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Larry Keller
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Posts by Larry Keller
Annals of Hypocrisy: GOP Gay Group Featuring Gay-Basher Ann Coulter
01 year ago
by Larry Keller
in Anti-Gay
Former Democratic U.S. senator and presidential candidate John Edwards is a “faggot,” according to conservative provocateur and author Ann Coulter some years back. Nobel Prize winner, former vice president and one-time Democratic candidate for president Al Gore, she said on a separate occasion, is a “total fag.”
So when an organization that bills itself as representing “gay conservatives and their allies” was looking for a speaker at its first annual “Homocon” party in New York City this September, who did they hire?
Why, Ann Coulter, of course.
“The gay left has done their best to take all the fun out of politics, with their endless list of boycotts and protests,” Christopher Barron, chairman of the board of an outfit calling itself GOProud, explained in a prepared statement. “I can’t think of any conservative more fun to headline our inaugural party then the self-professed ‘right-wing Judy Garland’ — Ann Coulter.”
It seems unlikely that Judy Garland would have insinuated that Bill Clinton was gay, not to mention implying that that would have been bad. Coulter did. And it was Coulter who just this February said of openly gay Department of Education official Kevin Jennings: “Jennings’ idea of a good sixth grade field trip is to take the kids to the Tony Awards,” which are given for excellence in theater. In the same talk, she added, “These days a moderate Democrat is one who thinks children in the public schools shouldn’t be taught fisting until they’re at least 12 years old — okay, 11.”
Coulter’s “faggot” comment about Edwards came at an annual Conservative Political Action Conference — CPAC — and drew enormous negative publicity, earning her the enmity of many of her fellow conservatives. Arch-conservative blogger Michelle Malkin was among them. “With a single word, Coulter sullied the hard work of hundreds of CPAC participants and exhibitors and tarred the collective reputation of thousands of CPAC attendees,” Malkin wrote.
Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid is a notorious gay basher, but even he found Coulter’s comment offensive. He wrote a column that labeled Coulter the Britney Spears of the right, adding that “Coulter must be a liberal infiltrator whose purpose is to give conservatism a bad name.”
Apparently, none of this history bothered GOProud officials. Maybe they’re comforted by the fact Coulter’s homosexual slurs have been aimed only at Democrats. But it’s hard to know. Nobody at GOProud responded to a Hatewatch email asking why Coulter, as opposed to a conservative with no history of using derogatory language about gays, was invited to be the group’s keynote speaker n September.
GoProud’s emphasis, however, is on politics, not civil rights. “We are Republicans and conservatives who believe in limited government, individual liberty, free markets, a strong national defense and a confident foreign policy,” its website states. “We believe that every individual should be equal under the law. We support candidates for federal office who share our priorities.”
So perhaps Coulter will treat her listeners to a new diatribe about the 9/11 widows — you know, those “broads” who are “enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.” Maybe she’ll offer another spirited defense of the indisputably — except to her — racist organization, Council of Conservative Citizens, which has called black people a “retrograde species of humanity.” In addition to despising blacks and Jews, the same CCC that Coulter contended is unfairly branded as racist has also called gay people “perverted sodomites.”
No wonder GOProud’s Christopher Barron envisions a “fun” night with Coulter on the dais. What could be more knee-slapping hilarious than a stream of invective from somebody who says liberals are traitors and hate America, who has wished for John Edwards’ assassination, who has called Muslims “ragheads,” and opined that Jews need to be “perfected”?
And Coulter is looking forward to the fun, too. On GOProud’s website, she is quoted as saying, “I am thrilled to be giving a speech to a room full of gay conservatives, because according to every single liberal I’ve ever met, such people don’t even exist!”
Los Zetas Still Not Seizing Laredo Ranches
01 year ago
There’s an old jest in the news business: Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story. Some anti-illegal immigrant zealots in the blogosphere are taking the joke to heart. Two-and-a-half weeks after reporting with no factual basis that members of a dangerous Mexican drug gang had seized two Americans’ ranches near Laredo, Texas, the bloggers still insist their fairy tale is true.
