Coming eventually: Comcast, race-baiter Tony Zirkle, and campaign ads

WWW--There will be mud, in the face, and in the direction of Zirkle and Comcast.

Why we should be happy that the racists are out of the closet

WWW--There's a theme I keep coming across with some of my compatriots on the progressive left, and I think that it's unnecessary: the fear of traditional American racism coming out of the closet. These people are literally the lunatic fringe now, but they're white and they're loud, if not proud (OK, they're that too, just without any basis). The problem--mainly--is our reaction to them, and reaction in itself is the problem, there's too much of it. We need to be more proactive about these people rather than reactive, and that's not an endorsement of Scientology. That's why I support the legal actions of the SPLC and its director, Morris Dees. His targets seem to understand intuitively, as some of the mentally ill do, that he's got their number and that he's using the proper cure. This provokes very dramatic responses.

Just looking at the words behind the anagram tells you where they're coming from at the SPLC: The Southern Poverty Legal Center. I have had great admiration for Mr. Dees and his work for ages, and the key to his work and that of his great staff has been in tracking these groups and bringing them to the attention of the public while going after the very worst, the most dangerous of them, in the courts rather than in the streets where they're only going to be emboldened by physical attacks. Hate movements thrive on the victim mentality, but we should also remember that these folks are victims in their own right, frequently victims of poverty that breeds this form of mental dysfunction. Dees knows that this isn't simply a Southern problem, but an American one, and while it is a bit alarming that these groups have grown in numbers since the election of a black president, it's also a reason to be thankful for the fact that we have one. They're out of hiding and easy targets again, just as they became so in the 1960s. They were always out there, their number haven't really grown.

The Civil Rights movement of that decade (really beginning in the mid-1950s and cresting roughly ten years later) brought the flat-heads out of the woodwork. The ranks of the KKK swelled as they had with the great influx of European immigration during the 1920s and "White Citizens Council" offices sprang-up everywhere...and they lost, badly, to the civil rights workers and activists because history and moral authority weren't on their side. Crucially, the federal government was pressured into action and the FBI unwillingly had to conduct a barely submerged war on the Klan and other hate groups. Indeed, non-violence proved to be a vital tactic, but so too did African-American groups like the Deacons for Justice and the original Black Panthers in the South with their militancy and their rifle clubs, meant to protect black communities from terror tactics. But the real fight was won in the legislative arena and the courts and the laws are still on the books to this day and aren't likely to be rolled-back anytime soon. That's not to say we shouldn't be vigilant, however.

In the 1990s, the late Stokely Carmichael, one of the founders of SNCC and one of the central players in the rise of black nationalism said that the problem had become deeper, that racism had "gone into hiding" and was therefore harder to combat, and he was right. Racism became institutionalized and very much a phantasm, a free-floating force that was almost impossible to pinpoint, let alone to fight with traditional methods. That has changed now that the loons have come out of the woodwork and are now shooting their mouths off, not to mention committing some very heinous acts of violence again. But that's what people do when they're desperate and feel they have no other options. They'd better enjoy the fun while it lasts, because it's not going to for very long.

In other words, they feel very threatened in their racist beliefs and identities, and that's a good thing since those culturally pathogenic personalities can ultimately be isolated and marginalized out of existence. These small, reactive faux-personalities--once again--intuit this and that's when the fear comes, when the ego externalizes its innermost and darkest tendencies. The shadow side externalizing itself can be dealt with by civil society more easily. Now they're visible targets, even their goons they've embedded within the military. But we tend to take these revelations the wrong way, we react, and we become part of the fear. This is a mistake. We know who they are now, we have their number, and it's time to go round-'em-up when they misbehave. We can also make sure that they never come into being by fighting for social and economic justice. Poverty is a breeding ground for this kind of faux-personality.

A recent cross-burning in my community has had some alarmed, but I'm not especially worried. As much as I have a problem with the FBI on other issues, they're good at criminal investigations like this and they're likely to find out who was behind it. When-and-if they do, the perpetrators are going to be dragged into court and could face real jail time if not civil penalties, meaning heavy fines that have shut them down in the past. We should also keep in mind that not all rabid racists are poor and that this is a pathogenic cultural stream predicated on keeping things as they've been in America since the beginning: oligarchical and unequal. The name Tony Zirkle should come as a good example of the privileged racist flake.

Economic elites must become racists by-definition in order to hold onto that power, something that they're more-than-willing to do. The reality is that they're more frightened of the rest of us, these groups, and while it makes them dangerous, they're still marginal. Nonetheless, vigilance and awareness is the key, and now we have the added advantage of visible targets.

GOP Sen. Vitter ups to keep Bernanke from reconfirmation at the Fed

Washington D.C.--Hey, he had to do something to show he was worth more than a squirt-of-piss what with a dead prostitute chained to his leg for the rest of his life. Oh yeah, and the fact that he votes against the interests of the people of his state and the nation, that too...

It's not going to help him. You're no Bernie Sanders, Senator Vitter, you're closer to D.C. Stephenson. You and your lawyers tipped-the-balance in threatening a disturbed woman with legal expenses and she killed herself. "Asshole" doesn't even begin to describe what you are, and we're coming for you.

"The Underground Railroad never happened."

Michiana--Of course it did, and it was more widespread than bigots and racists here in Northern Indiana would care to admit.

Whether the local Klaverns around here or foaming-at-the-mouth racists like attorney Tony Zirkle want to admit it or not, a lot of people around here were involved in the hiding and ferrying of runaway slaves into Canada and other "free" states that wouldn't cooperate with slave hunters in returning the "property" of slaverholders in the American South and the border states.

My own father--not exactly someone I'd ever refer to as racially progressive in any sense--even had to admit this to me. During the 1970s, he did a lot of work on construction sites throughout Michiana as a civil engineer (the area I live in was once part of Michigan, and the borders might be contested again soon, another story for another time...) and he and his coworkers found several sites that were part of it, even tunnels that weren't on any map, completely unknown until their discovery by the construction crews.

