Monday, June 16, 2014

Where is the Outrage?

ASTOUNDING -- Below reminds me of Einsatzgruppen the German killing squads grouped in Eastern Europe killing Jews during World War II. This is utterly disgusting. And let's see what is this tribal Hatfield/McCoy 1000 year war over ideology? NO not much over that, although there are differences, but rather its etiology lay over the line of succession to the prophet (in respect: peace be upon him.) Are you kidding me?

Wikipedia:

The historic background of the Sunni–Shia split lies in the schism that occurred when the Islamic prophet Muhammad died in the year 632, leading to a dispute over succession to Muhammad as a caliph of the Islamic community spread across various parts of the world which led to the Battle of Siffin. The dispute intensified greatly after the Battle of Karbala, in which Hussein ibn Ali and his household were killed by the ruling Umayyad Caliph Yazid I, and the outcry for his revenge divided the early Islamic community.

Can one imagine if the US were photographically on film caught doing this OR Israel? The outrage would be deafening. This is a human catastrophe of immense proportions, in my opinion, a war crime rivaled by Nazi Germany; hundreds of thousands have been killed already all over the Middle East, thousands of American deaths, tens of thousands more maimed for life and millions more displaced. Where is the outrage from every corner of the globe left wing and right wing alike? Read the article below and do not hide from images we all need to see and then speak out for the sake of humanity speak out!

Militants post apparent images of mass killing in Iraq

By Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Sameer N. Yacoub

| Associated Press June 15, 2014

This image posted on a militant website appears to show members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant leading away captured Iraqi soldiers in plain clothes.

MILITANTS CLAIM MASS EXECUTION

Rebels Post Gruesome Photos Of Alleged Mass Murder... Claim 1,700 Killed... 'Look At Them Walking To Death On Their Own Feet'... Insurgent Offensive Appears To Slow... Baghdad Prepares For An Attack... Rebels Seize Northwest Town In Heavy Battle... U.S. Begins To Evacuate Embassy Staff... Plans Talks With Iran... Explosions Kill At Least 19... Lightning Strike Was Years In The Making... FEAR: 'Multinational War Fought Along 500-Mile Front'...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Sunday, June 15, 2014

Israel, Anti-Semitism and Me

Eric Cantor is through. Did his Jewishness play a part in his defeat as Huff Post is asking? Well, before one says absolutely not let's take another look at the hysteria of world wide anti-Semitism.

My left of center politics was formed in the late 1960's in large part because of the Holocaust. I was not born when it happened but it did consume a major part of my thoughts when tying to decide where I belonged on the political spectrum. It became rather easy -- Nazism was the political extreme of the right and Communism was the political extreme of the left. Both extremes hated one another. I knew that while I would never be an extremist of any stripe I would rather be associated with a movement whose goal was universal equality for all irrespective of race and I wanted a more egalitarian society where economics was more universally distributed. The Nazis near extermination of all the Jews -- my Jews -- of Europe nearly became reality. Thus, my politics was born out of near genocide.

Helping me arrive at my philosophical and political decisions were campus anti-war movements dedicated to rethinking this nation's post WWII foreign policy and proclivity for war. There were books, movies, plays, professorial lectures by left of center intellectuals and there was a new form of music dedicated to creating a more just world -- folk artists like Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, of course the Beatles and many others. Among these musicians were political satirists whose music I loved. One such satirist was Tom Lehrer. In his 1967 song "National Brotherhood Week" audio here or below one stanza of the lyrics reads:

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Muslims,
And everybody hates the Jews.

Surely, everybody hating the Jews is not reality. Alan Dershowitz, however, makes an interesting case for not only German and Eastern European anti-Semitism but western European anti-Semitism as well. He indicts the left and the right for this obsession too. He wrote what I thought was an interesting piece on it to give some alternative perspective on this 2000 year old pathology. I paste his thoughts below.

Europe's Alarming Push to Isolate Israel

By Alan Dershowitz

Why are so many of the grandchildren of Nazis and Nazi collaborators who brought us the Holocaust once again declaring war on the Jews?

Why have we seen such an increase in anti-Semitism and irrationally virulent anti-Zionism in western Europe?