As Hatewatch reported earlier, Pennsylvania anti-immigration blogger Dan Amato wrote last month that members of Los Zetas — Mexican gunmen involved in the international drug trade and other crimes — had taken control of the ranches. When skeptics questioned the story, Amato said that he got the tip from San Diego Minutemen leader Jeff Schwilk, who in turn learned of it from his fellow San Diego anti-immigration enthusiast, Kimberly Dvorak of Examiner.com.
The potential “act of war,” in Dvorak’s words, produced no actions by the U.S. government to protect its citizens. There were no arrests. And those residents of the two ranches forced to flee? One would think they’d be doing interviews with every news organization around — or at least with those savvy sleuths, Amato, Schwilk and Dvorak. Alas, they remain mute and unidentified. Rather than be embarrassed by this, Amato and friends insist they’ve been proved right. The proof: A supposed police blotter reproduction Dvorak claims to have obtained reporting the incident.
The blotter item states that a local, unnamed ranch owner called the sheriff’s office to say that Los Zetas had taken over his ranch. It also says that the sheriff’s SWAT team went to the area. A real reporter might have questioned why the blotter referred to the “Laredo Sheriff’s Office.” Laredo is a city in Webb County, so it’s actually the Webb County Sheriff’s Office.
That detail aside, the events described in the purported blotter entry aren’t at odds with facts acknowledged by authorities. The sheriff’s office did in fact receive a tip about two ranches being seized by Mexican gang members. The office did send personnel to investigate. The Laredo Police Department also was advised of the tip and was on standby if needed, says Investigator Joe Baeza of that department.
After talking to the ranch owners and other residents at the site of the supposed Mexican invasion, authorities concluded there was nothing to the tip. That didn’t satisfy the anti-immigration bloggers. “They’re accusing the local authorities of being elusive, of there being a media blackout,” Baeza says incredulously. “I don’t know what they’re talking about.”
Now Amato is calling the so-called incident at the ranches “LaredoGate” on his “Digger’s Realm” blogsite, claiming there was media incompetence and a political cover-up. He offers a variety of theories as to the latter — without a scintilla of proof, of course. His five-part “exclusive” on the supposed ranches takeover is a mix of wild conjecture and complaining about individuals and organizations that have attacked his credibility, including the Southern Poverty Law Center.
For her part, Kimberly Dvorak wrote on her own blog Tuesday that the purported copy of a police blotter “proves that the alleged incident did in fact happen,” when it actually only shows that law enforcement checked into a report of an incident.
“I’ve been trying to appeal to people’s common sense,” Investigator Baeza says. “There would be no reason a cartel would take a stand on rural property.” There are many local and federal law enforcement agencies in the region because of its proximity to the Mexican border, he noted. “There are a million other venues available to [Los Zetas] that are less resistant. They’re not interested in being in your face about it like in Mexico.”
Still, the yarn has appeared on various websites, including that of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations, as well as other anti-immigration forums. Baeza says he even got a phone call from a well-meaning U.S. Marine in Virginia who offered to come to Texas with his buddies to help rid the area of the Mexican gang takeover of ranches.
“It’s beyond tiring,” Baeza says.
What’s more, it may not end any time soon. Now that she claims to have proven there was a scary Mexican invasion, Dvorak is calling on local media to track down the events that followed. This, while complaining in the same blog post of a “media blackout.”
Prime Islam-Basher Pam Geller Outdone by Colleague
01 year ago
by Larry Keller
in Anti-Muslim
As head of New York-based Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA), “Atlas Shrugs” blogger Pamela Geller has certainly gotten her share of publicity, thanks to her inflammatory rhetoric and stunts like wearing a bathing suit four years ago to make a videotaped harangue about Palestinian terrorists.
