Ku Klux Klan Using Anti-Immigrant Hate to Recruit New Members

Never underestimate the foulness of the far right.  While parading around extolling their own supposed godliness and piety, these folks traffic principally in hate and division.  And anyone who isn't a white, heterosexual Christian is open to the focus of their hatred.  A case in point?  The Tea Party/Christofascists are in most cases virulently anti-immigrant - read anti-Hispanic - and now the Ku Klux Klan is using this racial hatred to recruit new members.  Yes, it's sick, but then so is today version of conservative Christianity which but for the degree of violence used is of a like mindset with fundamentalist Islam.  Think Progress looks at the KKK's new recruiting efforts.  Here are highlights:

Citing the issue of child arrivals through the U.S.-Mexico border, about 100 members of the Ku Klux Klan held a protest in North Carolina over the weekend to drum up support against immigration. The event was part of the organization’s latest campaign strategy to recruit new members. 

According to a local Fox affiliate, Klan members did not give a speech at the rally, opting instead to shout messages of white power and hate against “mixed breeds.” At the same time, the Fox reporter said that immigration advocate counter-protesters across the street sang the gospel song, “Hallelujah.” The event at the Troy County Courthouse devolved into a shouting match between Klan members and counter-protesters who were separated by law enforcement officials. For over a month, the KKK has advertised the Troy rally, calling on local residents to “save our land, join the Klan.” The rally drew between 400 and 500 immigration advocates counter-protesters. 

[L]ast month, the group left fliers and bags of candy on driveways in South Carolina, urging residents to call a “Klan Hotline” to disseminate hateful anti-immigrant rhetoric. The organization, fast dwindling in members and funded by nativist groups, has seen membership sharply drop since 2010. The KKK began targeting immigrants in July as part of its newest recruiting tool that they hold three times a year. In spite of having a website that still features cross-burning and hood-wearing, the Klan has even tried to reach out to black people with its anti-immigrant message. 

One Klan member from North Carolina told Al Jazeera, “If we pop a couple of ’em off and leave the corpses laying on the border, maybe they’ll see we’re serious about stopping immigrants.”

Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), told the Orange County Register that the Loyal White Knights are trying to unite Americans around demonizing undocumented immigrants. 

The KKK is not the only extremist group to target immigrants this summer. Most recently, right-wing militiamen took to the Texas-Mexico border to confront border crossers. One militia leader said, “You see an illegal. You point your gun dead at him, right between the eyes, and you say, ‘Get back across the border or you will be shot.’” 

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has designated the KKK as a hate group. The number of KKK groups diminished since the 1960s. The SPLC estimates that there are about 5,000-8,000 members “split among dozens of different – and often warring – organizations that use the Klan name.” 

Iran's Execution of Gays - the Only Time Christofascists Care About Gay Rights

Another example of GOP/Christofascists hypocrisy likewise comes from policy positions dealing with the Middle East.  Here at home in America, Christofascists are only too happy to deprive gays of civil rights, denigrate and stigmatize us at every turn, and claim that we are worthy of death in the minds of many professional Christians.  But if Iran executes gays for being gay, suddenly these same foul and hypocrisy filled individuals shriek and condemn the murders which in fact are nothing more than a more extreme extension of their own beliefs/policies.  A column in The Daily Beast looks at this disingenuous hypocrisy on parade.  Here are excerpts:

[T]wo men, Abdullah Ghavami Chahzanjiru and Salman Ghanbari Chahzanjiri, were hanged in southern Iran on August 6, possibly for consensual sodomy. Their deaths are part of a wave of executions in Iran, with more than 400 in the first half of 2014 alone, according to the NGO Iran Human Rights.

If these men were hanged for consensual homosexuality, however, this could be another LGBT headache for the Obama administration, which has been trying to walk a tightrope between LGBT human rights on one end and international politics on the other.


