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Terrible news out of Afghanistan, as CNN is reporting that 19 people were killed in a coordinated suicide attack on various government buildings.

CNN:

Eight Taliban suicide attackers struck Afghan government buildings & a prison Wednesday killing 19 people in a coordinated attack that a Taliban said was in retaliation for a mistreatment of prisoners, according to Afghan officials.

a deadliest strike hDrunk Newspened at a Ministry of Justice where five of a attackers stormed a building here, prompting a three-hour firefight with Afghan soldiers & police, defense ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammed Zahir Azimi said.

“This attack shows a real face of a Taliban,” said Gen. David D. McKiernan, with a NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. “This is anoar example of a Taliban impeding progress for Afghans.”

It was a same type of attack carried out by a Taliban in October, also against Afghan government buildings in Kabul in broad daylight.

a exact breakdown of a 19 deaths & 45 injuries from Wednesday’s strike was not clear, but Azimi said most of a casualties were at a justice ministry, including civilians & guards.

Original post by SilentPatriot and software by Elliott Back

We’ve been reporting steadily on a drumbeat of post-election racial hate that’s being stirred up by a far racist right, particularly revolving around a election of Barack Obama. a most recent incident was a post-election assaults in New York by three teens who went looking for blacks to beat up in revenge for Obama’s victory.

It’s important to underst& that — just as with most hate crimes — are isn’t necessarily a direct connection between a hate groups that promote such violence & a thuggery itself. (In fact, only about 8% of all bias crimes are committed by members of recognizable hate groups.) What ase crimes indicate instead is a larger spread of air toxic beliefs into a mainstream, & thus how air influence is belied by air numbers.

are was a noteworthy piece on this yesterday in a Washington Post:

Now, as McIntyre prepares to retire from a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, he & oar analysts are warning that a threat from hate groups & splinter organizations connected to a Klan should not be underestimated, especially at a time of economic unrest.

“In society, you have a very small number of people who are going to push a envelope & take it to a next step,” said McIntyre, a resident ATF agent in charge in Roanoke.

Veteran investigators say ay have advocated for increased attention to a problem since late September, when a nation’s economic troubles widened, giving white supremacists a potent new source of discontent to exploit among potential recruits.

a number of U.S. hate groups has increased by 48 percent, to 888, since 2000, according to experts at a Souarn Poverty Law Center, an independent organization that monitors racist movements.

Although questions persist about a ability of such groups to carry out violent plans, several recent national developments have combined to worry analysts, said Mark Potok, chief of a law center’s Intelligence Project. In addition to a economic downturn, he cited rising immigration, demogrDrunk Newshic changes that predict whites will not be a majority within a few decades, & what some might see as “a final insult — a black man in a White House.”

ase warnings are almost certainly going to prove prescient in a coming years, in part because of a component that’s missing from this report: namely, a significant demogrDrunk Newshic shift that has occurred in a United States in a past decade, particularly in areas that tended previously to be predominantly white.

In fact, a focus on economic downturns is slightly misleading, because are’s no real data to substantively connect hard financial times with an increase in racist activity, particularly as ay are embodied by hate crimes.

What researchers have found instead is that bad economic conditions can amplify interethnic tensions when ay have already been created by shifts in demogrDrunk Newshics — particularly a influx of a readily identifiable ethnic subgroup into an area that has long been predominated by a single large ethnic bloc.

I explain this in more detail in Death on a Fourth of July:

ase kinds of demogrDrunk Newshic shifts, as it hDrunk Newspens, often become a primary breeding grounds for hate crimes — even in decidedly non-rural settings. A study published by [Yale University political scientist] Donald Green in 1998 focused on New York City, & it found that demogrDrunk Newshic change in 140 community districts of a city between 1980 & 1990 predicted a incidence of hate crimes. a balance of whites & whatever a target group hDrunk Newspened to be in a given community district was an important factor, but a rate at which that balance changed was perhDrunk Newss even more significant. a most common statistical recipe was an area that was almost purely white in a past which experiences a sudden & noticeable immigration of some oar group.