Geller is a leader in the opposition to the Islamic center and mosque proposed for a site near that of the 9/11 attack in New York. She has said — without any evidence at all to back her up — that funding of the center could be “tied to jihad or terror” and added that building it would be “repugnant,” a “kick in the head” to Americans and equivalent to “stab[bing] Americans in the eye.” In May, she spent $10,000 for anti-Islam ads to be placed for a month on 40 New York City buses. Among other things, the ads directed Muslims to a website urging them to leave the “falsity of Islam.” Not surprisingly, many Muslims were offended.
Nobody on the far right, it seems, has been able to surpass Geller for anti-Obama epithets with a Muslim-bashing twist. She has called the president “a third worlder and a coward” who is anxious to “appease his Islamic overlords.” On another occasion, she wrote that Obama “wants jihad to win.” But now a founding board member of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) — a group founded by Geller, apparently to act as an umbrella for the SIOA she co-founded — is doing his best to be even more vitriolic than her. His rants, coupled with his apparently close relationship to Geller, cast new doubt on Geller’s already extremely doubtful claim to be a reasonable critic of Muslims and Islam generally.
According to the Daily Kos, AFDI board member John Joseph Jay recently has posted a series of truly vicious anti-Muslim rants — apparently without the benefit of a capital letter function on his computer. “if islam kills non-believers as a matter of religious doctrine, then why should muslims expect to be free of retribution in the name of those islam kills?” he wrote. “why should muslims get a free pass? if it is right for muslims to kill non-believers, then why is it no less right for the rest of us to kill muslims?”
In another screed, the Daily Kos said Jay wrote: “there are, friends, no ‘innocent’ muslims. they obey. and they obey the dictates of the koran on jihad. and, they obey the commands of local clerics. in this, they have no choice. because, friends, there is no ‘free will’ in islam, one obeys the dictates of allah.”
Last month, Jay expanded on his advocacy of violence against Muslims to include people in positions of power. He commented on his blog about a magazine article regarding America’s “ruling class” as follows: “friends, if you wish to retain and preserve individual virtue, you are going to have to kill in order to do so. if we are to excise the ruling class, it will be with violence. they used violence to attain their privilege, they use it nakedly in the form of the s.i.e.u. [an apparent reference to the SEIU, the Service Employees International Union] and black panther thugs in elective politics to maintain it, they contemplate relocation camps to preserve it. … buy guns. buy ammo. be jealous of your liberties. and understand, you are going to have to kill folks, your uncles, your sons and daughters, to preserve those liberties.”
Jay, 62, says he lives in a tiny town in northern Oregon, just south of Walla Walla, Wash. He says he was a lawyer in Washington for 25 years, mostly in criminal defense, but also including a stint as a prosecutor that lasted for nearly six years. “you will find out that I am interested in weapons, that I have some proficiency in them, and that I am very jealous of my liberties and will defend them.”
Jay seems to relish the small furor his writings have caused since Daily Kos and then LoonWatch published some of his musings. He claims his critics are pro-abortion, and therefore also violent. “i advocate violence, if necessary, to retain liberty,” he wrote. “they espouse, advocate and support the annual murder of millions as an actual fact, as a matter of social expediency. i speak only the truth. if it is too unpleasant or unpalatable for your consumption, that is your problem and not mine.”
A Kinder, Gentler Lou Dobbs?
01 year ago
by Larry Keller
in anti-immigrant
Ever since he was bounced from his high-profile gig at CNN nearly nine months ago, we have seen a kinder, gentler Lou Dobbs than the commentator who became synonymous with vilifying undocumented immigrants.
The latest from Dobbs came this week, when he told Megyn Kelly at Fox News and George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he disagreed with the growing number of Republican senators calling for amending or repealing the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to babies born in America. Critics complain that illegal immigrants take advantage of the amendment to come to the United States to have “anchor babies” who are eligible for welfare benefits and who are used to eventually get citizenship for their parents. (The key words in the amendment are these: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” Congress adopted the 14th Amendment after the Civil War, in part, to guarantee the citizenship of freed slaves and their descendants.)
