Eideard

A group of militia members arrested nearly two years ago in southern Michigan effectively operated as a “social club” that amassed guns and bombs to defend themselves, not to plot a war against the government, their lawyers said Monday at the start of a trial for seven of the defendants…

“David Stone was exercising his God-given right to blow off steam and open his mouth,” his lawyer, William W. Swor, told jurors.

But the federal authorities contend that the Hutaree (pronounced hu-TAR-ee) was on the brink of carrying out a plan to begin attacking police officers, possibly by killing one and then using improvised explosives to ambush mourners at the officer’s funeral…

Nine members of the Hutaree were arrested in March 2010, days after Mr. Stone declared, “It’s go hour,” in a voice mail to an undercover federal agent who had been training with the group, Mr. Graveline said. The seven now on trial are charged with seditious conspiracy, attempting to use weapons of mass destruction and various firearm charges. If convicted, they could be sentenced to life in prison…

One of the nine arrested, Joshua Clough, pleaded guilty in December to a firearm charge that carries a minimum sentence of five years in prison. Another defendant, Jacob Ward, was ruled incompetent to stand trial and is undergoing treatment.

Mr. Graveline said the authorities have seized about 100 firearms, including some illegal short-barrel rifles and machine guns, and 148,000 rounds of ammunition from the defendants’ homes. He showed jurors one table covered with guns and held up other examples of evidence collected, including flak jackets, ghillie suits used to camouflage snipers, Kevlar helmets, night-vision goggles and bomb-making instructions…

Mr. Swor described Mr. Stone as a preacher’s son who was raised in an “apocalyptic tradition” and studied the Book of Revelation. Mr. Stone, who invented the name Hutaree because he thought it sounded like something from the “Star Wars” movies his sons liked, believed he needed to be able to defend his family from the Antichrist, Mr. Swor said.

It’s easy enough to dismiss fools like this as paranoid and deluded. Except for the fact that the arrests were initiated because the threat level to the lives of citizens and police seemed elevated and immediate.

The reality is that these murderous clowns aren’t any funnier than any other rightwing gang – from the KKK to posse comitatus militias – who have murdered innocent people for decades.

Four elderly men from the US state of Georgia have appeared in court charged with plotting to murder officials using explosives and the lethal toxin ricin.

Court documents say the group scoped out federal buildings and asked a contact to produce ricin. The FBI used a confidential informant to record the group’s meetings. You have to wonder if this was the “usual” level of informant. Like, some drug dealer trying to get a reduced sentence.

The men were arrested on Tuesday days after a laboratory test found trace amounts of ricin in their possession, the authorities said.

The four were named as Frederick Thomas, Dan Roberts, Ray Adams, and Samuel Crump, all ranging in age from 65 to 73.

The bespectacled accused appeared to have trouble hearing the judge at the federal court in Gainesville, even though she was using a microphone…

Mr Thomas allegedly wanted to model the group’s actions on the online novel Absolved, which involves small groups of citizens attacking US officials.

The novel’s author, Mike Vanderboegh, wrote on his blog on Wednesday his book was fiction, and was sceptical the group could have ever carried out the attacks…He appears often enough on Fox News that he’ll probably make a bundle commenting on the case.

According to court documents, Mr Thomas told the group he had a “bucket list” of politicians, employees and others he felt needed to be “taken out”…

Mr Crump and Mr Adams were allegedly assigned to try to obtain or make ricin.

As a grayhead who has occasionally been accused of being a terrorist by the sort of dimwit who would be a willing volunteer in a Georgia militia, I will be following the case with the sort of skepticism an FBI sting involving “confidential informants” deserves.

Maybe the case is legit. Maybe not. It speaks volumes of how most folks disrespect official Washington that the only people enthusiastically covering the purported plot are TV talking heads.

Tonight, the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow will air, for the first time ever, audiotapes of Timothy McVeigh giving his own account of why he detonated a truck filled with explosives in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. It was our country’s most destructive and deadly act of terrorism on U.S. soil prior to September 11. The bombing murdered 168 people, including more than two dozen children under the age of 6. More than 800 people were injured; damage was estimated at $652 million. Yet, McVeigh’s recorded voice, as if speaking from the grave almost nine years after his execution, says, “I feel no shame for it.”

