Wednesday, February 28, 2018

EXODUS - TRUMP, KUSHNER AND THE RETURN OF JESUS


WILL TRUMP DEPORT AMERICA'S JEWS TO ISRAEL? 
WILL JARED KUSHNER BE THE NEXT HEROD?

President Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital last week made little sense to most Middle East experts. His own national security team opposed the decision. But for many white evangelical Christians, 81 percent of whom voted for Trump, it was great news.
 
According to a recent poll released by the Brookings Institution, 53 percent of American evangelicals supported Trump's decision, while only 40 percent opposed it. (Sixty-three percent of all Americans opposed the decision.)
 
To understand why evangelicals are so enthusiastic about this move, I reached out to Elizabeth Oldmixon, a politics professor at the University of North Texas. Oldmixon studies the rather strange alliance between evangelical Christians and people in the orthodox Jewish community who are stridently pro-Israel.
 
A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.
 
Sean Illing
I don't fully understand why evangelical Christians are so supportive of Israel. Can you walk me through it?
 
Elizabeth Oldmixon
First, we should remember that "evangelical" is a really broad term. In a most general sense, evangelicals are people who believe in the absolute authority of the Bible, in salvation through Jesus, and in the need to spread the gospel. People who identify as evangelicals internalize those three things to different levels, and so in the same way we talk about cultural Catholics, we can also talk about cultural evangelicals.
 
So I would really focus here on a subset of the evangelical community for whom the status of Israel is really, really important because of the way they understand the end of time.
 
Sean Illing
And how large is that subset?
 
Elizabeth Oldmixon
Roughly a third of the American evangelical population, which is something like 15 million people.
 
Sean Illing
Why are these evangelicals so interested in the fate of Israel?
 
Elizabeth Oldmixon
These are the folks who believe that there will be a millennium in the future, a golden age, where Christ reigns on Earth, [and] they believe that before Christ will return, there will be a tribulation where Christ defeats evil. There will be natural disasters and wars, and perhaps an Antichrist, as the book of Revelations notes. Then at the end of that period, the people of the Mosaic covenant, including the Jews, will convert. Then after their conversion, the great millennium starts.
 
Sean Illing
And what about the people who don't convert? What becomes of them?
 
Elizabeth Oldmixon
Well, according to the evangelicals who believe this, they'll end up with the rest of the unsaved, which means they'll be wiped out and sent to hell.
 
Sean Illing
So politics is a means to what they see as a religious goal?
 
Elizabeth Oldmixon
Yes. This is a movement in Christianity that's as old as Christianity itself. You have this group of people looking around for signs of the end time, and in the 20th century when Israel was founded, this was seen as a major sign. This was electrifying for that community because the gathering of all the Jews in exile to the Holy Land is a prerequisite for all of these events unfolding. So for the subset of evangelicals in the 20th century, support for Israel became a really, really important political position.
 
Sean Illing
Why is Jerusalem in particular so crucial?
 
Elizabeth Oldmixon
Well, the whole area is important. The tenet of Christian Zionism is that God's promise of the Holy Land to the Jews is eternal. It's not just something in antiquity. When we talk about the Holy Land, God's promise of the Holy Land, we're talking about real estate on both sides of the Jordan River. So the sense of a greater Israel and expansionism is really important to this community. Jerusalem is just central to that. It's viewed as a historical and biblical capital.
 
Sean Illing
How do people on the Israel side justify their alliance with fundamentalist Christians? After all, the Christian prophecy implies the destruction of Jews who don't convert.
 
Elizabeth Oldmixon
There's something that these Christians have in common with religious Zionists in Israel. The founding generation in Israel was fairly secular. Their support for a Jewish state wasn't about biblical prophecy. It was about physical security. David Ben-Gurion [the first prime minister of Israel] came up with an accommodation for the religious community so they would support the formation of Israel and the establishment of Israel, but his motivations weren't religious per se.
 
 
But religious Jews were always unhappy that the founding generation wasn't really motivated by a religious understanding of the Jewish people in the world. That's something that evangelicals in this country share. They support Israel for religious reasons, not secular reasons.
 
Sean Illing
But orthodox Jews don't share the evangelical conception of hell, which includes literal lakes of fire, right?
 
Elizabeth Oldmixon
No. Jewish people have their own theology of the end times. There is an understanding that the Messiah will come, but it won't be a second coming of the sort Christians believe in. But the state of Israel has welcomed the political support of evangelical Christians nevertheless. They even encourage Christians to visit Israel, to tour the holy sites.
 
Sean Illing
So this is an alliance based on political expedience?
 
Elizabeth Oldmixon
I think that's basically right.
 
Sean Illing
How do Arab and Israeli Christians feel about all this?
 
Elizabeth Oldmixon
I'm less sure about that. We're talking about a relatively small community here. I haven't seen poll data, and I haven't studied Arab Christians who are Israeli citizens to a great degree, but they tend not to be of the evangelical variety. End times prophecies aren't especially important to them.
 
