Your tax dollars at work: The wages of neo-Nazi toil -- A federal paycheck.

Folks,

I offer this as background to the next post coming up about a certain Net Nazi in the news. It is an oldie but a goodie and illustrates a question I've had since the 90s.

Is there anything the neo-Nzis and Mistaken Identities do that ISN'T paid for by the FBI?

Mike
III

Neo-Nazi rally was organized by FBI informant

Henry Pierson Curtis | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted February 15, 2007

A paid FBI informant was the man behind a neo-Nazi march through the streets of Parramore that stirred up anxiety in Orlando's black community and fears of racial unrest that triggered a major police mobilization.

That revelation came Wednesday in an unrelated federal court hearing and has prompted outrage from black leaders, some of whom demanded an investigation into whether the February 2006 march was, itself, an event staged by law-enforcement agencies.

The FBI would not comment on what it knew about the involvement of its informant, 39-year-old David Gletty of Orlando, in the neo-Nazi event. In court Wednesday, an FBI agent said the bureau has paid its informant at least $20,000 during the past two years.

"Wow," Gletty said when reached by phone late Wednesday. "It is what it is. You were there in court. I can't really go into any detail now."

Orlando City Councilwoman Daisy Lynum, whose district includes the march route west of Interstate 4, said she wants to know who was behind the march, the neo-Nazis or the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies.

"If it was staged, I would feel very uncomfortable and would ask for a full-scale investigation," Lynum said. "To come into a predominantly black community which could have resulted in great harm to the black community? I would hate to be part of a game. It's a mockery to the community for someone else to be playing a game with the community."

Others applauded the FBI's infiltration of the neo-Nazis.

"It's one of the largest extremist groups in the country, and Gletty was one of the most visible individuals in the National Socialist Movement," said Andy Rosenkranz, state regional director for the Anti-Defamation League. "Generally, the FBI and the JTTF (Joint Terrorism Task Force) in Florida does an excellent job."

Rally puts city in spotlight

Orlando drew national attention when the city granted a permit to Gletty so a minimum of 100 white supremacists and National Socialist Movement members could march Feb. 25 through the historically black Parramore neighborhood.

Wearing swastikas and holding signs declaring "White Pride," the 22 neo-Nazis who turned out were protected from 500 counterprotesters by about 300 police officers.

Gletty's secret life became public Wednesday in a federal court hearing resulting from the arrest last week of two suspected white supremacists on charges of conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine.

Last Thursday, the FBI arrested Tom Martin, 23, and John Rock, 35, after Gletty wore a wire to a meeting and agreed to help them rob a drug dealer in Casselberry, according to testimony.

Rock told Gletty in a tape-recorded conversation that he and Martin had robbed seven drug dealers by posing as law-enforcement officers, according to testimony. Martin and Rock remain held without bail in the Seminole County Jail.

Slip-up lets name out of bag

Throughout most of the hearing, Gletty was referred to as "Mr. X" or "CW" (cooperating witness). His identity was revealed when Assistant Federal Public Defender Peter W. Kenny repeatedly slipped up and mentioned Gletty's full name.

FBI agent Kevin Farrington and a federal prosecutor were clearly uncomfortable with the disclosure of the informant's name in open court.

Questioned about Gletty's role in the march, Farrington testified that "he participated in it. He did not organize it. . . . [That's] pretty good firsthand information, sir."

The city parade permit, however, lists Gletty as the "on scene event manager."

And pictures of Gletty addressing marchers sporting swastika armbands for the Orlando rally appear on a neo-Nazi Web site. Captions from other photos on the site mock the counterdemonstrators and the police presence.

On another Web site, Gletty details his role in organizing the Orlando event and hosting a victory party afterward.

"On 1/17/06 I got the permits and started the ball rolling," he writes. "On 2/25/06 at 3 pm on saturday [sic] in downtown Orlando My crew and I got it done."

In another part of the posting, he writes: "Since I was the permit holder I was the person to deal with the police and had over-all authority of the event."

No word from FBI

FBI officials did not return calls asking for specifics about the agency's relationship with Gletty. A tree-trimmer in Orlando, he withdrew from the National Socialist Movement last fall to pursue other projects, Farrington testified.

Orlando police Deputy Chief Pete Gauntlett, who supervised the march preparations, would not say what the FBI told police about Gletty and other marchers.

"We let them express their free speech and let them do what they're allowed to do, but we wanted to have control," Gauntlett said.

Bill White, a former spokesman for the National Socialist Movement who participated in the rally and now runs another neo-Nazi group, said he was surprised to hear of Gletty's involvement with the FBI. He said Gletty did a lot for the cause.

A neo-Nazi offers his take

"If he was being sponsored by the FBI, then American National Socialism has a lot to thank the FBI for," White said in an e-mail.

Lynum said that if the FBI was behind the march, she would like the agency to reimburse the city for the tens of thousands it spent to send officers -- including SWAT-team and mounted-unit members -- to police the march.

Adora Obi Nweze, president of the State Conference NAACP in Miami, said she was disturbed an informant set up the march and was working for the FBI.

"That's very troubling that somebody like that would be an informant for the FBI," she said. "You never know what they are capable of. No question, it bothers me."

But Alzo Reddick, a former state legislator who grew up in segregated Orlando, lived through KKK marches and later taught black history, said he was proud of the way the police and the community responded. He was a member of the "Be Cool" movement organized to calm the community before the march.

"I think law enforcement has to walk in some murky places to be where the bad guys are," Reddick said. "Was the FBI informant an activist or a participant? Was he the agent provocateur from the get-go? Sure, that would be part of what I'd like to know."

Yet more on Shawna Forde: "She hates all ethnicity with the exception of Caucasians."

More lipstick on what turns out to be an even uglier pig.

My thanks to Jackie J. for forwarding these. My apologies for taking so long to get them posted. They provide certain small but revealing details about the woman, the motivation and the crime.

Mike
III

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20090624/NEWS01/706249604&news01ad=1#Everett.woman.was.suspect.just.hours.after.Arizona.slaying

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Everett woman was suspect just hours after Arizona slaying

By Scott North and Jackson Holtz

Border-watch activist Shawna Forde of Everett surfaced as a potential suspect in an Arizona double-murder investigation within hours of the killings after a co-defendant told detectives she'd been staying at his home nearby, according to police reports.

The Pima County Sheriff's Department today released roughly 200 pages of case reports to The Green Valley News and Sun newspaper in southern Arizona. The records focus primarily on the investigation in the hours immediately after the May 30 killings.

News apparently was swirling through the small town of Arivaca, Ariz., about the home-invasion robbery that took the lives of Raul Flores, 29, his daughter, Brisenia, 9, and left the girl's mother with gunshot wounds.

Talk in town quickly brought detectives to the home of Albert Robert Gaxiola, 42, who was said to have had bad blood with Flores, in part because of alleged drug trafficking.

Gaxiola told investigators he didn't know anything about the shootings and had been in Tucson, the police reports said.

"Upon being questioned about other individuals that were present at his house, he stated that a group of people whom he identified as 'Minute men' had been staying there," the report said. "He stated that he had a relationship with the leader whom he identified as Shawna Forde."

Gaxiola reportedly told detectives that the military-style clothing and gear in his house, plus a blood-stained van that was at his home all were associated with Forde, 41.

Detectives took items from Gaxiola's home under a search warrant, including an improvised grenade and numerous firearms, including a shotgun found in a hidden compartment, documents show. They also seized Gaxiola's cell phone.

"I opened the cell phone and questioned him about contacts whom he had listed in the phone; one of which was identified as 'White,' " one officer wrote. Gaxiola "stated that White was the nickname of Shawna Forde. I then asked him why that was her nickname. He stated that she hates all ethnicity with the exception of Caucasians."

The phone appeared to contain numerous text messages between Forde and Gaxiola during the night of the fatal robbery, the police reports said.

The documents released today say little about what happened with the investigation between June 1 and June 12, when Forde and Gaxiola were arrested. There also is no mention of Jason Eugene Bush, 34, who also is charged in the case.

