=== Aum Shinrikyo
1. Tax bureau rejects complaint from Aum

=== Falun Gong
2. Cult friction

=== Mormonism
3. Church And State: Controversial church bloomed in biblical fastness of
Utah's desert

=== Buddhism
4. SAR artist creates stir with swastikas

=== Islam
5. Asia's Islam: Islam gains strength in Asian strongholds
6. Asiatic Islam is more tolerant, diverse
7. Event Fosters Religious Diversity

=== Witchcraft
8. Witches In Warrior

=== Hate Groups: Aryan Nations
9. Nation at risk
10. Aryans get 'levelheaded' judge
11. Butler's message of hate may return to haunt him
12. TIMELINE: The Aryan Nations through the years Series: "Aryan Nations"
13. On the inside Series: "Aryan Nations"
14. Aryans pick up maps of public buildings
15. Stakes get higher for Aryans

=== Hate Groups: National Alliance
16. Racist Alliance Sets Sights on 'White Utahns'

=== Hate Groups: Nazism
17. German anti-Nazi activists demonstrate against far right
18. Schroeder warns neo-Nazis
19. Three Neo-Nazis Face Murder Charges
20. Inside Story: Extreme prejudice
21. Neo-Nazi Web Sites Reported to Flee Germany

=== Hate Groups: World Church of the Creator
22. White Supremacist Show Will Air In Seven Towns

» Part 2

=== Other News
23. Expert: US Open To Bioterrorism
24. Briton offers reward for daughter missing in Japan
25. Maharishi eyes Colony project
26. A shadow of a school: Polygamists Heed Call; Enrollments Drop
27. Atheists to distribute book covers; Grand Prairie school district had
already permitted Ten Commandments
28. Jesus is coming ... or maybe not
29. Arcane psychic ordinance criticized

=== UFOs
30. UFO Skywatcher Keeps Watching the Skies over Phoenix
31. UFO secrets on-line

=== Death Penalty / US Human Rights Violations
32. More juveniles facing execution
33. Georgia and Florida postpone executions of mentally ill inmates

=== Noted
34. Whatever happened to the lost tribes of Israel?
35. Fighting words/ Evangelical Christians divided over the notion of trading
warlike terms for more positive metaphors
36. Mouse ministers
37. Ancient beliefs still alive in Georgia (Voodoo - part 1)
38. Seeking the root of knowledge (Voodoo - part 2)


=== Aum Shinrikyo

1. Tax bureau rejects complaint from Aum
Daily Yomiuri (Japan), Aug. 22, 2000
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
The Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau has informed two Tokyo-based computer retailers affiliated with the Aum Supreme Truth cult that it has rejected their complaint over having to pay about 800 million yen in back taxes, including penalties, sources said Monday.

The two companies, Poseidon in Chiyoda Ward and SBR in Taito Ward, have one month in which to file an appeal with the bureau. But as the bureau has been unable to contact the presidents of the two firms and the content of the complaint is ambiguous, tax authorities say the firms' complaint appears to have been merely a ploy to gain time.

The bureau plans to begin collecting the taxes and to seize the stores, the sources said. The two stores were the cash cows of the Aum-affiliated computer business. In late March, the bureau informed the two companies they had failed to report 1.2 billion yen in income and asked them to pay 800 million yen in back taxes, including consumption tax and penalties.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Falun Gong

2. Cult friction
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), Aug. 19, 2000
http://www.smh.com.au/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Believers like Dai Meiling feed the deep insecurities of the Chinese leadership. The 54-year-old electrical engineer says she used to be frightened of the police in her native Shanghai, but since she became a follower of the Falun Gong sect she is no longer afraid.

Now an Australian citizen, Dai has been arrested on each of the four times she has travelled back to China to support her fellow devotees.

On her most recent trip in February, it took a 23-day hunger strike to force the police to release her after 45 days in a detention centre and deport her to Australia.

''I am not scared,'' she says after demonstrating in Canberra this week while a visiting Chinese human rights delegation was in town. ''I have done nothing wrong.''

But for the authoritarians clinging to power in Beijing, this is the kind of defiance that threatens to undermine the foundations of Communist Party rule.
(...)

The Australia Tibet Council and other human rights watchdogs have protested against the ''patriotic re-education campaign'' now under way in Tibet, while the Beijing authorities continue to persecute the ''underground'' Catholic Church and some Protestant groups. Despite this climate of oppression, many of the estimated millions of Falun Gong devotees in China have shown no sign of buckling under the weight of a crackdown that has seen tens of thousands arbitrarily detained and led to widespread allegations of torture, beatings and deaths in custody.
(...)

While this ongoing campaign against the sect in China is common knowledge, the Howard Government has been reluctant to publicly acknowledge that Chinese diplomats and their agents have also been attempting to curb the activities of Falun Gong on Australian soil.

Going into this week's human rights talks with a Chinese delegation under the leadership of the Vice-Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi, Australian officials confirmed that they would broach the subject of the treatment of Falun Gong believers in China, but made no mention of the complaints of harassment and intimidation in Australia.

This is because a key strategy for the Government in building a strong relationship with Beijing has been to take human rights off the public agenda, in which criticism of China's widespread violations leads to rancorous exchanges, and bury these complaints in a series of annual private talks.

So, while the Prime Minister, John Howard, publicly condemns the show trial and jailing of the former Malaysian deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, on trumped-up charges, he remains silent on what has been a grim year in China.

The Government and senior officials believe this has been a highly successful strategy, with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, claiming that ties with Beijing have never been better.
(...)

Certainly, the Chinese authorities appear much more comfortable with human rights virtually stripped from high-level exchanges and handled by lower-level officials in closed talks.

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the Australian Federal Police have known for months at least that the sect's followers in Australia were being targeted, but the Government has declined to speak out.

ASIO agents have approached a number of people to warn them about the campaign - a sign that the security services are closely monitoring the activities of Chinese diplomats and the large number of Chinese agents believed to be active in Australia.

It wasn't until the Herald reported on the harassment campaign this week that Downer acknowledged, against the advice of his senior officials, that these complaints had already been raised with the Chinese embassy in May and again at this week's talks.

It appears that one reason the Chinese authorities have extended their campaign of suppression offshore is that Falun Gong is one of the first mass movements of its ilk that has adopted the Internet to spread its message and co-ordinate its activities.