To answer these questions, a myth must first be exposed. That myth is the one perpetrated by the French, the Dutch, the Norwegians, the Swiss, the Belgians, the Austrians, and many other western Europeans: namely that the Holocaust was solely the work of German Nazis aided perhaps by some Polish, Ukrainian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian collaborators.

False.

The Holocaust was perpetrated by Europeans - by Nazi sympathizers and collaborators among the French, Dutch, Norwegians, Swiss, Belgians, Austrians and other Europeans, both Western and Eastern.

If the French government had not deported to the death camps more Jews than their German occupiers asked for; if so many Dutch and Belgian citizens and government officials had not cooperated in the roundup of Jews; if so many Norwegians had not supported Quisling; if Swiss government officials and bankers had not exploited Jews; if Austria had not been more Nazi than the Nazis, the Holocaust would not have had so many Jewish victims.

In light of the widespread European complicity in the destruction of European Jewry, the pervasive anti-Semitism and irrationally hateful anti-Zionism that has recently surfaced throughout western Europe toward Israel should surprise no one.

“Oh no,” we hear from European apologists. “This is different. We don’t hate the Jews. We only hate their nation-state. Moreover, the Nazis were right-wing. We’re left-wing, so we can’t be anti-Semites.”

Nonsense. The hard left has a history of anti-Semitism as deep and enduring as the hard right. The line from Voltaire, to Karl Marx, to Levrenti Beria, to Robert Faurisson, to today’s hard-left Israel bashers is as straight as the line from Wilhelm Mars to the persecutors of Alfred Dreyfus to Hitler.

The Jews of Europe have always been crushed between the Black and the Red - victims of extremism whether it be the ultra-nationalism of Khmelnitsky to the ultra-anti-Semitism of Stalin.

“But some of the most strident anti-Zionists are Jews, such as Norman Finkelstein and even Israelis such as Gilad Atzmon. Surely they can’t be anti-Semites.” Why not? Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas collaborated with the Gestapo. Atzmon, a hard leftist, describes himself as a proud self-hating Jew and admits that his ideas derive from a notorious anti-Semite.

He denies that the Holocaust is historically proved but he believes that Jews may well have killed Christian children to use their blood to bake Passover matzah. And he thinks it’s “rational” to burn down synagogues.

Finkelstein believes in an international Jewish conspiracy that includes Steven Spielberg, Leon Uris, Eli Wiesel, and Andrew Lloyd Webber!

“But Israel is doing bad things to the Palestinians,” the European apologists insist, “and we are sensitive to the plight of the underdog.”

No, you’re not! Where are your demonstrations on behalf of the oppressed Tibetans, Georgians, Syrians, Armenians, Kurds, or even Ukrainians? Where are your BDS [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions] movements against the Chinese, the Russians, the Cubans, the Turks, or the Assad regime? Only the Palestinians, only Israel? Why? Not because the Palestinians are more oppressed than these and other groups.

Only because their alleged oppressors are Jews and the nation-state of the Jews. Would there be demonstrations and BDS campaigns on behalf of the Palestinians if they were oppressed by Jordan or Egypt?

Oh, wait! The Palestinians were oppressed by Egypt and Jordan. Gaza was an open-air prison between 1948 and 1967, when Egypt was the occupying power. And remember Black September, when Jordan killed more Palestinians than Israel did in a century? I don’t remember any demonstration or BDS campaigns — because there weren’t any.

When Arabs occupy or kill Arabs, Europeans go ho-hum. But when Israel opens a soda factory in Maale Adumim, which even the Palestinian leadership acknowledges will remain part of Israel in any peace deal, Oxfam parts ways with Scarlett Johansson for advertising a soda company that employs hundreds of Palestinians. Keep in mind that Oxfam has provided “aid and material support” to two anti-Israel terrorist groups, according to the Tel Aviv-based Israeli Law Group.

The hypocrisy of so many hard-left western Europeans would be staggering if it were not so predictable based on the sordid history of Western Europe’s treatment of the Jews.

Even England, which was on the right side of the war against Nazism, has a long history of anti-Semitism, beginning with the expulsion of the Jews in 1290 to the notorious White Paper of 1939, which prevented the Jews of Europe for seeking asylum from the Nazis in British-mandated Palestine. And Ireland, which vacillated in the war against Hitler, boasts some of the most virulent anti-Israel rhetoric.