But besides being a nexus for the Underground Railroad, Michiana has also been yet another place where local folklore once flourished. In 2005, folklorist Carl Lindahl visited the Suggs house and Underground Railroad museum, still run by the family of the same name up in Vandalia, Michigan, right outside of the city of Niles.

Lindahl's article is about a collection that was released at the time, but his observations about the Suggs patriarch J.D. Suggs and the legacy of certain folklore collectors from the last century are interesting ones:

Much more commonly, however, I emerged from the listening experience with enhanced respect for the collectors and for the positive bonds they had forged with the storytellers. Perhaps the most pleasant surprise of this sort was Richard Dorson. Dorson has been roundly (and rightly) taken to task for many of his statements about the nature of African American narrative, especially his contention that it was a “borrowed” tradition —adapted from European sources rather than being “truly” African American. Such theoretical positions have long been discredited, but they have influenced many folklorists, including myself, to belittle Dorson’s work with African American narrators and narratives. So I was astonished to find that the children of Dorson’s favorite African American storyteller, J.D. Suggs, not only remembered Dorson, but cherished their memories of him. Their father had had a vision of “black and white coming together”—and the Suggs children have interpreted that vision in terms of Suggs “coming together” with Dorson. When I drove up to the J.D. Suggs Underground Railroad Museum and Historical Site in Vandalia, Michigan, I was stunned to find two metal silhouettes —one of Dorson, painted white, and one of Suggs, painted black—facing each other. The silhouettes were fashioned on the model of a photo of Dorson and Suggs that Suggs had carried with him until the day he died. In August 2004, shortly after American Folktales had been released, I attended the J.D. Suggs Freedom Festival at the museum and emerged from my car to find the Suggs family gathered in a circle around the metal cutouts of Suggs and Dorson.
The recordings of Suggs and Dorson reveal a strong mutual affection based on the two men’s common love of story. These and similar recordings from other storyteller- collector teams underline the importance and redeeming quality of fieldwork. We may get it wrong theoretically, our scholarship may sometimes seriously misrepresent our “informants,” but as long as we can record their remarkable performances and deal with them personally, in an atmosphere of mutual respect, we have done something remarkably right. The recorded performances will survive our misperceptions and, through such archives as the AFC, be available for their grandchildren and ours. We justify our existence by prolonging that of the storytellers.
The Archive of Folk Culture is in many ways America’s folkloric memory. There is no substitute for the wealth of oral art and wisdom to be found there. (Lindahl, Carl. "The Making of American Folktales," Folklife Center News, Winter/Spring 2005, Volume XXVII, Numbers 1-2)

God love the common man, the only conscience America's ever had or ever will have, because it's not going to come from above. The Suggs House Freedom Festival is being held today and tomorrow in Vandalia, Michigan. Its main-thrust is racial unity between African-Americans and Euro-Americans and a reminder that the nation most of us has always wanted has always been there, right under our eyes all along, if only we heed the call. Most of us already have in our hearts and minds, the real battleground.

Listing of local events that include the Suggs Freedom Festival (Aug. 8-9): http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090705/INTHEBEND/305029998/1044/Ent

Lindahl, Carl. "The Making of American Folktales," Folklife Center News, Winter/Spring 2005, Volume XXVII, Numbers 1-2: http://www.loc.gov/folklife/news/news-text-winter-spring2005.html

On Alex Jones, the Philadelphia shooter, and the red-headed step-children of the left

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania--It would be unfair to lay all of the blame for the shooting rampage of Richard Andrew Poplawski in Philadelphia this week on Alex Jones (or even Glen Beck) alone, but he and the rest of the reactionary right noise machine own a good chunk of it. It's not begging the question since the unbalanced and ignorant spree killer was an avid reader and consumer of such extremist dreck.

This wasn't about someone "getting into it" with their family over a dog urinating on a rug, it was about a sick young man with a small mind who found inspiration from right-wing demagogues, some of whom erroneously get lumped-into being part of the progressive and populist left. But Poplawski wasn't part of that political stream and had direct connections with the white supremacist "Stormfront" white supremacist group and was an avid reader of Alex Jones, among others on the rightist fringe.

While it's true that Poplawski was influenced by various texts, Jones figures highly in the story, and the role of anti-government conspiracy theories play a significant part of what led an ignorant and antisocial personality to focused and violent action.

“He was really into politics and really into the First and Second amendment. One thing he feared was he feared the gun ban because he thought that was going to take away peoples’ right to defend themselves. He never spoke of going out to murder or to kill,” said Edward Perkovic, who described himself as Mr. Poplawski’s lifelong best friend.
Mr. Poplawski’s view of guns and personal freedom took a turn toward the fringes of American politics. With Mr. Perkovic, he appeared to share a belief that the government was controlled from unseen forces, that troops were being shipped home from the Mideast to police the citizenry here, and that Jews secretly ran the country.
Believing most media were covering up important events, Mr. Poplawski turned to a far-right conspiracy Web site run by Alex Jones, a self-described documentarian with roots going back to the extremist militia movement of the early 1990s. ("Suspect in officers' shooting was into conspiracy theories," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 04.05.2009)

Thanks Texas, keep on delivering, we might just let you secede. Poplawski didn't need to "speak" about murdering or killing, as actions speak louder than words, but it's obvious that Perkovic is the same kind of flat-head, and might not be the only questionable acquaintance of the shooter.

With Poplawski gone, Perkovic himself deserves closer scrutiny. Yeah, sure, Poplawski was "into politics" alright--extremist parapolitics--which is speculative-at-best and has no academic endorsements for all the right reasons. One of the key ingredients in Poplawski's rampage was the conspiricism of the fringe right, coming directly from demagogues like Alex Jones, but also "mainstreamed" ones like Glen Beck (public opinion polls aren't reflective of the Fox News agenda). Three policemen might be alive today otherwise. Unfortunately, it's unlikely that any of this will dissuade Jones's followers since they're resistant to reason (but not Reason magazine), or any of the gun-toting nuts out there who are going to react similarly in the intervening months. Oddly, none of this is mainstream thinking, yet there it is, right out in the open.