The records contain a summary of the interview detectives did with Flores' wife after she reached the hospital.

She said Raul Flores had told her that law officers were at the door, demanding entry to search for fugitives.

She said that two people entered the home, both wearing camouflage clothing. One was a large man; the other a short, "heavyset or chubby" woman, both white, the documents said.

The shooting victim "stated that the female appeared to be giving orders to the male and was talking on a walkie-talkie or similar device to other individuals," perhaps outside the home.

The tall man shot her husband, shot her, and shot their daughter, she told police.

The woman said she heard more people come into the home, perhaps speaking Spanish. They left, and the woman managed to get her husband's pistol in the kitchen and call 911.

The large man returned to the house and a gun battle erupted. The woman said a Hispanic man stuck his head in the door at one point and hollered something.

The woman told police that she thought the Hispanic intruder could be Gaxiola, although she wasn't certain. She also described a teal-colored minivan, similar to the one found at Gaxiola's home, the reports said. The woman said she remembered it because it had cruised through her neighborhood days before. The man and woman inside the van waved at her, reports said.

The intruders left behind a sawed-off shotgun in the house. A trail of blood led to a handgun that was found outside.

The robbers apparently left without finding the $4,000 cash hidden in the house.

Pima County officials have alleged the purpose of the robbery was to get money and drugs to fund Forde's group.

Forde was arrested in Sierra Vista, Ariz., nearly two weeks after the shootings. Investigators believe she and Bush went to northern California, where they are suspected in a home-invasion robbery and burglary.

One of the documents talks about Forde's demeanor while being fingerprinted after her arrest. She reportedly refused to sign the fingerprint card.

When she was searched, a white piece of paper was found in one of her pants pockets. It appeared to contain GPS coordinates, the documents said.

Forde reportedly said that the paper contained information about a drug cartel in Mexico.

A Pima County grand jury returned indictments late Monday against Forde, Bush and Gaxiola.

Pima County Deputy Attorney Rick Unklesbay said Tuesday each defendant is charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of aggravated assault and one count of attempted first-degree murder, first-degree burglary, armed robbery and aggravated robbery.

They are scheduled to be arraigned Monday.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/49046871.html

Report: Minutemen leader was involved with accused accomplice

Jun 24, 2009 at 5:58 PM PDT


By ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) - Authorities released new details Wednesday about an Arizona home invasion that left a little girl and her father dead, with investigators saying a 12-gauge shotgun was found in a concealed compartment of a suspect's printer and he harbored members of an anti-illegal immigration group.

Albert Robert Gaxiola, 42, told Pima County Sheriff's investigators that he let members of the Minutemen American Defense group stay at his house and he had a relationship with 41-year-old Shawna Forde, the leader of the border watch group accused of planning the attack to help fund her anti-immigrant operations.

Reports released Wednesday show investigators searched Gaxiola's house in Arivaca two days after the May 30 home invasion and found military-style gear and clothing. The report also said that a printer in Gaxiola's home had a concealed compartment in which a 12-gauge shotgun was found, with a spent shell in the chamber and seven more shells in the magazine.

"I observed numerous firearms, camouflage clothing and other military type gear being found," the detective said.

The robbery in the small community of Arivaca left 29-year-old Raul Junior Flores and his 9-year-old daughter, Brisenia, dead. Gina Gonzalez, the girl's mother and Flores' wife, was wounded.

Authorities arrested Gaxiola of Arivaca; Forde, of Everett, Wash., and Jason Eugene Bush, 34, of Meadview, Ariz., near the New Mexico border, in connection with the shooting.

Bush was arrested at a Kingman, Ariz., hospital undergoing treatment for a leg wound. The three were indicted this week by a county grand jury on charges including first-degree murder, aggravated assault and aggravated robbery.

After the shootings, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik described Flores as a suspected drug dealer.

Detectives began focusing on Gaxiola a day after the shootings and after a hospital interview with Gonzalez.

Gonzalez, 31, was shot three times and she shot and wounded Bush during the home invasion, authorities said.

She gave detectives information that helped tie Gaxiola to the shootings, according to the report.

She told Detective R.M. Svec that a man "who stuck his head into the residence did match the approximate height and weight of Albert. When she heard the man yell, she said, he sounded like Gaxiola.

She knew Gaxiola from living in Arivaca, she said, and he and her husband had a dispute last year because Gaxiola had allegedly stored marijuana on their property.

According to another incident report from Svec, Gaxiola told detectives a few hours after Gonzalez's interview that he had heard about the fatal shootings and the wounding of Gonzalez "but he had absolutely no knowledge of any participation in the incident." Gaxiola said he was in Tucson on May 30, according to the report.

Gaxiola told detectives that clothing and military-type webbing gear in a container in his home belonged to "a group of people whom he identified as Minute Men." The people had been staying in his home, he said.

Gaxiola denied owning any weapons, according to the report, and he told investigators that any weapons found in his home belonged to Forde's group.

A van Gonzalez described as suspicious and one she had seen drive past her home a few days before the attack also was parked in front of Gaxiola's home during the interview, Svec's report said. Gaxiola told authorities it belonged to the Minutemen group and Forde had driven it.

Gonzalez told detectives that the intruders wore camouflage clothing and told her and her family that they were law enforcement personnel looking for fugitives.

The deadly fallacy of believing "The boogeyman will go away."

Looking for a quote for Absolved this early morning, I found this in How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War by British historian Donald Cameron Watt (Pantheon, 1989). In his final paragraphs, Watt speaks of the English people's fears about the Germans lingering on after the war. And, he adds:

So do the fears of a war which stems from the will or miscalculation of a ruler or ruling group intent on global hegemony to the point of unreason or mental instability. Hitler willed, wanted, craved war and the destruction wrought by war. He did not want the war he got. Its origins lay through his own miscalculations and misperceptions, as much as through those of his eventual opponents, not least in their belief that he was bluffing, that he would recoil, that in Paul Claudel's words, "Croque-mitaine se degonflera" (the boogeyman will go away). Be firm and it will not happen. . . Neither firmness nor appeasement, the piling up of more armaments nor the demonstration of more determination would stop him . . . The only people who could have stopped him permanently were those least conditioned to do so, his Generals, and their soldiers, if they had been ready to obey, by coup d'etat, or an assassin capable of penetrating into the Reichs Chancellery from which, in the last days of peace, Hitler never emerged. History knows this did not happen.

The German generals' original sin, of course, was to accept the Fuehrer "blood oath" in place of the oath to the German Constitution. History never repeats exactly, yet certain patterns always remain. A leader may direct his people to war not because he loves war, but because he loves power and is willing to use violence, internal or external, to get his way.

Since we live in interesting times, let me be explicit. Obama is no Hitler and I am not indirectly soliciting his assassination or an American coup d'etat. Surely not even the West Point Protective Association could be maneuvered into slavish obedience as the Prussian leaders of the Wehrmacht allowed Hitler to do to them.

But if Obama is no Hitler, he may be a Mussolini. He has, after all, the arrogant jutting jaw and narcissism of that Italian tyrant. Only time will tell.

If he is allowed to accrue that much deadly power, however, it will be because the rule of law has collapsed and the Oath our Founders provided has failed.

The rule of law is collapsing around us. Pray that the Oath never fails. For the tyrannical boogeyman, in all its manifestations, will never go away.

Praxis Question: "One man's 'dunnage' is another partisan's supply material."

My thanks to Hertz for sending me this email below. Any Three Percenters want to tackle the issues?

Mike
III

What about the capacities/capabilities of 'Patriot Magazines'?

Sir,

I have read some of the articles on the "SipsyStreetIrregulars" blog but have not seen this topic discussed: What about the capacities/capabilities of 'Patriot Magazines'?

Not the ones you read, but the ones in the Military sense, where munitions are stored and/or manufactured. With all the re-loaders in the country has there been given any thought to the capabilities/capacities for the eventual resupply requirement of a partisan force? The snatch and go supplies that I see emphasized do not speak of a long resistance movement.