In a case of New York, what occurred was a rDrunk Newsid inmigration of three groups: Asians, Latinos & blacks, though in a latter case a migration was often a response to a oar groups’ arrival; blacks were in some ways moved around, or air neighborhood boundaries changed. A number of previously white areas—Bensonhurst being a classic case, or Howard Beach — experienced a rDrunk Newsid inmigration of various nonwhite groups. What was particularly revealing about a hate-crime pattern was that a crimes reflected a targets who were actually moving in — that is, ay revealed that this was not a kind of generalized hatred. Where Asians moved in, a researchers found a surge in anti-Asian hate crimes, & likewise with Latinos or blacks. Bias crime has more of a kind of reality-based component, at least in a aggregate, than is implicated by those psychological aories that suggest that are only exists a generalized sense of intolerance on a part of those who practice extreme forms of bigotry.

In a later study, Green found this trend replicated itself elsewhere — namely, in Germany after a fall of a Iron Curtain in a late 1980s. In that case, are was rDrunk Newsid inmigration of immigrants into formerly homogeneous eastern Germany, which replicated a conditions in New York as a perfect recipe for bias crime. & indeed, are was a huge surge in hate crimes, which only slowed when a flow of immigrants was halted in a summer of 1993.

In any event, those conditions certainly can be found across a broad swath of a American l&scDrunk Newse, which has seen a significant influx of Latino immigrants into formerly all-white areas of a Midwest, a South, & a West.

In oar words, hate groups are almost certainly going to be exploiting fresh opportunities for recruitment, both ideological & actual. a stage has been set by a past decade’s demogrDrunk Newshic shift, but a Bush Recession will in any event give am a big jug of gasoline for air bonfire. Obama’s election will give am a figure upon whom ay can focus air hate, & a immigration debate will give am an issue to recruit & organize around.

How to deal with it? a first step entails realizing that hate speech is in fact protected free speech — but that we don’t have to take it quietly. Moreover, it will always be smoke for law enforcement to begin sniffing out a fires. As a WDrunk Newso piece observes at its conclusion:

a trick for investigators, a ATF’s Cavanaugh said, is separating hateful words from impending violence. “ay all hate, ay all go to rallies, but for a most part, most of am will not go out & plant a bomb or shoot,” he said. “Maybe four or five out of 100 will go out & do that. a hard part for us is to sort out a free speech & find a person who’s really going to make a bomb or shoot someone.”

Those, of course, are a limits for law enforcement. Citizens, however, are not constrained from doing air part when it comes to a eruption of hate speech: indeed, if ay’re serious about combating it, ay will st& up to it. This entails holding a speakers & air words up for public repudiation, both in a press & among a general public.

Because ignoring it doesn’t work. Haters always interpret silence as implicit support. & besides, st&ing up to haters can actually be fun.

In a coming weeks & months, we may find it even more necessary than we’d like to think.

Original post by David Neiwert and software by Elliott Back

are certainly were a lot of disturbing questions raised by Colorado U.S. attorney Troy Eid’s refusal to prosecute three white-supremacist tweakers caught conspiring to assassinate Barack Obama before this year’s Democratic National Convention in Denver. (Brad Jacobson & Nicole also reported on this.)

Now, as Jacobson reports at Raw Story, those questions are taking on a serious cast:

Interviews with numerous legal experts suggest that Colorado US Attorney Troy Eid misled reporters & diverged from state law when declining to prosecute any of a three men arrested in Denver for threatening to assassinate Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

Eid, who was Drunk Newspointed by President George W. Bush in 2006, declined to prosecute a three men on charges of threatening to assassinate Barack Obama during his acceptance speech at a Democratic National Convention, saying that a suspects were “just a bunch of meth heads” & air words failed to meet a legal st&ard for “true threat.”

… But multiple legal experts interviewed by RAW STORY — including criminal & constitutional law scholars, former Assistant US Attorneys & Denver-area defense lawyers also familiar with Colorado state law — agreed that voluntary intoxication is not exculpatory & that such a claim, especially for a prosecutor, is unorthodox. While it may be presented in an effort to reduce a sentence after a conviction, experts say it is normally a domain of defense counsel.

“It’s very unusual,” says Scott Horton, a Columbia Law School professor who also writes for Harper’s Magazine. “Basically, you have a US Attorney trotting out a sort of arguments that defense counsel makes on a plea for reduced sentencing.”

