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Max Blumenthal has an explosive story about the influence of Israel counter-terrorism tactics on American police training -- and the way they handled the Occupy movement. Very disturbing stuff:

New York – In October, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department turned parts of the campus of the University of California in Berkeley into an urban battlefield. The occasion was Urban Shield 2011, an annual SWAT team exposition organized to promote “mutual response,” collaboration and competition between heavily militarized police strike forces representing law enforcement departments across the United States and foreign nations.

At the time, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department was preparing for an imminent confrontation with the nascent “Occupy” movement that had set up camp in downtown Oakland, and would demonstrate the brunt of its repressive capacity against the demonstrators a month later when it attacked the encampment with teargas and rubber bullet rounds, leaving an Iraq war veteran in critical condition and dozens injured.

According to Police Magazine, a law enforcement trade publication, “Law enforcement agencies responding to…Occupy protesters in northern California credit Urban Shield for their effective teamwork.

”Training alongside the American police departments at Urban Shield was the Yamam, an Israeli Border Police unit that claims to specialize in “counter-terror” operations but is better known for its extra-judicial assassinations of Palestinian militant leaders and long record of repression and abuses in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

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I hope you caught Max Blumenthal on the IFC channel last week. He did a great piece on the Tea Party movement which he follows up close and personal.

My thirty minute documentary on the Tea Party and right-wing fear-mongering airs tonight at 8PM ET on the Independent Film Channel.

The Denver Post admires the series and praises the research Max has done on his 30 minutes episode called "Fear."

He knows some of the topics we covered all too well and wrote an amazing blurb about our new book:

“If you want to understand the forces behind the extreme demonization of President Obama and the assault on progressive America, look no further than Over the Cliff. With witty analysis and thorough investigative reporting, Amato and Neiwert provide a definitive chronicle of the far-right’s rapid movement from paranoia to outright violence. —Max Blumenthal, author of Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party

That was very kind of Max. Yes, I'll be posting about the book since it's my first one. I'm tremendously excited about it and I was very fortunate to be working with David on this project.

Don't forget, you can grab a copy here.

OTC is the #13 ranked book in Politics on Amazon right now and you know how competitive I am. You can also buy it from all the major online retailers and Over the Cliff is now available as an ePUB and mobi-Kindlen on PoliPoint.com.

And we have all the end notes listed on our Over The Cliff website which is a great resource guide in of itself. Check out the notes on Chapter 3: Reaping the Whirlwind, as an example.

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Really, it doesn't get more sublimely idiotic than it did last night on Greta Van Susteren's Fox News show, when she brought on Sarah Palin to attack the imminent passage of health-care reform.

Why oh why wasn't this a bipartisan bill? Van Susteren wondered. In a rational world, the simple answer would be obvious: Because Republicans have found it more politically expedient to simply oppose every step taken by President Obama. But of course in Palintopia, it's all President Obama's fault:

Palin: It really reflects a lack of experience of President Obama's, which -- it was warned about during the campaign that Candidate Obama didn't have executive experience, he hasn't been an administrator or a manager of anything. So to jump into this huge -- hugely important responsible position as President of the United States without the experience to know how to work across party lines, and to know how to administer and to manage a team to get policy through that makes sense, that's supported by the people -- it's a bit, um, it's a bit over his head, if you will. And, uh, things aren't going well, and the public is really voicing their frustration.

Of course, hearing Palin talk up her "executive experience" as somehow superior to Obama's is always occasion for low mordant chuckles, if not outright guffaws.

In the course of carefully examining Palin's public record as an administrator -- particularly her stint as Mayor of Wasilla -- for the investigative piece Max Blumenthal and I co-wrote for Salon in October 2008, I happen to be intimately familiar with just what kind of issues and decisions Sarah Palin dealt with on a daily basis.

Primarily, Palin was involved with such vital issues as which streets to pave in town, whether to put a levy for a sewer bond, and issuing proclamations of support for the Iditarod. Probably her most difficult issue involved construction of a new sports-activity center -- a project that turned into a gigantic financial headache for her former constituents.

So when she talks about cramming bad ideas down people's throats with deceptive tactics, she knows whereof she speaks.

