Showing posts with label terrorism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label terrorism. Show all posts

Friday, August 5, 2011

The Right Wing is apoplectic at being accused of inspiring terrorism. I guess all of these people came up with the idea on their own.

Photo courtesy of the Red Phoenix
All of these incidents were compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

January 21, 2009
On the day after Barack Obama is inaugurated as the nation’s first black president, Keith Luke of Brockton, Mass., is arrested after allegedly shooting three black immigrants from Cape Verde, killing two of them, as part of a racially motivated killing spree. The two murders are apparently only part of Luke’s plan to kill black, Latino and Jewish people. After being captured by police, he reportedly says he planned to go to an Orthodox synagogue near his home that night and “kill as many Jews as possible.” Police say Luke, a white man who apparently had no contact with white supremacists but spent the previous six months reading racist websites, told them he was “fighting for a dying race.” Luke also says he formed his racist views in large part after watching videos on Podblanc, a racist video-sharing website run by longtime white supremacist Craig Cobb. When he later appears in court for a hearing, Luke, charged with murder, kidnapping and aggravated rape, has etched a swastika into his own forehead, apparently using a jail razor.

May 31, 2009
Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion extremist who was involved with the antigovernment “freemen” movement in the 1990s, allegedly shoots to death Kansas late-term abortion provider George Tiller as the doctor is serving as an usher in his Wichita church. Adherents of “freemen” ideology claim they are “sovereign citizens” not subject to federal and other laws, and often form their own “common law” courts and issue their own license plates. It was one of those homemade plates that led Topeka police to stop Roeder in April 1996, when a search of his trunk revealed a pound of gunpowder, a 9-volt battery wired to a switch, blasting caps and ammunition. A prosecutor in that case called Roeder a “substantial threat to public safety,” citing Roeder’s refusal to acknowledge the court’s authority. But his conviction in the 1996 case is ultimately overturned. In the more recent case, Roeder is charged with murder and faces life in prison.

Feb. 18, 2010
Joseph Andrew Stack, who had earlier attended meetings of radical anti-tax groups in California, sets fire to his own house and then flies his single-engine plane into an Austin, Texas, building housing IRS offices. Stack and an IRS manager are killed, and 13 others are injured. Stack leaves a long online rant about the IRS and the tax code, politicians and corporations.

March 27-28, 2010
Nine members of the Hutaree Militia are arrested in raids in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana and charged with seditious conspiracy and attempted use of weapons of mass destruction. The group, whose website said it was preparing for the imminent arrival of the anti-Christ, allegedly planned to murder a Michigan police officer, then use bombs and homemade missiles to kill other officers attending the funeral, all in a bid to set off a war with the government.

April 30, 2010
Darren Huff, an Oath Keeper from Georgia, is arrested and charged with planning the armed takeover of a Madisonville, Tenn., courthouse and “arrest” of 24 local, state and federal officials. Authorities say Duff was angry about the April 1 arrest there of Walter Francis Fitzpatrick III, a leader of the far-right American Grand Jury movement that seeks to have grand juries indict President Obama for treason. Several others in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement accuse Duff of white supremacist and anti-Semitic attitudes in Internet postings.

May 10, 2010
Sandlin Matthew Smith detonates a pipe bomb at a rear entrance to a mosque in Jacksonville, Fla., while worshippers are inside. Armed only with a fuzzy videotape, authorities only identify Smith, based on talking to witnesses to whom he admits the attack, a year later. They track Smith, a bus driver from Julington Creek, Fla., to a campsite near Fairview, Okla., where he resists arrest with a gun and is killed. A search of Smith’s two homes turns up explosive materials.

June 8, 2010
A bomb packed into a soda can is planted outside Osage Baptist Church in Carroll City, Ark., where a polling station for a Democratic Senate primary runoff between Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Lt. Gov. Bill Halter is located. The device does not explode, although authorities say it was capable of causing death or serious bodily injury. Officials later receive a tip from contractors who hired to clean out the foreclosed home of self-described “Patriot” Mark Krause, where they find bomb-making materials, manuals, and materials related to antigovernment militias. Krause, who earlier posted antigovernment messages to MySpace, eventually is arrested in Seattle.

July 18, 2010
An unemployed parolee with two bank robbery convictions, apparently enraged at liberals and what he sees as the “left-wing agenda” of Congress, allegedly opens fire on California Highway Patrol troopers who pull him over in Oakland. No one is killed, but two troopers are slightly injured and Byron Williams is shot in the arms and legs. Williams allegedly later tells authorities that he was on his way to attack offices of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Tides Foundation, a liberal organization that, although little known to most Americans, has been repeatedly pilloried on air by Fox News host Glenn Beck.

