As The Second Vermont Republic Sputters to Its End...

... apparently the new plan to attain relevance in our time by the secesher brain trust is a concerted anti-Bernie Sanders campaign by Vermont's flailing secessionists.

The publisher of SVR's hate blog, Rob Williams, points us to this piece by longtime secesher flack, Bill Kauffman, as though it isn't a piece of transparent, partisan "analysis." Kauffman "analysis" relies entirely on the musings of, at one time or another, three of Vermont's best known crackpots. (I've written before about Kauffman here. Kauffman is also a contributor to the notoriously anti-Semitic, neo-Confederate and racist Chronicles magazine. Williams suggests to us that he has a relationship with Bernie - that's a laugh since Bernie has a short fuse around assholes like Williams. Although he is well aware about his Dixie singing founder of SVR, the quite dead Thomas H. Naylor,, Kauffman never discloses what he also knows about the SVR-Williams'-Naylor's many, many ties to racists and homophobes like the declared anti-Semites and racist League of the South, delegates from the racist Southern National Congress, and Williams past publication of the ravings of racist UVM prof. Robert S. Griffin, anti-Semites like Carol Moore and Dennis Morrisseau (too name only two of his Jew loathers), the racist LoSer board of director and convicted felon Franklin Sanders (no relation to Bernie), as well as the particularly nasty homophobes at South Carolina's Christian Exodus who Rob invited to Vermont because they like him.

In short, with no successes that he in the more than ten years that he's been fluffing the secesher hog - a failed publication; a rejected distribution deal; the goal of distribution throughout Vermont never even came close; although he promised them in all towns there has been no meaningful effort to get Vermonters to vote for secession at town meetings; despite his saying seceshers would be in the legislature and proposing legislative articles of secession by 2015, no secesher has come even remotely close to something exceeding a single digit showing when people knew it was a dyed in the wool secessionist running - Williams is now apparently orchestrating anti-Bernie campaign aided by a tiny group of usual suspects (former Bernie friends and/or allies Peter Diamondstone, Greg Guma, Robin Lloyd, Ben Dangle, to name just a few - all seceshers and lifelong losers.

The biggest laugh I got from the piece is that Williams might possibly believe that Bernie Sanders might see him as something better than (as in advisor) the neo-Confederate, anti-Semitic, racist enabler that he is. Next time you see him remember that Bernie sees you for exactly what you are.

"... support for the Pentagon’s F-35 Burlington-based joint strike fighter baffles and infuriates me. I find his cozying up to Lockheed and Sandia Labs perplexing, and his support for Israel maddening.”

“Bernie knows I am a secessionist,” says Williams. “I have often suggested he run for president of the 2nd Vermont Republic. I’m not sure he appreciates this.”

Right, Rob. Anyone is bound to be sweeped away by the pleadings of a neo-Confederate, racist and anti-Semitic enabler rather than the platform for the presidency. Williams really is a completely delusional, narcissistic asshole, and Bernie knows it. What Williams didn't say was that more than five years ago Thomas Naylor sought to get Bernie to run as the secesher gubernatorial candidate but who they eventually got to stick his neck out was Dennis Steele, a bad caricature of the Brawny Towel Guy. Although conventional wisdom has long held that Bernie hasn't a chance in the Democratic 2016 primary, the seceshers own track record for failure may push Bernie over the top. Wouldn't that be a trip?

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Are anti-Marriage Equality Activists Preparing to Resort to Secession?

A few days ago Christianist windbag and conspiracist nutter Joseph Farah, publisher of the evangelical online hatesite called World Net Daily proposed exactly that but is apparently ignorant of the fact that Christian haters have tried that before.

A little more than ten years ago Cory Burnell, a failed member of the leadership of the Texas branch of the racist League of the South, proposed that Christians from across the country emigrate in 12,000 member waves to the State of South Carolina where they'd eventually takeover the various legislative districts. Well, Corey failed miserably but not before getting an invite to visit Vermont by Second Vermont Republic's own Rob Williams where Burnell condemned "sodomite marriage" to Vermont's seceshers. To date, Vermont's seceshers still consider same-sex marriage to be an unsettled issue in Vermont.

Here's what Farrah said,

Does Same Sex Marriage Warrant Secession?

"I know there are millions of Christians, Jews and others who would pull up stakes and move to another country that honored the institution of marriage as it was designed by God – a union between one man and one woman.

As Jesus said it: 'For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh.'

Is there one state in 50 that would not only defy the coming abomination, but secede in response? The rewards could be great. I would certainly consider relocating. How about you?

The founders of this country found a place of refuge in America and shaped it into the greatest self-governing nation in the history of world. Just think what one state could do if it simply stuck to the principles that made this country great? Americans wouldn’t have to cross an ocean to rediscover what brought most of our ancestors here. We could simply drive.

Are any states so inclined?

I haven’t heard this question raised by anyone else. So I’m raising it now. We don’t have much time before the nine high priests in black robes decide to follow Baal instead of the One True God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We need a Promised Land. We need an Exodus strategy.

[snip]

"Are there any governors or legislatures out there among the 50 states willing secede to offer a refuge for the God-fearing?"

Various forms of this misbegotten scheme have been tried before by the likes of Burnell and Jason Sorens' failed New Hampshire Free State Project. The idea always fails because of the huge cost attached to uprooting 10s of thousands of disgruntled religionists and other true believers - it's simple economics. The bucks trump the hate.

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Will He or Won't He?

Back in February I challenged Vermont's last secessionist, the failed publisher of the defunct secesher propaganda rag Vermont Commons, Rob Williams, to once and for all renounce his ties to the racist and anti-Semitic hate group known as the League of the South after the LoS announced its plans to celebrate the murder of Abraham Lincoln by the deranged secessionist John Wilkes Booth here. This came after LoS's ironfisted leader, Michael Hill, organized a guerrilla group that he called "The Indomitables" and had directed his members to arm themselves with a variety of weapons including train derailers!

Here we are three months later and all we've gotten from Williams is crickets but not so at LoS. Now comes the revelation by the Southern Poverty Law Center that, not unlike the SVR super hyper secret listers of 2009-2010 that this blog exposed, the LoS had a members only secret Facebook page where like the SVR group they could chat about Jews, pesky women, homosex, miscegenation and "tribes." Here's the SPLC story.

So, with a fresh revelation of racist and anti-Semitic chat by his supposed allies at LoS the question remains, will Rob Williams ever distance himself from his bigoted friends at the League of the South or are we to assume that he approves since they, like he, are seceshers?

I think we know the answer.

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Another One Bites The Dust

Enough isn't being said about failures of the secessionist movement. What's left of the group that called itself the Second Vermont Republic is a mere shadow on a cloudy day of what it used to be. At its greatest, SVR claimed 125 "members," that is until its founder, the Dixie singin' Thomas Naylor, eliminated memberships and declared himself a "think tank." He stopped bankrolling the Vermont secesher print journal, Vermont Commons and funding their gatherings so their visibility became nil. Then Naylor up and died a year and a half ago and that brought the few remaining VT secesher antics to a screeching halt.

