Elderly Georgians Arrested For Terror Plot Involving Ricin, Assassinations, Blowing Up Buildings
Everyone gripes about how ridiculous it is when security checks for bombs inside the shoes of 75-year-olds at the airport…but it turns out that Grandpa in fact is a menace. Via the Daily Mail:
Federal agents arrested four suspected members of a Georgia militia on charges of plotting attacks with toxins and explosives against unnamed government officials. The four – all over 65 years old – who authorities arrested on Tuesday, were expected to appear in federal court in Gainesville on Wednesday afternoon.
Court documents state that 73-year-old Frederick Thomas told others he intended to model their actions on the online novel Absolved, which involves small groups of citizens attacking U.S. officials.
Thomas is part of a group that also tried to obtain an unregistered explosive device and sought out the complex formula to produce ricin, a biological toxin that can be lethal in small doses, according to a federal complaint.
The four listed…
Los Angeles Man Who Created Fake U.S. Army Unit Arrested
This takes elaborate ruses to new level. Californian Yupeng Deng used uniforms, IDs, basic training exercises, and military parades in a scam tricking Chinese immigrants into believing they had joined a “special forces reserve” of the U.S. military. The New York Times reports:
To the Chinese immigrants he recruited, Yupeng Deng was known as Supreme Commander. He offered them United States Army uniforms, conducted training exercises on Sundays, led marches in municipal parades and promised a path toward American citizenship.
The uniforms were real, but Mr. Deng’s U.S. Army/Military Special Forces Reserve unit was a sham, the authorities said.
On Wednesday, Mr. Deng, 51, was arraigned in Los Angeles County Court on 13 felony charges related to the fake military operation, which concentrated on Chinese immigrants, eager to become American citizens, in the San Gabriel Valley, east of Los Angeles.
More than 100 immigrants paid upwards of $300 to join the bogus unit, the authorities…
Vote For Pamela Gorman Or Get Shot
The message of this television spot for Pamela Gorman, running for a seat in Arizona’s state congress, seems to be, “Vote for me, or I’ll shoot you.” It actually seems like an imitation of militia/Al-Qaeda training videos, but with more puns thrown in — she has my vote.
Is Christian Terrorism Growing In The United States?
Writing for Religion Dispatches, Mark Juergensmeyer claims that a violent Christian extremist movement is growing in the United States. (The murder of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller and the Hutaree militia’s pipe bomb plot would be two examples.) Is his argument legitimate?
At the extreme right wing of Dominion Theology is a relatively obscure theological movement that Mike Bray found particularly appealing: Reconstruction Theology, whose exponents long to create a Christian theocratic state. Bray had studied their writings extensively and possessed a shelf of books written by Reconstruction authors. The convicted anti-abortion killer Paul Hill cited Reconstruction theologians in his own writings and once studied with a founder of the movement, Greg Bahnsen, at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi.
Rev. Paul Hill, Rev. Michael Bray, and other Reconstructionists—along with Dominion theologians such as the American politician and television host Pat Robertson and many other right-wing Christian activists today—are postmillenialists. Hence they…
Not-Guilty Pleas Entered for 8 Michigan Militia Members
Reports CNN:
Not-guilty pleas were entered Wednesday in federal court in Detroit on behalf of eight militia members accused of plotting to kill police officers as part of a revolt against the federal government.
“This is not about militias or a group of militias, but about a group conspiring against the U.S. who have shared beliefs that the New World Order elitists are in charge and seek to have one world government and is working with the U.S. government,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronald Waterstreet said in his opening statement. “Any law enforcement officer is a foot soldier for the New World Order.”
None of the eight defendants spoke during the proceeding. The seven men wore orange jumpsuits and the lone woman a green jumpsuit; the legs of each were shackled. Each stood silently next to their court-appointed attorneys as the judge entered pleas of not guilty on their behalf.
A ninth person, Thomas Piatek,…
Militia Planned To Murder Officer, Attack Funeral
From CNN:
“Captain Hutaree,” his wife and two sons planned with other militia members to kill a law enforcement official to draw the officer’s colleagues to the funeral, authorities say. Then, according to an indictment unsealed Monday, the militia planned to attack the funeral procession to kick off its war against the U.S. government.
Members of the Hutaree militia — whose Web site says it is preparing for end times to “keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive” — have been indicted on five counts, including seditious conspiracy and attempting to use weapons of mass destruction…
FBI Raids Christian Militia In Michigan, Ohio, Indiana
The Detroit News reports that FBI has arrested at least seven members of an apocalyptic Christian militia group called Hutaree in raids conducted in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana. The Hutaree website describes the militia’s mission as “preparing for the end times to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive.” Apparently the arrests were for making violent threats against Islamic organizations and for a plot to kill police officers with pipe bombs. The below video, of members running around in the woods with guns, was taken from their Myspace, and oddly enough is set to a song by ’80s goth-metal band Sisters Of Mercy.
Homegrown Right-Wing-Extremist Terrorism: A Recent History
The Southern Poverty Law Center compiled a jaw-dropping overview of about seventy terrorist attempts on American soil by right-wing extremists over the past fifteen years; a lot happened between Timothy McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bombing and the recent plane attack on an IRS building in Austin. Take the 1999 attack by Buford Furrow, for example:
Buford Furrow, a former member of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations who has been living with the widow of slain terrorist leader Bob Mathews, strides into a Jewish community center near Los Angeles and fires more than 70 bullets, wounding three boys, a teenage girl and a woman. He then drives into the San Fernando Valley and murders Filipino-American mailman Joseph Ileto. The next day, Furrow turns himself in, saying he intended to send “a wake-up call to America to kill Jews.”
Norm’s Militia Scrapbook (Video)
From VBS.TV:
Norman Olson is the founder of the Michigan Militia, the most famous/notorious/we-think-maybe-oldest? group of the early-90s citizens’ militia movement. If you’re too young to remember, that was this thing where guys in camouflage got together to train with their guns and guys with cameras pretended they were scary and racist.
The movement hit a speed bump when it got blamed for the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, and Norm Olson didn’t do much good for his own group when he tried to pass the blame to the Japanese—an idea which, if you subscribe to certain theories concerning the earlier sarin-gas attack on the Tokyo subway and the responsible doomsday cult’s alleged connections to the Japanese Imperial Family, makes a limited sort of sense, but otherwise sounds like the craziest of all possible answers. With faith already shaken in his leadership, Norm then hitched the Militia’s wagon to fears over that Y2K thing and by February 2000 the group was essentially defunct.