“The idea that anchor babies somehow require changing the 14th Amendment, I part ways with the senators on that because I believe the 14th Amendment, particularly in its due process and equal protection clauses, is so important,” Dobbs said on Fox. “It lays the foundation for the entire Bill of Rights being applied to the states.” On ABC, Dobbs said, “It is not in the interest of the American people, in my judgment at least, to roll back the laws … because the result may be inconvenient to some and their political views.”
This is the same Dobbs who often made spurious claims about undocumented immigrants on his CNN program — that there was a surge of leprosy cases likely due to immigrants, that immigrants filled one-third of American prison cells, and so on. Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center and others called for Dobbs’ firing after the CNN host suggested that the president had not proved he was born in the United States. In November, Dobbs left the network at a reported cost to CNN of $8 million to buy out his contract.
Only nine days after that, Dobbs began to sound more conciliatory in his remarks about undocumented immigrants. In an interview he did with the American Spanish-language television network Telemundo, Dobbs said, “We need the ability to legalize illegal immigrants under certain conditions.” He added, “What isn’t working is a penalty to those who are in this country illegally for whom we can both be building a bridge to the future in which there is legalization and at the same time constructing an environment in which everyone is clear and unequivocal about the need for border security and a regulated flow of immigration.”
Those comments enraged one of Dobbs’ most ardent fans, William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC — ALIPAC. He had collected pledges of more than $672,000 from people like himself who hoped Dobbs would run for president in 2012. Saying he was “dismayed, angry, sad” and more, Gheen withdrew ALIPAC’s support for a Dobbs presidency.
Dobbs’ rhetoric has continued to be less inflammatory since then. He has advocated a “rational, humane immigration system” several times on his radio show. He told a caller on April 1: “I’m pro-immigrant. I am for higher levels of immigration, not lower, as long as there’s a public policy reason for it. I’m anti-illegal immigration, but I’m also for rational, effective humane immigration policies.”
The more strident anti-illegal immigrant activists who were once Dobbs’ fans aren’t pleased with comments like those, or his remarks this week regarding the 14th Amendment. “Lou, you are full of something we all find foul!” one wrote on ALIPAC’s website yesterday. “Take a stand and don’t appologize [sic] like so many whimpy [sic] republicans or I assure your children and grand children they will have nothing left to hope for in a few short years.”
Evelyn Schlatter contributed to this post.
Annals of Hypocrisy: ‘Political Cesspool’ and ‘Vulgarity’
01 year ago
When he’s not bemoaning the white man’s plight, “The Political Cesspool” radio host James Edwards often expresses intimate interest on another subject: homosexuals. Like so many who rant about gays, Edwards apparently can’t stop thinking about them. Even when he’s not overtly musing about them, gay double entendres and phrases creep into his writings almost as routinely as racial slurs.
Edwards is best known, of course, for the white nationalist, anti-Semitic views he and his guests express on Memphis-based “Cesspool,” whose statement of principles includes the expected white nationalist pining to revive the white birth rate and to increase the percentage of whites in the world relative to other races, coupled with opposition to feminism, abortion and “primitivism.” But another of Edwards’ founding principles is that he and his show are opposed to “vulgarity” (along with homosexuality, “loveless sex and masochism”).
He has an unusual way of showing that. Consider:
— Last month, the “Cesspool” website carried a story about a black woman running for office in Wisconsin who wanted to declare on the ballot that she is “not the white man’s bitch.” Edwards commented, “There’s no way she could be ‘the white man’s bitch.’ That would be Senator Lindsey Graham.” (In April, William Gheen, who heads Americans for Legal Immigration PAC — ALIPAC — called on Graham to acknowledge he is gay, claiming that Democrats could be using the senator’s supposed sexual orientation to blackmail him into cooperating on immigration reform. Graham later told The New York Times: “I’m sure it’s really gonna upset a lot of gay men — I’m sure hundreds of ’em are gonna be jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge — but I ain’t available. I ain’t gay. Sorry.”)