This means the sect's followers outside China, including the estimated 2,000 in Australia, can play an important role in reinforcing and supporting their fellow practitioners.

Some of the movement's Australian followers, mostly of Chinese descent, have been aggressive in their attempts to visit China to protest against the official crackdown. Two are in custody in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou.

Local followers believe that they have been the target of a major campaign of intimidation that has included surveillance and monitoring, vandalism, phone tapping and direct pressure from Chinese diplomats.
(...)

The Herald has established that Chinese diplomats have contacted councils in Sydney and urged them to deny Falun Gong the use of community facilities for meetings or for demonstrations.
(...)

In a strongly worded statement that gives some measure of Beijing's antagonism to Falun Gong, the embassy criticises what it calls a ''heretical cult''. ''It spreads a whole set of evil ideas and fallacies to poison people's minds,'' the statement says. ''Many followers become mentally disorientated and even crazy as a result of practising Falun Gong.''

There could be grounds to suspect that Falun Gong is driving the Chinese Communist Party crazy.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Mormonism

3. Church And State: Controversial church bloomed in biblical fastness of Utah's desert
The Independent (England), Aug. 23, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Baptising the the dead - or ''redeeming'' them, as doctrinal parlance has it - is just one way in which the Mormon church seeks to increase its numbers around the world.
(...)

Numbers have been growing in Western Europe - 178,000 in Britain compared with 150,000 a decade ago; 31,000 in France compared with 1,500 in 1960.

Mormonism is essentially an attempt to resurrect the early days of the Christian church, when followers of Christ were not merely followers of doctrine but a close-knit community. Saints then were not religious celebrities but rank-and-file believers - the meaning Mormons continue to attach to the concept.
(...)

The Latter-Day Saints believe in the literal truth of the Bible, in the sanctity of family as the noblest expression of God's will, and in the possibility of redemption far beyond the span of life on earth.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

* Mormons are not Christians, and do not represent Biblical Christianity.
Theologically, Mormonism is a cult of Christianity. They do not believe
in the literal truth of the Bible, but rather in a Bible rewritten and edited
to fit the cult's own religious fantasies. The only thing Mormonism has
in common with early Christianity is the movements insistence on following
multiple heresies. Mormons are not saints in the Biblical sense of the word.
According to the Holman Bible Dictionary, saints are ''Holy people, a title
for all God's people but applied in some contexts to a small group seen as
the most dedicated ones.'' Since Mormons follow a Jesus Christ of their own
making, they are not saved and thus are not counted among God's people.

=== Buddhism

4. SAR artist creates stir with swastikas
South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), Aug. 22, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
A Hong Kong artist has been stopped by Customs while trying to take 2,000 one-metre high Buddhist swastika symbols into Germany for an arts festival.

Danny Yung, 57, has been ordered to burn the swastikas or take them back to Hong Kong after they were seized by officials at Berlin airport. It is illegal to display swastikas in Germany because of their link with the country's Nazi past.

Yung, founding director of the Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture and artistic director of alternative theatre group Zuni Icosahedron, hoped to show the symbols as part of the Hong Kong- Berlin Arts Festival.
(...)

Festival producer Matthias Woo Yan-wai defended the planned display: ''This is what cross-cultural exchange is all about. It's not just about showing pretty things. It should also generate controversial arguments.''

He said the swastika had been a symbol of the Buddha's heart for thousands of years.

Germany is particularly sensitive about the issue at the moment, with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder touring economically hard-hit eastern Germany in a bid to quell right-wing extremism in the face of rising violence.

In recent Falun Gong protests in New York, followers unfurled banners bearing Buddhist swastika insignia. Outraged New Yorkers thought they were witnessing Nazi marches.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Islam

5. Asia's Islam: Islam gains strength in Asian strongholds
Star Telegram/AP, Aug. 19, 2000
http://www.star-telegram.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
In a small city deep in northern Afghanistan, the world's harshest brand of Islam meted out justice four months ago: Turbaned religious leaders found a woman guilty of adultery -- then battered her with stones until she was dead.

Thousands of miles across the Asian continent, the globe's most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia, lives under a very different Islam. There, muezzin call the faithful to evening prayers while throngs of the young head to discos for nights of drink and dance.

To the north, in the Philippines, Islam means rebellion. Guerrillas armed with assault rifles and grenades have fought three decades for an Islamic state, continuing a struggle that started when Muslims first repelled Spanish conquerors in the 16th century.

Sectarian fighters, secular believers, dictators, democrats. These are the Muslims of central and eastern Asia, a region that has embraced a faith founded in Arabia 14 centuries ago and crafted it into a dynamic social force.

Islam in Asia has long been overshadowed by the Middle East. Understandably so: The Middle East is where the creed was founded by Mohammed and enjoyed its first flowering. Today, the region looms large because of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Iranian revolution.

But the ''other Muslims,'' spread from the steppes of Central Asia to the Malay archipelago and beyond, have also laid an enduring claim to the religion.

More than half the world's Muslims live east of Karachi, Pakistan, and Asia is home to the four countries with the largest Islamic populations: Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India.

Asia has the strictest Islamic regime, in Afghanistan, and perhaps the longest running Muslim rebellion, in the Philippines.

Pressure is rising in Asia for stricter observance of conservative Islamic ideals: Women in parts of Malaysia have been ordered to wear headscarves, and local Indonesian authorities closed nightspots last New Year's to avoid a backlash from Muslims in the holy month of Ramadan.

The implications for the non-Islamic world are inescapable: Muslim unrest, from Chechnya eastward, gnaws at the southern underpinnings of post-Soviet Russia. In China, it is one more ingredient adding to the wrenching transition of a communist giant. Islamic terrorism has pulled U.S. investigators into the Philippines and provoked a U.S. missile salvo into Afghanistan. Islam's rivalry with Hinduism smolders beneath tensions between India and Pakistan, the newest members of the world's nuclear club.

