Allison Kilkenny: Unreported – “It’s as if a nuclear apocolypse has gone off in the Gulf.”

There are a few new, developing BP-related stories that should greatly disturb any American who values openness and transparency in their democracy.

First, a chemist named Bob Naman claims samples he received from Orange Beach Alabama waters tested positive for the dangerous neurotoxin pesticide 2-butoxyethanol, the main ingredient of Corexit 9527A. The government has been claiming they discontinued the use of that version of Corexit in the Gulf. Now, Naman says he’s worried because BP called him and “threatened him.”

Next, Dr. Nyman of Louisiana State University, who began comparative tests early May to determine the impact of oil and the impact of Corexit laced oil on maritime life, says, while marine life may recover quickly from oil exposure, the same cannot be said about exposure to Corexit.

Large mammals were the least affected by the presence of oil, while the small bottom creatures, worms that are the food source for bottom feeders, were affected the most.

The conclusion was that an oil spill is disruptive to maritime life but does not negatively impact the seafood population on a permanent basis. The impact is temporary and can reverse and restore itself over a period of time.

The same cannot be said when natural waters contain a Corexit-oil mixture. Dr. Nyman’s studies show that the recovery period is twice or three times as long when maritime life is exposed to the toxic mixture of Corexit and oil. While the large mammals ultimately recover, the smaller fish population is reduced dramatically by 25% or more, depending on the concentration.

The bottom of the natural food chain however, does not recover and is killed in its entirety which affects all the bottom feeders in the Gulf of Mexico, including shrimp, crawfish, crabs and lobster.

Over at Counterpunch, Anne McClintock has a very good summary of the three vanishing acts playing out in the Gulf: the “disappearing” of oil courtesy of Corexit, the disappearing story in the media, and the disappearing of private contractors who are making a pretty penny helping BP and the Coast Guard keep a lid on the cover-up.

Previously, I have written about the absolutely absurd claim that the oil has magically disappeared thanks to the Corexit fairy. Corexit simply hid the problem by sinking the oil, and there is no good way to clean up oil that is sitting deep in the ocean. Marine scientists have reported finding enormous oil plumes that could still exist in the Gulf due to the cold temperatures of the water.

I recommend reading McClintock’s article in full, but I wanted to highlight this interaction with her source, a veteran named Steve who was hired to help in the clean-up effort.

“It’s as if a nuclear apocalypse has gone off in the Gulf,” he said. “The media is not telling the truth. No one is telling the truth. Let me tell you something. Yesterday on the beach where we work, my crew cleaned up seven hundred bags of oil. Today we went back and the beach was completely covered in oil, as if we had never been there. Today we carried away another seven hundred and fifty bags. Every day we clean up, then the tide brings it in again. The oil is everywhere, deep under the sand. Today I wanted to measure the oil, so I stuck my shovel into the sand and the oil was down there eight inches deep.”

Steve leaned in close, “Do you want to know how long my contract is to work down here?” he asked. “Three years.” His jaw muscles tightened as if he wanted to suck his words back into his mouth, but could not. “They are telling everyone it is not so bad, but clean-up will take many years. I am going to be here a long time.” Steve wiped a hand heavily over his eyes as if they were burning. “Let me tell you something. Today we saw three sharks washed up dead on the beach. The insides of their noses were black with oil. The membranes of their mouths were black with oil. Their eyes were black with oil.”

As I have repeatedly stressed, the full ramifications of this disaster won’t be understood for years. That’s why it’s so essential the media doesn’t buy the narrative that the crisis is over. Ever since they refused to allow workers to wear respirators during the clean-up, BP has been doing everything in its power to skirt liability for not only the oil volcano, but also the consequences of dumping two million gallons of experimental toxins into the ocean. They have bullied, intimidated, and used private contractors to suppress free and open media coverage of the unfolding events.

BP is now desperately trying to get the victims of the Gulf disaster to quickly sign away their legal rights in order to secure swift payment as opposed to dragging things out in a lengthy, expensive court war like the one Exxon victims had to (and continue to) endure.

All the right rich people want the Gulf squared in their rearview mirrors. The oil companies want to drill, and many politicians want the oil companies to stay happy so they can secure their donations come election time. The media is fatigued by the story, and eager to believe BP and state officials when they brushed off their hands and delivered the clarion call, “The End!”

