The Fascism Lurking Under the Winter Games

It's vital to pay attention, amid all the glitz and Olympic glamor, to what's going on under the surface in Russia. The show we are seeing in Sochi this month is all facade, and what's beneath, as I've been saying, is profoundly disturbing.

The British documentary Hunted, released just in time for Sochi, reveals explicitly the nature of the beast beneath the facade, a political pathology that is being unleashed in Russia now, today: fascism. Honest-to-God, unadulterated fascism.

One of the reasons I have railed in the past about right-wing efforts to confuse the public's understanding of the meaning and nature of fascism -- embodied in Jonah Goldberg's travesty, Liberal Fascism -- is that people would cease being able to distinguish the real thing when it came along. Well, it is on our doorstep in much of Eastern Europe now, as we speak, and particularly in Russia. And hardly anyone, it seems, recognizes it.

As I've noted previously, the real red flag when it comes to fascism isn't merely the spread of scapegoating politics (focusing for now on gays and immigrants), producing eliminationist thuggery in the classic Brownshirt mold -- it is when officialdom, the government authorities and church leaders, not only condone such behavior but encourage and reinforce it.

Watch the entire documentary [below]. I am particularly struck by the observations of the Russian woman -- a schoolteacher who is herself a straight woman -- who has decided to stand up to the thugs as a matter of conscience and "self respect":

Right now it suits the state and the regime to organize this witch hunt, because our economic situation, our pensions, our salaries, our healthcare, and our education are all getting worse. Understandably people need someone to blame. To stop people from focusing their anger at the authorities, the regime is igniting and maintaining this conflict and hatred. They are making people fight amongst themselves.

When you see, day in and day out, what’s happening, and how people are being beaten, hounded, how they fear stepping outside alone, how can you not realize this is a serious turning point for the country? This is a turning point toward fascism.

One of the more chilling moments in the documentary comes when the "Occupy Paedophila" people -- who claim not to be anti-gay, only anti-pedophile, even though they are clearly entrapping their target with an adult man as bait -- threaten their gay victim by suggesting that he is likely to be raped if taken to a police station, because they had heard someone at one of the stations had been brutally raped in the jail. Talk about the complicity of authorities.

And you'll notice how the man who runs the website that harasses teachers and gay-rights protesters describes what motivates him -- that is, having children and a family: "You become concerned with purity."

This is classic eliminationist reasoning, which is always about excising "impure" elements from society, cutting out cancers, flushing parasites from our systems (and all that accompanies that, psychologically speaking). As I explained back in The Eliminationists:  

Rhetorically, eliminationism takes on certain distinctive shapes. It always depicts its opposition as beyond the pale, the embodiment of evil itself, unfit for participation in their vision of society, and thus worthy of elimination. It often further depicts its designated Enemy as vermin (especially rats and cockroaches) or diseases, and disease-like cancers on the body politic. A close corollary—but not as nakedly eliminationist—is the claim that opponents are traitors or criminals and that they pose a threat to our national security.

Because it is about "purity" and "Russian tradition" and nationalistic fervor for them, this is not a short-lived and limited phenomenon. It is not just the LGBT community that is under siege by the young Russian thugs and neo-Nazis, whose numbers swell every year in Russia. There have also been significant violent attacks on immigrants and Muslim communities. The far right has been making its presence known in public displays of fascist nationalism, all condoned by the Russian Orthodox Church and, most of all, the authoritarian government led by Vladimir Putin.

I am glad that most Western leaders did not come to Sochi. But that will not be enough to stand up to what is happening to Russia. Because fascism, once it comes to power, is never sated. The LGBT community is just the beginning.

Here is the entire documentary, Hunted.

Lolita and Freedom: Feds' Decision on Her Endangered-Species Status Shifts the Tide

The people trying to bring the orca Lolita -- also known as Tokitae -- back to her home Salish Sea waters scored an incremental victory yesterday:

The federal government wants Lolita — the orca snared 44 years ago in Penn Cove by whale hunters who sold her to a Florida aquarium — protected under the Endangered Species Act.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Friday reversed itself and recommended the killer whale held by the Miami Seaquarium be governed by the same law that protects Puget Sound’s wild southern resident killer whales.

The move could have implications for other endangered species held by zoos and aquariums and almost certainly will lead to a re-evaluation of the conditions of Lolita’s captivity, which activists have complained about for years.

But it’s not clear how or if this will affect the decades-long campaign to have the former member of L pod returned to Washington.

It's a provocative question: If an aquarium or zoo possesses a member of an endangered population, should it be required to attempt to return it to the wild and that home population? Indeed, many zoos are engaged in species-recovery work, and returning animals to the wild is a big component of those programs.

No such programs exist, however, for orcas. And as anyone who has seen Blackfish understands, there is only one reason for that: Killer whales are the money engine for these theme parks. They are the reason the turnstiles rotate as rapidly as they do. And as a result of that and the declining population of captive orcas, each one of these animals is worth millions of dollars.

The marine-park industry has only ever gotten involved in wild-release work for killer whales when it was dragged, kicking and screaming, into the efforts to return Free Willy star Keiko to the wild, and when it finally did engage, it attempted at every step of the way to sabotage that effort, sometimes secretively.

I was in Florida last week and I went to the Miami Seaquarium to see Lolita. She is a sprightly female and charming as can be, and appears to be in excellent health still. At one point she came up to me at the railing where I was standing and seemed to pose for me:

Lolita posing

I was taken aback by a couple of things. For one thing, she is ridden by her trainers a great deal during her twice daily performances. You can't help admiring the athleticism required for both whale and trainer to pull this stuff off. And there's no doubt the exercise is good for the whale. But these are extremely unnatural behaviors, and there are stresses associated with that. I have grave doubts that so-called "water work" -- which is now prohibited by OSHA at SeaWorld parks -- is really good for these animals.

Nonetheless, she is in excellent health still, though Lolita gives the impression of having survived these forty-four years in captivity by having simply shut down part of her personality or her brain. It struck me as unlikely, for instance, that she is echolocating very much in her pool because it is featureless concrete that will simply reflect back at her.

These impressions could be wrong -- her curator and trainers were not inclined to talk to me, so I wasn't able to get any information from them about these issues. But my chief and abiding impression from my visit, and the thing I was taken aback most by, was just how tiny and cramped her little pool really is.

Perhaps I had been spoiled by my visit a few days earlier to SeaWorld Orlando, where the orcas' sterile pools at least have the virtue of being reasonably large, though still tiny compared to even the smallest cove orcas might explore in the wild. They are also clean and well-maintained.

Miami Seaquarium, by comparison, is a dump. It is going on fifty years old now, and looks every bit of it. The orca stadium's concrete pillars are stained with algae and mildew, and the paint inside the stadium is in a state of constant peeling, even though it appears fresh coats get slapped on periodically. But most of all, Lolita's pool is tiny. Painfully tiny. She is able to cross its widest point -- about 80 free -- with two quick flicks of her flukes. It is deep enough to enable her to perform her breath-taking breaches, but the minimum distance point, between the pool's edge and the island in the middle where her trainers stand, is only thirty-five feet wide. Lolita herself is twenty feet long.

These dimensions, it should be noted, are in fact in violation of federal regulations for an orca tank, where the minimum horizontal dimension (MHD) allowed is 48 feet, not the 35 in Lolita's tank. But the agency in charge of regulating and licensing these facilities, has for every year they've been in business given Seaquarium a "waiver" for that island as though it does not actually exist, thus extending the pool's MHD to include the portion of the pool behind the island. There is a lawsuit against APHIS over its failures to properly regulate the Seaquarium over this very point.

Seaquarium will never let Lolita return to the Puget Sound on its own: It is too addicted to the revenues she generates. But now that one federal agency has weighed in and found that she is part of an endangered population, its walls are starting to crumble. One more favorable ruling and the tide may finally rise in Lolita's favor and sweep her out of her depressing little concrete prison.

Read more about Lolita at the Orca Network.

At This Point in Taiji Slaughter, All We Can Say Is: Shame On Japan

The dolphin fishers in Taiji, Japan, upped their annual slaughter of wild dolphins this year, after they rounded several hundred into a cove last week and then, over the past couple of days, have either placed them in captivity for display in aquariums and "swim with dolphin" facilities, or in the majority of cases, have killed them for their dubious meat.