Additionally, there are things that us 80 year olds can do to support a partisan movement since we can't go running around the hills fighting. I remember Mater and Pater talking about spending dark nights while the bombers flew overhead re-charging stripper clips and bandoleers left on the battle fields by wasteful Nazis. One man's 'dunnage' is another partisan's supply material. Something we saw overseas after U.S. Forces left a battlefield... the next day the area was completely clean of crates, cans, brass, strippers and anything not totally destroyed.

I know that in a test of my hobby, I was able to put up 2000 units in a ten hour day, with a manual press. And incidently 240 loose units fit nicely in a 2lb coffee can.

Not normally necessary to think about unless one is trying to smuggle 'contraband' to a partisan fighting force. The coffee in the can, while masking the valuable contents is still usable when the cargo is removed.

And how many 'normal' cases of coffee would some BAT go through to find the right ones?

Just some old man's thoughts.

The Bavarian Over-the-Hill Gang: Justice by Zimmer frame (walker).

My thanks to TypeAy who sent me this link, which sent me here.

This could end up being a chapter in the next volume of the Absolved trilogy.

Mike
III


Suspects: Roland K. 74, seen here with his 79-year-old wife is accused of kidnapping James Amburn

First picture of kidnap gang pensioner who abducted financial adviser after he lost £2m savings

By Allan Hall

Pensioners battered a financial adviser with Zimmer frames before kidnapping and torturing him for losing £2million of their savings.

James Amburn, 56, was ambushed outside his home in Speyer, western Germany, bound with masking tape and bundled into a car boot.

‘It took them quite a while because they ran out of breath,’ said Mr Amburn, who was driven to the Bavarian lakeside home of one of the gang.

Another couple, retired doctors, joined the kidnappers in the cellar where Mr Amburn was chained and tortured for four days last week.

‘The fear of death was indescribable,’ he said. Mr Amburn was rescued when he sent a fax to release funds from a Swiss bank and scribbled a message on it for the receiver to call police.'

Mr Arnburn, 56, described how two of his kidnappers, identified only as Roland K, 74, and Willy D, 60, hit him with a Zimmer frame outside his home in Speyer, west Germany before binding him with duct tape.

He was bundled into the boot of a silver Audi saloon and driven 300 miles to the home of Roland K on the shores of Lake Chiemsee in Bavaria.

As the financial advisor, who runs investment firm Digitalglobalnet, was bundled into the cellar another couple, retired doctors Gerhard and Iris F, aged 63 and 66, arrived to assist his kidnappers.

Mr Amburn said: 'I had known these people for 25 years. I had no reason to be afraid. But as I went into my home I was jumped from the rear and struck.

'They bound me with masking tape until I looked like a mummy. It took them quite a while because they ran out of breath. When they loaded me into the car I thought I was a dead man.

'I was bleeding from my eyes, nose and my mouth. But the nightmare had only just started.'

During his confinement in an unheated cellar, Mr Amburn claims he was burned with cigarettes, beaten, had two of his ribs broken when he was hit with a chair leg and chained up 'like an animal.'

He says he was fed only two bowls of watery soup during his four days in the dungeon.
'I was led into the cellar,' recalled Mr Amburn, 'And I saw a folding bed and a WC reserved for me. They immediately went on about their money.

'I told them what I had told them before, that due to market conditions, unfortunately it was gone.

'I was struck. Again and again they threatened to kill me. The fear of death was indescribable. I never thought I would make it out alive.

'I tried to buy time, to ease the situation, but I didn’t know if night was day or day night.

'I told them that if I sold certain securities in Switzerland they could get their money and for this I had to send a fax to a bank in that country so funds could be transferred.'

They agreed and he sent a fax. But unbeknown to them, he had scribbled a message on the bottom of the paper for whoever received it to call the police.

'It was disguised as a policy which is spelled police in German,' he said.

'I wrote call police and they didn’t notice it but someone at the bank was bright enough to pick up on it.'

Allowed out of the cellar on Friday for cigarette break in the garden while the kidnappers waited on their loot, Mr Amburn attempted to escape over the wall.
In the pouring rain he ran down the street pursued by his captors in the Audi A8 they had used to transport him to the house.

Several people saw him but Roland K shouted: 'He’s a burglar!'

He was then dragged back to the cellar where he sustained several broken ribs as a 'punishment' for trying to escape.

Shortly afterwards, the Swiss bank telephoned police in Germany and an armed team of special SEK commandos was scrambled and the house was stormed in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Forty armed officers rescued Mr Amburn who was naked except for his underwear.
A physician had to be on hand to help his captors into police vans because of their various infirmities.

They now face up to 15 years in jail each for illegal hostage taking, torture and grievous bodily harm.

Chief public prosecutor Volker Ziegler said: 'They were angry because they invested money in properties in Florida and he lost it all.

'This was black money - they hadn’t declared it to the revenue authorities in Germany.'

Mr Amburn, who needed hospital treatment for his injuries before being allowed home, added: 'They threatened me with the Russian mafia too. I am not sure I feel all that safe even though they are behind bars.'

Ordeal: James Arnburn was held at a house by Lake Chiemsee, Germany (above)

Feedback on "They Don't Hate Our Guns, They Hate Us."

Michael Jackson's dead. Francisco Franco's STILL dead. And the world spins on.

Here's an excellent item of feedback from my recent post, "They don't hate our guns, they hate us." I do not have time at the moment to respond to David's excellent points. Perhaps one of my readers would be so kind?

Mike
III

Dear Mr. Vanderboegh...

Your latest article, "They don't hate our guns, they hate us," was, as always, incisive and thoughtful. I wanted to share a theory about why so many politicians hate and fear gun owners.

As you point out in your article, gun owners have the potential to stop the politicians' petty schemes. But I think there are also deeper, darker reasons they hate and fear us.

I believe that the most politicians suffer from a pathological need to have other people be dependent on them. Of course, we all want to be important in the lives of others; this is natural and healthy, and most of us recognize that, although our relationships are important, we can't live through other people. But a typical
politician's sense of self is so shallow that his idea of who he is depends largely on what they fantasize is their indispensable role in the lives of millions of others.

Therefore, to a politician, a self-reliant individual is a threat to his very sense of identity.

This theory explains some things that are hard to make sense of otherwise. For example, many politicians are viciously opposed to over-the-counter availability of vitamin supplements. This seems absurd, but consider: whatever the merits of vitamin supplements, their availability allows people to take control of their own
health care, which implies they don't want or need the politician's "help" in making health care decisions. Or look at the hysterical opposition most politicians show toward placing retirement planning back in the hands of the individual. "Social Security" is widely acknowledged to be unsustainable; one would think any plausible
solution would get serious consideration, but few politicians will entertain any idea that would allow people to take substantial control of their own retirement planning. As another example, observe the bizarre hostility many politicians show toward home-schoolers. Since most government schools ostensibly suffer a lack
of funding and overcrowding, shouldn't politicians applaud home-schoolers for reducing the burden on the system? Instead, they interfere with them at every turn, since the home-schooler is saying, implicity but unmistakably, that they don't want or need government "help" in teaching their children.

And, finally, if the self-reliant individual threatens the politician's sense of self, who could pose more of a threat than a gun owner? The gun owner says to the politician, in effect, "I don't need you for anything, not even protecting my life and property." I think this implicit message is such a profound threat to the politician's identity that he would stop at nothing--even genocide--to eliminate the source.

This theory also explains the opposition individual politicians show toward widely disparate and apparently unconnected activities. Why, for example, would a politician such as Ted Kennedy oppose over-the-counter sales of vitamin C, self-directed retirement planning, home-schooling, and the right to keep and bear arms?
What to all these things have in common, except their ability to reduce the dependence of the individual on the government?

If my theory is correct, it implies that politicians will always hate us, not because of what we own, or even because of what we do, but because of who we are. Our very existence is a constant threat to their world view, and a continual reminder that their imagined indispensibility to the lives and welfare of millions is really nothing more than hubris and delusion.

