Hatewatch Tweets
Hatewatch is managed by the staff of the Intelligence Report, an investigative magazine published by the Alabama-based civil rights group Southern Poverty Law Center.
Man Arrested With Explosives Near Topeka Capitol Released
Investigators with the Kansas Highway Patrol (KHP) will seek criminal charges against a Florida man who was detained Wednesday after explosive material was found in his pickup truck, which was parked near the state Capitol in Topeka.
The suspect, detained in a publicly accessible tunnel on the Capitol campus, was released following questioning by KHP’s Capitol Police officers and detectives with the Topeka Police Department, KHP spokesman Patrick Saleh said today. Because the suspect wasn’t booked into jail, his name isn’t yet public record and can’t be released, Saleh said.
Highway Patrol investigators will meet Friday or Monday with Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor to review evidence retrieved from the man’s truck and items found when a search warrant was served at a Topeka home where he was living, Saleh told Hatewatch. “We’re hoping to have it done by the end of the week, but it may be Monday before our investigators meet with the district attorney,” Saleh said.
He wouldn’t comment on reports that the explosive material found in the suspect’s truck was quarter-sticks of dynamite. “I’d be speculating,” Saleh said. “I don’t know for sure.”
However, when investigators went to the Topeka residence where the man had been living, they found and seized other items, the Capitol Police spokesman said. “Items that would cause concern were seized,’’ he said.
The man was detained by police on the same day the Kansas Legislature was conducting hearings on a proposed, controversial anti-immigrant law – similar to nativist laws already passed in Alabama and Arizona. Such laws have become lightning rods for anti-immigration extremists.
Investigators determined the man who was detained has lived in Florida, but for “some time” has been in Kansas, Saleh said. He wouldn’t say if investigators have developed any links between the suspect and anti-immigrant groups. “It’s my agency’s hope that he will be charged after the district attorney reviews this case,’’ Saleh said.
A civil rights group representing immigrants released a statement Thursday suggesting there it likely was no coincidence that explosive material was found on a day that groups would be protesting hearings at the Topeka Capitol on anti-immigration laws.
The incident in Topeka “is clearly a reflection of the anti-immigrant syndrome eating away at society. Kansas is once again on the spotlight; this gives us an opportunity to take a different approach to this national problem,” Sulma Arias, executive director Sunflower Community Action, said in a statement given to Hatewatch.
“As an organization which represents immigrants, we understand that there is a problem with immigration in this country, but we, as a community, condemn acts of violence and will not resort to them in order to win dignity,” Arias said. “We, as most Kansans, want a more reasonable and rational discussion that leads to real solutions.”
The incident drew national media attention.
In Topeka, there appeared to be an initial jurisdictional questions over whether the Kansas Highway Patrol, the Topeka Police Department or the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives would assume lead jurisdiction.
The ATF bowed out after it was determined the explosive material wasn’t assembled into a device that would easily allow federal jurisdiction. “This is pretty much a state matter at this point,” ATF spokeswoman Trista Frederick in Kansas City, Mo., told Hatewatch.
on February 16th, 2012 at 4:44 pm
Let’s hope no one is killed by this man before Kansas gets its act together.
on February 16th, 2012 at 5:42 pm
Isn’t it irony, that Florida has been limelighted in negativity a lot lately? Three of their cities made the top 10 list for 2012 as “the most miserable cities in the U.S.” And then there’s a loon emerging from the shadows of Florida, like the one in this article. Almost common today.
Florida…. it’s not the happy paradise that it used to(or claims to) be.
on February 16th, 2012 at 9:31 pm
In fact, I’d be surprised if they ever see this man again…until the day they arrest him for doing it.
on February 17th, 2012 at 4:47 am
Oh, Kansas.
That is truly disgusting.
If this isn’t a clear message of tacit approval to right wing terrorists, then I don’t know what is.
on February 17th, 2012 at 8:33 am
If he was a poor person caught shoplifting bread, he would have been taken into custody and kept on a bond that was way too high for him to possibly pay.
on February 17th, 2012 at 9:05 am
Yeah, Shadow Wolf, but it was Kansas let him go.
