Obama Administration Stunned Human Rights Groups

"Obama’s memorandum may look jarring on paper, but it’s grimly consistent with Washington’s agenda of waging war indefinitely, without boundaries, against an enemy we can no longer really define. The U.S. supports warfare that uses children as weapons, warfare that kills civilian children indiscriminately, warfare that ultimately sends our own children to perish on foreign soil. And so America marches on in a world of conflict where the first casualty is innocence itself."

White House Says Child Soldiers Are Ok, if They Fight Terrorists

by Michelle Chen


“You cannot be completely happy with all these wounds—both in your body and in your mind.” —15 year-old child soldier


The phenomenon of child soldiers, like genocide, slavery and torture, seems like one of those crimes that no nation could legitimately defend. Yet the Obama administration just decided to leave countless kids stranded on some of the world’s bloodiest battlegrounds.


The administration stunned human rights groups last month by sidestepping a commitment to help countries curb the military exploitation of children. Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy reported that President Obama issued a presidential memorandum granting waivers from the Child Soldiers Prevention Act to four countries: Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and Yemen. The memo instructed Secretary of State Hilary Clinton that it is in our “national interest” to continue extending military aid to those countries, despite their failure to comply with the rules Congress passed and George W. Bush signed in 2008.


A thumbs-up for child soldiers from the pen of President Obama? Whitehouse spokesperson P.J. Crowley explained it was a strategic decision to ease the 2008 law. The rationale is that on balance, it’s more effective for the U.S. to keep providing military assistance that will help countries gradually evolve out of the practice of marshaling kids to the battlefield, rather than isolating them.


According to the Christian Science Monitor, Crowley argued, “These countries have put the right policies in place… but are struggling to correctly implement them.” The New York Times reported that administration spokespeople also cited the countries’ crucial role in global counter-terrorism efforts.


Strategically granting certain countries a pass on child rights reflects Washington’s warped attitude toward the global human rights regime. The U.S. has failed to ratify, or simply ignored, numerous human rights protocols, and our ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child has languished. Human Rights Watch points out, “Only the United States and Somalia, which has no functioning national government, have failed to ratify the treaty.” (Although we did ratify two optional protocols in 2002, relating to child soldiers and other forms of exploitation.)


Somalia, by the way, is one of just two countries that the White House allowed to be sanctioned under the 2008 law; the second was Burma. Presumably this is because Somalia is not receiving direct military funding, reports the Monitor. Yet the U.S. continues to support Somali government forces as they fight Islamic insurgents—with the help of a large force of child soldiers. (To their credit, Somalia has at least promised the U.N. they”ll stop arming kids eventually, according to the Washington Post).


Maybe you could argue that the U.S. is so “advanced” it needn’t bother with rules about children’s rights to education and whatnot. Obama’s waivers might be seen as realpolitik in areas like Yemen, whose military we support as part of our sprawling counter-terrorism operations. But the bottom line is that the administration has carved out an exception to a law intended to ethically guide the flow of U.S. aid money around the world.


According to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, which holds America to the same scrutiny that countries like Uganda and DRC routinely face in the media, we benefit indirectly and directly from the exploitation of child fighters:


In 2006 the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) registered 59 children in detention during 16 visits to five places of detention or internment controlled by the USA or the UK in Iraq. US soldiers stationed at the detention centres and former detainees described abuses against child detainees, including the rape of a 15-year-old boy at Abu Ghraib, Iraq, forced nudity, stress positions, beating and the use of dogs. Following US troop increases in Iraq in early 2007, US military arrests of children there rose from an average of 25 per month in 2006 to an average of 100 per month. Military officials reported that 828 were children held at Camp Cropper by mid-September, including children as young as 11. A 17-year-old was reportedly strangled by a fellow detainee in early 2007. In August 2007 the USA opened Dar al-Hikmah, a non-residential facility intended to provide education services to 600 detainees aged 11-17 pending release or transfer to Iraqi custody. US military officials excluded an estimated 100 children from participation in the program, apparently on the grounds that they were “extremists” and “beyond redemption”.

Omar Khadr, the young Canadian detainee at Guantanamo Bay, remains trapped in a Kafkaesque quasi-judicial system without regard to the fact that he was a child when captured. Rights advocates like Monia Mazigh in Ottowa have called for Khadr to be recognized as a child soldier, but the administration seems to think securing a conviction in Kangaroo Court takes precedence over international law. And because Khadr, like the other Gitmo prisoners, is identified with that faceless dark horde the U.S. has branded “terrorists,” Americans aren’t even inclined to see him as a human being, let alone as a juvenile soldier deserving of sympathy.


So America’s hypocrisy on children in war has many layers. Obama condemns the practice in theory, then undermines federal law by issuing waivers for our partners in Africa and the Middle East. And of course, Washington sees no problem with punishing child soldiers as adults when they’re aligned with the terrorists who are bent on destroying America.


