• WASHINGTON: The “war on terrorism” just got a little more complicated with the indictment of an average white American female dubbed “Jihad Jane” on charges of plotting with Islamic radicals, bringing even the so-called soccer moms under the radar.
• Colleen LaRose, 46, a Pennsylvania native, has been charged with trying to recruit Islamic fighters and plotting to assassinate a Swedish cartoonist who made fun of Prophet Muhammad, according to a federal indictment unsealed on Tuesday.
• What is striking about the case is that Colleen LaRose, who called herself Fatima La Rose, is a regular workaday housewife. Blonde and green-eyed, she would have easily slipped under scrutiny that typically focuses on non-whites.
• In 2008, LaRose allegedly posted a video on YouTube calling herself JihadJane and stating she was “desperate to do something somehow to help” ease the suffering of Muslims, a move that attracted the attention of law-enforcement authorities.
• According to the indictment, in email exchanges with five unindicted and unnamed co-conspirators in South Asia, Eastern and Western Europe, LaRose allegedly agreed to recruit people for jihad, to raise money for fighters. She also agreed to one jihadist’s request to marry him to enable him to get inside Europe.
• This is the first time a white American female has signed up for jihad. According to the indictment, in March 2009, shortly before she made the You Tube video, LaRose allegedly received a directive from her jihadist contacts to “go to Sweden… find location of (resident of Sweden)… and kill him… this is what i say to u”. The target was identified as Lars Vilks, a cartoonist who had drawn Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog.
• LaRose was instructed to kill Vilks in a way that would frighten “the whole Kufar (non-believer) world.” She was arrested in October 2009 but the case was kept under seal as authorities pursued leads to track down her jihadist contacts.
• The indictment was unsealed on Tuesday after the arrest of seven Muslims in Ireland, in a case that was said to connect “Jihad Jane” to the plot to kill Vilks.

(Pshh, more fear-mongering. SUSPECT EVERYONE! TERRORIST SOCCER MOMS!!)

criminalwisdom:

Philip K Dick’s FBI file and the bizarre story of a neo-Nazi plot to start a Third World War.

Speaking of speed freaks …

azspot:

The radical right caught fire last year, as broad-based populist anger at political, demographic and economic changes in America ignited an explosion of new extremist groups and activism across the nation.

Hate groups stayed at record levels — almost 1,000 — despite the total collapse of the second largest neo-Nazi group in America. Furious anti-immigrant vigilante groups soared by nearly 80%, adding some 136 new groups during 2009. And, most remarkably of all, so-called “Patriot” groups — militias and other organizations that see the federal government as part of a plot to impose “one-world government” on liberty-loving Americans — came roaring back after years out of the limelight.

The anger seething across the American political landscape — over racial changes in the population, soaring public debt and the terrible economy, the bailouts of bankers and other elites, and an array of initiatives by the relatively liberal Obama Administration that are seen as “socialist” or even “fascist” — goes beyond the radical right. The “tea parties” and similar groups that have sprung up in recent months cannot fairly be considered extremist groups, but they are shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism.

azspot:

Markos Moulitsas, founder of DailyKos, recently commissioned Research 2000 to poll over 2,000 self-identified Republicans to see what they actually believed.  To quote Kos “The results are nothing short of startling.”

The highlights can be found here.

68% believe, or think its open for debate, that Pres. Obama should be impeached.

79% believe Pres. Obama is, or could possibly be, a socialist.

58% don’t believe or aren’t sure Pres. Obama was born in the US.

57% believe, or think its possible, that Pres. Obama “wants the terrorists to win.”

…..and that’s not even the scariest bit!

76% believe, or think its possible that ACORN stole the 2008 election.

73% believe gays shouldn’t be allowed to teach in public schools.

77% believe literal creationism should be taught in public schools.

31% believe contraceptives should be outlawed.

…..and the list goes on and on.

Not sure about ‘finally’ but, yeah, we are screwed.