Focusing on the unknown consequences of Corexit is bad PR. It’s bad for deep-sea oil drilling. It’s bad for the politicians that need oil corporation donations. In all honesty, it’s bad for the local fishing industry, too. And I feel for those poor men and women, who will suffer years of financial devastation because of the irresponsible actions by BP (another reason not to let BP off the legal hook.)

Of course, it’s also necessary to ask these questions. No one really understands the long-term consequences of Corexit. In fact, every day it becomes clearer and clearer that no one has any idea what this stuff is going to do to the food chain.

Link to this article:

http://www.breakthruradio.com/index.php?b=article.php?id=1562

– Allison Kilkenny

Allison Kilkenny: Unreported – Add your own “crappy journalism” warnings with sticker templates

A reader sent me a link to these establishment media-correcting sticker templates:

And for pretty much every edition of The New York Times and Washington Post:

Scratch out “Journalist,” insert “Columnist,” and slap this one on every Thomas Friedman page-long mistake:

See all the stickers here.

Someone want to print up a couple thousand of these and hit their local newsstands? Brownie points for photo evidence of media-corrections.

Link to this article:

http://www.breakthruradio.com/index.php?b=article.php?id=1550

– Allison Kilkenny

Allison Kilkenny: Unreported – Take Your Dirty Stimulus Money and Put It In My Pocket, Please

A study of contrasts.

March 2009

WASHINGTON — South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is expected Wednesday to become the first governor to formally reject some of the federal stimulus money earmarked by Congress for his state.

The move will cement Sanford’s growing reputation as a political powerhouse among Republican party stalwarts nationwide — though how much of the estimated $8 billion in stimulus funds destined for South Carolina will be affected is unclear. The law allows state legislative leaders to accept funds the governor rejects.

“Our objections to the so-called stimulus bill have been well-chronicled for the way it spends money that we don’t have and for the way this printing of money could ultimately devalue the American dollar,” Sanford said on Tuesday, even as he acknowledged that he’ll accept some.

“Those of us opposed to this package lost the debate on these merits, and I now think it is important we look for creative ways to apply and use these monies in accordance with the long-term interests of our state,” he said.

August 2010

…Mr. Sanford quietly signed a bill passed by the Legislature that expanded eligibility for unemployment benefits. The move paved the way for the state to claim $97.5 million in stimulus money to bolster its financially ailing unemployment insurance trust fund.

Sanford’s reversal attracted little notice, and the move makes South Carolina the 33rd state to expand jobless benefits. It appears that when all the bellyaching over deficits and the grandstanding is over, what becomes important is alleviating constituents’ suffering.

According to the National Employment Law Project, 13 Republican Governors, including Sanford, have gone against their party’s mantra in order to help citizens by taking steps to modernize their state’s unemployment insurance systems.

In 2010, South Dakota, Maryland, Nebraska, Alaska, the District of Columbia, and now South Carolina have made legislative or regulatory changes to revise their jobless benefits system and collect their full incentive. Utah claimed one third of its incentive. Twenty-five other states made legislative changes to collect their full incentive in 2009. Taken together with New Mexico, whose benefit system qualified for full funding without making changes, this year’s action brings the total to 32 states that now qualify for full federal funding.

Of the 19 remaining states that have not claimed their full share of ARRA incentive funding, seven have claimed one third of their incentive(click here: http://www.nelp.org/page/- /UI/Incentive%20UI%20Status%202010.pdf ). Additionally, 11 of these states introduced unemployment insurance reform legislation this year and three states still have pending bills. (Two states – North Dakota and Texas – are not in session this year, but they have until August 2011 to change their laws to qualify for the federal stimulus funds.) States that are now debating modernization reforms include Michigan, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania.

I’m not one of these people who enjoys lambasting politicians when they change their minds. Actually, I think changing one’s mind in the presence of overwhelming contradictory evidence is a good, healthy thing that should be encouraged. However, political demagogues shouldn’t be allowed to rant and rave in defense of one kind of ideology in public, while simultaneously practicing the opposite in private. That’s blatant hypocrisy and the media should shout to the rafters whenever it happens.Don’t get me wrong, I understand why Sanford is freaking out. After all, his is a state that celebrated a dip in the jobless rate to “only” 10.7 percent. But that doesn’t mean he gets a pass on being a hypocritical douchebag. Either strict Conservatism (small, limited government) is the be all, end all as Sanford has been insisting all these months, or it’s not, and government spending really is the key to recovering from a recession. You can’t have it both ways.