The simple reality is that one cannot understand the current western European left-wing war against the nation-state of the Jewish people without first acknowledging the long-term European war against the Jewish people themselves.

Theodore Herzl understood the pervasiveness and irrationality of European anti-Semitism, which led him to the conclusion that the only solution to Europe’s Jewish problem was for European Jews to leave that bastion of Jew hatred and return to their original homeland, which is now the state of Israel.

None of this is to deny Israel’s imperfections or the criticism it justly deserves for some of its policies. But these imperfections and deserved criticism cannot even begin to explain, must less justify, the disproportionate hatred directed against the only nation-state of the Jewish people and the disproportionate silence regarding the far greater imperfections and deserved criticism of other nations and groups - including the Palestinians.

Nor is this to deny that many western European individuals and some western European countries have refused to succumb to the hatred against the Jews or their state. The Czech Republic comes to mind. But far too many western Europeans are as irrational in their hatred toward Israel as their forbearers were in their hatred toward their Jewish neighbors.

As author Amos Oz once aptly observed: the walls of his grandparents’ Europe were covered with graffiti saying, “Jews, go to Palestine.” Now they say, “Jews, get out of Palestine” - by which is meant Israel.

Who do these western European bigots think they’re fooling? Only fools who want to be fooled in the interest of denying that they are manifesting new variations on their grandparents’ old biases.

Any objective person with an open mind, open eyes, and an open heart must see the double standard being applied to the nation-state of the Jewish people. Many doing so are the grandchildren of those who lethally applied a double standard to the Jews of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.

For shame!

This article first appeared at NEWSMAX.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgASBVMyVFI

Block Out

A dear friend of mine recommended a wonderful HBO documentary I post here and below on the political cartoonist and satirist Herb Block. He drew the most prescient politically satirical cartoons that made, in their way, a most weighty influence on our history. He began his drawing in the early 20th century; working through the Great Depression until his death in 2001. That's a lot of history to draw. I paste a famous one he drew of Nixon during Watergate:

Nixon hanging between the tapes

[Nixon hanging between the tapes], May 24, 1974 Reproduction of original drawing. Published in the Washington Post (79)

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/herblock/images/hblock11.jpg

[Nixon hanging between the tapes], May 24, 1974 Reproduction of original drawing. Published in the Washington Post (79)

I loved this documentary and if you care anything about the trajectory of our nation you will, I think, love it too. The film was made for me as I try to, in my own small way through my writing, unprofessional that it may be, place a stake in what I think is the most humane and just policy while pointing out grave hypocrisies when I can. My mantra has been to question everything, as Howard Zinn instructed, by always asking who does policy benefit and why.

I wanted to be a voice for the little guy, to erase terrible injustice and to add to the fairness in life and not detract from it. There is, an ethical cement in which I place my opinion to try. Maybe I will not be able to fill the aisles when I depart the planet but someday if someone is reading a history of our time my point of view -- liberal humane points of view -- will get a just hearing.

Herb Block before his death sums up his hope for our nation's future through Truman's famous "The Buck Stops Here" sign on his desk except Herbblock (as he liked to spell his name) rephrased it. He said "Anything FOR a buck stops here" Amen, Mr. Block, from your words into God's ears!

http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/herblock-the-black-and-the-white#/

Saturday, June 14, 2014

For they Have Sown the Wind

Josh Rogin

World News

06.14.14

America's Allies Are Funding ISIS

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), now threatening Baghdad, was funded for years by wealthy donors in Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, three U.S. allies that have dual agendas in the war on terror.

The extremist group that is threatening the existence of the Iraqi state was built and grown for years with the help of elite donors from American supposed allies in the Persian Gulf region. There, the threat of Iran, Assad, and the Sunni-Shiite sectarian war trumps the U.S. goal of stability and moderation in the region.

It’s an ironic twist, especially for donors in Kuwait (who, to be fair, back a wide variety of militias). ISIS has aligned itself with remnants of the Baathist regime once led by Saddam Hussein. Back in 1990, the U.S. attacked Iraq in order to liberate Kuwait from Hussein’s clutches. Now Kuwait is helping the rise of his successors.