Similarly, Ed Sebesta over at the Anti-neo-Confederate blog reported yesterday about the folding of the Southern Nationalist Network website, a website that had been devoted to the racist and anti-gay nature of the "emerging" Southern secessionist movement. Most of its membership seems to come from the depleted ranks of the League of the South, Sons of Confederate Veterans and a few mostly defunct chapters of the Klan. It seems that the SNN feels that they've been so successful in their demonstrations, where they number usually less than ten, that they no longer have the need for a platform like a website. Su-u-re. In the 21st century the path to success lies in restricting your public access.

Here's Ed's report:

Southern Nationalist Network Website is Supposedly Shut Down Because It is Claimed That It Has Been a Big Success
May 8, 2015

"The www.southernnationalist.com website has shut down."

"The person who ran it claimed that the website was shut down for this reason:"

"Over these past 5 years demonstrations have been held to rally folks to the idea of independence for Dixie. Many people have become serious Southern nationalists. Due to this rise in activity SNN will be shutting down; in order to begin a new phase that will inspire even more folks to get involved in the movement."

"So because the website was successful it is being shut down and the ownership given up. I would like to suggest another possibility, the SNN wasn't going anywhere."

"You look at photos of the League of the South/SNN demonstrations and you realize that there aren't a lot of people at the demonstrations."

"Or perhaps there wasn't any money to pay the bill. Even if you were going on to another activity you would retain ownership of the existing site to refer people to your new site or activity."

"I don't think the SNN's demise is a great advance. It didn't seem to be accomplishing much. I thought because they were protesting they might get recruits. Direct action, protests often get people involved. But it seems there isn't seem to be any public support for the SNN's agenda."

The Southern seceshers got maybe ten people to turn out, on a good day, for their demos. Not unlike VT seceshers who at their last Statehouse stunt got maybe a dozen people from instate, some visiting allies from out-of-state and a few of the nutters from that worn-out act called Bread and Puppet Theater. The VT seceshers were spread out so thinly on the Statehouse floor that they had to shout to hear each other.

So, if you want to see one of the last remaining seceshers in Vermont, you'll have to go to the Waitsfield or Warren Fourth of July parade (no irony there, huh?) where you'll get to see Rob William's wizened scowl.

UPDATE Sunday, May 10, 2015, 12:00 PM: There's a particularly vicious racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic website called Occidental Dissent run by a white supremacist and neo-Confederate scumbag named Brad Griffin a.k.a. Hunter Wallace where the commenters are lamenting the passing of the Southern Nationalist Network. Included in the collective wailing and whining is this post by the piece of shit who ran the racist Southern Nationalist Network, another neo-Confederate waste of time by the name of Michael Cushman. Here's his bullshit:

Palmetto Patriot says:
May 9, 2015 at 4:44 AM

Thank you very much to those who read and supported the site. I enjoyed running SNN and met quite a few really good folks thru it. It was intended to be more than a blog. We did regular podcasts, videos, organised (sic) activism, etc. It was much too much for me to operate by myself once I began to work more hours. Even with a little help it was too much. I also felt it had served its purpose by popularising (sic) the term and ideology ‘Southern nationalist’ among those in pro-Southern and pro-White circles. We mostly defeated the Rainbow Confederate forces and moved the Southern secessionist movement in an ethno-nationalist direction. That said, we were not seeing a lot of growth in our ranks despite a lot of time, money and effort being put into the project over 5 years. So I think it is time for the next thing. To get a different – better – result something new must be tried, I think. We need talented people to step up with new ideas for spreading our worldview. For the last few months I have been focused on writing a Golden Circle book. I recently finished the first draft of that and will soon start a new book project. As HW says, I do plan to start a new blog – a much less ambitious but more manageable site than SNN.

Heh!

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How Unlike The Secessionists At The Scottish National Party Are The Weenies At The Secesher Second Vermont Republic?

In recent months the baas of the Second Vermont Republic, Rob Williams has been making thinly veiled comparisons between his moribund group and the Scottish National Party. Let's take a look at that comparison.

SVR has existed for about a decade; the SNP has existed for more than eight decades. The SNP holds 10% of the seats in the Scottish House of Commons; SVR has never occupied a legislative or statewide office, ever. Secessionists (Dennis Steele, Peter Diamondstone and Emily Peyton) have repeatedly failed to inspire public support beyond the single percentile; in fact, in their most ambitious attempt, the Steele gubernatorial campaign of 2010, the seceshers failed to do better than three quarters of one percent of the vote - more than 99% of Vermonters voted for someone other than the secesher Steele. The SNP's widespread support in the Scottish body politic is contrasted by SVR's utter lack of support from the public, political institutions, public bodies, educational institutions, clergy and, well, just about anyone you can think of. Other than its strident antipathy to rule seated in London at Westminster Parliament the SNP has never engaged in the establishment of alliances with racist, white supremacist or homophobic hate groups as the SVR has in furtherance of its goals; nor has the SNP engaged in and promoted the base anti-Semitism as SVR's "small community" of crackpots has.

One similar strategy of the two groups has been opposition to popular military projects. In SNP's case it's the Trident nuclear sub base 40 miles from Glasgow; in SVR's case it's opposition to basing of still to be developed F35s with the Vermont Air National Guard. In SVR's case the opposition has taken a distinctly anti-VTANG tone, while the SNP has engaged in no such demonizing of the military in general. Further, the SNP has sought to establish common ground with the Labour Party, if not with the Conservative Party, in the upcoming election which will have the base as an issue, while the SVR has fostered terrible relations with Vermont's congressional delegation, virtually all of its political parties (except for the Liberty Uniontards who never count), its statewide and legislative officials and Burlington's city administration (the F35s will be based at the city's airport). Hell, Williams can't even get his wife to support his movement.

The SNP's opposition to the nuclear fleet is based on real world considerations of affordability and Britain's future role in the world if it's to keep Scottish participation, while SVR is basing its opposition to the F35s based on the loose interpretations of a patent attorney's thoughts on a limited number of documents received by a narrow FOIA request.

The SNP could very well shape the future of Britain's nuclear fleet, while the SVR has virtually no chance of affecting the outcome of the F35 basing.

While the SNP supports marriage equality SVR proposes to set aside Vermont's now long established law based on its constitutional requirements on the matter in favor of a referendum majority decision on minority rights; likewise, it seems to want to take no position on women's reproductive freedom. Kinda makes one wonder what SVR intends to do with Vermont's constitution which predates by more than a decade and a half its statehood.

"(T)he Second Vermont Republic takes no official position on such controversial issues as abortion, gay marriage, school prayer, and legalizing marijuana. These are issues for the citizens of the independent republic to decide." SVR website FAQ, 3.28.15

Oddly, SVR's failed lieutenant gubernatorial candidate recently, according to SVR, spoke to the South Burlington Rotary about... Wait for it... legalizing marijuana - go figure. Apparently the South Burlington Rotary thought so little of Peter Garritano's remarks that they made no mention of the attendee on their website as they normally do.

The SNP proposes expanding voter access while SVR proposes curtailing and suppressing voter access through an outdated and archaic town meeting scheme. The SNP stands for the eradication of poverty, the building of affordable social housing, free higher education as a matter of governance, while SVR vaguely stands for such but only through a trickle down fashion from a poorly thought out public bank scheme.