UN Treaties alone obviously won’t demobilize all the world’s child soldiers, but their main role is to put down a legal placeholder. And it’s that moral guidepost that the U.S. undermines every time it waives parallel U.S. laws based on the “national interest.”


Obama’s memorandum may look jarring on paper, but it’s grimly consistent with Washington’s agenda of waging war indefinitely, without boundaries, against an enemy we can no longer really define. The U.S. supports warfare that uses children as weapons, warfare that kills civilian children indiscriminately, warfare that ultimately sends our own children to perish on foreign soil. And so America marches on in a world of conflict where the first casualty is innocence itself.

WHO WILL STAND UP TO THE SUPERRICH?



Photo by Damon Winter

Yesterday, Frank Rich, a columnist for the New York Times, wrote an opinion piece dealing with one of the biggest problems that we are currently faced with in this country and one that is grabbing a lot of headline attention - the Bush Tax Cuts and the corporate gurus who are really running this country.

As it appears that President Obama is waffling yet again in an effort to appease the right-wing elements of Congress, and signaling some sort of "compromise" on extending these tax cuts, many of us are becoming more and more incensed by his wishy-washy, mamby-pamby performance.

Frank Rich, questions who, then, will stand up against those who represent the upper echelon of the out-of-control economic ladder:


The wealthy Americans we should worry about instead are the ones who implicitly won the election — those who take far more from America than they give back. They were not on the ballot, and most of them are not household names. Unlike Whitman and the other defeated self-financing candidates, they are all but certain to cash in on the Nov. 2 results. There’s no one in Washington in either party with the fortitude to try to stop them from grabbing anything that’s not nailed down.



The Americans I’m talking about are not just those shadowy anonymous corporate campaign contributors who flooded this campaign. No less triumphant were those individuals at the apex of the economic pyramid — the superrich who have gotten spectacularly richer over the last four decades while their fellow citizens either treaded water or lost ground. The top 1 percent of American earners took in 23.5 percent of the nation’s pretax income in 2007 — up from less than 9 percent in 1976. During the boom years of 2002 to 2007, that top 1 percent’s pretax income increased an extraordinary 10 percent every year. But the boom proved an exclusive affair: in that same period, the median income for non-elderly American households went down and the poverty rate rose.

More here...

A SIGN OF THE TIMES

A LITTLE MESSED UP ISN'T IT?

HE'S....BACK...hopefully not for long

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Eric Draper, John Ott,
Dirk Wüstenhagen)

A Small Fraction of a Man

Saturday 13 November 2010
by: William Rivers Pitt

George W. Bush was all over my television this past week, all over the newspapers, and the feelings inspired by his sudden reappearance are almost beyond my capacity to describe. There was the story about his hearty approval of waterboarding. There was the story that had him contemplating dropping Dick Cheney from the administration. There was the story that had him describing himself as a "dissenter" on the Iraq invasion. He did interviews, and excerpts of his new book dribbled out, and it was all too much to endure.


This is the guy, I thought to myself when I saw his face or heard his voice. This is the guy.

This is the guy who took a massive Clinton administration budget surplus and gave it away to his friends at the top of the tax bracket, a move that laid the groundwork for our current economic calamity.

This is the guy who breezed past a pointed warning about Osama bin Laden, terrorism and airplanes on August 8, 2001, because he was on vacation and couldn't be bothered.

This is the guy who parlayed that massive failure into a constant goad of fear to be wielded with impunity against the people he purported to lead. Plastic sheeting and duct tape, anthrax under your pillow, and of course, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

This is the guy who, not even a month after the Towers came down, looked into a television camera and said, "We need to counter the shockwave of the evildoer by having individual rate cuts accelerated and by thinking about tax rebates."

Oh yes, this is the guy who stood before the American people in January of 2003 and proclaimed that Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile biological weapons labs, uranium from Niger for use in a "robust" nuclear weapons programs, and that Iraq enjoyed connections to al Qaeda that led directly to the attacks of September 11.

This was the guy who presided over the outing of a deep-cover CIA agent after her husband had the temerity to call him a liar in the public prints. That agent was running a network for the purpose of thwarting any person or group that might try to deliver weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

This is the guy who strutted like a bantam rooster under a banner reading "Mission Accomplished," bragging about the end of a war that was to grind on for seven more years, and grinds on even to this day, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

This is the guy who said "Bring it on" and put a target on the backs of tens of thousands of US troops. This is the guy who is personally responsible for the death and injury of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings. The body count from his administration is breathtaking in size and scope.

This is the guy who allowed the intelligence services of this nation to violate the Constitutional rights of its citizens in a way never seen before.

