OBAMA'S SECRET POLICE from MOJO 5FEB10

Lunacy from the Republican Party, right wing extremeist and the Tea Party movement. Click the header for the story on MOJO. This is followed by a Washington Post story PENTAGON SHOOTER, OTHERS STRIKE SYMBOLS OF 'POWER FOR THE POWERLESS'. Copy and paste this link to go to the story
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/05/AR2010030504438_pf.html

Obama's Secret Police
How a radical conspiracy theory traveled from the Tea Party movement to the US Congress.

— By Stephanie Mencimer
Fri Feb. 5, 2010 3:00 AM PST

Does Obama want to impose martial law to shut down the Tea Party movement?

For months, much of the right-wing blogosphere has been fuming about Executive Order 12425, which Obama amended in mid-December. The one-paragraph document grants Interpol, the international law enforcement agency based in France, special privileges within the United States—mainly immunity from the Freedom of Information Act and from lawsuits over activity considered part of its official duties. It's no secret police conspiracy.

But thanks to Glenn Beck, the National Review, Newt Gingrich, and others, this obscure directive has fueled a firestorm of right-wing paranoia. Conservative activists warn that Obama intends to use Interpol as a "secret police" with the power to knock down doors and arrest law-abiding American citizens. No matter that Interpol agents don't even carry guns and have no right to arrest people, or that its American office boasts all of five people. And the hysteria over the executive order is not confined to the Tea Party movement. It has also reached the highest levels of politics—that is, the US Congress.

In January, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) introduced a resolution that would require a repeal of the order. "As a former FBI agent, I believe that giving INTERPOL blanket exemptions is dangerous," Rogers explained in a statement. "This change ties the hands of American law enforcement and prevents full access to information that could be crucial for on-going U.S. investigations related to criminal or national security activity. This is no time to be weakening the ability of law enforcement to defend our nation."

The online backlash to executive order 12425 became so intense that Ron Noble, Interpol's secretary-general, wrote a piece for Newsweek’s website debunking the conspiracy theory. "An executive order cannot legally authorize an unconstitutional act, and this one doesn't even come close," he wrote.

But Noble's appeal for reason isn't likely to quiet the storm. That's because the Obama executive order feeds a thriving narrative on the right about the current administration's nefarious intentions. Ever since Obama took office, certain corners of the Internet have been frothing with speculation that Obama fancies himself a Mobutu-style African dictator who is furtively plotting to use martial law to crush dissent or unrest over his economic policies.

Nutty as this premise sounds, it's proven particularly popular among those who believe that Obama is not an American citizen or who are bitterly opposed to health care reform. The drumbeat has been so loud that a host of state legislators have introduced "state sovereignty" bills declaring their independence from the federal government under the 10th Amendment and threatening to secede in the event that martial law is declared; Sarah Palin even signed one such bill before quitting as governor of Alaska. (A favorite of states' rights proponents, the one-sentence 10th Amendment basically says that any power that isn't specifically granted to the federal government by the Constitution is reserved for the states.)

Other "evidence" that Obama has despotic designs: A Rand Corporation report released in April 2009, titled "A Stability Police Force for the United States." The think-tank study, commissioned by the US Army, weighs the possibility of creating a new national civilian police force that could be used to help stabilize foreign countries in conflict or after disasters such as the earthquake in Haiti. But because such a force would be insufficiently busy abroad, the authors also suggested that it might be used at home—for instance, to help respond to natural disasters.

The study has become Exhibit A for those who think Obama wants a domestic secret police to silence his political enemies, particularly those in the Tea Party movement. The conservative blogger YidwithLid wrote of the "brown shirt" report, "I wonder what kind of Domestic Role the Stability Police can have, controlling Tea Parties? 'Fixing' Fox News? A national police under the control of this or any president will do nothing less than signal the end of freedom in the United States. Any movement toward this force must be voted down." Of course, it didn't help that the Department of Homeland Security produced a 2009 report warning about the rising threat of right-wing extremism—convincing many conservative activists that they are being targeted by the federal government.

When I asked Rand spokesman Warren Robak about the study, he said jokingly, "Oh, you mean the Gestapo report?" The wonks at Rand were startled when their staid policy analysis became a rallying cry for anti-Obama and right-wing activists. Robak points out that the report was actually commissioned in 2007, during the Bush administration. He also explains that the military had been questioning its ability to shoulder nation-building responsibilities and thought it might be a job better performed by civilians. (After the post-invasion debacle in Iraq, it's not hard to see why police trained in dealing with civilians might be a good idea.)

None of this is likely to quiet Obama's critics—especially as many already believe that he is plotting to hold citizens in "FEMA-run concentration camps." Activists believe these were established under the Bush administration to hold US citizens should martial law be declared following an emergency like Hurricane Katrina. Their suspicions swelled when Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) introduced a bill in January 2009 called the National Emergency Centers Establishment Act that would direct the secretary of homeland security to establish national emergency centers on military installations to be used in the event of such disasters.

By "disasters," Hastings was presumably referring to events such as the hurricanes that regularly buffet his home state. But conservative activists believe the bill would empower the president to detain pretty much anyone he wants at the centers. And when Obama designated the H1N1 flu outbreak a national emergency last fall, right-wingers seized on this as further evidence of a sinister government plot. Conservative bloggers warned darkly that anyone who refused to submit to the flu vaccine might be held in one of the government-run emergency facilities.

Leonard Zeskind, author of Blood and Politics, a history of the white nationalist movement, says that the Tea Partiers' conspiracy theories aren't new. Similarly hysterical warnings of government overreach were rife during the Clinton or Carter administrations. "In the militia days in the 1990s it was about a UN invasion. It's exactly the same phenomenon. Some of the same people are involved," he says.