Maddow has said the program is designed to put antigovernment extremism in perspective. “It doesn’t have to lead to violence, but it can and it has,” says Maddow in promotional spots. “We ignore this, our own very recent history of antigovernment violence and the dangers of domestic terrorism, at our peril.” According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of antigovernment extremist groups spiked from 149 in 2008 to 512 (127 of them militias) in 2009…

Attorney Beth Wilkinson was the prosecutor who argued for the death penalty for McVeigh. “Obviously I am gratified to know he’ll be admitting to what he was convicted of,” says Wilkinson. “That said,” she adds, “I find it disturbing that these tapes will be played at such length, giving him—once again—a platform.” She hopes that the two-hour segment will provide a perspective on extremism, not just McVeigh’s…

Hearing from the losers who still back the policies of Bush and Cheney, I see no rhyme or reason to separate them from the violence that – for some – flows easily from their politics.

But, just as McVeigh used the death and destruction of suicidal nutballs in Waco as justification for his mass murder, thousands of defeated Republicans and their camp followers justify their hatred of government, their egregious unwillingness to pay their fair share of running a nation the size of the United States – you can expect the next McVeigh to come from the ranks, the families, of the déclassé paranoids who gather in collective anti-democratic self-pity.

Achieved by the last OK militia

Fed up with what they see as Washington’s intrusion into their state, Oklahoma “tea party” leaders and some conservative legislators want to create a volunteer militia to defend against the federal government.

“Is it scary? It sure is,” said Al Gerhart, a tea party activist who heads the Oklahoma Constitutional Alliance. “But when do the states stop rolling over for the federal government?”

State Rep. Charles Key, a Republican representing Oklahoma City, said he believes there’s a good chance that legislation could be introduced next year to authorize a militia.

A tea party leader in Tulsa, J.W. Berry, has been soliciting interest through his newsletter, urging that readers “buy more guns, more bullets.”

“It’s not a far-right crazy plan or anything like that,” Berry said. “This would be done with the full cooperation of the state Legislature…”

How’s that for an interesting dichotomy? If politicians collaborate in nutball paranoia – it’s not crazy?

Critics point out that the National Guard already provides for the state’s military needs. They worry a militia would stoke extremism…

Next Monday marks the 15th anniversary of the anti-government terrorist attack by Timothy McVeigh. The former U.S. soldier and militia sympathizer killed 168 men, women and children with a truck bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. He was executed in June 2001.

Typically, nutballs like this break out into two groups. Those who run their mouths and haven’t the courage to spend two hours canvassing a neighborhood filled with people a different color from their zip code. Those who nod their heads, fester, and commit terrorist acts – like McVeigh.

A Louisiana sheriff has begun training 200 local volunteers in basic hand-to-hand combats techniques as part of Project Exodus aimed at protecting the northwestern corner of the state from the danger of terrorists, the Shreveport Times reports.

Reporter Drew Pierson writes that Bossier Parish Sheriff Larry Deen’s policing plan involves “a mostly white group of ex-police volunteers and a .50-caliber machine gun” and was inspired in part from the Book of Exodus in the Bible.

“The buck stops with Larry Deen,” the sheriff says, according to the Times. “The liability stops with Larry Deen. I am the chief law enforcement officer in this parish, and it is incumbent upon me to protect all of the people in it…”

Doyle Dempsey, chief deputy for support services, says in the training video that if the project is successful “we will be ahead of the curve when it comes to fighting Islamic extremists.”

The volunteers will be armed provided weapons such as shotguns, riot shields and batons, the newspaper says, including a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on what the sheriff’s office calls “the war wagon.”