But the notion that Palin's "experience" compares to Obama's background crafting legislation that affects the health and well-being of millions of Americans -- well, let's just say the guffaws are well earned.

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Max Blumenthal just posted his video from his weekend at CPAC. Max used to be able to go to these things and post some great guerrilla videos, but nowadays they all know what he looks like and he attracts a crowd of camera-carrying wingers.

He also manages anyway to elicit some prime goofiness when Hannah Giles, the woman who posed as a prostitute in James O'Keefe's ACORN videos, defends O'Keefe when Blumenthal asks why O'Keefe and Breitbart falsely pretended that he had worn an outlandish "pimp" outfit into those ACORN sessions (he hadn't). Blumenthal wonders why O'Keefe was putting on this "minstrel show", and Giles responded:

Giles: But James is a man. He couldn't have a menstrual cycle.

Then a right-wing kook tried to argue that the Black Congressional Caucus was an innately racist organization since it excludes whites. Nevermind that the difference between minority civil-rights organizations and white supremacists is that one is about defending people's civil rights, the other is about taking them away. Minority caucuses, unlike white-supremacist organization, are not about demonizing and belittling and disenfranchising other people. Equating minority caucuses with hate groups is the height of wingnuttery.

But the best was reserved for Breitbart, who wouldn't even deign to engage Blumenthal in a reasoned debate over the facts of the matter involving Max's on-point reportage about O'Keefe's dalliance with white supremacist Jared Taylor.

All Breitbart could manage was rage and spittle:

Breitbart: You're ridiculous. You are a joke. You are a despicable human being -- the lowest life form that I have ever seen. Your entire job is trying to destroy people with Alinsky tactics.

Explain to me what your political philosophy that you have, other than this nihilist --

Blumenthal: Did you want me to finish what I was gonna say, which is that --?

Breitbart: Not particularly, you've already said it.

Blumenthal: Well, then, do you have anything -- do you have any more insults?

Breitbart: You try to destroy people. I don't care -- yes, absolutely. I could go on for a year. You're disgusting.

I cannot believe that you're fighting your father's battles. I can't believe what you did to Christopher Hitchens, you are -- you have been programmed by some ungodly creature to be this character of hatred.

Blumenthal: So the --

Breitbart: Accusing a person of racism is the worst thing that you can do to someone.

Blumenthal: So you're defending Jared Taylor?

Breitbart: I'm not at all! Of course I'm not!

Blumenthal: Sounds like you're defending Jared Taylor.

Breitbart: No it isn't! No, you --

Blumenthal: John Derbyshire?

Breitbart: What do you mean? -- What are you talking about?

Blumenthal: I don't know. I mean, this is an event with two people who believe that whites are genetically superior. And Marcus Epstein planned it --

Breitbart: Kevin Martin was there debating at the Georgetown Law Center! You think -- this smearing tactic --

Blumenthal: Kevin Martin ended the event with his arm around Jared Taylor. He's from a total -- a front, a front group, he's from a front group that defends white nationalists.

Breitbart: Make your case. Make your case.

Blumenthal: I made my case.

Breitbart: This isn't a case, that's guilt by association, you punk.

Blumenthal: Why are you so angry?

Breitbart: Because you're a punk you destroy people.

Blumenthal: Your face is trembling.

Breitbart: Because you try to destroy people's lives through innuendo!

Blumenthal: I'm not calling any names.

Breitbart: Innuendo! We're done with you! Innuendo! Innuendo! In order to destroy people's lives! You're the most despicable life form I've ever seen!

[Applause]

Yeah, that's right: Andrew Breitbart has the chutzpah to accuse someone else of indulging in "innuendo" in order to "destroy people."

And what Blumenthal reported wasn't "guilt by association", which by definition involves irrelevant associations; whereas these associations are entirely relevant, since they speak directly to O'Keefe's motives and his ideology. Guys like Breitbart love to shout "guilt by association!" whenever they're called out for playing footsie with white supremacists, but they have no idea what it really means.

All in all, it's quite the hilarious spectacle. Somehow, Jonah Goldberg's description of Breitbart as a "crack addict on ten espressos" sounds about right, if understated.