• The trailer industry and lawmakers are pressing the government to send Haiti thousands of potentially formaldehyde-laced trailers left over from Hurricane Katrina — an idea denounced by some as a crass and self-serving attempt to dump inferior American products on the poor.
• “Just go ahead and sign their death certificate,” said Paul Nelson of Coden, Ala., who contends his mother died because of formaldehyde fumes in a FEMA trailer.
• The 100,000 trailers became a symbol of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s bungled response to Katrina. The government had bought the trailers to house victims of the 2005 storm, but after people began falling ill, high levels of formaldehyde, a chemical that is used in building materials and can cause breathing problems and perhaps cancer, were found inside. Many of the trailers have sat idle for years, and many are damaged.
• The U.S. Agency for International Development, which is coordinating American assistance in Haiti, has expressed no interest in sending the trailers to the earthquake-stricken country. FEMA spokesman Clark Stevens declined to comment.
• In a Jan. 15 letter to FEMA, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said the trailers could be used as temporary shelter or emergency clinics.
• “While I continue to believe that these units should not be used for human habitation, I do believe that they could be of some benefit on a short-term, limited basis if the appropriate safeguards are provided,” he wrote.
• For the recreational-vehicle and trailer industry, which lost thousands of jobs during the recession, the push to send the units to Haiti is motivated by more than charity.
• Bidding is underway in an online government-run auction to sell the trailers in large lots at bargain-basement prices — something the RV industry fears will reduce demand for new products. Some of the bids received so far work out to less than $500 for a trailer that would sell for about $20,000 new.
• Lobbyists for the Recreational Vehicle Industry Assn. — which includes some major manufacturers in Elkhart, Ind., among them Gulf Stream — have been talking with members of Congress, the government and disaster relief agencies to see if it would be possible to send the trailers to Haiti instead.

iisabelle:redguard:

Here we go: New Orleans 2.0

By Jeremy Scahill

We saw this type of Iraq-style disaster profiteering in New Orleans and you can expect to see a lot more of this in Haiti over the coming days, weeks and months. Private security companies are seeing big dollar signs in Haiti thanks in no small part to the media hype about “looters.” After Katrina, the number of private security companies registered (and unregistered) multiplied overnight. Banks, wealthy individuals, the US government all hired private security. I even encountered Israeli mercenaries operating an armed check-point outside of an elite gated community in New Orleans. They worked for a company called Instinctive Shooting International. (That is not a joke).

Now, it is kicking into full gear in Haiti. As we know, the member companies of the Orwellian-named mercenary trade association, the International Peace Operations Association, are offering their services in Haiti. But look for more stories like this one:

On January 15, a Florida based company called All Pro Legal Investigations registered the URL Haiti-Security.com. It is basically a copy of the company’s existing US website but is now targeted for business in Haiti, claiming the “purpose of this site is to act as a clearinghouse for information seekers on the state of security in Haiti.”

Scahill: What will happen during a National Emergency

• ROME — More than a thousand African workers were put aboard buses and trains in the southern Italian region of Calabria over the weekend and shipped out to immigrant detention centers, following some of the country’s worst riots in years.
• The clashes began Thursday night in Rosarno, a working-class city amid citrus groves in Calabria, the toe of Italy’s boot, after a legal immigrant from Togo was lightly wounded in a pellet-gun attack in a nearby city. It is not clear who pulled the trigger — the authorities said they were investigating whether organized crime had provoked the riots — but the consequences were severe.
• Blaming racism for the attack, dozens of immigrants burned cars and smashed shop windows in Rosarno in two days of riots, throwing rocks at local residents and fighting with the police. More than 50 immigrants and police officers were wounded, none seriously, and 10 immigrants and locals were arrested before the authorities began sending the immigrants to detention centers elsewhere in southern Italy on Saturday.
• The images emerging from Calabria over the weekend — of torched cars and angry African immigrants hurling rocks — were the most vivid example of the growing racial tensions in Italy, which have been exacerbated by an economic crisis whose depth has only recently been acknowledged in the national dialogue. Both the official and underground economies increasingly rely on immigrants, while Italy remains torn between acceptance and xenophobia.
• The riots also shone a bright light on a side of the country rarely seen in tourist itineraries. On Sunday, the authorities began bulldozing the makeshift encampments outside Rosarno where hundreds of immigrants live in what human rights groups describe as subhuman conditions. They are often paid less than $30 a day picking fruit, a job that many Italians see as beneath them. Organized crime syndicates are known to have a strong grip on every level of the Calabrian economy.
• “This event pulled the lid off something that we who work in the sector know well but no one talks about: That many Italian economic realities are based on the exploitation of low-cost foreign labor, living in subhuman conditions, without human rights,” said Flavio Di Giacomo, the spokesman for the International Organization for Migration in Italy.
• In recent years, the center-right government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has issued strong anti-immigrant statements. Mr. Berlusconi, who is recovering after being struck in the face with a statuette of the Milan cathedral by a mentally unstable man last month, has not commented on the riots.