But the story of Islam in Asia is above all one of stunning diversity, of a faith that swept a continent -- by conquest on the Indian subcontinent, by peaceful trade and mysticism across the Malay archipelago -- and adapted to the multitude of beliefs it encountered there, among them Hinduism, Buddhism and ancient animist cults that believe in spirits.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

* More about Islam
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/i07.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]


6. Asiatic Islam is more tolerant, diverse
Akron Beacon Journal/AP, Aug. 20, 2000
http://www.ohio.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Call it the Muslim melting pot. No discussion of Islam can ignore the most populous Muslim nation on Earth: Indonesia. And perhaps no other country more typifies an Asiatic brand of Islam.

Islam is the religion of 85 percent of the country's 210 million people, but its more than 13,000 islands also encompass large pockets of Christians, Hindus and ethnic Chinese practicing Buddhism.

Even the Islam practiced in Indonesia is hardly uniform. Strict Islamic mores rule in Aceh province on Sumatra, for example, while Muslims elsewhere practice a faith strongly tinged with remnants of Hindu and animist rituals that predate Islam.

Flashpoints are many; ethnic bloodshed has flared recently on several islands.

But the diversity also brings openness and flexibility. The country's major Muslim group, the Nahdlatul Ulama, once hired sorcerers to drive evil spirits from a meeting hall, something Muslims elsewhere might consider blasphemous.

That broad tolerance has helped put Indonesia in the vanguard of a growing movement in the Muslim world: democratic Islam. Indonesia's first democratically elected president, Abdurrahman Wahid, a Muslim cleric and head of the 30-million-member Nahdlatul Ulama, has reached out to religious and ethnic minorities and refuses to promote strict Islamic law.
(...)

Taliban's extremism
A world away is the Taliban regime of Afghanistan.
After years of struggle for Afghans, first to repel Soviet troops and then in civil war, the Taliban emerged to impose an Islamic regime so severe that even other conservative Muslims call them extremists.
(...)

Now, with Iran's tentative turn toward moderation and the muted Hezbollah reaction to Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon signaling a possible Shiite softening, attention is turning to what inspiration the Taliban may provide to Sunnis elsewhere.

``If you look at where radicalism and the dangers of radicalism are occurring, you have the Taliban and the export of a Taliban outlook and mentality,'' said John Esposito, a specialist in Asiatic Islam at Georgetown University.
(...)

Most women are freer
In another Muslim land, millions of women run small businesses. Women are the key workers in textiles, the nation's top export industry. The government encourages girls to get educated.

The country is Bangladesh, a predominantly Muslim nation of 126 million.

Asia is a showcase for the diversity of the roles women can play in Muslim societies. In addition to their labor, women have been heads of state in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and Indonesia has a female vice president.

With the clear exception of Afghanistan, Islam in Asian nations imposes fewer restrictions on relations between the sexes than Muslim regimes do in Arab nations, experts say.
(...)

The progress isn't unopposed. Conservative clerics have fought the employment and education of women. And women in Bangladesh, as in Pakistan and other countries in Asia, face violent attacks not directly related to religion: Women or girls who refuse marriage proposals are sometimes disfigured with acid, and young brides can be killed by spouses or their families if they don't provide a dowry.


Muslims in minority
China. The Philippines. Parts of Indonesia. Central Asia's former Soviet republics. In each, Islam has taken a central role in centuries-old clashes of culture and ethnicity.

The struggles are driven by multiple forces: fragile governments' fear of Islamic fundamentalism; outside inspiration and training of Muslim militants; intolerance and discrimination by a non-Muslim majority. In China, the government views allegiance to anything but the state as subversion.
(...)

Fundamentalists' gains
At the demographic center of the Islamic world -- Islamabad, Pakistan -- lives the divided soul of Asiatic Islam, split between a religion that imposes iron-clad restrictions on the faithful and a more flexible creed that embraces tolerance and diversity.

The backdrop is the enduring struggle of Muslims worldwide to maintain a religious identity and culture while confronting the economic, social and political forces of Westernization.
(...)

``Between the more accommodating and modern Islam and the more fundamentalist Islam, I would say the recent gains have tended to be made by the fundamentalists,'' said Ng Kam Weng, a religion expert at Kairof, a think tank in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. ``What you want to ask is whether these gains are permanent. I think the jury is still out.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


7. Event Fosters Religious Diversity
The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star, Aug. 21, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Imam Ali Salaam preaches and teaches that faith is belief and action.
He knows that in the third Sura of his holy book, verse 103 calls him to ''hold fast, all together by the Rope which Allah (stretches out for you), and be not divided among yourselves . . .''

When Salaam reads this passage, it teaches him that the division among Muslims and other faiths must be mended.

To help destroy this divide and to better mankind, Salaam and the members of the United Community of Al-Islam in Chesapeake held three days of prayer and fellowship with Christians and Jews celebrating the theme of ''Unity and Diversity in the Human Family.''

''We are bringing different faiths together to demonstrate what God has told us to do,'' Salaam said Sunday at Chesapeake City Park.
(...)

After digesting everything he witnessed, Salaam couldn't find many words to describe the scene. But others, like Catharine Cookson, didn't have any difficulty filling in.

Cookson, director of the Center for the Study of Religious Freedom at Virginia Wesleyan College in Virginia Beach, attended the picnic with her family. She said she was overwhelmed by the love and hospitality shown to her by the organizers.

''This is such a wonderful idea, I wish I would have thought of it,'' Cookson said, smiling. ''When people chat and get to know each other, religious bigotry and intolerance fade away.''
(...)

Imam E. Abdul Malik Mohammed, a national spokesman for Muslim leader W. Dean Mohammed, said he hopes to see the interfaith weekend branch out in the future and help bring the world together.

He said interfaith celebrations help shed the mistaken notion that the Islamic religion is one of conflict and war.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Witchcraft

8. Witches In Warrior
CBS/WIAT.com, Aug. 21, 2000
http://www.wiat.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
After a Tuesday night full moon ritual was harrassed by protestors
the leader of the Pell City announced the lease of a house and land in
North Jefferson County.

Many people in the area say the witches need to stay where they are.
(...)

Some in the community say as long as the witches don't bother them,
they have the same rights to freedom of religion as anybody else does.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Hate Groups: Aryan Nations

9. Nation at risk
The Spokesman Review, Aug. 20, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
In eight days, a notorious 82-year-old North Idaho man will shuffle into a Coeur d'Alene courtroom for a high-stakes legal fight.

Richard Girnt Butler must convince 12 jurors that he isn't responsible for the criminal acts of three of his Aryan Nations security guards.

