Farrakhan and Turner

Max Blumenthal nails it in his report on Louis Farrakhan's remarks in which he cites radio talk-show host Hal Turner as a source of his information regarding Turner's conspiracy theory that the New Orleans levees were sabotaged.

Be sure to read it all. I'll just add this: Why anyone would want to be associated with Farrakhan in any fashion -- let alone partipate in an event designed to burnish his reputation -- is beyond me. Whatever good the Million More March may achieve (and as Max says, its larger purpose was truly laudable), his involvement will always cast a cloud over it.

For a little more on the execrable Turner, see this, this, and this.

Pushing our buttons, redux

It's becoming evident that the terrorists with designs on destroying America don't need to actually carry out any attacks to undermine our national security. The Republicans now in power are doing it for them.

Remember that one of the primary goals of any terrorist organization is to get its target population to live in fear. The Republican right has been doing a fine job of doing just that.

Besides raising the prospect of suicide bombings by Islamist radicals where no such threat appears to actually exist, Republicans have also been raising alarms about actual terrorist attacks on the New York subway system.

Last weekend's foofarah in the Big Apple was another incremental episode in the gradual erosion of public confidence in authorities' ability to adequately sniff out and prevent terrorist attacks. After loud public warnings of an imminent attack, the episode failed to catch any terrorists, but it did produce a panic induced by a soda can and headlines in the right-wing tabloids warning of bombs in baby strollers. (One can only imagine what might have happened there had NYC police engaged in the shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy employed by London cops: "three in the melon" indeed.)

Now, according to some reports, it turns out that it was all a hoax anyway. However, subsequent reports have cast doubt on this charge as well -- though it should be clear from the outcome that the warning was indeed groundless.

Another mitigating factor was the fact that both Homeland Security and the FBI cast doubt on the accuracy of the information that led to the warning. However, New York City Mayor Bloomberg -- facing an election in the near future -- decided to make the threat public and to heighten security ... as well as the ambient fear levels.

Nice result, mayor.

Hoax or not, the episode further erodes public confidence in warnings issued by public officials, just as Homeland Security's earlier color-coded warning system did.

This most recent scare followed a trend established during the reign of the color codes: It just happened to coincide with a downturn in political fortunes for President Bush.

And how, well, serendipitous it was, don't you think, that the New York alert just happened to follow on the heels of President Bush's rather lame attempt to rebound in the polls by delivering a national address about the Iraq war and the "war on terror" -- as if his manifest incompetence there hadn't already been thrown into stark relief by Katrina.

Fortunately, Keith Olbermann at MSNBC has been paying attention too:

Last Thursday on Countdown, I referred to the latest terror threat - the reported bomb plot against the New York City subway system - in terms of its timing. President Bush’s speech about the war on terror had come earlier the same day, as had the breaking news of the possible indictment of Karl Rove in the CIA leak investigation.

I suggested that in the last three years there had been about 13 similar coincidences -- a political downturn for the administration, followed by a "terror event" -- a change in alert status, an arrest, a warning.

We figured we'd better put that list of coincidences on the public record. We did so this evening on the television program, with ten of these examples. The other three are listed at the end of the main list, out of chronological order. The contraction was made purely for the sake of television timing considerations, and permitted us to get the live reaction of the former Undersecretary of Homeland Security, Asa Hutchinson.

We bring you these coincidences, reminding you, and ourselves here, that perhaps the simplest piece of wisdom in the world is called "the logical fallacy." Just because Event "A" occurs, and then Event "B" occurs, that does not automatically mean that Event "A" caused Event "B."

But one set of comments from an informed observer seems particularly relevant as we examine these coincidences.

On May 10th of this year, after his resignation, former Secretary of Homeland Security Ridge looked back on the terror alert level changes, issued on his watch.

Mr. Ridge said: "More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it. Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don’t necessarily put the country on (alert) ... there were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said 'for that?' "

In the ensuing rundown, Olbermann points out one especially noteworthy coincidence: the dramatic appearance of that videotaped message from Osama bin Laden one week before the November 2004 election.

I'm reminded of a piece I wrote for MSNBC.com back in early November 2001 (no longer available online) that discussed John Ashcroft's then-recent warnings of imminent terror threats, titled "Pushing Our Buttons."

These warnings, you may recall, were amazingly vague and seemed aimed largely at raising the national paranoia levels. But what I wrote at the time holds true as well for the New York warnings, which reportedly were more specific, but no better grounded in reality:

The problem with such a warning is that there is only a marginal chance of its actually preventing an attack, and a considerably higher likelihood that it will backfire and actually harm the nation's chances of responding to terrorist threats successfully. Consider the lessons of history.

In the days and weeks immediately following the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, a wave of fear swept up and down America’s West Coast. Public officials began trumpeting unfounded rumors that the disaster had been a direct result of "fifth column" activity by Japanese-American spies in Hawaii (a report that later proved to be completely groundless). Soon the papers began hawking stories predicated on fears of an imminent invasion. The Los Angeles Times ran headlines like "Jap Boat Flashes Message Ashore" and "Caps on Japanese Tomato Plants Point to Air Base" -- and the public quickly jumped aboard. Reports of "signals" being sent out from shore to unknown, mysterious Japanese boats offshore began flowing in.

The end result of all this hysteria was one of the great black marks on American history: internment of some 110,000 people of Japanese descent (70,000 of them American citizens) from 1942 to 1945 in barbed-wire camps. That spring of 1942, the populace and politicians demanded the removal of the "spies" from the Pacific Coast, citing the "imminent threat" their presence posed. Today, few historians doubt that it would have taken place without the active encouragement of groundless fears by public officials.

The lesson in all this for the Bush administration should be obvious: The American public is at its worst when it is egged into a state of fearfulness by its own government, and may even be induced into committing travesties of justice for its own "self-protection."

The administration also needs to consider the nature of the public's typical reaction to such dire warnings, which inspired in 1941 a deluge of red herrings and misinformation that wound up impeding law enforcement from performing its regular important work. Ashcroft's warning is more likely than not to inspire precisely the same kind of overload, swamping officers and switchboards with reports of impending terrorist acts, while diluting the ability of those personnel to respond to genuine threats.

If the warning is a success, and a terrorist threat is actually prevented, then Ashcroft’s decision to raise the fear level among the general public will have proven correct. But the likelihood of that happening is relatively slim -- and that is the only scenario under which raising these kinds of alarms makes sense.

If, for instance, terrorists pull off a successful attack in spite of the warning, then the federal powers in charge of preventing this will look even more impotent. And then the fear level of Americans will skyrocket, because it will be clear to them that even intense scrutiny will not make them safe.

On the other hand, if an act of terrorism is prevented silently — that is, its would-be perpetrators are forced to retrench and wait — then the only thing gained is time. The likelihood of its eventual enactment will remain the same; those terrorists are still free to act, perhaps at a time when Americans’ guards are let down, especially if nothing happens during the week ahead.

Indeed, that is the most likely scenario, and the most problematic. If the week in fact goes by and no terrorist acts occur, then the credibility of the government will take a terrific hit on the domestic front. If the administration attempts to claim the fact that no terrorism occurred actually justifies its warning, it will risk looking like those apocalyptic cults who have at various times announced the impending end of the world and then, when such doom fails to materialize, credited the prayers of its followers for saving mankind.

At the same time, a non-event will only perpetuate a rising perception among the public that Ashcroft and other top officials may lack the competence to do this job properly. Like the villagers who heard the shepherd boy cry "Wolf!" once too often, there is a grave danger that Americans will be lulled by these warnings into a refusal to respond when the threat is real.

Like most analyses, it rather missed the predictive mark in some key areas; I underestimated, I think, the American public's capacity to see "strong leadership" in a figure like Bush -- rather than the incompetence he embodied -- at a time of crisis because of its need to. So the silly color codes and the multiple conveniently timed warnings that turned up empty didn't destroy the public's confidence in Homeland Officials, as I feared.

What they have done, instead, is gradually erode that confidence. And now, with Bush's misfeasance of the presidency coming into full technicolor view, the whole house of cards looks ready to crumble.

Most of all, it's becoming apparent that the Bush administration indeed learned well the lessons of history, both present and past: It knows all too well that "the American public is at its worst when it is egged into a state of fearfulness by its own government."

It knows now that, when the fear level goes up, Americans are prone to support those already in office, particularly when they wrap themselves simultaneously in patriotism and point accusatory fingers at their political opposition. And it is using that knowledge in the most cynical fashion.

This is true of the conservative movement at large, and can be readily found in the recent behavior of its mouthpieces like the New York Daily News. Typical of the right-wing response to the New York reports were Roger L. Simon's exercises in hysteria, in which he went on to attack anyone in sight who dared suggest the warnings might not be well grounded. Afterward, of course, Simon was utterly unrepentant; as Tristam Shandy points out, he lacked even the grace to apologize to the people he attacked so viciously.

