted of the robbery were Weather Underground members Kathy Boudin, who served twenty-two years in prison; Judith Clark, sentenced to seventy-five years in prison; and BLA member Donald Weems, who was sentenced to life in prison, where he died of AIDS in 1986. In 2003 the Nyack post office was renamed in honor of those killed in the robbery. SOURCE – Domestic Terrorism – Notable Incidents Of Domestic Terrorism

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