If Butler fails, he could lose the keys to his white supremacy compound that critics say has spun out dozens of racist felons and ruined the image of Idaho over the past 20 years.

The racist leader will square off with his archenemy - Morris Dees, the nation's leading civil rights attorney and co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala.

Dees has stated that he wants to bankrupt and shut down the Aryan Nations. He has won judgments of millions of dollars in previous legal triumphs over similar hate groups.

Dees' privately funded legal center is bringing the civil suit on behalf of Victoria Keenan, 43, and her son, Jason, 20, who were shot at by Aryan Nations guards in July 1998.
(...)

''People who trade in hate and violence need to learn that there are consequences for their conduct,'' said George Critchlow, director of Gonzaga University's Institute for Action Against Hate.

''Win or lose, the Southern Poverty Law Center is sending that message to the Aryan Nations,'' Critchlow said.
(...)

Butler is being defended by attorney Edgar Steele of Sandpoint. A legal defense fund, including money from the sale of Aryan flags and racist music CDs, has been set up for Butler.

The Aryan Nations also is attempting to win support from other racist groups, using anti-Semitic messages to describe the lawsuit. In one such posting, Butler refers to Dees as ''The Sleeze.''

The shooting occurred July 1, 1998, after guards Jesse Warfield, John Yaeger and Shane Wright roared out of the Aryan compound in a truck and chased the Keenans' car two miles down a county road near Hayden Lake.

The Keenans say they inadvertently dropped something out of their car's window as they drove by the Aryan compound on a county road. When they returned to pick up the paperwork, their car backfired.

The Aryan guards said they believed they heard gunfire before giving chase.

At least five bullets hit the Keenans' car. One round flattened a rear tire before their 1977 Datsun careened into a ditch.

The Aryan guards forced the Keenans from their wrecked car and threatened to kill them, the suit alleges. The Keenans say they were traumatized by the attack and continue to suffer ''severe emotional distress.''

Warfield and Yaeger confessed to the sequence of events when they separately pleaded guilty to assault charges. Wright is still a fugitive.

The assault occurred two weeks before an Aryan Nations parade in downtown Coeur d'Alene in 1998.

The plaintiffs contend Butler and his ''compound of hate'' fostered an environment that precipitated the assault-rifle attack by the Aryan guards.

''The attack ... was the inevitable outcome of the reckless manner in which Butler and Mike Teague, his second-in-command, ran their organization,'' the plaintiffs say in court filings.

Butler will counter with the claim that he's no more responsible for his guards' actions than a Catholic bishop is responsible for the altar boy caught shoplifting after leaving church.

There also could be an attempt by Butler's attorney to turn the tables - a David vs. Goliath strategy - and put the spotlight on Dees and his history of suing racist organizations.

During jury selection or opening arguments, Steele may attempt to depict Butler as the ''little guy,'' a religious bigot whose First Amendment rights of free speech and religion are being threatened by a battery of lawyers from out of state.

The jury, ultimately, will have to decide whether Butler and the Aryan Nations should be held financially accountable for the criminal acts of the guards who shot at the Keenans' car.

Dees and the plaintiffs hope that, if they prevail, they will get a large financial judgment that could force the sale of the Aryan Nations compound, owned and controlled by Saphire Inc. Butler is the corporation's only officer.

The property already is encumbered by a $65,000 lien for Butler's legal bills associated with the suit.
(...)

First District Judge Charles Hosack agreed to allow the plaintiffs to also seek unspecified punitive damages - a form of punishment - for the acts of the Aryan guards.
(...)

Butler, Teague, the three guards, the Aryan Nations and Saphire Inc., are defendants.
(...)

Even people who disagree with his racist views tell him his church shouldn't face the possibility of bankruptcy at the hands of outsiders, Butler said.

''As much as I find the views of the Aryan Nations offensive, each person is entitled to equal protection under the law,'' former Idaho Gov. Phil Batt said.

''I'd be tickled to death if they left the state or folded up, but I don't think that forcing them to bankruptcy should be part of a case like this,'' Batt said.

He previously has blamed the Aryan Nations for ruining Idaho's image. The state is now spending $100,000 in an effort to improve its image.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

* More about Aryan Nations
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/a83.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]


10. Aryans get 'levelheaded' judge
The Spokesman Review, Aug. 21, 2000
http://www.spokane.net/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
COEUR d'ALENE -- Don't expect a truckload of excitement from Charles Weeks Hosack, 1st District judge.

Colleagues describe the man -- who will preside over next week's civil trial aiming to bankrupt the Aryan Nations -- as a hard-working, get-what-you-see type of judge who avoids attention.
(...)

Hosack, 54, will preside over the trial in which the jury will be asked to give monetary awards to a mother and her son whose car was riddled with bullets in 1998 after it reportedly had backfired outside the Aryan Nations compound north of Hayden Lake.
(...)

Hosack hasn't been a judge long enough to build up a war chest of decisions that could hint at how he might guide the Aryan trial.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


11. Butler's message of hate may return to haunt him
The Spokesman Review, Aug. 22, 2000
http://www.spokane.net/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
The 82-year-old racist has been in court many times since he took early retirement as an aeronautical engineer and moved from California to North Idaho in 1973.

The white supremacy views that he brought with him -- the cornerstone of the Aryan Nations -- frequently catch the attention of law enforcement and civil rights advocates.

''We are facing the enemies of the white race,'' Butler said last week as he ate a patty melt and some coleslaw at a Coeur d'Alene restaurant.

But his critics say Butler's anti-Semitic, racist words spawn violence, and the time has come to hold him accountable.

Next week he'll square off with famed civil rights attorney Morris Dees in a courtroom showdown that could cost him his North Idaho compound.

So far, Butler seems to have won more court battles than he's lost.
(...)

Next Monday, though, Butler confronts perhaps his toughest opponent in Dees.

Dees, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, wants to use a civil tort damages suit to bankrupt and close the doors of the Aryan Nations.
(...)

Butler is viewed nationally as a patriarch of the white supremacy movement. For three decades, he's been one of the country's most influential racists.

Many ''Aryan warriors'' who've passed through the gates of his compound are now in prison for murders, bombings, counterfeiting and armored car robberies.

He continues to attract young neo-Nazi skinheads and felons on parole to his pine tree studded compound.
(...)

