DOWNLOADS: (87)

PLAYS: (829)

Embed

The FBI arrests a right-wing extremist in Minnesota for a planned domestic-terrorism attack:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced on Monday that it had arrested a Minnesota man for plotting a “localized terror attack.”

A press release from the Minneapolis Division said that “special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in conjunction with the Montevideo Police Department; the Chippewa County Sheriff’s Office; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; the Minnesota State Highway Patrol; the Bloomington Police Department; the Minnehaha County Sheriff’s Office (South Dakota); the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources; and members of CEE-VI (Cooperative Enforcement Effort), executed a search warrant at 1204 Benson Avenue, Lot #8, in Montevideo, Minnesota. Several guns and explosive devices were discovered during the search of the residence” on Friday.

Buford “Bucky” Rogers, 24, was arrested for unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon. An Associated Press report said that he had previously been convicted for felony burglary in 2011 and a misdemeanor charge of dangerous handling of a weapon in 2009.

It appears he came by his nuttiness the natural way -- via his family:

Throughout the interview with FOX 9 News, Jeff Rogers insisted he still doesn't know why his family is considered a threat.

"We are peaceful people, okay? We're not out to blow up the world -- none of this crap," Jeff Rogers said.

Investigators claim to have removed a computer, a military-style Romanian rifle and explosives from his shed -- specifically, Molotov cocktails and pipe bombs. Jeff Rogers said that isn't the case, describing the seized items as household chemicals.

"That's a bunch of s---," he said.

Police and Jeff Rogers both point out that Buford Rogers does not live at the home. Rather, he lives across town with his girlfriend and their new baby. Neighbors say they don't see him much, but residents told FOX 9 News the family is very dedicated to their Black Snake Militia, which some consider un-American.

Jeff Rogers is not coy about the family's political leanings, displaying an upside down American Flag and signs suggesting the government wants to implant microchips inside citizens outside his home.

"We are patriots. You guys are patriots," he said. "You see the country is going to s----."

Yet, Buford Rogers' Facebook page suggests a sinister side to his politics. In publicly visible posts from 2011, he wrote, "We already started fighting. I'm sure you'll hear about it in a bad way."

A website for the Minnesota Minutemen Militia, which says it is not anti-government, claims the Black Snake Militia is comprised of 73 members. The leader's profile shows a man who claims to be 29 years old wearing a ski mask and holding an assault rifle. His bio reads, "Im an american patriot willing to lay down my life so we may take our republic back…. [sic]"

Meanwhile, the media -- and Fox News especially -- yawn. Eric Boehlert observes:

You will likely not be surprised that none of Fox News' primetime hosts mentioned the Rogers arrest last night or the looming threat of right-wing extremist violence. That, despite the fact the shows have dedicated countless programming hours in recent weeks to ginning up fear and angst surrounding the terror attack in Boston on Patriot's Day.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (251)

PLAYS: (1764)

Embed

The right-wingers have been in full-on gloat mode since the capture of the Boston Marathon bombers -- not because it turned out that they were right about the nature of the perpetrators (they weren't), but because speculation that they might be right-wing extremists was wrong. Only wingnuts can convert a sigh of relief into an attack on their opponents.

The problem is that all they're really doing is attempting, yet again, to whitewash away the very real existence of violent extremists on their own side.

Leading the charge is William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection, who published a post over the weekend titled "Add Boston Marathon Bombing to pile of Failed Eliminationist Narratives":

Yet there was a theory behind the madness, the Eliminationist Narrative created by Dave Neiwart of Crooks and Liars about an “eliminationist” radical right seeking to dehumanize and eliminate political opposition. It was a play on the over-used narrative of Richard Hofstadter’s “paranoid style” in American politics.

The Eliminationist Narrative was aided and abetted by an abuse of the term “right-wing” to include groups who are the opposite of conservatism and the Tea Party movement.