Sept. 2, 2010
A pipe bomb is thrown through the window of a closed Planned Parenthood clinic in Madera, Calif., along with a note that reads, “Murder our children? We have a ‘choice’ too.” The note is signed ANB, apparently short for the American Nationalist Brotherhood. Six months later, law enforcement officials arrest school bus driver Donny Eugene Mower, who allegedly also threatened a local Islamic Center and has the word “Peckerwood,” a reference to a white supremacist gang, tattooed on his chest. Mower reportedly confesses to the attack.

Sept. 7, 2010
The FBI arrests 26-year-old Justin Carl Moose, a self-described “freedom fighter” and “Christian counterpart to Osama bin Laden,” for allegedly planning to blow up a North Carolina abortion clinic. After earlier receiving tips that Moose was posting threats of violence against abortion providers and information about explosives on his Facebook page, the FBI set up a sting operation to capture him. Moose later pleads guilty to distributing information on manufacturing and use of an explosive and is sentenced to 30 months in prison.

Jan. 14, 2011
Federal agents in Arizona arrest Jeffery Harbin, a member of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement, for allegedly building homemade grenades and pipe bombs that he apparently intended to supply to anti-immigration groups patrolling the Mexican border. A prosecutor says that Harbin constructed the devices, using model rocket engines and aluminum power, “in such a way as to maximize human carnage.” Harbin is indicted on two counts of possessing a destructive device and a third of transporting destructive devices. Jeffery Harbin is the son of Jerry Harbin, a Phoenix-area activist with past ties to the neo-Nazi National Alliance and the racist Council of Conservative Citizens.

Jan. 17, 2011
Bomb technicians defuse a sophisticated improvised explosive device (IED) found in a backpack along the Spokane, Wash., route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade with 1,500 marchers. Using forensic clues found in the dismantled bomb, officials about two months later identify and arrest Kevin William Harpham, a long-time neo-Nazi. Harpham had posted more than 1,000 messages to the neo-Nazi Vanguard News Network since 2004, when he was a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance. Harpham also had contributed to the white supremacist Aryan Alternative newspaper. He is indicted on one count of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and one count of possessing an IED. Later, federal hate crime charges are added.

We could have course quibble at a few of the incidents listed above as to whether the individuals were inspired by the "Right Wing" as most of us understand it, or more fringe elements, but we do have to admit it is a chilling list to see all put together like this.

I would also like to add our own Alaska grown terrorist Schaeffer Cox to the list as well. just to round it out.

These are just the incidents that have taken place since Barack Obama became President. You can see a much more comprehensive list over at Addicting Info.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Sarah Palin complains to Sean Hannity that some Americans consider her and the Teabaggers "terrorists." Truth hurts, don't it?



I CANNOT believe that Hannity would dare to bring up Gabby Giffords' name, only days after her miraculous return to the floor of Congress after the assassination attempt against her, to use as an example of how Sarah Palin has been unfairly treated.  That is absolutely disgusting!

And then in the very next handful of sentences, with no sense of irony whatsoever, Palin brings up the long dead issue of Obama's minor association with Bill Ayers. This of course fires Hannity up and he goes off on how he was virtually the ONLY one who kept bringing up the Obama/Ayers connection. (Gee I wonder why dumbass?)

At one point Palin even says: “if we were real domestic terrorists, I don’t think President Obama would have a problem with us.”

Okay so is she saying that it is open season on condemning people for their associations?


Well thanks for the opportunity Sister Sarah.  I guess that means it is perfectly reasonable to remind Americans that you aggressively defended a talk show host who repeatedly screamed racial epithets at an African American woman on her radio show? Or that you were once the team manager of convicted murderer Jeremy Morlock's hockey team? Or that both you and Joe Miller have increasingly strong ties to Schaeffer Cox and his radical militia group?

Since Obama's tenuous connection to a man who was a radical over forty years ago, can be used to condemn him, than what do we make of Sarah Palin's multiple associations with known racists, murderers, and terrorists, whose crimes have happened in the very recent past?

After all Sarah, you do remember this guy don't you?

Eddie Burke, Palin-bot, racist, Teabagger, and ex-radio host.

One has to wonder if Palin is even remotely aware of how fragile her glass house is, while searching the ground for the next rock to throw?

(H/T to Mediaite.)

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Alaska militia member, Coleman Barney, denied bail. Whew!