(Berlusconi’s silence is deafening. A horrible situation altogether. I recommend reading the whole article as it gives a good indication of the level of institutionalized racism in Italy.)

• “If you don’t have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he’s illegal, we can make him disappear.” Those chilling words were spoken by James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Office of State and Local Coordination, at a conference of police and sheriffs in August 2008. Also present was Amnesty International’s Sarnata Reynolds, who wrote about the incident in the 2009 report “Jailed Without Justice” and said in an interview, “It was almost surreal being there, particularly being someone from an organization that has worked on disappearances for decades in other countries. I couldn’t believe he would say it so boldly, as though it weren’t anything wrong.”
• Pendergraph knew that ICE could disappear people, because he knew that in addition to the publicly listed field offices and detention sites, ICE is also confining people in 186 unlisted and unmarked subfield offices, many in suburban office parks or commercial spaces revealing no information about their ICE tenants—nary a sign, a marked car or even a US flag. (Presumably there is a flag at the Veterans Affairs Complex in Castle Point, New York, but no one would associate it with the Criminal Alien Program ICE is running out of Building 7.) Designed for confining individuals in transit, with no beds or showers, subfield offices are not subject to ICE Detention Standards. The subfield office network was mentioned in an October report by Dora Schriro, then special adviser to Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security, but no locations were provided.

• A nativity scene featuring a dark-skinned Jesus, Mary and Joseph that has gone on display in a Verona courthouse has created heated debate in a city with strong links to Italy’s anti-immigration Northern League party.
• The nativity’s appearance coincides with the League’s controversial operation “White Christmas,” a two-month sweep ending on Christmas Day to ferret out foreigners without proper permits in Coccaglio, a small League-led town east of Milan.
• The Christmas scene — featuring a dark-skinned baby Jesus dressed in a red shirt and lying in a manger — was the idea of Mario Giulio Schinaia, the chief Public Prosecutor in Verona.
• “History teaches us that baby Jesus and his parents were very probably dark-skinned,” Schinaia told Reuters. “This nativity belongs to a universal Christmas tradition that brings together the whole of Christianity in celebration.”
• The nativity has caused heated reactions in the rich northern town, where resentment toward foreigners has spread as the number of immigrants, particularly from north Africa and eastern Europe, continues to rise.
• “It is a useless act of provocation, just like the suggestion not to have a nativity scene at all, in order not to offend Muslims,” Northern League farm minister Luca Zaia told one paper, referring to proposals in recent years that town halls and stores should no longer sponsor Christmas scenes.
• “Magistrates have other problems to deal with: I hope they spend as much time thinking about lawsuits and trials,” he said.
• The Northern League, an ally of conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi with key cabinet posts including the interior ministry, has used its growing political clout to secure tough new laws including making illegal immigration a crime.

• New federally financed drug research reveals a stark disparity: children covered by Medicaid are given powerful antipsychotic medicines at a rate four times higher than children whose parents have private insurance. And the Medicaid children are more likely to receive the drugs for less severe conditions than their middle-class counterparts, the data shows.
• Those findings, by a team from Rutgers and Columbia, are almost certain to add fuel to a long-running debate. Do too many children from poor families receive powerful psychiatric drugs not because they actually need them — but because it is deemed the most efficient and cost-effective way to control problems that may be handled much differently for middle-class children?

(The answer is yes.)

• Voters in Switzerland have approved a ban on the construction of minarets on mosques, official results show.
• Of those who cast votes in Sunday’s poll, 57.5 per cent approved the ban, while only four cantons out of 26 rejected the proposals.
• The result paves the way for a constitutional amendment to be made.
• “The Federal Council [government] respects this decision. Consequently the construction of new minarets in Switzerland is no longer permitted,” the government, which had opposed the ban, said in a statement.