In the case of Sparkman, the accusations were just Another Failed Eliminationist Narrative. And the Eliminationist Narrative would fail time and time again:

James Holmes
Jared Loughner
The Cabby Stabber
The “killer” of Bill Sparkman
Amy Bishop
The Fort Hood Shooter
The IRS Plane Crasher
The Pentagon Shooter

We can now add the Boston Marathon Bombing to the pile. The wild speculation that there was a Tea Party or “right-wing” connection proved false.

Of course, it would always help if people like Jacobson managed to review the posts of the people he's attacking -- since neither I nor anyone at Crooks and Liars ever speculated in print that the perps were white right-wing extremists. Others did, however -- and frankly, we discussed it among ourselves. But we knew that it was irresponsible to speculate publicly until we knew more, and so we waited -- unlike a few progressives, and even many, many more conservatives. (More about that in a moment.)

The fact, however, is that the speculation about right-wing extremism's potential role was entirely rational, considering that in the past four years, there have been nearly 70 acts of domestic terrorism committed by right-wing extremists in the United States, compared to just over 30 such acts committed by Islamist extremists here. (I have prepared a report on this that Mother Jones will be publishing soon.)

And let's not overlook the OTHER terrorist attack that occurred in the same week -- namely, the ricin attacks on the White House and Senate, a case that is still officially unsolved, now that the original suspect has been released. However, considering both the targets and the fact that ricin has long been a favorite weapon of right-wing extremists, there is a high likelihood that one or more of them will eventually prove to be the source of these attacks.

Indeed, just in the past year alone, we've observed the following entirely successful acts of domestic terrorism, perpetrated by extremists animated by various kinds of far-right ideologies and their eliminationist rhetoric:

An Army veteran named Wade Michael Page walks into a Sikh temple and opens fire, killing six and wounding four

Two Tulsa men embark on a killing rampage targeting black people, killing three and wounding two

A group of Louisiana "sovereign citizens" kills two sheriff's deputies when they try to serve warrants

A Utah skinhead shoot six police officers, killing one, when they try to serve a warrant

A black man named Ray Lengend torches a Muslim mosque

An ex-convict tries to blow up a Wisconsin women's clinic because it performs abortions

We've also had a couple of unsuccessful plots broken up:

Seven members of a racist skinhead organization arrested for training to launch a terrorist race war

"FEAR" militia plot broken up when members are charged with murder of member and his 17-year-old girlfriend

Continue reading »

F2C2012: Aaron Swartz keynote - "How we stopped SOPA", May 21, 2012

I know as I stare at the blank page in front of me that I cannot do justice to this post, that my feelings of sadness and anger will prevent me from the eloquence I wish I could have. So I apologize to you, the reader and I apologize to Aaron Swartz for failing to find the words that his memory is owed.

I knew of Aaron, having been on common lists and sharing common acquaintances and frequently, common political aspirations. But I can't say that we had much in the way of interactions. Still, what I knew of him, genius is not too strong a word. How else could you describe the person who developed RSS at the age of 14? Or sold Reddit to Conde Nast (effectively making him independently wealthy) at the age of 20? He could have sat back on his laurels then, but Aaron had a mission: to make information free and available to all on the internet. Remember, information is the ultimate democratizer and Aaron believed that the internet was a great democratizing tool.

But genius does not necessarily make you smart. Aaron took risks that were not wise and that others warned him against. And those risks ultimately cost Aaron Swartz his life.

Yes, Aaron took his own life. Yes, Aaron suffered from depression, which he wrote about as well as anyone else I've seen and instantly identifiable to anyone who has suffered from it as well.

But Aaron was also facing a terribly bleak future in prison for decades, although his actions hurt no one and put no one in danger. But he had the bad luck of his case coming across the desk of Carmen Ortiz, US Attorney in Massachusetts. Lawrence Lessig, one of Aaron's mentors:

But all this shows is that if the government proved its case, some punishment was appropriate. So what was that appropriate punishment? Was Aaron a terrorist? Or a cracker trying to profit from stolen goods? Or was this something completely different?