[UPDATE below.]

James O'Keefe and his boss, Andrew Breitbart, already are having trouble keeping their stories straight on O'Keefe's illegal attempts to access Sen. Mary Landrieu's phone system.

And now that Max Blumenthal has ripped off the facade from O'Keefe's background as a race-baiting right-wing dirty trickster the other day, they're having even more trouble.

Blumenthal reported in Salon that O'Keefe was actively involved in helping promote a white-nationalist conference in 2006:

Now an activist organization that monitors hate groups has produced a photo of O'Keefe at a 2006 conference on "Race and Conservatism" that featured leading white nationalists. The photo, first published Jan. 30 on the Web site of the anti-racism group One People's Project, shows O’Keefe at the gathering, which was so controversial even the ultra-right Leadership Institute, which employed O'Keefe at the time, withdrew its backing. But O'Keefe and fellow young conservative provocateur Marcus Epstein soldiered on to give anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism an opportunity to share their grievances and plans to make inroads in the GOP.

According to One People's Project founder Daryle Jenkins, O'Keefe was manning the literature table at the gathering that brought together anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism. OPP covered the event at the time, sending a freelance photographer to document the gathering. Jenkins told me the table was filled with tracts from the white supremacist right, including two pseudo-academic publications that have called blacks and Latinos genetically inferior to whites: American Renaissance and the Occidental Quarterly. The leading speaker was Jared Taylor, founder of the white nationalist group American Renaissance. "We can say for certain that James O'Keefe was at the 2006 meeting with Jared Taylor. He has absolutely no way of denying that," Jenkins said. O'Keefe's attorney did not respond to a request for comment on his client's role in the conference.

After reporting this, Andrew Breitbart -- O'Keefe's employer, and one of the chief promoters of his lawbreaking brand of "investigative journalism" -- went on the offensive. A writer for his "Big Journalism" site attacked Blumenthal's report as a "lie":

Here is the story they actually have:

James O’Keefe attended a forum years ago that dealt with race and politics. The forum was located at a Georgetown University building (that’s right, a 21-year-old man attended an event on a college campus). The forum had as one of its three speakers a controversial figure, Jared Taylor, with a track record of making racist statements. He was being debated by two other people including Mr. Martin (taking issue with the racist figure). Mr. Taylor has also appeared with Phil Donohue, Queen Latifa and Paula Zahn on their TV shows to debate race. Are the audience members of the Donohue show racist for sitting and watching that debate?

Honestly, that isn’t much of a story. But… you put Mr. O’Keefe at a table full of racist literature and you say that he was manning the table. And you say you have a picture proving it. And you make it sound like he was one of the organizers of this event. And you call the event a “White Supremacist Conference”. Well… now you’ve got a story.

Only problem: It’s all a lie.

Except, as Max pointed out subsequently, it was perfectly true:

According to an otherwise fact-challenged post on Breitbart, the website that has paid O’Keefe, O’Keefe said that he “attended the event with many of his Leadership Institute co-workers since it was right across the street from their building in Arlington, Va., and it was organized by other LI associates.”

In fact, a photographer who covered the event told me O’Keefe was helping its chief organizer, Marcus Epstein, and was not an innocent bystander, as he has claimed. But more on that later. First, O’Keefe vs. Breitbart…

Andrew Breitbart, who has paid O’Keefe and attempted to defend him by calling my reporting “FALSE,” has been undermined by O’Keefe himself. O’Keefe concedes my report was true — he was at the event. Breitbart has therefore been contradicted by O’Keefe.

Daryle Jenkins' response was equally pointed:

First off, you can't say that those who have written about your boy James O'Keefe attending a white racist forum is a lie when you yourself are publishing a story where he admits to going. Secondly, you are not going to make the charge of racism go away when that same article is downplaying a racist idiot like Jared Taylor, an editor of a white supremacist newsletter (who by the way is organizing a conference of white supremacists in Washington DC the same weekend as the Conservative Political Action Conference), as a guy who is just someone "with a track record of making racist statements." Thirdly, you might also want to think twice about pretending that if someone calls him a white supremacist when he is not white, it doesn't mean forum organizer Marcus Epstein (whose claim to fame besides working for Pat Buchanan and Tom Tancredo is karate-chopping a black woman in the street and calling her the n-word while drunk off his behind) is not a racist that doesn't work with white supremacists.