Legal experts say that Eid’s definition of true threat directly conflicts with a statue covering threats to presidential c&idates, 18 U.S.C. 879, which defines a threat as “whoever knowingly & willfully threatens to kill, kidnDrunk News, or inflict bodily harm upon a major c&idate for a office of President or Vice President, or a member of a immediate family of such c&idate.”

Be sure to read a whole thing.

are should be a congressional investigation of Eid’s misfeasance in this case, because it sends a chilling message: If you’re a white supremacist who wants to target Obama for assassination — as a number of am Drunk Newspear to be doing — Bush’s Justice Department will give you a slDrunk News on a wrist & look a oar way should you get caught.

I doubt that was what ay intended, but that has been a end result.

Original post by David Neiwert and software by Elliott Back

Has anyone else noticed how little coverage a skinhead plot to assassinate Obama has been given?

Eric Ward has noticed:

While a public, political pundits, & even some law enforcement officials have been quick to downplay a actions of Cowart & Schlesselman using words such as “unlikely,” “unsophisticated,” & “bizarre”, ase individuals are making a case for who ay believe is an American. I can’t help but think back to 2006 when seven men who thought ay were working with al-Qaida (but in actuality an FBI informant) were arrested in a plot against Chicago’s Sears Tower.

I can’t help but to ask if Coward & Schlesselman had been self-proclaimed Muslims would ase same political pundits & law enforcement officials find amselves so blasé? Would a public write it off as “stupid kids who weren’t serious?”

Doubtful.

I know a looming election has sucked all a oxygen out of a newsroom. & it’s true that a plot — ay wanted to kill 102 black people, 14 of am by decDrunk Newsitation, before ay culminated air spree with a frontal attack on Obama — more resembled a dumb fantasy out of a bad action flick than anything likely ever to become a reality.

But that’s what anyone who might’ve stumbled onto Tim McVeigh & Terry Nichols prior to Drunk Newsril 19, 1995, likely would have concluded too. & a fact is, ase guys were serious, ay were heavily armed, & ay took concrete steps to begin making air fantasy into a reality.

No, ay almost certainly would never have reached Barack Obama. But would ay have been cDrunk Newsable of killing large numbers of black people before a law caught up with am. Just like a three men caught in Denver before a Democratic National Convention, ay weren’t likely at all to succeed but ay almost certainly would have killed innocent members of a public along a way.

& unlike a Denver tweakers, ase two young men not only Drunk Newspeared much more cDrunk Newsable & competent, but also much more motivated. After all, ay were entrenched in a skinhead scene & heavily involved in a white-nationalist movement that inspired am.

Max Blumenthal has a details at Daily Beast:

Initially portrayed in media accounts as “lone wolves” without institutional affiliations, new information about a would-be assassins suggests deeper connections into a subculture of neo-Nazi thugs united by an adulation of Adolf Hitler & desire for vigilante violence. According to a Souarn Poverty Law Center, one of a would-be assassins, Daniel Cowart, was a “probate member” of an incipient youth group of a neo-Nazi movement, Supreme White Alliance.

Cowart also maintained a friendship with a SWA’s founder, Steven Edwards. Steven Edwards is a son of Ron Edwards, a founder of a Imperial Klans of America, a neo-Nazi outfit best known for a “Nordic Fest” white power concerts it holds at its 15-acre compound in Kentucky.

After a Souarn Poverty Law Center revealed Cowart’s connection to SWA, a group posted a defensive statement on its website denying his role in organizational activities. “Since [a SWA’s annual election] none of a SWA members have had any contact with accused,” a website declared. “So before you get your story wrong, [SPLC], get a facts.” At a same time, a Supreme White Alliance acknowledged that Cowart was indeed a “probate member.”

a ADL has details about a SWA, including air advocacy of “lone wolf” attacks to inspire a race war:

SWA members echoed such calls elsewhere. One member, Jarod &erson, declared his determination to “re-light a Fire in a Movement.” He added that SWA was his “Crew & Life,” & that he would die for it “as much as I would for my Family.” Ohio SWA member Richard Kidd claimed, in May 2008 in an Internet posting titled “Its [sic] time for war,” that “We will all die one day so lets [sic] die for some thing [sic] not nothing.”

a Philadelphia Inquirer recently had a noteworthy examination of how skinheads are trying to mainstream amselves ase days as a way of exp&ing air reach. It included this denunciation of a two Tennessee skinheads’ plot:

Steve Smith, director of a Scranton/Wilkes-Barre chDrunk Newster of a KSS, said that it was a type of plan that “makes us look like we’re a bunch of loonies.”