Early on, and to its great credit, JSTOR figured “appropriate” out: They declined to pursue their own action against Aaron, and they asked the government to drop its. MIT, to its great shame, was not as clear, and so the prosecutor had the excuse (s)he needed to continue his war against the “criminal” who we who loved him knew as Aaron.

Here is where we need a better sense of justice, and shame. For the outrageousness in this story is not just Aaron. It is also the absurdity of the prosecutor’s behavior. From the beginning, the government worked as hard as it could to characterize what Aaron did in the most extreme and absurd way. The “property” Aaron had “stolen,” we were told, was worth “millions of dollars” — with the hint, and then the suggestion, that his aim must have been to profit from his crime. But anyone who says that there is money to be made in a stash of ACADEMIC ARTICLES is either an idiot or a liar. It was clear what this was not, yet our government continued to push as if it had caught the 9/11 terrorists red-handed.

Continue reading »

We all remember Anders Breivik, the right-wing extremist who massacred dozens of (mostly) young Norwegians in the summer of 2011, right? Well, now it seems that people in Poland have narrowly escaped having their own version of such a terrorism-induced bloodbath, at the hands of an admirer of Breivik:

Last week the Polish government announced the thwarting of a terrorism plot that is worrisome in its audacity and in who was behind it. In a country with minimal experience of terrorism, the discovery of a sophisticated homegrown bomber seeking to decapitate the government by blowing up the parliament and the president has caused shockwaves and introspection.

The would-be bomber, Dr. Brunon Kwiecień, a forty-five year old research scientist at Krakow’s Agricultural University, fits few currently fashionable profiles. Neither a jihadist nor marginally employed or socially bereft, Kwiecień is married with two children, has a respectable income, and is reported to have been exceptionally interested in explosives since his youth. A skilled chemist popular with his students and considered unremarkable by his university colleagues, he came up with a truly audacious plot to blow up the Sejm, the Polish parliament in Warsaw, during a joint session where both houses, the president and the full cabinet would be present. As Kwiecień is reported to have conducted visits to Warsaw to select his targets, this appears to be more than the figment of a demented imagination.

The seriousness of the bomber’s intent was evidenced by the astonishing haul made by Polish police after Kwiecień’s arrest on November 9. Among the items seized were a dozen illegal firearms, some 1,100 rounds of ammunition, body armor of various types, several detonators (including cell phones triggers) and an amazing four tons of high-grade explosives—more than enough to flatten several city blocks—which the bomber had access to due to his job. There seems to be little doubt that Kwiecień had the technical competence to build the bomb, but his efforts to find collaborators fell short.

As Stratfor explains, this was an attack for which Kwiecień was well suited, requiring a skillset well within his range of competence:

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (187)

PLAYS: (1342)

Embed

While much of the media attention, driven by congressional hearings, on terrorism issues focused this week on events in Libya, there was another Senate hearing that took a good look at terrorism on our own shores.

Chaired by Sen. Dick Durbin, it was titled "Hate Crimes and the Threat of Domestic Extremism," and much of it was focused on last month's horrific shooting rampage at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, as well it should.

But the most riveting testimony was provided by a former Department of Homeland Security analyst named Daryl Johnson, who had this to say:

The threat of domestic terrorism motivated by extremist ideologies is often dismissed and overlooked in the national media and within the U.S. government. Yet we are currently seeing an upsurge in domestic non-Islamic extremist activity, specifically from violent right-wing extremists. While violent left-wing attacks were more prevalent in the 1970s, today the bulk of violent domestic activity emanates from the right wing.

Of course, we've been writing about this for some time now, particularly in light of the fact that Johnson was driven out of the DHS by the witch hunt that ensued after he authored that bulletin on right-wing extremism that has turned out to be all too prescient.

We have seen the results, as dozens of police officers have died in the line of duty while confronting right-wing extremists for whom they were largely unprepared.

Johnson was the focus of a Washington Post piece examining how the DHS eviscerated its capacity for adequately analyzing the threat of right-wing extremism, and Johnson recently provided more details for Spencer Ackerman. After the mess in Wisconsin, all Johnson could say was that he had tried to warn them.

