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.

The U.S. Secret Service is looking into a controversial column by an Atlanta Jewish newspaper publisher that mulled the assassination of an American president.

Andrew Adler, owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, wrote a January 13 column about the threat of Iran to Israel. He posed three options for the Jewish state to counter the Iranian regime.

One of them called for a “hit on a president in order to preserve Israel’s existence.”

“Give the go-ahead for U.S. based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place and forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.”

U.S. Secret Service spokesman George Ogilvie told CNN Saturday, “We are aware of it. We are taking the appropriate investigative steps…”

“The suggestion by anyone, in this case a Jewish newspaper publisher, that Israel should consider assassinating President Obama is shocking beyond belief,” said Dov Wilker, director of the American Jewish Committee in Atlanta.

“While we acknowledge Mr. Adler’s [eventual] apology, we are flabbergasted that he could ever say such a thing in the first place. How could he even conceive of such a twisted idea?” said Wilker. “Mr. Adler surely owes immediate apologies to President Obama, as well as to the State of Israel and his readership, the Atlanta Jewish community.”

The White House declined to comment Saturday on the column.

I guess this proves that fundamentalists needn’t be Christians to be nutballs.

This thug still thinks he should be president of the United States
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

In his last days in office, outgoing Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour pardoned four men convicted of murder…David Gatlin, Joseph Ozment, Charles Hooker and Anthony McCray received full pardons and were released at 1 p.m. Sunday, said Suzanne Singletary, spokeswoman for the Mississippi Department of Corrections. All four were serving life sentences and worked as trusties at the governor’s mansion, she said.

I guess they were extra polite serving the governor his bourbon and branch.

Gatlin was convicted of murder, aggravated assault and burglary of a residence…Ozment was convicted of murder, conspiracy and armed robbery in a separate case…

Hooker was convicted in a 1991 murder, while McCray was convicted in a 2001 murder, Singletary said…

Families of the men’s victims told CNN affiliates WAPT and WLBT they are outraged by Barbour’s decision…In 1993, WLBT reported, Gatlin walked into the trailer where his estranged wife, Tammy Ellis Gatlin, lived and shot her in the head. The woman’s friend, Randy Walker, survived a gunshot to the head.

“Is Gov. Barbour going to pardon us from our aches and pains and heartache that we have to suffer?” the victim’s mother, Betty Ellis, asked WLBT. “Is he going to pardon a child that had to grow up without a mother? Is he going to pardon me from never being able to feel her arms around my neck again? What is Barbour going to do about that?”

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Flowers by the canal where the bodies of the Shafia sisters and their mother were found

Few phrases in the popular discourse are as contentious as “honour killing,” but the Shafia trial, currently taking place in Kingston, Ont., is forcing Canadians to once again grapple with this controversial issue.

Mohammad Shafia, his wife, Tooba Yahya, and their son Hamed stand accused of killing four female family members.

In 2009, teen sisters Sahar, Zainab and Geeti Shafia, along with Mohammed Shafia’s first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, were found dead in a submerged car in the Rideau Canal. The Crown alleges the four women were killed because Sahar and Zainab Shafia were thought to have dishonoured the family by having boyfriends and living a modern lifestyle…

In a wiretapped conversation between Mohammed Shafia and his wife and son after the bodies were discovered, Shafia revealed his anger at seeing suggestive cellphone photos of his two eldest daughters: “Curse God on both of them. Is that what a daughter should be? Would a daughter be such a whore?”

Though often linked to sexual issues such as adultery and premarital sex, the perceived “offences” that have prompted honour killings have ccome to include a woman’s push for independence…There are documented cases of men being killed for ruining a family’s reputation, but the vast majority of the victims are female.

To some observers, honour killings confuse the issue of domestic abuse with religious connotations. For others, it’s an important designation of a cultural phenomenon distinct from domestic violence…

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Three U.S. citizens traveling to spend the holidays with their relatives in Mexico were among those killed in a spree of shooting attacks on buses in northern Mexico…A group of five gunmen attacked three buses in Mexico’s Gulf coast state of Veracruz on Thursday, killing a total of seven passengers in what authorities said appeared to be a violent robbery spree.

The Americans killed were a mother and her two daughters who were returning to visit relatives in the region, known as the Huasteca, said an official in the neighboring state of Hidalgo, where the mother was born.