The SNP first gained traction with the voting public with a influx of Labour Party members (kinda like Democrats), trade unions and the nuclear disarmament movement; SVR has experienced no such influx, particularly among Vermont Democrats, unions and Vermont's small demilitarization movement with the exception of the aforementioned patent attorney and a sham radical, Juliet Buck, tied to SVR's hateblog.

In short, the Second Vermont Republic isn't even remotely comparable to the actually secessionist movement Scottish National Party.

The SNP has widespread community support as a political enterprise; the weenies at SVR are a statewide standing joke.

More on the SNP nuclear fleet issue here.

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There's A New Hate Group In Town

And given the current baas of the Second Vermont Republic's very low bar for who he'll work with in pursuit of secession I think that Burlington VT's Champlain College adjunct staffer, Rob Williams, is gonna find this to be a match made in heaven. The Middlebury, VT based Creativity Alliance hates Jews, "coloreds," "niggers," race mixing and mestizos. Williams has long worked with and supported important neo-Confederate figures in the racist and anti-Semitic League of the South like Michael Hill, Franklin Sanders and Donald Livingston, so working with the Rev. Pat Tracy of the neo-Nazi Creativity Alliance should be an easy fit.

The Spring 2015 issue of the Southern Poverty Law Center lists the neo-Nazi Creativity Alliance as located in Middlebury, VT on their national hate map here. The contact information for the North American liaison for the Creativity Alliance's Reverend Pat Tracy, PO Box 1006, Middlebury, VT 05753 northamerica@creativityalliance.com can be found on pg. 4 of their handbook here. Their very particular and extremely racist and anti-Semitic membership requirements and obligations can be found on pages 7-10 of the handbook. The average, present day SVR member should fit in quite nicely.

Coincidentally, Middlebury, VT is also the original home to SVR co-founder Kirkpatrick Sale's racist enabling and anti-Semitic Middlebury Institute.

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Liar, Liar, Carol Moore's Anti-Semitic Pants (Sweats Really) On Fire!

Every so often I take a gander at the Second Vermont Republic's favorite misandrist, transphobic and anti-Semitic hate blogger's DC based website, The Carol Moore Report for a taste of whats au courant among Jew loathers. Carol never disappoints.

In a phallus festooned post (NSFW) Moore once again promotes the anti-Semitic exaggeration that Jews control Congress and the likely presidential candidates. Here's a taste:

"Look at Congress applauding their true leader (Benjamin Netanyahu), the one who is willing to destroy America if it's good for Israel; and makes sure they know they are out of office if they don't support him. (Perhaps Carol can point us to the precise area in Netanyahu's speech where he says that) I wonder how many non-attending Democrats will face stiff electoral challenges supported by Israel-directed money machines for boycotting his speech."

I strongly doubt that either Bernie Sanders or Pat Leahy are exactly quaking in their boots over such a supposed threat. I'd defy Carol to show us proof when 2016 rolls around of her cocksure prediction of even one Democratic boycotter getting such treatment from the "Jewish cabal." I'll remind her when the time comes to provide evidence of such nefarious contributions from Jewish or Israeli "money machines."

'Course, Carol goes on to anoint Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas billionaire casino owner and Jew to be the ultimate Republican Party King maker. Putting the lie to Moore's racist premise was this piece from a year ago in the Washington Post:

"Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who along with his wife plowed more than $92 million into efforts to help mostly losing candidates in the 2012 elections, is undertaking a new strategy for 2016 — to tap his fortune on behalf of a more mainstream Republican with a clear shot at winning the White House, according to people familiar with his thinking."

"In 2012, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson spent so much of their money on long-shot candidate Newt Gingrich that they helped extend an ugly intraparty fight that left the eventual nominee, Mitt Romney, severely bruised by the time he faced President Obama in the general election."

Newt who? Must have all been a part of a secret plan to secure the field for President Obama, if I got my conspiracist thinking right. Carol's never been one to let the truth get in the way of one of her anti-Semitic tropes, for instance, the view she shared will Holocaust denier Kevin Barrett that Jews were "definitely" involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers. Among her periodic discharges of racialized anti-Semitism has been her championing of segregation, positing that such a thing is okay when secessionists are the ones doing the segregating. Thing is that she hasn't posted much recently at the SVR hate blog operated by the new baas there, Rob Williams. Links from her Twitter account to her articles at VermontCommons/SVR from as little as two years ago are now deadlinks. I wonder why that is? Maybe it's because she's such an out and out liar? That's probably the safe bet. Or maybe it's because she has declared SVR to be "defunct." It's certainly not because of her blatant anti-Semitism since anti-Semitism has been a touchstone of the Vermont secession movement ideologues for more than a decade.

Previously published on this Vermont Secession blog about the lying anti-Semite Carol Moore: Vermont Secessionist Blogger Carol Moore's "Jew Counting," "Jew Washing" and "Jew Lubing", A Vermont Commons Blogger's Anti-Semitic Rant, More on James Edwards (Thomas Naylor's Hate Radio Friend) & Others and Vermont Commons Blogger (Carol Moore) Now Calls Second Vermont Republic "Defunct".

Corbett - Sitush - Steeltrap - SPECIFICO?

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The Quack Is Back

I'd thought that we'd seen the last of the homeopathic quack, Jennifer Stella, back in the 2012 session of the Vermont General Assembly. But apparently she's concerned that there may again be a move this year to finally remove the dangerous exposure to unvaccinated kids in our schools by the legislature, finally killing the "philosophical exemption" to vaccinations. This despite the fact that it's clear that the session is to be taken up by more pressing matters, at least for this term of the biennium.

True to the extremist nature of her agenda, I found that she has posted misleading material at Rob Williams anti-Semitic hate blog called the Second Vermont Republic (as a rule, I no longer link to Williams' hate site) from a similarly committed anti-vaxxer by the name of Bob Sears. Essentially, such anti-vaxxers believe that despite the proof and the science their poorly acquired doubts trump reason because "Freedom!", your child or immunocompromised relation or grandparent be damned.

Stella has incorporated Sears' misleading material into an essay that she addressed to Governor Shumlin. I'll tackle some of the deception via a dissection of Sears' essay from a piece published last Friday at Scienceblogs (there's that pesky "science" that doubters like Stella and Sears so rue) called "Blowing the Antivaccine Dog Whistle Again."

Here's a taste:

"There’s a term I coined reading Dr. Bob (Sears') nonsense: The antivaccine dog whistle. In politics, a “dog whistle” refers to terminology that sounds benign to most people but in reality tells those holding objectionable viewpoints that the speaker is sympathetic to them (or even one of them). In other words, most people can’t “hear” the message, and only those for whom it’s intended can “hear” it, recognizing for what it is. Let’s just put it this way. Dr. Bob is very good at antivaccine dog whistling. (So is Rand Paul.) Now, in a “point-counterpoint” pair of editorials, Dr. Bob does it again. Now, don’t get me started on the idiocy of false balance that presenting point-counterpoint editorials represents about a scientific topic like vaccination. Unfortunately, lately false balance has been rising from the grave again. (Apparently, like Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees, it never dies.) Dr. Bob’s editorial is entitled Mandatory vaccination is not the answer to measles and it starts out with some serious dog whistling right out of the box:"

"Measles. It used to be just a disease. Now it’s become a banner under which politicians gather to threaten one of our most sacred rights – the right to give informed consent for medical treatment."