Other hypocrites include Bobby Jindal, who first rejected stimulus, and then later attempted to take credit for it, and Rick Perry, who was totally, totally against government spending until he begrudgingly accepted $17 billion, adding he thought there were probably better ways to fix the economy. What those better ways are, he didn’t say.  Considering Perry compared stimulus money to drug addiction in the past, it’s safe to say he’s now a full-blown junky.

Like I said, it’s fine to change your mind, but the media should at least prominently point out when this flip happens. I know the NYT and Rachel Maddow occasionally feature this stuff, which is great – I hope they keep it up. However, the nature of these things tend to result in buried epilogues, while everyone goes on remembering Sanford as the stalwart Republican (a “powerhouse”,) who refused big gubment spending. That’s simply a false narrative.

Link to this article:

http://www.breakthruradio.com/index.php?b=article.php?id=1548

– Allison Kilkenny

Allison Kilkenny: Unreported – Arming the Middle East While America’s Empire Collapses

The other day, Greenwald wrote a very good summary of America’s collapsing empire. Basically, we are entering year nine of the Afghanistan occupation, and Republicans are leading a crusade to cut benefits and Social Security during the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. Greenwald highlighted this disturbing passage from a NYT article:

Plenty of businesses and governments furloughed workers this year, but Hawaii went further — it furloughed its schoolchildren. Public schools across the state closed on 17 Fridays during the past school year to save money, giving students the shortest academic year in the nation.

Many transit systems have cut service to make ends meet, but Clayton County, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, decided to cut all the way, and shut down its entire public bus system. Its last buses ran on March 31, stranding 8,400 daily riders.

Even public safety has not been immune to the budget ax. In Colorado Springs, the downturn will be remembered, quite literally, as a dark age: the city switched off a third of its 24,512 streetlights to save money on electricity, while trimming its police force and auctioning off its police helicopters.

I occasionally feature bits of empirical evidence to prove the existence of the collapsing empire in this blog, like the inevitable Republican-inspired Mad Max future of no firefighters, or parks, and endless water shortages. And we’ve seen signs of the decay everywhere – the real unemployment of 16 percent, and certain counties’ decision to switch from pavement to gravel roads in order to save money, not to mention the woeful state of the nation’s other infrastructure (water mains, bridges, etc.).

I don’t need to tell you shit is bad. But what’s so amazing about all of this is Washington’s utter indifference to the state of the decaying empire. (Quick digression: Don’t get me wrong. I don’t wish to imply empires are a good thing. We know the true toll of colonialism and empire expansion, and I reject the notion that America must remain an all-powerful empire in order to survive and thrive.) If the ruling class isn’t made to understand the effects of their detrimental policies, the U.S. will not only lose the empire, but the very fabric of society itself.

Take for example, the U.S. plans to sell $30 billion-worth of F-15s to Saudi Arabia. While watching MSNBC this morning, a fairly useless human being (didn’t catch his name, but he’s an old, white, male journalist – does that narrow it down?) claimed that this move may not be the best idea in the world because it might anger Israel. You know, because the US also sends Israel around $1 billion annually ($114 billion total) in military aid, and they’re our supposed allies, so if we’re arming their sworn enemies, it looks…weird.

See, because the only threat here is that Israel might get upset – not the U.S. taxpayers who fund the military, which in turn outsources weapon research and development to private companies (that whole “Military-Industrial-Complex” thingy). The fairly useless human being (FUHB) on my teevee (along with this article) also state not to worry because the US military never gives brown people the best weaponry available, but rather last year’s hot toy.  Of course, the toys can still maim and kill civilians, but since they’re not the shiniest, newest toys, the weapons sales practically don’t count!

Meanwhile, our politicians continue their rich tradition of investing time and money – not in jobs, green energy, schools, infrastructure, or healthcare – but into weapons and weapons sales. Not only that, but the US is now arming mortal enemies Israel and Saudi Arabia, in the midst of their expansionist Iran paranoia, while the US tells Iran not to bother investing in nuclear energy because they totes shouldn’t worry about their hyperventilating, super-armed neighbors. Everything will be fine. Maybe. Who cares? We’re six thousand miles away from you.