As ISIS takes over town after town in Iraq, they are acquiring money and supplies including American made vehicles, arms, and ammunition. The group reportedly scored $430 million this week when they looted the main bank in Mosul. They reportedly now have a stream of steady income sources, including from selling oil in the Northern Syrian regions they control, sometimes directly to the Assad regime.

But in the years they were getting started, a key component of ISIS’s support came from wealthy individuals in the Arab Gulf States of Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Sometimes the support came with the tacit nod of approval from those regimes; often, it took advantage of poor money laundering protections in those states, according to officials, experts, and leaders of the Syrian opposition, which is fighting ISIS as well as the regime.

“Everybody knows the money is going through Kuwait and that it’s coming from the Arab Gulf,” said Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies. “Kuwait’s banking system and its money changers have long been a huge problem because they are a major conduit for money to extremist groups in Syria and now Iraq.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been publicly accusing Saudi Arabia and Qatar of funding ISIS for months. Several reports have detailed how private Gulf funding to various Syrian rebel groups has splintered the Syrian opposition and paved the way for the rise of groups like ISIS and others.

“The U.S. has made the case as strongly as they can to regional countries, including Kuwait. But ultimately when you take a hands off, leading from behind approach to things, people don’t take you seriously and they take matters into their own hands.”

Gulf donors support ISIS, the Syrian branch of al Qaeda called the al Nusrah Front, and other Islamic groups fighting on the ground in Syria because they feel an obligation to protect Sunnis suffering under the atrocities of the Assad regime. Many of these backers don’t trust or like the American backed moderate opposition, which the West has refused to provide significant arms to.

Under significant U.S. pressure, the Arab Gulf governments have belatedly been cracking down on funding to Sunni extremist groups, but Gulf regimes are also under domestic pressure to fight in what many Sunnis see as an unavoidable Shiite-Sunni regional war that is only getting worse by the day.

“ISIS is part of the Sunni forces that are fighting Shia forces in this regional sectarian conflict. They are in an existential battle with both the (Iranian aligned) Maliki government and the Assad regime,” said Tabler.

Donors in Kuwait, the Sunni majority Kingdom on Iraq’s border, have taken advantage of Kuwait’s weak financial rules to channel hundreds of millions of dollars to a host of Syrian rebel brigades, according to a December 2013 report by The Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank that receives some funding from the Qatari government.

“Over the last two and a half years, Kuwait has emerged as a financing and organizational hub for charities and individuals supporting Syria’s myriad rebel groups,” the report said. “Today, there is evidence that Kuwaiti donors have backed rebels who have committed atrocities and who are either directly linked to al-Qa’ida or cooperate with its affiliated brigades on the ground.”

Kuwaiti donors collect funds from donors in other Arab Gulf countries and the money often travels through Turkey or Jordan before reaching its Syrian destination, the report said. The governments of Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have passed laws to curb the flow of illicit funds, but many donors still operate out in the open. The Brookings paper argues the U.S. government needs to do more.

“The U.S. Treasury is aware of this activity and has expressed concern about this flow of private financing. But Western diplomats’ and officials’ general response has been a collective shrug,” the report states.

When confronted with the problem, Gulf leaders often justify allowing their Salafi constituents to fund Syrian extremist groups by pointing back to what they see as a failed U.S. policy in Syria and a loss of credibility after President Obama reneged on his pledge to strike Assad after the regime used chemical weapons.

That’s what Prince Bandar bin Sultan, head of Saudi intelligence since 2012 and former Saudi ambassador in Washington, reportedly told Secretary of State John Kerry when Kerry pressed him on Saudi financing of extremist groups earlier this year. Saudi Arabia has retaken a leadership role in past months guiding help to the Syrian armed rebels, displacing Qatar, which was seen as supporting some of the worst of the worst organizations on the ground.

The rise of ISIS, a group that officially broke with al Qaeda core last year, is devastating for the moderate Syrian opposition, which is now fighting a war on two fronts, severely outmanned and outgunned by both extremist groups and the regime. There is increasing evidence that Assad is working with ISIS to squash the Free Syrian Army.

