American Terror January 29, 2011

January 29, 1998

An off-duty police officer is killed and a nurse terribly maimed when a nail-packed, remote-control bomb explodes outside a Birmingham, Ala., abortion facility, the New Woman All Women clinic. Letters to media outlets and officials claim responsibility in the name of the “Army of God,” the same entity that took credit for the bombings of a clinic and a gay bar in the Atlanta area. The attack also will be linked to the fatal 1996 bombing of the Atlanta Olympics. Eric Robert Rudolph, a loner from North Carolina, is first identified as a suspect when witnesses spot his pickup truck fleeing the Birmingham bombing. But he is not caught until 2003. He ultimately pleads guilty to all four attacks in exchange for a life sentence.

From:
The Second Wave: Return of the Militias
Southern Poverty Law Center Special Report

Technorati Tags: American Terror, Terrorism, Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC, Politics

Why We Are In Afghanistan (Because We’re Damn Fools) January 24, 2011

From an interview with Retired Colonel Ann Wright:

Proponents of the war often point to the plight of women and other oppressed groups, and say that if we were simply to leave, things would get even worse. How do you respond to that?

We have to look honestly at the plight of women and children in Afghanistan. The U.S. involvement over the last ten years has not increased the lifespan of women or men in Afghanistan–it is still at an appalling 45 years. Afghanistan has the second-highest infant mortality rate in the world, with 151 deaths out of 1,000 live births. One in five children in Afghanistan die before they reach five years of age and 850 children die per day. Thousands of Afghan women have been widowed or killed and children have been made orphans by U.S. forces, many more than were ever harmed by the Taliban or al-Qaeda.

The Karzai government that the United States helped create in 2001 supported the ‘Taliban style’ Shia Personal Status Law, which legitimizes marital rape and prevents women from stepping out of the home without their husband’s consent. Karzai’s wife, a gynecologist in a country in great need of doctors, does not practice medicine and stays at home. Only one minister in Karzai’s cabinet is a woman–the head of Women’s Affairs, the only minister who has no regulatory powers.

 

What, to you, would a good outcome in Afghanistan look like?

From what I’ve heard from Afghans, they want a country that has no fighting [so] they can return to their occupations in agriculture and farming in the rural areas, where their children can have medical care to stay alive and go to school. They want a country free from the interference of other countries-the United States, Pakistan, Iran, India, China, Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan. They want the war lords who have raped, pillaged and plundered brought to justice instead of being paid millions of dollars by the U.S. government as hired guns and later appointed to key jobs in the government.

There’s some stunning stuff in the interview, but no real surprises to anyone who’s been paying attention to the war and the damn fools running it.

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan, War, Terror, Bush, Obama, Politics, Karzai

American Terror January 22, 2011

January 22, 1997

Authorities raid the Martinton, Ill., home of former Marine Ricky Salyers, an alleged Ku Klux Klan member, discovering 35,000 rounds of heavy ammunition, armor piercing shells, smoke and tear gas grenades, live shells for grenade launchers, artillery shells and other military gear. Salyers was discharged earlier from the Marines, where he taught demolitions and sniping, after tossing a live grenade (with the pin still in) at state police officers serving him with a search warrant in 1995. Following the 1997 raid, Salyers, an alleged member of the underground Black Dawn group of extremists in the military, is sentenced to serve three years for weapons violations. He is released from prison in 2000.

From:
The Second Wave: Return of the Militias
Southern Poverty Law Center Special Report

Technorati Tags: American Terror, Terrorism, Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC, Politics

American Terror January 21, 2011

January 21, 2009 Brockton, MA

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.

From:
The Second Wave: Return of the Militias
Southern Poverty Law Center Special Report

Technorati Tags: American Terror, Terrorism, Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC, Politics

Christian Bigot Is The New Governor Of Alabama January 18, 2011

This story about Alabama Governor Robert Bentley pretty much speaks for itself, as well as for the principle of separation of church and state.

 

Technorati Tags: Religion, Politics, Alabama, Bentley, Bigotry

American Terror January 18, 2011

January 18, 1996

Peter Kevin Langan, the pseudonymous “Commander Pedro” who leads the underground Aryan Republican Army, is arrested after a shootout with the FBI in Ohio. Along with six other suspects arrested around the same time, Langan is charged in connection with a string of 22 bank robberies in seven Midwestern states between 1994 and 1996. After pleading guilty and agreeing to testify, co-conspirator Richard Guthrie commits suicide in his cell. Two others, Kevin McCarthy and Scott Stedeford, enter plea bargains and do testify against their co-conspirators. Eventually, Mark Thomas, a leading neo-Nazi in Pennsylvania, pleads guilty for his role in helping organize the robberies and agrees to testify against Langan and other gang members. Shawn Kenny, another suspect, becomes a federal informant. Langan is sentenced to a life term in one case, plus 55 years in another. McCarthy is released from prison in 2007, while Stedeford’s release date is set in 2022. Thomas receives eight years and is released in early 2004.