— After University of Hawaii football coach Greg McMackin apologized for a slur against gays, Edwards wrote, “Greg McMackin. What a faggot.”
— Of MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, Edwards wrote, “Tell me this guy doesn’t take it up the butt.” He went at it again in another screed, writing, “Keith Olbermann must’ve accidentally sat on his butt plug again.” (Olbermann has dated, among other women, conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham.)
— When Russ Weiner, the son of hate radio host Michael Savage (original name Michael Weiner), gave $25,000 to the then-gubernatorial campaign of San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, the liberal Newsom returned the donation. Wrote Edwards: “That’s something you don’t see every day — a man in San Francisco saying no to a Weiner.”
— Commenting on a story that O.J. Simpson and a white supremacist Nevada prison cellmate had befriended one another, Edwards wrote, “Heck, in a few years, the two of them will probably be able to get married.”
— When some leaders in the Tea Party movement said their organizations are not racist despite an NAACP resolution calling on movement leaders to oust racist elements, Edwards wrote that “they predictably went into their usual bend over and grab their ankles mode.”
— In a story headlined “Trouble in Pervtown,” a “Cesspool” writer said the “pervert community … have begun eating their own,” and added, “Well, that’s when the buttplug hit the fan.”
— “Cesspool” headlined an item about openly gay Democratic congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts this way: “A GOP candidate Barney Frank can get behind.”
— Of a white California city councilman who denied he was racist after making a racist statement, Edwards commented, “You may be white, but you’re no man. Men have testicles.” He also complained that Republicans who are accused of racism get “on their knees kissing every non-white ass in the vicinity.”
— Returning to the subject of testicles, Edwards wrote in another commentary that to work for the mainstream media “you’ve got to check your spine, testicles, and self respect at the door as part of the deal.” And in an unrelated witticism, he referred to the political blog site “Little Green Footballs” as “Little Green Testicles.”
So there you have it. James Edwards and “Political Cesspool” — opposed to homosexuality and vulgarity and happily, it seems, immersed in it.
Cult Leader to be Retried on Rape Accomplice Charges
01 year ago
by Larry Keller
in Anti-Black
A proponent of multiple wives, polygamous prophet Warren Jeffs appears destined to have multiple trials. The Utah Supreme Court on Tuesday reversed Jeffs’ two convictions on charges of rape as an accomplice and ordered that he be tried again.
“He was thrilled,” said Jeffs’ attorney, Wally Bugden. “He believed his prayers, and the prayers of many others, have been answered.” Despite a “media lynching,” Bugden added, “he felt the rights of an individual were protected by the Constitution.”
Jeffs is the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), with an estimated 10,000 followers. The sect first split from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — commonly known as the Mormon Church — in 1890 after Mormon officials renounced polygamy under pressure from the U.S. government. The FLDS captured national attention in 2008, when authorities acting on reports of sexual abuse of a minor raided its El Dorado, Texas, compound and placed 219 children and women in protective custody. Jeffs is considered a prophet in the FLDS, which has compounds in several western states, Mexico and Canada.
After spending nearly two years on the run, Jeffs was tried in 2007, convicted and sentenced to two consecutive sentences of five years to life in prison. The charges stemmed from his arranging the marriage of an unwilling 14-year-old girl, Elissa Wall, to her 19-year-old cousin, Allen Steed, in 2001. Wall testified at Jeffs’ trial that she implored him to release her from the marriage. Instead, he instructed her to give herself to Steed “mind, body and soul, and obey him without question,” she said. That action by Jeffs was the source of the second rape as an accomplice count filed against him. The first was alleged to have occurred soon after Wall and Steed were married and first had sex.
It was Jeffs who performed her marriage ceremony to Steed, Wall testified at trial, ordering her to “go forth and replenish the Earth and raise good priesthood children.”