Butler preaches that the white race is a nation, and that nation is religion. White people are the real children of God, Butler says, and Jews are impostors.

He also preaches that the Aryan Nations is under siege and at war with Jews and anti-Aryan forces.
(...)

Much of Butler's work ''has been behind the scenes,'' said Dina Tanners, who co-founded the Kootenai County Human Rights Task Force in response to the Aryan Nations.

''But he has sparked so many others, I believe, who have committed crimes,'' said Tanners, a Jewish activist and college instructor who lives in Spokane.

The Aryan Nations compound continues to pump out racist literature that's mailed worldwide, including to various prisons. It also hosts the annual Aryan Congress, which attracts a shifting array of racists and anti-government types.

The Aryan Nations had one of the first Internet ''hate sites,'' carrying Butler's message worldwide.
(...)

Butler said if he prevails in the forthcoming trial, he intends to bring his own suit.

''I am going to try to recover legal costs, and monetary damages for pain and suffering,'' he said.

Butler said he worries only about legal costs associated with defending himself and the Aryan Nations. He said he is setting aside $600 of his monthly $800 Social Security check for legal costs.
(...)

Butler, who survived bypass surgery in 1987, still conducts Sunday services at his Church of Jesus Christ Christian at the compound. Typically, a couple dozen people show up.

On weekdays, Butler walks from an old farmhouse, where he lives with his German shepherd, Fritz, to the tiny Aryan Nations office.

He opens mail and checks with a small staff of volunteers who run the office. They answer the telephone and mail Aryan literature to those requesting it.

Pictures of Adolf Hitler and Bob Mathews, who left the Aryan Nations to form a terrorist group known as The Order, are on the office walls.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


12. TIMELINE: The Aryan Nations through the years Series: ''Aryan Nations''
The Spokesman Review, Aug. 20, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/s
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Here's a brief history of the Aryan Nations in North Idaho.
June 1973

Richard and Betty Butler move to North Idaho from California a year after buying 20 acres north of Hayden Lake. In 1977, the site becomes the Church of Jesus Christ Christian - Aryan Nations.

April 1980

Richard Butler, involved with a Posse Comitatus group in Kootenai County, calls for unity among white supremacist groups at a conference in Hays, Kan.

December 1980

As word of Butler's racist group spreads, citizens meet in Coeur d'Alene, laying groundwork for what becomes the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations.

June 27, 1981

Aryan Nations church is bombed, causing $80,000 damage. Butler blames the Jewish Defense League. The bombing is never solved.

July 1981

The first reported cross burning occurs at the Aryan Nations during a ''Kingdom Identity Conference.'' The gathering becomes an annual event called the Aryan Nations Congress.

July 1982

The Aryan Nations Congress honors Manfred Roeder, Robert Miles, J.B. Stoner and Louis Beam Jr. as ''Aryans of Outstanding Valor.''

September 1982

Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations is formed by Undersheriff Larry Broadbent, the Rev. Rick Morse and citizen- activist Dina Tanners.

June 1983

Aryan Nations holds a rally in Spokane's Riverfront Park, where a confrontation occurs involving Aryan supporter Robert Mathews, of Metaline Falls, Wash. Three months later Mathews secretly forms an Aryan terrorist group known as The Order.

October 1983

The Order launches its crime spree when Mathews and members Randy Duey, Bruce Pierce and Daniel Bauer rob an adult bookstore in Spokane.

April 1984

The Order robs an armored car in Seattle of $500,000. Counterfeit money printed at the Aryan Nations also turns up.

June 18, 1984

After bombing a synagogue in Boise, members of The Order use a machine gun to assassinate Jewish talk-radio host Alan Berg in Denver. The next month, The Order pulls off a $3.6 million armored car robbery in Ukiah, Calif.

Dec. 7, 1984

After earlier shootouts in Sandpoint and Portland, four Order members are arrested at a hideout on Whidbey Island. Mathews dies in a siege by the FBI.

April 15, 1985

A federal grand jury which has questioned Butler indicts 23 members of The Order. The same day, Aryan Nations and Order member David Tate fatally shoots a state trooper in Missouri.

August 1985

Aryan Nations security chief Elden ''Bud'' Cutler is arrested in Coeur d'Alene for ying to hire a hit man to kill the key FBI informant in The Order investigation.

December 1985

A federal jury in Seattle convicts 10 Order members of racketeering; others plead guilty. Sentences range from 40 to 100 years.

July 1986

The Aryan Nations Congress promotes establishment of a white homeland in five Northwest states.

Sept. 29, 1986

Three pipe bombs explode in Coeur d'Alene, including one at the U.S. Courthouse. An earlier bombing damages the home of anti-Aryan activist Bill Wassmuth. Investigators later tie the bombs to Aryan Nations security chief David Dorr, who has formed The Order II.

April 24, 1987

Richard Butler is arrested on a federal indictment, accusing him and 12 others of playing godfather roles in a scheme to overthrow the government with The Order. Butler stands trial in Fort Smith, Ark., and is acquitted in 1988.

April 1989

The Aryan Nations hosts its first Aryan Youth Conference, attracting neo-Nazi skinheads in an event that coincides with Adolf Hitler's birthday. The Aryans Nations promotes the event in its first mass mailing to residents of Kootenai County.

May 1990

Three men with ties to the Aryan Nations - Steven E. Nelson, Robert J. Winslow and James Proctor Baker - are arrested after traveling from North Idaho to Seattle to blow up a gay bar. The three are later convicted in Idaho.

January 1991

Randy Weaver, who attended Aryan Nations gatherings in the mid- 1980s, is arrested for selling a sawed-off shotgun to an informant. Weaver refuses to show up for trial, ultimately triggering an August 1992 shootout with federal agents at Ruby Ridge. Weaver's son and wife, and a deputy U.S. marshal, are killed. Weaver later is acquitted of most charges.

February 1992

Another splinter group from the Aryan Nations, ''The Bob Mathews Brigade,'' is linked to plots to assassinate two civil rights leaders.

June 1992

The U.S. Supreme Court rules that cross burnings like those at the Aryan Nations are protected free speech.

December 1992

Two members of the Aryan Nations, Tim R. Biscope and Adam Elteto, are arrested for first-degree murder in the shooting death of skinhead Johnny R. Sharbnow.