But Alex Jones often gets a free-pass from some on the left (our red-headed step-children--put down the pipe), and he shouldn't since he was once affiliated with the far-right militia movement and his associations with people you wouldn't want over for dinner, ever. Who are they? Who is Alex Jones...really? To know someone, you need to look at their friends and their allies and how closely their public statements and views correspond.

As recently as March 24th, 2009, Jones was featured on a Fox News panel with Judge Andrew Napolitano, Ron Paul, and Lew Rockwell. (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/33154_Video-_Napolitano_with_Alex_Jones_Ron_Paul_Lew_Rockwell_Etc) Who is Judge Napolitano? He's a former federal prosecutor and mid-level state judge from New Jersey, avowed Libertarian, and nowadays--don't laugh--a Fox News commentator. He's also an alumni of Princeton's and Notre Dame's Law Schools, and was a "television judge" for a time on "Power of Attorney." While Napolitano is rumored to have connections of his own to white hate groups (probably through Ron Paul), he definitely has admirers in their ranks, evidence of which can be found on forums of the Aryan Front and others.

Presidental candidate Ron Paul? We know about him, and like Alex Jones, he's getting a free pass from the gullible on the left (and right, for other reasons) because he's come out against the war in Iraq and sounds vaguely populist and progressive. That's because he's smarter than the people he's been swaying since his first Libertarian candidacy for president in 1988. His views have changed little since that time and they are extremist in a profound sense. But Paul and his associates know how to repackage themselves as "populists" and how to appear "progressive" and "left," which is scary. They need to--again, the majority doesn't agree their core-beliefs. The same goes for so-called "mainstream"--an oxymoron if there ever was one--Libertarians, a group that needs to seriously reassess their party and the rest of its membership.

From the late Molly Ivins:

Dallas' 5th District, East Texas' 2nd District and the amazing 14th District, which runs all over everywhere, are also in play. In the amazing 14th, Democrat Lefty Morris (his slogan is "Lefty is Right!") faces the Republican/Libertarian Ron Paul, who is himself so far right that he's sometimes left, as happens with your Libertarians. I think my favorite issue here is Paul's 1993 newsletter advising "Frightened Americans" on how to get their money out of the country. He advised that Peruvian citizenship could be purchased for a mere 25 grand. That we should all become Peruvians is one of the more innovative suggestions of this festive campaign season. But what will the Peruvians think of it? ("Molly Ivins October 10," Forth Worth Star-Telegram, 10.10.1996)

In short, Paul is recommending that well-off Americans at that time engage in capital flight, which is hardly a "left" position, but parallel with that of the mainstream Republican Party as well as extremist tax resisters and Wall Street. It's certain that he feels the same now, and that's not a populist argument by any stretch--it favors the rich--the people we can presume he really serves. But this is really going easy on Ron Paul, so we'll get to the "meat."

There have been many accusations over the years levelled at Paul that he's a white supremacist. Some of this comes from his own connection with the militia movement, one he shares with Alex Jones and many other allies of the Austin-based parapolitical demagogue. But Paul's grandstanding on these issues begs-the-question of whether it even matters whether he believes what he says.

It doesn't matter, but Paul shows all the tendencies of the immovable American crank and the racialist throwback, as found in his open opposition to the Emancipation Proclamation, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and much-much more in the racial arena. He appears to be a true believer of the extreme right, a curious physician.

Paul's connections to the South Carolina-based "Partiot Network," also an organ of the right-wing tax resistance movement, but really a conglomeration of anti-government gun-toting extremists with connections to the Christian Identity movement. Former KKK leader David Duke, has spoken and written kindly of Ron Paul (posts have been removed since the summer of 2007, and no comments on Paul can now be found on his site, but it's likely that captures are out there), and Paul has spoken of cross burnings in Texas (and the rest of the nation) as "protected speech." That's not reflective of the law in most parts of America, and certainly not the attitudes of the public.

And then there's the fact that GOP Representative Paul was the lone "nay" vote recognizing the 40th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, an act that not only proscribed integration of American educational institutions (and several other types), but in the workplace and in "public places."The bill itself also includes provisions that also protect white Americans, specifically regarding the protection of the rights of women generally.

Paul just knows full well that African-Americans would never vote for him so long as they were in their right mind, not a worrying issue for his core of virtually all-white, extremist, supporters. But Paul's not talking to Blacks--obviously--but to people who irrationally fear and loathe them and anyone not like themselves:

Last week, Congress hailed the 40th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The heroic Ron Paul was the only member of Congress to vote No. Here is his statement. ~ Ed.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to explain my objection to H.Res. 676. I certainly join my colleagues in urging Americans to celebrate the progress this country has made in race relations. However, contrary to the claims of the supporters of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the sponsors of H.Res. 676, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not improve race relations or enhance freedom. Instead, the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave the federal government unprecedented power over the hiring, employee relations, and customer service practices of every business in the country. The result was a massive violation of the rights of private property and contract, which are the bedrocks of free society. The federal government has no legitimate authority to infringe on the rights of private property owners to use their property as they please and to form (or not form) contracts with terms mutually agreeable to all parties. The rights of all private property owners, even those whose actions decent people find abhorrent, must be respected if we are to maintain a free society. ("The Trouble With Forced Integration," by Ron Paul, M.D., lewrockwell.com, 07.03.2004)

These were Paul's groan-inducing statements on the floor of the House back in the salad days of the Bush II administration, when it still appeared that there could never be an African-American president. There was no other reason to do this except to pander to the racialist right. Things change in the modern world, and rapidly.

Yet, the historical record doesn't jibe with these revisionist interpretations of American history, especially with Paul's loss to every single candidate in the 2008 presidential elections, the opinions of the American public gleaned through numerous opinion polls, the stunning victory and broad mandate of Barack Obama, and the fact that Black Americans gained the right to vote from federal civil rights legislation under necessary federal protection from some of the grandparents of Paul's ridiculous supporters. We won't even go into his and their views on the American Civil War, evolution, the separation of Church and State, and so on--it ain't pretty.