The law under which Jeffs was charged states that the victim must be younger than 18 years, and “the actor” must be in a position of special trust with the victim. Jeffs’ attorney argued on appeal that the jury instruction should have focused on Steed’s “position of special trust” with Wall rather than that of Jeffs.
The Utah Supreme Court agreed. “The state interprets the term ‘actor’ to mean the defendant,” the court opined. “We conclude that the state’s interpretation is erroneous.” The opinion added, “We regret the effect our opinion today may have on the victim of the underlying crime, to whom we do not wish to cause additional pain. However, we must ensure that the laws are applied evenly and appropriately, in this case as in every case.”
Defense attorney Bugden said that prosecutors tried Jeffs on a “far-fetched legal theory” and that “it would be very difficult for them to meet their burden of proof” if there is a retrial. But Jeffs won’t be going anywhere soon. He still faces criminal charges in Texas in connection with his own alleged marriages to underage girls in 2005. The judge has denied him bail in that case, Bugden said. There also remains a federal indictment stemming from his time as a fugitive on the Utah charges.
The Southern Poverty Law Center began listing the FLDS as a hate group in 2005 because of its racist tenets. “The black race is the people through which the devil has always been able to bring evil unto the earth,” Jeffs has preached. As for homosexuality, Jeffs said, “It is like murder. Whenever people commit that sin, then the Lord destroys them.”
Latest Nativist Horror Story: Once More, It’s a Fairy Tale
01 year ago
by Larry Keller
in anti-immigrant
It had the makings of a dramatic story: Members of a Mexican drug cartel on Saturday took control of two ranches in Laredo, Texas, as the ranch owners fled for their lives.
If only it were true.
The tale, reported by Dan Amato, a Pennsylvania anti-immigration blogger, gained traction throughout the blogosphere. Amato, who blogs under the name of Digger, claimed that members of Los Zetas — dangerous Mexican gunmen heavily involved in the international drug trade and other criminal activities — had crossed from Mexico into Texas and taken over the two ranches in the border city of Laredo. “The source is law enforcement in the area,” Amato wrote from his perch some 1,800 miles away.
In truth, Amato’s source was Jeff Schwilk, the bellicose leader of the virulent San Diego Minutemen anti-immigration group, as Amato subsequently revealed. Schwilk’s home base is about 1,300 miles from Laredo. And Schwilk’s source? Another San Diego anti-immigration diehard, Kimberly Dvorak. She wrote on Saturday at Examiner.com that the so-called ranches takeover “could be deemed an act of war against the sovereign borders of the United States.”
No such pronouncements were forthcoming from the White House or the State Department. Perhaps that’s because the Amato-Schwilk-Dvorak troika appears to be trafficking in pure fiction.
At least a few real-life reporters contacted local authorities about the supposed international incident. Haven’t heard a word about it, said the Laredo Police Department. Same here, said the Webb County Sheriff’s Department. Ditto, added the U.S. Border Patrol.
As Amato began fielding skeptical queries later on Saturday, he disclosed that contrary to his moniker of “Digger,” he did no digging at all to determine the veracity of the story. Instead, he relied on second-hand and third-hand information, first from Schwilk, then Dvorak. The latter supposedly “had made multiple confirmations within the Laredo Police Department.” At that point, Amato said, “the story to me … was 100% confirmed.”
Amato had a simple explanation as to why local law enforcement said they knew nothing of the brazen actions by Los Zetas. With the deluge of media phone calls, “there may indeed by (sic) a bona-fide news blackout as they try to resolve the situation,” he wrote. “The story is still developing and I’ll report more as I find out,” the Digger added on Saturday.
Amato did not immediately respond to an email from Hatewatch today asking if he still stands by his story. Apparently, the “story” is still developing.
Felon, Angry at ‘Left-Wing’ Drift, Said to Shoot at Police
01 year ago
by Larry Keller
in Antigovernment
A California felon whose mother said he was disgruntled by “the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items,” was shot several times and arrested after he allegedly began shooting at highway patrol officers who stopped him for a traffic citation.