This is the guy who turned the entire world against America after that same world embraced us so completely after September 11. World leaders could not stand to be in the same room with him, and openly mocked him, thus humiliating us all.

This is the guy who literally fiddled while Hurricane Katrina devoured the city of New Orleans.

This guy actually said he considered dropping Cheney from the administration? It would be comic if it were not so pointedly fraudulent. Cheney ran the government, ran roughshod over every right he found meddlesome, and Bush sat by and let him do it with that same simpering smirk on his face.

This is the guy who set stem cell research back more than a decade because of his overarching fealty to "snowflake babies" over living, breathing, suffering people.

This is the guy who unleashed all the horrors of the torture chamber because the lawyers said it was OK. If the president does it, it's not illegal, right? Nixon came up with that line, but this is the guy who took it farther than it has ever been taken before.

This is the guy, and now he's back on my television again, and it makes me want to eat my own teeth. I endured him for eight long, brutal years, and have often thought since that no matter how bad things get - and they have, indeed, gotten pretty damned bad - I don't have to endure his face or his voice or his abject serial failures anymore.

But now he's back, and it is like returning to a nightmare.

I don't know what this George W. Bush Reputation Rehabilitation Tour will actually accomplish in the end. The same 20% of the country that kept his approval ratings from slipping into single digits - said group now being known as the "Tea Party" - will go out and buy his book. They will lap up his mealy-mouthed pabulum like cats into the cream, and some of our "mainstream" commentators will try to shoehorn the idea that he is missed into the national conversation.

He is not. George W. Bush was, and likely will forever be, the single worst American president in the nation's history. To outstrip his remarkable record of failure, criminality and disgrace, a future president will have to personally cause the Earth to crash into the sun.

All I can do for now is avoid the TV, stay away from the newspapers, and pray to God on High that this small fraction of a man will soon retreat back into the ignominy from which he has emerged. There is no salvaging him, and thanks to him, there may be no salvaging America in his aftermath.

We are all children of this bastard fool now. The least he can do is stay in the shadows where he belongs, while we toil and sweat to repair what he wrought

Nooses Are A No-No - Goodbye Daniel

Department of Justice


Office of Public Affairs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monday, November 8, 2010





Oregon Man Sentenced for Threatening Lima, Ohio, Civil Rights Leader by Mailing Noose





Daniel Lee Jones

 WASHINGTON - Daniel Lee Jones, a Portland, Ore., white supremacist, was sentenced today to 18 months in prison and three years supervised release for threatening the president of the Lima, Ohio, chapter of the NAACP by mailing him a noose. Jones entered a guilty plea on May 17, 2010, to using the U.S. Postal Service to send a threatening communication.



In the plea agreement, Jones admitted to mailing F.M. Jason Upthegrove a hangman’s noose, which arrived at Mr. Upthegrove’s home on or about Feb. 14, 2008. Jones stated in the plea agreement that he mailed the hangman’s noose in order to convey a threat to Mr. Upthegrove because he was an African-American who publicly advocated for better police services for African-Americans in Lima, Ohio. The indictment indicated that Mr. Upthegrove also spoke out in the media against Jones’s white supremacist group’s mailing of hate flyers related to the shooting of an African American woman by a member of the Lima Police Department.



"A noose, an unmistakable symbol of hatred in this nation, was used by this defendant as a threat of violence aimed at silencing a civil rights advocate," said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division. "The Department of Justice will vigorously prosecute those who use threats of violence to attempt to silence proponents of racial equality."



"We will not tolerate those who use threats of violence, such as by mailing a noose, to intimidate individuals who are advocating for racial equality," said U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio Steven M. Dettelbach.



The case was investigated by Special Agent Brian Russ of the FBI, and the prosecution was handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney David Bauer from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and Special Legal Counsel Barry Kowalski and Trial Attorney Shan Patel from the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

An Open Letter To The White Right On The Occasion of Your Recent Successful Temper Tantrum

An Open Letter to the White Right, On the Occasion of Your Recent, Successful Temper Tantrum
By Tim Wise



Posted on November 3, 2010


For all y’all rich folks, enjoy that champagne, or whatever fancy ass Scotch you drink.


And for y’all a bit lower on the economic scale, enjoy your Pabst Blue Ribbon, or whatever shitty ass beer you favor.


Whatever the case, and whatever your economic station, know this…


You need to drink up.


And quickly.


And heavily.


Because your time is limited.


Real damned limited.


So party while you can, but mind the increasingly loud clock ticking away in the corners of your consciousness.


The clock that reminds you how little time you and yours have left.


Not much more now.


Tick, tock.


Tick, tock.


Tick.


Tock.


I know, you think you’ve taken “your country back” with this election — and of course you have always thought it was yours for the taking, cuz that’s what we white folks are bred to believe, that it’s ours, and how dare anyone else say otherwise — but you are wrong.