January 18, 2003

Washington James D. Brailey, a convicted felon who once was selected as “governor” of the state of Washington by the antigovernment Washington Jural Society, is arrested after a raid on his home turns up a machine gun, an assault rifle and several handguns. One informant tells the FBI that Brailey was plotting to assassinate Gov. Gary Locke, both because Locke was the state’s real governor and because he was Chinese-American. A second informant says that Brailey actually went on a “dry run” to Olympia, carrying several guns into the state Capitol building to test security. Eventually, Brailey pleads guilty to weapons charges and is sentenced to serve 15 months in prison. He is released in 2004.

From:
The Second Wave: Return of the Militias
Southern Poverty Law Center Special Report

Technorati Tags: American Terror, Terrorism, Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC, Politics

American Terror January 16, 2011

 

January 16, 1997

Two anti-personnel bombs — the second clearly designed to kill arriving law enforcement and rescue workers — explode outside an abortion clinic in Sandy Springs, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta. Seven people are injured. Letters signed by the “Army of God” claim responsibility for this attack and another, a month later, at an Atlanta gay bar. Authorities later learn that these attacks, the 1998 bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., abortion clinic and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing, were all carried out by Eric Robert Rudolph, who is captured in 2003 after five years on the run. Rudolph avoids the death penalty by pleading guilty in exchange for a life sentence, but simultaneously releases a defiant statement defending his attacks.

From:
The Second Wave: Return of the Militias
Southern Poverty Law Center Special Report

Technorati Tags: American Terror, Terrorism, Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC, Politics

Bobby Jindal’s Real Problem January 15, 2011

From a headline in the latest Brown Alumni Monthly in an article about the current governor of Louisiana, you know, the strange little guy who does the occasional exorcism:

The Republican Governor’s new book shows a sharp pubic-policy thinker trying to appeal to his party’s Palinesque base.

He might be a little too base for the Palin crowd…

 

Technorati Tags: Bobby Jindal, Louisiana, Brown Alumni Monthly, Politics

Fixing Congress January 13, 2011

The Lion stole this from out there where it’s floating around…

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The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified!  Why?  Simple!  The people demanded it.  That was in 1971…before computers, before e-mail, before cell phones, etc.

Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land…all because of public pressure.

Congressional Reform Act of 2011

1. Term Limits.

12 years only, one of the possible options below.

A. Two Six Year Senate terms

B. Three Four year House terms

C. One Six-year Senate term and Two Three Year House terms

ALL ELECTIONS WOULD HAVE A WINDOW FOR CAMPAIGNING OF 3 MONTHS PRIOR TO ELECTION, NO EXCEPTIONS, NO CORPORATE OR PAC CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS WHATSOEVER.

2.  No Tenure / No Pension.

A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

3.  Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.

All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately.  All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people.

4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.

5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise.  Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

6. Congress participates in the same health care system as the American people.

7. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.

8. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/11.

The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen.  Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves.

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career.  The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S. ) to receive the message.  Maybe it is time.

THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS – be vocal and act!!!!!

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Thoughts?

 

Technorati Tags: Congressional Reform Act of 2011, Congress, Constitution, Politics

American Terror January 7, 2011

January 8, 2003

Federal agents arrest Matt Hale, the national leader of the neo- Nazi World Church of the Creator (WCOTC), as he reports to a Chicago courthouse in an ongoing copyright case over the name of his group. Hale is charged with soliciting the murder of the federal judge in the case, Joan Humphrey Lefkow, who he has publicly vilified as someone bent on the destruction of his group. (Although Lefkow originally ruled in WCOTC’s favor, an appeals court found that the complaint brought by an identically named church in Oregon was legally justified, and Lefkow reversed herself accordingly.) In guarded language captured on tape recordings, Hale is heard agreeing that his security chief, an FBI informant, should kill Lefkow. Hale is found guilty and sentenced to serve 40 years in federal prison; he is not expected to be released until 2037.

From:
The Second Wave: Return of the Militias
Southern Poverty Law Center Special Report

Technorati Tags: American Terror, Terrorism, Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC, Politics