But the Syrian moderate opposition is also wary of confronting the Arab Gulf states about their support for extremist groups. The rebels are still competing for those governments’ favor and they are dependent on other types of support from Arab Gulf countries. So instead, they blame others—the regimes in Tehran and Damascus, for examples—for ISIS’ rise.

“The Iraqi State of Iraq and the [Sham] received support from Iran and the Syrian intelligence,” said Hassan Hachimi, Head of Political Affairs.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

You can delete this BUT you cannot be an ostrich. Looking away does NOT make it go away

You cannot be an ostrich. For some reason my blog cuts off large pics because summaries of my blog entries gets in the way and I cannot delete it so click on the link.

After 10 years of war and US blood in the thousands, trillions of US blood soaked bucks and Iraqi blood in the hundreds of thousands from Bush/Cheney and the Neocons fiasco: feast your eyes: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ ; Those that took us to a war based on lies should only rot in hell and be prosecuted for war crimes. Can't look at this dispassionately. It makes me sick and it should make YOU sick too! Compassionate, humane, foreign policy with targeted strikes was the ONLY answer. Now it may be too late.

'MORTAL THREAT' IN IRAQ

Iraqi Kurds Seize Oil-Rich City Of Kirkuk... Militants Take Saddam Hussein's Hometown... Advancing Toward Baghdad... Soldiers, Security Forces Abandon Posts... Thousands Flee... Iraq Asked U.S. For Airstrikes... Group Too Extreme For Al Qaeda Takes Over 2nd Largest City... Senior U.S. Official: 'It Makes You Want To Kill Yourself'... MAP: Where ISIS Is Gaining... 'By Invading, Occupying And Looting Iraq, Bush And Cheney Brought al-Qaeda Into The Country'...

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

In a Heartbeat

Quickly written and unedited. What you should take away from Eric Cantor's big Virginia House majority leader's loss: You should know the guy he lost to (Brat -- yes, a Dickensian name) is worse than even Cantor. Brat is a Tea Party horror and would have voted against raising the debt ceiling sending the world into an economic earthquake. That VA district is VERY conservative gerrymandered that way by unconscionable Republicans. The Party has been taken over by the Tea Party racists on steroids. The other main issue that got Brat elected is he is death against Hispanics and persons of color who are looking for a path to citizenship to secure a better life.

The Republican Party is deathly afraid the demographics are changing. Persons of color WILL be in the majority. WE MUST WORK HARD ALL OVER THE COUNTRY to make use of minority numbers -- I CANNOT EMPHASIZE THAT ENOUGH -- to make sure these Republican unconscionable know nothings do NOT take back the Senate and it would be nice for Dems to take back the House -- in my dreams. If you think the Republican House is in gridlock now just wait until Republican right wing extremists take real power.

If you know those in especially the Hispanic, Brazilian, South or Central American community and if you know or are yourself a person of color this email SURELY is important to you. GET THE HISPANIC AND MINORITY VOTE OUT ALL OVER THE NATION.

DO NOT GIVE UP and do NOT let this Republican Party of white -- very white -- racists, inhumane and cruel specimens of humanity ruin life for the poor, the sick, the disabled, the elderly, the student and the child who need our help. As Pope Francis is about the poor so should we all be. We are all I believe in my heart our brother and sister's keepers because, in truth, NO ONE KNOWS if economic derailment, injury, sickness or death of a loved one will happen to them and most of us are NOT billionaires.

Neither are the Tea Baggers but they do not intellectually understand the money that is behind their movement and they are so full of racist rage they do not care about much else. The money bags sit back, smile and use them to gain polices that are good for them and harmful even deadly for most of us. The billionaires are the power behind the Republican throne. WORK YOUR HEART OUT FOR THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. It is the only Party that offers, wants to maintain and improve the safety nets we do have but it can be taken away in a heartbeat and make no mistake if Republicans gain real power it will be.

NEVER FALTER AND DO NOT FAIL. ELECT DEMOCRATS ACROSS THE BOARD.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Revolution on the Right -- our Duty to Oppose

The recent violent events in Las Vegas included the murdering of two police officers having lunch and one innocent shopper at Walmart. It was perpetrated by two right wing extremist anti-government fanatics in a vicious act of revolutionary racist white supremist gun violence adding to the horrific NRA-inspired gun violence across our nation that we have witnessed so many times.