You have won a small battle in a larger war the meaning of which you do not remotely understand.


‘Cuz there is nothing even slightly original about you.


There have always been those who wanted to take the country back.


There were those who, in past years, wanted to take the country back to a time of enslavement and indentured servitude.


But they lost.


There were those who wanted to take us back to a time when children could be made to work in mines and factories, when workers had no legal rights to speak of, when the skies in every major city were heavy with industrial soot that would gather on sidewalks and windowsills like volcanic ash.


But they lost.


There were those who wanted to take us back to a time when women could not vote, or attend any but a few colleges, or get loans in their own names, or start their own businesses.


But they lost.


There were those who wanted to take us back to a time when blacks “had no rights that the white man was bound to respect,” – this being the official opinion of the Supreme Court before those awful days of judicial activism, now decried by the likes of you – and when people of color could legally be kept from voting solely because of race, or holding certain jobs, or living in certain neighborhoods, or run out of other towns altogether when the sun would go down, or be strung up from trees.


But they lost.


And you will lose.


So make a note of it.


Tweet it to yourself.


Put it on your Facebook wall and leave it there so you’ll remember that I told you so.


It is coming, and soon.


This isn’t hubris. It isn’t ideology. It is not wishful thinking.


It is math.


Not even advanced math. Just simple, basic, like 3rd grade math.


The kind of math that proves how your kind — mostly older white folks beholden to an absurd, inaccurate, nostalgic fantasy of what America used to be like — are dying.


You’re like the bad guy in every horror movie ever made, who gets shot five times, or stabbed ten, or blown up twice, and who will eventually pass — even if it takes four sequels to make it happen — but who in the meantime keeps coming back around, grabbing at our ankles as we walk by, we having been mistakenly convinced that you were finally dead this time.


Fair enough, and have at it. But remember how this movie ends.


Our ankles survive.


You do not.


Michael Meyers, Freddie Kreuger, Jason, and that asshole husband in that movie with Julia Roberts who tracks her down after she runs away and changes her identity–they are all done. Even that crazy fucker in Saw is about to be finished off for good. Granted, he’s gonna be popping out in some 3-D shit to scare the kiddies, so he isn’t going quietly. But he’s going, as all bad guys eventually do.


And in the pantheon of American history, old white people have pretty much always been the bad guys, the keepers of the hegemonic and reactionary flame, the folks unwilling to share the category of American with others on equal terms.


Fine, keep it up. It doesn’t matter.


Because you’re on the endangered list.


And unlike, say, the bald eagle or some exotic species of muskrat, you are not worth saving.


In forty years or so, maybe fewer, there won’t be any more white people around who actually remember that Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, Opie-Taylor-Down-at-the-Fishing Hole cornpone bullshit that you hold so near and dear to your heart.


There won’t be any more white folks around who think the 1950s were the good old days, because there won’t be any more white folks around who actually remember them, and so therefore, we’ll be able to teach about them accurately and honestly, without hurting your precious feelings, or those of the so-called “greatest generation” — a bunch whose white members were by and large a gaggle of miscreants who helped save the world from fascism only to return home and oppose the ending of it here, by doing nothing to lift a finger on behalf of the civil rights struggle.


So to hell with you and all who revere you.


By then, half the country will be black or brown. And there is nothing you can do about it.


Nothing, Senõr Tancredo.


Nothing, Senõra Angle, or Senõra Brewer, or Senõr Beck.


Loy tiene muy mal, hijo de Puta.


And by then you will have gone all in as a white nationalist movement — hell you’ve all but done that now — thus guaranteeing that the folks of color, and even a decent size minority of us white folks will be able to crush you, election after election, from the Presidency on down to the 8th grade student council.


Like I said, this shit is math, baby. And numbers don’t lie.


Bottom line, this too shall pass.


So enjoy your tax cuts a while longer.


Go buy whatever you people buy when your taxes get cut: a new car or two, a bigger house, an island. Whatever.


Go back to trading your derivatives, engaging in rampant financial speculation that produces nothing of value, that turns the whole world into your personal casino. Whatever.


Play your hand, and for the love of God play it big. Real big. As in, shoot for the moon big. As in, try to privatize Social Security, and health care, and everything else. Whatever.


At least that way everyone will be able to see what you’re really about.


We’ve been trying to tell them, but nothing beats seeing it with your own eyes, so “Go big or go home,” Bubba.


“Git ‘er Done.”


“Cowboy up,” or whatever other stupid-ass catch phrase strikes your fancy.


Just promise you’ll do more than talk this time.


Please, or as one of your celluloid heroes might put it, “make my day.”


Do whatever you gotta do, but remember that those who are the victims of your greed and indifference take the long view.


They know, but you do not, that justice is not for the sprinters, but rather for the long distance runners who will be hitting their second wind, right about the time that you collapse from exhaustion.