To put just what Epstein and O'Keefe were doing in context, it's important to understand what guys like Jared Taylor excel at -- namely, lending a respectable sheen to old-fashioned bigotry through a combination of pseudo-social science and pseudo-logical obfuscation. They constitute the self-proclaimed "academic wing" of the white-supremacist movement.

Here's the complete ADL backgrounder on Taylor. Some lowlights:

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I have to give Max Blumenthal, who I had the pleasure of hosting here in Seattle this past week, credit for coming up with the ideal question to ask the fans of Glenn Beck who showed up Saturday in the Seattle area to root for their favorite right-wing fearmonger:

Do you think President Obama hates white people?

The first person I asked was Sean Salazar, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate -- he wants to take on Sen. Patty Murray, and so far appears to be leading the GOP field -- standing outside Safeco Field, where Beck's Seattle event was held.

Salazar, as you can see, hedged and stammered and then quickly found someone else to talk to. But he typified the response in Seattle: "When did Glenn Beck say that? Really? He said that? Well, I need to see the context." One woman said that "Beck explained that," but I pointed out to her that all he said was that he was sorry how it was worded, but that it's still a "serious" question Americans need to be asking. So I was asking them.

I also asked the man who was carrying the big sign making fun of Beck. He pointed out how white the crowd was. And it was true, particularly inside the stadium (more on that shortly). Eventually, I did manage to find an African-American man who was outside gathering signatures on behalf of Ron Paul's "Campaign for Liberty." He said he wasn't going in to see Beck.

Finally, right at the end, I did encounter one honest soul. As you can see.

I met many, many more of these folks at the Beck rally in Mount Vernon later that afternoon and into the evening. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to capture most of them on video (a camera burp) -- just one couple towards the end of the evening. But I had at least five different people at Mount Vernon, supporters of Beck's, tell me they firmly believed Obama was a racist who hated white people.

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The scene at Mount Vernon was radically different from the one in Seattle. Outside Safeco, there were only 30 or so anti-Beck protesters. Everyone evidently saved their energies for Mount Vernon, where the mayor, a Republican named Bud Norris, unwisely decided to give the hometown-boy-gone-bigtime the keys to the city.

Locals chanted: "Change the locks! Change the locks!" And there were hundreds of them; the crowd estimate was at about a thousand, including several hundred pro-Beck counter-protesters. Those were the folks I talked to the most, and the toxic Obama-hatred was far stronger among this group than it was with the attendees in Seattle.

Fortunately, they were badly outnumbered.

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ginandtacos: 'Democrats-as-socialists' comments are particularly lame coming from someone like the CEO of Coca Cola. Dirt-cheap, subsidized corn sweeteners, anyone?

Scott Horton: Republican Gomorrah - Six Questions for Max Blumenthal

Pacific Views: Act in haste, repent at leisure

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Eschaton: Atrios has news...

Consortiumblog: Neocon judge's history of coverups

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Max Blumenthal went on Morning Joe today to debate the nature of the unhinged rhetoric and behavior that's becoming part and parcel of the right-wing response to Obama's presidency.

Joe Scarborough often talks a good game about realizing what a huge mistake it is for Republicans to allow themselves to be dragged over the cliff like this, but like David Brooks, he has yet to come to grips with the dimension of the beast he's up against. Max tried to set him straight, but as you can see, this is a very slow process for recovering movement conservatives.

Both Joe and Mike disputed some of Max's facts, and as promised he's posted the substantiation for those facts at his blog. Yes, it's true that Jim DeMint believes that neither single pregnant women nor gays and lesbians -- moral reprobates all, apparently -- should be allowed to teach in public schools.

Incidentally, you can find these details and many more in Max's new book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Destroyed the Party. On bookshelves everywhere!