It appears the Grand Vision is to arm every corner of the Middle East and hope the brown un-Christians nuke each other into oblivion so the US can set up Tennessee 2.0 where Tehran used to be. Then, we can get at that sweet, sweet oil unimpeded by the vaporized natives. Keeping foes in constant armed conflict is a great way to suppress real democracy (the thing we’re supposedly in the Middle East to set up). With the Middle East trapped in constant volatile war hell, the US can operate forever in the region under the pretense of “helping” the poor people…who we arm…against their neighbors…precisely so they’ll keep fighting forever. See how that works? Neat, isn’t it?

With things so shitty at home (bad schools, people losing their homes, jobs, etc.) the military is guaranteed a limitless supply of poor kids/soldiers to help out in the Forever Wars. And our politicians are aiding the cause by focusing America’s last dollars not on progressive evolution, but on feeding the MIC, which is literally pushing the collapsing empire toward the abyss.

Link to this article:

http://www.breakthruradio.com/index.php?b=article.php?id=1546

– Allison Kilkenny

Allison Kilkenny – Unreported: Whistleblower! BP Uses Dispersants To Hide Oil

Image from logodesignlove.com

Fred McCallister, a whistleblower who claims BP is using dispersants to sink oil and hide it from the pesky media’s cameras, will testify before a Senate investigative panel this week.

For quite some time, many bloggers and journalists following the BP-Corexit story, including me, have made the allegation that BP may have been experimenting by dumping over a million gallons of toxic dispersants into the ocean because they were desperately trying to prevent the oil from hitting the beaches.

(The amount of dispersants used by BP has been contested. Rep. Ed Markey has questioned the validity of BPs numbers, saying on July 31 that a new congressional report shows “BP carpet-bombed the ocean with these chemicals, and the Coast Guard allowed them to do it.”)

Everyone remembers what happened to Exxon’s public image the moment all of those adorable birds became coated in thick crude. And while BP has not been able to prevent oil from hitting all coastal birds, they have greatly diminished their PR liability by using dispersants like Corexit to coagulate the oil and sink it beneath the ocean’s surface where the media cannot photograph it, and BP won’t be fined for beach cleanup.

There, buried in the sea, the dispersants will likely alter the ecosystem – perhaps poisoning and killing ocean life – but by then BP will have fled the area, leaving future coastal generations to clean up their mess.

Perhaps most frustrating is that the media has been assisting BP in shaping the narrative that not much harm was done by BP’s underwater oil volcano. Time Magazine’s Michael Grunwald thinks Rush Limbaugh “has a point” because the extremist right-wing windbag spent weeks dismissing the disaster, and if Professor Limbaugh says thinks things are a-okay, then they must be. Also, I guess all black people are on welfare, and Mexicans are the cause of the Depression, since we’re believing every bit of bile that flies out of Rush’s mouth.

BP seized upon the media’s complacency to give themselves cover as they ready to pull out of the region. Billy Nungesser, President of Plaquemines Parish, LA said unequivocally that it is too soon for BP to scale back its clean-up efforts. The point is: no one can understand the scale of this disaster yet, but it’s definitely too soon to let BP off the hook.

Brad Johnson put it best:

…the only honest take on the BP disaster right now is that this is a calamity, the true scope of which will take years to discover, with many impacts impossible to ever know. No one knows how badly this disaster will affect the dying marshlands of Louisiana. No one knows how badly the toxic oil plumes will affect the spawning grounds of the bluefin tuna, the feeding grounds of the threatened Gulf sturgeon, or the future of the endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, whose corpses have been found at 15 times the historical rate this summer. No one knows what the long-term physical and mental health impacts will be on the tens of thousands of cleanup workers.

The only solution in the short-term is to not allow BP to walk away preemptively. They must be forced to make a long-term commitment to the coast. Set up shop there. Go meet the locals. Settle in for the long haul. It takes decades to learn the full consequences of an environmental calamity like the BP disaster. That’s unfortunate, and it will demand the government and media remain vigilant, but it shouldn’t serve as an excuse for the media to get lazy and say, “Guess she wasn’t so bad!” so they don’t feel guilty when they turn their back on Louisianans.