But it's not as if the GOP weren't working overtime from at least 2000-on (with several lame attempts dating back between 1958-to-1981) to scuttle the voting rights of African-Americans in several key states, states populated with people whose views are similar to the "Paul" strain. Paul's viewpoint on cross burning isn't just mistaken, it's patently racist and not supported by the law as protected speech, but really a historically-proven invitation to violence meant to instill terror--everyone knows in America that burning a cross on any property is meant to intimidate its prospective victims; it's symbolic violence in its purest form.

This kind of intentional instilling of fear in a targeted population is as close to terrorism as one can get, but Ron Paul supports it, and a lot of other things that the American public doesn't accept anymore. Because of this, he and his kind have to couch their extremist beliefs in the garb of progressive populism, but it's anything but that and his coalition bears a closer resemblance to South American paramilitary groups, lynch mobs, and international neo-Nazis with a sprinkling of the gullible. Who else figures-in the constellation?

Lew Rockwell, Libertarian speaker, and all-around nutcase who worked as Paul's congressional chief of staff from 1978-1982. He and Paul both advocate secession and question the validity of a "cohesive" America as a nation state, which is decidedly extremist and runs parallel with numerous right-wing groups, notably the militia groups that Paul is associated with. Libertarian "Reason" magazine (my pals, they quoted me once--I logically fired-back abuse) has claimed that Rockwell has ghostwritten for Paul in the past.

Rockwell's support of the militia movement is still going strong, as evinced by a series on "militia organizing" by the nutcase William S. Lind, ostensibly the "director" of "The Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation," posted on Rockwell's site (where else? Ron Paul-connected sites and Fox News, disclaimers to the contrary.):

We tried in our discussions to identify and find remedies to typical militia weaknesses. One weakness seen often in militia history is that units degenerate into mere social clubs. To prevent this, all companies would participate in annual play-offs in the form of free-play exercises against other companies. The winner would advance to the next level. Our hope is that these competitions would become big deals in communities across America, spurring the militiamen on to greater efforts.

Another typical militia weakness is doctrinal stagnation. To counter this, the militia would have its own General Staff, made up of the kind of "military dinks" who have been into military history and war games since they were kids. The General Staff would oversee doctrine, training and the regular round of free-play exercises. It would not vet individual militia members, since this would create centralization, but it would have the power to dissolve companies that performed poorly, became social clubs or got taken over by MS-13 and the like. ("Organizing the Militia, by William S. Lind," lewrockwell.com, 08.11.2005)

That's great, but what would that doctrine be, and where does the urgency to organize militias emanate from? The notion that the federal government is nothing but "evil," "the problem" (a conservative argument, not a genuinely leftist or progressive or populist one), and will eventually have to be met with force, is held by Jones and many of the individuals he not only associates with, but openly allies himself with. It goes without saying that there are legitimate concerns regarding government surveillance--most notably after 9/11, but an ongoing problem from the 20th century that has had ample conservative support--and it gives demagogues like Jones and his compatriots plenty to yell about.

That their own peculiar take is calculated and wrong is a given, hence the need to make them sound vaguely populist so that their far-right extremist agenda is more palatable.

Alex Jones's public pronouncements concur with this agenda, and as stated earlier in this piece, he has roots going back to the militia movement in the early-1990s. It's all about the "New World Order," and other paper tiger arguments that have very little basis in political, let alone human, reality. But there's just enough there for them to exploit, and exploit it they do which is what makes them all demagogues. The biggest part of the problem is that ignorant progressives and antiwar activists have been falling for it and still are. This is because they're as ignorant as Poplawski and probably harbor arch-conservative attitudes of their own.

This writer makes no bones about it: I hope that this Philadelphia shooting spree brings real enforcement of existing gun laws and an expansion of them as well as downing demagogues like Alex Jones, Ron Paul, Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Lew Rockwell, and all the rest. With self-fulfilling actions like those of Poplawski this week, and the gun problem along the Mexican-American border, it appears inevitable.

There's another fact about Alex Jones, Ron Paul, and Stormfront in the story of Richard Andrew Poplawski: contrary to Jones's protestations that he isn't with them, many of them come very close to endorsing him on their website. This suggest a strong ideological connection, if not outright pandering. In the case of Ron Paul, they endorse him unequivocally. But if you really want evidence that Alex Jones and his compatriots are right-wing nuts and demagogues, just read their writings and watch and listen to their media appearances. But what is Jones saying about Pittsburgh? It appears that he's saying and writing nothing so far.

But Jones wasn't going to respond to the criticisms himself, so he tapped his hack writer, Kurt Nimmo, to do it:

...In the meantime, we can expect the Obama libs [Ed.--I voted Nader, thank you very much.] to continue their demonization of those of us who not only value and support the Second Amendment – the very cornerstone of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights – but also those of us who realize government invariably plots against liberty and eventually enslaves the masses, as a glance at the last century reveals. ... It should be expected that the government will exploit the recent shootings in order further their propaganda and realize their master plan of an unarmed and helpless populace. It really is sad the liberals are helping them in this effort by offering themselves up as useful idiots. ("Lib Blogs Kick into Frothing Overdrive in Reaction to Pittsburgh Shootings, inforwars.com, 04.04.2009)

That's funny, I'm a philosophical socialist who voted for Ralph Nader in the 2008 presidential elections, but does that matter when you're trying to discredit your critics? It does. Nimmo and Jones like accusing their adversaries of using "Stalinist tactics," yet there isn't one mention of the fact that Poplawski was an enthusiastic reader of Jones's site anywhere in his meandering article that must be read to be believed for its acrobatics and wild leaps of logic. What do you expect in the world of the paranoiac, the demagogue? Stalin would be proud.

