South Of Heaven

How's fighting the negative portrayal of Muslims going?

Wrong guy was in charge, I guess. From the BBC:

A New York television executive has been given the maximum sentence of between 25 years to life in prison for murdering his wife in 2009.

A jury last month found Pakistan-born Muzzammil Hassan guilty of stabbing Aasiya Hassan and beheading her six days after she filed for divorce.

Hassan argued she had abused him and that he had acted in self-defence.

Hassan founded Muslim-oriented Bridges TV in 2004 in an effort to counter negative portrayals of Muslims.

Prosecutors argued Hassan abused his wife and attacked her in a hallway at the television office, after she filed for divorce following years of domestic violence.

He was arrested in 2009 after he walked into a police station in the city of Buffalo, in New York state, and told officers his wife was dead.

The couple had been married for eight years and had two children.

 

This doesn't surprise me.

That cops were busted for doing an illegal search. And it doesn't surprise me that the cops were caught by a security camera.

When the world became more surveilled by security cameras and camera phones the initial assumption was that it gave police another tool to find the bad guys, and in some ways it has. But all these cameras are catching cops being cops in the worst ways.

Interesting murder case

This case, from down in Southern California, fascinates me. The victim is a twice-widowed woman who is suspected of having her two husbands killed. The killer is a nephew who allegedly did it to get his inheritance. Except that the victim didn't have a will.

The prosecutor and defense attorneys agreed on at least one thing: Sonia Rios Risken was a loathsome person.

The 60-year-old woman from Lomita was under investigation by the FBI in 2006 after her second husband, a retired naval officer, was fatally shot while visiting her relatives in the Philippines. Her first husband, a retired Marine, was shot to death 19 years earlier under suspiciously similar circumstances.

When news leaked that federal agents suspected Risken of masterminding both slayings, local media dubbed her the "Lomita Black Widow."

Then, in a bizarre twist, Risken was killed April 26, 2007 — shot once in the back of the head — in the entryway of her home. She was wearing pajamas and a bathrobe.

On Thursday, a Torrance jury convicted Risken's grandnephew, an active duty Navy sailor at the time of the killing, and his Navy buddy of planning and carrying out a plot to murder her.

The grandnephew, Eric Delacruz, 31, of Carson and his friend, Fernando Romero, 27, of Highland, face 50 years to life in prison. They are scheduled to be sentenced March 16.

Prosecutors alleged greed motivated the pair to kill Risken.

Delacruz, who called Risken "Grandma" and testified during trial that she practically raised him, expected to inherit her money and property, prosecutor John Lewin said during closing arguments.

"Mr. Delacruz just wanted the money that he thought was coming to him, and he didn't want to wait," Lewin said.

To avoid getting caught, Delacruz planned to frame Risken's son, John Bourdeau, prosecutors alleged. In January 2007, Delacruz set up an e-mail account in Bourdeau's name and began e-mailing the sister of Larry Risken, Sonia's deceased second husband, authorities said.

Pretending to be Bourdeau, Delacruz e-mailed the sister and said he could retrieve her brother's remains from the Philippines for $35,000.

In a later e-mail to her, Delacruz offered to have Sonia Rios Risken killed, also for pay, prosecutors said.

"I have a friend in L.A. and he can find a way to kill Sonia Rios Risken," he allegedly wrote. "All I need is your permission, you don't have to pay him right now. He will kill her first and then you can pay him later."

That's where Romero came into the picture, prosecutors alleged. Both sailors were assigned to the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan at the time of the killing, and Delacruz brought Romero into the conspiracy as the "trigger man," Lewin said.

A week before Risken's death, someone fired a shot at her inside her Lomita hair salon. In the police report Risken filed after the shooting, she described the assailant as a Latino in his mid- to late-20s with a military haircut and light skin. That description fits Romero, prosecutors said.

Delacruz, who was at sea during the hair salon assault, had called Romero several times that day and in the days following, the prosecutor said. Then a week later, on the night of Risken's death, cellphone records indicate that both Delacruz and Romero were in Lomita within a few miles of the victim's house.

Risken's body was discovered the next morning by her son, Bourdeau. A purse containing $1,700 in cash was untouched; but a 9-millimeter handgun she owned — the same caliber as the gun used to kill her — was missing.

A few days later, Delacruz went to the office of Risken's attorney and asked "What did she leave me?" her attorney testified during the trial. It turned out Risken had no will, so much of her money went to her closest living relative — her son.