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Wow. Maybe he was inspired by his earlier session with Max Blumenthal. Or maybe it was the way Glenn Beck dissed Mika by telling her to "shut the hell up." Or maybe he's just as sick of Glenn Beck as the rest of us are.

Whatever it was, Joe Scarborough was relentless and on-point this morning in attacking not just Glenn Beck, but the conservatives who condone and empower him.

He took his cue from Peter Wehner's piece in Commentary, "Glenn Beck: Harmful to the Conservative Movement":

I understand that a political movement is a mansion with many rooms; the people who occupy them are involved in intellectual and policy work, in politics, and in polemics. Different people take on different roles. And certainly some of the things Beck has done on his program are fine and appropriate. But the role Glenn Beck is playing is harmful in its totality. My hunch is that he is a comet blazing across the media sky right now—and will soon flame out. Whether he does or not, he isn’t the face or disposition that should represent modern-day conservatism. At a time when we should aim for intellectual depth, for tough-minded and reasoned arguments, for good cheer and calm purpose, rather than erratic behavior, he is not the kind of figure conservatives should embrace or cheer on.

Scarborough was even more damning:

Scarborough: But when you preach this kind of hatred, and say that an African American president hates all white people -- stay with me -- hates all white people, you are playing with fire. And bad things can happen. And if they do happen, not only is Glenn Beck responsible, but conservatives who don't -- call -- him -- out -- are responsible.

Incidentally, Mark Levin was just as harsh in knocking down Beck.

This is certainly a good start for conservatives serious about rescuing their movement from the abyss into which it is descending. But again, as with David Brooks, none of them quite grasp the dimensions of what they're up against.

Sure, the things Glenn Beck says are completely nuts and reflect poorly on the American Right generally. That's probably because Beck is in reality a genuine far-right extremist who is gradually coming out of the closet about that -- and as he does, he's lapping up the ratings.

But Beck is far from the only extremist dragging movement conservatism to the right. The bridges between the far right and mainstream conservatives are so numerous and widely trafficked that it's hard to keep up, but they range from the extreme religious right connections that Blumenthal describes in his new book in detail, to the "Patriot" wingnut right like WorldNetDaily, which has multiple ties to the Republican National Committee. And yes, ordinary conservatives do have reason to be concerned.

This is especially the case when it comes to the Tea Parties, which actually reflect the takeover of movement conservatism by right-wing populists. They have become a fundamentally important nexus for the promotion of extremist beliefs and fringe conspiracy theories.

Because that's what Joe Scarborough is up against. Glenn Beck is just the face. There's a much larger beast lurking there alongside him.

Our friend Max Blumenthal recently participated in the Independent Film Channel's Media Project (you might have noticed the ads on the site). Max's segment on "Fear" -- a look at the Tea Party movement and its discontents -- airs tonight at 8 p.m. EDT.

The video above looks great. The Denver Post's reviewer liked it:

As a mainstream media type myself, I'm always suspicious of projects that purport to "take on" the mainstream media (or MSM).

But "The IFC Media Project" succeeds to the extent that it lets idealistic journalists express themselves in a conversational and sometimes dramatic way, being informative and media-like while bashing The Media.

The series returns for a four-part documentary, "Fear, War, Greed and Disaster," in half-hour episodes airing at 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday next week on IFC, Comcast Channel 503.

Four award-winning journalists — some more on the fringe than others — tackle projects that "aim to uncover what the mainstream media often misses," according to the series creator Meghan O'Hara (who worked under Michael Moore on "Bowling for Columbine" and "Fahrenheit 9/11" ). O'Hara learned from collaborations with Moore that a fast pace, music, candid and down-to-earth interviews, judicious use of animation, a cynical take on capitalist impulses and bobbing hand-held cameras help tell the "alternative" story in a captivating way.

In this case, author and journalist Max Blumenthal's episode, "Fear," examines the Tea Party movement and the use of fear tactics by the right-wing as orchestrated by the Republican Party. He charts the shift from inflammatory to violent language, says Fox News is "reveling in what they created," and interviews rally-going wackos who think President Barack Obama is the foreign- born anti-Christ. He's smart, doing more than making fun of easy targets.

Be sure to check it out.