Angry White Male Terror in US More Deadly Than Jihad Since 9/11
Remember back in 2009 when the Department of Homeland Security warned (pdf) against the growth of homegrown terror arising from right-wing extremism? Remember how the howls of protest from the same right-wing politicians who dog-whistle the right-wing extremists into action were so loud that DHS took the report off its website and even disbanded the research unit that produced the report? Here’s Daryl Johnson, who headed the group at DHS that produced the report, talking in 2011:
When the right-wing report was leaked and people politicized it, my management got scared and thought DHS would be scaled back. It created an environment where my analysts and I couldn’t get our work done. DHS stopped all of our work and instituted restrictive policies. Eventually, they ended up gutting my unit. All of this happened within six to nine months after the furor over the report. Analysts then began leaving DHS. One analyst went to ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement], another to the FBI, a third went to the U.S. Marshals, and so on. There is just one person there today who is still a “domestic terrorism” analyst.
Since our report was leaked, DHS has not released a single report of its own on this topic. Not anything dealing with non-Islamic domestic extremism—whether it’s anti-abortion extremists, white supremacists, “sovereign citizens,” eco-terrorists, the whole gamut.
Finally, in February of this year, DHS finally got around to mentioning the right-wing terror threat again:
A new intelligence assessment, circulated by the Department of Homeland Security this month and reviewed by CNN, focuses on the domestic terror threat from right-wing sovereign citizen extremists and comes as the Obama administration holds a White House conference to focus efforts to fight violent extremism.
Some federal and local law enforcement groups view the domestic terror threat from sovereign citizen groups as equal to — and in some cases greater than — the threat from foreign Islamic terror groups, such as ISIS, that garner more public attention.
The Homeland Security report, produced in coordination with the FBI, counts 24 violent sovereign citizen-related attacks across the U.S. since 2010.
In a jaw-dropping revelation, the CNN article on the report goes on to note that there may be as many as 300,000 adherents to the sovereign citizen extremist movement.
But it’s the white supremacists who now are in the spotlight thanks to the racist terrorism in Charleston last week. And the New York Times is driving that point home by citing a New America analysis of terror attacks in the US since 9/11:
In the 14 years since Al Qaeda carried out attacks on New York and the Pentagon, extremists have regularly executed smaller lethal assaults in the United States, explaining their motives in online manifestoes or social media rants.
But the breakdown of extremist ideologies behind those attacks may come as a surprise. Since Sept. 11, 2001, nearly twice as many people have been killed by white supremacists, antigovernment fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists than by radical Muslims: 48 have been killed by extremists who are not Muslim, compared with 26 by self-proclaimed jihadists, according to a count by New America, a Washington research center.
The slaying of nine African-Americans in a Charleston, S.C., church last week, with an avowed white supremacist charged with their murders, was a particularly savage case. But it is only the latest in a string of lethal attacks by people espousing racial hatred, hostility to government and theories such as those of the “sovereign citizen” movement, which denies the legitimacy of most statutory law. The assaults have taken the lives of police officers, members of racial or religious minorities and random civilians.
When we go to the New America analysis, we see that half of the deaths from attacks termed jihadist came in a single attack, the one at Fort Hood. There are only seven entries on the list of jihadist attacks since 9/11. On the other hand, there are 19 entries on the right-wing attack list (and the biggest of those, the Oklahoma City bombing, was pre-9/11 and so is excluded from the list).
Despite the trillions spent and lives lost in fighting jihadists “over there” so that we won’t have to fight them here, the homegrown threat from angry white males is still stronger than the threat from jihadists inside the country. Just imagine the howls, though, should an extra 300,000 names of sovereign citizen adherents get added to the the Terrorist Screening Database. Meanwhile, panic buying of Confederate flags and guns continues. Angry white males are getting even angrier as they squirm under the spotlight.
“Just imagine the howls, though, should an extra 300,000 names of sovereign citizen adherents get added to the the Terrorist Screening Database.” What a great concept, great observation.