From NBC News:

Japanese fishermen drove a large group of dolphins into the shallows on Tuesday and, hiding from reporters and TV cameras behind a tarpaulin, killed at least 30 as the annual dolphin hunt that sparked protest in the West entered its final stages.

Both the U.S. and British ambassadors to Japan have strongly criticized the "drive killings" of dolphins citing the "terrible suffering" inflicted on the marine mammals.

Every year the fishermen of Taiji, in western Wakayama prefecture, drive hundreds of dolphins into a cove, select some for sale to marine parks, release some and kill the rest for meat.

On Tuesday, at least 30 dolphins out of the group of more than 200 held in the cove since Friday were herded by boat engines and nets into a killing area of the Taiji cove.

Ric O'Barry, the founder of the campaign against the Taiji atrocity, was on CNN last night with Anderson Cooper. He goes into greater depth about what can be done here:

One of Japan's foremost defenders of the dolphins, our colleague Sakae Hemmi of the Elsa Nature Conservancy of Japan, submitted a letter a few weeks ago to Dr. Gerald Dick, Executive Director of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA), which includes as a member the Japan Association of Zoos and Aquariums (JAZA), one of whose members is Angel's captor, the Taiji Whale Museum.

Dr. Dick responded to Elsa stating that WAZA would not take action against the hunts: "As you know, in some Japanese communities these drives have been part of the culture for centuries."

This is nonsense, and Ms. Hemmi has replied to Dr. Dick with an open letter stating that: "In fact, the history of dolphin hunting in Taiji is short. According to The History of Taiji, edited and published by Taiji town in 1979, the first recorded dolphin drive was in 1933, with subsequent hunts occurring in 1936 and 1944. It was not until 1969 that dolphin drives have been conducted on a large scale. The history of the dolphin drives spans not so-called 400 years, but a mere 45. Furthermore, in 1969, the main goal of the dolphin drive was to capture pilot whales as prized showpieces for the Taiji Whale Museum. In other words, the dolphin drive was purely for profit, having nothing to do with cultural history."


Elsa and two other grassroots Japanese environmental organizations are asking WAZA, in their open letter, to eject JAZA members that violate the WAZA "Code of Ethics" in using the brutal hunts to catch dolphins for display, thereby subsidizing the slaughter of dolphins for meat.

Perhaps the strangest thing is that, in defending what they see as their honor, the Japanese traditionalists so fiercely rebuking their critics are only staining the honor and reputation of their nation in the eyes of the rest of the world by permitting this kind of slaughter of wild, free-roaming and highly intelligent/sentient animals.

It is not just the West that is horrified when we see the pictures coming out of Taiji now, such as those Tim Zimmerman has compiled at National Geographic. It is shameful by nearly any standard of basic decency, and it is past time that it ended.

Mimi Bekhechi at The Independent offers her thoughts:

This horrific massacre goes on for six months a year during which time more than 20,000 dolphins and small whales – including babies and their mothers – are corralled into shallow waters, disorientated with underwater sounds, run over in boats, netted, starved for days and then killed by having their throats cut with knives or by having metal spears driven into their spinal cords in front of their terrified families. Dolphins are so devoted to one another that even those who escape from the killing area have been known to linger nearby to wait for their family, even if that means being killed themselves.

It is commonly assumed that the Japanese fishermen hunting these highly sentient beings do so to supply a small minority of Japanese people with dolphin meat. But in fact, the Japanese government issues permits to kill dolphins in order to prevent them from consuming the fish in Japan’s surrounding oceans, which it prefers to reserve for human consumption.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Japan Proceeds With Largest Taiji Dolphin Massacre in Years

Watching yet another massacre of hundreds of dolphins -- and the capture and removal for aquarium display another hundred or more -- by Japanese captors in the town of Taiji is difficult to stomach. Those of us who have seen The Cove know what is going on behind their walled-off zone.

But they are by God intent on doing it anyway:

Japanese fishermen have finished killing some of the 250 dolphins trapped recently in what environmental activists claim was the biggest roundup they have witnessed in the last four years.

Sea Shepherd, best known for its anti-whaling activities, said the fishermen first selected 52 dolphins to keep alive for sale to aquariums and other customers. They included a rare albino calf and its mother.

Of the rest, about 40 were killed, one became stuck in a net and drowned, and the others were released, it said.

A video released on Tuesday by Sea Shepherd shows dozens of fishermen on boats surveying the dolphins after they were confined to a cove with nets. Divers can be seen holding the dolphins selected for sale and guiding them to nets hanging off the boats.

While other dolphins have been killed since the hunting season began in September, Sea Shepherd said the 250 herded into the cove last Friday represented the largest group it has seen since it began monitoring the hunt.

And their official excuses are disgusting and pitiful; utterly devoid of any ethical awareness:

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters at a news conference Monday that marine mammals including dolphins were "very important water resources."

"Dolphin fishing is one of traditional fishing forms of our country and is carried out appropriately in accordance with the law. Dolphin is not covered by the International Whaling Commission control and it's controlled under responsibility of each country."

Taiji mayor Kazutaka Sangen echoed the sentiments.

"We have fishermen in our community and they are exercising their fishing rights," he said. "We feel that we need to protect our residents against the criticisms."

Mostly, we have been hearing how these are just animals and not any different from, say, rounding up cows and pigs. That, of course, is baldfacedly untrue: We know that dolphins are highly sentient and intelligent animals, at least as intelligent as chimpanzees and gorillas.

And there's little doubt that if there were some benighted government somewhere in Africa that actively enabled people to hunt and slaughter chimpanzees and gorillas, they would be under pressure from animal ethicists around the world to end the practice.

Thank goodness that this year around, Caroline Kennedy was brave enough to stand up to the Japanese. They remained, predictably, defiant and unmoved, despite the growing stain on their national honor the hunt is coming to represent.

As Tim Zimmerman observes, there is at least the chance that economics will change these practices -- though the shift may move from slaughtering the dolphins to selling them live to aquariums around the world, including the United States:

In recent years, however, concern over mercury levels in dolphin meat has raised questions in Japan about the use of dolphin meat as a food source, especially in school lunches. And dolphin meat is no longer a primary source of food, reducing the practical value of the drive hunt as a food source.

At the same time, the sale of dolphins captured in the Taiji drive hunt for marine park display (via brokers such as the Taiji Whale Museum) appears to be a steadily growing profit source for the hunts. From 2000-2005, an average of 56 live dolphins annually were sold for captive display. From 2006-2012, the annual average has more than doubled to 137, with a total of 247 sold for captive display in 2012-2013, according to marine mammal advocacy groups.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

‘Doomsday Prepper’ Arrested on Gun Charges in Washington State

Tyler Smith seemed to want to stand out among his fellow “Doomsday Preppers” – at least, that was the impression the Buckley, Wash., man gave in his Nov. 12, 2013, appearance on the National Geographic TV series that examines the efforts of fearful survivalists to prepare for a possible social and economic meltdown. Unlike most of the show’s participants – who often seem eager to assure viewers that they intend no one any harm and their efforts are merely defensive in nature — Smith, a large 26-year-old man with close-cropped hair and a red goatee, seemed eager to strike fear into the audience.

“We’re not in it to stockpile,” he proclaimed in a segment that was used to promote the show. “We’re in it to take what you have, and there’s nothing you can do to stop us. We are your worst nightmare, and we are coming.”

It was language such as this that got the attention of local law-enforcement authorities – especially after they ascertained that Smith, who was featured firing all kinds of weapons he and his friends had stockpiled, in fact was a convicted felon forbidden to own or use weapons. He was arrested by Pierce County deputies on Wednesday.

Smith has two felonies on his record already: In 2009, court records show, Smith was caught fondling a 14-year-old girl in an Auburn parking lot and wound up pleading guilty to “communicating with a minor for immoral purposes.” In 2009, after failing to pay for a motorcycle he purchased, he pleaded guilty to first-degree theft in Pierce County.