Sean Illing
Do you think this political gamble will pay off for Trump?
 
Elizabeth Oldmixon
I think it depends, first, on how long this process takes. It could just fade away to the background. Second, and this is really key, it depends upon whether or not the administration down the road is willing to say, "Okay, East Jerusalem can be controlled by Palestinian Arabs, and West Jerusalem will be controlled by Israel." If the administration plans for a united Jerusalem under the sovereignty of Israel, that will be pretty problematic for the peace process. So it depends upon whether they'll concede to divided control.
 
Sean Illing
And do you think this move made political sense for Trump at home?
 
Elizabeth Oldmixon
Yes, I do. I'm not sure it's good for the Republican Party in the long run, but I do think it maintains the support of high-profile evangelical leaders, such as Jerry Falwell Jr. and Robert Jeffress. That will be key as the president's support drops among other groups. In other words, this contributes to a floor below which Trump's support cannot drop.

https://www.vox.com/2017/12/12/16761540/trump-israel-jerusalem-embassy-evangelical-christians


THE CRIMES OF EVANGELICALS
 
 
http://phylliscartersjournal.blogspot.ca/2018/01/in-jesus-name-i-would-support-hitler.html.

NERO FIDDLED. TRUMP TWEETS. HAIL CAESAR !


HERE IS YOUR NEW LORD, O ISRAEL. 
BOW DOWN AND KISS HIS ASSETS.
Israeli group mints coin bearing Trump's image."Temple Coin" honors president's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel
CBSNEWS.COM

THE BLOOD AND SCREAMS OF SYRIA'S CHILDREN - HISTORY WILL NOT FORGET

 
MEN FULL OF GREED AND HATE MURDER EACH OTHER'S CHILDREN.

THEIR LITTLE LIMBS ARE TORN OFF, THEIR EYES BLINDED, THEIR BLOOD FLOWS. THEY ARE ZOMBIES, BEYOND TEARS.

AND ASSAD AND PUTIN AND TRUMP AND THE NRA AND THE KU KU KLAN GO ON AND ON AND NO ONE STOPS THEM.

HISTORY WILL MARK YOUR DESCENDANTS WITH THE CURSE OF THE ATROCITIES YOU ARE COMMITTING.

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT THE NRA


THE NRA IS EVIL INCARNATE.

ITS BUSINESS IS DEATH AND DESTRUCTION.

ITS MESSAGE IS BIGOTRY AND HATE.

ITS GOAL IS UNLIMITED WEALTH AND POWER.

ITS FRUIT IS CARNAGE AND AGONY.

ITS STRENGTH IS CRUSHING OPPOSITION AND SILENCING TRUTH.

Monday, February 26, 2018

JUSTICE IS IN NOBODY'S JURISDICTION IN CANADA


JUSTICE DEMANDS THAT THE PUNISHMENT MUST FIT THE CRIME.

BUT WESTERN LAWS AFFORD ALL THE PROTECTION AND BENEFITS AND RIGHTS AND PERKS TO CRIMINALS.

NOBODY PROTECTS CRIME VICTIMS.

I KNOW BECAUSE I AM A CANADIAN CRIME VICTIM. 

AND A VICTIM OF THE MONTREAL POLICE.


EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT

"MRS. CARTER'S RIGHTS WERE VIOLATED THREE TIMES."
MARLENE JENNINGS, MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT

http://phylliscartersjournal.blogspot.ca/2017/10/mrs-carters-rights-were-violated-three.html

MONTREAL POLICE WILL NOT INVESTIGATE EVEN WHEN THERE IS A CORPSE.
 
HOW DID ED MCSWEENEY DIE? HOW DID MY MOTHER DIE?
 
HOW DID KENNETH GREGOIRE PRUD'HOMME, A COMPLETE STRANGER WHO NEVER MET MY FATHER, COME TO INHERIT MY FATHER'S LIFE'S SAVINGS AND OUR FAMILY HOME?
 
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO MY SISTER, DEBBIE RUBIN MCSWEENEY?
 
MONTREAL POLICE ALWAYS REFUSE TO INVESTIGATE.
                                                                                                                            
POLITICIANS ARE OUT TO MAKE THEMSELVES MORE COMFORTABLE, RICHER MORE POWERFUL. CANDIDATES MAKE PROMISES THAT THEY NEVER KEEP. IF YOU ASK THEM FOR HELP, THEY SMILE AND SAY THAT THEY CAN'T DO ANYTHING UNTIL THEY ARE ELECTED.

AFTER YOU HELP THEM GET ELECTED, THEY SMILE AND SAY, "YOUR RIGHTS WERE VIOLATED BUT JUSTICE IS NOT IN MY JURISDICTION."

JUSTICE IS IN NOBODY'S JURISDICTION IN CANADA.