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On a lighter note, since we have an equestrian posting today and an attorney over on the Twitterverse, I’ll throw this summary of a recent legal decision into the mix, as an excruciating example of what lawyers can accomplish after twenty years of school (and also of why people really don’t like lawyers).
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“Veterinarian Does Not Have Stableman’s Lien; Horses Forfeited to Custody of SCSPCA”
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“The court conducted a forfeiture hearing under Agriculture & Markets Law §347(8)(a). Schultes was convicted of five counts under AML §353. At the hearing, Dr. Golub testified, and it was revealed she was only in possession of one of the subject horses, as one died, and the whereabouts of the remaining three were unclear. All of the horses were used in Schultes’ carriage-pulling enterprise. The court noted the fact the hearing was commenced more than 30 days after Schultes was convicted, as required by statute, was not a basis for dismissal of the forfeiture proceeding. Thus, it continued to consider if Golub had a pecuniary interest in the four surviving horses, as a result of a stableman’s lien arising under New York Lien Law §183. However, the court found to the extent a stableman’s lien may have arisen, it could not pertain beyond the one subject horse remaining within Golub’s possession. However, as Golub’s stable and the subject horse she was boarding were both in Connecticut, no lien in her favor arose within New York. Hence, Golub may have recourse under Connecticut law, but the four horses were ordered forfeited by Schultes to the custody of Suffolk County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SCSPCA).”
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I protest! I am not an equestrian. I never ride.
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Sorry, my response to your comment was delayed when I had to go turn out the horses that live here at the house. And, of course, shovel the shit out of their stalls…
you forgot police terrorism.
personally, i believe police terrorism is conducted both by some members of these same quasi-military, domestic-terrorism groups and by some iraq-afghan wars military veterans.
certainly the police in chicago, new york, and albaquerque and probably l.a., just to name some of the most notorius, deserve dishonorable mention.
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Good point. I’d love to see a study of the crossover between police forces and white supremacist groups. Would likely be quite the eye-opener.
as for the domestic terrorist gaggle taken altogether, there are two salient issues:
1) politicians and the media treat these deluded, dangerous fools as if they enjoyed some special dispensation from our society for their beliefs and their behaviors. they don’t.
2) until things get deadly, our corporate media, fox news especially but not exclusively, frown on these guys adolescent behavior, but with an indulgent frown and a wave behind the back for free speech.
our fbi police and doj prosecutors target and imprison black american imams for legitimate angry speech while looking the other way at white nutcases and their organizations.
e.g., in kansas, a few hours before the last abortion doctor was murdered while standing in the door of his church, the fbi had been asked to intervene because the soon-to-be murderer was acting up again toward the abortion clinic. the fbi took no effective action.
You want to cut down on the number of angry white men doing angry things?
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Reconfigure the economic incentives in this society to make it possible (not “more possible”) for those white men (and men of color) to have jobs that pay more than WalMart wages. A lot of them wouldn’t have time or energy to be angry if they had decent, remunerative employment that would enable them to raise families. A lot – probably the majority – of them are angry because they can’t make enough money to support themselves, let alone a family, yet get advertising rammed into their faces reminding them of the material prosperity they’ll never get a chance to sniff at. Kick a dog often enough and, sooner or later, it will bite you. People are not that different – they’re even less tolerant of abuse than dogs and more willing to strike back.
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But, I know, that would undercut the police-security-prison-industrial police state we’re building and we can’t offend the presidents of police unions anywhere, nor cut into the profits of the Owners. Ever.
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Indeed. Recall that the original DHS report came in 2009, at the height of the economic meltdown. Lack of opportunity was pointed out as a strong contributing factor. [Which then gets whipped into a frenzy by right-wing media.]
The racist attitudes have been consistent through good times and bad.
“During the 1960s the United States experienced its longest uninterrupted period of economic expansion in history.” http://elcoushistory.tripod.com/economics1960.html
And it was then that the Confederate flags reappeared and angry white men were slaughtering black folks and their allies with a vengeance.