Despite Iran’s state anti-Semitism, the recent arrest of U.S. journalists, and the continued oppression of women, the Obama administration has been attempting a rapprochement with the Iranian regime. Fending off Iran hawks in Congress and the D.C. punditocracy, the administration has argued for a policy of constructive engagement, pursuing diplomacy over military action to halt Iran’s nuclear program. The execution of two gay men, while it may not be surprising, certainly doesn’t make that “engagement” any easier.

Just a few weeks ago, the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing on human rights in Iran at which progressives such as Hossein Alizadeh of the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission testified about Iran’s hideous record of criminalization and persecution.

But at that same hearing, some of the most vocal defenses of human rights came from Robert George—the intellectual father of the right-wing “religious liberty” movement and, domestically at least, a zealous opponent of LGBT equality—and Republican Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chris Smith, and Ed Royce, who used Iran’s human rights record as evidence against the Obama administration’s policy of engagement.

[T]he fact remains that when Iran persecutes gay people, conservatives in the United States suddenly become enamored of gay rights—and bash the Obama administration for not doing enough to defend them. Thus the administration is hit from all sides—at a moment in which it is trying to pursue its dicey diplomatic agenda.

The phenomenon of invoking LGBT equality as a justification for American foreign policies, which theorist Jasbir Puar calls “homonationalism,” has been around for several years. (Puar might prefer the term “imperialism.”) Even as conservatives fight LGBT equality at home, Puar says, they champion it overseas—as long as it serves their interests to do so.

GOP Hopefuls Criticize Obama for Iraq But Ignore How Disater Began

Modern day Pharisee Mike Huckabee - who makes a nasty whore seem virtuous

Proving yet again that hypocrisy and selective amnesia are two of the main attributes of today's Republican Party, GOP shysters in Iowa made an effort to criticize Barack Obama on events in Iraq but conveniently ignored how America's ongoing disaster in that country began: deliberate lies perpetrated on the American people by the GOP's own cretinous George W. Bush and the ever scheming Emperor Palpatine Cheney.  But for the fool's errand launched by these two war criminals, history would be very different and thousands of young Americans would not have lost their lives and billions and billions of dollars would not have been squandered.  A piece in Slate looks at the hypocrisy and lies on display in Iowa at a hate group sponsored forum.  Here are highlights:

AMES, Iowa—When he ran for president in 2008 and the Republican caucuses in Iowa made him a contender, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee did not have much to say about Iraq. It was John McCain’s issue, Ron Paul’s issue. The most memorable comment Huckabee had about America’s war was that it had been, indeed, worth starting, and that when it came to the missing WMD, “just because you didn’t find every Easter egg didn’t mean it wasn’t planted.”

When he arrived at the Iowa FAMiLY Leader’s annual summit for social conservatives on Saturday, though, Huckabee summoned his inner hawk. Huckabee closed a half-hour speech by asking where the Obama administration had been while the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria burned through Iraq.

The thousand-odd social conservatives in attendance social conservatives broke into cheers—not as loud as their cheers when Sen. Ted Cruz had called for the repeal of Obamacare, but plenty loud.

It had taken a while for Iowa to turn against the Iraq War, but in 2006 Democrats captured two congressional seats thanks to the backlash, while Barack Obama and John Edwards defeated Hillary Clinton in no small part because of the war. Since then, the Republican party’s libertarian, America-first segment has also found fertile soil in Iowa. Ron Paul nearly won the 2012 caucus vote, and his forces went on to take over the delegation and—until this year—the whole state party.

But the renewed hostilities in Iraq have rattled conservatives. At events in Iowa and at the summit this past weekend—Huckabee was joined there by fellow prospective 2016 GOP nominees Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, and Rick Santorum—Republican politicians and evangelical thinkers tried to fold the ISIS situation into various grand theories of foreign policy without bringing up how the war had started. For Huckabee, it was obvious that America had failed Christians.

Did that raise any questions about whether America should have invaded Iraq? Definitely. But that’s not what the gathered Republicans with national ambitions wanted to discuss.

The day before the summit, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal had campaigned at a supporter’s home in Knoxville, where some of the voters said they had lost friends or relatives in Iraq and feared that they’d sacrificed for naught.  But Jindal avoided any talk of the origins of Iraq’s latest woes. “It is not acceptable for this radical terrorist group to, one, occupy land in Iraq and Syria and, secondly, be threatening to slaughter Christians and minorities in Iraq,” said Jindal.