MONTREAL MAYOR MICHAEL APPLEBAUM SET FREE - A MOCKERY OF JUSTICE
Former Montreal mayor Michael Applebaum was quickly granted parole on the year-long sentence he received for having accepted bribes while he served as a borough mayor. Corruption to benefit the rich permeates society - including our injustice system. Crime victims are an inconvenience.

MONTREAL POLICE COVER-UP.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-police-projet-alex-norris-1.4042467

SECURE SHREDDING AT MONTREAL CITY HALL.
WHAT WAS MAYOR DENIS CODERRE SO EAGER TO HIDE?
http://www.tvanouvelles.ca/2017/11/06/operation-dechiquetage-a-lhotel-de-ville-de-montreal.

MONTREAL POLICE CHIEF TO BE RELIEVED OF DUTIES
http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/police-chief-philippe-pichet-to-be-relieved-of-duties-report-1.3709005.


THE KU KU KLAN - IT TAKES A LUNATIC

Image result for ku klux klan photographs


 
NO SANE PERSON COULD BE A MEMBER OF THE KU KU KLAN.
 
THE KU KU KLAN CLAIM TO BE CHRISTIANS.
 
BUT THEY HATE JEWS AND DARK SKINNED PEOPLE.
 
ASK A KU KU KLAN MEMBER HOW HE CAN WORSHIP JESUS,
 
A DARK SKINNED JEWISH MAN.
 
DON'T LAUGH OUT LOUD WHEN HE EXPLAINS.
 
WE MUST START TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THERE ARE MORE INSANE PEOPLE THAN WE HAVE EVER IMAGINED.

Friday, February 23, 2018

STONE MOUNTAIN MONUMENT - A SHRINE FOR AMERICAN NAZIS






From its north side, Stone Mountain is a formidable sight. Staggeringly steep, nearly five times as high as Niagara Falls, it rises from Georgia's wooded landscape like a rogue wave.
 
This anomalous, igneous dome east of Atlanta is the centerpiece of a state park that draws 4 million visitors a year. Forty stories above ground, front and center on the gunmetal-gray face of the stone, is the largest bas-relief carving on the planet, a Civil War memorial to Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. These leaders of the Southern rebellion against the United States sit astride their steeds, hats over their hearts, on a three-acre backdrop etched into the mountainside.
 
Stone Mountain is the Mount Rushmore of the Confederacy, only bigger. So big, a stonecutter could duck out of a downpour inside a horse's mouth. Robert E. Lee is as tall as a nine-story building. Jefferson Davis' nose is the size of a sofa.
 
Some see the carving as a memorial to rebel heroes and those who fought and died defending the Southern way of life. Activist Richard Rose sees it as "the largest shrine to white supremacy in the history of the world."
 
"If you read the declaration of secession for those states, they make it clear in the first paragraph, even the second sentence, why they wanted to secede from the union."
 
"The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery."
 
Although the monument is protected by state law, Rose says it needs to go.
 
 
Stone Mountain's first sculptor, Gutzon Borglum. President of the Atlanta chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Rose grew up in the civil rights movement, the "whites only" times. Such tributes to the Confederacy have haunted him all his life.
 
"I don't think people understand the objective and the intent," he said in a phone interview. "They don't understand that it's based on white supremacy because the war was based on white supremacy, and the 'heroes' are based on white supremacy.
 
"After the killings at Emanuel Church in Charleston, it finally crystallized for me that these monuments encourage violence and validate oppression."
 
Two summers ago, 21-year-old Dylann Roof joined an evening Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Then, as worshippers closed their eyes to pray, he executed those around him, killing nine in all. Investigators later discovered his website filled with racist rantings and photos of him with Confederate flags and other symbols embraced by his kind.
 
After the massacre, Rose, speaking on behalf of Atlanta's NAACP, and Charles Steele, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), called on Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal to remove "symbols of hate" from all state properties, including Stone Mountain.
 
As cities across the country wrestled with whether Confederate tributes should stay or go, Charlottesville cranked up the volume.
 
On August 12, a contingent of mostly angry white men, some donning battle gear and waving Confederate and swastika flags, gathered for a "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue from a city park. Clashes turned bloody, then murderous when a rally supporter plowed his vehicle into counter-protesters, injuring 19 and killing Heather Heyer, 32.
 
 
A Klan cross-lighting at Stone Mountain on Thanksgiving, 1915.
After Charlottesville, others joined the call for the Stone Mountain carving to come down, most notably African-American gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives.
 
For Rose, it boils down to this:
 
"If Joe Blow wants to put a statue of Robert E Lee in his front yard or on his farm, I think that's great. I mean, this is America; he ought to be able to do that. But the state of Georgia should not be doing that, the state of Alabama, the state of Virginia. Cities and counties should not be promoting white supremacy and racism.
 
"And there's a law to protect it. The fact that the state says this makes it all the more onerous."
 
The Klan's sacred stone.

