Tag Archives: domestic terrorism

Sunday reflections: the Christian South

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“According to Bailey and Snedker, at least 2,500 blacks were lynched in the South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, roughly one per week for 50 years. One per week. Imagine being a part of a visible minority community and hearing of someone killed by a mob made up of the dominant group nearly every single week. It’s important to remember that lynching was and is a means of social control. It was a demonstration of power. By killing one person in a bloody spectacle, the group in power conveys a message to others (particularly to blacks) that they are in control, and they will exercise that control through random yet coordinated acts of violence. Some describe this as domestic terrorism. Strikingly a fair number of lynchings were actually photographed and reproduced on postcards to be traded with other lynch fans around the country.”

— The Promise and Peril of Christian Solidarity: Lynching in the Christian South (via: azspot)

Remember this? 2009 DHS Report on Rightwing Extremism (re: Sikh Temple shooting)

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Page 7:

Sikh Temple Shooter Identified: The shooter in the deadly attack Sunday at the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek was identified as Wade Michael Page, 40, sources familiar with the shooting investigation said Monday. He served in the Army for several years and was assigned to psychological operations or PsyOps, according to the sources.  He is no longer in the Army. The Southern Law Poverty Center, a group that has studied hate crimes for decades, reported Monday that Page was a frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white-power band known as End Apathy. (via: wisconsinforward)

Related: The Sikh Temple shooting in Wisconsin

The Sikh Temple shooting in Wisconsin

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What does it say about our society, our culture, and our country that CNN spent an inordinate amount of time yesterday explaining the difference between Sikhs and Muslims? Or that CNN interviewed a Sikh so that he could explain to their audience what his religion was “about.” For one thing, why don’t most people know that they’re different religions? And for another thing, did that suggest, even a little, that a shooting at an Islamic temple would make more sense?

Recently Michelle Bachmann and four other representatives came out with highly racist, sinister, and completely ridiculous allegations against top State Department official Huma Abedin (who is Muslim-American), suggesting that she is part of a Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy to infiltrate the U.S. government. I have to ask if Bachmann’s typically negligent dog-whistling finally crawled inside the sick mind of one of these rightwing “patriots” who support her brand of psuedo-Christian-politicking, and decided to take her phony conspiracy theory to the next level?

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Officials are describing the shooting at a Sikh temple near Milwaukee as a domestic terrorism incident.

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More information is coming out about what led the FBI to declare Sunday’s Sikh temple shooting an act of domestic terrorism. According to the Los Angeles Times, tattoos plus “certain biographical details” were the source of that conclusion. A representative of the Sikh congregation, Kanwardeep Singh Kaleka, told CNN that “members described the attacker as a bald, white man, dressed in a white T-shirt and black pants and with a 9/11 tattoo on one arm.” There has already been widespread speculation that the shooter may have intent on committing an anti-Islamic hate crime but confused Sikhs with Muslims because of their turbans. Kaleka pointed out that “maybe it’s because the ladies were fortunate enough to dodge it out, but so far most of the people I’ve heard have been shot and killed were all turbaned males.”

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(Photo: Jeffrey Phelps / AP)

nbcnews: Gunman opens fire at Sikh temple in Wisconsin; 7 dead

Updated at 4:20 p.m. ET:  A gunman opened fire Sunday morning at a Sikh temple outside of Milwaukee, killing six people and wounding at least three others, including a police officer, before being shot to death, police said.

Greenfield  Police Chief Bradley Wentlandt, acting as public information officer at the scene, said the shooting was reported at 10:25 a.m. at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek, south of Milwaukee along Lake Michigan. The shooting took place shortly before Sunday services were to begin. Read the complete story.

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“Just minutes after it was reported that people had been shot at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin, the hatemongers at Westboro Baptist Church were tweeting out: ‘God Sent Another Shooter.’ Read the whole story here.” — Westboro Baptist Church Responds To Shooting In Predictably Horrific Manner

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A statement by the Milwaukee Jewish Federation: “The Milwaukee Jewish community stands in solidarity with the Sikh community, and we offer assistance to the community, especially to the families of the victims. While we don’t know many details at this point, this may well be an intentional attack on the Sikhs which would make the massacre even more heinous. Our society is based on freedoms of religion and due process of law. We hope that law enforcement will find and hold accountable all parties involved in this senseless and shocking tragedy.” 

