The State of Hate in Arizona

by Pa Rock
Social Observer

Remember William Kostric, the moron who showed up at President Obama’s town hall meeting in New Hampshire this week packing a pistol? He carried a sign with a thinly veiled death threat that read: “It is time to water the tree of liberty.” Kostric wondered aloud to Chris Matthews on Hardball why more good Americans, like him, weren’t showing up armed at these events?

My first thought regarding this evolutionary throwback was that he would fit right into the cultural landscape of Arizona. Imagine my lack of surprise when I learned later that he had recently relocated to New Hampshire from Scottsdale, Arizona!

To say that Arizona has its fair share of dangerous and demented nut jobs would be gross understatement. The state is rife with hate – and damned proud of it!

This week Dr. Heidi Beirich, a representative of the Southern Poverty Law Center, spoke in Phoenix and gave a public presentation on the increase of hate group activity in Arizona. She listed the three primary reasons for the rise of extremist activity in the state as being the election of a black President, the weak economy, and the nativist uproar over illegal immigration from Mexico. Arizona, due primarily to its long border with Mexico, seems to go especially berserk whenever it appears that anyone with brown skin is being treated fairly or humanely.

Dr. Beirich had particularly pointed remarks concerning Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, and state senator Russell Pearce, both of whom she sees as pandering toward members of these groups and thus empowering them with a sense of legitimacy.

The Southern Poverty Law Center recognizes nineteen distinct hate groups currently operating in Arizona. Three are classified as Racist Skinhead organizations: the Western Hammerskins (statewide), Vinlanders Social Club (Mesa), and Volksfront (Phoenix). The term "Skinheads" refers to young thugs with shaved heads and plenty of tattoos who get off on drugs and violence. The group had its origins in Great Britain fifty years ago. It later split into two distinct factions - the racists and the anti-racists - and both varieties crossed the Atlantic Ocean where they were able to infest America. And lucky Arizona - we got the "racist" version of these vermin!

Ten of the hate groups are Neo-Nazi: the White Knights of America (statewide), White Revolution (statewide), National Socialist Movement – NSM (Apache Junction), American Thule Society (Black Canyon City), National Socialist Movement (Cochise County), Aryan Nations (Goodyear – an All-American City!), American National Socialist Workers Party (Phoenix), Aryan Nations (Phoenix), and National Socialist Movement – NSM (Phoenix). The Neo-Nazis profess a love of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and they are stridently vocal in their hatred of Jews. (Didn't we fight a big war against this type of scum?)

The remaining hate groups with Arizona chapters include: the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (General Hate – Colorado City), Remnant Outreach Ministries (Christian Identity – Cottonwood), Arizona White Pride (White Nationalist – Maricopa County), Nation of Islam (Black Separatist – Phoenix), American Border Patrol (Anti-Immigrant – Sierra Vista), and the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK – Tempe).

Other reported hate groups in Arizona include the National Organization for European American Rights, World Church of the Creator (Florence and Tucson), Hammerskin Nation (Glendale and Mesa), and the National Alliance (Phoenix).

Arizona is truly blessed to have this many organized ways to hate. What could be sadder than a racist, moronic, gun-toting Neanderthal without a support group? New Hampshire must be a deep pit of putrefying prejudice to lure William Kostric away from this scorpion and rattlesnake-riddled, fascist nirvana!

Let us prey.

One final note: The President of the United States and Mrs. Obama - and their little girls - will be in Arizona this Sunday and Monday. So far his town hall meetings on health care have been polite and productive. That ain't gonna happen here. Tread with care, Mr. President. These bastards are seriously scary.

Thoughts on Terrorism

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

When we think of brazen acts of terrorism, September 11th is usually the first thing to come to mind. Middle easterners with dark skin hijacked four passenger planes and flew them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. It was unimaginable that these madmen could get away with such an outrage inside the borders of the world's mightiest country!

In point of fact, however, September 11th was not the first attack by terrorists on the United States of America, nor was it the first to occur within our borders. As noted earlier in this blog, lynchings were still happening in this country fifty years ago. Some find it hard to let go of those "good old days." Earlier this week the Secret Service was investigating a sign that was posted on a tree in Vay, Idaho, with Barack Obama's name on it and the offer of a "free public hanging."

Idaho has a long history of being infested with terrorists. A white supremacist group headquartered near Coeur d'Alene called the Aryan Nations achieved notoriety a few years back when some drunken guards at their main compound opened fire on a car that had backfired. The inebriated fascists captured the lady and her son who had been in the car and held them at gunpoint while terrorizing them into near insensibility. The Southern Poverty Law Center and their founder, Morris Dees, sued that Aryan Nations on behalf of the two victims and won a $6.3 million settlement - which resulted in all of the group's property and assets being seized and turned over to the plaintiffs.