If you have the time and are so inclined, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on this.

Best Regards,

David Schmidt
"Manus haec inimica tyrannis"--motto of Algernon Sidney

They're burying Bert Bank today, 67 years late.

Bataan Death March survivor Bert Bank flashes a big smile Friday, Oct. 31, 2008, at a plaque with his likeness on it during his induction into the Alabama Military Hall of Honor at Marion Military Institute in Marion, Ala. Bank died Monday, June 22, at age 94.

The funeral of Bert Bank will be held today, 25 June 2009, at the Moody Music Building on the UA campus. There will be a visitation from 8:30-10 a.m. and the service will follow at 10 a.m. Bank will be buried alongside his parents, Sam and Bessie Bank, and his brother, Harold, at Evergreen Cemetery. Graveside services, with full military celebrations, will be held at 11 a.m. Born on 1 September 1914 in Montgomery, Alabama, he was 94.

I won't be there, as I have been ordered by my doctor to stay off my right foot if I want to continue having it attached to my right leg. I wish I could be.

The service will be slightly over 67 years late, for that is how long Bert beat the terrible odds he was faced with early in life. But, oh, what he did with that life.

Bertram Bank was born in 1914 to Russian Jewish parents who had emigrated to the United States from a village near the Polish border. he grew up on the coalfields of Tuscaloosa County near the small mining town of Searles. The Great Depression had all but decimated his father's restaurant and plumbing businesses, but Bert somehow saved up enough money to realize his dream of a college education and enrolled at the University of Alabama. The affable extrovert spent four cherished years at the Capstone, working at the school paper, drilling with the R.O.T.C. detachment, and making friends, one of whom was a rugged, lanky football player named Paul Bryant. He intended to pursue a career in law, but with the winds of war sweeping the nation, Bert soon found himself flying dive-bombers instead of filing legal briefs.

Assigned to the 27th Bombardment Group at Hunter Field in Savannah, Georgia, lieutenant Bank trained in the skies by day and entertained his share of Georgia belles-including the winner of the 1939 Miss Georgia pageant-by night. On November 20, 1941, Bert and his comrades arrived at Fort McKinley in the Philippines. -- John D. Lukacs, When Men Must Die: An Alabama POW at Bataan, Alabama Heritage, Fall 2003.

After Bert's squadron's planes were destroyed on the ground thanks to the dithering MacArthur's hesitation, Bank and his friend Bill Dyess ended up fighting, and starving, as infantrymen on Bataan.

"On Christmas Eve, General Douglas MacArthur moved everybody to the Bataan Peninsula," said Bert. "All air force personnel became infantry. They put all of us on the front lines. We were fighting as infantry with no training."

And yet they fought well. With the fall of Bataan, Bank and Dyess fell in together at the surrender and Dyess later recalled their initiation into Japanese military ethics.

Death March survivor and friend of Bert Bank, LTC William Dyess.

"The victim, an Air Force captain, was being searched by a three-star private. Standing by was a Jap commissioned officer, hand on sword hilt. These men were nothing like the toothy, bespectacled runts whose photographs are familiar to most newspaper readers. They were cruel of face, stalwart, and tall.

'The private, a little squirt, was going through the captain's pockets. All at once he stopped and sucked in his breath with a hissing sound. He had found some Jap yen.'

'He held these out, ducking his head and sucking in his breath to attract notice. The big Jap looked at the money. Without a word he grabbed the captain by the shoulder and shoved him down to his knees. He pulled the sword out of the scabbard and raised it high over his head, holding it with both hands. The private skipped to one side.'

'Before we could grasp what was happening, the black-faced giant had swung his sword. I remember how the sun flashed on it. There was a swish and a kind of chopping thud, like a cleaver going through beef'.

'The captain's head seemed to jump off his 'shoulders. It hit the ground in front of him and went rolling crazily from side to side between the lines of prisoners.'

'The body fell forward. I have seen wounds, but never such a gush of. blood as this. The heart continued to pump for a few seconds and at each beat there was another great spurt of blood. The white dust around our feet was turned into crimson mud. I saw the hands were opening and closing spasmodically. Then I looked away.'

'When I looked again the big Jap had put up his sword and was strolling off. The runt who had found the yen was putting them into his pocket. He helped himself to the captain's possessions.'

This was the first murder. . ." -- William E.Dyess, The Dyess Story, 1943.

Then began the Death March.

The Bataan Death March-depending on where and when a prisoner joined the slow, suffering column-was actually a series of forced marches lasting from five to ten days, covering approximately sixty-five miles from Mariveles to the rail hub of San Fernando, in the northern province of Pampanga. Bert weaved through the smoldering jungle, passing abandoned, fire-gutted, olive-drab vehicles licked by dying flames and centuries-old banyan trees splintered by shrapnel and shell. Through the choking dust clouds kicked up by the ghost-like, khaki silhouettes plodding in front of him, he spotted artesian wells bubbling with cold, clear spring water, but he dared not stop. Bert quickly learned that the Japanese summarily executed anyone who strayed from the march. Each evening, the drained, disease-wracked prisoners would collapse in a vacant schoolyard or sugarcane field. Lucky prisoners received a single ball of rice, about the size of a baseball, to eat. Most received nothing.

At first light, cracks of rifle fire echoed throughout the rolling green hills. Some guards pumped bullets into those physically unable to keep the grueling pace; others delivered death with samurai swords. As the blistering midday sun slowly arced across the powder-blue tropic skies, temperatures soared to stifling, triple-digit figures. Prisoners watched helplessly as guards gunned down weak comrades who stopped to rest without permission or others who made the fatal mistake of possessing anything stamped "Made in Nippon"-the logic of the guards being that one had to have taken the object from a dead Japanese soldier. Even the desperate, thirst-crazed men who lunged for roadside carabao wallows-shallow pools of filthy, brackish water in which floated bullet-riddled corpses and the rotting carcasses of dead horses-received swift, fatal reprimands from Japanese bayonets. Inflated with rage, yet weak, unarmed, and powerless to interfere, they could only watch the slaughter in utter disbelief. For four months, they had seen comrades killed honorably by bombs and shells and bullets in combat. But they had not been prepared for this. Questions abounded in Bert's mind, and answers were not forthcoming.
"The thing in my mind when we started the Bataan Death March was, what happened? America's abandoning us," says Bert. "We didn't understand this." -- Lukacs, Ibid.

Banks later wrote:

On this march I was with my very good friend Lieutenant Colonel Dyess who escaped in 1943 and successfully reached the States and gave the American people the first information concerning our prison life and the March of Death. The third day of this march, Dyess amd I were very thirsty and we stepped to the right a few feet and attempted to get a drink from an artesian well. A guard shot at me and missed, but killed a Filipino standing right next to me. This was not an unusual incident, as many of us were desperate for water. For the entire five days the Japs gave us no water at all. After seeing so many killed on the attempt, few of us would dare try to get the water. On this march we were given one small rice ball about the size of a fifty cent piece. Our lips were so blistered and raw that we could not eat even this small amount of rice. That is all the food the Japs gave us during these five days and nights of horror. . . The third night it rained very hard and about midnight the Japs said we could rest . . . During this second of rest, I fortunately sat down in a mud hole and I drank the water from this hole, even though animals and humans had marched through it for days.

Along the highway one saw bodies maimed and completely decapitated as the result of the Jap trucks along the highway. The Japs in these trucks would hit the Americans on the head in passing. One day a Jap in a passing truck attempted to decapitate me and I ducked and he completely cut off the head of a Filipino standing next to me. One day during the march we heard a blood-curdling scream and when we looked over into a nearby rice pattie we saw a guard cutting the stomach out of a poor old Filipino. I was later told that the Filipino had refused to march any farther. The Filipino was not dead when they finished cutting out his stomach and he was begging the guard to shooy him, but he was refused even that. One person told me that he, along with other Americans, had been required to eat pieces of human flesh during the march . . . -- Back From the Living Dead, Major Bert Bank, 1945.