Smith’s Doomsday Preppers episode was remarkable for his aggressive stance. Smith, like many far-right conspiracy theorists, believes a “series of domestic terrorism attacks” are going to force the government into a dictatorial military stance, at which point he believes society will break down. Unlike most of the show’s previous participants, he did not insist that his position was purely a defensive one.

Rather the opposite: He told the show’s producers that he only had a few months’ supplies for his family because he intended to aggressively assault his neighbors and steal their food and weapons caches.

“All your shiny ARs, your high powered.308 rifles, your 50,000 rounds of ammo, are all going to be ours,” he said on the show.

Smith’s apocalyptic fears were blended with violent fantasies about life after the great social breakdown. “When the shit hits the fan, the people that are gonna survive are the people who are prepared to do whatever it takes,” he is heard saying – just before a simulated scene showed Smith and cohorts invading a home, putting guns to the heads of people in their bedrooms and taping them up.

Smith tried hard to be incendiary. “Most preppers talk about how they’re afraid of the mass people that are going to come take their supplies,” he said. “We are those people. We are the people that are going to come kick your door in, take your supplies, and just leave you behind. And there is nothing you can really do about it. We are the marauders. We are your worst nightmare. And we are coming.”

Much of his energy in the program is devoted to constructing a homemade set of body armor. Smith told viewers what he intended to make: “My armor is going to protect my head, my chest and vital organs, it’s going to be lightweight and stronger than anything you can buy in the store,” he said.

“It’s gonna protect me day to day, and when I go out and I’m kicking doors down and I’m kicking in store windows. It’s also going to make me the apex predator in my area, and that’s all that matters.”

That “apex predator” was mostly seen roaming the Pierce County countryside in a rattle-trap old pickup and then piecing together some dubious-looking armor. At the show’s end, he persuaded his cousin to shoot him with a round from a .12-gauge shotgun in the armor as he wore it; it appeared to only deflect off the armor and away harmlessly, though the absence of shot-pellet spray from the round suggested it may have been only a blank in any event.

Smith was unabashed about his aggressive plans for taking other people’s stores: “My advice to any of you preppers out there is to keep on buying your ammo, keep on buying your guns, your food, your bulletproof vests, and all your camping equipment. Because we’ll be by shortly to take all of it.”

“His stated plan was not to defend himself but to use weapons he illegally possessed, to rob his neighbors at gunpoint,” Sheriff Paul Pastor said in a news release. “Did he really think that this wouldn’t attract our attention?”

Sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said the Buckley man came to the department’s attention “by people all over the country bringing him to our attention.”

“Reality TV crashed into reality,” he said.

National Geographic issued a brief statement: “We are aware of the arrest, and have decided not to air this episode until all legal matters are sorted out.

One of the more remarkable segments of Smith’s “Doomsday Preppers” episode involved his preparations for conducting a Caesarean Section surgical operation on his pregnant wife in case the end of the world came before she could give birth. Smith can be seen, hunkered under a plastic tent, drawing a dotted line in the place where he believed the incision should be made and running an encased scalpel along it; notably, his wife did not seem so assured he would be able to pull off the operation.

According to the News Tribune, Smith first tried to claim that the filming had occurred before his 2009 convictions, though it occurred on a property he lived on afterwards. Moreover, the footage showing his pregnant wife had to have occurred afterwards as well, since she was not pregnant in 2009.

Cross-posted at Hatewatch.

Appeal Denied for Shawna Forde, Nativist Leader and Murderer

The Arizona Supreme Court today rejected every aspect of convicted Minuteman murderer Shawna Forde’s appeal, notably including her attempts to escape the death penalty. In a sweeping ruling issued this morning, the court found no reason to derail the nativist leader’s death sentence. Instead, the court affirmed her convictions and sentences, while ordering that her robbery sentences run concurrently rather than consecutively — a meaningless adjustment for someone on Death Row.

Forde, now 46 years old, was convicted by a Tucson jury in 2011 of first-degree murder in the home-invasion shooting deaths of Raul “Junior” Flores and his 9-year-old daughter, Brisenia, at their residence in rural Arivaca, Ariz. The case focused national attention on the racism and violence that were at the core of the Minuteman anti-immigration movement, whose members were once memorably described by President George W. Bush as “vigilantes.” The horror of the case — Brisenia was a beautiful little girl who was shot in the face as she cowered terrified on a couch with her puppy — helped to bring about the eventual collapse of Minuteman movement.

Despite evidence put on about such mitigating factors as Forde’s abusive childhood and her supposed mental incapacities, the jurors in her case nonetheless unanimously voted for a death sentence.
The murders were part of a grand scheme concocted and led by Forde, a native of Washington state, to construct a large militia training compound on the Arizona border for her border-watch organization, an offshoot of the larger Minuteman vigilante movement. Forde intended to fund the enterprise by ripping off drug-cartel marijuana smugglers at their drug houses.



Flores was indeed a small-time independent smuggler, but Forde and her gang of killers — including gunman Jason Bush, now also on Death Row, and a local enabler named Albert Gaxiola, behind bars for life — invaded his home, not his safe house, and wound up both empty- and bloody-handed. The lone survivor – Gina Gonzalez, Flores’ wife and Brisenia’s mother, who lived by pretending to be dead after Bush shot her – eventually drove the three from her home in a hail of gunfire. Behind them they left a bloody DNA trail that took authorities straight to Bush and Forde.

After the arrests of Forde, Bush and Gaxiola, Forde’s former associates in the Minuteman movement fled from their onetime protégé. National leaders of the Minuteman movement — particularly its co-founders, Chris Simcox of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC) and Jim Gilchrist, leader of the Minuteman Project — hastily tried to put distance between themselves and Forde and her Minuteman American Defense (MAD) group.

Simcox claimed that his organization had kicked out Forde back in 2007, when she was accused of lying and pretending to be a senior leader in the Washington state chapter of MCDC. “We knew that Shawna Forde was not just an unsavory character but pretty unbalanced, as well,” he said. Not only that, he claimed that this proved his organization had done a good job of weeding out extremists from its ranks.

Simcox’s MCDC spokesperson, Carmen Mercer, even decried the media coverage of the Forde case in a press statement. “The media continues to flame the fires of ethnic friction and faux racism through their ridiculous reporting that this is a Minuteman crime — the media is irrational and reckless in perpetrating this despicable propaganda,” she declared. “The Arivaca home invasion had nothing to do with the Minutemen, nothing to do with race or illegal immigration, it had to do with psychopathic criminals preying on other criminals.”

A Minuteman Project webpage promoting Shawna Forde's announcement that her team headed by "Gunny" -- aka Jason Bush -- was at work on the border.Only a few weeks later, they would be under arrest for murder.

Similarly, Jim Gilchrist rapidly took down material from his Minuteman Project website that supported Forde’s MAD group and announced his “condolences to the victims” while claiming that Forde and her associates were “rogues” and that his relationship with her was never “extensive.” “They happened to use the Minuteman movement as a guise, as a mask,” he said.

However, my investigation of these claims and characterizations makes clear that they are patently false. Not only did both Simcox and Gilchrist have extensive dealings with Forde over the years, but both repeatedly courted her and her organization. Simcox didn’t chase Forde out of the MCDC; he begged Forde not to leave his fold. In the case of Gilchrist, one witness to a conversation between him and Forde says that the two discussed her plan to finance the movement by ripping off drug dealers in 2008 – and that Gilchrist seemed enthusiastic about it.

One of the components of Forde’s appeal was her claim that publicity about the case in the local press – which was in reality fairly subdued – prejudiced her jury pool and entitled her to a new trial. But the court found otherwise.

“The publicity surrounding this case was not so pervasive and prejudicial that the court should have presumed prejudice,” the justices wrote. “Most of the publicity occurred in the immediate aftermath of the crimes — approximately eighteen months before trial. Moreover, most news accounts were essentially factual. We have held that the trial court properly refused to presume prejudice under similar circumstances.”

They may now be few and far between, but Forde still has defenders who claim that she was railroaded in a government plot intended to smear the Minuteman movement. One of her old border-watching allies, a former Simcox sidekick who calls herself “Laine Lawless” (real name: Roberta Dill), runs a Justice For Shawna Forde that describes the double murderer as a “political agenda prisoner.”