Byron Williams, 45, of the central California town of Groveland, shot it out for about 15 minutes with California Highway Patrol officers early on Sunday after they stopped him for traffic violations in his Toyota Tundra on an interstate in Oakland, according to authorities.
Williams is a federal parolee who was released from prison two or three years ago after serving time for a California bank robbery in 2002. He also had earlier convictions in Washington state for assault, property destruction, drunken driving and hit-and-run, the San Jose Mercury News reported. The unemployed carpenter was frustrated at his inability to find work, his mother, Janice Williams, told reporters.
“He’s been upset with the direction the country is going,” she told Sacramento’s News10. “He feels the people of this country are being raped by our government and politicians.” She added that her son blamed politicians for destroying the U.S. economy.
As officers approached Williams’ truck, they said he picked up a handgun and began shooting at them. Officers returned fire and radioed for assistance. Ten officers in all fired at Williams, who also had a rifle and a shotgun. He was hit several times but was wearing a bulletproof vest and survived. He was hospitalized in stable condition. A bomb squad also detonated a suspicious object found in Williams’ truck. No officers were shot, but two were treated for injuries from flying glass.
Oakland police are investigating the incident. They have not offered a motive for Williams’ alleged actions, but say they are executing search warrants in other cities and looking for possible accomplices.
Williams’ mother said that, unknown to her, her son took her truck and weapons she had legally bought and kept locked in a safe in her house. She told the San Francisco Chronicle she had the guns because “eventually, I think we’re going to be caught up in a revolution.” She added that she had told her son many times that “he didn’t have to be on the front lines” of that revolution.
The shootout is the second time in four months that a man expressing antigovernment views has opened fired on highway patrol officers. In March, Brody James Whitaker fired shots at two Florida Highway Patrol troopers and was arrested two weeks later in Connecticut. Whitaker claimed he was a “sovereign citizen” — part of the larger antigovernment “Patriot” movement — and therefore not subject to laws in Florida or Connecticut. He has been returned to Florida to face charges there.
Former Wheaties Spokesman Said to Back Racist Party
01 year ago
There was a time when former Olympic athlete Bob Richards seemed the personification of the all-American man: A two-time gold medal winner in the pole vault, he was the first jock to appear on the front of boxes of Wheaties — “the breakfast of champions” — as well as the first spokesman for the cereal.
But for some, Richards is the all-American white gentile man. In a message posted on the website of the white supremacist American Third Position — the A3P — chairman William Daniel Johnson says that he met recently with Richards at the latter’s sprawling ranch west of Dallas. “Bob Richards has joined our cause,” Johnson proclaimed. Hatewatch’s calls to Richards’ ranch yesterday seeking comment were not returned.
That A3P’s cause is to “represent the political interests of White Americans,” according to its mission statement. The California-based organization hopes to unite disaffected racists and field candidates for political offices across the United States.
Whether A3P’s overwhelmingly young male members and sympathizers have even heard of or care about an octogenarian whose popularity waned decades ago remains to be seen.
The A3P became active in January and has recruited some of the leading lights of the contemporary radical right. One of its directors is Kevin MacDonald, a psychology professor at California State University, Long Beach, who has written a trilogy of anti-Semitic books. Another is James Edwards, host of the racist Tennessee radio program, “The Political Cesspool.” As for Johnson, the chairman, he’s a veteran white supremacist who has been cozy with Klansmen and neo-Nazis. The Los Angeles lawyer has advocated stripping the citizenship of and deporting millions of non-whites — indeed, anyone with a “discernible trace of Negro blood” — from America.
