The Southern Poverty Law Center has sent their head ritard, Mark Potok out in front again to make specious charges against Conservative icons;
Anti-government sentiments in the U.S. have reached levels so high they could result in another attack like the Oklahoma City bombing, according to a report released Tuesday by an organization that tracks right-wing extremists – and the authors of the report place part of the blame on Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck, Rep. Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin.
“We’ve seen more threats and actual attacks in the past 18 months than we’ve seen at any given period over the past 15 years,” claimed Potok.
Seriously, absolutely retarded. And what is more, they care only about symbolism, not substance.
Today I get their email and they claim:
SPLC sues to protect rights of African-American teen
SPLC filed suit against a Mississippi school district for expelling a student with a promising academic and athletic career over tossing a penny on a school bus. The suit contends that the district violated the boy’s rights and coerced a false confession from him through threats and intimidation. This is another step in SPLC’s campaign to keep children in the Deep South in school instead of in alternative facilities or abusive detention centers.
Filed today in Hinds County Chancery Court in Jackson, the lawsuit claims the school district failed to follow its own rules as it targeted the 16-year-old boy, identified as A.H. in the complaint, and coerced a false confession through threats and intimidation.
The school’s actions stemmed from an incident that occurred while A.H. was riding the school bus home from Terry High this past September. During the ride, A.H. and five other students were tossing coins back and forth. A penny landed on the bus driver, who was not injured.
Now, let’s just say you are wondering who A.H. is. I mean, they are using initials, so it must be hard to track down, eh?
Haven’t read the brief yet, but I bet it is chalk full of shitty goodness.
Want A.H.’s mailing address? Mom’s name? That is all in there too. With lawyers like these, who needs enemas.
Someone might want to write to SPLC’s lawyer that put this shit up (Poonam Juneja poonam.juneja@splcenter.org) and let her know if she cares at all about this kid’s anonymity she ought not to broadcast it.
And the case is too stupid to even go into. The kid got suspended for 10 days*. So SPLC because they have jack shit else to do want to turn this into the Scopes trial. Yeah, good luck with that. I’m sure the mom and kid will love having their info spread willy nilly all over the internet.
* (Correction on that, the letter says 10 days, the suit says 6 months. So I have no clue.)
BWAHAHAHA: Just how stupid is this:
He [A.H. Secret Identity that Anyone Can Find Out By Clicking] and five other students were allegedly tossing coins at each other on the back of the bus. One of the tossed pennies inadvertantly landed on Ms. Geneva Reid, the bus driver.
Excuse me while I channel my inner Arlen Specter…..
Ok, we’ll assume this was your standard, garden variety of blue bird. Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, I give you, the north American standard school bus (Standirum Norto Americanski Bussillium. Kingdom: Bus, Phylum: School, Class: Non Special Needs, Order: Bluebird, Family: Itsabus)
Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, let us assume for now, subject to compelling evidence to the contrary, that Ms. Geneiva Ried, no doubt a lovely woman who does not look like Geraldo Rivera, was in fact driving the bus from the front. This is in fact where most North American busses not featured in animated cartoon faire are driven from. Let us further suppose on this intellectual jaunt into the great unknown, that fraulein Ried was driving from the “drivers side” being that portion of the front of the vehicle which resides to the left of the centerline when viewed facing the direction of travel, assuming that the vehicle is not making that annoying beeping noise that always cracks me up when someone makes about a fat woman proceeding in a backwards direction.
We are to understand further, that A.H. secret identity known but to Spongebob and those who can use a mouse, was seated in the back. Notice if you will our bus has 12 evenly spaced windows. We shall here forward divide the bus into 3 equal sections, calling them (from the back of the bus): “the back of the bus”, “the middle of the bus”, and “close enough to Ms Reid to smell any effluvient that leaks from her backside.” The last category is a bit wordy, but you get the idea.
Imagine if you will the game that all children play in societies ranging from native Maori children, to Siberian lads raised by wolves, to the Children of Hind County, Mississippi, to wit, the “tossing of pennies game.” Ah, who among us doesn’t on occasion lose ourselves in a sunny remembrance of those halcyon days of old spent whiling the days away tossing pennies at one another. The rules of said game need not now be reiterated, as we all know them so well, inculcated as they were in daily activities.
Now, the question at bar begins and ends with the tragic, and nearly deadly trajectory of the coin. If coin it were. For Ms Reid no where states that it was a coin, but rather refers to an “object” which “hit my windshield and then hit me.” Ah, what merciless missile of Beelzebub was this object de assassination?