Today the Southern Poverty Law Center was in the news again. This time they brought suit against America's premier terrorist organization, the Ku Klux Klan. Those stupid Klan bastards beat the hell out of a Panamanian/Native American youth (who was also an American citizen) named Jordan Gruver because they thought he was an illegal Latino immigrant. The incident occurred at a Kentucky county fair where the Klan was recruiting. They knocked the 16-year-old Gruver to the ground and proceeded to give him a severe kicking and beating that resulted in the boy having a broken jaw, broken arm, two cracked ribs, and assorted cuts and bruises. The SPLC and Mr. Dees won a judgement against the Imperial Klans of America and two of its leaders in the amount of $2.5 million. Kick that, morons!

Who says that Courts can't serve up justice?

These home grown terrorist groups conflate their idiot-ologies with religion, usually that of the angry Christian stripe. Take for instance, the case of Eric Robert Rudolph who roamed the American South bombing family planning clinics and also set off a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics.

But the king of all American terrorists has to be Timothy McVeigh - the man who brought down the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. His act of madness killed 168 people, including children who were in a daycare center on the premises, and wounded eight hundred others. McVeigh was one of the Posse Comitatus creatures who don't recognize any government above the county level. His anti-government beliefs were his undoing because he was picked up shortly after the bombing for driving his vehicle down the highway without license plates.

Our government went crazy after September 11th, quickly going to war in two countries, one of which had nothing to do with the attacks, but completely ignoring the home of most of the terrorists - Saudi Arabia. Nothing like that happened after McVeigh's attack on the Federal Building. There was no rounding up of crackpot militia members, no weapons seizures, no exhaustive investigations, no all-out war declared on Idaho or the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It was all laid on the backs of two men, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, and the case was closed.

What a shame that we didn't just go get Osama bin Laden after September 11th, bring him to trial, and close that sad chapter of our history. If we had targeted the man responsible instead of turning our wrath (or our greed) on the whole Middle East, our treasury would still be relatively full, our prestige around the world would be intact, our military would be strong, and thousands of lives would have been spared.

Our country has not seen the last of terrorism, from home or abroad. When the next awful act happens we need to react with a calm and measured response. If it can be handled as a law enforcement issue, it should be. And if it is an act sponsored by a foreign nation that requires a military response, that response should be quick, targeted, and to the point. We literally cannot afford another quagmire like Iraq. When we march into quicksand and can't get out, it is the terrorists who have won.

God Doesn't Even Hate Fred Phelps

The Lord works in mysterious ways, and earlier this month Her choice of a modus operandi was the United States Federal Court System. Acting through the distraught father of a Marine who was killed in Iraq, God smote America's best known hate-monger, the Reverend (sic) Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church / Cult of Topeka, Kansas.

Do you know about Fred?

Fred Phelps was born in Mississippi during the Great Depression, did a stint at Bob Jones University without graduating, and eventually became a Kansas Attorney specializing in Civil Rights cases. And while he did assist in bringing an end to some of the Jim Crow legislation that was still on the books in Kansas, his gears soon began to slip and he was ultimately disbarred for bizarre behavior in Court. Fred's other accomplishments of note include fathering thirteen children, nine of whom still claim him, and founding a church - of sorts. That church, the Westboro Baptist, has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. According to Wikipedia, "60 of its 71 confirmed members are related to Phelps through blood or marriage or both." Both?

Phelps and his church/cult became famous and a national embarrassment primarily on one issue: their rabid stand against homosexuality. Their premier website, for those not overly faint of heart, is: godhatesfags.com. (Are you getting the picture?) It was the Phelps crew from Westboro who protested and heckled the Matthew Sheppard funeral. For awhile the group was content with just being cruel to the families of AIDS and hate crime victims. Somehow though, they have since conflated their homosexuality issues with the US Military, and are now protesting at military funerals on the premise that the United States has enabled homosexuality, and our dead soldiers are God's revenge for that transgression. The group also has up websites detailing their hatred of Canada, Ireland, and Sweden.

Though Phelps and his minions are openly hostile to the American government (and Fred himself has spoken glowingly of Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein because of their stands against gays), they are not too proud to avail themselves of the protections offered by the United States Constitution. Whenever anyone has summoned the courage to attack these bullies in Court, they wrap themselves tightly in the First Amendment and proclaim the sancity of their freedom of speech.

But maybe the lights are finally about to go out at the Westboro circus.

The Federal Court in Baltimore looked at more that just freedom of speech. Those judges also considered a family's right to privacy and the emotional distress that comes with having the funeral of a loved one disrupted with plackards and heckling. And when those good judges viewed the whole picture of what these homophobic crazies had hurled upon people who just wanted to bury their Marine son in quiet and dignified repose, they took a big step to righting a festering wrong. The Court awarded the family of the deceased Marine 10.9 million dollars to be paid by Fred, two of his children, and the Westboro Baptist Church.


May the verdict hold through appeals, may the government seize and sell the Westboro Compound to pay the damages, and may the whole place be bulldozed and salted by a team of gay construction workers so that nothing ever grows there again! And then may God bless us each and every one, especially Fred.

Amen