Cross-posted at Hatewatch.

How Did Glenn Beck's 2009 Predictions for 2014 Turn Out? Massive Fail.

I remember when Glenn Beck first played out his doomsday scenario for the Year 2014 back in 2009, highlighted by his special "War Room" episode, and thinking even then: "It's going to be fun to go back in 2014 and see how well his predictions turned out."

Well, those predictions -- though of course Beck, in his usual weasel fashion, demurred that these were "not predictions" but just him thinking out possible scenarios ... even though he brought in a panel of experts to play them out -- were built around Beck's certainty that there would be a "financial meltdown":

-- All the U.S. banks have been nationalized.
-- Unemployment is "between 12 and 20 percent".
-- The Dow is trading at 2800.
-- The commercial real-estate market has collapsed.
-- The government and unions control most businesses.
-- America's credit rating has been downgraded.

My favorite part happens when he brings on Gerald Celente, who predicts "tax revolts" that will turn bloody:

Celente: Oh no, no. This is going to be violent. People can't afford it anymore. Look, the cities are going to look like Dog City. They're going to be uncontrollable. You're going to have gangs in control, motorcycle marauders. You're not going to have enough police and federales, just like Mexico, to control the situation.

Well, as Ben Collins at Esquire notes, not only have not one of these predictions panned out, they were in fact spectacularly wrong, and the country has largely gone the other direction. Moreover, though Beck has since departed Fox, he remains an influential voice in that segment of the population for whom Fox News is too liberal.

Of course, I also recall how Stephen Colbert had some fun with all this fearmongering even then ...

And it's worth noting that one of Beck's expert panelists, Michael Scheuer, has more recently distinguished himself by advocating the assassination of President Obama.

In other words, the right-wing extremism that was being fomented five years ago on Beck's Fox Show hasn't gone away. It's just gotten crazier -- especially as their fearmongering proves to be wrong, wrong, wrong, just as it always does.

Nuts and Fruits Department: Pamela Geller’s Puppy Bombs

One of the distinct qualities that often qualifies organizations for designation by the SPLC as hate groups is that they specialize in spinning degrading narratives about members of their target groups. And the really vicious haters often give away their game by unleashing the most heinous accusations imaginable — especially so when those accusations turn out to be based on completely false fairy tales.

Recently, far-right Islamophobes Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer demonstrated once again why their organization, Stop Islamization of America, has earned the SPLC’s “hate group” designation for several years running: According to a story heavily promoted by their organization, heartless Islamist radicals are now lighting puppies aflame and hurling them at their enemies.

This preposterous claim originated with a dubious report from a local CBS TV station in New York that has since retracted the story and removed it from the station’s website. The story, from reporter Amy Dardashtian, claimed that two puppies up for adoption in New Jersey had been rescued from Egypt after nearly becoming the victims of the puppy bombers.

Quoting an animal rescuer from New Jersey named Robyn Urman — who was herself quoting a Facebook post from an Egyptian rescue volunteer — the story originally claimed that “members of the Muslim Brotherhood marching toward Tahrir Square to demand that ousted President Mohamed Morsi be reinstated were using puppies as gas bombs — dipping them in gasoline and lighting them on fire.”
Urman’s group posted a semi-grammatical description of the supposed puppy-bomb gang: “Ten cruel bearded men gathered more than 20 puppies and start[ed] pouring gasoline on them and throw[ing] them at the army. These flying fire balls were puppies that [were] used as weapon[s]. We only could save these three poor babies.”

Within the day, the story was removed from the CBS 2 website and replaced with an uncontroversial piece simply saying the dogs were looking for a new home. A producer at WCBS, the parent station, told Hatewatch that the story’s initial publication was an error since it had not been properly sourced and vetted, and editors at the station immediately doubted its veracity. It was taken down from the website, the producer said, very shortly after it was first published, and replaced with the current story, since the facts of the initial version did not check out.

In spite of the story’s obviously dubious nature, Geller and Spencer avidly promoted it at their websites. Geller’s post at her blog, Atlas Shrugs, was headlined “Puppy Bombs: Puppies Being Used as Living Firebombs by Muslim Brotherhood” and attacked President Obama because he “backs these savages,” adding: “But then again, he eats dog, so …” (Of course, Geller’s blog has also claimed that Obama is the “love child” of Malcolm X.) Spencer’s post at his blog Jihad Watch was about as subtle: “Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood using ‘puppy bombs’ dipped in gasoline and set on fire,” its headline read, while the text noted helpfully that “Muhammad didn’t like dogs.”

From there, the tale made its way to sites in the right-wing blogsphere like Breitbart’s “Big Peace” blog, where one Mary Chastain dutifully wrote an outraged post under the headline “’Puppy Bombs’ Rescued From Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.”

Patrick Kingsley, the Egypt correspondent for the Guardian, told the Huffington Post UK he did not believe the reports: “I think it’s really, really unlikely that Muslim Brotherhood protesters could have turned puppies into firebombs during clashes in Tahrir Square. Aside from a couple of brief instances, Brotherhood demonstrators have not been able to enter the square all summer. Most importantly, the logistics of this seem barely feasible. Gathering 20 puppies, transporting them to a protest, dousing them in petrol, and then throwing them at soldiers while being teargassed strikes me as not just impractical, but nigh-on impossible.”

Cross-posted at Hatewatch.

Dearborn, Mich.: We Are Not Under Shariah Law!

The world of right-wing extremism produces people who so deeply believe in conspiracy theories woven out of fantasies that they stop being able to distinguish between reality and fantasy – or, in some cases, satire.

And in the case of Dearborn, Mich., this week, satire was mistaken for reality by a large number of such people. An article published at a satirical website mocking right-wing paranoia about Shariah law (Muslim religious law) being imposed in the United States – headlined “City in Michigan First to Fully Implement Sharia Law” and informing readers that Dearborn was now under Muslim control – was mistaken by a large number of people for the real thing.

Spread widely through social media, the story published at the National Report satire site – which publishes fake news in the manner of The Onion, though perhaps more obliquely – sparked an outpouring of outrage from conservatives who have been warned by a number of conspiracist anti-Muslim organizations that Islamic radicals intend to begin imposing “Sharia Law” in the United States. Thousands of phone calls and E-mails came pouring in to Dearborn City Hall.

It reached such a boiling point that the Dearborn mayor’s office issued a statement over the weekend clarifying reality. “Dearborn has never been, nor ever will be, under sharia law. We are governed by the U.S. Constitution, the Constitution of the State of Michigan and the City of Dearborn Charter,” Mayor John O’Reilly said. “We are a city named after a Revolutionary War hero. We have lost loyal Dearborn American military service personnel in every war this country has fought to protect the individual rights we are guaranteed through the U.S. Constitution.”

The National Report specializes in satire mocking extremist fears, often by taking them to their illogical conclusion. A similar satirical piece conned Fox News pundit Anna Kooiman into believing that President Obama intended to keep the International Museum of Muslim Cultures open during the government shutdown by paying for it out of his personal funds. She then went on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends Weekend” program and told her audience that Obama intended to do this, adding: “It really doesn’t seem fair.” She later retracted the remarks.

But the reason the Dearborn satire sparked such a reaction was that in many ways it told paranoid Muslim-bashers that fears they had warned about were coming true.

Dearborn in fact has one of the nation’s largest Arab-American communities by percentage of population, and as such is an active center of Muslim worship. That in turn has produced a great deal of paranoia about the town by right-wing conspiracists, especially since 2001. A 2012 Atlantic article, “Dearborn: Where Americans Come to Hate Muslims,” explored the great extent to which the city is a magnet for Muslim-bashers (notably the Islam-hating Florida pastor Terry Jones) and people committing acts of violence as well, including an attempted bombing of a Dearborn mosque.

Mayor O’Reilly blamed the National Report for inspiring the outpouring from angry conservatives who believed the fake report. “The National Report’s misguided attempt at humor furthers the goals of some people who have tried to suggest that the City of Dearborn is anti-American because our population includes residents who are Muslim,” the mayor’s statement read. “The National Report is not a news site, but is only pretending to be one. Its purpose is entertainment. In this case, its outrageous story, with no basis in fact, has ended up fooling people in part because it mirrors allegations made by others in the past with less than humorous intentions.”