Additionally,Nimmo creates a straw man argument that Poplawski's comments on the Obama administration came from Edward Perkovic, when the information really came from an acquaintance named Aaron Vire. Poplawski's neighbor, Tom Moffitt, has also stated that the young man expressed comments along the same lines as the accounts of Perkovic and Vire. That's three testimonies thus far that Poplawski was afraid his guns were going to be taken from him, specifically by the Obama administratoion, with more to come.

The title of the Nimmo article should tell you all you need to know about Alex Jones and the people he calls "friend," and that these people really are dangerous to the rest of us--not that the cops appear to care since many of them share the same extremist interpretations of the Second amdendment. But somehow, they're "victims," they'll tell you...again and again, and again. Incredibly, Nimmo makes a case for government-backing of the very kinds of groups that he and his boss are ideologically-aligned with. Far be it for the radical right not to claim they're "victims" when they clearly are not. They've been in the vanguard of state repression for a very long time, and they know it.

That anyone on the left would listen to them speaks volumes about the individuals who even begin to listen to them for a minute.

To say that they're arch-conservative and not genuinely progressive, populist, or "left" should be obvious, but they suffer from the same complex as a Richard Poplawski: just enough knowledge to be a problem, a serious pain-in-the-ass. Poplawski's killing of the four Pittsburgh police officers is being called an "ambush." That it was, and with the echo chamber emanating from Jones's site and Fox News, he had ample ammunition to justify his own actions in his own small and twisted mind.

Fascism tends to come from below, not above. Welcome to stutopia. Now open a history book, stop listening to lunatics, and get a clue.

"Lib Blogs Kick into Frothing Overdrive in Reaction to Pittsburgh Shootings, inforwars.com, 04.04.2009: http://www.infowars.com/lib-blogs-kick-into-frothing-overdrive-in-reaction-to-pittsburgh-shootings/

"Stormfront Radio supports Ron Paul, Youtube, 09.17.2007:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yafeVz8eP0U

"Organizing the Militia, by William S. Lind," lewrockwell.com, 08.11.2005: http://www.lewrockwell.com/lind/lind72.html

"The Trouble With Forced Integration, by Ron Paul, M.D.," lewrockwell.com, 07.03.2004: http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul188.html

"Molly Ivins October 10," Forth Worth Star-Telegram, 10.10.1996: http://www.creators.com/opinion/molly-ivins/molly-ivins-october-10-1996-10-10.html

"Suspect in officers' shooting was into conspiracy theories," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 04.05.2009: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09095/960750-53.stm

A'murka

Why would anyone want to assassinate Barack Obama?

Washington D.C.--I so want to like this man, I really do. The idea of a Black American president is something that just seemed impossible in my lifetime, and I'm at least glad for that part of his successful election into office.

Richard Pryor used to joke that the first Black president would be dead very quickly, and similar talk is going on right now. Certainly, there are some reasons to be concerned, but it's already a given that the Secret Service is going to be augmented for him, and plots have been uncovered before they could get anywhere.

The rapidly vanishing OpEd News has had a poll conducted on the likelihood of an assassination attempt on President-elect Barack Obama--and granted that any asshole can post their pusgutted blatherskiting rumors there--but it really should be removed as inappropriate.

The notion of there being any real attempt on the President-elect isn't even very realistic.

"But Matt," you're saying, "Alex Jones and Naomi Klein have told me there's a lot of talk about it out there in the public. Why couldn't it be some wacky Ku Klux Klan members or some kind of extremists from a white hate group?" The most obvious problem with this logic is that the vast majority of these people are more of a threat to themselves than anyone else.

"But Matt, it would only take one person to pull-it-off."

This isn't Serbia, 1914. This kind of logic assumes that any of them would even make it past the planning stage without being caught, yet we have examples from the national elections already that show the Secret Service is getting very proactive in their defense of the President-elect, which is appropriate in a democracy with a history of violence like our own. It would take a lot of people to pull-off something as daring as that, and the assassins would probably have to be willing to die in-the-process of completing their objective.

This narrows the playing field considerably, and the chances of success start becoming virtually nil. Again, security is going to be considerably augmented with a Black president in office--it's a given--and again, most of these white hate members are screw-ups and methamphetamine addicts, people who are generally powerless and do a lot of very loud and stupid talking when they're high or drunk. If many of them get-up before 1 PM every day, it's a minor miracle.

Sure-sure, there's going to be some "rogue" element of white supremacists who've infiltrated the Special Forces, the Navy Seals, or some other branch or section of the military or government, but they're not going to get very far or close either. It's not as if this is news, let alone a good tactic on anyone's part, and it's not as if the government bureaucracy hasn't take it into account and acted on it proactively, shutting it down. Someone's always watching for these things, it's what Military Intelligence and Counterintelligence is for. None of this matters.

There are some very simple and obvious reasons why the President-elect will never even get close to being endangered: Barack Obama is part of the establishment and isn't challenging the system in any fundamental way, and isn't likely to ever do so. He's not a Malcolm X, he's not a Frederick Douglass, he's not a Nat Turner (thank God!), he's not a Stokely Carmichael or a Assata Shakur or even a Medgar Evers. He's not a Fred Hampton anymore than he's a Thomas Paine, and he's certainly not Jesus, as he's said on a few occasions himself.

No, if anything, Barack Obama is extremely conservative in the sense that he wants to preserve American dominance and power throughout the world. Besides someone from the Middle East, why the hell would anyone in America want to kill him? Yet, the talk continues, the fear that "some nut's going to shoot him, you watch." Watch all you want--it isn't going to happen, mark my word.

Dynamic Black men in America are murdered when they confront the system directly and effectively, with sincerity. That's not ever going to happen under Barack Obama, the public will have to carry that load, and carry it we will when the shit hits, there won't be any choice. Obama's wisdom will be in getting out of the way. If that's what all these people mean, then they might be right, but we're talking about unknowns, hypotheticals, and those don't count.