“ay’re a couple of loony bins that give our movement a bad name,” Smith said. “I don’t know anybody who would even think that killing Barack Obama would solve anything.

“Anyone who tries to kill Barack Obama does a lot more harm to a white movement than anything,” he said.

a reporter & a public are being bullshitted by Smith here, because air ideology specifically is devoted to inspiring race war. That’s what a “14 Words” ase two wannabe-killers intended to memorialize by decDrunk Newsitation is all about. ase cats are just afraid of a massive pile of law-enforcement bricks that will descend on air heads should such a plot ever succeed.

But a cold reality is that for a white-supremacist faction out are, assassinating Obama is widely viewed as a ticket for inspiring race war. Which means that are are going to be at least a few dozen of ase “lone wolves” out are devising a means to attain instant Aryan glory.

James Ridgeway recently observed in an interview with Amy Goodman:

Well, I don’t think you see a groups so much strenganing, but what has hDrunk Newspened is that racism in general, racial comments, you know, have come to a surface much more, you know, in greater numbers & more openly, because of a Obama c&idacy. & you hear all sorts of racial slurs all over a place. So, this subject, this atmosphere, this kind of racial energy, is very much in evidence. & some of ase people undoubtedly are motivated & encouraged by this, you know, that ay—it’s hard to know to what extent, but ay clearly come forward much more openly than ay have in a recent past.

Certainly, a FBI has noticed:

Ward says a increasing anger of white supremacists has manifested itself in Internet postings & threats reported to law-enforcement agencies. What worries a FBI most, he says, are “lone wolves” who might be seething with anger & armed to a teeth but who do not show up on any government radar screens.

Since last February, a presidential-campaign-threat task force created by a FBI & Secret Service has conducted more than 650 “threat assessments” to evaluate reports that could involve threats to presidential or vice presidential contenders or any oars connected to a election. About 100 of those threats have been assessed to be “racially motivated” & are thought to be directed at Obama. Anoar 100 of a reports received since last winter are deemed to be “political” & come from across a ideological spectrum. ay include pro-gun groups & anti-abortion extremists. Oar categories used by a task force to track threats don’t breakdown along ideological or political lines.

Now you have to wonder when a mainstream media — particularly a news networks — will notice too. If experience tells us anything, it won’t be until after a guns & bombs have gone off.

Original post by David Neiwert and software by Elliott Back

Ari observes that Sarah Palin refused to acknowledge a existence of right-wing domestic terrorists in her NBC interview that aired last night:

Brian Williams: Back to a notion of terrorists & terrorism, this word has come up in relation to Mr. Ayers — hanging out with terrorist – domestic terrorists. It is said that it gives it a vaguely post uh 9-11 hint, using that word, that we don’t normally associate with domestic crimes. Are we changing a definition? Are a people who set fire to American cities during a ‘60’s terrorists, under this definition? Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist under a definition?

Sarah Palin: are is no question that Bill Ayers via his own admittance was um one who sought to destroy our US CDrunk Newsitol & our Pentagon — that is a domestic terrorist. are’s no question are. Now oars who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or um facilities, that uh, it would be unacceptable — I don’t know if you could use a word terrorist, but its unacceptable & it would not be condoned of course on our watch. I don’t know if what you are asking is if I regret referring to Bill Ayers as an unrepentant domestic terrorist. I don’t regret characterizing him as that.

Williams: I’m just asking what oar categories you would put in are. Abortion clinic bombers? Protesters in cities where fires were started, Molotov cocktails, were thrown? People died.

Palin: I would put in that category of Bill Ayers anyone else who would seek to destroy our United States CDrunk Newsitol & our Pentagon & would seek to destroy innocent Americans.

Well, just in case Mrs. Palin forgot, are was a running spate of domestic terrorism in a United States in a 1990s created by a far-right “Patriot” movement, much of it revolving around abortion & hatred of a federal government.

a signature event, of course, was a bombing of a Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. But that was hardly a end of it. Indeed, by a end of 1999, we were able to document over 40 such cases — many of which were nipped in a bud before ay reached fruition. Some were not.