Knowing as we do the rules of Penny Tossing (again, owing to the innumerable times each of us has played this game) we know that the rules hold that one must toss the pennies. Any hurling of the coin at the head of another is verbotten, often resulting in a yellow card, and offering the opposing team a “pitch” or “Rochambeau” as it is called in France, Ontario, New Orleans and other frenchified regions. We know that since the schism in penny tossing rules brought about at the Council of Taint in 1952 (wherein Winston Churchill famously remarked that the previous rules were “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”) that the Western Hemisphere rules hold that the coin be tossed in an underhand manner, rather than overhand (like Lamar in Lambda, Lambda, Lambda threw his javelin.)
We must therefore consider the relative distance between AH and Ms Ried therefore must be 30 feet. We know this because the penny came forward, therefore AH was facing the front of the bus at the time he propelled it in and underhand manner. Therefore, assuming that 4 children were playing the game (rule C12, standardized rules of Penny Tossing, 1987) AH must have been in the last seat of the bus, or perhaps the one immediately in front of that one, the penultimate seat if you will.
We are thus faced with the question, assuming that the laws of physics operated in the standard fashion on Ms Ried’s bus, and there were no sudden deceleration, how did said coin travel 30 feet, and still have enough momentum to bounce off the windshield and then hit Ms Ried with enough force to get her attention. Now, we know from our friend Newton that an object in motion will stay in motion until it is operated on by an outside force. Since striking any of the backward sides of the seats would have deadened the forward momentum, we must conclude that the coin travelled at some velocity (V*) down the walkway of the bus. Since it was underhand, and AH was complying with the rules of being seated, there is simply now way that it could have gone that far, unless it had some wholely unbeliveble bounces betwixt his seat and the windshield.
No my friends and ladies and gentleman of this supposed jury, we might look to an outside source, for there is no way that the tossed coin of AH could possibly have travelled at such a velocity on the arc dictated by physics and the laws of gravity, that it might bounce off the windshield and strike our poor driver.
My friends, I put it to you: There was another Penny Tosser on the Grassy Knoll. September 28, 2009 had the standard weather for Hinds County Mississippi. There was some humidty, but no rain. Thus, the third window from the driver on the left hand (as before mentioned “Driver Side”) was open, as it customarily was. It is only through this window that this “Magic Coin” could possibly have come from.
I will discuss the possible individuals responsible for this in a later post. Several of the theories I am currently exploring include: Cuban President Fidel Castro, the anti-Castro Cuban community, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, the Mafia, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), E. Howard Hunt, and the Eastern Bloc – or perhaps some combination of these.
Please stay tuned for more. And remember this is a This Ain’t Hell Exclusive.
OK, now this race war has really hit home. I agree with Mark now, we need to end all attacks based on race. And it starts with these evil bastards that perpetrated this felonious assault:
Three boys have been arrested for investigation of bullying red-haired students after a Facebook message promoted “Kick a Ginger Day” at a Southern California school.
I know the SPLC will leap right on this one. It clearly is a sign of hatred based on race that we see nearly everywhere. And I know I can look forward to it being covered in the SPLC Hatewatch this week.
And a good thing too. I know some might point out where it says no Children were actually harmed. Yeah, well that fails to consider that someone might have been harmed. I’m afraid to let my gingers play outside when those maniac soldiers are coming home from this immoral and illegal war.
I am therefore, even before SPLC can comment, starting up the MWGDF, the Mid West Ginger Defense Fund. It’ll be sort of a cross between the IDF (We’ll be trained in that Krav Maga stuff) and the ACLU, MALDEF or one of the other groups that just defends folks for no apparent reason.
So, fear not my fellow Irishmen, no more will be tormented on account of our lack of pigment. They won’t see us if we attack directly out of the sun, on account of us being translucent and all.
NAIROBI, Kenya – The mistaken belief that albino body parts have magical powers has driven thousands of Africa’s albinos into hiding, fearful of losing their lives and limbs to unscrupulous dealers who can make up to $75,000 selling a complete dismembered set.