They are like the tortoise to your hare.


They are like the San Francisco Giants, to your New York Yankees: a bunch that loses year after year after year, until they finally win.


You have had this confidence before, remember?


You thought you had secured your position permanently after the overthrow of reconstruction in the wake of the civil war, after the elimination of the New Deal, after the Reagan revolution, after the Republican electoral victory of 1994. And yet, they who refuse to die are still here.


Because those who have lived on the margins, who have been abused, maligned, targeted by austerity measures and budget cuts, subjected to racism, classism, sexism, straight supremacy and every other form of oppression always know more about their abusers than the abusers know about their victims.


They have to study you, to pay careful attention, to adjust their body armor accordingly, and to memorize your sleep patterns.


You, on the other hand, need know nothing whatsoever about them. And this, will surely prove fatal to you in the end. For it means you will not know their resolve. Will not fear it, as you should.


It means you will take their greatest strength — perseverance — and make of it a weakness, called losing.


But what you forget, or more to the point never knew, is that those who lose know how to lose, which is to say they know how to lose with dignity.


And those who suffer know how to suffer, which is to say they know how to survive: a skill that is in short supply amid the likes of you.


You, who could not survive the thought of minimal health care reform, or financial regulation, or a marginal tax rate equal to that which you paid just 10 years earlier, perhaps are under the illusion that everyone is as weak as you, as soft as you, as akin to petulant children as you are, as unable to cope with the smallest setback, the slightest challenge to the way you think your country should look and feel, and operate.


But, surprise…they are not.


And they know how to regroup, and plot, and plan, and they are planning even now — we are — your destruction.


And I do not mean by that your physical destruction. We don’t play those games. We’re not into the whole “Second Amendment remedies, militia, armed resistance” bullshit that your side fetishizes, cuz, see, we don’t have to be. We don’t need guns.


We just have to be patient.


And wait for your hearts to stop beating.


And stop they will.


And for some of you, real damned soon, truth be told.


Do you hear it?


The sound of your empire dying? Your nation, as you knew it, ending, permanently?


Because I do, and the sound of its demise is beautiful.


So know this.


If you thought this election was payback for 2008, remember…


Payback, thy name is…


Temporary.

Tea Parties - Racism, Anti-Semitism and the Militia Impulse

Written by  D. Burghart & L. Zeskind


This section of the Special Report compiles opinion polling data, documents significant examples of racist vitriol on the part of Tea Party leaders, shows incidents where well-known anti-Semites and white supremacists have been given a platform by Tea Partiers, and analyzes the attempt by white nationalist organizations to find new recruits in Tea Party ranks.







Tea Party leaders have bristled at any mention of the racism, Christian nationalism and white supremacy that is a part of their movement. In several notable instances, people of color have been prominently put forward as speakers or entertainers at Tea Party rallies, as if to say: look, this is a racially diverse movement that wants to add more color to its ranks. Prominent among these few individuals has been Lloyd Marcus, previously mentioned in this report as a paid consultant of Tea Party Express.






Nevertheless, Confederate battle flags, signs that read “America is a Christian nation,” and racist caricatures of President Obama have been an undeniable presence at Tea Party events in both local communities and in Washington, D.C. The venom (and spittle) directed at African-American Congressmen during the health care debate carried an unmistakably racist message. It is not the contention of this report that all Tea Partiers are consciously racist. The evidence presented, however, speaks for itself.






Providing a Platform to Bigots


Tea Party leaders have promoted and provided a platform to known racists and anti-Semites on multiple occasions. Dale Robertson, the chairman of the 1776 who displayed the infamous “n****r sign,” for example, brought Martin “Red” Beckman on as a guest to the Tea Party Radio hour that he co-hosts with Washington state talk show host Dr. Laurie Roth. Beckman has been known for over twenty-five years for his anti-Semitic writings and his defense of militias. In 1994, Beckman was evicted from his property in Montana by the IRS for refusing to pay taxes. He now resides in southwestern Washington State.[199]






While introducing Beckman, Robertson said, “Red’s a great guy. He’s been actually leading this fight long before I probably was even born. Red has written many books, one is Walls in Our Minds, another is Why the Militia. And so you’ll find that he agrees with you Laurie wholeheartedly that owning a gun is a constitutional right. And he is an authority on the Constitution and what the government has done to undermine our authority as citizens. It’s a pleasure to have him on board.”[200]






At the end of this program, Beckman promoted his book and noted that “Dale is talking about putting it on his website and I have no quarrel with that.”[201] Robertson added, “I’ve read his books, and they are a must read. Once you read them you’ll realize that we’ve definitely been deceived by our government and we need to do everything in our powers to take our nation back.”[202]






In a separate incident, Robertson endorsed Pastor John Weaver on the 1776 Tea Party Meet Up website. According to Robertson, “John Weaver is a very knowledgeable Christian leader who presents scriptural basis for Constitutional Rights. The Church has not exercised these rights and consequently is in decline. The Constitution is founded on the principal of God and a moral people, without either then the Church and the people of this land will fall victim to an oppressive government.”[203] Robertson also used this Meetup site to advertise an August 29, 2009 “family retreat” with Pastor Weaver in Magnolia, Texas.[204] The site also indicates that Robertson attended that retreat.