But really, Simon was just symptomatic of what we heard throughout from the right-wing Wurlitzer, both the radio gasbags and the right-wing bloggers. If you go back and check over the latter's work for the past week, it's all about terror. Terra, terra, terra. Boogadah boogadah boogadah.

And it's all just transparent bullshit. Which really is a problem.

If there's anything America needs right now, it is leaders, and thinkers, and media figures who will not play games with our national security -- who will forsake the temptation to parlay the real war on terror into a political marketing campaign.

It's a temptation this administration has fully indulged, with the adamant support of its cheering section in the Republican Party. Indeed, it is now apparently even being refined by lesser Republican lights in their local races.

And someday, we're all going to pay for it.

Mad bombers

You may think you know what you're dealing with -- but believe me, you don't. -- Noah Cross to Jake Gittes

It's been kind of heartwarming, really, to see the American right -- almost overnight, seemingly -- become all aflutter at the prospect of domestic terrorism as a potentially significant front in the war on terror.

There's only one problem: They seem to be operating under the illusion that the most likely source of this threat is from radical Islamists.

Most of the flurry of worry from the right is coming from a feeding frenzy over a suicide bombing at the University of Oklahoma. So far, all of their speculation has been built on a foundation of apparently false "facts."

Besides a Washington Times editorial built on a groundless presumption that Hinrichs was potentially associated with Al Qaeda or other radical Muslims, there have been numerous reports on Fox and various right-wing radio talk shows (in Seattle, KVI's John Carlson devoted an entire show to the subject). The right blogosphere -- led by Michelle Malkin, of course -- has chimed in, with contributions from such luminaries as Jawa Report, Wizbang, and the ever-enlightened Little Green Footballs.

Next thing you know, they start seeing an Islamist suicide bomber behind every homemade bomb that turned up. LGF trumpeted an explosive device found at UCLA, while Malkin and others began hyping some bombs in plastic containers found at Georgia Tech.

Of course, it turned out that the latter was just a pasty-faced student who says the whole thing was a prank. There's only fleeting mention of this on the blogs who trumpeted the case. (There's still no word yet on the UCLA case, but don't be shocked if there's a similar outcome.)

Likewise, much of the factual grounding for the hysteria about Islamist suicide bombers in Oklahoma is looking, well, questionable at best. It turns out that he did not attend a local mosque, had never visited there, and he was not Muslim; it appears doubtful that he attempted to enter the stadium.

But the fearmongering has been good for something: creating fear among Muslims in the vicinity:

Distorted media stories have city and student Muslim communities on edge, after it was revealed that bomber Joel "Joe" Henry Hinrichs roomed with a Muslim student at the Parkview apartments near the University of Oklahoma campus.

However, the FBI has found no connection between the 21-year-old engineering major, who died from an explosion at about 7:30 p.m. Saturday about 100 yards outside OU's Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium packed with more than 84,000 fans, and the Muslim community, other than other than Hinrichs' rooming with OU finance major Fazal M. Cheema from Pakistan.

And Hinrichs apparently never visited the Masjid An-Nur Islamic mosque that has served the Muslim community at 1304 George Avenue since 1978.

"He had never been to our mosque and he's not associated with our mosque in any way, shape or form," said 44-year-old Mohamed Farid Elyazgi, who has lived in Norman with his family since 1985. "We had never seen him until we saw his picture in the media."

Elyazgi emphasized that Islam forbids suicide and Muslims condemn all acts of violence.

He said many area Muslims have become concerned about television stations filming stories about the bombing in front of the mosque and its sign, fearing it could fan fear and perhaps violence against Muslims or associate the incident with the Islamic Society of Norman.

The source of the problem -- beyond the fearmongers themselves -- as the Oklahoma Daily pointed out in an editorial, is an FBI that has put the clamps on any information and left the public in the dark:

Remember, the FBI has commandeered this investigation. In doing so and by not telling anyone anything, they are only allowing the events of Oct. 2 to be misinterpreted over and over by people who are firm in believing something that is false and terribly dangerous.

For example, unsubstantiated claims that Hinrichs had been frequenting the Norman mosque have managed to seep onto television news broadcasts even though everyone we have contacted at the mosque says Hinrichs was never seen there.

So who is lying? Inherently, people should perceive the unfounded news broadcasts as the liars, but that doesn't always happen. And even if only one person sees and believes such a report there or online, word of mouth can transmit that "truth" to hundreds or thousands within a matter of days.

Which is why it is undeniably the duty of the FBI to break its unctuous vow of silence and talk to somebody. The longer the feds delay in doing so, the more they become equally responsible for misinformed social reactions as the hacks who started these rumors in the first place.

The FBI's tight-lippedness is largely standard policy, though the agency has been known to relax it when it serves the public interest; this appears to be such a case, however, given the extraordinary and irresponsible speculation that the case has elicited.

The hysterical reaction from the right recalls the first few days after the Oklahoma City bombing, when speculation of Middle Eastern terrorist involvement ran rampant, and a number of Muslims were made to suffer as a result. Then, of course, it turned out that the bombing had been perpetrated by a couple of right-wing extremist white men.

The similarities of the most recent case in Oklahoma to that earlier tragedy underscore the seriousness of what's at stake here. Hinrichs apparently did try to buy a large amount of ammonium nitrate a few weeks before; there are other indications he may have intended to kill large numbers of people with his bomb.

It's worth noting that some news reports have described him as someone with a long interest in guns and explosives -- interests that are more indicative of right-wing proclivities than any pro-Islamist or left-wing sympathies.

But caution is always called for with domestic terrorism, particularly when it comes to sorting out motives. When entering that aspect of the problem, you're entering a hall of mirrors in which things often are not what they seem.

Certainly, focusing on the M.O. of the perpetrators gives us only an oblique guess at best. The ammonium nitrate certainly reeks of Tim McVeigh, but we can't assume that Joel Hinrichs was a right-wing militiaman because of it.

Likewise, the appearance of plastic bottles as a bomb container -- seized upon by the right-wing bloggers as potential evidence of a larger plot -- is meaningless in the larger context of what we know about homemade bombs.

Lots of people besides terrorists make such devices -- usually young males with slightly less sense than your average rock and a preternatural interest in things that go boom. Most of these amateurs nowadays get their recipes off the Web, from such places as the "Terrorist's Handbook", which recommends the following:

Plastic containers are perhaps the best containers for explosives, since they can be any size or shape, and are not fragile like glass. Plastic piping can be bought at hardware or plumbing stores, and a device much like the ones used for metal containers can be made. The high-order version works well with plastic piping. If the entire device is made out of plastic, it is not detectable by metal detectors.

When it comes to actual terrorists, the next most likely suspects are so-called "lone wolves," who attack for ideological reasons that are often idiosyncratic. These can include such figures as Ted Kaczynski, but far and away more common are the Eric Rudolph type of right-wing extremist, including the many abortion-clinic bombers who have tended to remain at large more often than not. All of these extremists -- including McVeigh -- emerge from an ideological milieu that encourages and embraces violence as a means of enforcing its own bizarre version of morality.

The least likely kinds of terrorists to engage in these kinds of attacks on American soil, however, are Middle Eastern extremists. In fact, there has never been a record of even an attempt at such a lone-wolf suicide bombing in the USA -- though, of course, this does not preclude it from happening. Nonetheless, the history of homemade bombs strongly suggests we look elsewhere for motives when trying to sift through the evidence.

The concern about domestic terrorism raised by the recent Oklahoma case has some legitimate dimensions, but the right wing seems interested in none of these. All they actually seem interested in is tarring Muslims by association.

So I have a hunch that, when these turn out to have nothing to do with radical Islamists -- which seems nearly certain in all of these cases -- their recent concern about domestic terrorism as a front in the war on terror will turn off like a light switch. The cases will be dismissed as "isolated incidents." Malkin in particular has a history of this.

Likewise, expect no mea culpas regarding the groundless fears they raised about local Muslim communities with their thoughtless rhetorical bombs. They were too busy having their own little blast.

But then, a good smear is always easier than the hard work of keeping us safe, isn't it?

Fascism: Two hoary myths

A couple of recently recurring bits of misinformation about the nature of fascism have come floating across my radar recently. Their falsity is fairly clear, but nonetheless, they are enjoying some currency at present, and need debunking.

The first is a supposed quote that I keep seeing pop up in e-mails sent to me:

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini

The fact is that, as far as anyone can ascertain, Mussolini never said or wrote this. Indeed, it contradicts much of what he did say about corporatism.

As Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates explained awhile back:

It is unlikely that Mussolini ever made this statement because it contradicts most of the other writing he did on the subject of corporatism and corporations. When Mussolini wrote about corporatism, he was not writing about modern commercial corporations. He was writing about a form of vertical syndicalist corporatism based on early guilds. The article on Wikipedia on Corporatism explains this rather well.

Here are some typical Mussolini quotes from original documents:

The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State--a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values--interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people. (p. 14)

Fascism recognises the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade-unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which diverent interests are coordinated and harmonised in the unity of the State. (p.15)

Yet if anyone cares to read over the now crumbling minutes giving an account of the meetings at which the Italian Fasci di Combattimento were founded, he will find not a doctrine but a series of pointers… (p. 23)

"It may be objected that this program implies a return to the guilds (corporazioni). No matter!... I therefore hope this assembly will accept the economic claims advanced by national syndicalism." (p. 24)

Fascism is definitely and absolutely opposed to the doctrines of liberalism, both in the political and economic sphere. (p. 32)

The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organised in their respective associations, circulate within the State. (p. 41).

Benito Mussolini, 1935, The Doctrine of Fascism, Firenze: Vallecchi Editore.

The Labour Charter (Promulgated by the Grand Council ofr Fascism on April 21, 1927)—(published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale, April 3, 1927) [sic] (p. 133)

The Corporate State and its Organization (p. 133)

The corporate State considers that private enterprise in the sphere of production is the most effective and usefu [sic] [typo-should be: useful] instrument in the interest of the nation. In view of the fact that private organisation of production is a function of national concern, the organiser of the enterprise is responsible to the State for the direction given to production.

State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management. (pp. 135-136)

Benito Mussolini, 1935, Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions, Rome: 'Ardita' Publishers.

The other recurring myth is actually a great deal more popular -- namely, that because Mussolini was at one time an ardent socialist, and because Hitler's party called itself the National Socialists, then fascism itself was a form of socialism, and thus a left-wing phenomenon.

The reasons for its popularity are obvious: It's a convenient way of smearing the left for conservatives, as well as shedding their own well-established baggage from the far right. Rush Limbaugh repeats this claim regularly, as do a number of other right-wing commentators. You can find it expressed throughout a number of right-wing Web sites, notably Free Republic. It even popped up in my comments here recently.

So, let's do a reality check: Both Hitler and Mussolini pretended to have socialist aspirations as part of their propaganda efforts during their rise to power, largely as a way of encouraging working-class support. But they were unquestionably right wing politically by the time they obtained power, and in fact were viciously anti-left-wing as well.

Those who repeat the "Nazis were socialists" claim are, in fact, falling for (and repeating) Nazi propaganda from the 1920s.

Mussolini was indeed an active socialist at the beginning of his political career. But he was remarkable for shifting his alliances and adjusting his ideology accordingly as he climbed the ladder of power; and by the time he had completed his climb, he was an outspoken and lethal anti-socialist.

Hitler's fascists, somewhat in contrast, only adopted a limited socialist rhetoric as a sop to its efforts to recruit from the working class. Hitler quickly jettisoned these aspects of the party as he obtained power, particularly in forming a ruling coalition with conservative corporatists. There was little doubt that Hitler and the Nazis were devoutly anti-leftist: their Brownshirts made a career of physically attacking socialists and communists wherever they gathered, and the first people sent to the concentration camp at Dachau in 1933-34 were socialist and communist political leaders.

This site does a reasonably good job of laying it all out:

Prior to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, worker protests had spread all across Germany in response to the Great Depression. During his drive to power, Hitler exploited this social unrest by promising workers to strengthen their labor unions and increase their standard of living. But these were empty promises; privately, he was reassuring wealthy German businessmen that he would crack down on labor once he achieved power. Historian William Shirer describes the Nazi's dual strategy:

"The party had to play both sides of the tracks. It had to allow [Nazi officials] Strasser, Goebbels and the crank Feder to beguile the masses with the cry that the National Socialists were truly 'socialists' and against the money barons. On the other hand, money to keep the party going had to be wheedled out of those who had an ample supply of it."

Once in power, Hitler showed his true colors by promptly breaking all his promises to workers. The Nazis abolished trade unions, collective bargaining and the right to strike. An organization called the "Labor Front" replaced the old trade unions, but it was an instrument of the Nazi party and did not represent workers. According to the law that created it, "Its task is to see that every individual should be able ... to perform the maximum of work." Workers would indeed greatly boost their productivity under Nazi rule. But they also became exploited. Between 1932 and 1936, workers wages fell, from 20.4 to 19.5 cents an hour for skilled labor, and from 16.1 to 13 cents an hour for unskilled labor. Yet workers did not protest. This was partly because the Nazis had restored order to the economy, but an even bigger reason was that the Nazis would have cracked down on any protest.

In other words, the Nazis did a classic bait-and-switch: They convinced working-class people to vote against their own self-interest by clever use of propaganda techniques and pretending to embody their values, but then screwed them over from one end to the other once they had obtained power.

Sound familiar?

At any rate, it's also useful to refer to Robert O. Paxton's defintive text, The Anatomy of Fascism, which describes the overt antileftism of the early fascists as well, p. 84:

Fascist violence was neither random nor indiscriminate. It carried a well-calculated set of coded messages: that communist violence was rising, that the democratic state was responding to it ineptly, and that only the fascists were tough enough to save the nation from antinational terrorists. An essential step in the fascist march to acceptance and power was to persuade law-and-order conservatives and members of the middle class to tolerate fascist violence as a harsh necessity in the face of Left provocation. It helped, of course, that many ordinary citizens never feared fascist violence against themselves, because they were reassured that it was reserved for national enemies and "terrorists" who deserved it.

Paxton also describes the fascist appropriation of left-wing ideas for its own purposes, pp. 56-59:

It turned out in practice that fascists' anticapitalism was highly selective. Even at their most radical, the socialism that the fascists wanted was a "national socialism": one that denied only foriegn or enemy property rights (including that of internal enemies). They cherished national producers. Above all, it was by offering an effective remedy against socialist revolution that fascism turned out in practice to find a space. If Mussolini retained some lingering hopes in 1919 of founding an alternative socialism rather than an antisocialism, he was soon disabused of those notions by observing what worked and what didn't work in Italian politics. His dismal electoral results with a Left-nationalist program in Milan in November 1919 surely hammered that lesson home.

The pragmatic choices of Mussolini and Hitler were driven by their urge for success and power. Not all fascist leaders had such ambitions. Some of them preferred to keep their movements "pure," even at the cost of remaining marginal.

Paxton goes on to describe how the failed Spanish and French fascist movements are exemplary in this regard. Then he says:

Hitler and Mussolini, however, not only felt destined to rule but shared none of the purists' qualms about competing bourgeois elections. Both set out -- with impressive tactical skill and by rather different routes, which they discovered by trial and error -- to make themselves indispensable participants in the competition for political power within their nations. ...

Long after his regime had settled into routine, Mussolini still liked to refer to the "Fascist revolution." But he meant a revolution against socialism and flabby liberalism, a new way of uniting and motivating Italians, and a new kind of governmental authority capable of subordinating private liberties to the needs of the national community and of organizing mass assent while leaving property intact. The major point is that the Fascist movement was reshaped in the process of growing into the available political space. The antisocialism already present in the initial movement became central, and many antibourgeois idealists left or were pushed out. The radical anticapitalism of early Fascism was watered down, and we must not let its conspicuous presence in early texts confuse us about what Fascism later became in action.

Paxton later puts in simple terms the political space occupied by the fascists:

... In sum, fascists offered a new recipe for governing with popular support but without any sharing of power with the Left, and without any threat to conservative social and economic privileges and political dominance. The conservatives, for their part, held the keys to the doors of power.

The more we hear mainstream conservatives today act as though liberals, their longtime partners, are no longer fit to share power, the more I fear for a repeat of history.

Talkin' bout immigration

In the comments thread for the previous post, Paul Donnelly (aka the Americanist) adroitly wonders:

So what's the immigration policy we're FOR?

Now, posts like the previous are primarily about demonstrating what a steaming heap of dung we're being served on the issue of immigration from the right. We get to choose there between Bush's "guest worker" proposal that would officially sever the concept of immigration from citizenship -- a radical enough proposal in its own right; and the troglodytes of the Minuteman crowd.

But on the left, we hear ... crickets chirping.

Which is strange, considering that everyone knows that Republicans intend to make immigration a big re-election issue in 2006. Aren't any Democrats getting ready for that?

It's time to talk -- seriously -- about immigration and how to solve the problems surrounding it, particularly illegal immigration, which just as surely negatively affect issues traditionally of concern to the left, particularly labor-market issues.