Yet for all that, other POWs recalled that it was Bert who kept them going with his irrepressible sense of humor.

After five days on the march, Bert staggered into San Fernando, where he and more than a hundred other prisoners were prodded into a musty World War I-era steel boxcar-designed to hold only forty-for a tortuous, twenty-four-mile journey. Many prisoners, suffocating under the oppressive heat, fainted. Those suffering from dysentery soiled their threadbare uniforms. Others died standing upright, unable to slump to the floor. When the train finally screeched into Gapas, in Tarlac Province, dozens fell out onto the station platform gasping for fresh air. Six miles later, Bank found himself standing before the gates of Camp O'Donnell, the first of three squalid Japanese prison camps that he would call home for the next three-and-a-half years. Unlike nearly seven hundred of his countrymen and ten thousand of his Filipino allies, he had survived the Bataan Death March. But his ordeal was only just beginning.-- Lukacs, Ibid.

For almost three years, Bert Bank suffered at the hands of the Japanese, from Camp O'Donnell, to Cabanatuan, then to a former leper colony in Davao and finally back to Cabanatuan. It was there that Bert Bank was rescued by the Rangers, as portrayed in the movie The Great Raid.

Picture of Bert and rescued comrades from his memoir, Back From The Living Dead.

"The liberation by the Rangers was a great, great thing," says Bert. "If they hadn't been successful, the Japanese would definitely have eliminated us."

The resurrected "ghosts" were treated to an unlimited menu from the 12th Battalion Replacement Center field kitchen, given much-needed medical attention, and greeted by General MacArthur himself. According to Bert, a visibly emotional MacArthur shook hands with the former prisoners and personally welcomed each man back. "One guy said to him, 'How come it took you so long?'" said Bert. . . Bert spent the early part of 1945 convalescing overseas and steadily regained his sight. he returned home to Tuscaloosa and, after checking out of Northington General Hospital with a clean bill of health, was promoted to the rank of major. Bert spent the remainder of the war a celebrity, traveling the country selling war bonds for the Treasury Department. . . -- Lukacs, Ibid.

Upon his return, Bert wrote his memoir, a small pamplet of a book of 108 pages with black cover and stark white letters: "Back From The Living Dead: The infamous death march and 33 months in a Japanese prison." In it, he included this postwar photo and dedication:



Bert left the service in 1946. Despite suffering from recurring nightmares like many former prisoners, he made a highly successful transition to peacetime life. he became a radio entrepreneur, eventually owning several Tuscaloosa stations, which, at the request of his old friend Bear Bryant, he used to help create the Crimson Tide football radio network. he entered politics in 1966 and was elected to three terms, two in the Alabama House of Representatives and one in the Senate and served as floor leader in the administrations of three governors-George Wallace, Lurleen Wallace, and Albert Brewer. he also ran for lieutenant governor in 1978, but lost in a tight race. Between his political and business careers, Bert found time to raise two sons-Ralph and Jimmy-with his late wife of thirty-four years, Gertrude. -- Lukacs, Ibid.

Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace's "stand" in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963. This is a photo of Wallace entering a motel in Tuscaloosa. Surrounding cast includes (1) Wallace; (2) Lonnie Falk, then a student at UA; (3) UPI's Gary Haynes of UPI-Atlanta and assorted other bureaus, later Times and Inquirer editor; (4) Rex Thomas of AP-MG; (5) Gerald Wallace, the governor's brother; (6) Ralph Roton, Klan member, official and head of self-styled Klan Bureau of Investigation. Also standing behind state trooper on the far left is Tuscaloosa businessman Bert Bank, a survivor of the Bataan Death March who was later elected to the Alabama Senate.

No man is perfect. Neither was Bert Banks. He opposed the desegregation of the University of Alabama, not on racial grounds (the Klan hated him for being both Jewish and a "nigger lover") but rather on states rights objections. His support of Wallace drew him into Alabama politics, but he never believed in the racial theories of the Klan. As sportscaster Paul Finebaum recalled:

While his memories from the Pacific are well known and documented, there are many other things about Bank rarely discussed. For instance, he was the first white radio-station owner in Alabama to put a black DJ on the air in the late '50s. "A bunch of advertisers threatened to cancel, and I told them I would publish their names in the paper if they did," Bank said. Most backed down. Bank, who owned two stations in Tuscaloosa, gave many students their first job at WTBC-AM, including a number who have gone on to major network jobs.

If Bert Bank needs an epitaph beyond his amazing life, do not use the word "hero" in it. Bert always denied he was a hero, saying the real heroes were the soldiers who never came home. And as John Lukacs wote:

Bert retired in 1985, but he still maintains an office at WTBC as "producer emeritus" and attends every Alabama football game, home and away (he's missed just three games in the past forty-eight years), with the station broadcast team. After the death of his wife, he was reunited with Emma Minkowitz Friedman, the former Miss Georgia he had met more than sixty years earlier in Savannah, and remarried in 1997.

Almost six decades later, Bert has not forgotten his country. he tells his story regularly at schools and at meetings of Kiwanis and Rotary clubs across the state. He's been the guest speaker at dozens of Memorial and Veterans Day events for years. He's even given pep talks to Crimson Tide athletic teams. In short, he'll sound the praises of his country anywhere and for any audience who will listen. That's because Bert Bank, once forgotten himself, will never forget the night his country came back for him.

"They don't hate our guns. They hate US.": Bob Herbert plays Uncle Tom on the government monopoly of force plantation.

Bob Herbert, New York Times Columnist and advocate of a government monopoly of force.

A moment of clarity over Milo's Sweet Tea and Diet Mountain Dew.

I was sitting in the back room of a gun store here in Alabama the other day, chatting with a long time friend about Bob Herbert's latest NYT column, A Threat We Can’t Ignore over drinks. He had a Milo's Sweet Tea and I had a Diet Mountain Dew.

A call for more gun control, it began with this:

Even with the murders that have already occurred, Americans are not paying enough attention to the frightening connection between the right-wing hate-mongers who continue to slither among us and the gun crazies who believe a well-aimed bullet is the ticket to all their dreams.

Then, had this right about the middle:

There is no Obama gun ban on the way. . . . What’s important to grasp here is that this madness has nothing to do with hunting, which the politicians always claim to be defending, and everything to do with the use of firearms to resist policies and lawful government actions that some gun owners don’t like.

Herbert then concluded:

Gun craziness of all kinds, including the passage of local laws making it easier to own and conceal weapons, is on the rise. . . It might be wise to pay closer attention than we’ve been paying. The first step should be to bring additional gun control back into the policy mix.

"Gun crazies." "Slither(ing) among us." Lumping ordinary American gun owners in with National Socialist (read collectivist) terrorists so that we can all be repressed. And note -- Herbert thinks we're paranoid for thinking Obama is going to give us more gun control. His solution? Why, more gun control, of course.

My friend sighed, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. We're all older than we were in the 90s the last time this kind of stuff was rolling out. We're older, wiser and sadder, I think, than we were then. No less determined, but we've been here before.

"You know something, Mike?" he asked in sadness and quiet discovery. "I just realized something. All this time I thought it was our guns they hated, but that's not it. They don't hate our guns. They hate US. You and me. We're free individuals and they can't stand it."

I could only agree. However, there was one thing Herbert wrote with which I agreed.

"This . . . has . . . everything to do with the use of firearms to resist policies and lawful government actions that some gun owners don’t like."

Or, to put it the other way round, this has everything to do with the government being able to force compliance from citizens who desire to retain their property and liberty contrary to the wishes of Herbert and his friends. Just as after Heller, when we began to hear calls from the victim disarmament crowd about repealing the Second Amendment, we now hear demands for the codification of a government monopoly on violence.

That's what this whole thing about "sporting use" is all about. Other than PETA, the collectivists don't really care if poor little Bambi ends up in somebody's pot. Heck, even Herman Goering was a great white Aryan hunter. What they object to is not necessarily the firearm, but the combination of a firearm and the hands of somebody trained and willing to use it to defend his liberty. That's what scares the crap out of them.

