LIAR! LIAR! PANTS ON FIRE?

First of all, we know that Bill White's properties are not worth a hundred grand a piece. A few months back, some of the properties were listed by his wife and were lucky to be worth $30K.

Secondly, the man claims $52K in credit card debt and doesn't list the medical expenses that he says caused the bankruptcy. It is patently obvious that Bill White has lost - the business is bust - there isn't enough money generated by his holdings to even pay the bills. He blew it plain an simple. So much for his braggadocio.

Thirdly, millionaires - real millionaires - don't have to worry about medical bills.
TO ORIGINAL SOURCE


Roanoke neo-Nazi files for bankruptcy
William White is seeking Chapter 11 protection after what he called a "cash crunch."
By Laurence Hammack
981-3239

Four years after coming to Roanoke and starting a rental home business that quickly drew attention to his role in the white supremacy movement, William White has filed for bankruptcy.

White, a neo-Nazi activist who is perhaps better known for his virulent Internet postings than as the owner of White Homes and Land LLC, recently sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

In a petition filed last week in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Virginia, White listed assets of $1.9 million and liabilities of $1.4 million.

White, commander of the Roanoke-based American National Socialist Workers Party, was one of the country's few white supremacy leaders with a viable business, giving him both credibility in the movement and the financial means to spread his racist views, according to one expert on hate groups.

"Now that's gone, and I think he has very little left," said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

"It's a remarkable end for a guy who simply can't stop bragging about what a brilliant businessman he is."

According to an SPLC report issued earlier this year, White came to Roanoke in 2004 to start a real estate business, maxing out several credit cards for the capital to purchase the first of about 20 homes he currently maintains as rental properties in an impoverished part of the city's West End neighborhood.

About the same time, White began to post racially charged comments on his Web site, complaining about his black tenants and suggesting that he would evict them as part of a "ghetto beautification project."

A federal housing discrimination complaint filed by the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People produced no charges against White, who continued to use overthrow.com as a forum to comment on race relations both in Roanoke and across the country.

White said Tuesday that his reliance on credit cards had nothing to do with his financial difficulties, which he attributed to medical bills of more than $130,000 from the recent hospitalization of his wife and newborn daughter.

"We're just reorganizing some debt," he said.

"The property is certainly not underwater. We have plenty of money in it, but we just had a temporary cash crunch."

White said he has been planning for some time to sell his rental homes. He said the bankruptcy proceedings should have no effect on his home construction business or on his role as leader of his neo-Nazi organization.

Although White discounted the role that credit cards played in his financial difficulties, a list of his 20 largest unsecured creditors in the bankruptcy filing includes more than $52,000 in credit card debt.

White said he has paid off the credit card used at the start of his business.

As assets, White listed 13 rental properties on Chapman and Patterson avenues with a combined value of more than $1.3 million. He also listed about $565,000 in personal property, the bulk of which he said came from his interest in White Homes and Land. The remaining seven rental properties are listed in the name of White's company and were not included in his personal bankruptcy.

Another section of the 70-page bankruptcy petition contains evidence of White's cash-flow problem: While his business grossed about $550,000 in 2007 and $541,000 in 2006, income to date this year was listed as just $78,797.

White's financial problems come at a time when his neo-Nazi activities have been getting more attention.

In perhaps his most publicized controversy, White used his Web site in August to post the names and addresses of the defendants in the Jena Six case, a racially charged assault proceeding in Jena, La. Next to the black defendants' contact information, White posted the words: "Lynch the Jena 6."

Although the FBI said at the time it was investigating White's actions, no legal action has been taken against him in connection with the Jena Six case.

More recently, White tangled with lawyers involved in a housing discrimination case in Virginia Beach. After White inserted himself into the case -- sending racially charged letters to black tenants who had sued their white landlord -- lawyers for the plaintiffs asked a judge to impose sanctions against him. The judge has yet to make a decision in that case.