Those who did discuss Iraq, like Huckabee, fit it into a story of Obama-driven weakness. “Sadly, what’s happening in Iraq is the latest manifestation of the failures of the Obama-Clinton foreign policy,” said Cruz to reporters. “The Sunnis and Shiites are fighting a sectarian civil war that has been raging for 1,500 years. They have been battling since 632. For the president to think that we can somehow cause the Sunnis and Shiites to lay down their arms, embrace, and sing ‘Kumbaya’ is the height of hubris and ignorance.”

Like Huckabee, Cruz was deploying one of the arguments against invading that had originally been used—and dismissed—at the start of the Iraq War. (Cruz ignored a follow-up question about whether the war had been worth it.) Meanwhile, the idea of “independent Kurdistan,” which was poison when Democrats supported it, had now become a perfectly mainstream position to flog in Iowa.

There's more, but the take away is that the nastiest whore has more virtue than today's would be GOP presidential hopefuls.  As for the members of the GOP base in attendance, most belong in a mental institution!
 


 

The True Legacy of Bush Cheney - About as Bad as it Gets

Click image to enlarge

The image above lays out the facts that my Kool-Aid drinking former GOP colleagues simply cannot face.  They rail about Obama, but the real worse president was Obama's predecessor who not only should have been impeached but also should be tried for war crimes.  Until that latter prosecution occurs, today's Republicans need to simply shut up and engage in some introspection over the horrors and misdeeds they helped to implement.

One thing America does not need is another Republican president. 

More Monday Male Beauty

Embracing Libertarianism Will Not Save the GOP

There are some in today's Republican Party who claim that Libertarianism offers the best new hope for the GOP.  While there may be libertarians in the GOP, the bulk of the GOP base is the antithesis of the libertarian agenda of maximum personal freedoms with minimal government intervention.  It is no coincidence that the anti-gay agenda of the GOP base (and the political whores in elected GOP positions) flies directly against the arguments made by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, in amicus briefs which have sought to see state bans on same sex marriage invalidated.  The GOP base wants to regulate and control everything except for businesses/corporations.  True libertarians take a a 180% opposite position.  David Frum argues that the GOP is insane if it believes that embracing libertarian themes will save it from being anathema to most voters under 30.  Here are highlights:

Has the libertarian moment finally arrived? Robert Draper asks that question in the Sunday New York Times Magazine. His answer: Yes! Young voters are leaning libertarian, he says, and a Rand Paul presidential candidacy could energize those voters for the GOP.

Spoiler alert: Draper’s wrong, emphatically wrong. Young voters are not libertarian, nor even trending libertarian. Neither, for that matter, are older voters. The "libertarian moment" is not an event in American culture. It's a phase in internal Republican Party factionalism. Libertarianism is not pushing Republicans forward to a more electable future. It's pushing them sideways to the extremist margins.

Every serious study of the political attitudes of voters under 30 has discovered them to be the most pro-government age group since the cohort that directly experienced the Great Depression. Young voters are more likely than their elders to believe that government should intervene in the economy to create jobs. They support government aid to education and healthcare more than any other age group. Their voting behavior tracks their values: Under-30s massively voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

The claim that young voters are trending libertarian rests on three principal data points:

1. Young voters are more permissive on issues like same-sex marriage and drug legalization than their elders.
2. Young voters are marginally less supportive of Medicare and Social Security in their present form than are older voters.
3. Young voters are more alienated from institutions than their elders, including the two existing political parties.

But these points don’t add up to libertarianism. They don’t even present an opening to libertarianism. They reveal (modest) generational self-interest, social liberalism, and political demobilization.