Hidalgo state regional assistant secretary Jorge Rocha identified the dead U.S. mother as Maria Sanchez Hernandez, 39, of Fort Worth, Texas, and the daughters as Karla, 19, and Cristina, 13. Rocha said all three held dual U.S.-Mexican citizenship. A 14-year-old Mexican nephew traveling with the three was also killed…

While funeral plans were unclear, Rocha said Sanchez Hernandez’s mother wants her daughter to be buried in Mexico.

Three other Mexican citizens were killed in the Thursday attacks on the three buses. The five gunmen who allegedly carried out the attacks were later killed by soldiers.

Earlier in their spree, the gunmen shot to death three people and killed a fourth with grenade in the nearby town of El Higo, Veracruz…

The US consulate urged Americans to “exercise caution” when traveling in Veracruz, and “avoid intercity road travel at night.”

As I have advised my friends and relatives – stay the heck out of Mexico!

A baby born to a Muslim couple having an affair had to be adopted to save it from being murdered by its mother’s family in a so-called honour killing, senior judges have ruled.

The unmarried woman was said to have told the married father of her child that it had died to keep him away, and wore loose clothes and visited a hospital far from her home so relatives would not learn she was pregnant.

The father got hold of the baby girl’s birth certificate and tried to get legal rights to visiting her, even though he had by then had a newborn with his own wife. But a judge ruled that the love child should stay with its adoptive parents, and not meet its father, because of the danger that its mother’s family would kill it, and her, because of the shame of their secret relationship…

“As soon as [the baby] was born, she was relinquished for adoption because [the mother] genuinely feared for [the baby's] safety should [the grandfather] become aware of or be forced to acknowledge her existence.

“[The mother's] evidence, supported as it was by her actions and the evidence of [the father] and an experienced police officer, drove the judge to conclude that refusal of the order would carry with it a significant risk of physical harm. In our judgment this conclusion cannot be criticised.”

The judgement, in which all of the parties are kept anonymous for their safety, tells how the baby’s parents are both Muslims from foreign countries “but their cultures differ”…

The woman later told social services she wanted to have the baby adopted because she was “scared” that her father “would hurt her and the family would reject her”.

After the birth, her mother was quickly discharged from hospital and a year ago her daughter was placed with another Muslim couple…

In July a High Court Family Division judge, Mrs Justice Parker, ruled that the baby would be at “very significant risk” if it were placed with its natural father and his wife, while it might “provoke action to preserve the family’s honour” if the mother’s relatives found out about the child…

The judge concluded that the baby had had a “very unfortunate start in life” and that consideration of its lifelong welfare required its adoption.

Why – oh, why – must a soap opera court trial about adoption and parental rights have to include the likelihood of murder and infanticide. This is not about honour. This is about demented people stuck into a barbaric belief.

Possible in any number of backwards religious sects. None the less barbaric.

Joyce Horman holding a photo of her journalist husband Charles Horman

A Chilean judge requested the extradition of a retired U.S. military officer Tuesday, accusing him of involvement in the 1973 killing of an American journalist that inspired an Oscar-winning movie.

An indictment charges former Navy Capt. Ray E. Davis with the homicides of journalist Charles Horman and student Frank Teruggi. Former Chilean military official Pedro Octavio Espinoza was also charged in the killings, which occurred shortly after the South American nation’s military coup.

Horman’s disappearance and his family’s attempts to find him inspired the 1982 movie “Missing,” starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. The film won an Academy Award for best screenplay, and also sparked a libel lawsuit from several U.S. officials for the way the movie portrayed them.

The libel lawsuit was dismissed, but the homicide cases have continued for decades…

The deaths of Horman and Teruggi occurred in the immediate aftermath of the overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende — a move which pleased U.S. authorities at the time. Allende, a socialist with ties to Cuban leader Fidel Castro and other Cold War opponents of the United States, was replaced by a right-wing military dictatorship headed by Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Pinochet’s subsequent 16-year rule was marked by the death and disappearance of thousands of alleged enemies of the regime.

At the time, Davis headed an American military group tied to the U.S. Embassy in Santiago…Chilean Judge Jorge Zepeda’s indictment says the former military official now resides in the United States and asks Chile’s Supreme Court to consider an extradition request to bring him to trial in Chile…

Horman’s widow, 66-year-old Joyce Horman, said she was surprised to learn of Tuesday’s indictment.