The nearly 60-year effort it took to create this monument, from its first fundraising campaign in 1915 to finishing touches in 1972, makes quite the compelling story. Historical photos show stonecutters dangling from cables and perched on swings halfway down the mountain's 825-foot face. One crewman died in 1927 when a chunk of rock loosened by dynamite let go, hit his platform and catapulted him into the air. Another was killed in 1966 when a scaffold plank slipped out of place.
 
Carving these figures into the mountainside took courage, strength and skill. But there's an odious side to the story.
 
In 1915, the second coming of the Ku Klux Klan occurred atop Stone Mountain. Klan money helped fund the monument. And the first of its three head sculptors was a Klansman, as was the owner of the mountain, Samuel Venable, whose family bought it in 1887 to run a quarry. Venable granted the Klan rights to hold meetings there in perpetuity. And for decades it did.
 
Two events sparked the revival of the Klan, which swept the South during Reconstruction before fizzling in the 1870s.
 
Fueled by anti-Semitism, the first was the lynching of Leo Frank, a Cornell graduate and Jewish superintendent of an Atlanta factory, who was convicted in a shoddy trial of the murder of a 13-year-old Christian girl. After Frank's death sentence was commuted to life, an armed mob snatched him from prison while guards did nothing to stop it. The men drove Frank to the girl's hometown and hung him from an oak tree. (Decades later a witness came forward and, in 1986, the Georgia Board of Parole granted Frank a posthumous pardon.)
 
The other provocation was the Atlanta debut of D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, a silent film portraying African Americans as savages and sex fiends who defiled white women, while glorifying the KKK as saviors galloping to the rescue.
 
On Thanksgiving night, William J. Simmons led a group of 15, including some members of the Frank lynching mob, to the summit of Stone Mountain, where they set up a flag-draped altar, opened a Bible and burned a 16-foot cross in an initiation ceremony described in Atlanta's Stone Mountain: A Multicultural History, by Paul Stephen Hudson and Lora Pond Mirza.
 
The resurrected KKK targeted primarily blacks, but also Jews, Catholics and foreigners among others.
 
Although the idea of carving a monument into Stone Mountain had floated about for years, Civil War widow Helen Plane made it her mission. As a charter member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, champions of the "Lost Cause" version of the Civil War, she had both the passion and the sway. Once Gutzon Borglum was chosen as the sculptor in 1915, she wrote him with a design suggestion.
 
"I feel it is due to the Klan which saved us from Negro dominations and carpetbag rule, that it be immortalized on Stone Mountain. Why not represent a small group of them in their nightly uniform approaching in the distance?"
 
Due to funding challenges and World War I, the jackhammers, drills and explosives didn't descend upon the mountain until 1923. Borglum had grandiose visions of carving an army of Confederates in addition to the three leaders, as many as 1,000 figures sweeping across the mountain. But after a year's work, all he'd completed was Lee's head.
 
Project managers fired him and later pressed charges when he destroyed his models. Borglum fled the state and went on to carve Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota on sacred Lakota land.
 
Augustus Lukeman took over, but slammed into the deadline before finishing. In 1916, Venable had granted a 12-year lease to complete the carving, and time was up. The project sat mothballed for the next 36 years.
 
The Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education integration decision and rise of the Civil Rights Movement jump-started interest in completing the carving. In 1958, under Georgia's segregationist governor, Marvin Griffin, the state created the Stone Mountain Memorial Association and purchased the dome and surrounding land to create a memorial park.
 
Carving resumed July 1964 with its third head sculptor, Walter Kirtland Hancock. Eight years later it was finished.
 
The state's purchase of Stone Mountain voided Venable's agreement with the Klan, but that hasn't stopped sympathizers and other white supremacists from making pilgrimages to their sacred ground of hate. And, it's hard to ignore the timing of the park's official grand opening on April 14, 1965 — 100 years to the day that President Abraham Lincoln was shot.
 
Looking the other way.

Stone Mountain Park has a lot more going on than its Confederate monument. The 3,200-acre tourist mecca offers an amusement park, hiking, boating, golfing, a laser show, a plantation, slave quarters included, and more. A tram takes visitors to the top, where chain-link fencing keeps them from sliding into oblivion. In addition to views, there's a 312-foot transmission tower, restrooms and a snack bar smelling of popcorn.
 
On a recent fall morning, on a scenic drive around the mountain via Robert E. Lee Boulevard and Stonewall Jackson Drive, tangerine and marigold leaves skittered across the pavement on a light breeze as the road traversed bridge after bridge over the meandering, manmade Stone Mountain Lake. People were everywhere, running, strolling, biking, dog walking, the vast majority black, white, and black and white together.
 
The park draws all races and ethnicities. One moment you see a ball cap with Confederate battle-flag symbols, the next a hijab and veil.
 
"If you don't look at the monument, and for me you can't look at the street names either, but, you know, it's a state park," Richard Rose said. "You can go camping, there's a golf course, you can rent a boat and go on the lake. They have a couple hotels, a campground. But it's a monument to the Confederate States of America.
 