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The man who shot six people to death and wounded three others during a rampage at a Sikh temple in a Milwaukee suburb was an Army veteran who may have been a white supremacist, according to a law enforcement source involved in the investigation. Law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation named him Monday as Wade Michael Page, 40. One law enforcement official said he owned the gun used in the shooting legally. He had apparently served on active duty, a U.S. official familiar with his record said. The source declined to give further details. The officials asked not to be named because they are not authorized to speak on the record about the shooting investigation. — Sources name alleged gunman in Wisconsin temple shooting – CNN

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“An unnamed federal official told the Los Angeles Times tonight that the shootings in Wisconsin are being treated as domestic terrorism because of the gunman’s tattoos and biographical details. ‘Tattoos on the body of the slain Sikh temple gunman and certain biographical details led the FBI to treat the attack at a Milwaukee-area temple as an act of domestic terrorism, officials said Sunday.’” — Little Green Footballs

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thebengalcat: Mourners take part in a candlelight vigil for the victims of the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin shooting, in Milwaukee, on Sunday August 5, 2012. A white gunman killed six people at a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee in a rampage that left terrified congregants hiding in closets and others texting friends outside for help. The suspect was killed outside the temple in a shootout with police officers. AP

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Family members of the Sikh Temple president have confirmed that he was among those killed – @NewsHub http://t.co/QmWuTQQ8

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The Washington-based Sikh Coalition has reported more than 700 incidents in the U.S. since 9/11, which advocates blame on anti-Islamic sentiment. Sikhs are not Muslims, but their long beards and turbans often cause them to be mistaken for Muslims, advocates say. — Fox News

What rightwing domestic terrorism?

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“You may call tyranny a mandate or you may call it a tax, but it still is tyranny and invites the same response. If we refuse to obey, we will be fined. If we refuse to pay the fine, we will in time be jailed. If we refuse to report meekly to jail, we will be sent for by armed men. And if we refuse their violent invitation at the doorsteps of our own homes we will be killed — unless we kill them first. … I am on record as advocating the right of defensive violence against a tyrannical regime.” — Mike Vanderboegh, the ex-militia blogger…recently predicted that if the Supreme Court declared the health care reform bill to be constitutional, it would lead to violent insurrection against “government tyranny.”

Your Second Amendment right to bear arms gives you no right to use violence against those you disagree with.

Political correctness is deadly: right-wing extremism is our biggest domestic terror threat

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Think Progress’s Ken Sofer and Molly Bernstein report on the REAL threats to the safety and security of American citizens today:

Though the terrorist attack on Oklahoma City happened nearly two decades ago, (17 years ago on April 19) right-wing extremist terrorism remains a significant domestic threat to American security. The Department of Homeland Security released a report in 2009 stating that the economic and political climate bears important similarities to the conditions of the early 1990s when right-wing extremism experienced a dramatic resurgence. These conditions, including the public debate around hot-button issues such as immigration, gun control, and abortion, along with the election of the first African-American president, present “unique drivers for right-wing radicalization and recruitment,” the report said.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano eventually ordered the report withdrawn because of significant political backlash from mainstream conservatives. But the report, which was originally commissioned by the Bush administration, also found that “lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States.”

A look at terrorist incidents since the Oklahoma City bombing, including both successful and disrupted ideologically-motivated attacks, backs up the conclusions of the DHS report:

Fifty-six percent of domestic terrorist attacks and plots in the U.S. since 1995 have been perpetrated by right-wing extremists, as compared to 30 percent by ecoterrorists and 12 percent by Islamic extremists. Right-wing extremism has been responsible for the greatest number of terrorist incidents in the U.S. in 13 of the 17 years since the Oklahoma City bombing.

After DHS withdrew the report, the department cut the number of analysts studying non-Islamic domestic terrorism. Daryl Johnson, the primary author of the report and a self-described Republican, soon left his post at DHS and said in July, 2011 that DHS has “just one person” dealing with domestic terrorism. The Department has largely been silent on domestic terrorist threats ever since.

Although current statistics show that right-wing extremism is on the rise through groups like the Sovereign Citizen and Patriot movements, domestic counterterrorism continues to receive few resources and little public attention. Though Islamic extremism remains a significant domestic security threat, current statistics and incidents such as Oklahoma City show that it is far from the only threat. In order to protect American citizens, we need to match our resources to the reality of our threats, not just the politically expedient narratives we have formed.