But everyone's forgetting something important--the FISA revision legislation that Obama voted for, a power he'll wield as president allowing him to authorize widespread domestic surveillance of American citizens if he wants to. Frankly, the rednecks planning to do anything to him had better reconsider. They're the ones who should be watching their asses. Enough talk about assassination, we have a country to fix. If President-elect Barack Obama wants to be another FDR, it's up to him.

They're Running the Protect America Act Ads in Heavy-Rotation in Indiana

South Bend, Indiana--Lots-o'-goobers here, the slack-jawed, drooling, yammerin' kind, that's why. How much you want to bet that the shadowy group running it to pressure Rep. Joe Donnelly to vote for the retroactive immunity version are being funded with Defense Department funds illegally? Being very wishy-washy, dumbo Joe might actually cave-in, hence the other reason they're running it here. Sorry, the threat is being exaggerated, but we're used to that since the president and the GOP tried to cry wolf every time they were in-trouble...just like now.

Hoosiers: they spook easily like most "oogah-boogah" people descended from lynch mobs, but that doesn't mean everyone here was raised by a wild-pack of baptists...

One would think the primaries are already here, but these silly-ass ads are all about making sure there are no real revelations about the crimes of the White House, Congress, and the telecoms, and how much they spied on all of us illegally. They knew it was illegal, and they're lying that we need this stupid legislation with its retroactive immunity amendments for the telecommunications companies--they are unrelated issues. Get a warrant, it's that simple. If it isn't, resign from office.

We might even be able to add a new crime into our lexicon: white collar crime, committed under the color of government authority using data-mining techniques which are also illegal. Why are some Americans so chicken-shit? Come visit Indiana sometime, and you'll find out: poor education, willful ignorance, lazy conformity, religious fanaticism, and your basic poverty and lack of culture. The usual.

Michiana/Indiana's 2nd District: This area is a mixed-bag, and if I was to say the group of people that I like the most here, it would be the Black people. There are also a few good-ol'-boys who live around here who have hearts of gold, they're very tolerant of differences in others. There are farmers around here who really are wonderful people. The Catholic community here is the mixed-bag, because--with the obvious exceptions--they're not especially tolerant, and frequently very well-off.

Employers around here aren't any better or worse than anywhere else in America--take from that what you will. Wanton, senseless bigotry is prevalent, in a town where Notre Dame students rioted against the Klan around eighty-years-ago. This was once a stop-over on the underground railroad. My father discovered a system of tunnels on construction site dig once that was part of that network. Indiana is a mixed-bag.

Ed.-The shadowy group that ran the ads are called "The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies," of which Joe Lieberman is a founder. Newt Gingrich is alleged to be a founder as well. Their site is cagey on these matters: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/about_FDD/about_FDD_list.htm?attrib_id=7615

English Accents and American Advertising

"Well, you speak better English than I do."--Byron de la Beckwith, deceased convicted murderer of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, from the HBO/BBC documentary 'Southern Justice: The Murder of Medgar Evers,' 1994 . Beckwith was convicted the same year of the broadcast of the documentary of Evers' murder. He mercifully croaked in 2001.

USAHHHHHHH, Fuck It...--Say what you will, but for a developed nation, we're the red-headed stepchild of the Western world. We've always been a dowdy, poorly-dressed lot of malcontents, but it's getting embarrassing. Compared to the average slob in most other 'modern' nations, we're incredibly fucking stupid and boorish.

Thanks to our lousy miseducational system and corporate owned mainstream media, many Americans have an pathetically low vocabulary and are not very well-spoken. Nonetheless, it's the fault of the individual, and it takes two to tango.

You have to have someone willing to be a poverty beforehand. But just look at interviews with average individuals in the U.K.--the differences are stunning, we sound like the cavemen that many around the world (rightly) think we are. Ignorance is hip, sounding 'smart' is out, and it's well known we're a decidedly anti-intellectual anti-culture. Enter the usage of voice-talent from the U.K. .

If you even watch television casually in the United States, it's inescapable that you'll see and/or hear an actor or actress from Great Britain doing the voice-over for any number of ads. Why? Because of the aforementioned: their voices sound 'authoritative,' while ours...like apes. Watch a young American woman speak: it's like seeing a baboon's ass pulsating from being in heat, which is pretty nauseating, I can tell you. Cockney flower girls in Victorian England were more well-spoken, while most of us are simply ignorant bores (well, not me...).

It's not just the American South either, it's everywhere in this country. This is about rednecks entirely, or even about machismo--it's about willful ignorance and mental laziness. There's no excuse for it in the modern world, none whatsoever. But it's not just about inherent intelligence--it's an attitude that being and sounding smart is somehow threatening. Well, yes, if one is stupid and lazy, and materialistic. Some of us never needed to be corrupted by the outlying society, we already were that way.

As a result of how incredibly stupid we are as a culture, we get the vocal-talents from another English-speaking country because they sound smarter than most of us, so therefore, they must know better (my targets cannot read this article--isn't this thrilling?!!). The most glaring example are these retarded ads on gold investments with the British woman (who could be an Aussie or a New Zealander, but I detect a British accent here).

The ad is definitely aimed at the perpetually frightened elderly reactionary who has some money to be deprived-of by the company paying for the advertisements. Or there's the one with the silly poof in the pond with the laptop, showing us how wireless works. Great. Recently, a LOCAL ad attacking a Republican mayor in Michiana had an English woman's voice-over. Bully for you. Face it: an English schoolgirl sounds more authoritative than the voice of most American politicians.

When will it end? When we (mainly you) aren't so fucking stupid. Probably when all of us are dead and buried. The very little kids will wisely grow-up and reject our ways...at least, that's my hope. As the "greatest generation that ever lived" croaks-off, we're going to see some very rapid change. We already are. It will become even more rapid with the baby boomers--particularly the male demographic in America--since they were a larger generation.

Whoever said mortality was a bad thing was assuredly wrong, it's natural and (thankfully) inevitable. I'm looking forward to my well earned rest, you can take immortality and shove it. Would you want George W. Bush to live forever? Would you want to be around all these pseudo-Christians forever? Right, you're nuts, but I'll welcome oblivion when I'm at its door (Never Mind the Bollocks).