Johnson explored a sampling of the record in his testimony:

Since the 2008 presidential election, domestic non-Islamic extremists have shot 27 law enforcement officers, killing 16 of them. Over a dozen mosques have been burned with firebombs – likely attributed to individuals embracing Islamaphobic beliefs. In May 2009, an abortion doctor was murdered while attending church. Two other assassination plots against abortion providers were thwarted during 2011 and six women’s health clinics were attacked with explosive and incendiary devices within the past two years.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (251)

PLAYS: (1764)

Embed

It's emblematic of just how cowed our federal authorities have been by the right-wing blowback against calling right-wing domestic terrorists what they actually are that the prosecutors in Georgia who recently charged a group of far-right militiamen with plotting carry out a series of attacks in Washington state and to assassinate President Obama took to calling them, in their press announcements, "anarchists" -- which meant, of course, that the media promptly followed suit.

Let's be perfectly clear: The only thing in the profiles of these men that suggests anything remotely "anarchist" in their politics is the fact that, according to the AP, they "aggressively recruited" other members of the military with a symbol that resembled the classic anarchist symbol, an "A" inside a circle (even though there are a number of far-right symbols that could fit this description as well).

In every other regard, however, these men were indisputably classic right-wing extremists:

-- One of the leaders of the plot, Joseph Aguigui, was a page at the Republican National Convention in 2008.

-- All of the plotters were members of the military and espoused a far-right philosophy, including targeting President Obama for assassination. "I did think that the government needed to change, and I thought that we were the people to be able to change it," one of the plotters told the judge in pleading guilty.

-- The targets of their terrorist acts were generally "liberal" government entities -- poisoning the Washington apple crop, for instance, likely targeted the liberal Seattle consumer market, the main consumers of those crops -- although no one can quite figure out why they targeted Savannah's Forsyth Park.

What's most disturbing about this case is that these men were obtaining their arms and combat training from the U.S. military and were aggressively recruiting other members from within their ranks.

As it happens, this sort of thing -- as well as last month's murderous rampage by an ex-soldier/white supremacist at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin -- is exactly what that Department of Homeland Security bulletin on right-wing domestic terrorism of 2009 warned about:

U//FOUO) Returning veterans possess combat skills and experience that are attractive to rightwing extremists. DHS/I&A is concerned that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities.

Of course, the DHS wasn't alone in sounding this warning. The year before, in 2008, the FBI issued a similar warning:

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (125)

PLAYS: (542)

Embed

It's a given, of course, that Fox News has become the greatest font of media mendacity of our times, perhaps in history. But the episodes really don't come any more dishonest than the one Bill O'Reilly featured last night with the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, discussing the shooting in the lobby of the FRC's Washington offices two days ago.

Just as he did earlier in the day, Perkins blamed the Southern Poverty Law Center for the shooting because it has designated the FRC a hate group. It is, of course, an outrageous and absurd charge, as Mark Potok of the SPLC himself explained yesterday.

The whole episode was a bizarre exercise in un-self-consciousness, especially because O'Reilly remains upset to this day that he was quite accurately accused of bearing culpability for the death of abortion doctor George Tiller in Kansas -- a fact that he led the segment off with. And yet he was all too happy to let Perkins come on his show and make similar accusations about the SPLC, all without evincing any awareness that Perkins was indulging the very behavior O'Reilly accused his own critics of engaging.

So, it's OK to lie and demonize someone to the point that they become the targets of violence if you're a right-winger, but it's not OK to accurately call out that very behavior and hold those people up for public condemnation, especially if you're a liberal or perceived as one. Got it?

To pull that off, of course, meant that there was a full menu of outright lying -- and there was plenty of that. O'Reilly himself set the tone when he decried the accusations about Tiller:

O'REILLY: Well, I never called him a killer. I said that he was nicknamed "Tiller the Baby Killer". That man is obviously not an honest person. He's also a late-term abortionist himself. I simply reported what Tiller was doing in detail and the press hammered me for it.