Despite the mayor’s comments, it seems hard to believe that so many people would swallow the National Report’s tall tale, which was replete with sentences like this one: “The new law could see citizens stoned for adultery or having a limb amputated for theft. Lesser offenses, such as drinking alcohol or abortion, could result in flogging and/or caning. In addition, the law imposes harsh laws with regards to women and allows for child marriage.”

Attempts at contacting the editors of the National Report were not successful.


Cross-posted at Hatewatch.

Florida Sheriff Who ‘Nullified’ Concealed Gun Arrest is Acquitted, Reinstated

The rural Florida sheriff whose arrest and trial on misconduct charges became a cause celebre among the “constitutionalists” of the antigovernment Patriot movement this summer was acquitted by a jury yesterday.

Nick Finch, the Liberty County sheriff who was arrested and suspended in June and accused of tampering with the arrest record of a man in custody on a weapon-concealment charge, was found not guilty by a six-person jury in Bristol.

Gov. Rick Scott, who had signed the arrest warrant for Finch and named his interim replacement, immediately announced that Finch would be returned to office. “Sheriff Nick Finch will be reinstated immediately,” Scott announced. “I would like to thank the members of the jury in Liberty County for their service in this trial. I would also like to thank Interim Sheriff Buddy Money for his service to the state of Florida.”

Finch was arrested after an incident in March in which one of his deputies arrested a man for carrying a concealed weapon during a traffic pullover. After the man’s mug shot was taken, Finch arrived at the jail with one of the man’s relatives, told his deputies to stop the procedures, released the suspect, and then allegedly walked away with the records that had already been generated. He told investigators he let the man go because he was protecting his Second Amendment rights, but he was charged with official misconduct for allegedly destroying the records.

The case attracted the interest of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, the organization run by longtime Patriot movement figure Richard Mack, who made Finch’s arrest a fundraising issue. Mack organized a legal-defense fund for the sheriff and warned his followers: “If Sheriff Finch is found guilty in this case, the most unjustified and frivolous trial in history, then we are all in trouble and could be suspects in any incident!”

Similarly, the conspiracy-minded Oath Keepers adopted Finch’s cause and organized fundraisers for his legal defense as well. The John Birch Society’s newsmagazine warned readers that “Freedom of speech, federalism, the right to keep and bear arms, and the right of the people to govern themselves through free elections are under assault in Florida.”

Much of the trial in Bristol centered around whether Finch had actually broken the law by whiting out the suspect’s name from the booking records. Finch claimed that the arrest records state officials alleged he walked away with never existed – and no one was able to prove otherwise.

Finch, meanwhile, acknowledged that he was practicing a kind of nullification of state law when he ordered the man’s release. He told the jury that he did not believe in enforcing the state’s concealment statutes, because he believed that Second Amendment rights trumped those laws.

The state prosecutor, Jack Campbell, questioned Finch on that point: “Don’t you agree that the Second Amendment doesn’t give you the power to pick and choose which laws you’re going to enforce and which laws you’re going to not enforce?”

Finch answered: “The Second Amendment is very specific to keeping and bearing arms, Mr. Campbell. You’re talking about many laws. What I believe is the Second Amendment requires me to make a decision based on that Second Amendment as to whether I’m going to go forward with the state charges. Yes, I think the Constitution has to mean something at some point, Mr. Campbell.”

There was no immediate response from Mack or his organization. A spokesman for an Oath Keepers unit in Florida posted on the organization’s blog: “This is a great day for Liberty and Freedom. This is a perfect example for the rest of the Sheriff’s [sic] in the state of Florida and in the United States that the Constitution still has authority in this country not the feds or any other state agency that thinks they can take our Sheriffs [sic] authority away.”


Cross-posted at Hatewatch.

Trial of Florida Sheriff on Misconduct Charge Draws Wrath of ‘Constitutional Sheriffs’ and Oath Keepers

The trial of a Florida sheriff on a charge of official misconduct is attracting the attention of so-called “constitutional sheriffs” and the far-right Oath Keepers, who claim that the sheriff – Nick Finch of Liberty County – was only standing up for the Second Amendment when he “nullified” the arrest of a citizen on a concealed-weapon charge.

Those activists see the Finch trial as a showdown between their “constitutionalist” belief that the county sheriff is the highest authority in the nation and state and federal authorities intent on imposing their “tyranny” on the citizenry. In reality, Finch was arrested for allegedly tampering with the arrest record of a man on a concealment charge because he believed enforcing the law violated the Second Amendment.

Finch was arrested in June by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and charged with one count of official misconduct, a third-degree felony, for having “destroyed or removed official arrest documents” and making it appear an arrest had never occurred, including whiting out the suspect’s name in the booking log. His trial in Bristol began today.

Finch, 50, first elected in 2012, has been suspended and could be permanently removed from office.
The incident that sparked his arrest occurred on March 8, when a Liberty County deputy pulled over a Bristol man named Floyd Parrish on suspicion of drunken driving. While searching the man’s car, the deputy found a pistol hidden inside his pocket. Parrish had no concealed-weapon permit, so he wound up under arrest at the county jailhouse.

According to the arrest warrant (pdf), at that point Sheriff Finch – who had never met Parrish – entered the holding cell with Parrish’s brother. He then took possession of the arrest file and told the booking sergeant to release Parrish and not file any charges. The man’s mug shot had, apparently, already been taken and his name entered into the arrest log. The arrest log entry was later whited out by someone, though no one is certain who did so. Video tapes of the arrest and subsequent release of Parrish were later recorded over.

After Finch’s arrest in June, his case drew the attention of Richard Mack, the erstwhile Arizona sheriff who now runs the far-right Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, an organization that draws its beliefs in the supremacy of the county sheriffs from old, anti-Semitic Posse Comitatus ideology. Also attracted to the cause were the conspiracy-minded Oath Keepers, who organized a fundraiser for Finch’s legal defense in August.

Finch’s case has become a fundraising draw for Sheriff Mack, who sent out an e-mail alert this week asking for help to support Finch. “Sheriff Finch did exactly what all of us have been hoping and praying for now for so many years; he nullified a gun charge and the arrest of a law-abiding citizen,” the e-mail said. “So the State, under the direction of one corrupt deputy Attorney General (Willie Meggs) with complicity of an equally corrupt FL Governor, actually arrested and removed from office the duly elected Sheriff of Liberty County, Florida.”

Finch himself has remained defiant while attracting support from a number of “constitutionalists.” He told an interviewer for the John Birch Society organ The New American that there was no chance he would stop fighting the charge: “Never! I will take this case all the way to the Supreme Court.”

Finch is fairly clear about his motives, telling the interviewer: “When I ordered him released from the holding cell I say that he has a right to carry a gun under the Second Amendment, and so I let him go.” Asked what prompted that step, he answered: “My beliefs and my stand on the Second Amendment.”

He also made clear his view of his obligations: “My only obligation is to the Constitution and I will continue to act according to my oath and that duty.”

Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, has been besieged by Sheriff Finch’s supporters. One report shortly after Finch’s arrest noted that Scott had received 1,326 e-mails, and only three of those supported the charges. Several writers suggested Scott resign because of the arrest, claiming it proved he opposed the Second Amendment.

Cross-posted at Hatewatch.

Dodging 'Blackfish': What Sea World Doesn't Want You To Know

Memo to the honchos at Sea World: You know that you are in a world of hurt when Newt Gingrich, of all people, starts to lecture you about your total lack of transparency, as he did the other night on CNN while discussing the stunning documentary 'Blackfish':

GINGRICH: Let me -- let me say, let me say, first of all, because I think the audience probably is curious about this. I want people to know that I'm disappointed that SeaWorld isn't representing itself. I'm delighted to have somebody as professional and as competent as Greg, but SeaWorld's a huge institution. This is a very important movie that raises some very troubling questions.

They did release a statement. They said, "The film paints a distorted picture that withholds from viewers key facts about SeaWorld, among them that SeaWorld is one of the world's most respected zoological institutions, that SeaWorld rescues, rehabilitates and returns to the wild hundreds of wild animals every year, and that SeaWorld commits millions of dollars annually to conservation and scientific research.