"Whether you are for vaccines, against them, or neutral, allow me to ask this question: Is vaccination a medical treatment which should fall under the protection of informed consent, or does the government have the right to force them on every American?"

"See what I mean? Right out of the box, Dr. Bob is trying to reframe the debate over a bill being considered in the California legislature that would eliminate non-medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates. I realize that often the editorial writer doesn’t pick the title (usually the editor does), but the very title “mandatory vaccination” helps Dr. Bob frame the issue not as one of public health but rather personal freedom, just as Rand Paul did. Notice how obviously but nonetheless rather cleverly he does it, with a little rhetorical prestidigitation in which he’s saying, “You know, what’s important is not whether you’re for vaccines or antivaccines or “neutral” (whatever that means in this context), it’s that the government can’t take away our FREEDOM!"

In addition to the measles anti-vaccine dog whistling, Stella has engaged in guilt by loose association attacks on legislative opponents of her philosophical scam. We can expect to see more of these if, by chance, legislation is actually introduced and begins to move forward. It's how she rolls.

More from Scienceblogs on the Stella/Sears' junk science:

"The issue thus reframed, Dr. Bob launches into a list of the horrors of vaccination and the joy of measles. OK, I’m exaggerating, but not by a heck of a lot. It’s the same stuff Dr. Bob’s been spewing all along since the measles outbreaks began, antivaccine tropes about how the measles isn’t that bad and how vaccines are “dangerous,” all in the form of bullet points. For example:"

About 2,000 severe reactions are reported to the CDC each year which result in prolonged hospitalization, permanent disability, or death. Most reactions aren’t even reported, so the true number may be even higher. Yet, because they can’t be proven, the medical community denies that they can happen. Over $3 billion have been paid out to victims of vaccine reactions. Not $3 million. Not $30 million. Not even $300 million. But $3 billion. Are we paying that much money to victims of pretend reactions? I think not.

"Dr. Bob should change that last sentence from “I think not” to “I don’t think,” as in “I don’t think,” a general statement of Dr. Bob’s intellectual prowess with respect to vaccines. I’m guessing that 2,000 severe reactions a year is probably referring to the > (VAERS) database, which, as regular readers here know, is an open database to which anyone can report any “reaction” to vaccination, whether it’s actually related to a vaccine or not. VAERS is not authoritative, and the adverse events are not generally verified. Indeed, as has been reported before, one pro-vaccine blogger, Dr. Jim Laidler, reported that the influenza vaccine turned him into the Incredible Hulk. True, the VAERS staff did contact this blogger and ask him about it, but, as he noted, if he had refused to remove the entry, it would still be there. Another pro-vaccine blogger, Kevin Leitch, verified that VAERS lets you enter basically anything by reporting that a vaccine had turned his daughter into Wonder Woman. That’s why VAERS is the antivaccinationist’s favorite database, and I like to refer to dubious correlations reported from VAERS as dumpster diving. Not surprisingly, antivaccine lawyers have made the database almost worthless as a source of information over the incidence of adverse events due to vaccines by encouraging their clients to enter all sorts of reports, in particular reports claiming that vaccines caused autism. Most recently, the Toronto Star completely misinterpreted how VAERS data should and shouldn’t be used in its utterly botched story falsely linking all sorts of horrific reactions to Gardasil. Then Dr. Bob lists a bunch of bullet points, all consisting of tired antivaccine misinformation that was old when Dr. Bob was in medical school, including (my favorite) the claim that measles isn’t dangerous, a claim rebuked by medical science. For instance:

It has killed no one. It can kill about 1 person in every 1000 cases. Will someone die of measles in the United States in the years to come? Maybe. But it hasn’t killed anyone in the past 15 years or more. The last time measles hit us hard was 25 years ago. Not last year, not this year, yet. It’s measles, people. It’s not the plague. It’s not polio. It’s not Ebola. It’s measles. If the plague hits, let’s force everyone to vaccinate. But measles? Measles? We need something a lot more dangerous than that if we are going to rob each and every patient of the sacred right of informed consent.

"So, measles is no big whoop, even though it can kill one out of a thousand children who get it. Of course, Dr. Bob neglects to note other, more common, complications of the measles that can be very serious, such as pneumonia (which he at least mentioned in his earlier rants) and he very much failed to mention how about one in four victims of this year’s measles outbreak have had to be hospitalized."

"But notice the overall construction of Dr. Bob’s argument. To him, measles isn’t serious (which he explicitly states multiple times) and the vaccine is dangerous (which he implies with his listing of “severe complications” of vaccination in general); so to him it follows that “forcing” vaccination is an unacceptable affront to freedom"

Stella and her partner in the crime of disinformation, Dorian Yates, have been on a media push that includes misstating vaccine statistics, following the Bob Sears model for screwing with the facts. I just have to wonder why she thinks posting her crap at a well known anti-Semitic hate blog like Williams' is going to do her much good except with the bigoted misogynist, homophobe and racist demographic. But perhaps it's expecting too much in the way of rational thought from a quack.

The entire piece at Scienceblogs is well worth the read and I recommend it.

More, undoubtedly, to come.


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Second Vermont Republic Ally Celebrates the Sesquicentennial of a Murder for Presidents Week

Longtime Second Vermont Republic ally, advisor and friend at the neo-Confederate hate group called the League of the South, by way of its president and champion of the Southern War of Treason, Michael Hill, has issued this proclamation at its website:

Honoring John Wilkes Booth

"The League of the South looks to the present and future. However, from time to time we do look back at our past.

This 14th of April will mark the 150th anniversary of John Wilkes Booth’s execution of the tyrant Abraham Lincoln. The League will, in some form or fashion, celebrate this event. We remember Booth’s diary entry: “Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment.” A century and a half after the fact, The League of the South thanks Mr. Booth for his service to the South and to humanity."

"Stay tuned . . ."
"Michael Hill"

I know I should probably give up trying to get him to do it but I'm going to ask Rob Williams, the last remaining Vermont secesher, one more time to renounce and denounce the League of the South and once and for all end SVR's ties to the racist hate group.

UPDATE: 11:00 PM, 2.17.15
Almost six and a half hours after I put the above post up, Green Mountain Daily's Jack McCullough added his voice to the call for SVR to put some daylight between themselves and the racist hate group, the League of the South. It's likely, though, that all we'll get from Rob Williams will be one of his trite aphorisms or homemade secesh bromides.

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The Vermont Secession Movement Winds Down

It's been apparent for some time that what remains of the Vermont secession movement is drawing justly to a close. Long a movement founded in deception and of lies and of hatred it could only go this way.