Delacruz's attorney, Donald Levinson, conceded during closing arguments that his client was guilty of extorting the Risken family for money, but he urged jurors to consider the circumstantial nature of the evidence linking him to the slaying.

"My client is a bad guy," he said. "But you've got no physical evidence that my client committed this murder.... Only phone records, some phone pings off local cell towers."

Both Levinson and Ludlow Creary, Romero's defense attorney, argued that detectives felt pressured to arrest the two men after the CBS crime show "48 Hours Mystery" spotlighted the case in a January 2009 episode and suggested that Delacruz was a probable suspect.

"Listen to the interviews and you can hear how frustrated the detectives are," Levinson said. "They know Mr. Delacruz didn't do it, but they know he knows who did."

Sonia Rios Risken was so despicable, both defense attorneys argued, that a number of people could have committed the crime.

Levinson called Risken an "evil murderer." Creary called her "a monster."

The prosecutor conceded that Risken was "likely a double murderer," but urged jurors to focus on the crime that had been committed against her.

"Our system of law is bigger than who she was," Lewin said.

Asia Times notes that white men can't be terrorists in America

Here.

The landscape of America is littered with bodies.

They've been gunned down in Tucson, shot to death at the Pentagon, and blown away at the Holocaust Museum, as well as in Wichita, Knoxville, Pittsburgh, Brockton, and Okaloosa County, Florida.

Total body count for these incidents: 19 dead, 26 wounded.

Not much, you might say, when taken in the context of about 30,000 gun-related deaths annually nationwide. As it happens, though, these murders over the past couple of years have some common threads. All involved white gunmen with ties to racist or right-wing groups or who harbored deep suspicions of "the government." Many involved the killing of police officers.

In Pittsburgh, three police officers were shot and killed, while two were wounded in an April 2009 gun battle with Richard Poplawski, a white supremacist fearful that President Obama planned to curtail his gun rights. In Okaloosa County, Florida, two officers were slain in April 2009 in an altercation with Joshua Cartwright, whose abused wife told the police that her husband "believed that the US Government was conspiring against him" and that he was "severely disturbed that Barack Obama had been elected President."

At the Pentagon, an anti-government conspiracy theorist, John Patrick Bedell, wounded two police officers in March of last year before being shot to death. At the Holocaust Museum in 2009, James W Von Brunn, a white supremacist, gunned down a security guard before being wounded and subdued by two other security guards.

Government officials, of course, have also been targets of the gunmen, as demonstrated so vividly by the recent shootings in Tucson, where Arizona Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 12 others were wounded, and one of Giffords's staff members and a federal judge were among the six dead.

Churches are no sanctuary from Christian extremists
Two of these shootings took place within the sanctuary of churches. In Wichita in 2009, Dr George Tiller was gunned down by anti-abortion extremist Scott Roeder. Tiller was serving as an usher during a Sunday morning service at Reformation Lutheran Church when he was shot. The attack in Knoxville, which left two dead and six injured in July 2008, occurred at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church while 25 children were performing Annie Jr.

Killer Jim David Adkisson said he hated Democrats and deemed the church part of the "liberal movement." Adkisson opened fire with a shotgun on an audience of about 200. In Brockton, Massachusetts, in January 2009, neo-Nazi Keith Luke sought to storm a synagogue, but never made it, authorities claim. According to a prosecutor, Luke wanted to "kill as many Jews, blacks, and Hispanics as humanly possible." In his rampage, he reportedly murdered two Hispanics and raped and wounded a third before, near the synagogue, he was wrestled to the ground by ordinary citizens.

Since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing - initially attributed by numerous media experts to Arab terrorists but actually the work of right-wing militia-movement supporter Timothy McVeigh - more than 25 law-enforcement officers have been killed by white supremacists, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Beyond the shootings - and those enumerated above are only a sample of such incidents since 2008 - there is a landscape of rubble and carnage. In February 2010, Joseph Stack, infuriated by the IRS and US tax policy, crashed his small plane into an Austin office building housing 200 IRS workers, killing himself and two others and injuring 13. Violence, he wrote in a "manifesto," is "the only answer" to oppressive government policies.

Sometimes the wreckage left behind from such incidents is easily overlooked, a roadside crash on a springtime day. In Nashville last March, a motorist was so enraged by an Obama bumper sticker that he rammed his SUV into the offending car, pushing it off the road and onto the sidewalk, leaving a man and his 10-year-old daughter terrified inside.