This is NOT about our current economic troubles (though using that’s an excellent way to make things worse).
as for the organizations not being responsible for the behaviors of their members, that is as credible a dodge of responsibility as my not being responsible for the pattern of behaviors of my children.
dylan storm roof recounted he WENT SEARCHING on the internet and FOUND there one organization that met his psychological needs, one focused on the ancient inflammatory rhetorical device of black men raping white women.
Pardon me for asking the obvious, Jim, but . . .
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WTF exactly is the point you and the New America report are trying to make? That the home-grown right-wing American nut-bags are murdering more Americans than the Muslim jihadis are?
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As a starting point of the analysis New America uses the ole’ tried and true “after 9/11” sleight-of-hand. According to New America’s analysis the starting point is Sep12.2001. From that arbitrarily chosen date to the present you have 4 dozen or so Americans killed by right-wing American scum and 2 dozen Americans killed by jihadi scum, and we’re off to the races about what those stats mean and who the bad guys really are.
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Well, what if the starting point were arbitrarily chosen not as Sep12.2001 but Sep10.2001? Then you would have the same 4 dozen butchered by right-wing American scum and 250 dozen butchered by the jihadi scum, and the question about who the bad guys are becomes immediately resolved by a factor of 63. A mere 2 days difference in when one starts the body-count is all you need to see that the main problem isn’t home-grown, right-wing terrorism, it’s Muslim jihaids.
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But I might suggest that if, as your post suggests, the REAL TERRORISM PROBLEM is coming from the right-wing nut bags INSIDE the country, then the USG is more than justified in collecting its intel from Americans’ smart phones, a position previously not so favored on this blog.
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If you are going to rely on the New American analysis to point fingers at the home-grown right-wingnuts, then your position regarding tapping Americans’ phones might require some re-thinking to avoid charges of hypocrisy. The question becomes: Could Charleston have been prevented by closer and warrantless surveillance of Americans’ phone traffic, and if so, would that justify such surveillance? But if we recognize that since 9/10 about 63x more Americans have been killed by foreign Muslim extremists, then maybe that isn’t the right question after all, which brings me back to my confusion about WTF the point is here, if you get my drift.
My take is that 9/11 was an inside job. You may chose to disagree.
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My take is that better gun control would be useful to limiting these murdering sprees, rather than phone surveillance, etc. Yet there have been times when one or the other of the Alphabets has been in the know about someone who was a threat – such as in the case of the Dr Tiller’s murderer – yet chose to do nothing. Why?
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I’m not big on govt surveillance, but let’s face it: we ARE being spied on. Everyone knows it. If so, why not at least use the Intel to, you know, actually protect citizens. Ooops my bad. Intel is used only AGAINST citizens.
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It’s a slippery slope with no easy answers.
Those white guys are all ‘lone wolves’, according to DoJ. (It’s much more important to have surveillance of anti-war and environmentalist groups.)
trolls have smartened up in the last few years, denis, just as pandering rightwing politicians like rick santorum and ted cruz have smartened up – all by faking reasonableness.
you’re a troll too, denis, your style of speech gives you away. and you, too, are faking concern. in this case about counting accuracy, when your real concern is to divert attention from charleston and (maybe) nail muslims as the enemy – charleston happens. then denis yells “look, look, over there. muslims, muslims – that’s the enemy.”
i got news for you, troll, killing ordinary americans in the pursuit of their ordinary lives makes you the enemy.
so which of the above shameful domestic terrorist groups do you belong to, denis. let me guess: confederate sympathizer?
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Heh. So by choosing 9/10/01 as your start date, you relegate sovereign citizen scum McVeigh to the dustbin of history, along with his 168 victims. How many more were there between 1995 and your start date?
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And no, my position isn’t advocating mass surveillance or even the really wide net of the “lists” the government uses. I favor good old-fashioned police work, where cops go to judges and get a warrant for every single person they want to monitor, and do so only once they have genuine probable cause to suspect someone.
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Thanks for playing, though. Now run along and buy some new Depends so you’ll be ready the next time ISIS publishes a video.