Now, I thought we ought to say that in fairness, but let me also say personally, I would like to extend an invitation to SeaWorld, to have a representative come and be on the show one night. Because I think, as a multi-billion-dollar institution, they owe the country some level of transparency and some level of accountability. And I am disappointed that they're not here tonight.

Of course, there's a reason Sea World wouldn't come on CNN to talk about 'Blackfish' and instead was content to hide behind blanket and nonresponsive PR statements: The facts are not on their side.

As Tim Zimmerman, the film's co-producer, observed to the 'Crossfire' panel:

So they refused to participate in the movie. We tried endlessly to try to get them to provide their side of the story. And it's a little bit ironic to complain that the movie is distorted if, you know, you yourself refused to come forward and to present your point of view. So I don't really think that's a very fair criticism of the movie.

Sea World's hunker-down strategy was a catastrophic failure: Not only did CNN clean up in the network ratings thanks to 'Blackfish,' but the film was also the talk of Twitter through the weekend.

And it was also painfully obvious, if you watched the film, that Sea World's statement was a blizzard of irrelevancies and nonsequiturs designed to keep audiences from thinking too hard about the real issue the film raises: Namely, is keeping these large and intelligent animals captive the right thing to do?

As the blogger Cetacean Inspiration observes:

The ethics of keeping killer whales in captivity is totally irrelevant to conservation and rescue programs. Using these programs to justify killer whale captivity is a bit like defending an abusive person because they volunteer at a soup kitchen. The two are not related. Just because someone does something “good” does not mean that they are excused to do something evil.

So, Sea World folks, with your stock value plummeting and your Facebook page filled with angry cancellations, you really, really need to rethink your strategy. You do have a chance to come out ahead -- but only if you actually were to embrace the conservation ethic you claim to be teaching kids.

Naomi Rose, in fact, has a perfect plan: Begin a program of rehabilitation for the 13 wild-born orcas now in captivity with an eye toward releasing them in the wild, and involve the public every step of the way. Sell tickets. Warm hearts. Demonstrate that you really do have the animals' best interests at heart. Because no one believes that you do now.

As Rose observes:

The marine theme parks can shift with the paradigm or be left behind -- it is up to them.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Beck Reality Show Promotes 'Documentary' on Alaska Militiamen

A documentary project that is currently faring well in the competition for the reality TV show Pursuit of Truth – a program on Glenn Beck’s Blaze TV network – purports to be about investigating the “truth” about the arrests and convictions of Alaska militia leader Schaeffer Cox and several of his cohorts. But if a “sizzle reel” video just released to promote the project is any measure, the film’s version of “truth” may well be at variance with the established facts of the case.

Cox, declared “delusionarily dangerous” at his sentencing, is currently serving a 26-year prison term for organizing a conspiracy to kill a federal judge and law-enforcement officers in the Fairbanks area, where he lived. He and three other militiamen were arrested in March 2011 and served with the conspiracy charges, along with a bevy of related firearms charges.

On Pursuit of Truth, hosted by actor Vince Vaughan, a Salt Lake City filmmaker named Joshua Ligairi has been preparing a project purporting to demonstrate that Cox and his cohorts were railroaded by a rogue FBI investigation, and selling it to the show’s judges – quite successfully so far. His project, titled “Plan 241,” was named a semi-finalist in the competition that aired last Wednesday.

The competition’s winner will get to produce a full-length version of their documentary with the help of the show.

The “Sizzle Reel” – a two-minute preview of the film, highlighting its most intriguing components – was released as part of the competition. It primarily features a handful of people telling the filmmakers how Cox and the others were railroaded by the FBI and an “out of control” informant.

Much of the onscreen time is devoted to Aaron Bennett, the tattooed proprietor of a Fairbanks gun-and-gear shop called Far North Tactical, who is a friend of the convicted militiamen. At a key point in the video he describes some of the “out of control” behavior of the key government informant in the case, telling the documentary makers: “Bill pulled out a knife, grabs him and puts it up to his throat and says, ‘You say one more word, I’ll kill you, I’ll cut your throat.”

Bennett is describing a verbal confrontation between the informant – a onetime militiaman from Anchorage named Bill Fulton, who owned and operated a gun-and-gear shop there – and Schaeffer Cox’s second-in-command, a Fairbanks man named Les Zerbe. But it is not at all clear that he’s giving an accurate description.

As blogger Jeanne Devon of Anchorage, who covered the trial daily, reported at the time, when Zerbe testified in court, he claimed that Fulton “came at me with a knife,” but then admitted that he did not see a knife in Fulton’s hand: “I was looking in the man’s eyes to see how serious he was on harming me. I did not see the weapon although I was told it was a knife.”

Fulton himself testified that Aaron Bennett was in between himself and Zerbe during their altercation, which he described as purely verbal. So the court evidence suggests that if Fulton did have a knife – and Fulton himself testified that he had one, but didn’t threaten Zerbe with it – it is highly unlikely it was brandished and held to Zerbe’s throat – otherwise, Zerbe would have testified to that effect.

The other primary witnesses in the video are the parents of militiaman Coleman Barney – a militiaman who, the evidence suggests, was accidentally caught up in Schaeffer Cox’s schemes and, accordingly, was given a lighter sentence – earning, ultimately, a pair of concurrent five-year sentences. All of them express the opinion that the case against the men was unproven – though that was clearly not the opinion of the jurors who heard the evidence in the case.

During his conversations with the Pursuit of Truth judges, Joshua Ligairi made clear that he had already decided on the angle for the film he wanted to make. He told them that “basically, the FBI’s investigation crossed all these boundaries they weren’t supposed to cross,” and described the agency’s behavior as “Orwellian.” When one judge asked if he would be able to remain objective during the investigation, Ligairi indicated that he had already made up his mind: “I don’t agree with what they’re doing, but I do not want to see innocent people go to jail.”

For all its ominous music and imprecations, however, there is no evidence, physical or otherwise, in any of Ligairi’s footage so far to support the allegations of improper convictions in these cases.

Cross-posted at Hatewatch.

Argle Bargle Morble Whoosh

Holy cow. Sarah Palin sounds like she's been nipping into the ol' Rushbo 151 again, hasn't she? With a side of Peggy Noonan's Magic Dolphin Helpers.

Reminds me of Frito Bugger the evening he hung out with Tim Benzedrine. And the funniest part is watching Megyn Kelly, nobody's fool, trying to maintain her composure and put a nice face on all this.

This is classic Palin, right up there with the Great Turkey Massacre.

Bob Cesca has a transcript.

Seattle Metro’s Refusal to Run Anti-Jihad Ads By Geller Group Sparks Lawsuit

Pamela Geller and her far-right Muslim-bashing organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, have announced they are striking back at “Sharia Enforcement” by suing the city of Seattle. Or someone.

In a press release earlier this week headlined “We Are Suing the City of Seattle,” Geller heralded the lawsuit by claiming that transit authorities in Seattle had refused one of the AFDI’s incendiary advertisements for their buses.

However, the lawsuit AFDI filed this week is actually against King County’s Metro Transit Authority, not the City of Seattle -- a much smaller entity fiscally and geographically than King County.

“Twelve years after the 9/11 jihad terror attacks, it has come to this: we have to file suit to fight against jihad terrorism, and the media calls us a ‘hate group’ for doing it,” Geller’s press release said.

As the release notes, the dispute revolves around a series of ads the AFDI purchased to appear on the sides of Metro buses. They featured mug shots of 16 “Faces of Global Terrorism” – all Arabic or black men – and all of whom are highly unlikely to be making appearances in Seattle anytime soon.

Previously, Metro had allowed the AFDI to run anti-Palestinian ads on some buses in response to similar ads run by pro-Palestinian groups. And it had run ads nearly identical to the “Faces” billboards when they were sponsored by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in June 2013. The JTTF, however, voluntarily removed those ads after U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle, wrote a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller expressing concern. McDermott said the ads would “only serve to exacerbate the disturbing trend of hate crimes against Middle Eastern, South Asian and Muslim-Americans.”