Sometimes the incidents reveal deep emotional wounds. Just before Christmas in 2008, in Belfast, Maine, an abused wife shot and killed her husband, James Cummings, a wealthy California native and Nazi devotee. Loathing Barack Obama, he was planning to join the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement at the time he was shot. Police and federal agents subsequently found radioactive materials and instructions for the making of a "dirty bomb" in his house, according to an FBI document released by WikiLeaks.

An FBI official said the materials could all be purchased legally in the United States. The police offered assurances that the public was not at risk. Amber Cummings, the abused wife who believed her husband had sexual designs on their nine-year-old daughter, was sentenced to eight years in prison for the shooting, but the judge suspended the sentence.

Sometimes the carnage is vast and events are still playing out. A bomb lab discovered in an Escondido, California, house in November proved so immense that authorities feared removing the explosives. Instead, they closed nearby Interstate 15 and set the property ablaze, sending a towering black cone of smoke skyward and filling the air with the hiss of burning chemicals and the crack-crack of exploding ammunition.

Police are still investigating the supposed architect of this explosive realm, an unemployed Serbian immigrant. As with the apparent plans to build a dirty bomb in Maine, the authorities have not yet declared these efforts in California to be associated with terrorism or possible construction of weapons of mass destruction. WikiLeaks, on the other hand, which released the FBI field report on the Maine incident, has since been termed a terrorist organization by a number of federal lawmakers and officials for bringing classified documents to public attention.

White men are never labeled terrorists
That leads to a common thread among these murderous incidents. None has been labeled the work of terrorists by authorities or the media. All involved white men, most of whom - like Jared Loughner in Tucson - have been deemed troubled or disturbed by authorities and various media outlets. Even Jim David Adkisson, the unemployed truck driver who attacked the Knoxville church because he believed it was "a cult" and a haven for Democrats and secular liberals, has not been characterized as a political terrorist. Adkisson was a fan of the writings and shows of right-wing media personalities Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, and Sean Hannity, according to authorities who searched his residence after the 2008 shootings. However, his primary motivation, according to those same authorities, was the imminent loss of food stamps and inability to find a job.

Joseph Stack, who flew his plane into the Austin IRS building in an eerie echo of the 9/11 attacks, is also not a terrorist - just a plain old suicide. The Maine dirty-bomb maker, who amassed quantities of hydrogen peroxide, uranium, thorium, lithium metal, thermite, aluminum powder, beryllium, boron, black iron oxide, and magnesium ribbon, a terrorist? No, just a "disturbed individual."

Arizona, of course, has seen a lot of extremist political activity in recent years. In fact, even as Jared Loughner was gunning down 20 people inside the Safeway on North Oracle Road on January 8th, the murder trial of Shawna Forde, head of the anti-immigrant Minutemen American Defense group, was getting underway in nearby Pima County Superior Court. Forde and two associates have been charged with the shooting death of a man, the wounding of his wife, and the killing of the couple's nine-year-old daughter during a June 2009 robbery aimed at funding her extremist political activities.

These are America's killing fields, coast to coast, yet the commentary and debate in the wake of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting revolves around political rhetoric in Washington. Both sides need to tone it down, we're told. There have been endless discussions on television and radio, newspaper commentary and Internet postings all focused on the issue of overheated political talk - as if Jared Loughner somehow leaped full-grown from the forehead of Glenn Beck.

Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck did not send Jared Loughner out to kill, even if their extreme lock-and-load rhetoric - Beck, brandishing a baseball bat, has warned his viewers to watch out during the next "killing spree" - has helped legitimate such talk. What they have certainly done is help create an inspirational environment where it is perfectly normal for Tea Party extremists to attend political rallies while packing pistols. Indeed, packing pistols is the point, isn't it?

That said, conservative columnist David Brooks, in an astonishingly superficial argument, wrote in the New York Times that those who drag politics into public debate over the killing of political figures and government officials are leveling "vicious charges" and lack empathy for the mentally ill. Brooks gravely wagged his finger at those - he singled out MSNBC commentator Keith Olberman, former Senator Gary Hart, and Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas - who have argued that violent rhetoric from the Tea Party and Sarah Palin set the table for the Tucson shootings. (Of course Congresswoman Giffords herself chastised Palin for putting her district in the now-infamous gun-sight crosshairs. Does Brooks include her, too, in excoriating "vicious charges made by people who claimed to be criticizing viciousness"?)