But these extreme conspiracy theories aren't just confined to the radical fringe. They're being adopted by national politicians, as Rep. Rogers proved with his attempt to roll back Obama's Interpol order. Back in the 1990s, says Brian Levin, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University San Bernardino, "The black helicopter stuff was pretty well segregated from the mainstream world. But now you have Sarah Palin entertaining the Obama [born in] Kenya thing or [Gov.] Rick Perry from Texas toying with the secession idea." It's yet another sign of how much the Tea Party and the Republican Party are increasingly one and the same.

PENTAGON SHOOTER, OTHERS STRIKE SYMBOLS OF 'POWER FOR THE POWERLESS'
Copy and paste the link for the Washington Post story
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/05/AR2010030504438_pf.html
By Joby Warrick and Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 6, 2010; A01

The setting was seemingly random: an outer gate at the Pentagon at evening rush hour. But John Patrick Bedell's violent rampage Thursday made him only the latest in the growing ranks of the disaffected and disturbed to take aim at a symbol of official Washington.

The shooting contained jarring echoes of other recent attacks, from last month's plane crash at an IRS building in Texas to the shooting last June of a museum guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in the District. Although the circumstances differ greatly, all were acts of rage by men who blamed their personal misfortunes on what they perceived to be sinister forces within the government.

All three also appear to have drawn ideological nourishment from the same well: online communities of like-minded people who validate and amplify extreme views. Today, more than in recent years, such communities are tapping into a broad undercurrent of anti-government discontent fueled by economic recession, joblessness and concern over the growing federal deficit, according to experts who have studied the phenomenon.

For Bedell and others like him, Washington and its institutions are an irresistible target -- the "ultimate symbol of power for the powerless," said Jerrold Post, a professor of political psychology at George Washington University.

"We've always had individuals who strike out at the giant 'system' when they're feeling a sense of powerlessness and insignificance," said Post, author of "Political Paranoia: The Psychopolitics of Hatred," a book on extremist movements. "Now we see an alarming tendency in which these same individuals can find substantiation online for almost any point of view."

Researchers who track violent groups see Bedell's rampage as a distorted manifestation of the anti-Washington view that has driven the rise of right-wing militias. A report last week by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that the number of such organizations jumped 244 percent since the election of President Obama, from 149 groups to 512, including 127 militias. At the same time, the number of extremist attacks in the United States that resulted in deaths has fallen since the 1990s.

White House officials declined to comment for the record about increased militia activity and noted that the two most recent incidents, at the Pentagon and in Austin, were perpetrated by men who had specific gripes with the government that appeared to be unrelated to the president personally.

But current and former officials privately acknowledge that the toxic political climate has heightened concerns about increased attacks. "Are we headed into a climate similar to Oklahoma City? It isn't clear," said one former administration official, referring to the 1995 attack on a federal building that killed 168 people.

A similar surge in militias and hate groups occurred during the mid-1990s, but this time the groups are interlinked to a much greater degree by the Web and mainstream radio and TV talk shows that echo many of the same viewpoints, said Mark Potok, author of the Southern Poverty Law Center report.

"People are bringing completely groundless conspiracy theories into the mainstream, and they are doing it for purely opportunistic reasons," Potok said. "To some, it may be only a ratings game, but the danger is that some people actually believe these tall tales and a few will actually act on them."

Yet the motivations for the attacks differ greatly. Joseph Stack, who flew a small plane into an IRS building in Austin, was inspired in part by the anti-tax movement. Bedell's anti-government views were more libertarian, and some were from the radical left, such as his belief that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were a U.S. government conspiracy. Conservative bloggers Friday sought to label Bedell as leftist extremist, noting his online tirades against President George W. Bush's administration.

"Tea party" leaders reject the notion that their movement fosters violence. "It is extremely unfortunate that certain elements are trying to malign, distort and misrepresent a movement that supports fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free markets," said Jenny Beth Martin, a national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots.

Although concern about anti-government groups has grown, the number of ideologically motivated attacks by extremists that led to deaths in the United States has not.

Between 1990 and 2009, there were about 120 attacks in the United States by far-right extremists that led to deaths, according to a study funded by the Department of Homeland Security and the University of Maryland's National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. The number of incidents has hovered around three per year since 2002, down from an average of eight annually from 1990 to 2001 and a peak of 16 in 1999, according to the U.S. Extremist Crime Data Base.

About 45 percent of incidents were motivated by white supremacist, neo-Nazi, anti-immigrant or other racist ideologies, and 15 percent by extreme anti-government views, the top two categories, according to researchers Joshua D. Freilich of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York and Steven M. Chermak of Michigan State University.

Federal agencies discount attacks by "lone wolves" as terrorism. By law, the FBI, State Department and National Counterterrorism Center define terrorism as politically motivated violence committed by "subnational groups and clandestine agents."

U.S. counter-terrorism officials say lone attackers pursuing a personal political agenda pose a different kind of threat than organized domestic groups or international entities such as al-Qaeda.

White House and administration officials have stepped gingerly around the subject of politics and domestic attacks, mindful of how conservative groups condemned Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano when her department issued a report on right-wing extremism April that said the return of military veterans could feed the emergence of terrorist groups.

Napolitano, who helped prosecute Timothy McVeigh after the Oklahoma City bombings, apologized for the report, which was revised and reissued, and later clarified that the administration does not -- "nor will we ever -- monitor ideology or political beliefs."

In February, she testified that there has been an increase in "lone wolf type" attacks and more ideologically driven attacks from U.S. citizens who have become radicalized, including incidents involving al-Qaeda-trained operatives or sympathizers.

Staff writers Anne E. Kornblut and Jerry Markon and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.