Regardless of what happens to White in bankruptcy court, Potok acknowledged that it will likely have little influence on his penchant for posting nasty and Nazi-inspired views on the Internet.

"My guess is that Bill White will continue to try to be a player in the movement," Potok said, "because he has an ego as large as the planet."

DEMOCRACY GONE WILD

Freedom of Speech is cherished - I understand that. But...has the internet provided a forum for speech that shouldn't be free? Is there a point where government must draw the line?


TO THE ORIGINAL SOURCE

'Democracy gone wild'
Hate speech infests online versions of local daily newspapers
06/12/2008

For the person behind the moniker “Viking Knight,” the Internet is a virtual playground for hate.
“Mexican’ts are a b…stard race and will come to nothing in the end. WHITE POWER FOREVER,” Viking Knight wrote in response to the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old boy. “Somebody saved the LAPD the trouble of icing this ‘vato.’ … He is one less Mexie on the planet, not that it counts for much.”

On the beating of an Orthodox Jew by skinheads in North Hollywood: “We should offer a reward to the guy who off’d this Christ-killer. … Jew$ are a disease.”

On the death of an Armenian girl who was denied a liver transplant by her health insurance company: “God got rid of one the Turks missed. Too bad He doesn’t get rid of all of them.”

A person might expect to find these and other vile comments by Viking Knight — including slurs against gays and Asians — posted on a white supremacist or neo-Nazi Web site.

But the banner on the top of the page belongs to the Daily News of Los Angeles, and in other cases to its MediaNews Group sister paper, the Pasadena Star-News.

Like dozens of other people who post comments through these and other newspaper Web sites, Viking Knight can remain as anonymous as he or she wishes to be. And due to the anonymity and instant access to an audience that poorly monitored newspaper and social networking sites provide, Internet hate speech is a growing national phenomenon.

“It’s democracy gone wild,” said Deborah Lauter, director of the national civil rights division of the Anti-Defamation League. She’s hoping the Daily News and the Star-News will remove racist diatribes from the Web and be more vigilant about hate speech in the future.

“Unfortunately, we believe now that many more papers are offering this kind of [comment] service we are going to see an increase in that kind of hate rhetoric. While it is protected speech, we believe it is incumbent on a newspaper or a social networking site to step up and be a responsible corporation, and be more active in moderating [its Web site] and taking down what is clearly hate speech,” said Lauter. “Once they decide to create that forum, then they have to act responsibly and monitor it.”

The Daily News and Star-News Web sites allow any reader to post his or her views through a service called Topix, which allows discussion forums to be built around news articles and other subjects.
“It is impossible for any paper our size to read all the comments every day, so this is an issue often discussed [among the 57 MediaNews Group daily newspapers, many of which use Topix],” said Ryan Garfat, online editor of the Daily News.

Garfat said the paper typically relies on Web users to flag hate speech and other abusive posts through Topix, which forwards those complaints to editors. He said Tuesday that he plans to remove hate speech identified by this newspaper, but is already dealing with dozens of reader complaints about other posts — some of which aren’t hate speech at all.

Garfat also said that there were no plans to change how the Web site is monitored.

“The unfortunate effects of having an open forum are that these things are going to happen, and we feel they reflect poorly on the identity of the newspaper. But if we take the alternate route of eliminating comments, then I think we are not fulfilling our goal of allowing legitimate discussion within our community and would be disserving our community by doing that.”

The Star-News has had far fewer problems with online hate speech than the Daily News — the source of the three comments quoted above — and removed posts that contained hate speech following conversations with the Pasadena Weekly.

“Our policy for the comments is that we do not moderate or edit the comments before they’re posted online. However, we will remove comments that are deemed to be offensive or inappropriate,” said San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group Senior Editor Frank Pine, who supervises the Star-News, Whittier Daily News and San Gabriel Valley Tribune.