Courtesy of Alaska Dispatch:

One of the things that fumbled Barney's chances for bail was something for which he isn't even charged, dating back to events that took place late one night last November outside a Fairbanks television studio. Cox had a scheduled appearance at the building and felt he needed security, with Barney in charge. The detail involved about a half dozen, armed militia members patrolling the block, blocking access and turning citizens away. Some of the guards, including Barney, who also had with him an anti-personnel riot control device – a burst of rubber bullets that could be deployed via a grenade launcher, stood watch along the perimeter in the shadows. The judge found the operation, which Barney spoke about on the stand, troubling.

"The defandant's activities in regard to a 'security detail' for co-defendant Francis Schaeffer Cox indicated a very substantial danger to the safety of other persons and the community and, in particular, a willingness to use assaultive behavior illegally to prevent the lawful arrest of another," Judge Bryan wrote.

Well THAT is certainly good news. I know that there were some people who were pretty worried about Barney getting out.


By the way it certainly did not help to have Coleman Barney take the stand in his own defense.

Barney admitted that -- like many Americans involved in the tea party movement -- he's worried about the direction of the country. But Barney said he advocated change through nonviolence. He said he believed that change could be achieved through education, through holding law enforcement accountable to the Alaska and U.S. constitutions, and through the legislative process.

"Everything I have been pushing for has been of peaceful means," he said.

He helped set up the Second Amendment Task Force, aimed at protecting gun rights, and the Liberty Bell Network, designed to provide citizens a witness network to unlawful search and seizure. And the efforts, he said, have already paid off, citing a new state law (A.S. 44.99.500) that legalizes silencers and other weapons.

If such items are made in Alaska, they are none of the federal government's business, Barney said.
When it came to alleged murder plots and anti-government loyalties, the Feds, Barney would have the court believe, simply got it wrong.

But on cross examination, prosecutor Steven Skrocki was able to get Barney to admit that he was, in fact, a command major in Cox's Alaska Peacemakers Militia. And Barney also said that, if necessary, he was also prepared to kill, though he said only as last resort. 

Just to bring you up to speed the individuals that Coleman was admitting he was prepared to kill were Federal agents which the incredibly paranoid Schaeffer Cox had convinced himself, and his friends, were out to kill him.


I think this should serve as a wake up call for those who are still laboring under the assumption that the Teabaggers are not potentially dangerous, or not associated with any violent extremists.

By the way I have been hearing some rather interesting tidbits of information from my sources that there are far more connections between Sarah Palin, Joe Miller, and Schaeffer Cox than have previously been brought to light.  I am attempting to make headway on that story right now, and will keep you all updated once I get something really good.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Jon Stewart pokes fun at the hypocrisy of the Fox News channel becoming defensive over the Oslo terrorist being labeled a "Christian."

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In the Name of the Fodder
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I LOVED this segment last night, and thought that Stewart did an amazing job of mocking the Fox News talking heads. So of course I felt I needed to share it with you.

I actually almost forgot about it because there was so much going on today. 

However perhaps saving it for last is not so bad as it is a great way to end our day, don't you think?

Oh, and there is SO much more coming tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Stephen Colbert ridicules the coverage of the Oslo terrorist attack by Fox News and other conservative news outlets.

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I thought this was one of Colbert's most brilliant segments ever.

It demonstrated just the right amount of seriousness about the attack themselves before using comedy to mock Fox, and other Murdoch owned media, for using the attacks to fan the flames of Islamic hatred.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Leah Burton does an amazing job of tying the Oslo terrorist to Christian Dominionism.

Yesterday I wrote of the connection that Anders Behring Breivik had to Sarah Palin and the Teabaggers in America. As many of you pointed out the strongest connection could be made between Beivik and the Domonionists, which is true, though I also believe that there are much stronger connections between the Tea Party and the Dominionists than many people seem to realize.

However as I have said in the past, when it comes to writing about Dominionists I ALWAYS defer to my friend Leah Burtion, who is the recognized expert on the subject.

And so I have.

Courtesy of Politicususa:

In regards to dominionist linkages to the bloody slaughter in Norway, here are our findings so far:

a) In particular, with a video manifesto (which has been linked on Youtube until it was pulled there, and which has since shown up on Liveleak) the shooter makes some very specific references that show he has familiarity with, and probably shares terminology with (if not overtly sharing intel with) “Christian patriot” militia groups in the US (including material that has been posted on racist and far-right-wing forums in the US, use of particular catch phrases associated with the “Christian Patriot” movement in the US, and others). I’ve just spent nine hours typing up an extensive analysis of the video; he is clearly connected with religious-nationalist groups in Europe and in the US. The degree of references to material originating in the US, in fact, indicate he has been in somewhat regular contact with anti-Muslim racists in the “Christian Patriot” movement in the US, rather than obtaining racialist material from racist groups elsewhere in the world.