So my friend is right. At the end of the day, Herbert and his ilk don't hate firearms. Firearms in the hands of the government which can be used to bully us into compliance are perfectly OK with them. What they really hate, or I should say, who they really hate, are free people, individuals, armed citizens who insist on their rights to liberty and property and have the ability to maintain them against government tyranny.

Let us postulate that they get their way. Of course they won't, not without a civil war. But let us say that they do. Now, at a wave of Bob Herbert's magic wand, all the law-abiding are disarmed. The government is not. The criminals are not, because, after all, they're criminals. The police cannot be everywhere at once, not even close, so this government monopoly of force becomes a government and criminal duopoly of force. The law-abiding are now, ipso facto, all potential victims. They are not citizens reponsible for their own defense; they are serfs, slaves, unable to effectively resist either the government or the criminals.

This is Bob Herbert's perfect world. It is ironic that African Americans like Herbert, Jesse Jackson and Gene Robinson would embrace this victimhood. The veterans of the Deacons for Defense and Justice who guarded civil rights advocates like Martin Luther King, Jr. with their military pattern firearms and their lives against Klan violence would, I am sure, call them "Uncle Toms" working on the government's plantation. And why wouldn't they?

Image from "No Guns For Negroes."

(I urge everyone to get a copy of JPFO's latest video, No Guns For Negroes, which was produced in concert with the Congress of Racial Equality's Chicago branch with the assistance of its Chairman, Ralph W. Conner. You can get a DVD of this solidly researched documentary by sending a $25.00 or greater donation to CORE at P.O. Box 2015, Chicago, Illinois 60690-2015. Their email is: coreblog08@gmail.com. Or, you can buy it on-line from JPFO by going to www.jpfo.org.)




By carrying their firearms concealed (and remember, this was in violation of the law back then), that would make the Deacons "gun crazies" in Herbert's alternate universe. So you see, this is not about race, except that the first gun control laws were designed to keep guns out of the hands of slaves and free blacks. No, it is about hate. Masters, the people who seek to run nations like plantations, hate free men and women with firearms. Uncle Toms hate them too, for we remind them that they are, in fact, Uncle Toms instead of free individuals.

Deacons for Defense and Justice.

Either you trust the people, as the Founders did, or you don't. The advocates of a government monopoly of violence, even defensive violence, are in the end all collectivists of different stripes. All tyrannical regimes insist upon a government monopoly of violence -- Nazis, Communists and now, Bob Herbert and his friends.

For our part, we don't hate them. We simply wish to be left alone. But here's the rub. We may not hate them, but if they force us into conflict by further predations on our property and liberty, our not hating them will not keep us from killing them in righteous self defense.

And THAT is why they hate us. That is why they libel us by lumping us in with collectivist terrorists.

Because they fear us.

They fear that we, the heretofore law-abiding armed citizenry of the United States, of all races, creeds and colors, will be able to resist when the time comes for them to shove their tyrannical ideas down our throats.

And you know what?

They should be afraid.

They should, in fact, leave us the hell alone.

Pacifist horsecrap on KABA; Orwell rebuts: "Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force."

George Orwell broadcasting to India on BBC, 1942. Gandhi denounced him as "pro-imperialist," saying that the Indian people could overwhelm the Imperial Japanese Army with "passive resistance" and still win their independence.

Found this link on KABA, entitled Without Firing A Single Shot: Voluntaryist Resistance and Societal Defense by Carl Watner.

Here is an excerpt:

There are many advantages of nonviolent civilian-based defense. For one thing, a nonviolent army is not limited to the physically fit. Children, seniors, people of every age and condition, even the infirm, are capable of refusing to do what they are told to do. For another thing, even though suffering and death are an inevitable part of any social struggle, nonviolent resistance minimizes both the numbers of casualties and the amount of destruction. Another advantage of nonviolent resistance is that there is no such thing as final defeat, so long as a few people exist whose minds and spirit are not bent to the will of the ruler. For example "[a]fter more than forty years the Tibetans continue to resist the Chinese military occupation. ... [I]f the will to resist is maintained ... the defense cannot be defeated."

300,000 dead Chinese demonstrate the efficacy of non-violent resistance during the rape of Nanking, 1937.

This is the reply I left on KABA:

Comment by: Mike Vanderboegh (6/22/2009) This is just so much historical horseshit it cannot be overstated. Collectivists are not deterred by moral suasion -- THEY HAVE NO FRIGGING MORALS and they will kill anybody, ANYBODY, who gets in their way. See George Orwell's comments on pacifism. If the Germans or the Japanese had made it to India, Gandhi would have been food for worms in 24 hours. Collectivism's appetite for those who resist it is insatiable and can only be discouraged by what they fear most-- their own deaths. Anyone who tells you different is selling something.

Japanese are so over-awed by Chinese passive resistance they stage a beheading contest in appreciation. Nanking, 1937.

And here is what I meant by Orwell's comments on pacifism, from The Partisan Review magazine, London, August-September 1942 issue, entitled: ‘Pacifism and the War’

"Children, seniors, people of every age and condition, even the infirm, are capable of refusing to do what they are told to do." Yup, worked out great for these Chinese children. Nanking, 1937.

Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’. The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security. Mr Savage remarks that ‘according to this type of reasoning, a German or Japanese pacifist would be “objectively pro-British”.’ But of course he would be! That is why pacifist activities are not permitted in those countries (in both of them the penalty is, or can be, beheading) while both the Germans and the Japanese do all they can to encourage the spread of pacifism in British and American territories. The Germans even run a spurious ‘freedom’ station which serves out pacifist propaganda indistinguishable from that of the P.P.U. They would stimulate pacifism in Russia as well if they could, but in that case they have tougher babies to deal with. In so far as it takes effect at all, pacifist propaganda can only be effective against those countries where a certain amount of freedom of speech is still permitted; in other words it is helpful to totalitarianism.

Comfort Women. Chinese victims of Japanese mass rape. Nonviolent resistance worked out real well for them, too. Nanking, 1937.

I am not interested in pacifism as a ‘moral phenomenon’. If Mr Savage and others imagine that one can somehow ‘overcome’ the German army by lying on one’s back, let them go on imagining it, but let them also wonder occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too much money and a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen. As an ex-Indian civil servant, it always makes me shout with laughter to hear, for instance, Gandhi named as an example of the success of non-violence. As long as twenty years ago it was cynically admitted in Anglo-Indian circles that Gandhi was very useful to the British government. So he will be to the Japanese if they get there. Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.

"A nonviolent army is not limited to the physically fit." You can even do it without your head! Nanking, 1937.

Gandhi even wrote a pamphlet in 1942 about how the Indians should greet the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere called HOW TO MEET A JAPANESE INVASION by Mirabehn (his female English secretary) and MK Gandhi, 1942. It laid out the ways Indians could "in good conscience" collaborate with the Imperial Japanese Army.

Had the Japanese got as far as India. Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass.

Glenn Spencer's Mea Culpa: The inevitable consequences of failure to execute zero tolerance for loons, racists, anti-semites and assorted sociopaths.

The Shawna Forde perp walk.

My thanks to Jackie J. for forwarding this to me regarding Shawna Forde. I will have some comments on the other side.

Mike
III

Full Disclosure about Shawna Forde

By Glenn Spencer -- American Border Patrol

June 22, 2009

About ten o’clock on the morning of June 12, I was at my computer working on the Operation B.E.E.F. final report when suddenly someone appeared behind me. It was Shawn Forde, the “Minuteman activist.” She had not called for an appointment but merely showed up at American Border Patrol’s front door (and my home) and was let in.

Being a polite person, I spoke with her, even though last summer I told American Border Patrol employees that, due to her strange behavior, she was no longer welcome at the ranch.