Weaver, of Fitzgerald, Georgia, has a sprawling set of connections to neo-Confederates and those preaching the so-called Christian Identity doctrine. He is the former Chaplain in Chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.[205] He has spoken at “Christian Identity” gatherings in Branson, Missouri in 1998 and 1999.[206] According to this particular theology, Jews are considered a satanic force (or the incarnation of Satan himself), and people of color are considered less than fully human. By contrast, the white people of northern Europe are considered racial descendants of the Biblical tribes of Israel, and the United States of America is considered their “promised land;” a theory descended from a theology known as British-Israelism. Although Weaver describes his particular outlook as a variant of “Dominionism,” his essay, “The Sovereignty of God and Civil Government” was listed in a book catalogue published by the British-Israel World Federation. As such, this would place Weaver just one step to the right of the most radical forms of Christian fundamentalism.[207]






The list of out-front anti-Semites on Tea Party platforms includes an event in July 2009. One thousand people gathered in Upper Senate Park for a rally in D.C. A full line-up of speakers included representatives from several tax reform groups, FreedomWorks, and talk show hosts. Also on the platform that day was the band Poker Face, playing music, providing technical back up, and receiving nothing but plaudits from the crowd.[208] The band, from Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, already had a reputation for anti-Semitism. Lead singer Paul Topete was on the public record calling the Holocaust a hoax, and writing and performing for American Free Press--a periodical published by Willis Carto, the godfather of Holocaust denial in the United States. According to Topete, “The Rothschilds set up the Illuminati in 1776 to subvert the Christian basis of civilization.”[209] Because of their bigotry, the band had been kicked off venues at Rutgers University in 2006 and a Ron Paul campaign event in 2007.[210] But they made it to the stage of the Tea Party without any questions asked.






More insidiously, it is common for rank and file activists to use anti-Semitic rhetoric in their web postings. For example, one Hutchinson, Kansas woman, using the name “salthawkmom,” recently wrote a message on a Tea Party website reading: “An international cult, called the Order of the Illuminati-Cabalistic bankers and Freemasons control WORLD finances, their goal is to degrade and enslave humanity.”[211] The “Illuminati - Cabalistic” language is widespread among followers of the John Birch Society and more radical Christian patriot-types active in Tea Parties in the Midwest and South.






In another instance, in April 2009, the San Mateo, California Republican Party chairman was moved to comment on an anti-Semitic graphic used to advertise a Tea Party event, “we strongly condemn the use of anti-Semitic imagery in the promotion of a recent event.”[212]






Signs claiming that “This is a Christian nation” have been part of many Tea Party protests, and they were in particular abundance in September 2009 during the large demonstration in Washington D.C. This should not come as a surprise, since organizations usually associated with the so-called Christian right have been a part of this movement since the beginning. The American Family Association, for example, signed up more than 1,500 organizers to lead protests in their home towns during July 2009.[213]






Founded by the Rev. Don Wildmon in Tupelo, Mississippi, this organization was initially known as the National Federation for Decency. It organized boycotts of the sponsors of television shows such as “Saturday Night Live,” and “Roseanne,” in opposition to the supposed “anti-Christian” character of these programs. It sponsored a boycott of Disney because of its “attack on American families.” And it has otherwise attempted to make its narrow vision of Christianity the law of the land.[214]






Members of this organization continued to participate and lead Tea Party events into 2010. Notably, the president of American Family Association of Kentucky, Inc., Frank Simon, became a director of Tea Party of Kentucky, Inc., and ensured that Louisville Tea Party events had an anti-gay cast to them, according to local reports.[215]






Enter White Nationalists...continued here...

FROM THE THIRD WAY & TALKING POINTS MEMO

Exteme Secrets - by Barton Gellman

"James Cummings appeared to have accumulated explosive ingredients and radioactive samples. He had filled out an application to join the National Socialist Movement and declared an ambition to kill the President-elect."

In an excellent expose on what some of the extreme elements of our society look like, Barton Gellman walks us through the dark and secret corridors of hate.