How sugary is Brooks' argument? Compare it to what he wrote following the shooting rampage that took place at Fort Hood in November 2009. In that murderous incident, Major Nidal Malik Hasan was ultimately charged with killing 13 and wounding over 30. Hasan, a Muslim psychiatrist, was clearly disturbed by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (he was about to be deployed to the latter) and his deteriorating mental state had been a concern to officials at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

That was before Hasan snapped. Despite documented psychiatric worries, the issue of terrorism quickly dominated public discussion of Hasan's act.

At the time, Brooks derided talk of Hasan's mental state and characterized those who brought it up as casting "a shroud of political correctness" over the Hasan "narrative."

"The conversation in the first few days after the massacre was well intentioned, but it suggested a willful flight from reality," Brooks intoned. "It ignored the fact that the war narrative of the struggle against Islam is the central feature of American foreign policy. It ignored the fact that this narrative can be embraced by a self-radicalizing individual in the US as much as by groups in Tehran, Gaza or Kandahar."

So much for "vicious charges" and empathy. They are apparently reserved for young white males in Tucson; Muslims need not apply.

Meanwhile, the bodies are piling up in Arizona and Tennessee, Kansas and Pennsylvania. The Homeland Security Department issued a lonely cautionary report in 2009 on the rising tide of right-wing extremism; it was loudly hooted down by right-wing radio celebrities like Rush Limbaugh and Internet pundits like Michelle Malkin. The killings and the attacks went on.

Now, we have just celebrated another Martin Luther King Day, the birthday of a man gunned down by a right-wing extremist more than 40 years ago and, while we talk endlessly about rhetoric, we have done a remarkable job of ignoring the growing pile of bodies. The murderous right wing is still with us. The racists and the skinheads and the neo-Nazis are still here. Sales of Glock semi-automatic guns are skyrocketing in the wake of Tucson. The growing piles of bodies is real evidence of growing extremist activity. What could be plainer or starker?

Congressman Peter King, the New York Republican who now heads the House Homeland Security Committee, is planning to hold hearings on Muslim radicalization in America when the new Congress convenes. Muslims, he said in the wake of the Tucson killings, are recruited by "foreign" terrorists, while Loughner is just a "deranged" American, the latest in a long line of deranged Americans.

What place is this? Where are we now?

The scorecard

Here:

-- July 2008: A gunman named Jim David Adkisson, agitated at how "liberals" are "destroying America," walks into a Unitarian Church and opens fire, killing two churchgoers and wounding four others.

-- October 2008: Two neo-Nazis are arrested in Tennessee in a plot to murder dozens of African-Americans, culminating in the assassination of President Obama.

-- December 2008: A pair of "Patriot" movement radicals -- the father-son team of Bruce and Joshua Turnidge, who wanted "to attack the political infrastructure" -- threaten a bank in Woodburn, Oregon, with a bomb in the hopes of extorting money that would end their financial difficulties, for which they blamed the government. Instead, the bomb goes off and kills two police officers. The men eventually are convicted and sentenced to death for the crime.

-- December 2008: In Belfast, Maine, police discover the makings of a nuclear "dirty bomb" in the basement of a white supremacist shot dead by his wife. The man, who was independently wealthy, reportedly was agitated about the election of President Obama and was crafting a plan to set off the bomb.

-- January 2009: A white supremacist named Keith Luke embarks on a killing rampage in Brockton, Mass., raping and wounding a black woman and killing her sister, then killing a homeless man before being captured by police as he is en route to a Jewish community center.

-- February 2009: A Marine named Kody Brittingham is arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate President Obama. Brittingham also collected white-supremacist material.

-- April 2009: A white supremacist named Richard Poplawski opens fire on three Pittsburgh police officers who come to his house on a domestic-violence call and kills all three, because he believed President Obama intended to take away the guns of white citizens like himself. Poplawski is currently awaiting trial.

-- April 2009: Another gunman in Okaloosa County, Florida, similarly fearful of Obama's purported gun-grabbing plans, kills two deputies when they come to arrest him in a domestic-violence matter, then is killed himself in a shootout with police.

-- May 2009: A "sovereign citizen" named Scott Roeder walks into a church in Wichita, Kansas, and assassinates abortion provider Dr. George Tiller.