As long as the media and average people pretend that ‘both sides do it’ and decide that it’s okay for self-described ‘patriots’ to rabidly hate President Obama, Democrats, and the federal government — and as long as everyone continues to look the other way when right-wing attitudes manifest themselves publicly, in the form of open racism and / or violent rhetoric, we’ll be under threat as a society and a functioning country.

Ask yourself if the fictional right-wing, Fox “News” created, tea party celebrated ‘creeping Sharia law’ is more of a threat to our country than the very real and ongoing use of the Republican Party’s Southern Strategy. Recall Sarah Palin’s creative ‘sniper rifle symbols’ on Democratic U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the aftermath. Think of Breitbart-protégé James O’Keefe and his ‘pimp costume’ and ACORN and the fictional Democratic voter fraud issue (as we’ve learned, Mitt Romney, the presumed GOP presidential candidate, actually committed voter fraud).

Or look at the most recent example of our politically correct, both sides do it, national discourse:

The ‘outrage’ for the right was something said by a CNN commentator about a candidate’s wife and was, in fact, entirely true. The ‘outrage’ for the left, which should be an outrage for the entire country, was a thinly-veiled threat against the life of our sitting president, for purposes of demonstrating the speaker’s Southern Strategy bona fides in front of an NRA crowd. With our history of political assassinations and attempted assassinations, should we ever take such rhetoric lightly?

While you think about which outrage received the most national attention and why, you might also ask yourself how your silence on such matters not only contributes to the escalation of ignorance in our national discourse, but encourages some Beck- or Palin-inspired Manchurian candidate to prove his ‘Super Patriotism’ in the form of action. Sort of like this guy, who has been happily expressing his right-wing ideals in court all last week:

[Anders Behring Breivik] identified as his enemy the “cultural Marxists” who he said had destroyed Norway by using it as “a dumping ground for the surplus births of the third world”. Claiming Norwegians would be a minority in their own capital “within five years”, he blamed liberal politicians for bringing about Norway’s demise with “feminism, quotas … transforming the church, schools”.

The 69 people, many of them teenagers, who died on the island of Utøya when he opened fire on the youth camp of the ruling Labour party were “not innocent”, he claimed.

“They were not innocent, non-political children; these were young people who worked to actively uphold multicultural values. Many people had leading positions in the leading Labour party youth wing,” he said, going on to compare the Labour party’s youth wing (AUF) with the Hitler Youth.

Morning Bunker Report: Thursday 4.5.2012

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THE SHORT BUS: YOUR 2012 REPUBLICAN (TEA)PARTY 

“Nobody thinks Romney’s going to win. Let’s just be honest. Can we just say this for everybody at home? Let me just say this for everybody at home. The Republican establishment — I’ve yet to meet a single person in the Republican establishment that thinks Mitt Romney is going to win the general election this year. They won’t say it on TV because they’ve got to go on TV and they don’t want people writing them nasty emails.” – Joe Scarborough, Morning Joe (via)

Here’s Some Advice for Mitt Romney – Matthew Dowd — Let go of the bitter fight with Rick Santorum and understand the key strategic imperative is to unite the party. Being bigger than Santorum will show how confident you are and how generous you can be. Don’t run any more negative ads against Santorum; let it be OK for him to win his home state and possibly save face. Tell your staff to quit attacking him and his campaign. Choose either to be all positive about yourself or to only contrast yourself with Obama. This will show how smart your campaign is and how able you are to adapt to a new moment. It is Easter, by the way, and as many folks of faith celebrate a new beginning and the power of compassion. Adopt this same sentiment. [image: politicaldirtylaundry]

Santorum struggles to stay relevant as Romney and Obama begin face-off  – Romney has already launched the first of what is expected to be a barrage of attack adverts targeting Santorum’s record as a US senator from the state for 12 years. Romney has accused him of betraying conservative values by voting to raise the national debt and of being compromised by years in Congress. [...] Romney commanded the most support among strong backers of the Tea Party movement and ran a close second to Santorum among voters who identified themselves as very conservative or as evangelical Christians. In early contests, such as South Carolina, Romney did badly with those groups. After Tuesday’s losses, Santorum pledged to defy pressure from “the Republican establishment and aristocracy” to drop out of the race and said he would keep going through the primaries in May. “Who’s ready to charge out of the locker room in Pennsylvania for a strong second half?” he said. But if Santorum loses the race in Pennsylvania, the pressure to step aside and allow the Republican party to concentrate on its campaign against Obama will intensify.