In Florida, every time the mercury hits 92°F, the felony benches expect a surge. That’s the way it always was, and Florida never was a gentle paradise. Your car breaks down, just hitch it to a couple of our bugs. One too many must have bit this guy, and then he was left out in the heat to welter. Now he’s running loose in Kansas.
on February 17th, 2012 at 10:00 am
Bleeding Kansas, Revisited.
on February 17th, 2012 at 10:51 am
Wait a second… Patrick Saleh? That sounds like a Muslim last name! HE MUST BE A TERRORIST!
on February 17th, 2012 at 11:24 am
I realize that I do not know enough details about this incident to understand why the suspect was released. But whatever the reason, I sincerely hope that it was not to avoid angering the extreme right. I can’t help recalling this story from SPLC of law enforcement officials who were reluctant to confront an antigovernment extremist:
http://www.splcenter.org/get-i.....ar-texas-a
on February 17th, 2012 at 11:32 am
cinesimon,
Don’t be so surprised. Kansas is as KKKonservative as it gets. But another reason they let him off the hook, is because he is white. They go very easy on white criminals. No matter how sinister their motives are.
And yes it’s “disgusting” and concerning. The American people should be enraged at Kansas.
on February 17th, 2012 at 12:25 pm
hey wolf for once i must agree with you…this ticking time bomb only got off the hook cuz he is white and a hardcore right winger…..but then again isn’t the hard right running things in kanas…he is only a grunt for the white right haters that wear the suits and have the college degrees and they probably didn’t want him to say too much to the feds….if this man were a mexican,black or muslim he would have been lynched by now…but since he is white and to the right he will probably be seen as an anti immigrant,anti government hero.
on February 17th, 2012 at 12:54 pm
Oh you see they have to lock up those “patriots” for breaking the law, but they don’t blame them. The liberal multi-cultural political correctness made them do it. That’s how they justify it.
on February 17th, 2012 at 1:44 pm
Tornado, where are you…
on February 18th, 2012 at 8:56 pm
This is my narrative of History …
Communism murdered millions of people. There were a whole series of Gulags in the Soviet Union. The Communists committed horrific atrocities against civilians. After the collapse of Communism, leftists had to create a cover story, to cover up their crimes. Thus they invented the fake story that white westerners ‘oppressed’ minorities. Leftists control the media and produce ‘documentaries’ (propaganda) spreading the lie. This is how evil works. These people commit evil, then point the finger at someone else and tell the lie that innocent people are guilty of imagined crimes.
Every documentary you’ve seen about the ‘Holocaust’ is one of these lies. Every documentary about ‘racism’ is another lie. Every documentary about the ‘slave trade’ is another lie. Every documentary about White people ‘oppressing’ non-Whites is a lie. It’s part of the Communist brainwashing program. I am a White man who is free from their lies and I am spreading truth.
on February 20th, 2012 at 12:57 pm
Gee Jason, your chronology is pretty interesting. You’re claiming that the concept of oppressed minorities and documentaries about the Holocaust didn’t exist before the collapse of Communism? That’s absolutely BRILLIANT!
Naw just kidding, you’re a moron. Thanks for continually disproving any claims to “white” superiority.
on February 20th, 2012 at 12:58 pm
One more thing- What the hell does this post have to do with Communism, oppressed minorities, or the Holocaust? Oh right, nothing. It’s amazing how you WNs connect these things.
on February 20th, 2012 at 1:50 pm
No Jason, you’re not spreading ‘truth.’ You’re spreading ‘raw sewage.’
on February 20th, 2012 at 1:57 pm
Jason, you’re so dumb I bet you think innuendo is an Italian suppository.
on February 20th, 2012 at 5:32 pm
You know, I still can’t help thinking that Jason is just toying with us to see how over-the-top he can make his posts before we realize that even he could not possibly believe the things that he is saying. I used to have a roommate in school who would amuse himself during our politcal discussions by deliberately taking ridiculously far-right positions, watching to see how angry he could get me before I realized that his proposals would kill or incarcerate virtually everyone on the planet. Then he would roar with laughter when I finally realized that I’d been had. To be sure, he was genuinely conservative on many issues, but he wasn’t above poking fun at his own politics, and he turned out to be more compassionate than I had thought he would be when I first met him.