-- June 2009: A Holocaust denier and right-wing tax protester named James Von Brunn opens fire at the Holocaust Museum, killing a security guard.

-- February 2010: An angry tax protester named Joseph Ray Stack flies an airplane into the building housing IRS offices in Austin, Texas. (Media are reluctant to label this one "domestic terrorism" too.)

-- March 2010: Seven militiamen from the Hutaree Militia in Michigan and Ohio are arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate local police officers with the intent of sparking a new civil war.

-- March 2010: An anti-government extremist named John Patrick Bedell walks into the Pentagon and opens fire, wounding two officers before he is himself shot dead.

-- May 2010: A "sovereign citizen" from Georgia is arrested in Tennessee and charged with plotting the violent takeover of a local county courthouse.

-- May 2010: A still-unidentified white man walks into a Jacksonville, Fla., mosque and sets it afire, simultaneously setting off a pipe bomb.

-- May 2010: Two "sovereign citizens" named Jerry and Joe Kane gun down two police officers who pull them over for a traffic violation, and then wound two more officers in a shootout in which both of them are eventually killed.

-- July 2010: An agitated right-winger and convict named Byron Williams loads up on weapons and drives to the Bay Area intent on attacking the offices of the Tides Foundation and the ACLU, but is intercepted by state patrolmen and engages them in a shootout and armed standoff in which two officers and Williams are wounded.

-- September 2010: A Concord, N.C., man is arrested and charged with plotting to blow up a North Carolina abortion clinic. The man, 26-year--old Justin Carl Moose, referred to himself as the "Christian counterpart to (Osama) bin Laden” in a taped undercover meeting with a federal informant.

Trafficking in outrage

 
I was trying to write a piece on Jared Loughner, but it’s difficult to make sense out of an insane man’s ramblings. My point was that having lots of talk from the right about using guns to resolve problems, even if they are only being metaphorical, is dangerous talk because not everyone can tell the difference. However, you can’t couch everything you say in order prevent the insane from misinterpreting you. Every few years some nut commits a horrible crime based on his interpretation of the Bible, and there are plenty of horrible crimes committed by sane people based on the Bible, for that matter.

 
The problem is that insanity is a relative thing. Byron Williams is sitting in a jail after a shootout with California state troopers. He was on his way to San Francisco to shoot lots of people at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU. His only real source of information about the Tides Foundation had to have been Glenn Beck. I’d never heard about the group. Beck, as is his manner, diagrammed how George Soros, today’s International Jew, was using the organization to destroy America.

 
Just for a moment, suppose Beck is absolutely correct and the Tides Foundation is working to destroy America. If you are really a patriot shouldn’t you want to do something about it?

Here is a video made by Loughner, strolling through the Pima Community College campus one night after he was kicked out and his parents had been told he wouldn’t be welcomed back until he’d passed a mental examination:

The guy sounds crazy, eh? He mentions mind control although he doesn’t go into detail about how the mind control works.

 
Let me introduce you to David Wynn Miller, a speaker on the rightwing circuit. One of his principle points is that government controls people by their control of language. It has something to do with adverbs. He also believes that adding hyphens and colons to your name makes you non-taxable in the eyes of the law. Thus, “:David-Wynn: Miller”. This theory hasn’t done well in court. According to Miller there is some connection to the Swiss postal service and the New World Order. He personally has claimed to be a judge and the King of Hawaii.

Miller also is associated with the sovereign citizen’s movement which has something to do with the Christian patriot movement and the Christian Identity movement and other fringe groups. These groups are anti-Semitic.

There is something about the right to print money, which I think brushes up against Ron Paul territory. That was another of Loughner’s obsessions, the illegality of US currency.

As far as I know, David Wynn Miller is not crazy. People come to listen to him speak at seminars. People believe him. People have gone to jail on tax fraud and other charges after trying to use his theories in court. Miller himself  believes that Loughner has visited his website because of some of the things that Loughner has said.

Here is an article that better connects the dots between the two.

(If you think that these theories about money are wacky, go here for an hour-long show about money. It answers questions like where the money went when your house lost half its value recently.)

While people are now sitting in jail for following his theories of tax law and how colons and hyphens makes one a non-taxable human, I don’t think he’s ever told anyone to shoot a Congressional representative.