So I'm setting up this thread to invite discussion here of those issues. The more, the merrier. I have some thoughts of my own, of course, and I hope to gather enough helpful input to produce something actually useful.

Please feel free to chime in.

Coddling extremists

The issue of immigration -- and particularly the activities of the so-called Minutemen and their cohorts -- continues to be an active ground for mainstream conservatives to commingle with genuine extremists, and thereby become more extremist themselves.

The latest example occurred recently in Arizona, during a visit by Republican legislators from Colorado to a ranch owned by a figure closely associated not just with the Minutemen, but also bona fide hate groups:

The tour was organized by Glenn Spencer, whose home is about 1,000 feet from the border. He recently organized a number of border-watching activities, including a few with the Minuteman group.

Spencer said he had been a military researcher who worked at the Pentagon before moving to Arizona to set up a nonprofit group that investigates illegal immigration.

He showed aerial photographs and videos of immigrants crossing the border illegally near his home. He also showed visitors a miniature reconnaissance plane with a camera attached to it that he spent $40,000 to develop and build.

"We do this to expose the malfeasance of U.S. border patrol officials, who have failed us in protecting our borders," he said. "What can U.S. citizens do to help? A lot."

Spencer also told the Colorado legislators and a group of Republican political candidates from Arizona about a volunteer who crossed the border into Mexico and brought back a "simulated weapon of mass destruction."

"We did it to see if anybody would try to stop us," Spencer said. "This happened supposedly along the most heavily policed border area in the United States."

Yes, this is the same Glenn Spencer whose organization, American Patrol, has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center:

Glenn Spencer, one of the hardest line anti-immigrant ideologues now operating, founded the Voices of Citizens Together (VCT, which is also known, like his web site and radio show, as American Patrol) in 1992.

In 1994, VCT lobbied hard for passage of California's controversial Proposition 187, which would have denied educational and other benefits to illegal immigrants and their children. (Although it passed, 187 was later thrown out by the courts.)

Four years later, Spencer claimed 3,500 subscribers to the VCT newsletter. Spencer takes a hard line on immigration, demanding that the armed forces seal America's southern border. He also displays a bigoted and vulgar side quite openly.

On his web site, he attacks Mario Obledo, a leading Latino activist and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, as "Pinche [literally, fucking] Cockroach and 1998 Asshole of the Year." A cartoon character is depicted urinating on Obledo's picture.

Spencer posts dozens of immigration-related articles but replaces the words "illegal immigrant" with "illegal alien," among other editing touches. In a 1996 letter to The Los Angeles Times, Spencer wrote: "The Mexican culture is based on deceit. Chicanos and Mexicanos lie as a means of survival."

He posts material on his site from such men as H. Millard, an infamous columnist for the racist Council of Conservative Citizens who once bemoaned the "slimy brown mass of glop" that immigration and interracial relationships were making of the U.S. population.

Spencer sent every member of Congress a copy of his videotape -- "Bonds of Our Nation" -- that purports to prove the Mexican government and Mexican-Americans are plotting to take over the American Southwest and create the nation of Aztlán. Hand-delivering the videos was Betina McCann, the fiancé of neo-Nazi Steven Barry.

On a weekly radio show that airs in several cities, Spencer has hosted a series of guests like Kevin McDonald, a professor who accuses Jews of devising an immigration policy specifically intended to dilute and weaken the white population of America.

Odd that the reporter for the Rocky Mountain News neglected to inform his readers of any of this information.

This extremism is also apparent throughout the Minutemen organization. The Center for New Community's Building Democracy Initiative has a new report out titled "Shell Games: The 'Minutemen' and Vigilante Anti-Immigrant Politics [PDF file], which lays bare the history behind the "border watch" concept:

The strategy of border vigilantism as a political spectacle did not originate with the Minutemen Project, Glenn Spencer's American Border Patrol, Ranch Rescue, or even the militia groups that inspired Chris Simcox. Instead, the "men of this calibre" who hatched the idea were leaders in the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, more than a quarter century ago.

The Klan Border Watch was launched on Oct 16, 1977 at the San Ysidro, California Port of Entry by Grand Dragon Tom Metzger and Imperial Wizard David Duke, who claimed that the patrols would stretch from California to Texas. It was conceived to recapture the Klan's glory days. With nearly 4 million members in the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was highly influential in the passage of the 1924 National Origins Act, thereby making racism part of official US immigration policy until the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965.

While Metzger handled the California operations, the Texas side was run by Louis Beam (who would go on to terrorize Vietnamese fishers in Galveston Bay a few years later.) They predicted that thousands would participate, though only dozens materialized. To Duke, a Klan Border Watch was a necessary part of "the battle to halt the flow of illegal aliens streaming across the border from Mexico."

More important than actually stopping border crossers, the Klan Border Watch was conceived as a way to "arouse public opinion to such a degree that they [the Federal Government] would be forced to better equip the beleaguered U.S. Border Patrol."

The underlying extremism of the founders of the current Miunteman Project is also laid quite clear. Cofounder Chris Simcox began -- like most of the current border agitators -- by applying the 1990s far-right concept of militias to the border situation; his first border group called itself the Tombstone Militia.

Likewise with cofounder Jim Gilchrist:

Under Gilchrist's guidance, the Minuteman Project has tried to rhetorically distance itself from both paramilitarism and racism. Yet Gilchrist himself is prone to hysterical remarks about immigrants and to conspiracy mongering, as evidenced by these remarks:

From what I have seen in videos, to me there is a clear and present danger of insurrection, sedition and succession by those who buy into the fact that this really is Mexico’s territory and doesn’t belong to the United States and should be taken back.

Gilchrist's words are a succinct statement of the so-called reconquista conspiracy theory which holds that Mexico is quietly infiltrating a fifth-column of revolutionaries into the United States with the purpose of territorial conquest. Moreover the infiltration is being accomplished with the treasonous collusion of various "liberal elite" institutions, e.g. the Catholic Church and the Ford Foundation, and the applause of muddle-headed multiculturalists.

Gilchrist's conspiracist formulation of the problem he sees with undocumented immigration is only an extreme form of the basic xenophobic arguments repeating the time-tested formula of bigoted fear-mongering. In the early years of the twentieth century it was the "yellow peril" -- which led to laws excluding those of Asian descent from immigrating to the United States. In the wake of the Civil War, and with the failure of Reconstruction, it was Jim Crow and anti-miscegenation laws, intended to keep the races forever separate and distinct.

In a May 2005 speech to a meeting of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, a hardcore anti-immigrant group which promotes the reconquista conspiracy theory, Gilchrist said, "I'm damn proud to be a vigilante." He believes that, "Illegal immigrants will destroy this country." At a Memorial Day 2005 "summit" of anti-immigrant leader in Las Vegas, Gilchrist commented, "Every time a Mexican flag is planted on American soil, it is a declaration of war."

Finally, the report lays out the extent to which the Minutemen are attracting large numbers of racists, white supremacists, and other extremists to their ranks -- a subject discussed often here.

Meanwhile, California's Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, recently defended the Minutemen again, comparing them to a "neighborhood watch":

"It's no different than if you have a neighborhood watch person there that's watching your children at the playground," he responded. "I don't see it any different."

Except, of course, that most neighborhood watches don't call themselves -- and organize themselves -- as militias. Nor do they rhetorically attack minorities. Nor do they attract neo-Nazis to their ranks.

But oh well. For today's Republicans, it seems, Barry Goldwater's old adage has now been altered: "Extremism in the pursuit of our political base is no vice."

The other possibility

It's kind of fun to watch the Muslim-bashing right -- see especially Michelle Malkin -- jump all over the case of the Oklahoma suicide bomber because a TV station reported that the bomber -- a 21-year-old Caucasian named Joel Hinrichs -- may have attended a local mosque. At least, he had a roommate who did.

There's no evidence that Hinrichs was a Muslim convert or that he was a member of the mosque, however.

In fact, if memory serves me correctly, the last Oklahoma bomber of any note in fact was a right-wing extremist who at various times expressed deep sympathy for Saddam Hussein.

I wonder why that possibility hasn't crossed their radar.

Well, actually, I don't.

Oil and the orcas

Saving the whales isn't just an abstract concept. In the case of the Puget Sound's killer whales, it's a concrete reality.

Earlier this week, the National Marine Fisheries Service released for public comment its conservation plan for protecting the endangered population of orcas of Puget Sound.

Getting NMFS to go this far took some doing; a federal judge ordered this plan after NMFS originally declined to list the orcas as threatened. NMFS changed course late last year, and has been preparing the plan since.

The key is getting enough public comment in support of the "threatened" status. Doing so will trigger the Endangered Species Act's "critical habitat" protections, and force the officials involved -- federal, state, and local -- to begin taking serious steps toward restoring the Puget Sound's health, the decline of which is directly related to the orcas' endangerment.