b) One thing that stands out (if one is unaware of racialist movements in Europe)–most racist activity in Europe so far has been from “odinists” and “Satanists” in the black-metal community (and are largely doing it in a pattern of occasionally bloody attention-whoredom) or from blatantly neo-Nazi groups. A group or person claiming a “Conservative Christian” basis for this, especially in Europe, stands out like a sore thumb; generally (unlike the US) there has not been a tradition of “racist right” churches like Christian Identity that claim to be “Bible-based”.

c) One thing that stands out in the killer’s videos and writings is a certain obsession with the Knights Templar, the Third Crusade, and the idea of setting up what amount to European “Christian Patriot militias” (often using the very same terminology, of note, as “Christian patriot” groups associated with dominionism and the racist right use in the US) to foment a revolution in the same way as planned by “Christian Patriot militias” here in the US.

d) In particular, the killer is a known guest writer on the site “Jihad Watch”, which has had very close linkage with Dominionist groups (including NAR groups). Jihad Watch is sufficiently infamous (and sufficiently tied to Dominionist activity, particularly among the NAR) that it is one of those groups that Southern Poverty Law Center keeps a very careful watch on (and is on verge of listing it formally as a hate site), and writers to that site almost inevitably have ties to NAR groups.

e) There is a known NAR movement in Norway, which is similar in extremism to the US and which has known linkage to NAR extremists in the US, particularly in C. Peter Wagner’s network (in particular, Jan Torp who has known linkage to Sarah Palin via the Wagner NAR network among others); Norway, a relatively religiously conservative country, has been aggressively targeted by the NAR in an effort to establish a bench-head in Scandinavia. (Of note–Wagner’s lineage of NARasites is the most closely connected to the “racist right” along with Christian Reconstructionists; there is clear evidence that Christian Identity groups and NAR groups have traded theological terminology related to domestic terrorism as recently as the late 1980s and early 1990s.) I wrote about Torp’s connection to Sarah Palin at God’s Own Party? in November 2008.

It is important to recognize that C. Peter Wagner who we are speaking of is one of the main endorsers of Governor Rick Perry’s “The Response” event in Houston.

Believe it or not this is but a taste of the extensive article that Leah has written making these connections and I urge you to free up the time necessary to read the entire post.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

For those who have been asking if there is a connection between the Oslo terrorist and Sarah Palin, your wish is my command.

In a revelation that should come as no surprise to most of us, Norway terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, is a fan of the American Tea Party, in particular crazed anti-Muslim firebrand Pamela Gellar.

Breivik was a fan of Tea Party darling Pamela Geller's rabid, anti-Islam website Atlas Shrugs, and made frequent comments there. Indeed Breivik's irrational fear and hatred of Islam and marxism, coupled with his Christian fundamentalism, makes him an ideological twin to many of the most dangerous members of the American Tea Party.

For those who were unaware, Gellar has a vicious, anti-Muslim website called Atlas Shrugs, and she is also on the national Advisory Committee of Jews for Sarah:

JewsForSarah is proud to have the dynamic Madame Geller as a member of our national Advisory Board.


Here is Gellar defending her idol on Canadia TV earlier this year.



Yesterday Gellar quickly put up a post condemning Breivak's murderous rampage and quickly going on the defensive:

According to this report, he started planning this attack nine years ago. I wasn't blogging back then.

Gellar misses the point.  It does not matter if the initial spark for his Muslim hatred did not come from the American Tea Party, Sarah Palin, or Gellar herself, there is increasing evidence that their rhetoric added fuel to inflame his hate until he could not longer take it and felt the time was right to act.

And as movie critic Roger Ebert pointed out in his review of "The Undefeated":

"The Undefeated" takes opposition to the Democratic party for granted, and focuses on Republicans and establishment conservatives, who should apparently share the blame. It praises only the Tea Party, and assigns credit to Palin for Tea Party victories in the 2010 elections. As Palin continues to prolong her entry into this year's GOP Presidential primaries, one wonders if Stephen K. Bannon has his money on a third-party bid by Palin as a Tea Party candidate. I suspect that's where his heart lies.

I myself have seen no evidence that Adolph Hitler ever personally murdered a Jew, but whose name is forever linked to the extinction of six million Jewish people?

So to date Sarah Palin placing a bullseye over Gabrielle Gifford's district had NOTHING to do with her being shot, her hate filled rhetoric during the McCain campaign had NOTHING to do with the insane number of death threats against our President, and her participation in the anti-Muslim hate speech coming from the Tea Party had NOTHING to do with what happened in Oslo, Norway.  Is that what we are supposed to believe?