Some trace the beginning of the end to the first revelations in 2007 that the Vermont secesher movement was joined at the hip to racists at the anti-Semitic, white separatist group called the League of the South, which is affiliated with the KKK and the Council of Conservative Citizens (formerly known as the White Citizens Council and commonly called the "Uptown Klan"). Like the LoS the Vermont seceshers, who call themselves the Second Vermont Republic, are vehemently anti-Semitic. That is a fact, as well as the racist, segregationist and conspiracist leanings, that has been exposed here at this blog by way of the writings of SVR bloggers like the Dixie singin' founder of SVR Thomas Naylor who had fantasized about creating an anti-Semitic white homeland, convicted felon and LoS Board of Directors member Franklin Sanders, neo-Confederate Lincoln historical revisionist Thomas DiLorenzo, failed secesher candidates for the Vermont Senate Dennis "Hit List" Morrisseau, Gaelan Brown, a conspiracist loon, and Robert "Needed Killin' " Wagner, Kirkpatrick Sale (who argues that Israel should be "undone"), Robert S. Griffin (UVM's own white nationalist professor), conspiracist anti-Semite Jacqueline Brook and Carol Moore, to name only a few.

Over the past year or so the SVR publisher, Rob Williams (who is also a member of the adjunct staff at Burlington's Champlain College), has been busy rhetorically cleansing his various secesher sites of the grossly bigoted posts of his bloggers. There are now a zombie like collection of rotten links that abound at his sites but he just can't help himself since new anti-Semitic posts have found their way onto his site, along with increasingly vicious anti-American, and in that way anti-Vermont, posts.

I had to smile when he posted a false claim that he had "invented" the idea that Vermonters get outdoors to enjoy the snow by attaching a numerical requirement to be recognized for doing so. He's calling his effort "#VT99". In doing so he betrays his roots from away since apparently he's unaware that such numerical recognition for how much a Vermonter might be enjoying the outdoors has been a part of the Vermont scene for many, many years. Probably the most notable was the Vermont 100 Club at Killington from a couple of decades ago that had to do with how many days a year that you used your season pass. He calls for 30 minutes of snow related activity on 99 days - sound familiar? Around Vermont that's called getting the mail and taking out the compost. He's even created a euro style bumper sticker to go with it that he's offered for free to his readers, for which, I have it on good authority, that there have been few, if any, takers. That's just a small measure of how mammothly unsuccessful his secession related endeavors - his print journal distribution and conventions featuring bigots from out of state and his plan to get secession articles on 200 Town Meeting ballots by 2015 (so far zero) and his constitutional convention scheme - have been for years. SVR founders Naylor, Ian Baldwin and Williams were all famously unsuccessful in getting their families, spouses and local communities to join them in their secesher delusions.

Hilariously, on Wednesday Rob posted the ironically titled "Secession, the Reasonable Option Everyone Resists" by Thomas E. Woods, Jr., a neo-Confederate founder of the League of the South. Rob signs off his post with his trite "Long Live the UNTied States," to which I'd ask, "Exactly what state or states are those, Rob?" - delusional asshole.

Rob Williams is now pretty much all that remains of the membership of 20 or nutjobs in the SVR. Don't forget to shut off the lights as you leave, Rob.

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Is This Any Way To Run A Republic's Gift Shop?

Occasionally on Rob Williams' hate blog he plugs a small assortment of geegaws selling for grossly inflated prices at his Vermont secessionist website. For instance, he has a collection of stale articles and commentaries from his defunct print journal that he'll sell ya for a cool $19.95; the only thing is that you can get it at Amazon for $6.35 where it's their 2,174,272nd best seller - ugh. Robbie-boy will also clip you for $30 for a half size replica of the Green Mountain Boys flag that he now claims is the flag of the non-existent Second Vermont Republic. The problem for Rob is that it's been the official battle flag of the Vermont Air and Army National Guard for decades before he and the Dixie singin' Thomas H. Naylor (who's still dead, btw) started fantasizing about ruling Vermont, and which in just the past decade or so alone has been carried into combat from Macedonia to Whatthefuckistan on numerous occasions.

Perhaps the most juvenile item that he has for sale is a "sovereign citizen" like Vermont Republic passport - "Use this commemorative parchment passport to gain access to VIP special events! Declare your support for decentralism at all border crossings!" - which is guaranteed to get you detained if you attempt to use it At a point of entry or as identification to board an aircraft.

Here's where Williams' internet savvy really got to shine in a not so good way recently. A mark, er, customer by the name of Gary W. Potter wrote on August 25, 2014 that,

I ordered a Republic of Vermont passport several weeks ago and never received it. I wondered if there was a problem.

Lightning fast - not - Williams' 2ndvtrepublic store shot Potter back a reply to his query on December 9, 2014,

Hi Gary – turns out, our Paypal link was broken. Email us at publisher@2VR.org with your address, and we’ll get one in the mall to you right away – on the house. Sorry for the delay!

I'm sure that Gary gave up checking on a reply to his problem months ago and that's probably spared him a night in the lockup at Border Patrol's Highgate crossing in the meantime. Oh, and since it's obviously an Internet ripoff site I'm not providing a link.

If Williams were to run his empire or republic like he runs his gift shop we'd all be fucked.





#JeSuisCharlie #JeSuisAhmed #JeSuisPolicier #raiseyourpencilforfreedom




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Jacqueline Brook: Second Vermont Republic's World Class Anti-Semite

Late this past summer and into the early fall Jacqueline Brook published frothingly nasty and tendentious anti-Jew pieces in the letters section of the Keene (NH) Sentinel. One response to her screed got her panties firmly tied into a knot when the writer, Elliot Greenblott, nailed her thusly,

"In the 1920s and 1930s, Adolph Hitler and Joseph Goebbels used “the Big Lie” as a means of spreading venomous lies and hatred. It is clear Ms. Brook has studied this approach and revels in it. (Her) letter does not employ satire or irony to make a point. Nor does it use valid research or sources. It promotes hate and prejudice through lies, false insinuations and misinformation."

While precisely true, I can not agree with Mr. Greenblott's conclusion that the Brook letter should not have been published, though slander and "over-the-top anti-Israeli (ranting)" it certainly was.

Nor was this Brook's first foray into selectively presenting and altering the truth in service to her odious cause, the public exposition of anti-Semitic reasoning. Swinishly, she roots around for a fact or two that she can misrepresent or frame in such a way that someone will infer "facts" not in evidence. Such as when she sought to show that Jews "benefited" from the horror of 9/11 in a letter to the Brattleboro Reformer dated Dec. 8, 2012 here (scroll to second letter). She lied when she said that Larry Silverstein "benefited" from the attack on the twin towers "to the tune of billions" - an insurance settlement isn't a benefit, it is a compensation for loss for which premiums were paid and for which no tax liability incurs due to it being just compensation. She also partially and deceptively quoted Benjamin Netanyahu to have said that "Israel had benefited from 'the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq,'" based on a report from "the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv." I checked her source and both the beginning and the conclusion of the quote that she left off was

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq." Ma'ariv further quoted the former prime minister as concluding by saying... "swung American public opinion in our favor." Something quite different from Brook's edited quote from Netanyahu.

Clearly, the Netanyahu quote points to a singular "benefit" having to do only with public opinion based on the heinous acts of America haters. Another quote of Netanyahu's that would have relevance here is,

"(I)f Israel were to put down its arms there would be no more Israel. If the Arabs were to put down their arms there would be no more war."

Unbelievably, Brook's bullshit has gotten me to the point where I, of all people, find myself quoting Bibi Netanyahu approvingly. Remarkable, really.

In the same paragraph Brook compounds her dishonesty by misstating a well debunked lie promoted by 9/11 Truthers like herself when she says,

"Witness the jubilant Israelis who recorded the demolition of the WTC towers... from a N.J. rooftop that morning."