Sitting down at my desk, Forde told me she was setting up an organization to put unemployed veterans to work protecting the border. Knowing that this was ridiculous, I quickly ended the conversation and excused myself. Forde asked if she could use our family room to do some work on her laptop. She stayed about twenty minutes and left.

I still don’t know why Shawna Forde suddenly appeared at my front door, but I am sorry she did.

As she left she asked if she could return the next day and retrieve something she left in the RV. I said OK. (Last summer I let Forde and her daughter use ABP’s RV for about a week.)

With the exception of allowing her to use our RV, I have never had any dealings with Shawna Forde. She has never participated in any of ABP’s border work and none of our people have participated in any Minuteman border operation, including those involving Shawna Forde.

Shortly after Forde left, Waste Management called and said they couldn’t pick up our trash as the FBI the road leading to my house blocked. I jumped on an ATV and drove to the end of the road where I saw a number of vehicles and people who appeared to be law enforcement. I asked if their activities had anything to do with the border and they said no. I returned home and called the Sierra Vista Herald to report the activity. I spoke with reporter Bill Hess, whom I have known for years, and explained the situation. He said he would look into it. That was about 11:30 a.m.

About 12:30 p.m. I left to go into Sierra Vista to do some shopping. I drove my Hummer and waved as I passed the “FBI” people who were still at the north end of my road - they waived back.

On the way home I was just pulling onto my road where the “FBI” people were when I encountered Melissa Jaramillo, my office manager ,who was just leaving. It was a little after 3 p.m., the end of Melissa’s workday. She pointed out that one of the cars on the road looked like it belonged to Shawna Forde. I confirmed this and took a picture of the vehicle ( the brown SUV).

Upon arriving home I called Bill Hess of the Herald and told him what had happened. He asked about Shawna. I told him she was a very strange. He said there were a lot of strange people in Sierra Vista. I amplified by saying she was a braggadocio and had claimed that she had visited drug hideouts north of the border. He said it was unlikely drug smugglers would be hanging out with Minutemen and that they would know who she was. I agreed. He said he would pass the information along.

About 5:30 p.m. I was in my yard, playing ball with my German Shepherds when two sheriff deputies arrived. They said that others would be arriving and that they had a warrant to search my home. They said that Shawna Forde had been arrested for murder. I was handed a copy of the warrant.

Shortly thereafter more officers arrived and then came an armored vehicle loaded with a SWAT team. As I was kept to one side the SWAT team entered my home and a search began. I was approached by a Sheriff deputy who said Forde had murdered two people. I corrected him, saying “you mean she is suspected of murdering two people.” He said, no, she murdered them.

I was then interviewed by a female detective from Pima County. We talked for about twenty minutes and I told her all I knew about Shawna Forde. I told her I had very little to do with Forde and that I had told my associates that we should have little to do with her. I told the detective I had heard from others that Forde had bragged about visiting a drug smugglers hide out inside the U.S. I also said I was concerned because of the way Shawna dealt with her daughter, then under eighteen years old, or so I was told.

I told the detective that the deputy who said she had committed the murders was not very professional. She said he was only human.

They finished the search of my home and apparently found nothing that bothered them as they took nothing. After a quick search of ABP’s RV, they all left.

American Border Patrol stopped using volunteers for border work five years ago. We now concentrate on the use of high technology and aerial surveillance.

This is an object lesson about understanding with whom you are dealing in the border volunteer effort. This is why I urged the Minutemen to do background checks on everyone they signed on. They did, which is one of the reasons I allowed Forde and her daughter to use the RV – I thought they had done a background check on her.

Glenn Spencer

PS – Earlier today I learned from a reporter based in Washington State that the FBI was tracking Shawna as she used her laptop to send e-mails over her cell phone Internet link. She sent an email from ABP’s headquarters and this may explain why they arrested her as she left our headquarters.

OK, crew, here's my observations. We do not yet know if there was an FBI snitch in all of this, or if so who it might be. I do know that the racist and anti-semite groups of the 90s were riddled with them. Sometimes, as in the Identity compound at Elohim City in early 1995, there were at least five snitches and provocateurs in, or circulating through, all of them working for the FBI and ATF yet ignorant of each other's CI status.

Carol Howe, who was a CI for the ATF, told her controller about Andreas Carl Strassmeier, an FBI provocateur (or perhaps another agency which shouldn't have had its mitts in CONUS operations, the CIA) who proposed bombing federal buildings in Oklahoma City. The ATF Tulsa office was set to raid the place in February of 1995 when the US Attorney and the FBI up from OKC intervened, telling the ATF, "back off, Elohim City is OUR operation."

You had government paid snitches snitching on each other and provoking each other to commit federal crimes, all on the taxpayer dime. Not even the secret police of Tsarist Russia was this convoluted or worked at such evident cross-purposes to the maintenance of public order and the protection of innocents.

Which leads me to point out part of FBI SOP when dealing with a criminal conspiracy. They like to follow the people (and especially, the money) from a criminal enterprise to see how many people they can net before they make the "big bust.". For in casting their nets as wide as possible, they find more confidential informants to turn for use in later operations. It is not beyond possibility that one or more of this bunch, working at the direction of the Fibbies, channeled Forde in the direction of Glenn Spencer. It is also not beyond possibility that Forde herself was a federal snitch playing both sides against the middle.

This is what the 90s taught me -- If you lie down with dogs, you get up with federal fleas. A cautionary lesson I'm sure Glenn Spencer wishes he would have internalized before letting Shawna Forde have unsupervised access to his house and headquarters long AFTER he knew she was poison.

Great M One Four pic from Afghanistan courtesy of Jeff Knox

He forwards with comment: "M14EBR-RI Being issued to 1 "Designated Marksman" per platoon moving toward 2 per platoon. Weight with scope and bi-pod is about the same as a wood-stocked M14."

Here's another image I found myself.



It is obvious from these photos why the troops want 7.62 NATO and larger caliber weapons. The terrain demands really long-distance shots.

Praxis: 38,400,000 rounds, or, You think you've been having trouble finding .300 WinMag ammo before? You ain't seen nothin' yet.

My thanks to Jim "Hoot" Gibson, USAF, Retired of Wilson County, Texas for bringing this to my attention. Further research on the topic found this snippet at Defense Industry Daily.

ATK subsidiary Federal Cartridge Co. in Anoka, MN received a $49.9 million firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity contract for .300 Winchester magnum ammunition.

Folks here in Alabama have been loading .300 Winchester Magnums with pulled .30-06 AP bullets for some time now and find they work quite spectacularly at distance. (Our first experiments were back in 1995, if memory serves me correctly. And what they do to body armor you don't even want to see.) Nice to know the Army finally caught up with the constitutional militia.

Mike
III

American Snipers Go Magnum

June 18, 2009: The U.S. Army has ordered 38.4 million rounds of .300 Winchester magnum ammunition for its newly modified M-24 sniper rifles, as well as similar SOCOMs Mk13 models. The new ammo will cost about $1.30 per round. The .300 Winchester magnum will be ordered in minimum lots of 56,160 rounds (117 boxes of 480 rounds each). The entire 38.4 million rounds will last a while.



All this is in response to requests from snipers for a longer range weapon, but not one as bulky and heavy as the 30 pound .50 caliber rifle (which is good to about 2,000 meters). Thus the army is modifying existing M24 rifles to fire the more powerful .300 Winchester Magnum round. It was felt that this gave the snipers all the additional range they needed, without requiring a much heavier rifle. SOCOM has been using this approach since the early 1990s.

The calls were loudest from snipers operating in Afghanistan, where U.S. Army and Marine Corps shooters wanted a sniper rifle that can consistently get kills out to 1,800 meters. The current 7.62mm round was good only to about 800 meters. The 300 Winchester magnum is a more powerful, but not much larger, round than the current 7.62mm one. By replacing the barrel and receiver of the $6,700 M24 sniper rifle, for about $4,000, you can fire the .300 Winchester Magnum round. This is longer (at 7.62 x 67mm) than the standard 7.62x51mm round, and is good out to 1,200 meters. An improved version of the round is expected to extend that range another 200 meters or so.