Pine said he was not aware of Viking Knight’s hateful posts until hearing from this newspaper, and that the only complaints about comments made over the Internet had been from sources in news stories who felt they were being characterized unfairly.

Although Topix terms of service prohibit content that is “hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable,” it also warns that users “may be exposed to content that is offensive, indecent or objectionable.”

Topix is a Palo Alto-based limited liability corporation owned largely by publishing giants the Gannett Co., The McClatchy Co. and the Tribune Co., according to its Web site. The Web site for the Los Angeles Times does not use Topix, and reader comments appear to be monitored to exclude hate speech.

At the Star-News site, Viking Knight makes it clear in one anti-affirmative action rant that he’s no fan of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, and in a separate post appears to advocate that Obama be assassinated.

“Robert Kennedy sold our courageous men in uniform out when he became a peacenik. He sold White people out when he started kissing up to the likes of Chavez, Dr. King, the mestizo farmworkers, etc. Sirhan may not be a prize, but he was just what America needed, just when we needed him,” wrote Viking Knight in response to a column by Star-News Public Editor Larry Wilson about Kennedy’s Pasadena-bred assassin. “As we approach the November elections, we could use a man like Sirhan again.”

“That post is clearly over the line,” Pine said Monday. On Tuesday it had been removed from the site, along with other posts disparaging Latino youth.

“As shocking as these kinds of things are, they are increasingly common on perfectly mainstream Web sites. Usually the paper will step in and scrub their sites of this kind of material, because if they didn’t they would become absolute nesting grounds for white supremacists. These guys are looking for a place to safely transmit their ideology and bring more people into the movement,” said Mark Potok, editor of Intelligence Report, a magazine that monitors hate groups and is produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Potok said that he’s been forced to keep a close eye on his magazine’s blog (www.splcenter.org/blog) to prevent hateful comments from being posted. People have even tried to post racially motivated threats to assassinate Obama, which he has reported to the Department of Homeland Security.
In the United States, constitutional free speech protections typically prevent legal action on hate speech unless someone is threatening or urging others to physically harm a person or racial group, said Potok, who recently testified before the Helsinki Commission (also known as the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe) about threats posed by Internet hate speech.

Potok was testifying not only as an expert, but also as a victim: A neo-Nazi group once identified him on a Web site as an enemy of their cause and posted his home address. But because the group did not specifically order its readers to do Potok harm, they didn’t break the law.

In Europe and most other Western nations, hate speech — in Germany, denying or trivializing the Holocaust — can be prosecuted as a crime. As a result, said Potok, the majority of foreign-language white supremacist Web sites are hosted through computer servers in the United States.

Viking Knight also took aim through the Star-News at the social services organization El Centro de Acción Social, which he or she wrote on May 31 “is nothing but a Reconquista terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of America.”

The next day, in response to another reader’s concern about the achievement levels of some students receiving scholarships from the organization, Viking Knight wrote: “They’re Mexican’ts, What did you expect? Their grades suck because in most high schools, you can’t major in Lowriding 101.”

El Centro Executive Director Randy Jurado Ertll said he thinks the Star-News should prevent racist comments like these — which were pulled from the site after Pine spoke with the Weekly — from reaching readers.

“Responsibility comes with freedom of expression,” said Ertll. “I was just disgusted by this. We need to be vigilant of people who use hate language. Just as we denounce hate crimes, we have to denounce hate language. Words impact people’s actions and influence others to promote more hate.”

But it doesn’t end there. One conversation chain from the Daily News involving Viking Knight and others was so rife with prejudice against a Latino teen shot to death at a party — “like all the rest of the scum too hell he went too face satan,” wrote catwomomen4u69 — that someone claiming to be the victim’s ex-girlfriend was actually pleading with people to stop.

“Certainly we could do a better job of moderating comments,” said Garfat, who acknowledged that recent staffing cuts have affected the paper’s ability to monitor the Web site. “But, I still maintain the need to allow people to have conversations supersedes the vile comments that sometimes permeate our boards. We work with what we’ve got.”