 
But Sharron Angle, who failed to unseat Harry Reid last fall, said this:  "What is a little bit disconcerting and concerning is the inability for sporting goods stores to keep ammunition in stock ... That tells me the nation is arming. What are they arming for if it isn't that they are so distrustful of their government? They're afraid they'll have to fight for their liberty in more Second Amendment kinds of ways?" Since the Second Amendment is the right to bear arms, what the hell is she talking about? And why shouldn’t that be interpreted as shooting for what you can’t get in an election?

 
Sarah Palin, whose motto is “Don’t retreat, reload”, and who had Giffords’ Congressional seat targeted with a gunsight on her website, was outraged that anyone would in any way blame her for any rhetoric that might have pushed Loughner into shooting Giffords. And now that we are know more about Loughner, it’s pretty clear that he’s schizophrenic and was not processing information clearly, whether or not he visited Palin’s website.

But we know that Byron Williams was inspired by Glenn Beck. Here Beck talks about how he wants to kill Michael Moore. And he hears a voice asking him what would Jesus do. Just a joke, right?

Before anyone sends any apologies to Palin, take a look at a news story about her outrage. “Blood libel” historically is the accusation that Jews kidnapped and killed Christian children because they used their blood in the making of matzos. In discussing this horrible incident where the first Jewish Congressional representative in Arizona is targeted for assassination and a nine year-old girl was murdered, you’d think that Palin would have steered away from the term.

But that’s not what Palin is doing. Palin traffics in outrage, and I wouldn’t be surprised that she, or her handlers or speechwriter, specifically chose that term for precisely that reason. Her supporters around the country are all outraged that the liberal media is picking on her again, or some twaddle. And it serves on another level. For the anti-Semites who follow her using the term to defend herself gives those folks a good chuckle.

 

Another echo in the echo chamber

Remember this guy?

Brett Reese, owner of 104.7FM Pirate Radio in Greeley, said he is playing the five-minute commentary on his station daily before MLK's birthday on Jan. 17.

It was crafted, he said, after he received a letter from a listener.

He still defends the words, three years after he taped it to air on his FCC licensed station.

"Ninety-nine percent of it's truth," he said. "I can tell you for a fact, there may be some small aberration that's in there."

Reese has served on the Greeley-Evans School Board for roughly one year, describing himself as a "controversial" school board member.

"He's not a legitimate reverend. He's not a bonafide PhD. His name isn't really Martin Luther King Junior..." Reese said in the commentary. "What's left? Just a sexual degenerate...an American hating communist, and a criminal betrayer of even the interests of his own people."

Reese said people in the United States are being "duped" about Martin Luther King Jr. the man, not his movement.

He says people in Greeley are taking issue with his stance now because he is on the school board, but said his commentary is great fodder for students everywhere.

"I think probably more appropriate than any other member of a community," Reese said. "A school board member should be talking about this particular subject."

However, an organizer of Greeley's 15th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. March and Celebration said Reese's comments are out of line.

"It is not balanced," said Tobias Guzman, chair of Greeley's Human Rights Commission. "If it is balanced, then we are educating."

Guzman said he would like to meet with Reese to have an open discussion about his words.

"Those words about another human being are obviously not kind and so it breeds hate," he said.

Well, message received.

This is an account from the local Spokane paper:

As Reiswig and her co-workers snapped photos of the police robot examining the backpack at the northeast corner of Washington Street and Main Avenue, posting some of them to their Facebook pages, the Spokane bomb squad was coming to a frightening realization. The backpack was equipped with a powerful bomb, positioned to inflict maximum blast damage toward the intended route of Spokane’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day march through downtown.

“Then we saw the officer in a bomb suit. At that point, we decided that maybe we should back away from the windows,” she said.

The FBI confirmed Tuesday that the Swiss Army-brand backpack contained a bomb that could have caused “multiple casualties” and credited Spokane city employees who noticed the suspicious bag and alerted authorities in time to re-route the parade. A $20,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible.

“It definitely was, by all early analysis, a viable device that was very lethal and had the potential to inflict multiple casualties,” said Frank Harrill, the special agent in charge of the Spokane FBI office. “Clearly, the timing and placement of a device – secreted in a backpack – with the Martin Luther King parade is not coincidental. We are doing everything humanly possible to identify the individuals or individual who constructed and placed this device.”

Harrill wouldn’t disclose specific details about the bomb.