She can't even get her lie straight. The FBI investigation of that incident reported that (1) the five young Israelis were on the roof of a van with hardly the room to dance, (2) that the person who reported the incident had animus toward the owner of the van, and that (3) the Israelis were engaged in the same thing that thousands of others did that morning, that is filming the aftermath of the attack. What did not make it into the "research" for Brook's letter was the fact that in the aftermath of the event that took 2,977 innocent lives on 9/11, at the hands of the 19 Saudi attackers, tens of thousands of Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza took to the streets, and yes the rooftops, to dance and hand out celebratory sweets honoring that ghastly occasion. If we were to use Brook's thinking we might speculate on the real reason for her omission but that would be to be just like her.

Elliot Greenblott got it exactly right when he compared Brook to Hitler and Goebbels. Godwin's Rule notwithstanding, I don't believe that he lost the argument when he aptly compared Brook's reasoning method to Goebbels when he was framing the argument about using Judenrats to further anti-Semitic policies. Brook's is a natural at that sort of hate argument.

As I said, I disagree with Greenblott about whether the Brook's letter should have been printed. I only wish that the Keene Sentinel had labeled the letter as an example of the sort of "venomous lies and hatred" that lay at the foundation of Brook's vile brand of historic anti-Semitism.

So that we're clear here, I'm not accusing Brook of attempting to mainstream Jew hate at Rob Williams' Second Vermont Republic hate site. Anti-Semitism is a well established fact at SVR. Brook's method is no mere "dog-whistle" Jew bashing; oh, no, this is the the real deal, David Duke style modus operandi. Brook's "over-the-top" style of lying anti-Semitism and "anti-Israeli ranting" fits quite nicely in with the group of America hating slime balls at the SVR hate site.

Related.

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Texas' Sam Houston on Secession

Andy Hall over at the Dead Confederates blog has posted an address made by then governor of Texas, Sam Houston, in 1860 on the topic of Texas' seceding - he wasn't for it. The observations that Houston made then have relevance for our time. Tiny, nearly non-existent groups like the anti-Semitic Second Vermont Republic and the white supremacist League of the South have been making a mighty noise for more than ten years, far out of proportion to their actual importance to the body politic. In Houston's time the discussion was of much more urgency then but, as I said, his remarks still hold true today, particularly when you factor in the absurd Lincoln historical revisionism of SVR's Rob Williams and the racist, would be goons at LoS. Just substitute the then empires of Great Britain and Spanish America for today's expansionist Greater Russian Empire and the growing Chinese Empire, and Houston's words become prescient for our time and argue just as convincingly against secession today.

Here's Andy's post in its entirety:

Houston: The Union Is Worth More Than Mr. Lincoln
Andy Hall, December 22, 2014

Everyone knows that Sam Houston, governor of Texas during the secession crisis of 1860-61, opposed secession and opposed Texas joining the Confederacy. He famously predicted a long and bloody war would follow, with disastrous consequences for the South regardless of the outcome.

But I recently came across this address he made in Austin, sometime during the 1860 presidential campaign, in which Houston laid out the pro-slavery argument against secession. It’s a very different take on an old dispute:

"[The seceded states] will soon whip themselves, and will not be worth whipping back [into the Union]. Deprived of the protection of the Union, of the aegis of the Constitution, they would soon dwindle into petty States, to be again rent in twain by dissensions or through the ambition of selfish chieftains, and would become a prey to foreign powers. They gravely talk of holding treaties with Great Britain and other foreign powers, and the great advantages which would arise to the South from separation are discussed. Treaties with Great Britain! Alliance with foreign powers! Have these men forgotten history? Look at Spanish America! Look at the condition of every petty State, which by alliance with Great Britain is subject to continual aggression."

[edit]

"When [the Union is] rent in twain, British Abolition, which in fanaticism and sacrificial spirit, far exceeds that of the North (for it has been willing to pay for its fanaticism, a thing the North never will do), will have none of the impediments in its path, now to be found. England will no longer fear the power of the mighty nation which twice has humbled her, and whose giant arm would, so long as we are united, be stretched forth to protect the weakest State, or the most obscure citizen. The State that secedes, when pressed by insidious arts of abolition emissaries, supported by foreign powers, when cursed by internal disorders and insurrections, can lay no claim to that national flag, which when now unfurled, ensures the respect of all nations and strikes terror to the hearts of those who would invade our rights."

[edit]

"But if, through division in the ranks of those opposed to Mr. Lincoln, he should be elected, we have no excuse for dissolving the Union. The Union is worth more than Mr. Lincoln, and if the battle is to be fought for the Constitution, let us fight it in the Union and for the sake of the Union. With a majority of the people in favor of the Constitution, shall we desert the Government and leave it in the hands of the minority? A new obligation will be imposed upon us, to guard the Constitution and to see that no infraction of it is attempted or permitted. If Mr. Lincoln administers the Government in accordance with the Constitution, our rights must be respected. If he does not, the Constitution has provided a remedy."

"No tyrant or usurper can ever invade our rights so long as we are united. Let Mr. Lincoln attempt it, and his party will scatter like chaff before the storm of popular indignation which will burst forth from one end of the country to the other. Secession or revolution will not be justified until legal and constitutional means of redress have been tried, and I can not believe that the time will ever come when these will prove inadequate.​"

It’s interesting to see a prominent figure as that arguing against secession for the protection of the peculiar institution. But then again, Big Sam was never entirely conventional.

(h/t Andy Hall)

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False Flags in Boston, by Jacqueline Brook (RESEARCH)

"Jacqueline Brook is an occasional artist and writer, a perpetual student, a full-time wannabe spiritual seeker, and an enthusiastic killer of sacred cows (the metaphorical ones).
Jacqueline Brook's very own "2VR" bio

Ah, yes. Jacqueline Brook is a longtime contributor to the defunct secessionists rag, Vermont Commons, since at least 2005, on such hefty topics as mind control and the 9/11 insights of conspiracist nutter and widely debunked crackpot David Ray Griffin (Griffin is a favorite of Vermont Commons publisher Rob Williams, Second Vermont Republic guru Jim Hogue, etc.) and the U.S. Space Command mixing it up with ETs. Brook is no simple headcase, nuh uh. She's got real conspiracist cred and was a contributor to the conspiracist issue of Vermont Commons in September 2005 that was dedicated to 9/11 nutter theories.

So in the latest installment of Jacqueline Brook wingnuttery we learn that the Boston Marathon bombings were a Jew inspired false flag attack, not unlike the 9/11 Jew organized false flag attack against the Twin Towers. And no, I'm not going to link to the hate filled websites of Williams; it's easy enough to find and includes the ravings of Jim Hogue on 9/11. I'll just provide a little taste of the most recent mind droolings of Jacqueline Brook on the Boston Marathon Bombing thing.