Geller’s press release explains: “But then the leftists and Islamic supremacists complained that the ads were ‘Islamophobic,’ and they came down – and now  Seattle is refusing to allow my group, the AFDI, to put them back up. This is sharia compliance.”

Jeff Switzer, a spokesman for Metro, declined to comment on the pending litigation but said the ads were refused because of Metro’s longstanding policy of refusing ads if they are have false and misleading statements, demeaning or disparaging content, or material that might lead to service disruptions.

Cross-posted at Hatewatch.

Oath Keepers Pushing Oregonians to Resist Gov’t Concentration Camps

A statewide organization of conspiracy-peddling Oath Keepers has been gaining traction in small-town Oregon by convincing a series of county-level officials that they need to speak out against the enactment of the National Defense Appropriations Act by passing official resolutions defending the constitutional rights of their citizens.

Among the concerns that these county officials cite is the alleged threat, raised by the Oath Keeper activists who promote these resolutions, that federal authorities are planning to round up American citizens and incarcerate them in concentration camps.

The resolution passed by the Klamath County board of commissioners on Sept. 24, for example, warned that “Whereas Klamath County is not a ‘battlefield’ subject to the ‘laws of war’,” the county commission was declaring that “it is unconstitutional, and therefore unlawful for any person to … arrest or capture any person in Klamath County, or citizen of Klamath County within the United States, with the intent of ‘detention under the law of war’ … or subject any person to targeted killing in Klamath County.”

Most of these resolutions are the handiwork of Tom McKirgan, who heads up the Oregon chapter of the Oath Keepers from his home in rural Coquille. He first convinced the Coos County commissioners – after months of activism – to pass a resolution in late July opposing the NDAA because of its supposed violations of the Fourth Amendment’s requirements for due process. (The national Oath Keepers organization also promotes NDAA-related conspiracy theories on its website.)

McKirgan has been working in tandem with activists from the state chapter of People against the National Defense Authorization Act (PANDAA) to promote the resolutions. And while PANDAA’s portion of the presentations have remained within the realm of the rational concerns about civil liberties related to the bill, when the Oath Keepers have spoken up, it has veered into the wildly conspiratorial.

Among the dire warnings these commissioners heard during the process were allusions to the Oath Keepers’ oft-stated belief that the NDAA creates the legal pretext for federal authorities to begin rounding up right-wing citizens and placing them in concentration camps, or that they might begin labeling Tea Party leaders “enemy combatants” and start assassinating them. At times – particularly in Klamath County – it seemed some of the commissioners shared those fears.

The same warning showed up on the Oath Keepers website in a discussion of the Oregon successes around the NDAA issue. A commenter named “D. Bertrand” explained: “One reason for the NDAA, (or maybe two reasons) is because, at some point in the near future, a massive round-up of any particular group and/or activists/journalists, would be so many that DUE PROCESS would be virtually impossible and would clog the legal system. The other reason would be … These massive arrests would be un-constitutional without legal probable cause, and a violation of 1st and 4th amendment rights, therefore….they will just go for it !!”

“Bertrand” then explained that, out of eight levels needed to reach that dire stage, “we are currently at Level Five,” adding: “Unfortunately, most Americans slept through Levels One thru Four and the NDAA is creeping through the back-door. Oregon Oath Keepers, and California, are going head to head with the NDAA. If when the NDAA goes live…that means WE ARE IN A WAR.”

McKirgan has weighed in on local issues in the Coos County area with a similarly conspiratorial perspective. When local night-sky watchers in the coastal town of Bandon promoted an ordinance to regulate residents’ lighting, he warned in a letter to the editor: “This is another avenue exploited by the [U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] to greatly expand their ulterior motive of turning the entire Coquille Valley into a massive mosquito bog unfit for human habitation.”

At an Oath Keepers gathering in Reedsport, he warned: “We are living under a soft form of martial law.” He also dismissed President Obama’s authority: “Obama is not a president,” he said. “He is nothing but a communist trying to usurp his power and bring us under the United Nations banner.”

“We’re trying to nullify, actually the Constitution nullifies it, we’re trying to reject and repeal section 1021 and 1022,” McKirgan told the Reedsport City Council. “Oath Keepers is not a militia. We are an organization of education. We reach, teach and inspire others to follow the oaths of office that they swore to uphold the Constitution. This is an unconstitutional act that places America on the battlefield, where everybody inside that battlefield are subject to the rules of military law.”

However, both the Reedsport and the Coos Bay city councils did turn him away in his efforts to get them to similarly endorse his conspiracy theories. But McKirgan has turned his sights to other precincts, with Douglas County next on his list, he says. And he promised: “We have other counties in our cross hairs.”

In the meantime, the Oath Keepers may not yet be calling their operations militias, but they are functionally becoming one: President/founder Stewart Rhodes recently announced that Oath Keepers were “going operational” with the formation of “Civilization Preservation Teams.” Last week, the organization announced it was forming an “honor guard” at the nation’s war memorials to prevent their closures during the government shutdown.

Cross-posted at Hatewatch.

Gun-Rights Group Wants to Make Sandy Hook Anniversary 'Guns Save Lives Day'

Ah, nothing like the gun nuts, keeping it classy:

A national Second Amendment group based in Bellevue has decided to sponsor “Guns Save Lives Day” on Dec. 14 — the anniversary of last year’s mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.

The 650,000-member Second Amendment Foundation, which announced the event Thursday with the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and DefendGunRights.com, has not yet decided what it will entail. But Alan Gottlieb, the president of the group, said the goal is to show “there’s a good side of guns.”

“People every single day use guns to save lives,” Gottlieb said. “We don’t think anybody should have been a victim at Sandy Hook, and we don’t think anybody should be a victim in the future.”

Gottlieb estimated that some 200 gun-rights groups from all 50 states would participate in the event.

“Quite frankly, we don’t want the gun prohibition lobby to own that day,” he said. “So we’re starting early.”

Critics blasted the event as disrespectful.

Cheryl Stumbo, a victim of the Seattle Jewish Federation shooting on July 28, 2006, said that if gun-rights groups tried to sponsor a similar event on July 28, it would feel like “a slap in the face.”

“It’s an attempt to blame victims, and it shouldn’t be tolerated,” said Stumbo, the sponsor of a 2014 initiative campaign to require background checks for all gun sales, not just those by licensed dealers.

Gottlieb's group is probably the second-most influential gun-rights outfit in the United States after the NRA. It's also one of the more radical: In the 1990s, Gottlieb was closely associated with the "Wise Use" movement and its leader Ron Arnold, and the two of them were involved in militia organizing in the Northwest.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Wingnut Truckers Vow to Bring 3,000 to D.C., But That's Looking Dubious at Best

Those angry right-wing truckers are still promising that at least 3,000 of their number will be showing up in Washington, D.C., this weekend to bring traffic along the Beltway to a grinding halt as part of a protest of what organizers call “the blatant disregard of our Constitution”.

It’s not so clear, however, whether the protest organizers will be able to deliver on those promises. Some of the participants appear to be backing out – or at least tempering their rhetoric – and the protest so far appears to be, as a conservative Washington Times columnist put it, “disorganized and confusing.”

Much of the confusion was spawned by a leading participant named Earl Conlon, a Georgia trucker who earlier told U.S. News and World Report that the protesters intended to arrest President Obama and members of Congress. A couple of days later, he told a Washington Post reporter that the whole thing was a hoax and that he wouldn’t be showing up there after all.

However, Conlon was never one of the organizers of the event. That title belongs to Zeeda Andrews, a former country singer who appeared on Glenn Beck’s television show this week to explain that indeed the protest was proceeding according to plan. At the protest’s Facebook page, Andrews and other participants dismissed the Washington Post story as disinformation ordered by the Obama administration.

Andrews told Beck that she had 3,000 “RSVPs” from other truckers for the protest. She also urged non-truckers to participate by refusing to buy anything on the weekend.

However, Andrews’ credibility is probably not much greater than Earl Conlon’s, considering her own lengthy history of dubious pronouncements. As Ben Dimiero at Media Matters explored at length, Andrews has a considerable record of imbibing in bizarre conspiracy theories.