But two security sources, who did not want to be named because they were not authorized to discuss the case, told The Spokesman-Review that they received a briefing Tuesday suggesting that the bomb was equipped to detonate by a remote device, such as a car remote or a garage door opener. The bomb apparently also had its own shrapnel that could have caused significant injuries to anyone near the blast.

Investigators were also concerned that the placement of the backpack – on a metal bench with a brick wall behind it – would have directed any blast toward marchers in the street.

“I think the link to the Martin Luther King celebration and march is inescapable,” Harrill said. “At that point, it falls directly in the realm and sphere of domestic terrorism. Clearly, there was some political or social agenda here.”

Ivan Bush, who has helped organize the celebration and march in Spokane for more than 20 years, said news of the backpack’s potential was “just painful to see and hear.”

“Man, that’s a sad testament,” said Bush, who works in human resources for Spokane Public Schools. “Here we are in the 21st century and these types of things are still happening. It just hurts.”

The whole purpose of the march was to bring residents together to celebrate a man who championed passive resistance, he said.

“This community came together to get a street dedicated to Dr. King and thousands come out to celebrate him every year,” Bush said. “When something like this takes place, it’s just painful.”

The FBI is working the case with other federal agencies and virtually all local police agencies via the Northwest Joint Terrorism Task Force. Two T-shirts were found in the bag. One reads “Stevens County Relay For Life June 25th-26th 2010” and another shirt reads “Treasure Island Spring 2009.”

Harrill said agents have conducted interviews and gathered surveillance of the area but said he could not discuss any potential suspects.

Meanwhile, federal investigators continue to investigate an explosive device that was discovered March 23 alongside the Thomas S. Foley U.S. Courthouse. Harrill said agents have not made an arrest in that case.

“We don’t know, at this point, of any linkage to any other incident,” Harrill said, referring to the Monday discovery. “We are not aware of any other events that prefaced this event … or threats associated with this device. Nor does it appear to be linked to any other incidents in Spokane or anywhere else in the country. But, that certainly is a focus for us.”

Harrill praised the city workers who discovered the backpack.

“They were the heroes of the day. They did what we all should do. They brought it to the attention of police,” Harrill said. “They took quick action, rerouted the parade and immediately called for the” bomb disposal unit.

Mayor Mary Verner said city officials are doing all they can to cooperate with the federal investigation.

“I was struck that on a day when we celebrate Dr. King, a champion of non-violence, we were faced with a significant violent threat,” Verner said in a news release. “This is unacceptable in our community—or any community.”

City Council President Joe Shogan praised the people who found the backpack and the officials who defused it. He noted the 1996 bombing of City Hall and said citizens must still be vigilant to prevent attacks.

“It would be nice to think that all this kind of activity was in the past, but obviously, it’s not,” Shogan said. “Too often, there’s that attitude that it can’t happen here. Well, it is happening.”

A pipe bomb packed with nails and screws exploded outside Spokane City Hall on April 29, 1996. There were no injuries, but the blast blew out a window in one of the doors and sent shrapnel flying into Riverfront Park.

Federal prosecutors later indicted white supremacists Chevie Kehoe, of Colville, and Danny Lee, of Yukon, Okla., for the bombing. Both also were later convicted for a 1996 triple murder in Arkansas. The two were accused of working to overthrow the government to set up a whites-only nation.

Back at Auntie’s, Reiswig said she and her husband recently adopted a son and they want to raise him to embrace cultural diversity, which was also one of the goals of the re-routed march.

“It’s so sad to me that there are people out there who can’t accept that there are differences (in people) and they are wonderful,” she said. “It is very disappointed to think that someone in Spokane was capable of that.”

And so it goes.

The power of a metaphor

It's two days after the Tucson massacre and the internet is filled with rhetorical battles between the right and left.

Maybe the right has no memory but having lived through the sixties it is simple common sense that public figures don't make jokes about shooting politicians. People with lesser intelligence and the mentally ill have trouble understanding the difference between a metaphor and reality.

That is why when McCain, Kelly, Palin, Angle et al used metaphorical phrases involving the shooting and/or murder of Democrats to remove them from office there was widespread concern. This event was utterly predictable. In fact, it was predicted although the conservatives didn't see it coming and pooh-poohed the idea as an impingement on their right to free speech. Now that what was predicted has come true the comments section is filled with apologists for those who used the language of hate and eliminationism.