Here's the NOAA Fisheries plan. Do your part and write in.

As the AP notes:

The draft conservation plan released Monday was prepared following the Fisheries Service's 2003 decision to list the orcas as "depleted" under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. That law extends protection only to the species itself; it does not include habitat.

The proposal incorporates public comment gathered through last spring. The Fisheries Service identified three primary concerns: availability of prey, pollution and disruptions from vessels. Oil spills and disease also are possible threats, the agency said in a news release.

Of course, the biggest obstacle in all this is the Republicans currently in power. Not only are they trying to gut the Endangered Species Act (specifically by repealing the "critical habitat" sections), they're also in the process of gutting more environmental laws in the name of reducing post-Katrina energy costs. This measure includes repealing the federal guidelines that kept Puget Sound from being inundated by oil tankers -- and inevitably, oil spills.

The bill would change key portions of the Magnuson Amendment enacted in 1977 to control the expansion of oil refineries and the number of oil tankers entering the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound.

The House may debate the measure as soon as tomorrow.

Inslee said the bill likely will pass the House but faces tougher opposition in the Senate.

Called the Gasoline for America's Security Act, it was introduced by Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, in response to damage that Hurricane Katrina inflicted on the oil industry on the nation's Gulf Coast. The bill aims to streamline efforts to expand existing oil-refinery capacity. Just one portion deals with the Magnuson Amendment.

The amendment, passed as part of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, prevents oil companies from expanding their Puget Sound operations beyond what's needed to serve the growing energy demands of Washington residents.

Even Joel Connelly was able to muster some outrage over this measure:

It was, after all, a state's rights issue: Washington was asserting jurisdiction over its own ports and marine estuaries.

All that gets tossed in this era of right-wing big government.

State's rights? The people deciding what's best for us are apparently Barton and Rep. Greg Walden, a GOP congressman from eastern Oregon. Barton is best known for his harassment of leading scientific researchers on global warming.

Bipartisanship? Out the window. The drive to protect our inland waters was started in the mid-1970s by Republican Gov. Dan Evans. A Shoreline Management Plan forbade building a large port inside Puget Sound to ship oil to the Midwest.

Studies? Who needs 'em? Issues of potential pipeline impacts and oil spills sloshing around our enclosed waters were copiously examined in the 1970s. The University of Washington even evaluated the economic value of keeping Puget Sound unspoiled.

Any new studies today would just get in the way of British Petroleum.

Connelly goes on to list a strategy for countering this plan.

But if he's looking for a symbol around which to rally support, he won't find one more compelling -- and accurate -- than the orcas.

Ending the birthright

The campaign to deny citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants has stepped up another notch, thanks to Tom Tancredo's new legislation to end the tradition of birthright citizenship:

Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., who heads a 90-member caucus pushing to tighten immigration laws, has introduced his proposal to deny citizenship to U.S.-born children of temporary immigrant workers.

He said the provision was vital because immigrants do not want to leave after their visas expire if their children are U.S. citizens.

In addition, Rep. Nathan Deal, R-Ga., has proposed a measure that would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to limit automatic citizenship at birth to children of U.S. citizens and lawful residents.

And Rep. Mark Foley, R-Jupiter, introduced a constitutional amendment that would eliminate birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants.

Most scholars believe a constitutional amendment is necessary to change the birthright citizenship provision, but some disagree because of different interpretations of the 14th Amendment. Changing the Constitution requires ratification by three-fourths of the states.

Any legislative statutes passed by Congress that eliminate birthright citizenship would be immediately challenged in the courts, experts said.

This campaign is not just about stopping illegal immigration. It is about changing the historic meaning of what it means to be American.

It's important to understand: Having given birth to citizen children is no bar to deportation or removal. All it does is encourage the parents to seek citizenship themselves -- that is, to become legal immigrants and take the necessary steps toward naturalization. That's something we have always encouraged, and should still.

I think the consummate commentary on this proposal comes from my frequent commenter Paul Donnelly [aka the Americanist] in my comments on the earlier thread:

Do the math: there are roughly 4 million births a year in the U.S. in a population of 300 million, which works out to about 67 births per thousand women of childbearing age. There are roughly 10 million illegal residents, of which considerably less than half are women -- say, 3 million. That would yield 40,000 U.S.-born children of illegal moms each year -- but of course a certain # of them are actually the children of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, being as how it still takes two to tango. So call it 15,000 new U.S. citizens a year with two parents who are illegal residents.

And for THIS, these clowns want to go back to the Dred Scott decision that the 14th amendment was specifically written to repeal?

LOL -- and the idea that anybody here illegally gets immigration benefits from having a citizen kid is nuts. For one thing, the kid can't sponsor parents until he's 18, which even for immigration policy is a bit of a wait. For another, it is simply not true that merely having a citizen child defers either deportaton or expedited removal.

If you want to deter illegal immigration, fine Wal-Mart a billion dollars. Then go after the meatpacking industry. Make our "no" meaningful, which you don't do betraying our values to deny infants their birthright.

Defend marriage: provide green cards to the wives and kids of legal permanent residents -- and abandon the idea that guest worker programs, which have always failed whenever they have been tried, are somehow gonna work THIS time. It's the Tinkerbell theory of governance -- just BELIEVE, and clap your hands, and all will be well.

Democrats are so lost right now that I have little hope they will rise to this opportunity to define themselves. But even worse would be a failure to stand up to Tancredo on this.

Extremists and the ESA

When the House voted 229-193 to gut the Endangered Species Act this week (as predicted,) it didn't simply represent an anti-environmental movement run amok in the halls of power -- though that visage was plenty visible.

If you scratch very far beneath the surface, you'll also recognize the fine hand of right-wing extremism. Indeed, the House approval for Rep. Richard Pombo's disingenuously titled "Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005" [PDF file] actually represents a major advancement in the extremist Patriot movement's agenda within the mainstream.

Even though they now have managed to cloak themselves in the rhetoric of mainstream conservatism, the actors (including Pombo) who have been promoting this agenda have a long history of dalliances with the American far right. Indeed, most of the components of their agenda first were promoted on far-right talk circuits. Watching their transformation, in fact, and the evolution of the anti-environmental agenda is very instructive when it comes to understanding the nature of the relationship between the mainstream right and its extremist cohort.

The extremism, really, is front and center stage in Pombo's legislation. What else can you call its provisions to repeal entirely the Endangered Species Act's sections on critical habitat? As the AP piece put it:

The critical habitat designation is at the very heart of the Endangered Species Act, said Clark, who headed the Fish and Wildlife Service for four years during the Clinton administration.

"It weakens Section 7 Consultation provisions (talks between the Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies, calling for an as-yet undefined set of alternative procedures, and it completely eliminates safeguards to protect species from pesticides," she said. "The proposed revisions undermine the scientific process and say one kind of science is better," she continued, explaining that the bill as passed by the House would give political appointees too much clout over decisions that should, by law, be based on the best available studies.

Let's put it simply: This section alone completely eviscerates the Endangered Species Act.

There is no species recovery without habitat protection. Period. It won't happen.

The remaining "reforms" in Pombo's bill are nearly as noxious: requiring compensation for property owners whose developments are forestalled by environmental regulations; shortening the government response time on ESA findings to 90 days; politicizing the enforcement process; and a menu of similar policies designed to give developers carte blanche on environmental issues.

It's now up to the Senate to stop this train wreck. The bill now goes to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, where hearings have already begun.

The utter silence of Democrats on this bill's progress indicates that they are counting on the Senate to bring it to a halt. There are fairly good reasons for this: Sen. Lincoln Chaffee, the Rhode Island Republican who chairs the subcommittee in charge of the law, has a well-deserved reputation for a strong environmental voting record.

However, that strategy may prove to be a weak one. The rest of the subcommittee is stacked with rabid anti-environmentalists like Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, not to mention Joseph Lieberman, the Democrat who helped bring us Mike Brown.

Perhaps the biggest threat to moving this bill out to the Senate floor for a vote in more or less in its current state this fall comes from Inhofe, since he chairs the larger committee and wields considerable influence in what proceeds out. Inhofe has indicated he intends to push for a vote this fall, while Chaffee says he wants a 2006 vote.

Inhofe's extremism when it comes to the ESA is already well established. He offered the following infamous remarks in 1997 regarding the ESA:

America has adopted an attitude that places more value on the life of a critter that on a human being. We want to protect the Spotted Owl, yet we care little for the men and women who lost jobs in the Northwest when the timber industry was virtually shut down. We want to protect the Arkansas River Shiner, a bait fish in Oklahoma, yet we will allow unborn babies to have their brains sucked out in a partial birth abortion. Mr. Chairman, we need to do something.