Camouflaged and silent, the assault team inched toward a walled stone compound for more than five hours, belly-crawling the last 200 yards. The target was an old state prison in eastern Ohio, and every handpicked member of Red Team 2 knew what was at stake: The year is 2014, and a new breed of neo-Islamic terrorism is rampant in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio ... The current White House Administration is pro-Muslim and has ordered a stand-down against Islamic groups. The mission: Destroy the terrorist command post — or die trying. The fighters must go in "sterile" — without name tags or other identifying insignia — as a deniable covert force. "Anyone who is caught or captured cannot expect extraction," the briefing officer said.







At nightfall the raiders launched their attack. Short, sharp bursts from their M-16s cut down the perimeter guards. Once past the rear gate, the raiders fanned out and emptied clip after clip in a barrage of diversionary fire. As defenders rushed to repel the small team, the main assault force struck from the opposite flank. Red Team 1 burst through a chain-link fence, enveloping the defense in lethal cross fire. The shooting was over in minutes. Thick grenade smoke bloomed over the command post. The defenders were routed, headquarters ablaze. (Watch TIME's video "Homeland Security Tradeshow.")

This August weekend of grueling mock combat, which left some of the men prostrate and bloody-booted, capped a yearlong training regimen of the Ohio Defense Force, a private militia that claims 300 active members statewide. The fighters shot blanks, the better to learn to maneuver in squads, but they buy live ammunition in bulk. Their training — no game, they stress — expends thousands of rounds a year from a bring-your-own armory of deer rifles, assault weapons and, when the owner turns up, a belt-fed M-60 machine gun. The militia trains for ambushes, sniper missions, close-quarters battle and other infantry staples.

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2022516,00.html





 

Holocaust Museum Shooter Eyed Axelrod

Photo courtesy of Talking Points Memo

Von Brunn Had Axelrod In His Sights...

The President was too hard to reach, in Von Brunn's view, but that was of no consequence. "Obama was created by Jews," he wrote. "Obama does what his Jew owners tell him to do."


The episode sent a jolt through the FBI and DHS. Von Brunn had demonstrated motive, means and intent to kill one of the President's closest aides. The Secret Service assigned Axelrod a protection detail and took other, undisclosed steps to broaden its coverage. The DHS put out bulletins to state and local law-enforcement agencies on the tactics, warning signs and other lessons of the case. FBI agents need to understand, a senior supervisor says, that "it isn't just the threat from Islamic extremists but also from homegrown or domestic terrorists" with antigovernment agendas

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/09/report_holocaust_shooter_wanted_to_kill_axelrod.php?ref=fpb

The "Half-Millionaire Nazi

Times are tough all over and even tougher for the loons on the right. Hal Turner didn't fare too well last week, and it looks like along with being incarcerated, Bill White is now on his way to the poor house.

In a civil suit that was heard this week, a jury found in favor of the plaintiff's awarding them over a half-million in Bill's ill-gotten green-backs. It just goes to show you that not all speech is protected.

The Roanoke Times



© August 28, 2010


By Laurence Hammack



Neo-Nazi leader William A. White, serving prison time for racially motivated threats, lost a civil lawsuit brought by five women victimized by his diatribes and, along with the American Nazi Party, must pay them $545,000, a federal jury decided Friday.



The jury of seven white men held White liable for compensatory damages of $265,000 and the American National Socialist Workers' Party for $280,000.



In a trial that began Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, five black tenants from a Virginia Beach apartment complex claimed White harassed them in May 2007 after learning of a discrimination lawsuit they had filed against their white landlord.



As the commander of a now-defunct neo-Nazi organization in Roanoke, White became so angry when he learned of the lawsuit that he fired off letters to the women with racial epithets.



It was a tactic White - described by one hate watch group as perhaps America's loudest and most obnoxious neo-Nazi - employed for years before he was jailed in 2008 on charges of making racially motivated threats.



White is serving a 2-1/2-year prison sentence.



During the trial, the women described their reactions to the letters.



One said she began to suffer seizures. Another developed an ulcer. All said they live in fear of White and his followers.



Annette Reddick testified that she no longer lets her 10-year-old grandson outside to play or ride his bike alone.



"I didn't know what was around the corner waiting for us," she said.



White, 33, did not testify or present any evidence.



White, who moved to Roanoke in 2004, once owned about 20 houses in the West End neighborhood. He claimed nearly $2 million in assets at one point but ended up filing for bankruptcy protection in 2008.



Because the jury found White's actions to be willful and malicious, the $545,000 judgment against him will stand regardless of the bankruptcy proceedings.



After deliberating about three hours Friday, the jury awarded damages to Reddick, her daughter Tasha Reddick, Arlene Carter, Tiese Mitchell and Crystal Lewis. White was ordered to pay the women amounts from $45,000 to $65,000. His now-defunct organization, the American National Socialist Workers' Party, was found liable for another $280,000.



The jury chose not to impose punitive damages.



After hearing from the women, the jury watched a videotaped deposition of White taken two years ago.



He yawned often and spoke in a flat tone when questioned by lawyers for the plaintiffs and the U.S. Justice Department.