"Every monument is a celebration of something, a person's life or some significant event. This represents a celebration of the attempt to maintain slavery as an institution in America."
 
Yet, it's highly doubtful the carving controversy is at the forefront of most park visitors' minds. Standing at a viewing area across from the monument, a black couple from the Atlanta area looked puzzled when asked their thoughts on the topic.
 
"I don't even know who that is up there," the woman shrugged.
 
Another man, white and fully aware of the controversy, took a long, hard look at the monument, but unlike most had no interest in having his picture taken before it. Instead, he said he felt like taking a knee.
 
More than a stone.

George Coletti grew up in Stone Mountain Village just outside the park boundary and is the author of two Civil War-era novels, including Stone Mountain: The Granite Sentinel, a story steeped in local history, as is his family, which first settled there as immigrants from the Middle East in the early 1920s.
 
"My granddaddy's store was right where Confederate Hall is now," he said of one of the park's attractions. "He owned a pre-Civil War hotel where the parking lot is. When they went back to Lebanon to visit family, a telegraph came that said the Klan had burned down his hotel. He wouldn't put a 'whites only' sign up."
 
Coletti's uncle, Elias Nour, became known as the Old Man of the Mountain way before he was old. As told in Carved in Stone: The History of Stone Mountain by David B. Freeman, between 1927 and 1963, Nour rescued 36 people, and six dogs, who slipped or wandered too far over the mountaintop's deceptive, rounded edge, his first at 13. Nour's eccentric resume included driving a Model T Ford covered in anti-Depression slogans to the top of the mountain, lighting oil-soaked rags on fire and sending the flaming vehicle flying over the edge to crash onto rocks below. Years later he repeated the stunt with a vehicle carrying Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo effigies.
 
Even if Coletti's family history weren't so deeply intertwined with that of Stone Mountain's, he'd adamantly oppose removing the carving.
 
"It's history," he said emphatically. "You can't destroy history. It's more culture than it is racist I think.
 
"Some people don't have anything better to do than start controversy. In my opinion, a few people want to stir up trouble and cause friction between the races."
 
Rama Roy, daughter of an immigrant father from India and a white mother, has her own deep connection to Stone Mountain. She lives closer to Atlanta now but once lived walking distance to the park entrance and has climbed the mile-long, west-side trail to the top more times than she can count. For sunrises and sunsets. For reflections on her life.
 
"There's a lot of Native American energy there," she said. "Preceding all this recent history, whenever I go there I feel more of the ancient vibe. It's more than just a rock that you go and exercise on. It can really give back a lot, too."
 
But then there's that carving on the north face. It's not visible from the hiking trail, but just knowing it's there and is painful to others makes it not OK with her.
 
"People from all over the world come to Stone Mountain … and I don't want them leaving with the perception that we just don't care or that we are backward or still thinking in those ways. Because most of us aren't.
 
"There are people who are still being oppressed by these symbols, and that's why they need to be gone."
 
Semper Idem.

Less than two months after the Emanuel Church massacre, as the debate over Confederate flags and monuments was ramping up, roughly 700 people from the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the League of the South and others rallied at Stone Mountain, "convinced their way of life and legacy were under attack," as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
 
A proposed bell tower to honor Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech — "Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!" — also drew protestors, some flaunting assault rifles, for a "Defend Stone Mountain" rally in support of "keeping the mountain 'pure' to its Confederate roots," the paper reported.
 
 
Stone Mountain played host to a November 2015 confederate rally, just two months after Dylann Roof killed nine African Americans at a church in Charleston.
The NAACP, SCLC and others didn't like the idea, either, of honoring a man like King at a place like that.
 
In granting rally permits, the Stone Mountain Memorial Association has to decide between honoring "free speech events" and concern for public safety at its family-oriented park. Last spring, it closed attractions after a white power rally coinciding with Confederate Memorial Day and Adolf Hitler's birthday became turbulent, and nine counter-protesters were arrested. Last summer, the association rejected a Klan request for a cross-burning ceremony to commemorate the 1915 resurrection.
 
Stone Mountain, despite its attributes, can't seem to shake the shadows of its past. As it says in Latin on lynching victim Leo Frank's tombstone: "Semper Idem."
 
"Always the same."
 
To stay or go.

Removing a statue is one thing; removing a gargantuan carving embedded 42 feet into the heart of a mountain is something else entirely. But it's not unprecedented. In the spring of 1928, after Lukeman took over, Borglum's sculpture of Robert E. Lee was blasted to bits.
 
Some have suggested filling it in and putting some other artwork over it. Or, maybe it could be carefully dismantled and relocated somewhere other than state property.
 
Andrew Young, former Atlanta mayor, Congressman and United Nations ambassador who was with Martin Luther King when he was assassinated, doesn't want any of that to happen.
 
"That is a tremendous carving, and I don't want to see that destroyed," he told National Public Radio.
 
