Next time you find yourself stuck in traffic miles from work—or school or home or daycare—don’t blame poor urban planning, low carpooling rates or inadequate public transportation.

Blame immigrants.

That’s right, according to high-profile ads placed this month in The New York Times and The Nation by a new front group for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and two other anti-immigrant hate groups. The ads, which are based on dubious statistical analysis, claim that an immigration-fueled population boom will dramatically worsen traffic congestion and destroy pristine lands.

One ad shows a four-lane highway clogged with vehicles above the caption, “One of America’s Most Popular Pastimes.” The other depicts a bulldozer clearing forest above the words, “One of America’s Best Selling Vehicles.”

The ads were placed by an organization calling itself America’s Leadership Team for Long Range Population-Immigration-Resource Planning. “We’re the nation’s leading experts on population and immigration trends and growth,” boasts one of the ads.

Actually, America’s Leadership Team is a public relations front group for a coalition of five anti-immigration organizations, three of which—FAIR, American Immigration Control Foundation and the Social Contract Press—are listed as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center for their links to white supremacists and publication of bigoted materials.

All five of the groups behind America’s Leadership Team—the other two are Californians for Population Stabilization and NumbersUSA—are financed by John Tanton the puppet master of the modern anti-immigration movement.

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The Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist hate group, publicly announced earlier this week that it was co-hosting an anti-immigration strategy session with Americans4America, the official Las Vegas chapter of Jim Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project.

Despite the Minuteman Project’s oft-touted anti-racist policies, the meeting took place June 24, offering some of the strongest evidence yet of direct ties between the Minuteman movement and overtly racist organizations.

“There’s a lot of overlapping between our two groups,” Nevada CCC leader Don Wassall told the Intelligence Report. “I met a couple of people from their group who are interested in trying to recruit more and get more people active in both of our groups.”

While a June 23 community calendar item placed by the CCC in the Las Vegas Review-Journal listed Americans4America and the CCC as “co-hosts” of the meeting, Wassall told the Report that, in fact, the Minutemen were more like special invited guests.

The relationship between the two organizations is “hard to explain,” said Wassall, but “we are working with them [the Minutemen].”

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The “Hapless neo-Nazi of the Month” award goes to Paul Anthony Palmer, Jr.. The former Pittsburgh police officer was sentenced June 20 to 52 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to possessing an unregistered explosive device—namely the homemade bomb that blew off Palmer’s left hand last May.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, police responded to Palmer’s mobile home park after neighbors called 911 to report a “kaboom type” explosion.

When officers arrived, the Post-Gazette reported, “They found that windows had been blown out of the trailer, and an awning ripped off. Mr. Palmer was sitting on a step out front with singed hair, burns to his upper chest and a severely damaged left hand, which later had to be amputated.”

In conducting a search of the premises, investigators found “numerous components for improvised explosive devices, including tubes, black powder, red phosphorous and a green pyrotechnic fuse.”

They also discovered a large amount of white supremacist literature, including 15 Aryan Nations pamphlets and two flags bearing the neo-Nazi organization’s insignia. Investigators further noted that Palmer had several Aryan Nations tattoos.

Palmer, 39, pleaded guilty and faced up to 63 months in prison. His lawyer argued at last week’s sentencing hearing that Palmer deserved a break because he’d served more than 10 years on the Pittsburgh police force. This means he’ll be a marked man behind bars, his lawyer said, especially since Palmer only has one hand for self-defense.

But the story behind Palmer’s departure from the Pittsburgh P.D. is hardly one to inspire leniency. Palmer was fired after he was convicted in 2006 of aggravated assault for firing seven bullets into a semi-trailer in a road rage incident while off duty.

Still, the judge cut Palmer a little slack, shaving 11 months off the maximum sentence. “There’s already been some punishment imposed, not by the court, but by himself,” the judge said.

Sometime after the accidental detonation, Palmer had yet another Aryan Nations symbol tattooed over the amputee nub of his left forearm, making him a living testament to the group’s motto: “Violence solves everything.”

This week, Heidi Beirich and I discuss her fascinating Intelligence Report story about supposedly “progressive” Vermont separatists teaming up with racist Southern secessionists. It’s an extraordinary tale of left meeting right — or, as our story headline has it, “North Meets South.”