Rick Santorum Trails Mitt Romney In Pennsylvania, Poll Says – The notion that Santorum has a shot at the Republican nomination even with a victory in Pennsylvania was already a bit far-fetched. A loss there would likely convince even the most passionate backer that the gig is up. But the practical effect of poll numbers like these is greater then just providing a window into where the race currently stands. Santorum has a lot — personally and professionally — riding on his performance in Pennsylvania. And it’s not unreasonable to see him feeling intense pressure to bow out of the contest out of concern that he’d suffer an embarrassing loss.

Planned Parenthood Bomber: ‘They’re Killing Babies There’ – Francis Grady, who’s accused of firebombing a Wisconsin Planned Parenthood clinic on Sunday night, appeared in court today and settled the question of whether or not he’s an anti-choice fanatic: he is. A Grand Chute man accused of setting a fire at a Planned Parenthood clinic made his first appearance Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Green Bay. Francis Grady, 50, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Sickel he planned to plead guilty, but Sickel ignored the statement and scheduled Grady for an April 19 preliminary hearing. At one point, Grady interrupted him to ask, “Do you even care at all about the 1,000 babies that died screaming?”

PRESIDENT OBAMA / DEMOCRATS

At UAW legislative conference, Obama defends auto bailout – ”I placed my bet on the American worker and I’ll make that bet any day of the week,” the president declared to the UAW delegates. He praised the union, saying it was a major factor in making American history, including enabling the country to “defeat fascism” in World War II and the creation thereafter of the middle class itself. He also slammed the Republicans for their concentration on so-called “value” issues. “I keep hearing these same folks talk about values all the time,” he said. “You want to talk about values? Hard work – that’s a value. Looking out for one another, that’s a value. The idea that we’re all in it together and I am my brother’s keeper and sister’s keeper that’s a value. “They’re out there talking about you like you’re some kind of special interest that needs to be beaten down,” Obama declared. “They are wrong. That’s the philosophy that got us into this mess. We can’t afford to go back to it. Not now.” [image: moveon]

What Detroit’s Resurgence Says About The Auto Bailout – Mitt Romney attacked the Volt the same day the big three released their new numbers. “I’m not sure America was ready for the Chevy Volt,” he said. “I mean, I hope it does well, I don’t want to disparage any product coming out of Detroit. But I think instead of having politicians tell us what kind of cars we ought to make, we ought to let the people who are trying to understand the market make that decision.” Romney also continues to struggle with his original position on the bailout — outlined in a memorable 2008 New York Times op-ed, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” “If by chance people don’t remember that editorial, we’re going to remind them of it,” said Don LaForest, chairman of the UAW’s bargaining committee at the Detroit Hamtramck plant, where the Volt is made. Rattner believes it’s a safe bet that the bailout will become a major campaign issue. “That the auto bailout has had a very positive impact on the country is the message you’ve seen the White House use and they should continue to use it,” Rattner told TPM. “There were some pretty amazingly incorrect predictions made by people who were against the bailout. They should step back and rethink their hypotheses.”

WE ARE LIKELY TO HEAR A LOT MORE ABOUT SOCIAL DARWINISM in the months ahead. It was the conservative creed during the late 19th century – legitimizing a politics in which the lackeys of robber barons deposited sacks of money on legislators’ desks, and justifying an economy in which sweat shops were common, urban slums festered, and a significant portion of America was impoverished. – Robert Reich: The Choice in 2012: Social Darwinism or a Decent Society

Clinton: Unilateral Israeli Attack On Iran Now ‘Is Not In Anyone’s Interest’ – REENA NINAN: How successful has the U.S. been in getting and preventing Israel from taking unilateral action against Iran? CLINTON: Well we’ve worked very hard with Israel on all levels from the military, intelligence, strategic, diplomatic level to make sure we were sharing information, that we knew what each other was assessing. And it’s our very strong belief, as President Obama conveyed to the Israelis, that it is not in anyone’s interest for them to take unilateral action. It is in everyone’s interest for us to seriously pursue at this time the diplomatic path.

What rightwing domestic terrorists? The Olds!

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FBI: Four militia members plotted to attack buildings, release poison

WASHINGTON — Four Georgia men in their 60s and 70s were arrested Tuesday, accused of being members of a right-wing militia group that plotted to attack federal office buildings and to disperse a deadly biological poison in Atlanta.