That kind of apathy protects negligent corporations. It allows BP to slip out the back door.

McCallister will make the far-left, extremist fringe statement that BP has an allegiance to its shareholders, and not to the majority of U.S. citizens (and their environment). As a result, the company is doing whatever it deems necessary to protect its bottom line, and if that includes experimenting with toxic dispersants, so be it. At least that icky oil isn’t blackening the beaches, and thereby tarnishing the happy green flower logo.

–

Update: Where’s the oil? The Upshot answers, “It’s oozing out of the Louisiana ground“

Link to this article:

http://www.breakthruradio.com/index.php?b=article.php?id=1533

– Allison Kilkenny

Allison Kilkenny – Unreported: Trust The People With The Electric Guns

An article being circulated by the Main Maine Civil Liberties Union states that Anthony Graber faces as much as sixteen years in prison if found guilty of violation state wiretap laws because he dared to video tape an officer drawing a gun during a traffic stop:

The scale of the Maryland State Police reaction to Graber’s video is “unprecedented,” (the cops raided his parents’ home and confiscated four of his computers,) but it certainly isn’t an isolated event. Yvonne Nicole Shaw, 27, was also arrested after recording an encounter with officers who had been called for a noise complaint.

(Image from thenonconformer.wordpress.com)

There are now proposals in the Bay Area to outfit all cops with wearable cameras to record stops, arrests, sobriety tests, and interviews. Obviously, I think this a grand idea unless the cop cameras become the state’s official narrative.

Citizen monitoring of the police is crucial in a democracy as we saw in the Oscar Grant tragedy. Hypothetically, if Johannes Mehserle had been suited with an official police camera, and no subway riders dared record video on their cell phones because doing so was newly outlawed, who knows what would have happened to that sole record of events? We shouldn’t rule out the possibility of videotape getting “accidentally erased,” or “lost” in office clutter.

The plethora of bad outcomes alive in this hypothetical situation can be extended to protests. Citizens video tape police during these demonstrations as a form of protection. Back in September ’08, I was reporting about the Republican National Convention in St. Paul when I received an email from Eileen Clancy, the founder of I-Witness, a citizen watchdog organization that relies on the freedom granted to them under the First Amendment to document public activity with video cameras.

Police have arrived at our office in St. Paul. They say that they have received reports of hostages barricaded in the building. We are behind a locked door. Lawyers are outside dealing with them.- Eileen

That was the second time the police harassed I-Witness at the RNC. The first encounter occurred on August 30 when seven members were preemptively detained at the house where the group was staying. And that’s the level of harassment activists faced without any bans on videotaping police officers. It’s terrible to imagine what could happen if the state outlaws independent monitoring of the cops – especially now that they’re experimenting with all kinds of neat toys like tasers, sound cannons, and the good ol’ reliable rubber bullets and tear gas.

It’s important to stress that citizen journalism is also good for the police, unless of course they’re more interested in covering up corruption and abuse than in preventing it. An independent monitor is able to neutrally observe conflict – sometimes from a unique vantage point as demonstrated by this G20 video shot by a Canadian citizen:

Could a police camera – on the ground, in the middle of the chaos – have captured quite the same story? It’s unlikely.

Link to this article: http://www.breakthruradio.com/index.php?b=article.php?id=1524

– Allison Kilkenny

Allison Kilkenny – Unreported: 600th Study Released Showing Wealth Disperity

It seems like we see this same study every month.

The gap between the wealthiest Americans and middle- and working-class Americans has more than tripled in the past three decades, according to a June 25 report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Yeah, but we’ve known that forever, right? Wages are stagnate, the majority of people have very little wealth (it’s much worse for women of color) while a smaller and smaller minority hoard all the cash.

I posted a question on Twitter: “How many studies need to come out showing the huge wealth disparity before the government acts to fix it?” and got the usual snarky, flippant response I’ve grown to expect and love from readers. The standard response goes like this: the government knows it’s a problem, but the rich, connected people are the ones in power, they benefit from this feudal system, and so they vote to preserve it.

I completely agree with that assessment, but there comes a time every few generations where that system becomes utterly unsustainable, and even the well-healed oligarchy must make some concessions to the serfs. Seriously – who in their right mind thinks this economic model can go on forever? Eventually, the whole thing will collapse and the rich won’t have a government left to protect their sweet little ponzi scheme. At this point, it behooves not only the poor to rework the system, but also the rich.