In another conversation that devolved into slurs against “Mexicans and blacks,” someone wrote: “It’s time for a good old fashion clan meeting … come on my arean [sic] brothers … lets get out our rebel flags and let the lynching begin.”

Such vitriol targeting Latinos in general or people perceived to be illegal aliens is, sadly, “very much par for the course,” in terms of hate speech to be found on mainstream Web sites, said Potok.

“We’re in a whole new age,” said the ADL’s Lauter. “The anonymity of the Internet provides a forum so the people who wouldn’t have the proclivity to say it in public can hide behind screens. We used to say the Klan hid behind their white hoods; these [people] hide behind their screens.”

And in many ways, newspapers are behind the times in figuring out how to respond.

“There’s a larger issue in this story,” said Pine, “that is, to what degree should newspaper Web sites allow people to comment anonymously. It’s something that warrants further scrutiny. Certainly it’s a conversation we’ve been having in the newsroom and will continue to have.”

Pine and Garfat said they are reluctant to restrict comments until they are screened or increase registration requirements, as that would hinder access to the service. “We want to facilitate the free exchange of ideas and have people feeling comfortable speaking their minds, but on the other hand you don’t want people to hide behind anonymity and use it to promote hatred and say things that have no place in civilized public discourse,” he said.

That such vicious comments sat for more than a week on the Web sites of local daily newspapers angers Nat Nehdar, a friend of the Pasadena Human Relations Commission and its former chair, who dedicates much of his time to activities combating prejudice, hate and violence.

“I feel strongly that newspapers should more carefully monitor their Web sites and eliminate such trash, which in some ways can reflect on the newspaper itself. If you allow it you are not condemning it, so it seems like you are condoning this type of hate speech,” he said.

Once a Nazi Not Always A Nazi

TO ORIGINAL ARTICLE AND MORE PICTURES

Christer Mattson, Swedish Holocaust educator, is seen during a visit to the Yad Vashem holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Monday, June 2, 2008. They used to paint swastika graffiti, get into street fights with immigrants, distribute anti-Semitic propaganda. But after studying the cases of a few of the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II, some former Swedish neo-Nazi teenagers came to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial to underline their new attitudes. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

Former neo-Nazis become Holocaust commemorators
By ARON HELLER – 2 days ago

JERUSALEM (AP) — They used to paint swastika graffiti, get into street fights with immigrants and distribute anti-Semitic propaganda.

But after studying the cases of a few of the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II, some former Swedish neo-Nazi teenagers came to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial with new attitudes.

The teens, some of whom were active members of neo-Nazi groups, visited the memorial Monday to present the findings of their research into the stories of 16 Holocaust victims from their hometown of Karlstad, and add pages of testimony for the previously unknown dead.

The project is the initiative of Swedish Holocaust educator Christer Mattsson. The concept is to take troubled youths off the street, confront their prejudices and ignorance and slowly convert them into Holocaust educators themselves.

"The first time I took a neo-Nazi to Auschwitz, I didn't know what to expect," he said. "But after seeing it, after seeing where Jews used to live, he said: 'I can no longer deny it happened, or salute what happened.'"

The journey has been an arduous one. Of the 100 teenagers in his program, Mattsson said about five to eight are "hard-core neo-Nazis" — some completely reformed, others not. Those, some sporting Nazi tattoos, did not make the trip to Israel, either for fear of offending survivors or to remain anonymous for their own safety.

The only former active member who arrived, 17-year-old Joar, refused to be photographed and would be identified only by his first name for fear of retribution from his former friends.

The shy, blond Joar hid behind a baseball cap and a large pair of sunglasses. He would only say that he used to have "different opinions."

"I didn't know so much. I've learned a lot about the Holocaust," he said, through a translator. "I have a different perspective on life now."