July 1993

Chevie Kehoe marries his second wife in a polygamous ceremony at the Aryan Nations. Kehoe later forms a Mathews-style group, the Aryan Peoples Republic, that is linked to five killings and three robberies.

December 1995

Betty Butler dies.

March 1998

The FBI says a group known as the Aryan Republican Army, responsible for 22 bank robberies, got its firearms from Chevie Kehoe. He is sentenced to life in prison in May 1999.

July 1998

Victoria and Jason Keenan are shot at during a car chase from the Aryan Nations compound. The assaults occur two weeks before an Aryan parade in Coeur d'Alene.

December 1998

Two wealthy former California businessmen, Vincent Bertollini and Carl Story, form the 11th Hour Remnant Messenger and send out expensive mass mailings promoting the Aryan Nations and its Christian Identity white supremacy message.

January 1999

Aryan Nations and Butler are sued by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represents the Keenans.

Aug. 11, 1999

Former Aryan Nations security guard Buford Furrow is arrested for killing an Asian postal carrier and firing an assault rifle in a Jewish day care center in Los Angeles.

July 2000

A national leader of the Posse Comitatus and Bertollini are featured speakers at the Aryan Nations Congress, where swastikas and a cross are burned in night ceremonies.
[...entire item...]


13. On the inside Series: ''Aryan Nations''
The Spokesman Review, Aug. 20, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Outsiders are regarded with great suspicion at Richard Butler's Aryan Nations compound near Hayden Lake. And, aside from law enforcement agents, the greatest suspicion may be reserved for the media. That's why Spokesman-Review photographer Kristy MacDonald was surprised to be offered an inside look at the Aryan Nations Congress 2000 in mid-July. The annual congress is a tightly controlled three- day summit of leading white supremacists from around the country. Here's MacDonald's report.

Arriving at the compound's electronic gate, I saw horses grazing in a pasture, and a sign nailed to a Ponderosa pine that read, ''Whites only.''

Richard Butler and four of his guards - men in black pants and neatly ironed blue shirts - sat on a deck in the center of the compound. A bright red flag emblazoned with a swastika hung from a guard tower behind Butler's rustic wooden chapel.

The event was a press conference, and the Blue Shirts told the media what we could and couldn't do, including what direction I could point my camera. Butler talked, but it didn't make a very good picture. After the press conference, I asked him if I could shoot a portrait of him and his dog, Fritz, who was dozing in the shade nearby. Butler agreed.

''Fritz, come,'' I called.

A suddenly snarling German shepherd charged straight at me.

I have raised show dogs for years, and had petted Fritz on my way in. I realized that the dog had probably been taught attack commands in German.

''Fritz. Platz,'' I said in my best obedience ring voice. He came to a sliding sit, growling under his breath. A group of young men in black boots and skinny red suspenders laughed raucously.

''Listen, she knows the mother tongue,'' said a man with a shaved and tattooed head. ''Man, she stopped Fritz! I can't believe she did that!''
(...)

The Blue Shirts started to shoo the media back to the gate. Perhaps impressed, or at least amused, by my run-in with Fritz, they invited me to spend the night. You can stay in the ladies' bunkhouse, offered a guard named Mike. I took him up on it. The cost: $35, and agreement that I wouldn't photograph anyone without their permission.
(...)

Neuman Britton, a California pastor, had started his sermon in the chapel. Wagging his index finger and glaring out of the corner of his eye, Britton raged about a holy war against Jews. When he had finished, faithful listeners gathered around to lay on hands in an attempt to heal an egg-sized lump that festered on Britton's mouth.
(...)

An agitated Blue Shirt herded me through the pines to the back entrance of the chapel. I had no idea what was going on. I was surprised at the press of people in the room. They were all men and they started shouting at me: ''Women in back!''

I pushed my way through the staring crowd, wondering if they were going to do some ritual that excluded women. It was 9:45 p.m. The ''Cross Lighting'' was scheduled for 10. Maybe they had a prayer service first. I joined several dozen women in a meeting room behind the chapel.

''We're going to do a strip search,'' a Blue Shirt informed us. We learned that the registry of participants for the Aryan Congress was missing. The list had names, addresses and phone and license plate numbers for everyone. The guards were wound up. ''We have an infiltrator,'' I heard more than once.

Then Pastor Butler walked into the room of nervous women. ''It's OK,'' he said. ''It was a mistake. The list has been found.''

The Blue Shirts were unconvinced. They wanted to see the list with their own eyes, but nobody knew where it was.
(...)

Fifteen minutes later, the congress participants were posing for family snapshots like 150 happy tourists, while a huge wooden cross and two swastikas burned behind them.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


14. Aryans pick up maps of public buildings
The Spokesman Review, Aug. 16, 2000
http://www.spokane.net/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
COEUR d'ALENE -- Local law enforcement officials are not the only ones bolstering security for the upcoming Aryan Nations civil trial.

The Aryan Nations sent two men and a woman last week to speak with local police officials and were given a map that shows all the buildings and parking areas on the Kootenai County courthouse campus.

Kootenai County Sheriff's Capt. Travis Chaney said Aryan Nations members Jere Brower, James Torkelson and an unidentified woman were given a map that shows the location of the Kootenai County Justice Building, the old courthouse, the Kootenai County Administration Building, maintenance shop and parking lots.

''That's what they were given,'' said Chaney, who would not identify the police official who gave the Aryans the map. Chaney said the Aryans obtained the map ''for their own security purposes.''

In an unrelated development, county Commissioner Ron Rankin said he learned Tuesday that all incoming packages to the county are now being screened.
(...)

Also on Tuesday, the Kootenai County Commission passed a resolution banning everyone except defendants, plaintiffs and attorneys from taking cameras, computers, cellular phones, pagers, and laptop computers into the Kootenai County Justice Building beginning Aug. 28.

That's when the civil trial against the Aryan Nations and its leader, Richard Butler, is set to begin.
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15. Stakes get higher for Aryans
The Spokesman Review, Aug. 15, 2000
http://www.spokane.net/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Coeur d'Alene _ The Aryan Nations faces a much greater potential monetary impact from a civil lawsuit following a judge's ruling Monday.