That is quite a number of coincidences, and what is it that Palin believes about coincidences again?

“There are no coincidences” is a favorite maxim.

 I could not have said it better myself.

(I would like to give a hat tip to the anonymous commenter who sent me some of the links I used in this post.  Thank you very much for your help.)

Though there was no connection, Fox News used the Oslo terrorist attacks to fan the flames of anti-Muslim hatred.

In early reporting all anybody knew was that there HAD been a bombing in Norway and a shooting at the youth camp.  Yet that was all Laura Ingraham needed to state unequivocally that, “Two deadly terror attacks in Norway, in what appears to be the work, once again, of Muslim extremists,” and then to immediately jump to a pre-recorded Bill O'Reilly interview with the lawyer representing the Islamic Community Center in New York, which prominently featured O'Reilly bullying the man and insinuating that the Muslim people were to blame for 9-11.



We can wait until we are blue in the face for Ingraham, or Fox News, to apologize for their blatant hate mongering but it will never come. This was a purposeful decision to gin up more hatred toward Muslims, and as a byproduct keep Americans supporting the wars overseas which financially benefits Fox News, and which feeds Roger Ailes personal xenophobia concerning the Islamic people.

This morning I wrote:

And hidden in the shadows there can be no doubt that America has its version of an Anders Behring Breivik, just waiting in the wings for that last straw to snap his emotional camel's back, or perhaps for direction from a Right Wing radio host or Fox News talking head, to provide a clue as to which enemy he needs to place in his crosshairs.

Can there be any doubt who Fox News is actively attempting to place in those crosshairs?


And is that not exactly the kind of rhetoric which inspired Anders Behring Breivik to launch his devastating terrorist attack against his own people in the first place?

Breivik had talked admiringly online about conversations he had had with unnamed English Defence League members and the organisation Stop the Islamification of Europe (SIOE) over the success of provocative street actions leading to violence.

"I have on some occasions had discussions with SIOE and EDL and recommended them to use certain strategies," he wrote two years ago. "The tactics of the EDL are now to 'lure' an overreaction from the Jihad Youth/Extreme-Marxists, something they have succeeded in doing several times already."

In other words it appears that the promoters of terrorism that Laura Ingraham, and her bosses, are having such difficulty identifying, may in fact be found staring back at them from the mirror. 


(H/T to Moral Low Ground.)

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Right Wing extremist murders at least 80 people in Norway.

Anders Behring Breivik, the face of terror
Courtesy of the New York Times:

Norway suffered a pair of devastating attacks on Friday when powerful explosions shook the government center here, killing seven people, and shortly after a gunman stalked youths at an island summer camp for young members of the governing Labor Party, killing at least 80.

The explosions in Oslo, from one or more bombs, turned the tidy Scandinavian capital into a scene reminiscent of terrorist attacks in Baghdad or Oklahoma City, panicking people and blowing out windows of several government buildings, including one housing the office of the Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, who was unharmed.

The state television broadcaster, citing the police, said seven people had been killed and at least 15 wounded in the explosions, which they said appeared to be an act of domestic terrorism.

Even as the police locked down a large area of the city after the blasts, a man dressed as a police officer entered the youth camp on the island of Utoya, about 19 miles northwest of Oslo, a Norwegian security official said, and opened fire. “He said it was a routine check in connection with the terror attack in Oslo,” one witness told VG Nett, the Web site of a national newspaper.

Of the at least 80 people killed on the island, some were as young as 16, the police said on national television early Saturday.

Terrified youths jumped into the water to escape. “Kids have started to swim in a panic, and Utoya is far from the mainland,” said Bjorn Jarle Roberg-Larsen, a Labor Party member who spoke by phone with teenagers on the island, which has no bridge to the mainland. “Others are hiding. Those I spoke with don’t want to talk more. They’re scared to death.”

Many could not flee in time.

After the shooting the police seized a 32-year-old Norwegian man on the island, according to the police and Justice Minister Knut Storberget. He was later identified as Anders Behring Breivik and characterized by officials as a right-wing extremist, citing previous writings including on his Facebook page.

I was watching this unfold yesterday on Twitter and via news updates, starting with the bombings in Oslo and culminating with the shootings at the youth camp, and I just kept thinking "Jesus, is it over yet?"

All of those poor children doing nothing but enjoying their day at camp and suddenly they are screaming in terror running for their lives.

Is this guy Norway's Jared Loughner?  Another politically motivated madman, taking out his anger and frustration through terrorist acts directed at innocent bystanders and children? And will Norway respond the same way Arizona did, by refusing to implement more gun control laws to protect their citizens?

So much senseless violence for such petty reasons.