Sweden remained neutral during World War II. It had a very small Jewish population and closed its gates to refugees. That policy began to change as the horrors of the Holocaust became apparent and Sweden began to lean toward the allies.

In 1944, Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg began handing out papers to save thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazi death camps. After the war, some 27,000 survivors arrived in Sweden.

In Karlstad, 16 Jewish women died shortly afterward, most from illness, and were buried in a Jewish cemetery. Mattsson took his students there to ask them if they still believed the Holocaust to be a myth. They, in turn, decided to investigate the women's stories. The result is a 100-page book that details their stories.

On Monday, they presented their findings to Israel's official Holocaust museum and memorial.

Yad Vashem spokeswoman Estee Yaari said it probably marked the first time it had ever dealt directly with neo-Nazis.

The teenagers toured the museum and met with Mirjam Akavia, a Holocaust survivor who fled to Sweden after the war.

She vividly described her childhood and how she was yanked out of school and sent to the camps, where only she and sister emerged while the rest of her family perished.

"When I was 12, it was the end of my beautiful childhood. It was the end of everything," she said.

The Swedish teenagers were not much older when they encountered their own local brand of anti-Semitism.

"The headmaster of my former school, who is here today, was beaten up by people I knew three years ago," said 17-year-old Jennifer Lindstrom, who said she joined Mattsson's group so she could have the tools to battle her classmates' rhetoric and actions.

"Maybe because I have been studying about the Holocaust and Nazism, maybe because I have been to Auschwitz and the empty shtetels (Jewish villages) in Poland or maybe because I got sick and fed up with racism and neo-Nazis — I could not remain silent."

Lindstrom's principal was assaulted because he tried to keep the neo-Nazi students out of his school. The two other teenagers in the group were Johanna Karlsson and Deken Izat, a Kurdish immigrant to Sweden who used to belong to a rival gang that battled with Joar's.

Lindstrom said that finding out what happened in her own backyard proved to be the best way for her and her new friends to counter racism.

"It is slightly unreal to be here today and handing over material that we have worked with for so long, knowing that it will be here at Yad Vashem for always," Lindstrom said.

OBAMA WINS NOMINATION

COMPLETE STORY HERE

AP tally: Obama effectively clinches nomination By DAVID ESPO and STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writers
16 minutes ago



Barack Obama effectively clinched the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday, based on an Associated Press tally of convention delegates, ending a grueling marathon to become the first black candidate ever to lead his party into a fall campaign for the White House.

Campaigning on an insistent call for change, Obama outlasted former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in a historic race that sparked record turnout in primary after primary, yet exposed deep racial and gender divisions within the party.

The tally was based on public declarations from delegates as well as from another 16 who have confirmed their intentions to the AP. It also included 11 delegates Obama was guaranteed as long as he gained 30 percent of the vote in South Dakota and Montana later in the day. It takes 2,118 delegates to clinch the nomination.

The 46-year-old first-term senator will face John McCain in the fall campaign to become the 44th president. The Arizona senator campaigned in Memphis, Tenn., during the day, and had no immediate reaction to Obama's victory.

Clinton stood ready to concede that her rival had amassed the delegates needed to triumph, according to officials in her campaign. They stressed that the New York senator did not intend to suspend or end her candidacy in a speech Tuesday night in New York. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to divulge her plans.

Obama's triumph was fashioned on prodigious fundraising, meticulous organizing and his theme of change aimed at an electorate opposed to the Iraq war and worried about the economy — all harnessed to his own innate gifts as a campaigner.

With her husband's two-White House terms as a backdrop, Clinton campaigned for months as the candidate of experience, a former first lady and second-term senator ready, she said, to take over on Day One.

But after a year on the campaign trail, Obama won the kickoff Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, and the freshman senator became something of an overnight political phenomenon.

"We came together as Democrats, as Republicans and independents, to stand up and say we are one nation, we are one people and our time for change has come," he said that night in Des Moines.