"Then there’s the uncle’s connection with CIA agent Graham Fuller. Then there’s the fact that both brothers were transported all the way across town to Beth Israel Deaconess hospital. BID’s CEO is a Zionist, Kevin Tabb. Then there’s Dr. Schoenfeld’s [of BID, at the time] utterly bizarre interview with NPR. Then there’s Ron Dermer, saying that the bombings would be good for Israel. Then there’s the fact that the scenario was almost identical to the 2013 Boston Urban Shield Drill, run by Cytel Group, which is using the bombings as advertising on their website, and the fact that Urban Shield events have been supported by Israel in 3 different ways. Then there’s Cytel Group’s connection with Hollywood effects company Strategic Operations, run by Stu Segall, allegedlya former porn king with mob ties. They are also using the bombings as advertising on their website. [The Boston Urban Shield drill was subsequently cancelled because the Marathon bombings had just happened and because the bombings had unfolded in such a similar manner to the planned drill.]"

"I actually drove to the scene of the shootout, because I couldn’t reconcile 2 eyewitness statements and was surprised to see so many bullet holes in houses at 2nd floor level. [OK. Maybe they were shrapnel holes.] Then I was astonished when I saw the house where the boat was parked. I had listened to a young woman tell an Infowars reporter: “My friend on Franklin St., ummm, lived across the street, and the army people did a huge search in their garage, ummm, but the boat was directly across the street; they didn’t search the boat, not once. They didn’t even go around it.” Presumably they didn’t go near Dave Henneberry’s carriage house behind the boat either, or either of the detached garages in the neighbors’ backyards. Then, there’s Leah Flynn, who, according to online white pages, lives at 20 Franklin St., a block and a half past Henneberry’s house on the L-shaped street, who said that law enforcement officers were in her backyard. So, we’ve been lied to about the ‘perimeter’ and its relationship to the boat. I actually think the site was being guarded until that incredible experiment with martial law was over."

"Then there’s the HUGE omission in Dave Henneberry’s story with regards to the giant door that was built into the shrink wrapping on the boat. There’s a video online at businessweek.com in which you can watch a police vehicle/apparatus peel back the door – which I’m assuming is what Henneberry pantomimed rolling up, in his interview with WCVB’s Ed Harding. I think the whole boat story is fishy – including the note allegedly scrawled therein, which seems to get longer and longer and which we only first heard about a month after the bombings."

"That quickly summarizes much of my earlier research."

Ri-i-ight. Stitch together disparate "facts," know absolutely nothing about layered law enforcement search protocols, throw in a few handy, nearby Jewy operatives and ya gotch yerself a bonafide false flag op. Nevermind all the evidence of the lone wolfpack nature of the Tsarnaev brother's murderous plans; just lay it all on the Jews.

According to a report published this past week by The New Yorker's Masha Gessen, "both the defense and the prosecution have acknowledged not only that the first phase (trial over guilt or innocence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev) will be short but also that its outcome is all but preordained." Obviously, using Brook's thinking the defense, prosecution and possibly Gessen are all in on the false flag operation.

And Williams, Brook, Hogue, William Boardman and virulently Jew loathing and segregationist hate blogger Carol "The Jew Loather" and Waco Whacko Moore, et al, all wonder why they get the rap for operating the most anti-Semitic, conspiracy addled hate site in Vermont.

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Hate Site Publisher Rob Williams Has Lost His Mind. More.

Lately the publisher of the defunct anti-Semitic and America hating site Vermont Commons/Second Vermont Republic, Rob Williams, has taken to fancying himself as a book and movie reviewer. And no matter what the book or movie, they're all about secession. That includes Hobbits, of whom Williams sees a resemblance to himself and his life. Seriously.

I try to not link to hate sites like Williams' or Stormfront or Occidental Dissent or Daily Stormer, so you'll find no link here. Each of those sites has promoted racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and the like and are easy enough to locate if you feel the need.

Hobbits? Really, Rob?

Get help and get well.

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Racist Writer for White Supremacist, neo-Confederate Website Outed by Southern Poverty Law Center

During the past few months there's been a back and forth of outing and doxing going on that's shaken the racist right to its jackboots. The racists at Occidental Dissent have been on an outing campaign of their own which has produced not very compelling results. Yesterday the SPLC dropped the latest bomb - a writer and moderator for the avowedly racist and virulently anti-Semitic mouthpiece for the neo-Confederate League of the South supporting website mentioned above, Occidental Dissent, who goes by the pseudonym "Jack Ryan" is in fact John V. Ellis of Hyde Park, Chicago. SPLC has the whole story here.

Tit for tat, eh Jack?

Speaking of the racist League of the South, we've been waiting for months for the current head of the so-called Second Vermont Republic, Rob Williams, to renounce and denounce SVR's past and present ties to the LoS and its militia. Well, one can always cling to the wistful hope that Williams will one day come to his senses.

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Ugh, It's Over... I Think.

UPDATE AT BOTTOM

Greg Guma's now "reporting" that Steve Goodkind gets the Progs nod and will run as an "Independent." "The Gume" is out... for now. Sadly for "The Gume" he was also unsuccessful in getting the Progs to ride his pet hobbyhorses in the next election cycle. Maybe it had something to do with their being woefully dated and no longer of much relevance.

Perhaps Guma will shortly seque smoothly to covering the mayoral race while ignoring his bloated conflict of interest in doing so. The problem will be finding a real news organization to ignore the conflict as well, otherwise it'll just be Facebook coverage.

He could always go back to writing his revisionist history of Vermont's dead secessionist movement and it's so-called Second Vermont Republic or expand on his 9/11 Truthiness. As Tommy "The Pathological Lair" Flanagan would say, "Yeah, That's The Ticket!"

UPDATE MONDAY, DEC. 8, 2:00 PM

"Greg Guma, who received one vote on Sunday, had expressed interest in running as a Prog; he attended the caucus but did not seek the endorsement."
Source

Sad. Really sad.

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Is a Secession Supporter Running in the Burlington, VT Mayoral Race?

UPDATE: Wednesday, Dec. 3, 4:00 PM Secession flack and political drama queen Greg Guma to announce Burlington mayoral election bid on Thursday, Dec. 4. Yawn...

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Well, certainly stranger campaigns have occurred in Burlington's past. But this year's musing by longtime political wannabe and unsuccessful influence on the body politic, Greg Guma, deserve a look if not much more.

Guma's been on the edge of the Burlington political scene for what seems like forever. One news organization even made the mistake of using him for past Burlington political campaign coverage and learned that with Guma's "journalism" comes his inevitable slant.

Last week I learned of Guma's latest ploy in a post of his at the Second Vermont Republic hate site (and, no, I don't link to there). I then found a similar advisory on the all-Guma-all-the-time blog here. In a tired and typical pol style, Guma self flogs his importance to the political scene despite his abundant lack of real accomplishment; it's like he's made it notwithstanding his never having done so. His brief tenure at Pacifica was wracked with conflict that led inevitably to his departure with little to show for his time there. Hell, he once had a largely self written Wikipedia article that Wikipedia dropped due to his "lack of notability."

Guma gives himself a backslapping blurb in the announcement post from some other non-notable and even hints at his crucial role in the ascent of Vermont's star and possible presidential contender Bernie Sanders.

Guma goes on at some length about a December 2 meeting without providing a link or a place whereat some might ponder the importance and relevance of a Guma candidacy to the public weal.