What a really sad attempt at ad hominem “humor” to divert the discussion from your own inability to think this thing through. I’m sure others who have neurological dysfunctions like MS think your joke was absolutely hilarious. I hope you never have to deal with it.
You are the one who took the bait that 9/11 is somehow a magical starting date from which all analysis regarding terror attacks in the US should begin. By pimping the New America stats, it was you that cut both the OC bombing and the 9/11 attacks out of the analysis.
Earth to Jim: Terrorism in America did not begin after 9/11 and so there is no reason why the analysis should.
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You really don’t read well, do you? It’s not my analysis. It’s the analysis by New America, and they chose the start date.
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And now I’m done.
sophomoric sarcasm and psuedo-analysis, denis. that your ilk would be sensitive to ms is not credible. that coment is yet another foray into puedo-sensitivity in a effort to gain an advantage in an argument.
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if you understood analysis, and you clearly don’t, you would know without question that you pick a data time period suitable for testing your theory. choosing post-2001 was not only appropriate but necessary for a meaningful comparison of foreign and domestic terrorism in the u.s. in any recent time.
picking a time period that included sept 2001 would have been stupid, denis. very stupid !
your interest is clearly not in making a legitimate critique of jim white’s analysis, but in throwing the kitchen sink and the toilet bowl at it. hence the irrelevant (and have i mentioned sophmorically stupid) comments about government spying.
It seems your drift is to justify warrantless spying on people, but that’s just my take.
Bill, my point was more nuanced than that. As a lawyer I am sworn to support the Constitution and I cannot foresee the time I would ever justify warrantless searches as a general policy no matter how much security they may provide Americans. I am just looking at the ramifications of the false idea that domestic “white-guy” terrorism is more of a threat quantitatively than foreign Muslim jihaids.
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If this blog is going to promote the idea that a larger threat to Americans is American right-wing nut bags, then it has to follow that domestic surveillance is more justified and more necessary than foreign surveillance.
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One can’t, without being a hypocrite, argue that American terrorists are the larger threat and yet domestic surveillance is off limits. My question was: if we accept the POV that domestic terrorism is the main problem (and I don’t, but Jim, apparently, does) then what does that mean about whether domestic surveillance is acceptable or necessary to protect Americans?
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If you fudge the data by removing 3000 cases of Americans being killed by foreign Muslims and then use the fudged data to conclude domestic terrorism is the REAL problem, you are walking into a trap w/ respect to whether the FBI should have the power to monitor your movements and conversations. That concerns me, and I don’t trust what New America is doing.
I don’t have the links or the time to research it, so correct me if I’m wrong. Seems to me that the majority (not all) of the mass murders that happen in the USA are perpetrated by angry WHITE men usually with some sort of tie to NeoNazi/skinhead communities. Some are clearly mentally unstable but not all.
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Yet what we hear about are “thugs” and “gangbangers” in the minority – especially black – communities who are alleged to be A. Very. Grave. Threat to especially whites. Yet stats show over and over again that most homicides are perpetrated against the murderer’s own racial group, ie, most whites are murdered by whites & most blacks are murdered by blacks.
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The PDs have become heavily militarized by design, and I do believe there is a growing number of police who are war vets and who appear to be quite trigger happy, especially against minorities, but not only… whites of all ages and backgrounds have been murdered in cold blood by PDs who clearly have a hair trigger anymore, who appear to have carte blanche to murder anyone as long as they use the “I was scared” clause. Why not? More useless eaters bite the dust, and the 1% goes: Score!
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There have been a few notable cases of mass murders perpetrated by US citizens who happen to Muslim. Every time, these crimes are immediately labeled as “terrorist” bc Muslim. Nothing else matters, apparently. Just Muslim = Terrorist.
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Lotta $$$ spent overseas allegedly to “keep us safe in the Homeland.” How many overseas people, whether Muslim or otherwise, have actually come here and committed mass murder on US soil? I don’t count 9/11. You can if that’s the way your wind blows. But other than 9/11?? What else? The alleged “undie bomber” or shoe bomber? Spare me.