No one  (or I should say very few people) are proposing a Communist utopia in which All Are Equal, and the government tears gold bricks from the desperate, clawing arms of the rich. Quite literally, the most radical mainstream proposals involve slightly raising taxes on the wealthy. It’d also be a good idea to increase the minmum wage and get people health insurance. That’s it. That maybe be all it takes from stopping the entire system from deteriorating.

Yet, our wealthy overlords seem incapable of reversing their myopic governance. They demonize the poor and unemployed, and dangle benefits before their noses before ultimately yanking them away. They propose severe austerity measures in the midst of an economic recession, and casually discuss privatizing Social Security – one of the last meaningful government programs. And they can generally get away with abusing the underclass because the corporate state – assisted by both political parties – toppled the sole tool of the solidarity labor movement, the union.

However, Bob Herbert writes that the new president of the UAW, Bob King, appears to have a grasp on the dangerous instability of the country, and an understanding of what needs to happen in order to rectify the problem.

“My view of the labor movement today,” he said in an interview, “is that we got too focused on our contracts and our own membership and forgot that the only way, ultimately, that we protect our members and workers in general is by fighting for justice for everybody.”

The fundamental issue is that “every human being deserves dignity and a decent standard of living,” he said, “and the whole point of the labor movement is to help make that happen.”

In Mr. King’s view, the fight to organize workers and improve their wages and benefits is important, but it’s part of a much broader effort to improve the lives of individuals and families throughout the country and beyond. He is a believer in cooperative efforts and shared sacrifice, and is unabashedly idealistic as he outlines what can only be described as a new activism on labor’s part.

He promised his members last month that the U.A.W. would be marching and campaigning and organizing — for jobs, for a moratorium on home foreclosures, for civil and human rights and against the mistreatment of immigrants, and for peace.

“The Tea Party has been more vocal than we’ve been,” he said. “There is something wrong with that picture.”

This is exactly what another man named King envisioned for his last proposed political movement, a Poor People’s Party, that would transcend racial boundaries and unite the underclass in a powerful movement that could push back against the tyrannical behemoths on Wall Street.

As Hebert writes (and I recommend reading the whole article,) no one talks like this anymore. No doubt the Serious People will scoff at Bob King’s words, but then again, they’re the same  type of assholes who also laughed at Dr. King, and who have now brought us to this place of recession and huge wealth disparity, so perhaps we should ignore those condescending dismissals and forge ahead.

Solidarity seems like a strange concept in these divisive times, but if workers remember and embrace the idea, it’s literally the only tool they have at their disposal to challenge the uncaring elite.

—

Update: Of course, it’ll be hard for workers to negotiate with total idiots.

Link to this article:

http://www.breakthruradio.com/index.php?b=article.php?id=1503

– Allison Kilkenny

Allison Kilkenny – Unreported: White supremacist bemoans low pay from New York Times

My friend Allen McDuffee has been busting his ass on a new blog called Think Tanked that you should all check out. Today, he posted an interesting little nugget about AEI’s Charles Murray, a white supremacist, but the “socially acceptable” kind that gets to write New York Times op-eds.

In a post titled “Arthur Sulzberger Needs YOU!,” Charles Murray takes his distaste over his payment from the New York Times to the AEI blog.

To all my fellow ink-stained wretches, a heads up. I got my check from the New York Times for an op ed that was published a few weeks ago. It was for $75. Not that anyone has ever paid the mortgage by writing op eds, but $75 for 800 words written for The Greatest Newspaper In the World is… how shall I put this? Weird. Do you suppose the red ink has really gotten that bad?

Yes. It’s true–not good at all. But what’s weird, actually, is posting something for the New York Times complaint department on the AEI blog.

Yeah, the writing world is a real harsh mistress, isn’t she, Charles?

This particular criticism isn’t only odd, as Allen pointed out, but also darkly hilarious. Here we have a white supremacist finally speaking up, not to defend his horrible beliefs, but to complain about his pay from the nation’s supposed shining example of journalistic integrity [insert hysterical laughter here]. At the same time, the media has been trying its damnedest to ignore the frequent and increasing instances of right-wing extremism in this country, a trend that I have reported on at length.