Plaintiffs will be allowed to seek punitive damages against the Aryan Nations, Idaho 1st District Judge Charles Hosack ruled.

The punitive damages could be in addition to actual damages for medical bills, car damage and other expenses incurred by a North Idaho woman and her son.

Victoria and Jason Keenan were shot at outside the Aryan Nations compound, north of Hayden Lake, on July 1, 1998.

They are suing the Aryan Nations; its founder, Richard Butler; and three Aryan security guards.

The Keenans are being represented by attorneys for the Southern Poverty Law Center. Its co-founder, Morris Dees, says he hopes the civil suit will bankrupt the Aryan Nations.

Butler, 82, views Dees as the archenemy of the Aryan Nations and the white supremacy movement.
(...)

It's not clear why punitive damages weren't sought when the suit was filed, but it appears the last-minute amendment was a tactical move by the plaintiffs.

They buttressed their argument for punitive damages with facts and statements from various witnesses who had given sworn statements during the initial ''discovery'' phase of the suit.

Punitive damages, which are allowed in Idaho but not in Washington, can be a way of allowing a civil jury to send a punishment message to defendants.

But before a jury will get to address the question of punitive damages, the judge will have to be satisfied that trial testimony was sufficient to allow that.
(...)

The plaintiffs will now be able to present witnesses in an attempt to show that Aryan security guards Edward Jesse Warfield, John Yaeger and Shane Wright were acting as agents or employees of the Aryan Nations at the time of the assault.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Hate Groups: National Alliance

16. Racist Alliance Sets Sights on 'White Utahns'
The Salt Lake Tribune, Aug. 21, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Residents of Salt Lake City's Ensign Downs neighborhood are the latest to receive social and political surveys and membership applications from the National Alliance, a group denouncing ''the sickness of multiculturalism, which is destroying America, Britain, and every other Aryan nation in which it is being promoted.''

Calling for a ''racially clean area of the earth'' -- white schools, white residential neighborhoods, white recreation areas and white workplaces'' -- the group is asking ''white Utahns of good moral character'' to pay $15 to participate in the Alliance's effort ''to build a secure and healthy future by having no non-whites in our living space.''

To be worthy to learn more about the Alliance, a person must answer correctly six or more of the 10 questions on the organization's survey. In other words, you must believe that:

-- Third World immigrants are bad for America;

-- Homosexuality is unnatural and immoral;

-- Bill Clinton has disgraced the office of the president;

-- Political correctness is ridiculous;

-- The media doesn't report the whole story;

-- Politicians are corrupt.

Additionally, you must date only within your own race and have thoroughly researched your genealogy.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Hate Groups: Nazism

17. German anti-Nazi activists demonstrate against far right
Associated Press, Aug. 19, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
HAMBURG, Germany (AP) -- Thousands of anti-Nazi activists demonstrated in three German cities on Saturday, while a court struck down a ban on a planned neo-Nazi demonstration in the northern port city of Hamburg set for Sunday.

About 2,000 people marched in Hamburg in a demonstration organized by labor unions, churches, and citizens groups, while 1,000 marched in the northeastern city of Rostock and 350 people took part in a demonstration in Eisenach in the eastern state of Thuringia.

The anti-Nazi demonstrations came a day after Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder called on Germans to help stamp out violence and discrimination against minorities following a recent string of attacks on foreigners.

Police said eight people were temporarily detained for carrying baseball bats and knives in Rostock Saturday, while 22 neo-Nazis were detained during a far-right demonstration in Eisenach late Friday.

Also on Saturday, the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, ruling on an appeal by radical rightist leader Christian Worch, partially overturned a Hamburg state court's ban on a neo-Nazi demonstration. But the court limited the demonstration to 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday in a square at the Axel Springer Publishers' building.

The court also stipulated that the neo-Nazi demonstrators cannot chant references, carry signs, or speak of Hitler's former deputy, Rudolf Hess.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


18. Schroeder warns neo-Nazis
BBC, Aug. 21, 2000
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, on a tour of eastern Germany, has warned that he will not allow the rebuilding of the east to be hijacked by neo-Nazi extremists.

Mr Schroeder was speaking in the town of Bad Elster along the border with the Czech Republic, at the start of an 11-day tour of eastern German states which will include 40 towns and cities.
(...)

Unemployment in the former communist states remains stubbornly at double Western levels, and now the spectre of extreme right-wing violence has added a new urgency to the task of binding East and West Germany together.

Mr Schroeder has said he would welcome moves to ban extreme the far-right National Democratic Party (NDP).

The foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, welcomed the comments.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


19. Three Neo-Nazis Face Murder Charges
Associated Press, Aug. 22, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
HALLE, Germany (AP) -- Three young Germans charged with murdering an African immigrant kept kicking and beating their victim even after he stopped moving, fueled by their anti-foreigner hatred, prosecutors said as the trial began Tuesday.

The June 11 attack on Alberto Adriano, 39, is one of the worst cases in a resurgent wave of neo-Nazi violence in Germany. Prosecutors even had the indictment translated into English, an unusual move demonstrating the international attention focused on how the country is dealing with foreigner hate.
(...)

Federal prosecutors have taken over the case because of its seriousness, part of Germany's efforts to crack down on a recent surge in violent attacks by right-wing extremists.

The first neo-Nazi killing in years was recorded in 1999, and three more deaths, including Adriano, have occurred so far this year.

Chief Federal Prosecutor Kay Nehm has called the rise in extreme-right violence a security threat because of the climate of fear and intimidation it creates, especially for the 7.3 million foreigners who make up 9 percent of the German population.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


20. Inside Story: Extreme prejudice
The Guardian (England), Aug. 21, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
A German is kicked to death in a Leipzig park. Why? He was black. John Hooper on how the former East Germany has become a breeding ground for neo-Nazis whose goal is to recreate Hitler's Reich
(...)

Investigators later told his wife that two of the three young men they had arrested and charged held him, while the third kicked and beat him to the ground. Then all three joined in, stamping on her husband's head with their steel-toecapped boots until one of his eyes came out of its socket. Finally, they stripped him and threw him into the bushes. He died of his injuries three days later on June 11.

When I ask Winfried Petzold to comment on the attack, he replies: ''You need to hear both sides.''