Inhofe, though, has nothing on Pombo when it comes to extremism.

Since his election to Congress in 1994, Pombo has been on the leading edge of the right-wing assault on environmental law, and in the process has aligned himself with some of the right's most radical elements. Besides constantly attacking the ESA and "radical environmentalists," he has also been a leading proponent of "takings legislation," a strategy favored by some property-rights advocates that argues for compensation for landowners affected by environmental laws.

Tarso Ramos explained the upshot of this activism for Public Eye:

Proponents of takings legislation argue that it will provide relief to small property owners who, they say, are increasingly restricted by wetlands ordinances, growth management laws, and other environmental statutes. Such arguments can be persuasive, since government bureaucracy does sometimes generate burdensome, irrational, and even harmful regulations, and as the relationship between, for example, wetlands protection and the public health is somewhat technical, as well as indirect. However, under regulatory takings doctrine, in order to prohibit industrial polluters from fouling air, land, and water, the public would be required to pay the cost of pollution prevention. This quite direct relationship between regulatory takings law, environmental protections, and the public health is either ignored by proponents or is resolved in the manner suggested by Ron Arnold: if a citizen can show a violation of rights by a corporate polluter or anyone else, let her or him sue.

So-called "Wise Use" groups were especially active on this front -- and one of the foremost of these activists, Chuck Cushman of Battle Ground, Wash., has in the ensuing decade become one of Pombo's closest associates. His American Land Rights Association remains one of the most visible and potent of the "Wise Use" property-rights group.

People in Washington state were first exposed to Cushman's activism back in the early 1990s, when he was first rounding up the troops to support his cause. In those days, the troops included a lot of militia types.

Paul DeArmond documented much of this at his Northwest Citizen site, and you can find the details in his exhaustive report, "Wise Use in Northern Puget Sound." As he explains, Cushman was showing up as the keynote speaker at public meetings in Whatcom County, much of it aimed at derailing an environmentalist proposal to create an international ecological preserve out of the North Cascades area. The first of these was March 23, 1994:

Skip Richards and CLUE hosted Wise Use leader Chuck Cushman at the Rome Grange on the Mt. Baker Highway, approximately 10 miles east of Bellingham, Washington. The meeting was run by Mr. Richards. Cushman's purpose was to organize support for a protest at a University of Washington conference, "Nature Has No Borders," on proposed administrative changes in the National Forests and National Parks in the North Cascades region. The first speaker at the meeting was Ben Hinkle, who promoted the "Ultimatum Resolution," a Christian Patriot proposal to abolish the federal government. At this same meeting, Hinkle distributed copies of John Trochmann's Militia of Montana flyer, "Executive Orders for the New World Order." On Hinkle's copies, all reference to the Militia of Montana has been replaced with the name of his Populist Party splinter group, Citizens for Liberty.

Cushman's presentation focused on the impending seizure of lands by an international group which included the United States and Canadian governments and environmentalists -- whom Mr. Cushman terms "preservationists." Cushman's style of speaking suggested that the seizure would be forcible and would involve the destruction of local homes.

This was part of Cushman's approach to recruitment back then, the ugly rhetoric fitting in neatly with the paranoid conspiracy theories that were being floated about on the far right regarding the North Cascades Park proposal. Immediately after Cushman appeared at these meetings, other figures from the far right began recruiting around these issues, as DeArmond explains in an appendix:

Chuck Cushman provided the rallying issue for the militia organizers when he toured northern Washington in early 1994 to organize opposition to the North Cascades Park proposal. The resulting furor over a mythical "UN invasion" has vastly exceeded the similar uproar around a hoax about "encephalitis carrying mosquitoes" at the Stone Lakes wildlife refuge in California. In both instances, Cushman has denied responsibility and attempted to distance himself.

Cushman has a history of using violent language and threatening tactics. In an interview on "60 Minutes", Cushman related how he encouraged things like video-taping environmentalists, disrupting meetings with noisy livestock or heavy equipment, and other methods of harassment and intimidation. Asked why he did such things, he compared his tactics to "Indians shooting flaming arrows over the wagon trains... to keep them awake at night."

At the Rome Grange, Cushman made over thirty references to violent acts in a half-hour speech. In every case, he associated the violence with his opponents. "They want to strangle you," was his most frequent remark. Cushman's set-speech emphasizes violent acts, theft, and arson. These themes repeat themselves over and over, creating the impression that these type of actions define the rules under which he and his supporters must operate.

... Cushman's selection of the North Cascades Park as an issue marked the beginning of a new phase in Wise Use activities in Washington State. The so-called "Park Conspiracy" was used as the main recruiting issue in Washington State by white supremacists and other anti-government extremists who have been forming paramilitary "militias." In October 1994, Skip Richards, Kathy Sutter and Shirley Hardy hosted a group of militia promoters, white supremacists, Constitutionalists and other conspiracy cranks at the Laurel Grange. Ostensibly, the meeting was to discuss the North Cascades Park, but the presentations focussed on conspiracy theories. The initial flyer for the meeting has a subhead that reads, "North Cascades International Ecosystem boundaries will be controlled by electronic fortifications and supervised by the CIA." (emphasis in original.)

Several of the speakers -- Ben Sams, Don Kehoe, David Montgomery, Robert Crittenden -- were later involved in sponsoring Bob Fletcher, Randy and David Trochmann of the Militia of Montana at a militia forum held in Maltby, Wash. on February 11, 1995. At Maltby, CLUE member Ben Hinkle spoke about the Citizens for Liberty's recruiting efforts that targeted Whatcom County police.

I attended the Maltby meeting, which was concerned almost solely with alarming the audience about the nefarious purposes planned for the park, including the construction of concentration camps and preparing for troop movement -- of United Nations soldiers, naturally -- over the Canadian border.

There was an array of tables set up inside the meeting hall promoting all kinds of militia materials, including a range of different tomes about the "New World Order", as well as multiple copies of The Clinton Chronicles. (You can see the latter in the stacks directly in front of the man seated nearest the camera on the left in the photo below.)



Some of the booksellers objected to having their picture taken, as you can see. One of these included the man on the far right of this photo. His name is David Trochmann.

Trochmann is the cofounder (with his brother John) of the Militia of Montana. He also has some historical notoriety as well: It was Randy Weaver's refusal to participate in an ATF investigation of Trochmann as an informant (for allegedly running guns over the Canadian border with another noted white supremacist, Chuck Howarth) that led to Weaver being charged with gun tampering, which led in turn to the ugly Ruby Ridge incident.

Trochmann approached me shortly after I took this picture and wanted to know who I was. It was a friendly enough approach, and I wound up stepping outside and sharing a smoke with him and his son, Randy, during which we chatted. I described this in Chapter 4 of my first book, In God's Country:

On my own, I'd found other evidence suggesting the whole Trochmann clan comprised Identity believers. I'd heard in early 1995 from friends in the Sandpoint area that Trochmann had at one time organized Identity Bible studies in the Panhandle. So I decided at the next opportunity to ask the Trochmanns about it.

The chance came at a militia meeting in Maltby, Washington, that February. The meeting was at a little barn-red town hall in the semi-rural village, the kind of town where edge dwellers proliferate. Bob Fletcher was the MOM representative that day, but Randy and Dave Trochmann were operating the book-and-video tables where they hawked their wares. They saw me taking pictures of the table and came over and asked who I was. I gave them a card, and we stepped outside for a smoke.

Dave Trochmann has the same kind of intense demeanor as his brother, but there's something vaguely unsettling about him. I've known men like him, that hard-eyed working-class kind of man, and they are not people you want to mess with. If you do, they'll fix you and anybody close to you. It's hard to believe that Randy is his son. Randy, a skinny, dark-haired twentysomething, is doe-eyed and easygoing, a little jittery like all the Trochmanns, but you get the feeling he'd find it possible to like you even if you were a liberal.

I asked Dave about the Identity Bible studies. Any truth to that?

"Well," he said, looking about before answering, "you know, we're not white supremacists. We just think the races should be separate."

I'd heard the distinction made before.

"We just don't believe in race mixing," Trochmann said. "It's the laws of Nature. You don't see robins and sparrows mating, do you? We don't have a bunch of spobbins flying around."

I started explaining the genetic distinction between race and species, but realized it was a useless argument here.

"We don't hate other races," Randy said. "We just don't think they should mix. That's all Identity means to us." I let it go at that, and we wandered off to other topics, and eventually back into the meeting hall.

Since those beginnings, however, Wise Use advocates like Cushman have learned to adapt their strategy. Having gotten up and running with help of true extremists, they've gradually shifted their tone to one palatable inside the Beltway, giving themselves more of a moderate guise while carrying forward the same radical agenda.