In December 2007, the Intelligence Report revealed that Latino gang members, acting on orders from Mexican Mafia “shot callers” inside California prisons, were terrorizing and murdering blacks in Los Angeles basely solely on the color of the victim’s skin — not because he or she was a member of a rival gang.

Last week, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) announced that the Report’s exposé of racially motivated “ethnic cleansing” campaigns in gang-ridden L.A. neighborhoods is the sole nominee, and therefore de facto winner, of this year’s national NABJ “Salute to Excellence” award in the “Magazine-Investigative” category. One day later, the Report’s groundbreaking reporting was validated by no less an authority than Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca.

“Some people deny it,” the veteran Latino sheriff wrote in a June 12 Los Angeles Times opinion column entitled, “In L.A, race kills.” “They say that race is not a factor in L.A.’s gang crisis; the problem, they say, is not one of blacks versus Latinos and Latinos versus blacks but merely one of gang members killing other gang members… . But they’re wrong. The truth is that, in many cases, race is at the heart of the problem. Latino gang members shoot blacks not because they’re members of a rival gang but because of their skin color. Likewise, black gang members shoot Latinos because they are brown.” ( continue to full post… )

Can the man sink any lower?

After all, we’re talking about a fellow who pickets the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq, shouting that they are being punished by God for somehow helping America in its “fag-enabling” ways. A man whose own children have accused him of beating them viciously with a mattock handle. A “pastor” who has celebrated the deaths of coal miners trapped beneath the earth, children killed in school bus accidents, even the thousands murdered on Sept. 11, 2001. The language he employs in his sermons attacking homosexuality — versions of which have been hissed at passing children by his followers — is so disgusting that it is unprintable in the major media.

But now Fred W. Phelps, who runs the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) of Topeka, Kansas, and the infamous GodHatesFags website, has taken another step down into the slime. His latest, posted last week on Friday the 13th, is “Thank God for Dead Boy Scouts.” The WBC Video News production opens to the strains of a hymn. ( continue to full post… )

In the inaugural Hatewatch podcast episode, listen as I talk with Intelligence Report writer Casey Sanchez. Casey wrote a remarkable piece about Arkansas televangelist Arnold Murray, pastor of Shepherd’s Chapel. Murray has millions of viewers. In his preaching, Murray attacks an evil race he calls the “Kenites,” who he identifies as the people who killed Christ, now occupy the land of Israel, and who won the Six-Day War — but who Murray insists are not the Jews. As Casey points out, there’s a great deal of evidence to suggest otherwise.

With the nomination of Barack Obama as the Democratic presidential candidate clinched, large sections of the white supremacist movement are adopting a surprising attitude: Electing America’s first black president would be a very good thing.

It’s not that the assortment of neo-Nazis, Klansmen, anti-Semites and others who make up this country’s radical right have suddenly discovered that a man should be judged based on the content of his character, not his skin. On the contrary. A growing number of white supremacists, and even some of those who pass for intellectual leaders of their movement, think that a black man in the Oval Office would shock white America, possibly drive millions to their cause, and perhaps even set off a race war that, they hope, would ultimately end in Aryan victory.

“He will make things so bad for white people that hopefully they will finally realize how stupid they were for admiring these jigaboos all these years,” “Darthvader” wrote on the neo-Nazi Vanguard News Network web forum. “I believe in the motto ‘Worse is Better’ and Obama certainly fits that description.” Just last week, another poster on the same thread chimed in with this: “I hope Obama wins because in four years, white people just might be pissed off enough to actually do something. … White people aren’t going to do a thing until their toys are taken away from them. So things have to be worse for things to be better.”

“Oh man,” enthused “Centimanus” on the white nationalist Stormfront website. “I am gleefully, sadistically looking forward to Obama as president. … It will be a beautiful day when the masses look at the paper and truly realize they have lost their own country. Added “Fulimnata”: “To the average white man and woman, they could look at Obama and see plain as day that whites are not in control.” Another message, from “TheLastOfMyKind,” agreed: “Could it be that the nomination of Obama finally sparks a sense of unity in white voters? I would propose that this threat of black, muslim [sic] rule may very well be the thing that finally scares some sense back into complacent whites throughout the nation.” “Actually,” said another poster, “if Obama were to win, it would be the best thing that ever happened to the Klan. They would have massive growth.” And “TeutonicLegion” said that “a whole bunch of people will join us and find these boards” if Obama becomes president.