I wrote the following last month:

There has been a surge in right-wing extremism in the U.S., copiously documented by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, but which was also predicted by Homeland Security. In fact, the report warned that right-wing extremists, who are “angry at the economy and the election of a black president” might recruit GWOT veterans.

I have been writing about how white domestic terrorism has slipped from the media’s radar, but sadly, it seems like the government is also uninterested by the surge in right wing extremism — possibly because such violence doesn’t fit the helpful war narrative of the “dangerous other” being brown, and from a desert landscape.

There have been a couple recent domestic terrorist attack that have been largely ignored by the media and government:

Robert Joos Jr.

A firearms and explosives expert suspected of involvement with two white supremacist brothers in the sending of a bomb to the office of a municipal diversity officer was sentenced to 6½ years in prison in Missouri on Tuesday.

And then there is the unknown man who bombed a mosque in Florida.

Unlike in the case of Faisal Shahzad, these bombs actually detonated. In a rational world, these stories would probably receive considerably more coverage than the Shahzad incident, but again, Shahzad, a Muslim Pakistani-American, fits the narrative of a “dangerous domestic threat with foreign roots.” Joos and the unknown man don’t fit that character description.

C&L also highlighted this extremely disturbing story that somehow didn’t make it onto the national media’s radar.

It kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it, why Arizonans — and particularly the Arizona media, not to mention the national media — never picked up on the case of Shawna Forde and her gang of rogue Minutemen, who invaded the home of a Latino family near the border in Arizona and shot them, killing the father and his 9-year-old daughter in cold blood as she pleaded for her life, and wounding the mother — who managed to get her own gun and shoot back, wounding one of the killers.

Even more incredible, really, is that this 911 call from the wounded mother received so little attention at the time, much less that it did not become a focus of Arizonans fretting about violent crime.

You can listen to the 911 call by following the link. All I can say is it’s heartbreaking, and that really doesn’t do it justice. This woman just witnessed the murder of her daughter, and her husband. She was shot by the extremists, managed to fend them off with a handgun, and she’s apologizing to the operator for cursing as she sobs, “Oh my God, I can’t believe they killed my family.”

So here we have all the classic “media friendly” elements of a story: high drama and violence. If such a story went down in the northern suburbs to a white family, there would be armies of network news vans parked across lawns – camped out for days, weeks, months. But this happened in the poor south, to a [spit] Latino family. The media barely touched the story.

Because there has been so little scrutiny of these right-wing extremists, people like Russell Pearce feel comfortable enough now to organize his neo-Nazi pals to patrol the border with weapons.

As I blogged back in May, Ready and fellow neo-Nazi Harry Hughes have been going on illegal alien “patrols” in Pinal County’s Vekol Valley, dressed in camouflage and armed with assault rifles.

“Camouflage or earth tone clothing [is] preferred,” according to the announcement. “Bandanas, balaclavas, or other identity concealing items are permissible and encouraged.”Now Ready has announced a “Border Ops” alert for this Saturday via his profile on the white supremacist New Saxon site, inviting participants to “bring plenty of firearms and ammo.”

Ready’s statement promises that, “This is the Minuteman Project on steroids! THE INVASION STOPS HERE!”

That’ll end well.

Domestic extremism is now so tolerated, and in some cases, actively encouraged by sitting politicians, that neo-Nazis feel like they have carte blanche to parade around, wearing camouflage in the desert, shooting Latinos. Awesome.

The extreme right feels so unthreatened by the sane members of society that the only backlash the media has felt for their shameful one-sided coverage of terrorism — something only brown foreigners do, but doesn’t apply to white guys who fly planes into an IRS building, or blow up US mosques — that the only complaint they’ve received is from another white supremacist.

Murray, whose work has been called “a scabrous piece of racial pornography masquerading as serious scholarship” by Bob Herbert, didn’t have much to say about neo-Nazis gunning down brown people. The man just thinks $75 is chump change. I kind of agree. Some of Murray’s conservative colleagues may disagree with us, though, and accuse him of “shaking down” the Times.

Seriously, Murrs. Calling them out on the AEI blog? What up with that?

PHOTO: The Bell Curve. Some other book I found on Google images by searching “Charles Murray white supremacist”

Link to this article:

http://www.breakthruradio.com/index.php?b=article.php?id=1475

– Allison Kilkenny