Five of the 200 volunteers are black, the Times says. Women will only be used in a “support role,” Deen says, indicating non-combat activity…

Deen elaborates on Operation Exodus on his Web site here:

As evidenced by recent terror threats, it is apparent that homegrown terrorists are in our midst. With the easy accessibility of the Internet, it is quite possible that these local and international terrorists can form a national or multiple location attack on our nation at any given moment. And no matter whether we are a direct target or not, fear and panic will still permeate our community. Control will have to be regained to ensure the safety of our residents. That is where Operation Exodus comes into play. It utilizes preventive measures to safeguard Bossier Parish from the fear and outcry that will inevitably transpire.

I think it’s time to expand upon the accepted political definition of “eejit” to include “dumfuk”.

The volunteers will be armed by local government; but, they’re not a militia. Uh-huh.

Although Mr. Frommer, the founder of Frommer’s Travel Guides (which is an online content partner of The New York Times), has used his blog to express strong opinions in the past, his post on Wednesday — expressing horror at the spectacle of about a dozen gun-toting protesters on Arizona’s streets during a visit by President Obama — stuck out from other recent entries like “Current Room Rates in Orlando at Non-Disney Properties Are Almost Too Good to Be True” and “Southwest Airlines Announces a Four-Month Airfare Sale — and It’s a Dilly.”

In his post on Arizona, Mr. Frommer explained that news coverage of the president’s visit — a trip that was intended, in part, to promote the state’s tourism industry — had convinced him to avoid going there:

“I am not yet certain whether I would advocate a travel boycott by others of the state of Arizona; I want to learn more about Arizona’s gun laws and how they compare with those of other states. But I am shocked beyond measure by reports that earlier this week, nearly a dozen persons, including one with an assault rifle strapped about his shoulders and others with pistols in their hands or holsters, were openly congregating outside a hall at which President Obama was speaking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

“For myself, without yet suggesting that others follow me in an open boycott, I will not personally travel in a state where civilians carry loaded weapons onto the sidewalks and as a means of political protest. I not only believe such practices are a threat to the future of our democracy, but I am firmly convinced that they would also endanger my own personal safety there. And therefore I will cancel any plans to vacation or otherwise visit in Arizona until I learn more. And I will begin thinking about whether tourists should safeguard themselves by avoiding stays in Arizona…

“I would feel as I do regardless of the political identity of the speaker whom these thugs attempted to intimidate. The continued tolerance of extremists carrying guns is a frightening development which strikes at the heart of the political process and endangers the ability to carry out a reasoned debate. Is there any responsible citizen of the United States who believes that people should carry guns to a public debate or speech? If Ronald Reagan were delivering a political talk in Phoenix, Arizona, would they have felt it was proper for protestors with guns to mill about outside the hall from which he would leave?”

Most media types are still too cowardly to identify this event as stage-managed, filmed and offered as “news coverage” by long-standing militia nutballs. The history of these clowns is tied directly to previous convictions of members of the Viper Militia as a public danger. Yet, Talking Heads from the world of TV news-as-entertainment never questioned a damned thing.

Even now, as a travel writer confronts these fearmongers – most broadcast journalists still describe the event as news coverage rather than a staged political farce. No different from teabaggers or “questions” from concerned Republicans at town hall discussions.

Anti-Taleban rally in Raghagan, Pakistan
AP Photo by Aamir Qureshi

With the sighting of the new moon, the Muslim holy month of fasting comes to an end and with it the customary night prayers that have kept the general mood solemn for a month.

To mark the occasion, the men in this village in the North West Frontier Province head for the hujra – a place for a Pashtun male only community gathering. But there is more on their minds than the usual feasting frenzy of Eid – the Muslim festival which the moon has heralded.

Less than two weeks ago, a couple of pro-Taleban activists from a nearby village made an appearance at night prayers in one of the village mosques. They appealed for donations and manpower for what they described as the “holy war” in Afghanistan.

The people in the mosque contributed some coins towards their cause. But no one volunteered for the war. Since then, there has been a general unrest among the villagers about the Taleban’s intentions. They want government help if they decide to resist a possible Taleban takeover.

“We have to show our willingness to fight them and to raise our own force to patrol the village,” says a village councillor, addressing the men at the hujra.

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