[,,,] The documents say the men, Frederick Thomas, 73, of Cleveland, Ga.; Dan Roberts, 67, Ray Adams, 65, and Samuel Crump, 68, all of Toccoa, called themselves “the covert group” and began in March to talk about staging attacks against federal targets including the IRS.

A confidential informant secretly recorded some of the meetings for the FBI.

“I’d say the first ones that need to die is the ones in the government buildings,” Adams was overheard saying in an April 16 meeting, according to the FBI.

Yet, get this:

According to federal investigators, Crump had worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta in the past doing “maintenance-type services” for a contractor, and Adams used to work for a U.S. Department of Agriculture agency called the Agricultural Research Service as a lab technician.

I'm unna getchu soon as I figger out where mah teeth went.SO YOU SEE Guvmit’s okay when they work for it, when a white man’s president (and especially when he’s GOP). Teabaggers. And they’re probably all pulling in Social Security and Medicare while they spend their days spitting off the porch of the General Store, plotting who deserves to die after Sunday services. It’s not al Qaeda we need to worry about.

image: wonkette

We outnumber them and we have the guns.” (Audience laughs) “I’m not kidding.” — Andrew Breitbart

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Explain to me how this isn’t hate speech, how it isn’t inciting domestic terrorism:

Charles Johnson: Videos: Andrew Breitbart Fantasizes About Killing Liberals –

Speaking at a Tea Party gathering in Boston, Andrew Breitbart fantasizes about armed conflict with his fellow Americans… He goes on to elaborate that he imagines the military is going to rise up and start killing union members to protect the country (or something), and reiterates that he’s talking about actual armed conflict and not elections.

Click the LGF link for the videos of Breitbart’s ACTUAL WORDS.

If a liberal commentator / entertainer (whatever Breitbart is supposed to be) had said this sort of thing, Fox “News,” Drudge, Limbaugh, the freshman Teaparty Congress, and every Teaparty GOP 2012 candidate — including the former half-term governor on Facebook (snerk!) — would be clutching their pearls, waving smelling salts everywhere, and hyperventilating on every network news program, 24/7!

It’s amazing what our ‘liberal’ media chooses to ignore.

Teaparty “Patriots” will revolt if ANY deal is reached under ANY circumstances

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Article screen shot below from wingnutty Newsmax (if you want to read the full article, Google the title): 

How is this not domestic / fiscal terrorism? Teabag anarchy!  Too bad they weren’t this concerned when the debt ceiling was raised, with Republican majorities, SEVEN times during the Bush Administration.

Related:

Big fan of Glenn Beck: Byron Williams

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How many ‘fans of Beck’ are out there right now: shades pulled, cleaning their guns, Fox News and AM radio droning constantly in the background?

Charles Johnson: Last July, when Byron Williams was arrested in Oakland after a shootout with police, we learned that he was on his way to attack the offices of the ACLU and the Tides Foundation — two frequent targets of Glenn Beck. The circumstantial connection of Williams’s violent plans with Glenn Beck’s ugly anti-government rhetoric is now being confirmed beyond doubt…

John Hamilton: ‘Progressive Hunter’ Jailhouse Confession: How the Right-Wing Media and Glenn Beck’s Chalkboard Drove Byron Williams to Plot Assassination.

Now, in exclusive interviews and written correspondence with journalist John Hamilton, Williams speaks for himself. He asks Hamilton to be his “media advocate” and repeatedly instructs him to watch specific broadcasts of Beck’s show for information on the conspiracy theory that drove him over the edge: an intricate plot involving Barack Obama, philanthropist George Soros, a Brazilian oil company, and the BP disaster.

Williams also points to other media figures — right-wing propagandist David Horowitz, and Internet conspiracist and repeated Fox News guest Alex Jones — as key sources of information to inspire his “revolution.”

In a separate exchange with Examiner.com’s Ed Walsh, Williams sought to defend Beck from “Obama and the liberals,” whom he said are afraid of Beck “because he often exposes things that are simply forbidden in news.” Williams said that Beck advocates non-violence and that he had already researched the conspiracy theories that informed his alleged plot — before seeing them “confirm[ed]” on Beck’s show.

Similarly, Williams tells Hamilton that “Beck would never say anything about a conspiracy, would never advocate violence. He’ll never do anything… of this nature. But he’ll give you every ounce of evidence that you could possibly need.” [MMFA]

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