That Richards, 84, apparently is sympathetic to the A3P isn’t all that surprising, despite the squeaky clean image he enjoyed as a gold medal athlete (1952 and 1956), Wheaties icon, reverend in the conservative Church of the Brethren and motivational speaker. In 1984, he was the presidential candidate of the newly formed U.S. Populist Party created by Willis Carto, a racist, Holocaust-denying publisher. Richards and his running mate received 66,324 votes out of more than 92 million cast. The Populist Party’s presidential standard-bearer four years later, in 1988, was ex-Klansmen and anti-Semite David Duke; in 1992, it was onetime Green Beret James “Bo” Gritz, an antigovernment zealot who has fretted about gays, feminism and Jews. The Populist Party folded before it could field a candidate for the 1996 election.
Johnson says he wrote to Richards to tell him about the A3P and its plans to make a short video “on the decay of Western Civilization and what can be done to stop this decline.” He asked if Richards would consent to an interview for the video, which he said will be posted on the A3P website and on YouTube. Richards called him, Johnson said, and the men met at Richards’ ranch last Saturday.
Richards and his wife support Johnson’s goal of a pro-white political party, Johnson wrote. Near the end of a three-hour conversation, the men reportedly agreed that they would try to organize a forum at a “pro-free speech university” to be overseen by the League of Women Voters and sponsored by the A3P at which the importance of third political parties would be the topic. Johnson and Richards would speak about the A3P at the forum, Johnson said.
The plan calls for Richards to personally invite “heavy hitters” with third-party ties to the proposed event, including Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, Bill Moyers, Alan Keyes, Colin Powell and Ron Paul. Just one problem, according to Johnson: While Richards “knows the heavy hitters … he does not have regular contact with them, so it will really be a cold call on his part. We must find the contact numbers for them.”
Johnson proposed that the forum be held six months from now. Richards’ response, according to Johnson: “Heck. Our country is dying. Six months is way too long. Let’s do it right away.”
Expanding A3P Absorbs Another Hate Group
01 year ago
The American Third Position (A3P), a fledgling but important Southern California-based white supremacist political party, has expanded its base by merging with another relatively new racist and anti-Semitic organization.
The latter group, the New Jersey-based League of American Patriots (LOAP), was absorbed into the A3P a few days ago and became the Metro New York area chapter of the A3P. LOAP was founded in March 2008 and is headed by a New Jersey attorney, Alexander Carmichael. It is based in Butler, N.J. Members must be heterosexuals “of complete European Christian ancestry.”
The A3P, which has attracted several leading American white supremacists and seems to have been growing steadily, was launched in January of this year “to represent the political interests of White Americans.” Its roots are in Orange and Los Angeles counties. The group’s goal is to eventually garner enough support to run white nationalist candidates for political offices in every state.
The A3P’s chairman also is a lawyer, William Daniel Johnson of Los Angeles. He’s a failed political candidate in three states who once wrote a book advocating that millions of non-whites be deported from the United States. Its first director was Kevin MacDonald, the California State University, Long Beach, psychology professor who is the author of an anti-Semitic trio of books. Other directors include James Edwards, host of the racist radio program, “The Political Cesspool”; Tomislav Sunic, a frequent speaker at racist and anti-Semitic venues; and Don Wassall, the longtime publisher of a monthly white nationalist newspaper.
In its 2½ years, LOAP has distributed racist fliers in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania neighborhoods. One of them beseeched readers to “Stop Minority (Non-White) Crime Now!” Members also dumped anti-Barack Obama fliers in neighborhoods during the 2008 presidential election, with one claiming that “Black Ruled Nations [are the] most unstable and violent in the world.” Other fliers have taken aim at undocumented immigrants, portraying them as criminals who deplete social services.
In March 2009, about 15 LOAP members met in a room they reserved at a branch library in Clifton, N.J., after stating on an application form that they were the “Polish-American Issues Forum.” When five protesters showed up, a brawl ensued, according to the library director. LOAP members also attended Tea Party gatherings in New Jersey and New York last July 4 and handed out fliers reading, “Celebrate Western Heritage.”
In an announcement about the marriage of the two racist groups on its website, the A3P praised LOAP for “the gracefulness by which it presents its message to the American people” and declared the merger “a giant step forward for the A3P.”