Along the way, of course, they've shed many of their old supporters and colleagues, including those from the Patriot movement and from the hard-core property-rights movement. You can see this, for instance, in a recent piece by property-rights activist Carol LaGrasse describing Cushman and Pombo's strategy:

Mr. Wigley's e-mail criticized the way I communicated about the Endangered Species Act. He was apparently remarking about either my white paper on the Act, where I pointed to the need to protect private property rights, or, more likely, my recent discussions with American Land Rights Association President Chuck Cushman, where I disagreed with adopting a public strategy directed at "strengthening" the Act while leaving out the need to protect property rights. He admonished me, "We can be as pure and right as we wish -- and we'll lose again! I'm in this battle to win and so is Chairman Pombo."

"As for ESA, I'm first in line in conservative views and a desire to pay for property takings, etc. But Carol, don't mistake the language we use to sell the public on the need for change -- with language which will appear in the bill," said his e-mail to my confidential personal address.

Indeed, Cushman has managed to largely reinvent himself as a mini-Karl Rove to the power circle that Pombo has cultivated. But if you dig beneath the surface very far, you'll find the same agenda they were promoting in 1994 at those militia meetings.

It's just that now, they have a lot more real power, and the capacity to actually carry it off.

A recent High Country News profile of Pombo also makes clear that the appearance of moderation these folks are presenting is all for show. At the heart of it is the same determination to eviscerate the nation's environmental laws:

As Resources Committee boss, Richard Pombo has roared. In his first two years as chairman, Pombo spent $105,000 on official mailings, almost seven times more than any other House committee spent in the same period. Many of them were partisan tirades against environmental laws.

Pombo has targeted not only the Endangered Species Act, but the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, fishing and logging regulations and other environmental laws. In one committee press release in 2004, he attacked the Clinton-era protection of roadless forests in national forests as a "mindless edict" that only benefits "the environmental scare-peddling and fundraising industry."

The committee's official Web site offers a taste of Pombo’s view of the world. It defends President Bush's policies on national parks, and it applauds the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision not to list the greater sage grouse as endangered — a decision that generated great controversy when it emerged that a high-level political appointee doctored a scientific report on the grouse (HCN, 12/20/04: Rulings keep the West open for business). And though Pombo constantly demands "sound science" in environmental debates, it is in short supply on the Web site. In one report, Pombo advocates oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, claiming it will benefit migrating caribou.

"He runs the Resources Committee like his own personal propaganda machine," says Wes Rolley, a Morgan Hill, Calif., activist who runs the "Pombo Watch" Internet blog. "I think 'sound science' is anything that supports what he wants to do."

With his party in control of both Congress and the White House, Pombo should be poised to make good on a career’s worth of threats — a possibility that frightens his critics.

"The long-range implications of following the path that Pombo is leading us on really haven't gotten the publicity they ought to have," says Jim DiPeso, policy director of Republicans for Environmental Protection. "His priorities in the areas of energy, public lands and wildlife conservation are completely at odds with the best interests of our nation. I cannot think of a worse person to be chairman of the Resources Committee."

The story also notes that, like most figures on the far right, his own mythology is actually predicated on bullshit:

Pombo has often said that his rage against environmentalists was sparked by a battle with the East Bay Regional Park District in the 1980s. The park district planned to open a hiking trail on an old railroad right-of-way that crossed the Pombo family ranch in the Diablo Range south of Altamont Pass.

"The park district sought this abandoned railroad right of way as a recreational trail through the property of two dozen local ranchers and that of my family," he wrote in his 1996 book This Land is Our Land, a brash credo on property rights and the evils of environmentalism. "We were very concerned that it would interfere with our ability to conduct business on our own property."

Pombo claimed the park district refused to fence the trail, police it or pick up trash, and that "viewshed" rules would have kept the ranchers from building new structures on their own land. All this, he wrote, and the park district refused to pay the ranchers a dime.

But none of this actually happened. The park district did propose a trail on the old rail line, but on a segment some 20 miles away, near San Francisco Bay. At that time, park district boundaries did not include the Pombo family land, Altamont Pass, or anything near it.

"The facts have been reported wrong," says Bob Doyle, the district’s assistant general manager, "and it's become part of the robust history."

Pombo's co-author on the book, Joseph Farah, says he cannot remember details of the trail story, adding that "I certainly have no interest in researching this." Farah is former editor of the now-defunct Sacramento Union newspaper, and founded WorldNetDaily.com, a news Web site with a conservative bent, based in Grants Pass, Ore.

Pombo also claimed, in testimony before a Senate subcommittee in 1994, that his family land was stripped of its value when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared it "critical habitat" for the endangered San Joaquin kit fox in 1986. In fact, the agency has never designated critical habitat for the fox -- not on Pombo land or anywhere else. Questioned later on the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, Pombo admitted he has never been directly affected by a critical habitat designation.

Pombo's long association with Joseph Farah underscores the extremist threads that run throughout this power claque. Farah, as I've explained previously, is one of the premier transmitters of right-wing extremism into mainstream conservatism of the past decade. In the late 1990s, he was making a pretty penny for his operations by promoting Y2K-related apocalyptic theories and warning everyone to go into survivalist mode -- just like the militiamen who constituted much of his audience.

As Max Blumenthal recently pointed out, Pombo's extremist opportunism isn't just relegated to the ESA; he's also using the recent Gulf Coast hurricanes as yet another excuse to gut even more environmental laws.

Chris Mooney's work on the Klamath River fiasco also lays bare how Pombo and the Republicans are twisting science to promote their agenda -- even as the policies produced thereby wreak real havoc on wildlife. (See also Mooney's excellent book, The Republican War on Science, for even more.)

And, wouldn't you know? The Klamath Falls scene was also a major recruitment ground for militias. Funny how that works.

The blame game

Remember how conservatives complained ad nauseam about liberal critics of the Bush administration engaging in a "blame game" after the flooding of New Orleans?

This kind of right-wing propaganda offensive, as always, is a clear sign that they are in the process of engaging in precisely the behavior they're accusing liberals of. And sure enough, we've been hearing steadily that the fault all lies with those stupid Democratic officials.

Remember what I wrote just as the New Orleans drama was unfolding:

Whether it's the war in Iraq or the economy or race relations, whenever anyone points out any of the panoply of abject difficulties arising from their policies and agenda, conservatives just cover their ears and wish them away. They do this through one of two techniques:

-- Pretend the problems don't really exist.

-- Pretend that they're really the fault of, or emanate from, liberals.

So my jaw dropped only a little this morning as I read about former FEMA Chief Michael Brown, testifying before Congress on the Katrina disaster:

Brown in his opening statement said he had made several "specific mistakes" in dealing with the storm, and listed two.

One, he said, was not having more media briefings.

As to the other, he said: "I very strongly personally regret that I was unable to persuade Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin to sit down, get over their differences, and work together. I just couldn't pull that off."

No mention of that 72-hour gap between Katrina's landfall and the first arrival of federal relief efforts.

But it's comforting to note that better press conferences are now officially a superior substitute for food and water drops.

The hearing, as it happened, was run by congressional Republicans, whose questioning was clearly designed to give Brown some softballs to hit out:

Davis pushed Brown on what he and the agency he led should have done to evacuate New Orleans, restore order in the city and improve communication among law enforcement agencies.

Brown said: "Those are not FEMA roles. FEMA doesn't evacuate communities. FEMA does not do law enforcement. FEMA does not do communications."

Here's what FEMA does do, though: It provides emergency food and water. It coordinates emergency personnel, including rescue and medical workers. It oversees, coordinates, and helps facilitate such efforts as evacuation and communication when the disaster is a regional one.

Brown is trying to paint a picture of FEMA as a minor role player in disaster relief. The reality is that when a federal disaster is declared, FEMA takes charge of the scene, and every other agency defers to its directives and initiatives. But FEMA didn't show up in New Orleans until three days later. Why was that?

When Brown can answer that question, we may start getting a clearer picture of what happened in New Orleans. But first, he has to be asked.

In the meantime, his attempts to shift the blame onto state and local officials are typical of this administration. Its motto, after all, is: The Buck Stops There.

Moonbats indeed

Sure, you'd like to think that at some point, better sense would sink in among the Michelle Malkins of the world, who continue to flog the General Ripperesque notion that the crescent shape of the memorial for the victims of Flight 93 (downed on 9/11, apparently by heroic passengers) is supposed to invoke Islam, and is thus an insult to the memory of those victims.

But no. It's all about purity of essence, Mandrake!

Well, what do those victims' families have to say? Are they insulted by the design?

Um, well ... it turns out that, according to the local Johnston Tribune Democrat, the families had a major role in selecting the design.