Libertarianism is not rising in the country, but since 2009 it has exercised increasing influence inside the Republican party.  One measure of the libertarian rise is the waxing fortunes of the Paul dynasty

Despite the self-flattering claims of libertarians, the Republicans' post-2009 libertarian turn is not a response to voter demand. The areas where the voting public has moved furthest and fastest in a libertarian direction—gay rights, for example—have been the areas where Republicans have moved slowest and most reluctantly. The areas where the voting public most resists libertarian ideas—such as social benefits—are precisely the areas where the GOP has swung furthest and fastest in a libertarian direction.

Nor is it the strength and truth of libertarian ideas that explains their current vogue within the Republican Party. Libertarians have been most influential inside the GOP precisely where they have been—and continue to be—most blatantly wrong, such as when they predicted that the cheap money policies of the Federal Reserve would incite hyperinflation or that the United States teetered on the precipice of a debt crisis.

Libertarianism diverges from ordinary conservatism in many ways, but perhaps most fundamentally in this: Whereas ordinary conservatism emphasizes the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of government action, libertarianism presents government as alien and malign. 


Like all political movements, libertarianism binds together many divergent strands. It synthesizes the classical liberalism of the 1860s with the human-potential movement of the 1960s. It joins elegant economic theory to the primitive insistence that only metal can be money. It mingles nostalgia for the vanished American frontier with fantasies drawn from science fiction. It offers three cheers both for thrift, sobriety, and bourgeois self-control and three more for sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll.  It invokes the highest ideals of American constitutionalism—and is itself invoked by the most radical critics of the American state and nation, from neo-Confederates to 9/11 Truthers.

The libertarians interviewed by Robert Draper talk about their movement’s exciting, bold ideological vision. Yet the true secret to its post-2008 appeal is just the opposite. Those conservatives who succumb to libertarianism do so in despair, not hope. Instead of competing to govern the state, many now feel that their only hope is defend themselves—with arms if necessary—against an inherently and inevitably hostile and predatory state.

Conservatives who still want to compete, win, and govern must trust that this despair will pass. The “libertarian moment” will last as long as, and no longer than, it takes conservatives to win a presidential election again. Unfortunately, the libertarian moment is itself the most immediate and the most difficult impediment to the political success that will be libertarianism’s cure.

Iran's Secret World of Sex

Remember how former Iranian President and utter nut case Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed that there were no gays in Iran?  Well, a new study shows just how out in fantasy land Ahmadinejad was - 17% of the Iranians interviewed sad that they were gay.  Not only, that sex is much more prevalent among unmarried heterosexuals than the mullahs (who bear a bizarre resemblance to the Catholic Church hierarchy when it comes to being obsessed with policing the sex lives of others) want to admit.   Note how clerics are suspected of being the most common users of "sigheh," i.e., temporary marriage, to cover their adulterous affairs.  It seems whether it is the Catholic clergy of Islamic mullahs, no one is more engaged in hypocrisy than the "holy men."    The Economist has details: 

IT IS the last thing Iran’s religious rulers want to talk about, but they may just have to. An official report has documented the nation’s worst-kept secret: sex of every kind is taking place outside the marital bed in the Islamic Republic. Something, in the ruling ayatollahs’ view, must be done.

An 82-page document recently issued by Iran’s parliamentary research department is stark in its findings. Not only are young adults sexually active, with 80% of unmarried females having boyfriends, but secondary-school pupils are, too. Illicit unions are not just between girls and boys; 17% of the 142,000 students who were surveyed said that they were homosexual.

In Tehran, the capital, long known for its underground sex scene, chastity is plainly becoming less common. The scope and pace of change are challenging the government and posing a headache for the clerics who dispense guidance at Friday prayers.

The report is also a rare official admission of the unspoken accord in Iran: people can do what they want so long as it takes place behind closed doors. Parliament’s researchers, on this occasion, were allowed to say the unsayable.

Their suggestion for stopping unsanctioned sex is remarkably liberal. Instead of seeking to cool the loins of the youngsters altogether, they should be allowed publicly to register their union by using sigheh, an ancient practice in Shia Islam that lets people marry temporarily.

Clerics themselves have long been suspected of being among its biggest beneficiaries, sometimes when they are on extended holy retreats in ancient religious cities such as Qom.