My Mother's Father (1922-2003) Part I

My grandfather was such a good man, but he was troubled by the world that he lived through. He never found a good way to express this until the very end of his life, which I find sad. His was a life that is no more and an America that is long-gone.

In many respects, this is a good thing, but it's impossible to say that I don't miss him or the generation he was a part of, now receding into the twilight. I won't say that my grandfather's generation was the " greatest [American] generation"--it wasn't. Most of the racists who beat civil rights activists, and even murdered them, were of the WWII generation. They were as wrong as one can be, but they weren't the whole story.

There were and are many shades of racism, and it's a part of our basic anthropology, almost innate to us. This isn't to say that people cannot overcome it, but it's a tendency within all of us as human beings. I think of racism as the greatest tragedy of the human experience. Were it not for the fact that I was shunted into the worst classes with the Black kids, I might not understand this. I understand discrimination well, and Black Americans have my admiration and empathy for the crap they have to put-up-with. I hate most White Americans myself, they're generally pigs. That said, it doesn't excuse reverse-discrimination or a racist response.

My grandfather was bigoted to-a-point, and I lament this fact, but he still saw Black Americans (and other so-called minorities) as people. God, the times he would bait me with racial-comments--he was a teaser, he loved to pick. But he didn't hate Black people, and he was a friendly man for the most part. He worked with them at his factory job at a ball-bearing plant (Torrington) for decades and had a few Black acquaintances. For someone like Rollie, this was a very big step indeed.

His job was building the equipment and tools for the machinists, and he did it for about twenty years. Before that, he and my grandmother worked in other factories and munitions-plants like many in their generation. Interestingly, he was discriminated against at his job for a variety-of-reasons (some due to his personality!). South Bend is a town that is almost predominantly Polish and Hungarian, with the rest falling-off from there. However, with the influx of Hispanics, it's changing rapidly as it is in many places in the United States. Most of these ethnic groups had (and have) one thing in-common: Catholicism, and the cold, cruel, Old world exclusionary version of it. America is a very primitive and tribally oriented place. Tribalism is for the birds and needs to go the way of organized religion. It needs to die. If that's community, you can have it, and I'm glad that the modern world is crushing it.

Like in most American cities that have ethnic enclaves, each group really just takes care of its own. South Bend has been, and is, no different in this. Each group tended to discriminate, especially when one wasn't Catholic. In truth, my family has probably been discriminated-against on this basis more than we'll ever know. This is ironic, since I was baptised a Catholic! My grandparents weren't very active religiously, which I still admire. They taught me from an early-age, "Don't ever trust the preacherman, he doesn't know anymore than you do. He just wants your money." This is pure prairie Populism, a tradition I am more-than-proud-of. After being forced to attend congregationalist churches with my father, this belief was only reinforced, what hollow, meaningless-crap. If Jesus showed-up, they would turn him away because he would be in-rags, they wouldn't recognize him if he was glowing.

My grandparents didn't trust authority of any kind, a lesson for us all, because they saw authority abused during their lives. I believe that the time has come again for prairie Populism's resurrection, only this time it won't be agrarian, and just a simple expression of the will of the people in different times. What could be more beautiful and sacred than the unprompted assertion of humanity by ordinary people? My family comes from this tradition, and our familial culture extends-back to our Anabaptist ancestors in Germany and possibly Switzerland. Somehow, it survived organically within our family's culture.

The Anabaptists were the first religious group in Western Europe to call for a separation of Church and State. I suspect we've always been anti-clerical, and anti-war (excepting defensive wars of survival) in some ways, but WWII was necessary. Few would argue this, and fascism had to be stopped. It really was the good war to my mind. It was the aftermath that the politicians and big businessmen screwed-up, and keeping them in-check is the role of the people. The "world's greatest generation" tried to do this, but I believe the postwar economic-boom caused many of them to lapse into forgetfulness--they forgot who the enemy really was, namely concentrated wealth.

My grandfather was from Kansas, while my grandmother was from Arkansas. Her family were literally dirt-farmers, and she was a mountain-girl, and such a lovely and warm woman. She was a real-life Cinderella. When she died, I nearly went with her, the shock was so overwhelming. She was literally my second mother. My grandfather's family moved to Arkansas (Marshall, I believe) during the late-1920s, and this is how they met.

His father was insane--he was both a Freemason (Masonry teaches universal brotherhood!) and a member of the KKK during the 1920s (probably because of the movie "The Birth of a Nation"), and one of the earliest Jehovah's witnesses. He'd had a good-paying job with the railroad as an engineer, but he was basically an abusive asshole who felt he was always right. So, he quit his job, and moved his family to start a farm during worst period in American history to start one (except now), right before the Great Depression! I was told many stories about the dustbowl and the dust storms that blanketed parts of the South, Southwest, and plains states, as a child.

They were stories of an apocalypse, a wall of death that smothered everything. Entire families were found suffocated-to-death in their shacks and farm houses according to my grandparents and the historical record. The Bloughs nearly starved-to-death, and eventually the hothead had to get another job. He was also a physically-abusive man, and rarely spoke to his children.

Things got better for them, gradually, in Arkansas. My grandfather was one of the only young men in his town with a car (a 1929 model A Ford with a rumble seat--I've ridden in a rumble seat! Fun!). My grandparents met at a dance that could have been out of a John Steinbeck novel, and they knew the life he wrote about intimately. They were poor, but luckier than many. They had food. My grandparents met at a public dance in Arkansas in the late-1930s.

There wasn't much work to be had, so my grandfather joined the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps, public works jobs provided by the New Deal). He always talked fondly about his experiences with the CCC and said that we should do it again as a nation. This was no Leftist firebrand, no radical, but a unionized worker who slaved his entire life. He was no fool, which is what America has been overpopulated with for some time.