Using metaphors for eliminating perceived problems is rhetorical shorthand. It plays well in the hinterlands. To say, "Let's deport all illegals!" is a lot easier than deporting twenty million illegals. Deporting that many people requires identifying them, having law enforcement arrest twenty million people, having twenty million deportation hearings in courtrooms, having places to hold twenty million people before deportation, having a means of sending twenty million people to countries that are willing to accept them without consequences, and ensuring that those twenty million people don't return to the U.S. Metaphors don't explain what you do with the children of illegals who were born here. Do you deport them? Under what law? Do change the Constitution to eliminate the citizenship of people who are already citizens? Do you support the wives, husbands and children of spouses who had been supporting their families before they were deported or let them starve? Do you treat them differently than hungry people who weren't married to illegals? Ah, but with a metaphor you can solve problems simply, although you don't actually solve anything. But it's easy.

There is a poem by W.H. Auden about Hitler, "Epitaph on a Tyrant", which he wrote in January 1939, long before the Nazis had done most of their dirty work:

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

Utterly predictable. A poet predicted it.

So various Republicans over the last few years used the rhetoric of elimination to attack Democrats and commentators warned what would happen. And it happened.

Sorry, I'll accept an apology from a Kelly, a Palin, an Angle, that they are truly sorry that they used that dangerous rhetoric if that apology comes with an understanding of the consequences of their misbehavior.

But pathetic mouthbreathers who say, "He was just a nut" still don't get it. Nuts listen to Sarah Palin too. And little children died in the streets.

 

Hunting season for Sarah's friends

 

Was Steve Landesberg working with Lee Oswald?

With the news of Steve Landesberg's death, I was reminded of the curious story involving him and Lee Harvey Oswald.

If you go here and continue reading, you'll see that a Steve Landesberg/Steve Landes/Stephen L'Eandes was in New York City representing himself as a member of a segregationist group known as the "Magnolia Rifles". He seemed to intentionally disrupt public gatherings. After the assassination in 1963 Landesberg went to the FBI to report that Oswald was a roommate with him in an apartment at 8th and MacDougall Street in Greenwich Village in late 1961 and early 1962. The two and a third ex-Marine named Earl Perry were apparently paid to disrupt "liberal" gatherings like an NAACP meeting. Landesberg appeared to be doing some sort of government informant work, either for the FBI, or more likely, for the CIA.

For his troubles going to the FBI to tell what he knew about Oswald Landesberg was arrested for lying to the FBI and put into Bellevue Psychiatric Center for several weeks.

It's interesting that both Landesberg and Oswald served in the Marines and got out early, a path for intelligence operatives, and that both seemed to be "performers", creating public disturbances, although Landesberg portrayed a Southern segregationist and Oswald portrayed a Communist.

The obvious question is "How can this be Lee Harvey Oswald when Oswald was in the USSR at the time?" Well, if you go here I give a brief glimpse into John Armstrong's Harvey and Lee, which in the course of a thousand pages documents two and at some times three different people using the Oswald identity. While one Oswald was in the USSR there was this different Oswald in New York City, also ordering trucks in New Orleans for an anti-Castro group and meeting with anti-Castro Cubans in Florida. This is also an intelligence strategy, having several people using the same identity.

Is this the same Steve Landesberg who later was in the cast of "Barney Miller"? There are plenty of parallels. There has been some discussion that at 65 he was too young to be the same guy, although I note that his age is reported as 74 in the NYT article cited at the beginning of the article. The Landesberg saga is best understood within the context of Armstrong's book. Still, here is a reprint from a Village Voice article on Dec. 5, 1963 about "Stephen L'eandes". 

The Voice has learned that a number of proprietors of Greenwich Village establishments have been given photographs by the FBI of a youthful right-winger who has spent considerable time in the Village.

 

The subject of the photographs has been identified as Stephen L'eandes, a native of Wiggins, Mississippi. The FBI is checking out information that Lee Harvey Oswald, alleged assassin of President Kennedy, had spent time in Greenwich Village reputedly in the company of L' eandes. L' eandes has not yet been located. The FBI is apparently eager to fill out the details of Oswald's life.

Meanwhile, reports have been snowballing that Oswald actually lived in the Village for a time since his return from Russia. A number of people insist they knew Oswald, but informants present their story via the telephone and have generally avoided direct contact with the FBI and the newspapers. One rumor links Oswald with a Village psychotherapist whose card Oswald was allegedly carrying at the time he was picked up by the Dallas police.