Iran’s media, always wary of being shut down, have played safe by ignoring the report. So have members of parliament. In most official circles, sex in Iran is still too hot to talk about.

Historically, Iran - or Persia as it has been known through most of history - was an advanced culture, something that continued under the Shah.  That all ended when the Islamic extremists overthrew the Shah and brought in a reign of terror that either killed or drove into exile some of the country's best and brightest.  If one wants a glimpse of what America would be under Christofascist rule, Iran offers a good example.  Fundamentalist religion and knowledge/modernity and personal freedoms are mutually exclusive.   It really is that simple.

Putin Pretends that He can Make Russia Self-Sufficient and Strong

When one controls most of the media it becomes much easier to sell lies and propaganda to the populace.  Sadly, Vladimir Putin - like Hitler, Stalin and similar monomaniacal dictators of the past - controls Russia's mainstream media and is working hard at selling the myth that he can make Russia self-sufficient and strong in isolation from the western world.  A piece in The Economist looks at this ploy.  Here are highlights:

“ISOLATION”, “consolidation” and “self-reliance” are different terms used among Moscow’s political and business elite to mean the same thing. In the face of international sanctions occasioned by its support of the rebels in eastern Ukraine and its earlier annexation of Crimea, Russia is preparing to pull inward. It is hunkering down for a long period of diplomatic antagonism and economic hardship.

That process appears to be accelerating. On August 6th the Kremlin responded to Western pressure by announcing that it will ban or reduce agricultural imports from countries imposing sanctions on Russia.

The tensions in eastern Ukraine are rising. Ukrainian forces have, in effect, closed off the rebel stronghold of Donetsk through a campaign of often-indiscriminate shelling. If it falls to Kiev, then the pro-Moscow insurgency will lose its potency.

Mr Putin may be tempted to salvage his credibility by sending in Russian troops on the pretence of a “humanitarian” operation. According to NATO, 20,000 Russian soldiers have amassed at the border. They are engaged in live-fire drills involving fighter aircraft and bombers—the sort of manoeuvres that have presaged invasion before. Even if troops do not cross the border, the confrontation between Russia and the West looks set to continue through the rule of President Vladimir Putin and, perhaps, beyond.

Mr Putin has shown that he values his own understanding of Russia’s historic destiny more than the economic well-being of his country and its global reputation. He is making a risky bet that challenging the architecture of the post-cold-war order will reap its own rewards and make up for a drop in living standards. It is a mistake to think of Mr Putin as “mercantile”, says a Duma deputy from the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. Rather, he is an “historical figure” set on establishing Russia as a self-sufficient centre of power. 

The Kremlin proudly claims it will aim to replace Western goods and services with domestic ones, for instance in high-tech parts for the arms industry. Import substitution could work if manufacturers weren’t running at near-full capacity and in dire need of new investment, which will be in shorter supply as foreign financing shrinks. The country’s $173 billion in sovereign-wealth funds, built up over years of windfall profits from oil sales, will be drawn down to stabilise the rouble and pay off the debts of state banks and firms. “It won’t kill us, but it will create problems,” says the United Russia deputy.

Mr Putin will have to push the country’s financial resources to their limit if he wants to fulfill the promises on social spending he made when he returned to the presidency in May 2012.

Mr Putin has already proposed the introduction of a 3% sales tax as a way of filling holes in regional budgets. The government has also announced it will siphon off private pension-fund contributions to the federal budget, prompting a deputy economic-development minister to declare he was “ashamed” of the move. He was fired the next day.

Such problems have not yet hurt Mr Putin.  

Yet may be the operative word.  Let's not forget that Hitler and Mussolini saw themselves as "historic figures."  Those who followed them paid a very high price.  Putin, like so many failed Russian leaders of the past, puts his own ego ahead of the welfare of Russia and the Russian people. Putin might do well to remember how things ended for Mussolini.
 