That includes her belief that President Obama is actually Osama bin Laden in disguise, as she described in a YouTube post: “He is alive call me crazy but, Osama Bin Laden is our President Obama do your research,” she wrote. “The CIA has been preparing for this since he was a boy. They have same height, bone structure, hands and ears both are left handed the Osama face was created by Hollywood. The fox is in the hen house.”

The report also demonstrates that Andrews has a history of posting racially incendiary material, including photos suggesting the Obama is a secret Muslim, to her Facebook page. Among her “likes” are a variety of conspiracy theories, including so-called “chemtrail” theories positing that passenger jets flying across American skies are secretly poisoning or drugging the population.

Also, as we noted earlier, the truckers’ protest is employing radio host Pete Santilli as one of their chief media spokesmen; Santilli is perhaps best known for wishing on the air that he could shoot Hillary Clinton in the vagina. As RightWingWatch notes, Santilli angrily denounced Earl Conlon’s threat to arrest members of Congress, saying the truckers only were demanding the impeachment of President Obama.

But on Wednesday, as Media Matters reports, Santilli called for violence if the trucker protest fails. Santilli referred to a group militiamen who dub themselves “Three Percenters” – that is, a tiny faction willing to take violent action – in the rant: “If we do not rise up this week, peacefully, there is going to be Three Percenters who I will also join, to make it not so peacefully. That's what's going to happen,” he said.

“Okay, our country will be saved. There is a select few of us, we'll call them Three Percenters that will take the next logical step to stop our domestic enemies. It will be stopped, I'm going to say this, this is not a threat. We will defend our nation to the absolute death.”

Cross-posted at Hatewatch.

Arizona Lawmaker’s Call for Constitutional Sheriffs Has Radical Roots

An Arizona legislator recently made headlines by comparing President Obama to Adolf Hitler as she decried the closures of national parks within her district, part of the ongoing federal shutdown. She posted the following on her Facebook page:

Barton later defended the Obama-Hitler comparison, telling the Arizona Capitol Times that she believes the president is “dictating beyond his authority,” citing gun-control legislation and Obamacare as examples: “It’s not just the death camps. [Hitler] started in the communities, with national health care and gun control. You better read your history. Germany started with national health care and gun control before any of that other stuff happened. And Hitler was elected by a majority of people,” she said.


But while the inapt comparison may seem outrageous (the claim about gun control under the Nazis, for one, is entirely bogus), Barton’s plea to call out “Constitutional Sheriffs” to nullify the authority of federal park rangers is even more interesting, and certainly more revealing.

Those “Constitutional Sheriffs” that she hopes can “revoke” the power of federal authorities are actually participants in a far-right antigovernment “Patriot” movement effort — descended from old Posse Comitatus teachings — to enlist the sheriffs of America in the belief that individual county sheriffs are the highest law of the land and possess the power to nullify and even arrest federal authorities.

One of the leaders of the “Constitutional Sheriffs” campaign is longtime Patriot movement figure Richard Mack (who counts Safford, Ariz. — Rep. Barton’s home — as his own childhood hometown). His efforts to enlist law-enforcement officers in the conspiracist worldview of the Patriots and militias dates back to the 1990s, but is also credited with helping to spur the movement’s recent resurgence. In addition to his own Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, Mack is also prominent in the Oath Keepers movement.

Rep. Barton also has a history of far-right activism. Her page at the website of the Arizona House of Representatives trumpets her mid-1990s activism in the so-called “Sagebrush Rebellion” — an antigovernment land-rights movement popular in the West in the 1980s and ’90s — and says she was “an elected officer in People for the West, a land-rights group.” This latter organization was a major player in the so-called “Wise Use” movement, which in the 1990s became a fertile recruitment ground for the Patriot movement and efforts to organize militias.

The notion of the supremacy of the local sheriff originated with the Posse Comitatus movement, a radical anti-Semitic organization, fueled by conspiracy theories and race hatred, that sought to dismantle the federal government and its civil-rights institutions. The Posse laid the groundwork for various Patriot-movement organizations in the 1990s, including the Montana Freemen and Richard Mack’s own early organizations.

Rep. Barton so far has not responded to the SPLC’s queries regarding her promotion of the “Constitutional Sheriffs” and its Patriot movement agenda.

Cross-posted at Hatewatch.

Truckers' Protest in D.C. This Weekend to Demand Obama Impeachment

A group of politically right-oriented long-haul truckers is attempting to organize a day of protest in Washington, D.C., wherein they essentially bring all traffic around the nation’s capital to a grinding halt by creating traffic jams on the “Beltway” system surrounding the city.

The only problem with the protest – scheduled for the coming weekend of Oct. 11-13 – is that it isn’t exactly clear what the truckers are protesting, nor is it clear what will meet their demands. It appears, though, that they expect Congress to impeach President Obama, overturn the congressionally approved health care reforms, and to disband the Department of Homeland Security.

The only aspect of the planned protest that is clear is that it is fueled by conspiracy theories regarding President Obama and fears about an imminent economic collapse. And it is being promoted by “Patriots” and radio-show hosts with a history of far-right agitation.

One of the would-be participants told U.S. News and World Report that the truckers intend to inspire the masses to force the arrest of President Obama and members of Congress.

The chief organizer of the “Truckers Ride for the Constitution” is a former country music singer named Zeeda Andrews who created a website and Facebook page for the campaign earlier this summer, and it has been gradually building momentum with the help of right-wing radio hosts.

Andrews’ website details the “demands” of the truckers in a somewhat oblique fashion, presented as a list of paranoid fears of supposed “unconstitutional” behavior by the government. Indeed, the list of demands begins: “Long before he was president, Barry Soetoro, aka Barack Obama, was already plotting with others, to overturn the Constitution for the United States.”

It then goes on to list a variety of offending actions – including emissions regulations for trucks in California, and a lack of truck parking (“More truck stops have went out of business because of this administration’s economic impact,” the manifesto reads). Among the actions the truckers appear to believe are unconstitutional are the Affordable Care Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, and the Patriot Act, since the truckers insist the Department of Homeland Security is an “unconstitutional” entity.

It also claims the Obama administration is violation the War Powers Act by “exposing, and administering experimental, psychotropic, mind altering drugs for control over soldiers during secret, clandestine operations.”

Andrews told U.S. News and World Report that among the actions that Congress could take to prevent the “shutdown” by the truckers would be the impeachment of President Obama. But not all of the participants agree.

"We are not going to ask for impeachment," a Georgia trucker named Earl Conlon, who claimed to be in charge of logistics for the protest, told the reporter. "We are coming whether they like it or not. We're not asking for impeachment, we're asking for the arrest of everyone in government who has violated their oath of office." Among those he expected to see arrested are former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California.

One of the most avid supporters of the protest is radio host Pete Santilli, who recently joined up with fired Pennsylvania police chief Mark Kessler to cohost a Patriot-movement radio show. He hosted Andrews on his show recently to promote the protest, promising to “shut Washington down.”

On that program, Andrews made clear that the purpose of the protest was to warn Americans that the government was conspiring to bring down the nation’s economy. “They are going to crash the economy, there’s no doubt about that,” she said. “That’s what they’re planning.”

Conlon, in the meantime, appears to be promoting the classic Patriot-movement strategy of applying a “Citizens Grand Jury” – in which ordinary “sovereign citizens” can convene a jury and declare federal laws unconstitutional without court approval – to the elected officials in Washington. He told the U.S. News and World reporter that such a jury would be used to indict various liberal officials.

"We want these people arrested, and we're coming in with the grand jury to do it," he said. "We are going to ask the law enforcement to uphold their constitutional oath and make these arrests. If they refuse to do it, by the power of the people of the United States and the people's grand jury, they don't want to do it, we will. ... We the people will find a way."

However, the movement is already showing signs of fractiousness: Andrews has angrily disclaimed Conlon’s participation, warning him on the protest’s Facebook page that he has been “advised NOT to misrepresent himself as a spokesperson for this peaceful event.” One post commented: “Although Earl riled up a sensational title, he stepped out of bounds of our peaceful intent and methods. DHS would love to have a reason to use their bullets.”

Cross-posted at Hatewatch.