He's worried it would make racial tensions worse. As for the activists who disagree:
 
"These are kids who grew up free, and they don't realize what still enslaves them — and it's not those monuments," he said.
 
Atlanta Journal-Constitution guest columnist R.K. Sehgal put it this way:
 
"I compare erasing the Stone Mountain carving to the way a middle-aged adult might view removing an unfortunate teen-aged arm tattoo. He can cut off his arm, an extreme remedy. He can attempt medical removal, resulting in a disfigured reminder of his bad decision. Or he can leave it as-is, a clear reminder of bad choices on his journey and use it as a lesson about how to create a better future. Art is always instructive if we let it speak to us. Even when it tells a sad story, eventually it coaxes insights and learning of history, liberation, reconciliation, and a positive way forward."
 
Richard Rose has received death threats by calling for the carving's removal.
 
"I understood what I was going to be facing to start with, but it's a matter of principle. America cannot find peace until it solves its racial problem institutionally.
 
"I know it's a long-term project. But I have granddaughters, and I want my granddaughters and great-grandchildren to grow up in an America that's free from government-sponsored terrorism."

 

AMERICA - THE WILD WILD WEST - KILL-EM FAST AND EASY

On average, 96 people are killed with a gun each day. This is a uniquely American problem. The homicide rate in the United States is more than 25 times than that of our industrial peers. This is not the price of freedom - this is the price of inaction and Washington politicians doing the bidding of the National Rifle Association.
The majority of American gun owners support common sense gun safety measures that could save many lives - Congress must act. We must all work to compel them to do so. 

Photo via @occupydemocrats

Cory Booker

THE SLAUGHTER OF THE LAMBS


No automatic alt text available.


There's a feeling we are going to die... 

Marked for slaughter and desperate because he can't go back to his mother.

It is a heartless society that accepts this with indifference.

Soon another Easter, soon another slaughter.

Pasquale Palmieri, Emiliano Ridolfi and many others.
Facebook,
February 23, 2018


WHEN YOU BITE INTO THIS BABY'S DELICIOUS FLESH, DO YOU FEEL HER PAIN, HER FEAR? DO YOU TASTE HER TEARS, HER BLOOD? IS THIS MOMENT OF YOUR PLEASURE WORTH THE TRAGEDY OF HER LOSS?

TRADITION? ANCIENT POLITICS CALLED "RELIGION"? WOULD WE STARVE IF WE DIDN'T EAT THE FLESH OF OTHER BEINGS? CAN WE LEARN TO CARE?

Thursday, February 22, 2018

WITH THE ELECTION OF DONALD TRUMP, NAZIS HAVE DOFFED THEIR BED SHEETS.


America's dark underbelly: I watched the rise of white nationalism.

Journalist Vegas Tenold spent six years among some of America's most extreme white supremacists, and discovered a people who believe the white race is under threat and the enemy is everywhere

My six years covering white supremacy

It was almost 3am, and Matthew Heimbach and I were sitting in an International House of Pancakes restaurant somewhere between Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Paoli, Indiana, when Matthew asked me why I never asked him about the Holocaust.
The question caught me by surprise, not because I was unaccustomed to Matthew talking about Jews – only a few hours earlier he had ranted about how Jews were behind tens of millions of aborted white babies – but because I didn't know the answer to the question.

It was on the evening before the presidential election, and I had known Matthew for a few years, watching him gain steam as a nationalist leader in America and putting together the Nationalist Front, his ragtag coalition of white pride malcontents.
I had spent the past six years with members of the radical right in order to write a book that explains the resurgence of right wing radical groups who march in the streets, whose beliefs are rooted in the flotsam of decades of American racism, antisemitism, and white supremacy.

Matthew's vision was to bring the these groups together within a single political movement – and in the time I knew him he became one of the most significant far-right figures in the country.
 
His question about the Holocaust made me wonder if all the time we had spent together had dulled me in some ways or softened my journalistic instincts.
If you spend enough time with another person, however much you disagree with or abhor that person's opinions on certain matters, you are bound to find traits you like. And there were traits about Matthew that I honestly liked. He was always upbeat and friendly and had a way of dismissing the rest of the far right in a way that was hard to disagree with.

Also, there were political issues that we agreed on. We both felt strongly for the struggle of Palestinians, and we both believed that the prevalence of money and special interests in American politics had gotten the country into trouble.
Perhaps I was getting a form of Stockholm syndrome. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that at some point along the way I had let myself get taken in by Matthew's charm and gregariousness.

The folksy, friendly qualities that made him so much more dangerous than your garden-variety white supremacist had gotten under my skin, and it dawned on me that the reason I hadn't asked him about the Holocaust might be that I didn't want to hear what he had to say about it.

Somewhere along the line, in the churning and virulent sea of Klan members' ramblings, neo-Nazis' aggression, and old-school white supremacists' hatred, Matthew had become an island of relative calm, someone with whom I discussed the craziness of the white supremacist movement rather than a subject whose views I dissected and scrutinized.