Monday Morning Male Beauty

U.S. Concealed Troops’ War Crimes in Afghanistan

One of the biggest disappointments for me has been Barack Obama's refusal to subject those who committed war crimes to prosecution.  The list of those deserving of such criminal prosecution includes, of course, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.  Yet there are many others who similarly deserve prosecution.  Sadly, much as the Catholic Church worked for decades to hide sexual abuse by priests and obstructed justice, so too has the Pentagon.  If one wonders why America has inspired jihadists, look no farther than our failure to prosecute those guilty of war crimes.  Here are excerpts from a piece in The Daily Beast of America's coverup of atrocities committed by the U.S. military:

The U.S. military has systematically covered up or disregarded “abundant and compelling evidence” of war crimes, torture, and unlawful killings in Afghanistan as recently as last year, according to a report by Amnesty International published today in Kabul.

The human rights organization alleges that the U.S. military has routinely failed to properly investigate reports of criminal behavior and, in some instances, tampered with evidence to conceal wrongdoing. On the rare occasions when servicemen are held to account, the report found that the compromised military justice system seldom secured justice for the victims of enforced disappearances, killings, and abuse that included torture.

“President Obama has admitted that ‘we tortured’ people in the past—but this is not the Bush administration, this is torture happening under Obama,” said Joanne Mariner, the author of the report.

While torture and other abuses by the CIA and the military were sanctioned by the Bush administration, Obama entered office vowing to end such practices. There have been a number of prosecutions and punishments of military units that have committed crimes and atrocities in Afghanistan under Obama, but Amnesty says the White House has to do more to ensure his policy changes are respected in the field. 

A survivor of one of the most egregious assaults on civilians detailed in the report told The Daily Beast he had been forced to listen to the last gasps and sobs of his dying daughter, who was seven months pregnant, while the Americans threatened to kill anyone who moved. “She was calling out for help, maybe she wanted to share her last words before she left us forever,” said Muhammad Tahir, a civil servant.

“There is a shocking lack of accountability for the killing of Afghan civilians by U.S. forces, including civilians killed in circumstances that raise concerns about war crimes,” said Mariner. “There is very strong evidence that war crimes were carried out.”

The report, titled “Left in the Dark,” includes detailed investigations of 10 incidents in which at least 140 civilians, including 50 children, were killed in dubious circumstances. In the aftermath of nine of these, eyewitnesses and families report that no one was ever interviewed by the U.S. military.

A Pentagon spokesman did not deny the allegations in the report but reiterated U.S. policy on torture and war crimes. “The Department of Defense does not permit its personnel to engage in acts of torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of any person in its custody,” said Maj. Bradlee Avots.

When the Americans realized that the pregnant women and children they had killed were unlikely to be insurgents, witnesses said they began to remove the evidence of what they had done. 

“When they understood they had hit the wrong place, they started pulling out the bullets from the dead bodies with their hands and their knives,” Tahir recalled. “America, the killer nation, we will never forgive you.”

In the following days they would go on to brief the press with a series of lurid but inaccurate stories suggesting that there was evidence of honor killings or execution-style murders.

“The immediate effort to cover up what had been done suggested that they realized it was a crime,” said Mariner. “And the changing story over time definitely suggests a cover-up.”

Amnesty says Tahir’s family is just one of thousands who have waited in vain for justice for their missing, dead, or severely injured loved ones.
Among the most disturbing allegations are claims of forcible disappearance, torture, and extrajudicial killings carried out by a rogue unit in Wardak province from the fall of 2012. “We interviewed a former detainee that had a really horrific story of just raw torture,” Mariner said. “It’s not only the testimony of this former detainee but a lot of bodies were found showing horrendous crimes of torture—people missing body parts and people whose corpses were badly mutilated.”

Amnesty says relying on an internal justice system is not conducive to thorough investigations of alleged crimes; the commanders whose duty it would be to report incidents may be implicated, and there is a heavy reliance on the word of the accused and their colleagues rather than independent witnesses.

Stories like this leave me feeling ashamed to be an American.  Just as Israel has created life long enemies in Gaza, so too has America created life long enemies through these unpunished crimes.  Worse yet, jihadists have been give powerful propaganda tools.