That's just flatly false. Not only did O'Reilly repeatedly refer to Tiller as a "baby killer," he did so without attributing it to anyone else:

We found at least 42 instances of O'Reilly mentioning Tiller by name, going back to 2005. In 24 instances, we found that O'Reilly referred to Tiller specifically as a "baby killer."

Most of the time, O'Reilly would simply refer to the Tiller as "Tiller the baby killer" or as "Dr. George Tiller, known as Tiller the baby killer" without attributing it to anyone. We found four times when O'Reilly said that "some" called him Tiller the baby killer. We did not find any instance where O'Reilly named an individual or a particular antiabortion group that referred to Tiller that way.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (123)

PLAYS: (777)

Embed

Let's be clear: Yesterday's shooting of a security guard at the Family Research Council's offices in Washington, D.C., evidently motivated by the shooter's anger over the FRC's ongoing campaign against the LGBT community, was an atrocity that harmed the cause the shooter espoused. After all, the chief reason groups are called out as "hate groups" is that the rhetoric they purvey is so toxic that often it justifies and inspires acts of violence against vulnerable minorities. To respond to that with an equally insane act of violence is a betrayal.

Moreover, if the motives as reported so far are accurate, it was clearly an act of domestic terrorism, one of an increasingly small species of such acts: left-wing domestic terrorism. It may be helpful here to remember that since 2008, there have been more than fifty incidents of domestic terrorism committed by right wing-extremists and directed at "liberal" targets.

The horrified finger pointing that has erupted among right-wingers, however, is nothing if not obscene, particularly when it involves hatemongers like Michelle Malkin and Bryan Fischer. Malkin's hypocrisy in particular would be hilarious were it not so noxious: Only a few weeks ago, she was reiterating her longtime claim that the Holocaust Museum shooter wasn't a right-wing extremist, along with a dozen other incidents involving similar extremists.

Indeed, right-wingers (particularly those at Fox News and the Malkin contingent) have long been eager to whitewash away the political orientation of right-wing terrorists and deny any culpability for their acts, even when -- as in the case of the Malkin fan who terrorized abortion clinics with fake anthrax attacks, or the rampaging shooter who claimed inspiration from Fox News figures -- those connections are painfully obvious.

Yesterday, Malkin's "Twitchy" site was eagerly blaming the Southern Poverty Law Center for the FRC shooting.

And she wasn't alone. As The Hill reports, there were lots of people -- including Fischer, a noted hatemonger himself -- blaming the SPLC, because it dares to call out hate groups for what they are:

The shooting of a security guard Wednesday at the Family Research Council (FRC) has spurred a torrent of heated accusations from both sides of the gay rights debate about claims that the conservative organization is a “hate group.”

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM), one of the nation’s leading opponents of same-sex marriage, told The Hill the shooting was a direct result of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s decision in 2010 to place the FRC on its list of hate groups for its rhetoric on gays.

Brian Brown, the president of NOM, pointed to a recent blog post by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), one of the largest gay-rights groups in the country. The post, “Paul Ryan Speaking at Hate Group’s Annual Conference,” called attention to the vice presidential candidate’s scheduled appearance at the FRC’s national summit next month.

“Today’s attack is the clearest sign we’ve seen that labeling pro-marriage groups as ‘hateful’ must end,” Brown said in a statement issued following the shooting.

“For too long national gay rights groups have intentionally marginalized and ostracized pro-marriage groups and individuals by labeling them as ‘hateful’ and ‘bigoted.’”

Neither the FBI nor the D.C. police have released any information about what motivated the shooter, who they placed in custody shortly after 11 a.m. near the FRC’s headquarters after he wounded a security guard in the arm.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (152)

PLAYS: (1006)

Embed

Following up on our discussion yesterday about the underlying issues raised by the horrifying murders in Aurora, there are several excellent and insightful pieces floating about that deserve to be well read.