Even David Duke (right), the neo-Nazi and former Klan boss who is the closest thing the movement has to a real intellectual these days, sees clear advantages in an Obama victory in the fall. “Obama will be a signal, a clear signal for millions of our people,” Duke wrote in an essay entitled “A Black Flag for White America” last week. “Obama is like that new big dark spot on your arm that finally sends you to the doctor for some real medicine. … Obama is the pain that let’s [sic] your body know that something is dreadfully wrong. Obama will let the American people know that there is a real cancer eating away at the heart of our country and Republican aspirin will not only not cure it, but only masks the pain and makes you think you don’t need radical surgery. … My bet is that whether Obama wins or loses in November, millions of European Americans will inevitably react with new awareness of their heritage and the need for them to defend and advance it.” ( continue to full post… )

In a recent posting to National Review Online, long-time columnist John Derbyshire (right) attacked the nation’s largest Latino civil rights organization, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), for the last two words in its name, which Derbyshire translated as “The Race.” With that, Derbyshire joined thousands of other Americans who use the organization’s name to claim — entirely without foundation — that NCLR is a race-based, supremacist organization.

Said Derbyshire: “The idea, as I had it explained to me, is that by blending the European race with the Mesoamerican, Mexico has brought forth a new race, the mestizo or bronze race, which is claimed to be superior to both the contributing races, I suppose by dint of hybrid vigor. This bronze über-race is ‘La Raza.’”

Next time, Derbyshire — who has described himself as a “racist,” albeit a “mild and tolerant” one — might want to consult a dictionary, or perhaps a linguist, before he goes public with his proposed translations of the Spanish language. If he had, he’d have learned that “La Raza,” in the context of the organization’s name, doesn’t mean “The Race” at all. In fact, the term is much more commonly translated as “the people” or “the community” and it is intended to be inclusive, encompassing the blending of European, African, and indigenous peoples in the Americas.

Derbyshire might even have paid a visit to NCLR’s website, which includes a nuanced explanation of the term: “While it is true that one meaning ‘raza’ in Spanish is indeed ‘race,’ in Spanish, as in English and any other language, words can and do have multiple meanings. Translating our name as ‘the race’ is not only inaccurate, it is factually incorrect. ‘Hispanic’ is an ethnicity, not a race. As anyone who has ever met a Dominican American, Mexican American, or Spanish American can attest, Hispanics can be and are members of any and all races.”

The NCLR site continues: “The term ‘La Raza’ has its origins in early 20th century Latin American literature and translates into English most closely as ‘the people,’ or, according to some scholars, ‘the Hispanic people of the New World.’ The term was coined by Mexican scholar José Vasconcelos to reflect the fact that the people of Latin America are a mixture of many of the world’s races, cultures, and religions. Mistranslating ‘La Raza’ to mean ‘the race’ implies that it is a term meant to exclude others. In fact, the full term coined by Vasconcelos, ‘La Raza Cósmica,’ meaning the ‘cosmic people,’ was developed to reflect not purity but the mixture inherent in the Hispanic people. This is an inclusive concept, meaning that Hispanics share with all other peoples of the world a common heritage and destiny.” ( continue to full post… )

The new issue of the Intelligence Report exposes a network of U.S. scholars, many of them paid by the Turkish government, who promote denial of the Armenian genocide.

One of the damning pieces of evidence examined in the Report is a letter denying the Armenian genocide that was signed in 1985 by 69 American scholars and published in full-page advertisements in major newspapers paid for by the Turkish government. All 69 of the signers, including Donald Quataert, then an associate professor of history at the University of Houston, had received funding that year from the government of Turkey, mostly from the Institute of Turkish Studies (ITS), a nonprofit organization housed at Georgetown University that was founded in 1982 with a $3 million grant from Turkey to promote a pro-Turkey agenda, including denial of the Armenian genocide.

Quataert later served as chairman of the ITS board of governors from 2001 until Dec. 13, 2006. Although the circumstances of his leaving that post were unclear at the time, last week it was revealed that he was forced to resign by Turkish Ambassador Nabi Sensoy after he refused to retract a scholarly book review in which Quataert said “what happened to the Armenians readily satisfies the U.N. definition of genocide.”
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