And, well ... they're feeling insulted, all right ... by the right-wing wackaloons:

Esther Heymann, whose stepdaughter, Honor Elizabeth Wainio, was killed on Flight 93, said most family members find the design's recent criticism "insulting," considering the designs had been on public display for months before "Crescent of Embrace" was selected.

"I'm greatly saddened by it," Heymann said from her home in Baltimore. "I think there is an overall consensus that the families feel we have been very open and inviting through all of this, long before it reached this point.

"We're certainly not trying to pay tribute to the terrorists. I find that insulting," added Heymann, pointing out that red maples are indigenous to Somerset County.

Jack Grandcolas of San Rafael, Calif., whose wife, Lauren, died on Flight 93, agreed.

"I certainly wouldn't expect the memorial to be a tribute to the hijackers," he said. "That goes without saying."

I guess by now we should know that America's rabid right is incapable of embarrassment. But do they have to keep proving it day after day?

And while they're at it, they might ease up on the posts making fun of "moonbats." A quick look in the mirror should suffice.

Endangering the species

While the war in Iraq and Katrina have provided plenty of evidence of the Bush administration's incompetence at governing, it's worth remembering that the Republicans now running the show are in fact very good at one thing: promoting bad policy that favors corporate interests and the wealthy, always at the expense of average citizens.

In general, this has meant a steady parade of efforts to overturn the real advancements made by liberals in the previous century, from Social Security to progressive taxation to civil and reproductive rights.

The latest, and in some ways most troubling, of these campaigns to reach fruition is the evisceration of the Endangered Species Act. Republicans are depicting this as a "moderate" reform, but the reality is that it is a radical remake of American environmental law.

And what's especially troubling is the near-utter silence emanating from the left -- from the blogosphere to congressional Democrats -- in response.

Indeed, some six Democrats on the House Resources Committee voted last Friday, 26-12, to forward to the full House a piece of legislation that would end the ESA's legacy of effective protection of endangered species.

The bill is H.R. 3824 [PDF file], given a Newspeak title, "Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005."

As Howard Garrett of Orca Network, posting at his DKos Diary, explains:

-- This bill eliminates the ESA's requirement that critical habitat be designated for endangered species, substituting a provision that only a small part of the important habitats -- those that do not stand in the way of developers -- may be deemed special enough by the Secretary of Interior, often subject to political pressure, to warrant designation in the recovery plan. In addition, the bill assigns the task of developing recovery plans to industry-dominated "recovery teams" who are not likely to understand the need for habitats.

-- The bill would also require the government to pay property owners at fair market value for any loss that results from protecting endangered species. Sounds fair enough on the face of it but the responsible agencies have virtually no budget for such compensation, and if compensation isn't paid, the government could not enforce the act. Thus, congress would simply cease enforcement of the Act on budgetary grounds. If a gravel pit would destroy an essential foraging area used by orcas or salmon, for example, then this bill would require the government to give the owner the market value of the land. Since it is unable to pay for the land, the strip mine would go forward, perfectly legally.

-- And the bill would require agencies to make snap judgments within 90 days about whether a project would threaten an endangered species, or the project would become exempt from the ESA. However, judging the effects of a particular project may take much longer than that. NMFS still has not reached consensus about what caused the Puget Sound orca population to decline, or how to address the problems or how future activities might affect them. Determining the impact of a proposed project could take much longer than 90 days. This change alone would essentially give industry and property owners carte blanche to flatten, pave or pollute whole habitats.

-- The proposed legislation would politicize the ESA's enforcement with a provision requiring the Interior secretary to define what constitutes the "best available scientific information." Other provisions would make it difficult to block damaging projects or add to the list of 1,370 plants and animals considered threatened or in danger of extinction.

-- The "no surprises" rule in the bill, saying that once a project is allowed to go forward there can be no further questions asked, assumes that government agencies will get it right the first time, a level of faith in government not generally warranted. The status of Southern Residents is in flux and the theories about how to help them survive are very difficult to resolve into a coherent strategy. NMFS and Fisheries and Oceans Canada are both still at the draft stage of conservation and recovery plans. A rushed plan that is stacked against the whales (see above), combined with a "no surprises" rule, would allow anyone to destroy habitat with gleeful abandon. Canada requires review of conservation plans every five years.

-- A last minute amendment to this bill gave legal immunity to the chemical industry, repealing ESA provisions that protect fish and wildlife from harmful pesticides. This is another of the "other purposes." Pesticides indirectly harm orcas by reducing salmon runs, the whales' primary food source. Other chemicals, such as PCB's and PBDE's need to be addressed more directly, but this bill would set a precedent by saying that some causes of extinction won't be addressed at all, to suit the short term needs of certain favored industries.

Perhaps one of the most stark illustrations of the effects of the bill -- authored by Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif. -- is its certain impact on the resident orcas of Puget Sound. The National Marine Fisheries Service only recently listed them as a threatened species, and that will certainly come to an abrupt end if the bill passes:

If this bill passes, the Southern Resident Orca Community (J, K and L pods), scheduled for listing under the Endangered Species Act in December 2005, would immediately lose the protection and conservation provided by the ESA, as would the 14 listed salmon runs the whales depend on for their sustenance and survival.

The folks at Environmental Defense, at least, have been sounding the alarm. As ED's Michael Bean points out:

Representative Pombo has long criticized the Endangered Species Act because few species have recovered and been taken off the endangered list (though many others are clearly making progress toward that goal). Ironically, the Pombo bill makes the recovery of species less likely rather than more. This is virtually guaranteed by three provisions of the bill.

The first allows environmentally harmful actions to proceed if the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service cannot evaluate them within a 90 day review period. Already, the cash-strapped Services are unable to meet many of the deadlines imposed on them. The new review deadline will exacerbate this problem for the Services, with the altogether new consequence that if the Services cannot review a proposed action within the deadline, the action can proceed – even if the result would make recovery unattainable.

The second provision undercutting prospects for recovery includes changes to the provision of the law requiring regulations for “threatened” species. Current law requires regulations that meet a highly protective standard (“necessary and advisable for the conservation” of the species). The Pombo bill eliminates any requirement for regulations protecting threatened species at all. If regulations are nevertheless promulgated, they no longer have to meet the existing protective standard.

The third provision putting new obstacles in the path to recovery are changes that make it harder for federal agencies to cooperate in the implementation of recovery plans. Currently, federal agencies often take on important tasks to implement recovery plans. Under the Pombo bill, they would be prevented from doing so unless they first enter into a draft agreement outlining what they intend to do, publish that draft agreement for public comment, and then publish both a final agreement and responses to all public comments received.

None of these bureaucratic obstacles to the voluntary implementation of recovery plans by federal agencies currently exists. All will add red tape to interagency cooperation, making implementation more costly and ultimately less likely.

Pombo's claims to be making species protection more effective is nothing short of baldfaced lying. The most noxious element of the bill is its repeal of the "critical habitat" provisions of the ESA. As a National Wildlife Federation report [PDF file] explains:

To justify this repeal, Rep. Pombo claims that he has replaced critical habitat with a better habitat protection tool, set forth in the bill’s recovery plan provisions. However, the Pombo bill merely states that recovery plans must identify areas of "special value" to the conservation of the species. Unlike the Act’s current critical habitat feature, the Pombo bill does not require that recovery plans identify the habitats needed for conservation (i.e., recovery) of the species. There is no definition of "special value." Thus, only a subset of the important habitats -- those that do not stand in the way of powerful developers -- may be deemed special enough to warrant designation in the recovery plan. The Pombo bill assigns the task of developing recovery plans to industry-dominated "recovery teams" who are not likely to agree to a broad definition of "special value" habitats.

The House is scheduled to vote on this travesty in a matter of days. It appears doomed to certain passage, unless mainstream Americans start banging the drum to stop the march of this extremist agenda.

Bobo's World

Here's a lovely recent incident in Montana, where I've been traveling this week:

[John Russell] Howald and three other men were at a campsite near Bernice when two dogs showed up, according to one of Howald's companions quoted in court documents.

When the dogs would not leave the site, Howald allegedly shot at them, wounding a chocolate Lab.

He allegedly pursued the wounded Lab around the side of a trailer and then into the trees and shot at it a number of times, then came back to the campsite and got a chainsaw and severed the dog's head.

Howald then allegedly drove to a campsite occupied by Mike and Brenda Sullivan of Butte and threw the severed head of their dog at them, saying "Here is your f------ dog back," according to the documents.

Howald also threw a beer bottle at young boy in the campground, and then fired a shot in the direction of the boy's father when he objected. He entered a not-guilty plea yesterday in court.

One has to suspect that crystal methamphetamine played a role in this incident, as it has in many other recent incidents of extraordinary violence in Red State America.