There was another option, and that was to replace the barrel and receiver of the M24 sniper rifles to handle the .338 (8.6mm) Lapua Magnum round. Thus you still have a 17 pound sniper rifle, but with a round that can hit effectively out to about 1,600 meters. British snipers in Iraq, and especially Afghanistan, have found the Lapua Magnum round does the job at twice the range of the standard 7.62x51mm round. The 8.6mm round entered use in the early 1990s, and became increasingly popular with police and military snipers. Dutch snipers have used this round in Afghanistan with much success, and have a decade of experience with these larger caliber rifles. British snipers in Afghanistan are also using the new round, having converted many of their 7.62mm sniper rifles. Recognizing the popularity of the 8.6mm round, Barrett, the pioneer in 12.7mm sniper rifles, came out with a 15.5 pound version of its rifle, chambered for the 8.6mm. But the U.S. preferred the lighter .300 Winchester magnum solution.



This is not the first time the U.S. Army has quickly responded to sniper needs. Two years ago, in response to requests from snipers operating in urban areas of Iraq, the U.S. Army began issuing the M110 SASS (Semi-Automatic Sniper System). Urban snipers often have multiple targets, at relatively short ranges. They needed a semiautomatic rifle. Previously, many snipers have had success using tuned up M-14s (from the 1960s) as sniper rifles. While semi-automatic and rugged, the M-14 wasn't designed to be a sniper rifle. The M110 was a better semi-automatic sniper rifle, since it is inherently more reliable and accurate. As far back as World War II, it was known that there were many situations where a semi-automatic sniper rifle would come in handy. But it's taken over half a century to solve the reliability and accuracy problems.

The M110 is a based on the AR-10 rifle. The U.S. Navy has been buying a similar weapon, the SR25. This is also known as the Mk11 Sniper Rifle System (SRS). These new semi-automatic sniper rifles are 7.62mm weapons based on the designs of M-16 creator, Gene Stoner. The basis for the M-16 was the AR-15, and a 7.62mm version of that weapon was called the AR-10. About half the parts in the SR25 are interchangeable with those in the M-16. The Stoner sniper rifles achieved its high accuracy partly by using a 20 inch heavy floating barrel. The "floating" means that the barrel is attached only to the main body of the rifle to reduce resonance (which throws off accuracy.)

The M110 weighs 17.3 pounds in combat, and about 70 pounds with all components of the system. The M110 can use a ten or twenty round magazine. The 40.5 inch long rifle can have a six inch tube attached to the barrel, which reduces the noise and flash made when the rifle fires, and largely eliminates nearby dust rising into the air, which often gives away the snipers position.

The M110 will gradually replace many of the bolt-action M24s, while the remaining M24s will be converted to fire the .300 Winchester Magnum, for those snipers working somewhere, like Afghanistan, where more range is needed..

"Perhaps the tinderbox is drier than usual." -- The significance of unnoticed events in China.

Folks,

There is much for Three Percenters to learn from the way technology is aiding the Iranian Greens as they seek greater freedom from the kleptocracy of the mullahs. However, contrarian that I am, I have not been giving the bulk of my attention to the riveting story of Neda and the street clashes with the religious militia thugs. No, like the trooper walking drag in a combat patrol, I've been keeping my eye on our strategic rear. I have been watching China. The incident described below by Malcolm Moore of the London Telegraph found here is of greater long-term strategic importance to the United States and the cause of liberty world-wide than the success or failure of the Iranian Green Revolution. Not that I don't hope the Greens succeed, but even in the unlikely event that it does I doubt that it will stop the Iranian nuclear threat or their support for Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups.

But China . . . China is another thing.

Much has been said about the ability of the Chinese to bring down the American dollar with a shrug. And it is true, they can, thanks to our spendthrift leadership. But this is why they can't. Not easily. Not without fatal consequences to their own regime. The PRC communist Politburo cannot risk the Chinese people discovering their own strength. Talk about sleeping giants! More on the other side.

Tens of thousands of Chinese fight the police in Shishou

By Malcolm Moore

It was a dramatic weekend in the relatively small city of Shishou in Hubei province.

Tens of thousands of rioters torched a hotel and overturned police cars, after the authorities allegedly tried to cover up the murder of a 24-year-old man as a suicide.

The deceased, Tu Yuangao, was the chef of the Yong Long hotel. According to the cops, he committed suicide by jumping off the roof of the building and left a note.

Witnesses said there was no blood on the scene and Tu's body was already cold just after it hit the ground. His parents were surprised at the suicide note, since he was allegedly illiterate.

There are plenty of rumours flying around - that two other employees at the hotel had died in the same way, that the boss of the hotel is related to the mayor of Shishou, that the hotel was a centre for the local drug business and Yu was killed for threatening to expose what was going on. There's also a rumour that three further bodies have been found at the hotel.

It's a strange story, and it gets stranger. A huge mob, of anywhere between a few thousand to 70,000 people, depending on which report you read, quickly gathered outside the building. Tu's parents refused to let his body be taken away, and instead placed it inside the hotel on ice.



The crowd defended the body against waves of policemen. However, on Saturday, a fire was lit inside the hotel, but the corpse was saved. Tu's cousin apparently armed himself with two barrels of gasoline and threatened to blow himself up if the body was taken.

The police restored order yesterday, imposed a curfew and took the body to a funeral parlour. Today, the website of the local government has been defaced by hackers.

What's extraordinary is the speed in which the riot blew up, and the venom directed against the local authorities. Whatever was behind Tu's death, there's clearly something rotten in Shishou.

But after months of calm, there have been a spate of reported riots recently. Is this because media restrictions have been lifted, allowing news of riots to spread, or has there been a genuine increase in social tension in the countryside?

It is impossible to tell. China no longer publishes the figures for how many riots take place each year, but most people put the figure at around 80,000 and the vast majority go totally unnoticed.

The fact that there have been a dozen riots reported in the last couple of months may not demonstrate anything out of the ordinary. There is no theme that connects the recent protests - some are about property, some have been triggered by work disputes, some are because of corruption.

But then again, a huge number of migrant workers are still out of work because their factories have not recovered from the economic crisis, the harvest is finished and people's savings may be running low. Perhaps the tinderbox is drier than usual.

The dry tinder of millions of unemployed Chinese, smarting under a regime which has sold out its ideological patrimony for the Marxist equivalent of a mess of pottage -- betting its entire legitimacy in the process on the very un-Marxist concept of prosperity -- can easily flare up into a prairie fire that will burn the PRC's Politburo elite to the ground.

They dare not deliberately increase this pool of discontent without an alternative. War? That has been the fallback plan of despots throughout history when faced with restive populations. But with who? Only if Barack Obama has given them a wink and a nod on Taiwan would they dare cross the Strait, even with the sellout KMT party now in power willing to sell the whole show for private profit.

No, war would probably bring them down too. Marxists have long studied the original Bolsheviks and how they toppled the Tsar together with willing useful idiots in the wake of an unsuccessful war. There are plenty examples from Chinese history as well. The PRC Politburo is riding a tiger, and it is a tiger that is acutely self-aware, despite Google-bought censorship, of things like the Iranian Greens, and the Ukrainian Oranges, etc.

No prosperity equals no stability, and I suspect that a Tienanmen Square now might put their whole Chinese Communist Party spinning down the Tidy Bowl of history. But what will they do?

I don't know.

The Chinese people are a great people, a magnificent culture, old and wise beyond our years. If they ever get shed of collectivism in all its forms, they will show us all how we should have done when we had the chance. Imagine their billions freed from centralized tyranny, working harder than anyone else in the world ever has, with the possible exception of our Founders, luxuriating in liberty and opportunity. Their rising tide could float the boats of the world. But will it?

I don't know. But I'm keeping at least one eye open for what will prove to the truly thunderous historical event of the 21st Century. And it will come, I guarantee you, out of China.

Count on it.

Mike Vanderboegh
The alleged leader of a merry band of Three Percenters.