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So if you’re a white male Nazi and you have a boatload of guns you get to be labeled as “unstable” but ohmigawd you MUST. At. All. Costs. have your fevered and critically important 2d Amendment “rights” no matter what. and if you murder a bunch of other citizens in the process of working out your “issues”?? Oh well, too bad, so sad, get used to it. The white male Nazi’s “feelings” and “rights” to gun ownership supercede anyone else’s right to remain alive. That’s what Wayne LaPierre says, and we’re all sticking to it, especially the bought off whores in Congress.
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Some diss the Southern Poverty Law Center allegedly for “profiling” or “targeting” rightwing hate groups. This is not to be tolerated for reasons that have never been clear to me, especially given how the 2009 report was deep sixed, and US citizens were left out in the cold I guess to learn how to Stand. On. Your. Own. Two. Feet. and Take. Care. of. Yourself… that great “libertarian-y” Ayn Rand panty-sniffing hogwash.
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Why do these scurrilous Nazi’s get away with their hate crimes? Because the PTB LET THEM. They may as well be the unofficial storm troopers… it’s why all this money gets spent on military grade equipment – out of our tax dollar$. But not spent in any realistic way that actually, you know, protects citizens. It is not the business of the US govt to actually – ROTFLOL – protect US citizens…. the business of the US govt is to enable the 1% to fleece and rob the rubes for as much as possible. If useless eaters get offed in the process?? SCORE!
The problem with Denis’s comment is that it, too, makes assumptions about 9/11 which are hard to justify.
To blame the deaths of “250 dozen” New Yorkers on “jihadi scum” is silly. If Al Qaida was the agency responsible then the, continuing, role of the US government in sponsoring Qaida is relevant. So is a deliberately provocative foreign policy which inevitably leads to revenge attacks. And will lead to more.
All of which is very well understood by the cunning ideologues who run the government.
The same can be said of the `angry white men`. They have been around since HR Helper was a gleam in his grandmother`s eye: they are what American culture is all about, the backwoodsmen distilling whisky, the hungry veterans whose pay ended up in Abigail Adams`s portfolio, the millions who lost their jobs after NAFTA, while the rich and their sleek servants got richer.
Terrorism is built into the system. It is crucial to its survival, an important feature that only idiots regard as a `bug`. It has always been there in one form or another and now, as living standards and popular expectations dissolve, it is going to be front and centre.
And thinktanks, disingenuously, will compete in setting out explanations for the tragedies that take place, which divert attention from the nest from which they all spring. We may not understand these things but in Syria, Ukraine and Libya-for example- every sentient being knows who is behind the suicide bombers, the beheaders and the death squads.
Latin Americans know it too, as do vast numbers of Africans and Asians.
Bevin:
To blame the deaths of “250 dozen” New Yorkers on “jihadi scum” is silly.
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My comment was:
Then you would have the same 4 dozen butchered by right-wing American scum and 250 dozen butchered by the jihadi scum . . .
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What precisely is it about my comment that you consider to be “silly,” Bevin? Your word-choice seem inapropos.
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250 dozens = 3000, roughly the number of victims killed in the 9/11 attack. Do you consider it “silly” that 250 x 12 = 3000? Or do you consider it “silly” that that many innocent people were killed? I don’t see anything “silly” about either one of those points.
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Or maybe you find it “silly” that those 3000 innocent people were butchered by jihadi scum. I note that you don’t take issue or offense with my use of the term “right-wing American scum.”
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What is “silly” is this post, which promotes a brain-ded quantitative analysis by New America on the relative numbers of Americans killed by right wingnuts vs. “radical Muslims,” while completely ignoring 3000 people killed by radical Muslims. The purpose of such BS is to peddle misinformation that white extremists are more deadly than radical Muslims. That is not just silly, it is daft, it is false, and the whole “post 9/11” approach is intellectually dishonest.
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And now let’s have another “Depends” comment to show what mature and careful thinkers we are here.
There are more innocent Americans killed every year by white Americans with guns, than died on 9-11 (or than have died at the hands of radical Muslims period). They are a greater threat to me, in America, than are the radical Muslims. In fact, for each of the last 13 years that is the case even if you limit the “killers” group to white Christian terrorists.