"I don't like people who lie," he said when asked why he wrote the letters.



"The complaint is so obviously false; it's clearly make-believe. If you read it, it looks like the kind of thing blacks make up. Blacks like to make up crazy stories that make them look like victims when they are wrong."



He described blacks as animals and Jews as demons.



"You may find Mr. White reprehensible," his attorney, John Weber, told the jury. "But you still have to decide this case under the rules of the law."



Weber had argued that the women had not proved their case, in part because they chose to stay in the apartment complex after receiving White's letters.

The "Downsizing" of a neo-Nazi

The "Millionaire Nazi" may just have to downsize. After all of his time in prison, attorney's fees, court costs, and now a civil suit, Bill White might very well find himself on the dole. Of course, this trust-fund sociopath might still be able to tap Mom & Dad for another hand-out. That is...until he takes them to the poor house with him. Karma bites, Bill.


Neo-Nazi Bill White faces financial hit in civil trial


The jailed racist goes on trial for slurring Virginia Beach apartment residents

By Laurence Hammack
The Roanoke Times



U.S. v. William White

Read complete coverage from White's Roanoke trial, as well as previous William White coverage

Neo-Nazi leader William A. White, already serving prison time for making racially-motivated threats, is now facing the possibility of financial punishment.



In a civil trial that began today in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, a group of black tenants from a Virginia Beach apartment complex is claiming that White harassed them in May 2007 after learning of a discrimination lawsuit they had filed against their white landlord.



As the leader of the Roanoke-based American National Socialist Workers Party, White sent the tenants letters adorned with swastikas and addressed to "Whiney Section 8 N-----."



Following a rant about blacks on welfare, White concluded: "You may get one over on your landlord this time, and you may not. But know that the white community has noticed you, and we know that you are and never will be anything more than a dirty parasite — and that our patience with you and the government that coddles you runs thin."



After hearing testimony about White’s actions in December, a federal jury convicted him of threatening several residents with the intent of intimidating them into dropping their lawsuit.



White, 33, is serving a 2½-year prison term for that and two other threats. He also faces charges in Chicago of encouraging violence against the foreman of a jury the convicted a fellow white supremacist, a charge that was dismissed on free-speech grounds and later reinstated on appeal.



The civil trial that began today is scheduled to last three days. The plaintiffs are seeking an unspecified amount in damages.

3rd Time A Charm

TURNER CONVICTED

Hal Turner was convicted today after only a two-hour jury deliberation.

Turner's mom and teenage son gasped and sobbed as the jury found the Internet shock jock guilty of a single charge of threatening to murder the judges - a charge that carries up to 10 years in prison.


An ashen-faced Turner stripped off his tie and belt and handed his wallet to a clerk before he was led out of the courtroom in downtown Brooklyn.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/08/13/2010-08-13_conservative_internet_shock_jock_harold_hal_turner_convicted_of_threatening_to_k.html#ixzz0wWnUkZpq

Is The Third Time A Charm?

Well, the third time is usually a charm. Let's see what the prosecution does with this one. One thing is for certain - they really want to put poor little Hal behind bars badly. I just wonder how much all of this has cost the taxpayers and just what will happen if the jury gets hung for a third time.

 

Jury selection underway

in 3rd trial for North

Bergen shock jock Hal

Turner

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Last updated: Tuesday August 10, 2010, 1:01 PM

BY PETER J. SAMPSON

The Record

STAFF WRITER

Jury selection got underway this morning in a

federal courtroom in Brooklyn where Hal

Turner, the ultra-right-wing shock jock and

former FBI informant, is facing his third trial

on charges of threatening to assault or

murder three appellate judges last year.

A pool of 45 residents from Brooklyn,

Queens, Staten Island and Long Island were

summoned before U.S. District Judge Donald

E. Walter who expects to seat a jury of 14 by

this afternoon.

Among the prospective jurors were school

teachers, a supermarket worker, an engineer,

a university dean and an assistant to the

chairman of Barnes and Noble.

The jurors were preliminarily asked about

how they get their news, how they use the

internet, whether they harbor any feelings

about the Justice Department and FBI that

would prevent them from being fair to both

sides, and if they have any close friends or

relatives who are judges.

Other questions of a more private nature

were explored by the judge and attorneys

behind closed doors.

A federal prosecutor will deliver the

government’s opening statement later this

afternoon and the trial will then recess until

tomorrow.

Turner’s two previous trials, in December

and March, ended in mistrial after jurors

failed to reach a unanimous verdict.

The 48-year-old North Bergen resident is

charged with a single count of threatening t

hree Chicago-based judges from the 7th U.

S. Circuit Court of Appeals after writing on

his blog in June 2009 that they “deserved to

be killed” for upholding local gun-control

ordinances.