The reporting for the book always took place with the full knowledge and consent of my subjects. I never concealed who I was or presented myself as anything but a journalist. But during my reporting I had spoken to several law enforcement officers who had infiltrated Klan and militia groups during the 1970s and 1980s, and they all said it was easy to become friendly with the people they were investigating and that keeping an eye on the ball was sometimes a challenge.

Had I, too, begun to lose sight of the ball?

I chewed on a forkful of red velvet pancake with syrup when it dawned on me that Matthew's question was a gift, bringing me back to where I needed to be. It was a wake-up call, a reminder that however friendly we had become, there was still a chasm between us that neither of us wanted to cross and certain things I could never condone.

Of course, I didn't say this to him. "I'm not sure why I haven't asked you about the Holocaust, Matt," I said. "I suppose I always planned on getting around to it, but now is as good a time as any."

I put down my fork and took a sip of iced water.

"So how can you defend national socialism when it was behind the murder of 6.6 million innocents?"

With that, everything fell back into place again.

It was jarring to listen to Matthew explain the mathematical impossibility of cremating millions of Jews, the lack of historical witnesses to the Holocaust, the impracticality of using Zyklon-B, and the benefits the international Jewry had seen in perpetuating the lie of the Holocaust. These were all boilerplate Holocaust-denying arguments and had been debunked ad nauseam, yet they still proved irresistible to those who wanted to give a veneer of pseudo-science to their antisemitism.

They were feats of faux-intellectual acrobatics, non-factual contortions designed to force a square peg into a round hole, and Matthew's refusal to acknowledge the mountain of historical evidence of the slaughter of a people reminded me that however friendly or rational he seemed, especially compared to other white nationalists, he still believed and promoted the same racist ideas.

When Matthew was done explaining how there were bound to be deaths at PoW camps – which, according to him, is what the concentration camps were – but that these camps weren't any worse than what the Russians were doing at the time, he stopped and asked me what I thought about it all. I told him it was pretty much what I had expected, and with that we paid our bill and got back on the road.
Writing a book about something that is ongoing is a surreal affair because one needs to decide at some point when the story in the book ends, whereas in real life it continues, unaffected by narrative concerns.

There is always a next rally. Always something bigger and more consequential.
In this story, it was Charlottesville.

Charlottesville was to be a grand and much-overdue coming together of the leaders of the alt- and far right, and was given the hashtag-friendly name Unite the Right. The lineup of speakers was unquestionably impressive, living up to the name of the rally. Richard Spencer would be there, as would David Duke, Mike Enoch, and the alt-right internet luminary Anthime Gionet, aka Baked Alaska, who announced on his Twitter feed on the eve of the rally on August 11: "Tomorrow we make history at #UniteTheRight."

Matthew had top billing. His name was on the poster along with the other prominent leaders of the far right. He had arrived.

I hadn't planned on going. I'd been to more than my fair share of these things, and I wanted to be done with it. But throughout the summer of 2017, as the rally drew nearer, Matthew began telling me that antifa promised to bring thousands to Charlottesville. According to him, they were flying in from New York, Chicago, and Oakland as well as bussing in from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. At the same time, the number of threats against him had been increasing.

In the end a mix of curiosity, fear of missing out, and force of habit drew me to Charlottesville. I'd been going to these things for so long that it seemed strange not to.

 Much like you don't notice yourself aging, I had failed to see Matthew's politics harden over time

Once I arrived at Charlottesville, it felt immediately like something had changed. The night before the rally, a few of the members of Matthew's Traditionalist Worker party (TWP) kicked me out of a party at their house.

I'd brought another journalist who they immediately suspected was a Jewish spy, and Scott, Matthew's gormless henchman, fetched a bacon pizza and asked her to eat it in what he believed was a clever ruse to ferret out Jewish infiltrators.

There was an edge to the crowd I hadn't seen before. There were more guns than I was used to and much more bravado. As soon as I got there Matthew Parrot told me I had to leave. "Nazi Joe is here, and he'd be &^*& pissed we invited a journalist. He's going to come up and start something. You guys better get out."

As menacing a name as it was, I soon found out that "Nazi Joe" was an alias the TWP used for Eric Striker, undoubtedly another alias.

Striker was a short, skinny kid with a big head and cartoonish features who liked to rant against Jews on the website the Daily Stormer. He was about as daunting as a very small dog, but his animosity spread among the usually bookish TWP crowd and, in some way I couldn't quite put my finger on, altered the tenor of my relationship with the group. Matthew wasn't there, but Striker said he spoke for him when he said I could stay but "the kike had to go".

I was taken aback by the aggression. It felt more like a skinhead gathering than a TWP party. The next day provided further hints that Matthew was hardening, slipping further to the right.

A couple dozen TWP members in matching uniforms and construction helmets (a not-so-subtle nod to the TWP's pro-worker bent) gathered early in the morning in a parking structure a couple of blocks from the park where the rally would take place. In their hands were riot shields, flags, and clubs. They were the tip of the spear, primed in case Antifa was there. Then came the League of the South (LoS), National Socialist Movement (NSM), and a few other groups.