Did you know in Indiana a law was actually, if one can believe it, passed by the Indiana Republican legislature and signed by its cowardly Republican governor (to even his own dismay) giving citizens the right to shoot police officers if they deem them a threat? Yes, as Jack Parr would have said "I kid you not." The governor did, in fact, sign the monstrous bill.

The "Patriot," Tea Party, and an array of other right wing extremist heretofore fringe groups have now found a home within the legitimate Republican Party one of the only two Parties that provide a path to elected power and leadership in this nation. The Republican Party has opened a Pandora's box. It has unleashed heretofore minorities on its periphery and now has accepted them within their ranks to gain money and power. These previously fringe groups are eating the mainstream Republican Party alive.

The Republican Party is NOT most definitely the Party of Lincoln nor is it the one that we knew even during the Eisenhower years. As a matter of fact both Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, too, would not be welcome in the Republican Party of our day because they were not ideologically right wing pure enough. There is no leadership within the Republican Party that can contain the cancer that has invaded its ranks, spread throughout its body and threatens to extinguish the life of this nation.

Therefore, we on the other side of the political spectrum and those of us in the middle must choose the only Party -- the Democratic Party -- that offers some sanity, compassion, diversity and hope for our poor, our elderly, our sick and our disabled. It offers a path to citizenship for millions, it offers relief for students and help for our children. It offers economic sanity for our nation's economic health as well. We must resist this menace before it eradicates our republic and promotes yet another civil war in our nation. Yes, it COULD happen again but we must not let it.

Therefore, I urge you to read the letter pasted below sent to me from the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization dedicated to the monitoring of domestic terrorists and to legally fighting their threat. The letter explains in more detail the right wing violence that recently occurred. Please read it, support this organization and, if you can, give to it. It is a force for good. And then in all elections across the country VOTE for and support progressives and Democrats in November. The very life of our republic is at stake!

June 09, 2014

We’ve confirmed that the man and woman who ambushed and killed two police officers in Las Vegas yesterday before murdering a bystander were active in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement.

Jerad and Amanda Miller walked into a pizza shop and shot two officers at point-blank range, then murdered a man at a nearby Walmart before killing themselves after a brief shootout with police.

Witnesses said the Millers shouted “this is a revolution” during the killing spree and draped the officers’ bodies in a swastika and the Gadsden flag – a Revolutionary War-era symbol used widely within the Patriot movement and by many Tea Party factions.

Earlier this year, Jerad Miller posted on Facebook a photo of himself with Richard Mack, a radical former Arizona sheriff and icon of the Patriot movement who encourages law enforcement officers to join his group and to disobey gun laws.

Amanda Miller once wrote on Facebook that “one day all hell will break lose and I’ll be standing in the middle of it with a shot gun in one hand and a pistol in the other.”

I’m deeply alarmed about the rise in far-right extremism and the violence that accompanies it. We’ve seen numerous violent attacks and terrorist plots in recent years.

In fact, yesterday’s shooting was the second act of domestic terrorism by anti-government extremists in the past four days. On Friday, an extremist attacked a suburban Atlanta courthouse with guns and explosives, apparently intent on taking hostages. He wounded a deputy before being shot and killed.

These attacks do not occur in a vacuum. They are the predictable result of a toxic climate of racism and far-right anti-government extremism that encourages and emboldens potential terrorists.

We’ve documented a dramatic resurgence of militias and like-minded Patriot groups – a more than 600 percent increase – since 2008, the year President Obama was elected as our first African-American president.

As you may know, we’ve been urging the federal government to take the threat of far-right terrorism much more seriously – just as we did six months before the Oklahoma City bombing. And last week, Attorney General Eric Holder responded by announcing the revitalization of a high-level task force to coordinate the government’s efforts.

With your support, we’re not only exposing the extremist rhetoric that seeps into the mainstream but also providing key intelligence and training to help law enforcement combat extremist violence.

Thank you for supporting our work. It’s more critical than ever.

Sincerely,

Richard Cohen
President, Southern Poverty Law Center

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COMMENTARY by NATALIE M. ROSEN