Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Extremist Killing Is as American as Apple Pie

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175342/tomgram%3A_stephan_salisbury%2C_the_right_wing_of_killing
Extremist Killing Is as American as Apple Pie
Murders Grow on the Far Right Four Decades After Martin Luther King
By Stephan Salisbury
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 U.S. 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.
Extremist Wreckage Pockmarks the American Landscape
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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 arrived at 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?
-- 
Namib
"Chère imagination, ce que j'aime surtout en toi, c'est que tu ne 
pardonnes pas" (André Breton)


Quello che trovo veramente buffo � il modo in cui morti e vivi vengono 
reclutati e fatti marciare sotto le banidere dei razzisti ed estremisti di 
destra.
Prendiamo il caso di Joseph Stack. La sua lettera di addio si conclude con 
le parole:
" The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according 
to his need.
The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each 
according to his greed."
Questo sarebbe un estremista di destra?
O prendiamo la morte di James Cummings. Questo era davvero un estremista di 
destra, e i suoi scritti non lasciano dubbi in merito. Aveva simpatie 
naziste ed era un violento. Sembra che stesse pianificando la costruzione di 
una bomba sporca (radiologica).
Aveva ucciso qualcuno? No. Aveva comprato materiali vietati? No. Aveva 
commesso atti di terrorismo? No.
E allora come mai � nella lista? B�, perch� � stato ucciso dalla moglie, 
mentre dormiva. Sappiamo per certo che aveva maltrattato la moglie (come 
detto era un violento). Sappiamo che avrebbe avuto intenzione di commettere 
atti di pedofilia con la figlia - questo la sappiamo dalla moglie, che ne ha 
fatto uso nella linea difensiva che l'ha portata ad evitare il carcere.
O prendiamo George Jakubec. L'articolo lo introduce con la parola "carnaio" 
("carnage"). Quanti morti ha fatto, dunque? Nessuno, neanche uno. Certo era 
un criminale - un rapinatore di banche. Certo aveva un'enorme quantit� di 
esplosivi in casa - e a quanto risulta per ora, non li aveva usati. 
L'articolo, molte righe sopra, era iniziato affermando che ci sono dei 
fattori comuni nei vari casi, e "tutti" coinvolgono bianchi con legami a 
gruppi razzisti o di destra. Jakubec aveva legami con gruppi razzisti o di 
destra? Non si sa.
Insomma: un po' troppo zelo da parte dell'autore.

 destra.
ecco chi mi ricorda Michele: Franchino! (cit. doctissima)

 ha scritto nel messaggio 
news:18f2f81f-a591-4f58...@w29g2000vba.googlegroups.com...

Mentre sui fatti non hai nulla da aggiungere. Sono lieto che tu prenda atto 
dei piccoli problemi in quell'articolo da me evidenziati. 

 Mentre sui fatti
Franchino, abbassa l'ascella, che le tortore sono innocenti
http://www.ansa.it/web/notizie/canali/energiaeambiente/natura/2011/01/12/visualizza_new.html_1641258923.html

 Franchino, abbassa l'ascella, che le tortore sono innocenti
Sei costretto a tagliare, a chiamarmi con un nome di fantasia, e a 
divagare - perchč sui fatti sei deboluccio. Impreparato, al posto, 4. 

 divagare - perch sui fatti sei deboluccio. Impreparato, al posto, 4.
chissà quanti 4 prendi nella vita reale per sentirti costretto a
venire a fare il Franchino su IPI

 divagare - perch sui fatti sei deboluccio. Impreparato, al posto, 4.
Taglio irrilevanze. deve dispiacerti assai che l'articolo citato da Namib 
abbia tutti quei problemini, visto che insisti pur non avendo nulla se non 
il tuo raffinato umorismo cui aggrapparti.

 Taglio irrilevanze
si risponde da solo. Povero....

 ha scritto nel messaggio 
news:58c5c763-486f-46d5...@fo10g2000vbb.googlegroups.com...

Tu invece eviti di rispondere. Un motivo ci sarŕ.
Capisco che i fatti per te sono sempre un'impresa ardua, abituato come sei a 
vivere in un mondo di tue illusioni.
Perciň proviamo con uno alla volta, invece che tre in un colpo. A piccole 
dosi.
L'articolista afferma che gli episodi sono tutti di matrice comune, razzista 
e/o di estrema destra.
Fatto: uno dei defunti ha lasciato un ultimo messaggio, che si conclude 
cosě:
"The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according 
to his need.
The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each 
according to his greed."
Domanda, facile facile: queste sono le parole di un estremista di destra?
Un semplice sě o no, se ti riesce. Qualcosa mi dice che non ti riesce.

 Questo sarebbe un estremista di destra?
Beh sarebbe un classico: la famigerata terza posizione.
PP

 Perciò proviamo
proviamo? Adesso capisco perchè parli da solo. Chissà quanti siete, là
dentro....datevi al bunga bunga, è più divertente.

 invece niente, chi si risponde da solo, � bene che sia lasciato a
darsi ragione da solo...
Questo � l'alibi che ti dai per la tua incapacit� di affrontare i fatti?
Visto che sono i fatti quel che ti d� pi� fastidio, la risposta che pi� ti 
sar� d'aiuto � rimetterti di fronte ai fatti.
Prendiamo il caso di Joseph Stack. La sua lettera di addio si conclude con
le parole:
" The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according 
to his need.
The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each 
according to his greed."