Anyhow, we are already killing many more of them, every year, than they killed on 9-11. We kill them because “they pose an imminent threat to the US”, and we say that gives us the right to go into their country and kill them. Well, we are not just an “imminent” threat to them, we are an actual threat. Doesn’t that give them the right to come into our country and kill us?
If anyone ever tells you that the Confederacy and the Civil Ware were NOT all about white supremacy and slavery, show them this Atlantic article, quoting every Southern state from back then. The racism was right up front as their raison d’etre — proudly so.
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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over/396482/
Most of the domestic AQ/ISIS plots are hatched by the FBI to entrap dim-witted individual or immature young adults or teens. There was recently an expose’ where the FBI was caught setting up mentally disabled men in these stings. An informant taped the meetings between the subject of the sting and the FBI which caught the FBI agents cracking jokes about the mental state of their targets. As a result, the FBI employs an extra agent to transcribe the proceedings in a case. It may get harder in the future to find out the real extent to which the FBI controls these plots. Don’t you just love it when CNN has six generals to discuss a terror arrest in its most dire terms for national security and not one of them mentions the whole plot was staged?
well said.
until recently the fbi could “interview” an individual without a witness or lawyer present and with no voice recorder or video operating. the second/third of the two agents would “take notes” and judges were credulous/dumb enough to treat those notes as an accurate and complete record of what transpired in that interview. as it happens, lying to an fbi agent, even if you are not under oath, is a crime. sweet !
the black muslim man in boston the fbi likely murdered recently had been called earlier by an fbi agent and asked to meet and talk with the agent. he refused.
former cia employee john kiriakou, persecuted/prosecuted by the doj/fbi for “leaking” a cia torturer’s previously publicly available name, said in effect in open advice to edward snowden: “never cooperate with the fbi. they will twist what you say to their advantage.” that’s easy to do if the fbi gets to take the only notes in an unrecorded interview, isn’t it? sweet !
I have to drop in to put in a word for ‘Sovereign Citizens’. I am a Constitutionalist, for which I am not infrequently accused of being, mistaken for, orcalssified as a Sovereign Citizen adherent. I have looked into the barrel to see what kind fo fish I am tossed in with. I hesitate to say Sovereign Citizens are ‘more radical’ than I am, for the connotations put on ‘radical’. They are not more conservative, because one does not get more conservative than rigid support for the Constitution, damn all ‘interpretations’ and re-shapings. And one does not get more liberal than Contitutionalist, since what the Constitution, with the English Law Presumption of Innocence Principle, enforces is liberality and tolerance. The English Law Principle is for the People: We are each responsible to control ourselves, and trials are not of crimes and contracts, but of whether the person accused of ‘failing to control him or her self sufficiently’ did or did not do so. The Constitution is for the government, not the People (read the Preamble).
Sovereign Citizens reject statutory law, in doing which they are beyond me. I do agree that statutory law is overdone, and the current government has bent statutory law around and applies it in wayx that are unconstitutional, and so illegal. Neither view is radical, right-wing or terrorizing. The abusing of statutory law (writing laws that are to be ‘obeyed’, rather than depending on individuals’ adhering to principles and ethics to recognize right from wrong, law or no law (written), statutes or no statutes, is inevitably a path to imperiality, police-state and revolution. Sovereign Citizens rejecting statutory law does not imperil anything or make them radical, right-wing or dangerous. It is going over the edge into revolutionary mode, crazy, insane, etc., or assuming irresponsible ‘rights’ under policing authority, as the killer cops do, most of whom are white, and supremecist, that creates terror. Consider the difference between the Nevada group who stood off the government and the two they rejected for being ‘too crazy’, who went off and shot holes in police uniforms, without regard for the people in them, who were just animated manikins to the pair of crazies. You will find that view of other human beings the actual separator factor between normal people with their own ideas and the dangerous and mad (in both senses), whether the ‘manikins’ are other races, religions, life-styles, just homeless, or ‘civilians’, or whatever.