Petzold is the leader in Saxony of the NPD, the National Democratic Party of Germany. The NPD is the party the German government is considering banning in a crackdown on far-right extremism, aimed at curbing attacks like the one on Adriano. The party has more members in Saxony than in any other of Germany's 16 regions.
(...)

For a party facing the ultimate sanction in a democratic society, the NPD is not exactly going out of its way to assure people that it has been misunderstood. Petzold insists that it has ''both feet firmly planted within the constitution''. But its central aim is ''to restore the German Reich''.
(...)

The NPD does not really deny that its members are involved in violence. ''We always try to influence the younger members not to use force,'' says Petzold.

But asked if there are criminal elements in the NPD, he turns up the palms of his hands, smiles and says: ''In any group, there are criminals. Just look at the SPD and CDU.'' Both Germany's main parties have recently been immersed in illegal funding scandals.

The NPD, then, is not a party for wishy-washy liberals. But it is tiny. At the last general election in 1998, it won just 126,571 votes - 0.3% of the total. The question which more than two weeks of impassioned debate in Germany has failed to answer is whether banning it will bring the government any closer to its aim of stamping out right-wing violence, particularly in the east.

Racist attacks happen all over Europe. Britain has had its Alberto Adrianos. But the frequency of such attacks in eastern Germany is in a different dimension. The most conservative calculations suggest an average of around three deaths a year in a territory with a population of only 18m. That is roughly four times the rate in the UK.

As deputy director of the Berlin regional centre for inter-cultural projects, youth and schools, Britta Kollberg is in the front line of the fight against neo-Nazism. Her responsibility is to draw up campaigns aimed at stemming right-wing extremism. ''The NPD is a long way from the real problem,'' she maintains. ''Which is that in many parts of eastern Germany it is considered absolutely normal to be racist.''
(...)

What makes racism in eastern Germany all the more incomprehensible is that the number of foreigners is tiny - 2% of the population. By no means everyone resents outsiders.
(...)

The explanation preferred by liberal politicians and journalists rests on the deindustrialisation of eastern Germany after unification 10 years ago and the rise in unemployment that followed. At more than 17%, the jobless rate in the east is more than double that in the west.

So it is striking to hear Kollberg, the very model of a liberal do- gooder, give her answer to the question of why young east Germans get involved in racist violence.

''Because they believe in the superiority of the white race,'' she says. ''Right-wing extremism has no real connection with the social situation. It may be desolate in the east, but the findings are that those who carry out the attacks are in a very good personal situation. They have a very clear view. They believe in Aryan resistance. They call it that - Aryan resistance.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


21. Neo-Nazi Web Sites Reported to Flee Germany
New York Times/AFP, Aug. 21, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
BERLIN, Monday, Aug. 21 -- German far-rightists are transferring their Internet sites to access providers in the United States in order to evade a crackdown by German authorities, N.D.R. radio reported today.

In a report on neo-Nazi activities, the radio said that around 90 rightist groups had transferred their sites to the United States as Germany has sought ways to fight a recent wave of violence that left an African immigrant dead and 10 other immigrants injured.
(...)

Nearly 360 hate-mongering Internet sites used by neo-Nazis have been identified by the domestic security agency in northern Germany's Lower Saxony region, the radio said in a statement issued ahead of its broadcast.

The agency's spokesman, Rüdiger Hesse, told the radio that neo-Nazi sites had become more aggressive as the German debate on the far right has recently intensified. Some, he said, provided instructions on how to make bombs.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Hate Groups: World Church of the Creator

22. White Supremacist Show Will Air In Seven Towns
The Hartford Courant, Aug. 19, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
A white supremacist group will soon be spreading its self-proclaimed racist message in seven southern Connecticut towns through public access cable television. And the cable company says it can do nothing about it.
(...)

The programs, entitled ''White Revolution,'' are protected by the First Amendment's right to free speech. As long as they are not pornographic or infringe on copyright laws, they must be aired, said Donkin.

The programs attempt to teach children ''to be as racist as possible,'' said Matt Hale, the 29-year-old leader of the World Church of the Creator in East Peoria, Ill. The program is scheduled to air next week on Channel 21 in Branford, North Branford, Guilford, Madison, East Haven, North Haven and Wallingford.

Hale said the programs were submitted to AT&T Cable Services by Wallingford resident Brian P. Davis, 21, who was arrested this month in upstate New York after being stopped by police while driving a car loaded with ammunition and three weapons.

Hale said the tapes will ''tell the truth'' about Benjamin Smith, who went on a three-day shooting rampage in Indiana and Illinois last year.
(...)

Public access television is governed by the Federal Communications Commission, which prohibits obscenity and indecency. In Connecticut, cable television is regulated by the state Department of Public Utility Control.

The board of directors of local cable stations may pass their own rules for accepting programs for broadcast. After a religious sect in Fillmore, N.Y. submitted a videotape purporting to expose ''the agents of the anti-Christ'' to Guilford public access, officials decided shows that are not produced locally must at least have a local sponsor.
(...)

Lisa Scails, president of the Connecticut NAACP chapter, said the White Revolution programs might be protected by free speech laws, but she is urging viewers to tune them out.

''We are suggesting to parents and reasonable people that these programs contain messages that we would not want our children to watch,'' Scails said Friday.

But in fact, exposing white youths to a white supremacist culture is the main goal of the programs, said Hale, whose title is Pontifex Maximus, or high priest, of his organization.

''The airing of White Revolution is part of a coordinated effort to win more of our White Brothers and Sisters to our great Cause,'' Hale wrote in a press release announcing that his programs would be broadcast in Connecticut.

''In particular, I hope that many White children will watch the show so that they can learn and accept the Truth before having their minds polluted with anti-white concepts,'' Hale wrote.

Hale suggested that the motivation for Smith's unprovoked murders was the refusal by Illinois authorities to allow Hale to practice law. Hale calls himself a ''doctor of law'' and said he is considering applying for a law license in Connecticut.

Davis was arrested Aug. 5 in upstate New York after several hundred rounds of ammunition, a loaded shotgun, a semiautomatic rifle and a .22-caliber pistol were found in the trunk of a car he was driving in Cambridge, N.Y. Davis could not be reached for comment Friday.

Police said they also found literature in the car linking Davis and passenger Bruce F. Silvernail, 28, of Plymouth, to the World Church of the Creator.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]