One of the more interesting is Chip Berlet's piece at AlterNet:

Understanding the Colorado Shooting: Terrorism, Politics, Mental Illness and the Superhero Complex

Older models of psychological interpretation often dismissed the violent actors as dysfunctional or mentally ill and left it at that. Contemporary approaches factor in psychological considerations, but also consider the role of demonization and scapegoating in creating perceptual frames. Within sociology, the study of how the construction of frames and narratives assists ideological goals and attracts and retains recruits is well developed. In several disciplines there are studies of apocalyptic narrative storylines that cast the perpetrator in the role of hero for saving society from a mortal threat.

For some terrorists who are not clinically mentally ill, the act of violence has a clear goal of sending a message they hope will be understood and acted upon. They are seldom correct in their idea that their “propaganda of the deed” will have the desired outcome. For the tiny handful of those who struggle with serious mental illness and turn to violence, outside factors in the society play a role in writing the script they are following to justify their actions. This script is internally generated and generally incomprehensible to other people, however, it can be internally consistent and understandable to the perpetrator. So outside societal factors can be involved, even if they are greatly misinterpreted through the darkened glasses of psychosis.

Dan Froomkin has a great piece at HuffPo describing how the NRA will predictably kill any and all discussion of gun-law changes as a possible response:

Opponents of gun control have a powerful rhetorical argument in their arsenal. "The gun lobby is very effective at saying that 'Now is not the time to exploit these events for political purposes,'" Rand said. "Their goal is to delay so that the pressure comes off of policy makers, the immediacy fades and everyone turns their attention to something else."

Gross agreed. "That's the arc that these things always take and they know it," he said.

But, Gross said, the "now is not the time" argument would only be genuine "if history showed that there ever is a time to discuss the role of gun policy in preventing these tragedies."

And Rand said it's appropriate to start talking about solutions right away. "It's not politics, it's public health," she said. "You have an industry that manufactures a product that is completely unregulated from a health and safety standpoint."

As Digby says, the only real taboo among the Beltway pundit class is against examining the causes of these tragedies.

Also, be sure to read Roger Ebert at the NYT.

DOWNLOADS: (204)

PLAYS: (1232)

Embed

You may remember those arrests back in 2009 of three leading white supremacists — Robert Joos, and Dennis and Daniel Mahon — for the 2004 bombing of the racial-diversity office of Scottsdale, Arizona, that seriously injured the office's director and inflicted wounds on two other people. Even though the trail had seemingly gone cold, dogged investigators finally ran these domestic terrorists to ground.

Now it appears that the investigators' relentlessness is about to bring down one of the nation's most prominent white supremacists, according to the SPLC's Bill Morlin:

Tom Metzger — a wily, iconic racist ideologue who has for years espoused “lone-wolf” terrorism — could soon find himself facing criminal charges filed by the federal government he’s excoriated for decades.

Federal investigators, fresh off a related mail-bombing conviction in Arizona, may be pressing for what could develop into a major Justice Department criminal case against “Terrible Tommy” Metzger, as he likes to call himself. Court records filed in three states show the investigators strongly suspect Metzger provided the Arizona bomber with explosive-making instructions, knowing they would be used in the commission of a crime of violence.

At 74, Metzger, who now lives in Warsaw, Ind., has “celebrity status” as the founder of White Aryan Resistance (WAR), court documents say, and is a dean of white supremacists. He’s the last vestige of a generation of revolutionary racist leaders in the United States that included the late Richard G. Butler of Aryan Nations and the late Robert Miles, a one-time Michigan Klan leader and convicted bomber. While those two and many other racist leaders were charged in various criminal cases over the past three decades, Metzger has managed to avoid any serious criminal charges in his 40-plus years of activism.

That may be about to change.

The documents Morlin has dug up make clear that the feds are poised to file indictments against Metzger in short order — because what's become apparent through their investigation is that the Scottsdale bombers were acting at Metzger's behest.

It's a great piece of reporting, so be sure to read it all. I particularly noted this tidbit:

Continue reading »