All told, there must have been close to a hundred people – all marching behind Matthew. He wore his new uniform, a snug, black shirt that stretched over his paunch, a black armband emblazoned with the silver logo of the TWP, and a black tie stuffed into the buttons of his shirt. Unlike his men, he didn't carry a shield or a club, and his helmet was a military-style combat helmet rather than a construction hat.

One of the guys from the LoS was telling the group to use the clubs against the abdomen, not the head. The head was assault, the abdomen was not. I wasn't completely convinced he knew what he was talking about, but to be fair, he also said to not strike unless the enemy struck first, which I guess made it all the more legal.
"We're not the alt-right and we're not the far right," he roared with his club in the air. "We're the hard right!" A pickup rolled up, and as if to underscore his point, Chester Doles, Peaches, and a couple of other guys from the Confederate Hammerskins, a violent skinhead group, jumped out.

I looked at Matthew's crowd again.

Spencer wasn't there. He, Mike Enoch, and the members of American Vanguard, Identity Evropa, and everyone else who belonged to what had become known as "white nationalism 2.0"– simply another term for the suits of the movement – were meeting elsewhere.

This was a 1.0 crowd, and I was struck by the realization that Matthew, who had once spent a freezing March day outside the Conservative Political Action Conference happily arguing with conservatives, was now a completely different person from the one I met years ago.
 
The transition had been gradual, and perhaps I had been too close to see it. Much like you don't notice yourself aging, I had failed to see Matthew's politics harden over time.

Now, in the stark glare of the parking lot fluorescents, surrounded by what could only be described as troops, shaking hands with the Hammerskins, marching with the old guard of the movement, his transformation was obvious.

Matthew was no longer "the affable, new face of organized hate" but rather someone who believed he was at war.

Matthew had come a long way since I first met him, but he'd also not moved an inch. No one could argue that he hadn't created an alliance of disparate far-right groups. He had curated an organization, the Nationalist Front, that somehow housed neo-Nazis, KKK, alt-right, and other racists, but it raised the question: to what end?
His friends from his former life, the one that included Youth for Western Civilization, had moved on, some to influential positions within conservative circles. But Matthew, for all his eloquence and affability, was now an avowed National Socialist, a dedicated antisemite, and the de facto leader of some of the most radical white supremacists in the nation.

He still maintained that his end goal was a true party for the white working man and that he still didn't consider other races inferior in any way, but at the same time he was rubbing elbows with the most alienating crowd conceivable. Although his plan was to work locally and convince everyday Americans that fascism was their friend, somehow he'd convinced himself that he could do it with the help of Klansmen and tattooed skinheads.

Where he once had ridiculed Jeff Schoep, the leader of the National Socialist Movement, for being delusional enough to believe that the American public might somehow get behind a party sporting the swastika, Matthew now believed that the public would somehow come to trust the friendly neighborhood Hammerskins, "kill niggers" tattoos and all.

Ultimately, however, I believe Matthew's vision, and the incarnation of the far right in America that I spent years covering, is destined to fail. Not because America is inherently good and that the forces of justice and progress are always stronger than those of intolerance and hatred, but because white supremacy is doing just fine without the far right.

The country has spent decades perfecting an ostensibly nonracial form of white supremacy, and it is serving with remarkable efficiency. Private prisons, mandatory sentencing, seemingly unchecked police power, gerrymandering, increasingly limited access to healthcare and abortion – these are all tendrils in an ingenious web designed to keep people poor and powerless.

Yes, white people were caught in that web too, but when it comes to those experiencing poverty, African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos vastly outnumber whites.

The people Matthew was ostensibly fighting for– the broken, beaten, and forgotten whites of Appalachia and the Rust Belt – weren't victims in a war against white people but rather collateral damage in a war against poor people and minorities. I believe Matthew was right when he said that the elites and politicians hate his people, but they don't hate them because they're white; they hate them because they're poor.

In the end, Matthew both succeeded and failed at the same time. He built the large alliance on the right that he'd always dreamed of, but it was a darker, angrier, and more extreme version than what he had pitched me all those years ago. If his plan had been to use his alliance to win the hearts and minds of those who weren't yet "red-pilled," then his goal seemed farther away than ever.

There was a reason the National Socialist Movement had been around since the 1960s with almost nothing to show for it: because despite all the latent racism in America and the explicit and implicit white supremacy built into the fabric of our society, National Socialism would always be a fringe outlier.

By succeeding, Matthew had made the same mistakes that all the coalition builders before him had made. The Nationalist Front would never be a political force in America. If Matthew played his cards right, he might become the next George Lincoln Rockwell, William Luther Pierce, or Richard Butler.

But his steady path further and further to the right guaranteed only one thing: Matthew Heimbach would always be an extremist.