Right wingers are on the march!
From Homeland Security Today:
New Vigilance Needed in Wake of Healthcare Vote
by David Silverberg
Monday, 22 March 2010
Violent domestic extremism poses a real threat. In the wake of the divisive 219-212 House vote passing healthcare reform, authorities need to heighten vigilance against extremist violence against government facilities.
The year-long healthcare debate was emotional and divisive and while the vote may have resolved the issue legislatively the passions it aroused are unlikely to die down soon.
In such an atmosphere extremist violence is a real possibility, particularly directed against government installations or symbols of government authority. Coming on top of a census process that has also been infused with extremist charges, homeland security officials at all levels of government should be especially vigilant against
potential attacks from domestic sources.
Domestic extremist terrorism has long been on the homeland security radar. In 2009 a report by the Office of Intelligence & Analysis in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), titled, Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment noted that while there were no specific plots under way, "rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues." These included the election of the first African-American president and the economic downturn. It also reported that extremists were recruiting returning Iraqi war veterans. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano later disavowed the report as having been released prematurely without proper vetting.
More recently, on March 2 the Southern Poverty Law Center released its own report, Rage on the Right , reporting that "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." According to this report, 363 new "Patriot" groups formed in 2009, with 127 of them being militias and the formation of 136 new anti-immigrant groups.
As though to underscore the volatility of the current situation, yesterday, as the House of Representatives voted on healthcare reform legislation, tens of thousands of demonstrators descended on Washington to demand comprehensive immigration reform, an issue that may prove even more passionate and divisive than healthcare.
While debate is always healthy, violent extremism is not. The use of the color-coded terror alert system has fallen out of favor with the Obama administration, but any casual observer can see that the current situation calls for at least an orange level of alertness.
That's right, we shouldn't raise the alert level to Code Orange because judges are releasing hardened terrorists from custody and the Attorney General wants to try in civil courts here in the United States the ones who aren't released and our border is a collander with a single hole three states wide, but we should do it because a large majority of the country expresses a consistent and growing opposition to the federal government assuming control over 1/6th of the U.S. economy and hiring 16,000 IRS agents to enforce the new powers of the State against its citizens and because those citizens presented themselves in body and spirit and with the most corny of handmade signs outside the house of our constitutional republic to let their representatives know they were opposed.
And the authorities we will site for indicting 65% of the American people and for the federal government ramping up to a hightened risk posture against its own citizens are, first, a discredited DHS report on so-called Right Wing Extremism, expected to increase with an influx of discharged U.S. warriors who apprarently are under the influence of some blood lust not satiated on the immoral battlefields of American imperialism and, second, a discredited report from the hyper-partisan and derelict-from-its-original-mission SPLC that notes the formation of - gasp! - Patriot groups (which curiously may or may not include leftwing 9/11 truther squads) and "anti-immigrant groups," (scare quotes back at ya!) which may actually be anti-illegal alien groups (you know, those pesky rule of law types). Oh, and the racists. Don't forget the innate truth of America which is that most Americans are racists and cowards for not admitting it and are one caffeine buzz away from donning all black outfits and tossing bottles-and-cans-only trash bins through the windows of cop cars.
In any event and regardless of who is in these various groups and their actual numbers of members, a certain segment of our elite believes anyone who protests Hope and Change is suspect and needs active surveillance.
Now that causes SBD to raise his own threat level to Orange.