I heartily agree with his sentiments about public service, and I think that it should be compulsory in our society, and mandatory for all economic strata. This goes for war. The draft should be reinstated as a first-step towards ending our love affair with overseas meddling, and our bloated military budgets must be slashed for all time. The time for beating our swords into plowshares has come. We should look to past wars as they're instructive of what not to do.

The invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939 dragged the world into a global conflict. The world was aflame. This takes us to 1940 in the lives of my grandparents...

Revised 10.13.2008

D.C. Stephenson: An Old Case of Molestation

"Everything is fine in politics as long as you don't get caught in bed with a live man, or a dead woman."--D.C. Stephenson, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, circa 1920s

If you think that the Foley scandal is some kind of aberration--as the GOP will try to convince-you--think again. In the 1920s, there was no man more powerful in Indiana than D.C. Stephenson. He had the Governor and a Senator in his pocket. Like the GOP incumbents today, he was arrogant and a braggart at the apex of his power--until it was found that he had forced a young woman onto a train, and got her drunk and violently raped her:

In 1925 he had met a statehouse secretary, Madge Oberholtzer, at an inaugural ball for Governor Ed Jackson. She was later abducted from her home in Irvington, a neighborhood of Indianapolis and taken by Stephenson and some of his men to the train station. While on a trip to Hammond, Indiana, Stephenson repeatedly attacked and raped Oberholtzer in one compartment of his Pullman railcar. In Hammond she took poison to frighten Stephenson into letting her go. He immediately rushed her back to Indianapolis where she died a month later, either from the effects of the poison or the severe bite marks she incurred during the rape. Stephenson was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. (NICH site)

She died weeks later but named Stephenson as her attacker before she died. Shortly before the scandal, Stephenson stated without a trace of irony that "I am the law in Indiana." At the time he said it, he was right. But once the scandal broke, he was finished, just as the GOP has been wrong in thinking that they could do anything they wanted in private. Life doesn't work that way, especially public life.

Imagine a victim taking poison to escape their attackers, it's truly unbelievable.


Stephenson started as a Democrat, but changed his affiliation with the most hardcore racists in America: the GOP.

Stephenson supported the candidacy of Ed Jackson (GOP), who became Governor of Indiana in 1924. It's my opinion that at this point, the Republican Party gradually began to take-up the gauntlet of racism from the Democrats who were still headed in an essentially progressive direction. FDR's New Deal, the Great Society, and the Civil Rights movement, would cement this in the 1960s, and a peculiar trading-of-places occurred. There are few original "Dixiecrats" left today besides Senator Robert Byrd.

Since then, the GOP has been the national party of racists (not that the DNC doesn't have its own problems). Why? If you are going to be the political arm of the business sector, you have no choice. Exploitation and abuse requires that the oppressor become racist, and not just to have some "justification" in their minds for their criminal policies against minorities and the poor. Choosing to separate yourself from the rest of humanity as an exploiter makes one a racist by definition and has little to do with color or cultural differences, but a form of nihilism. These creatures use the weapon of legislation, and it is informed by a primal hate. Their rhetorical flourishes tend to state the obverse of what they're actually guilty of in just another permutation of the big lie.

Remember that D.C. Stephenson spoke frequently about the Klan's desire to "protect Protestant womanhood," and then raped a young German-American woman to death. This is similar to Foley's numerous public statements against pedophiles and it was a cover created with just as much forethought. Where do scoundrels hide? Out in the open.

The saddest aspect of Stephenson was that he had been active with the Socialist Party for a time, but was gradually corrupted by power. It appears Foley was always a greedy scumbag who never believed in anything, so he can be viewed as a step down from Stephenson. The onetime Grand Dragon served 31 years of a life sentence and was paroled twice. The first time, it was alleged that he had attempted to molest a 16-year-old girl while on release. The Indiana authorities put him back inside right away. He was finally paroled in the early 1960s and died in-obscurity in Tennessee where he was probably a minor hero to some. Even to the Klan, he was an embarrassment, and that's saying something in America.

Stephenson was just someone who got caught, just as former Rep. Mark Foley (Fla.) is now busted. The rest of them...that's anyone's guess. This is why we need a politically insulated investigation of Foley and wherever the trail leads us. [Ed.-11.24.2009: this of course never happened.] Expect to be horrified by upcoming revelations this week. As a kid, I remember reading about the 1920s as being the most corrupt decade in American history. This is simply no longer true. This is the most corrupt era in American history to date.

It's obvious that all of this--from 1980-on, worsening in 1994 until very recently--has been an era of an omni-pervasive culture of corruption. But it isn't just the GOP. This includes the Democrats, too, and some will eventually be caught, although they're much smarter than their Republican cohorts at hiding their criminal behavior. The Teapot Dome scandal, runaway stock speculation on Wall Street, our reckless loans to Germany to pay-off war reparations to France and the rest of the Allied powers--it all just pales-in-comparison to the GOP's current reign of corruption and fiscal misrule. It is ending, and we must not spare the guilty, not even when they've left office.

One last note: Stephenson was abandoned by his political allies while he was in prison. In 1927, he threatened to "name-names"' of all the politicians who helped him, and then he finally did. It took down the Mayor of Indianapolis, the Governor, and several other fellow scoundrels. D.C. Stephenson never held public office because he didn't need to. He raped and murdered a wonderful young woman who taught poor people and black children to read. He stole her life, just as the majority of politicians steal ours, a piece-at-a-time. These are the kind of degenerates that the wealthy hire to flay us all.

Lightly Revised and Corrected, 11.24.2009

More on Stephenson and His Scandal:

http://experts.about.com/e/d/d/D._C._Stephenson.htm
http://www.centerforhistory.org/indiana_history_main7.html
http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/Books%20Pages/Book%20Descriptions/GrandDragonLutholtz.asp
http://www.historycooperative.org/cgi-bin/justtop.cgi?act=justtop&url=http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/imh/100.2/safianow.html
http://experts.about.com/e/i/in/Indianapolis,_Indiana.htm
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=8390