Of course, as the above article demonstrates, the subject of domestic terrorism is no laughing matter, and I don’t doubt that some of the people who are seriously contemplating attacks are linked to the WN movement. Moreover, I am likely wrong about Jason, and he may very well believe what he says. But his most recent post made me think of the kinds of things that someone might say just before being taken away to be treated for schizophrenia or some other form of paranoid delusion. Unfortunately, there seem to be a good many talk show hosts and bloggers out there who forget that not everyone in their audience is mentally stable.
on February 20th, 2012 at 6:17 pm
I reiterate, Mike: Jason Smith’s style, tone, and subject matter are so uneven that I am convinced he’s a committee of frat boys.
on February 20th, 2012 at 7:05 pm
moderate mike…..no i really think that jason is that naive which makes him a perfect candidate for the tom metzgers and david dukes of the bigot groups he belongs to…to brainwash and manipulate….he probably still believes in santa clause and the easter bunny also….but like mr.t used too say i pitty this dumb fool!
on February 21st, 2012 at 4:46 am
Jason COULD be troling, but I doubt most trolls would do their homework on such subjects. Jason’s posts reveal remarkable similarities to ideas typically expressed in WN circles, and yes, many of those ideas are THAT stupid. He or she is certainly no top-tier WN intellectual, but I would not be surprised to see someone posting such ideas on a major WN forum.
WN beliefs require the adherent to ignore contradicting reality, which tends to make one stupid. In other words, they don’t believe these things because they are stupid(perhaps they start out as ignorant), but they become stupid because they believe these things, and in order to do so takes effort.
I have actually seen one WN pseudo-intellectual who declared that WWII started in 1938, with the Japanese-Soviet border conflicts(which were actually a series of both large and small conflicts dating to before 1938). His rationale was that the USSR was responsible for these conflicts(wrong: the USSR fought in defense of Mongolia’s borders against Japanese expansion, which began in 1931), and as Japan was an ally of Germany in 1938, the USSR, also known to him as “the Jews” was the real initiator of the Second World War. He even bragged about his “sources” of information, which consisted of a Wikipedia article about these border conflicts. In other words, the fact that the conflicts happened proved his little thesis(aside from the fact that Japan initiated these hostilities, the nature of the agreements between Germany, Japan, and Italy at the time did not compel any party to go to war on behalf of any other party). Pressed on his theory he went into a Jason-like breakdown, in which he revealed that he didn’t “want,” yes, WANT “Whites” to be responsible for starting WWII(ironic since he misses an opportunity to blame it on Japan).
This tells us something important about WN thought. 1. WN’s live in a bizarre fantasy world of many conflicting beliefs and strange connections between things which are otherwise unrelated. For example, some WN propaganda quite clearly claims that Holocaust literature and documentaries are aimed at convincing “white” Americans NOT to have children(or at least not with other “whites”). This is what drives many of them to Holocaust denial, which is again strange because if we were to concede their claims that their hero Hitler didn’t systematically destroy Jews, and that the number of Jews who suffered was far lower, then Hitler can only be seen as a mass slaughterer of Europeans, or “whites” as WNs call them. Oops….
2. WNs to some extent live in a fantasy world of their own making because they wish to do so. This is strange because many of their fantasies, such as the idea that the “white race” is being persecuted or that it will die out(and thus goodbye beautiful white wimmins) are negative and create much anger and frustration for them. There is in fact no real evidence that people with “white” features will die out or go extinct(hell, “white” people evolved from non-white-looking people in the first place), and even WN Bill White admitted this. We can see that they are in this case getting very upset and angry, even to the point of violence, over something which is not happening, and will not happen.
on February 21st, 2012 at 8:29 am
Jason, the only thing you’re spreading is stupidity and ignorance. You know nothing, absolutely nothing, about anything.You’re the stupidest person I’ve seen on the Internet. Maybe Jason is playing a joke and is a troll, but it’s still ridiculous.
on February 21st, 2012 at 9:41 am
It is my believe that Jason Smith is either an authenic neo-Nazi or its a fake name for one of the few remaining members of the Wermarch or SS (or perhaps a child of an authentic Nazi).
I mean Jason Smith sounds suspiciously like a fake name – Germanic enough to satisfy the Nazi, but All-American sounding and sure to never yeild his whereabouts on a Google search. Of course, maybe its just because my mental picture of him is exactly like the author of Spingtime for Hitler
on February 21st, 2012 at 11:21 am
Jason is nothing special, just another right-wing extremist telling the Big Lie. This is the only strategy they have, since reason and truth are against them. It’s like Lincoln’s words quoted by Carl Sandburg, and misquoted by almost everyone since then:
“If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.”
on February 21st, 2012 at 11:28 am
Naw, a real German wouldn’t consider himself “white.”
on February 21st, 2012 at 12:58 pm
funny how wn’s live in a fantasy made up world…..but i bet if you were to scratch the surface a little bit you would find meth use very popular among most of these delusional hate groups.