TSO sent me this article last night from Reason entitled “The Paranoid Center” by Jesse Walker. It’s a fairly devastating piece about the use of paranoia that extremists like the Southern Poverty Law Center use to quell dissent in the current political debate. I found one part of the lengthy article particularly interesting. It’s in reference to the Department of Homeland Security report released earlier this year (on the third web page of the article);
Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report on the threat of “rightwing extremism.” Depending on whose interpretation you prefer, the paper either defined extremism far too broadly or failed to define it at all. “Rightwing extremism in the United States,” the department said, “can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”
The charitable reading of this passage is that it’s a sloppily phrased attempt to list the ideas that drive different right-wing extremists, not a declaration that anyone opposed to abortion or prone to “rejecting federal authority” is a threat. But even under that interpretation, the report is inexcusably vague. It focuses on extremism itself, not on violence, and there’s no reason to believe its definition of extremist is limited to people with violent inclinations. (The department’s report on left-wing extremism cites such nonviolent groups as Crimethinc and the Ruckus Society.) As Michael German, a policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote after the document surfaced, the bulletin focuses “on ideas rather than crime.”
Of course, that’s why our side got all upset about it – instead of mentioning dangerous extremist organization, the report, which was lifted almost verbatim from a Southern Poverty Law Center report published a year earlier attacked ideology. So the first thing TSO and I thought of, was to ask Mark Potok, who has been to TAH on occasion, about the SPLC’s reasons for perpetrating an attack on our ideas, rather than the real culprits.
Well, instead of enlightening us, Potok instead answered that he wouldn’t honor us with his opinion because we haven’t been that charitable to him and his organization – something about me calling them “greasy lawyers” or something. So we’ve been frozen out of the the SPLC loop. I feel a little like Fox News. Maybe Rupert Murdoch will buy me out.
Launched in March by Las Vegan Stewart Rhodes, Oath Keepers bills itself as a nonpartisan group of current and retired law enforcement and military personnel who vow to fulfill their oaths to the Constitution.
More specifically, the group’s members, which number in the thousands, pledge to disobey orders they deem unlawful, including directives to disarm the American people and to blockade American cities. By refusing the latter order, the Oath Keepers hope to prevent cities from becoming “giant concentration camps,” a scenario the 44-year-old Rhodes says he can envision happening in the coming years.
It’s a Cold War-era nightmare vision with a major twist: The occupying forces in this imagined future are American, not Soviet.
“The whole point of Oath Keepers is to stop a dictatorship from ever happening here,” Rhodes, a former Army paratrooper and Yale-trained lawyer, said in an interview with the Review-Journal. “My focus is on the guys with the guns, because they can’t do it without them.
I guess this is just Rhodes’ way of justifying the Department of Homeland Security’s report about right wing terrorists. My personal conflict is that the only person the Review Journal could find to comment against Oath Keepers is my old friend Mark Potok, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who happens to see hate groups around every corner;
“I’m not accusing Stewart Rhodes or any member of his group of being Timothy McVeigh or a future Timothy McVeigh,” law center spokesman Mark Potok said. “But these kinds of conspiracy theories are what drive a small number of people to criminal violence. … What’s troubling about Oath Keepers is the idea that men and women armed and ordered to protect the public in this country are clearly being drawn into a world of false conspiracy theory.”
Yeah, whenever Potok says “I’m not accusing…” that’s exactly what he’s doing. Why else would he be writing in a column he calls “Hate Watch”? Stuart Rhodes is a former Ron Paul staffer, and we saw how quickly the Ron Paul movement petered out last year. They became an annoyance, but they’re certainly not dangerous – unless Stuart Rhodes doesn’t tone down the rhetoric.
On the other hand, SPLC, in perpetual search of hate groups doesn’t do the discourse any favors by amping up the hate talk.
According to the law center, militia groups are re-emerging in this country partly as a result of racial animosity toward Obama.
It’s the “cross-pollinating” of extremist groups — some racist, some not — that is of concern, Potok said. As evidence that the danger is real, he points to several recent murders committed by men with anti-government or racist views.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reached a similar conclusion in a report earlier this year about the rise of right-wing extremism. The report said the nation’s economic downturn and Obama’s race are “unique drivers for right-wing radicalization and recruitment.”
The homeland security report added that “disgruntled military veterans” might be vulnerable to recruitment by right-wing extremist groups.
That warning was enough to make Rhodes feel paranoid.
It would have been nice of the Review Journal to mention that the DHS report leaned heavily on the SPLC’s own “research”. So quoting the DHS report is the same as quoting Mark Potok – and includes his intellectually-vacant rhetoric.
So you see how I’m conflicted – two organizations who are equally distasteful engaged in equally harmful verbal warfare. I don’t know for whom to root – I guess the best I can hope for is mutual annihilation.
TSO and I have been telling you for months that the Southern Poverty Law Center is just making stuff up in regards to military members joining white supremacist organizations – well, a few weeks ago, they jumped the shark. Sonia Scherr wrote an article on the “Hate Watch” web page entitled; Leaked Neo-Nazi E-mails Show Contacts With Military Personnel. Their article is based on 629 leaked private emails posted on WikiLeaks between the National Socialist Movement and some members.