“I was quite stunned, frankly. It’s taken me a little while to get used to the idea that there’s this big step that’s finally being taken that we’ve been waiting for, for so long,” she said. “I am very glad for this step forward. I’m very grateful for it, and I hope it keeps going.”

Just one more tale of American foreign policy consistent with events from the “adopting” of Nazis at the end of World War 2 and continued as policy through decades of White House administrations that were purportedly different from one another. The world has memories engraved in steel and blood of collusion between US diplomats and Pentagon flunkies whose tasks ranged from training death squads in torture techniques to assassination to the overthrow of democratically-elected governments.

From Iran to Chile, the people of those lands are as unlikely to forget – as American citizens are to have the slightest knowledge of what was done in their name to “preserve” our freedom.

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.

Taking fingerprints of one of the dead attackers
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

The top U.S. military officer accused Pakistani intelligence on Thursday of backing violence against U.S. targets including the American Embassy in Afghanistan…

Admiral Mike Mullen said Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) played a role in the September 13 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, supporting militants known as the Haqqani network. That network, he said, is a “veritable arm” of the ISI.

The embassy attack was the latest in a series of violent episodes that were a blow to U.S. efforts to bring the Afghan war to a peaceful close.

Pakistan’s interior minister rejected the U.S. accusations of Islamabad’s links to the Haqqanis, one of the most feared insurgent groups operating in Afghanistan. The minister, Rehman Malik, also warned against a unilateral U.S. ground attack on the Haqqanis, who are based in Pakistan’s ungoverned tribal territories…

A complete break between the United States and Pakistan — sometimes friends, often adversaries — seems unlikely, if only because the United States depends on Pakistan as a route to supply U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and as a base for unmanned U.S. drones…

But support in the U.S. Congress for curbing assistance or making conditions on aid more stringent is rising rapidly. And Mullen, CIA Director David Petraeus and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have all met their Pakistani counterparts in recent days to demand Islamabad rein in militants.

Bruce Riedel, a former top CIA analyst with close ties to the Obama White House, which he once advised, told Reuters administration officials have told him that militants who attacked the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul on September 13 phoned individuals connected with the ISI before and during the attack.

Following the attacks, Riedel said, U.S. security forces collected cell phones the attackers had used. These are expected to provide further evidence linking militants to ISI.

RTFA for beaucoup details.

Yes, I know all the history and have my own opinion about how things got this way. But, between no legal structure encompassing tribal bandits and apparently little or no inclination to divest backwards elements inside portions of the military and ISI, Pakistan will remain a well-armed and therefore more dangerous variation on the gangster turf which lies between Afghanistan and India. That adds nothing to the future of the people of Pakistan.

Nhut Nguyen and his target, Yvonne Stern

A Houston jury found a Vietnamese immigrant guilty Tuesday of aggravated assault in an alleged murder-for-hire plot.

There were three attempts on the life of Yvonne Stem of the Houston suburb of Bellaire, The Houston Chronicle reported…

Prosecutor Kari Allen, in closing arguments, called Nhut Nguyen’s contention he was not trying to kill Stern “hogwash,” the newspaper said.

“The gun was jammed,” Allen said, showing jurors a picture of the 9mm semi-automatic pistol police found near Stern’s home, a round still lodged in the slide. “That’s why Mr. Nguyen did not kill Mrs. Stern.”

…The Chronicle said the first round went through the glass front door of the Stern home as Stern and her teenage son went to answer the doorbell on April 15,2010. The gun jammed after Nguyen tried to fire off another round, officials said…

Yvonne Stern’s husband Jeffrey remains charged with two counts of solicitation of capital murder. Michelle Gaiser, with whom Jeffrey Stern was having an affair, also is charged with trying to hire hit men to kill Yvonne Stern.

Yvonne Stern was shot in the abdomen in the third attempt on her life… After that, she filed for divorce, but the couple has since reconciled and she has appeared with Jeffrey Stern at his court dates.

Why – oh why – has this woman reconciled and moved back in the with the crud who tried to have her killed?

I understand “love is blind”. That has nothing to do with “love can be self-destructive and stupid!”