on February 21st, 2012 at 5:25 pm
Note the silence. They’re a committee, and they’re now too drunk to move.
on February 21st, 2012 at 8:51 pm
While that is a possibility, Ruben, it is important not to dismiss them as drug-users or “nutcases.” This prevents us from tracing the origin and history of their beliefs and understanding where they come from. Typically WN beliefs begin with mainstream conservatism or right-wing populism.
on February 22nd, 2012 at 11:29 am
you are right Ruslan….but the fact remains that Hitler is a hero to most of the people in WN groups especially the less educated ones and Hitler was a user of meth which made him even more delusional and i think that people who carry so much hate have a chemical imbalance in there brain which also makes them more vulnerable to drug addiction….now you mix conservatism with white right wing beliefs add meth and you get a delusional domestic terrorist driving around with bombs in his truck….i am sure that most leaders of these hate groups are not strung out on meth but many of the grunts are which also makes them perfect candidates for the educated ones to brainwash and manipulate to carry out the dirty work.
on February 22nd, 2012 at 1:46 pm
Ruben, they didn’t *have* meth then, though they had plenty of stuff. Cocaine, maybe, but old Adolf didn’t need it.
on February 22nd, 2012 at 3:27 pm
reynardine…maybe they didn’t have “crystal meth” but they had an intravenous version of it…..hitlers dr. theodor morell gave him daily injections of methamphetamine from 42-45…to help him with his depression and fatigue and he also thought it would help him with parkinsons disease.but many historians believe that it wasn’t parkinsons but rather delusional and psychotic behavior from meth abuse.anyways i think that many of the white right wing grunts like the topeka bomber are already people on the edge as i truly believe that racial hatred is a mental disorder.so you mix that weak,twisted mind with a drug like meth and you have a lethal combination…these people for the most part are losers in life and there delusions make them believe that its someone else’s fault that they are in the situation they are in and the educated leaders of these wn groups take full advantage of it…all they do is point them to the target mexicans,blacks,jews,muslims etc….these are dangerous times in the u.s because before you just had the hard core racists calling the shots in these wn groups but now you have more main stream people like the tea party,fox news and the gop candidates running for office basically agreeing with the b.s of these wn’s and you are going to see more of the whacked out grunts that listen to the poisonous venom coming out of the right act out in terrorist ways.
on February 22nd, 2012 at 4:21 pm
Any drug use Hitler engaged in happened well after he achieved power.
on February 22nd, 2012 at 6:24 pm
You’re all spreading lies. You’re all Communists. I am a White man who has awakened and I am not influenced by your lies.
on February 22nd, 2012 at 9:19 pm
Yes, squeak, little white mouse.
on February 22nd, 2012 at 10:03 pm
Jason Smith (or is it Schmidt?) wrote:
“You’re all spreading lies. You’re all Communists. I am a White man who has awakened and I am not influenced by your lies.”
And yet, you keep returning, providing the best entertainment that money can’t buy.
on February 22nd, 2012 at 11:31 pm
jason smith….read the section i wrote about losers in my last post…i think you will find that you can relate to it.
on February 23rd, 2012 at 1:54 am
Jason, I’m the only Communist on here. That’s cute how you believe you are “awakened”, but doesn’t it ever bother you that in your many conversations you’ve had here, it’s become apparent that there’s a lot you don’t know about the world, including on topics you are very concerned about? Doesn’t that raise any questions for you?
on February 23rd, 2012 at 10:41 am
jason debating you is like debating a rock….as a matter of fact a first grader has more sense than you.
on February 23rd, 2012 at 1:51 pm
Jason Wins!!! What a shame.
To discuss a topic, the topic must be discussed.
Do any of you remember that before Jason successfuylly hijacked the conversation, the article was about an arrest in Kansas?
on February 23rd, 2012 at 2:10 pm
Ruben,
Actually I find debating rocks to be much more intellectually stimulating. Rocks can be beautiful!
on February 23rd, 2012 at 3:04 pm
Lawman, we don’t care about the topic. When Jason shows up, it’s only too much fun to shoot down his pathetic posts. See on Stormfront his posts would get all kinds of rep. Out in the real world, where WN mods can’t ban or censor opponents, each post gets smacked down, often several times in a row.
on February 24th, 2012 at 9:51 am
GOOD GAWD! More tirades by Jason Smith. Maybe he needs to be checked out by mental health experts.
on February 24th, 2012 at 2:43 pm
aron….you are so right lol!