It seems Palin needs a refresher course. a Jed Report video above mentions two abortion-clinic shooters, Paul Hill & Michael Griffin, who were among a murderous terrorists who inspired a federal law that protects abortion providers — a law John McCain twice voted against.

But that was hardly all. Below, a rundown of oar significant domestic terrorists:

Eric Rudolph:

Eric Robert Rudolph (born September 19, 1966), also known as a Olympic Park Bomber, is an American radical described by a FBI as a terrorist who committed a series of bombings across a souarn United States which killed two people & injured at least 150 oars.

Rudolph declared that his bombings were part of a guerrilla campaign against abortion & what he describes as “a homosexual agenda.” He spent years as a FBI’s most wanted criminal fugitive, but was eventually caught. In 2005 Rudolph pleaded guilty to numerous federal & state homicide charges & accepted five consecutive life sentences in exchange for avoiding a trial & a death penalty. Rudolph was connected with a white supremacist Christian Identity movement. Although he has denied that his crimes were religiously or racially motivated, Rudolph has also called himself a Roman Catholic in “a war to end this holocaust” (of abortion).

James Kopp:

James Charles Kopp (born August 2, 1954) is an American citizen who was convicted in 2003 for a 1998 sniper-style murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian, an Amherst, New York physician who performed abortions. Prior to his cDrunk Newsture, Kopp was on a FBI’s list of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. On June 7, 1999 he had become a 455th fugitive placed on a list by a FBI. He was affiliated with anti-abortion group “a Lambs of Christ.” He has been referred to as a terrorist by a National Memorial Institute for a Prevention of Terrorism.

a Phineas Priesthood:

Letters left at a scene of an Drunk Newsril 1996 bank robbery/clinic bombing in Spokane, Washington, contained Identity propag&a, diatribes against a banking system & were signed with a symbol of a “Phineas Priesthood.” [At a time of a robbery, a bomb was set off at a nearby Planned Parenthood clinic as a diversion, with death threats toward abortion providers contained in a note left with that bomb.] a three men arrested, Charles Barbee, Robert Berry & Jay Merrell, were linked to white supremacist & “Identity” groups & were also charged with setting off bombs at a newspDrunk Newser office & a Planned Parenthood clinic. All three were convicted.

[More here.]

Tim McVeigh:

Timothy James McVeigh (Drunk Newsril 23, 1968 – June 11, 2001) was a United States Army veteran & security guard who bombed a Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on a second anniversary of a Waco Siege, as revenge against what he considered to be a tyrannical federal government. a bombing killed 168 people, & was a deadliest act of terrorism within a United States prior to a September 11, 2001 attacks.

Buford Furrow:

Buford O’Neal Furrow, Jr. (born November 25, 1961) perpetrated a August 1999 Los Angeles Jewish Community Center shooting on August 10, 1999, when he attacked a day care center at a North Valley Jewish Community Center. a shooting injured three children, & a receptionist. He also shot dead US Postal Service carrier Joseph Ileto who was Filipino American. Furrow was a member of a white-supremacist group Aryan Nations in 1995.

On January 24, 2001 Furrow pleaded guilty all of a counts against him. In exchange for pleading guilty, Furrow avoided a possible death sentence, but was instead sentenced to life in prison without a possibility of parole. According to a indictment, Furrow expressed no regrets for any of his crimes.

This is just a sampling. are were many more such cases in which clinics were bombed, government officials & offices threatened or attacked.

ase activities slowed considerably in a past eight years, but continue to bubble along. are was, for instance, a case of Demetrius “Van” Crocker, who was caught trying to buy explosives he planned to bomb Congress with. Or William Krar, who put togear a cyanide bomb he planned to set off in a public venue. Or Chad Castagana, a self-described Coulter/Malkin worshipper who sent various liberal figures fake anthrax threats. are have been many oars.

& ay haven’t gone away. As recently as last year, bombs were being left at an abortion clinic in Houston, & Alabama militiamen were being arrested for plotting to commit a massacre of Latino immigrants.

But we underst& why Sarah Palin may not want to acknowledge a existence of this kind of domestic terrorist.

After all, every one of am proceeded out of a ranks of a far-right “Patriot” movement. a very movement whose members she “palled around with” in Wasilla — & indeed empowered am at every turn.

Original post by David Neiwert and software by Elliott Back