The first is from a guy who claims to be Army Sergeant Kyle Wrobel;
Among those who contacted NSM was an infantryman who identified himself as Kyle R. Wrobel. Writing from a hotmail contact, Wrobel told NSM that he was from Cleveland, Ohio. “i am a sergeant in the US Army infantry, currently serving my second combat tour to iraq,” he wrote on Jan. 17, 2008. “i vehemently support your cause, and want to become heavily involved. my wife and i both advocate and support the cause. i want a lifetime membership and want to become involved and do whatever i can as soon as possible.” […] Wrobel served for four years in the Army and was discharged in November 2008 as a specialist, according to an Army spokesman. The type of discharge is not public information, the spokesman said, though an acquaintance of Wrobel said it was honorable. (It’s unclear why Wrobel stated in his E-mail to the NSM that he was a sergeant, which is higher ranking than a specialist.)
So I checked on Military.com for a Kyle Wrobel in any military service and came up empty. The same for an AKO account;
There are probably several reasons he might not have an AKO account less than a year after after he was discharged. But I think it’s odd that I can’t find any record of him anywhere.
Ms. Scherr also quotes another military member as showing an interest in joining NSM. I won’t use his name, because I did confirm that he’s in the military – however, even SPLC admits that he didn’t join the neo-Nazis and I can’t find the actual emails in which he expresses an interest.
So let’s recap for a minute; SPLC tells the world that there’s a vast army of neo-Nazis getting their training from the US military. In their original report, they count about 300 – 300 who SAY they have been in the military. The SPLC finds TWO military members in email exchanges with neo-Nazis. One of whom, we can’t find a military record, the other never joined the Neo-Nazis.
Yeah, that’s some real evidence you’ve got there, SPLC.
I’ve been receiving emails over the last few months about Oath Keepers and my initial impressions of the organization were good. I mean, I’m all for military and law enforcement officers pledging to keep their respective oaths. And the Southern Poverty Law Center is scared by them, so that’s always good.
A week or so ago, one of my RSS feeds took me to an article on Oathkeepers’ website that was written by Eric T Orseske, an IVAW member. At the time, I let it slide to see what Oath Keepers would do about it – within a few days, the post came down. Well, the same post popped up again today;
Well, i just think it’s odd that Oath Keepers would associate itself with someone blatantly opposed to oaths. The IVAW has recently, at least at Fort Hood, encouraged soldiers to break their oath to serve. The IVAW won’t even vote to boot members who encourage violence against our troops.
So what about the IVAW lends itself to cooperation with an otherwise commendable organization like Oath Keepers?
I read about the incident last week on Weasel Zippers in which Human Rights Watch senior military analyst Marc Garlasco was dragged out of the closet as a Nazi memorabilia collector. At the time, Human Rights Watch said that it was no big deal;
This accusation is demonstrably false and fits into a campaign to deflect attention from Human Rights Watch’s rigorous and detailed reporting on violations of international human rights and humanitarian law by the Israeli government.
Well, this morning, the New York Times and the BBC reports that he’s been fired.
On Monday night, the group shifted course and suspended him with pay, “pending an investigation,” said Carroll Bogert, the group’s associate director.
“We have questions about whether we have learned everything we need to know,” she said.
Remember how the US media went out of their way to tell us that folks who used “88” in their screen names were Neo-Nazis during the Southern Poverty Law Center’s accusation that the military and militias were racist hate groups? Well, guess what was Marc Garlasco’s screen name was on memorabilia sites; “Flak88”.
So I just knew that the Southern Poverty Law Center and Mark Potok would be all over this – but I was disappointed. They’re still busy chasing “nativists” – whatever that means today.
Of course, the New York Times blames the Israelis;
The administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also weighed in, but its views on groups like Human Rights Watch were already clear. Mr. Netanyahu’s policy director, Ron Dermer, told The Jerusalem Post in July, “We are going to dedicate time and manpower to combating these groups; we are not going to be sitting ducks in a pond for the human rights groups to shoot at us with impunity.”
Other groups say they have felt more heat from the Israeli government and its allies. “Recently we have seen a new attitude, a stepping up,” said Sari Michaeli, press officer for the group B’Tselem, which recently came under harsh criticism from the Israeli military for a report that concluded that civilians made up more than half of the Palestinian casualties in the Gaza offensive.
Yeah, the Israelis convinced him to use the Nazi-lover “88” in his screen name.