"In short, the question I am now considering is whether to proceed anyway or, as I did 35 years ago when Bernie Sanders and I were both organizing mayoral campaigns, step aside for someone else. I'll be listening, watching closely, and thinking it over between now and Dec. 2. In the meantime, I have asked my current supporters to spread the word, invite others, and let me know what they think. If the prevailing sentiment is that Steve (Goodkind) is the right person and the only challenger needed, I need to hear why. The responses, along with discussion on Dec. 2, will be a significant factor in my choice."

Okay. We can probably agree that for such a non-player on the political scene Greg Guma has a pretty inflated sense of self-importance. But by this point one or two of you may be asking why-TF does Rowley give a shit about this loser? Well, Guma comes from a short list of flacks for the so-called "Second Vermont Republic." It's a really short list that includes basically Christopher Ketcham and Shay Totten. Ketcham's published a book on the topic that's gone nowhere, acknowledged that he snuck in a piece for Time that he later admitted was "a favor" for his Vermont Secesher friends and Totten now flacks books since Thomas Naylor is no longer his meal ticket - you'd of thought they might have gotten together on it but seceshers aren't exactly the brightest bulbs. In 2008 Guma wrote one piece that pushes what he thought were the strengths of secession without really telling the whole truth; some "muckraker," as he likes to characterize himself. Here's how he colored the controversy that sent SVR into its death spiral:

"... The controversy began when the Southern Poverty Law Center accused (Thomas) Naylor and the group of talking to an allegedly racist group, the League of the South. Critics pounced, and Seven Days, a liberal weekly in Vermont that was distributing Vermont Commons as an insert, decided to end the arrangement. Labor groups soon demanded the removal of offensive web links on Second Vermont Republic's website, disassociation from certain groups or individuals, and the release of a statement clearly opposing racism, fascism, bigotry, and discrimination. Although there is no evidence that Vermont secessionists condone such things, they've been pressured to prove it."

Actually, Greg, the"critics pounced" before the Southern Poverty Law Center took an interest in SVR and Naylor, and there's nothing "alleged" about the overt racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism and homophobia of the League of the South, in fact they're quite proud of their various hatreds. This blog and two others published extensively and were quite involved in petitioning the SPLC to take a look at Naylor and his flying monkeys. And there was plenty of evidence at the time that SVR condoned institutionalized homophobia, segregation, anti-Semitism and racism; all one had to do was read their publication, Vermont Commons, and Naylor's own website.

Guma has written other dishonest representations of the Vermont secesher movement but that could be the basis for a future post - who knows? Until then Guma will be consumed with his bloatedly self-important decision.

"This is an important moment for Burlington. In the next few years, decisions will be made that could transform the community for generations. If I do run, my goal will not be just to win, but to challenge complacency, provincialism, gentrification and the current redevelopment push, and to open up debate on crucial choices facing the city we love. What I find out in the next two weeks will determine whether that happens. I look forward to hearing what Burlington residents have to say and how they feel about a real independent voice in the race."

Yes, Greg. I'm sure that there are tens of Burlingtonians awaiting your decision.

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"The Cheese Stands Alone" Part IV - The League of the South Establishes A Militia Unit

At its annual meeting in June this year, Michael Hill, president of the League of the South announced the creation of a paramilitary group called "The Indomitables." No, really. The Southern Poverty Law Center has an exclusive report here.

On July 15 Hill posted on his blog an e-call to arms entitled "A Bazooka in Every Pot." Since then he's continued to ramp up the rhetoric that includes an outline of intended targets for his strike group,

"the primary targets will not be enemy soldiers; instead, they will be political leaders, members of the hostile media, cultural icons, bureaucrats, and other of the managerial elite..."
Michael Hill, League of the South führer and lunatic-in-chief

Hill has established a General Staff packed with KKKers, neo-Nazis and white supremacists. He's even created some Nazi style iconography for the outfit.

In a twelve point manifesto from his group, #1 is,

" The mantra “Violence [or the serious threat thereof] never settles anything” is patently false. History shows that it indeed does settle many things. Please don’t forget this—your enemy hasn’t."

My question to the new baas of the Second Vermont Republic, Rob Williams, remains when will he renounce and denounce his racist, neo-Nazi, KKKer allies at the League of the South" for the climate of hate and danger that they are creating in the nut bar pursuit of secession? Other than to take down a letter written by Thomas H. Naylor that once called for the League to renounce racism from his hate blog called Vermont Commons, Williams, a member of the adjunct faculty at Champlain College in Burlington, VT, has done nothing to put any distance between himself and the other conspiracy obsessed hate group, LoS.

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Crypto-Fascist Keith Preston's Longtime Love Affair With Vermont's Own Bigoted Secessionists

Normally, rather than reprise past posts I merely link to them for the reader's benefit, should they so choose to learn more. However, recently a racial separatist who tries unsuccessfully to mask his toxic fascist tendencies has turned his attention to this blog. So, to provide more understanding of his depraved political agenda, I've reposted immediately below two posts from December, 2012

There'll be an afterword.

Keith Preston: A Tribute from A Secessionist Bigot for the Late Thomas H. Naylor
Friday, December 12, 2012

This one comes from Keith Preston, an anarcho, pan-secessionist, anti-immigrant, racial "realist" (Read: racist), anti-Semitic, segregation affirming homophobe who, naturally, has a few issues with women as well.

Preston has a history of supporting extremists like Naylor. Preston was a contributor to the white nationalist conference held by the National Policy Institute (NPI) in 2011. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the NPI is an active white nationalist group based in Georgia; there's more from the SPLC here. Here's NPI's website (and don't forget to wash when you're done). A project of the NPI on the web called Alternative Right which calls itself Euro-Centric (and we're not talking about currency) identifies Preston as a part of their editorial collective of white guys here.

He's been described as a "fascist in anarchist clothing," but I liken his style, both personal and in writing, as more like the Comic Book Guy, if the Comic Book Guy wore a swastika armband around the comic bookstore.

The website One People's Project has more on Preston's racist ties with such low-lifes as The Political Cesspool's James Edwards and American Renaissance's Jared Taylor here, here and here.

At his website, Attack The System, Preston wrote:

"It is with great regret that I must inform our readers of the passing of Thomas H. Naylor, founder of the Second Vermont Republic. I received word earlier this evening that Tom passed away last night after a sudden stroke at the age of 76."

"Fortunately, I was able to interview Tom for my podcast on Voice of Reason earlier this year..."

"Tom was the author of thirteen books, including three on secession, and one of his books, Downsizing the USA, was crucial in the development of my own political outlook. It was largely due to Tom’s influence that I came to realize that decentralized micronations achieved through pan-secession are the most viable alternative to the Leviathan mega-states that plague us today. I cannot recommend Tom’s voluminous body of writings of these issue(sic) highly enough..."

Yes, "Tom" was an inspiration to a racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and plainly misogynistic dirtbag.

Figures.

Here's an obscure, little known fact: Preston is the Secessionist Outreach Officer for Sebastian Ernst Ronin's (see post immediately below for more on Ronin) white supremacist Renaissance Party of North America, according to this post at Preston's website:

Mr. Ronin is the Chairman of the Renaissance Party of  North America (RPN), for which I am the Secessionist Outreach officer.  This is a brand new party, having been formed only in December of 2009, and it is the only political party in North America that I would even consider becoming involved with at present.  The party’s mission statement and philosophical outlook is light years ahead of any of its competitors, as it combines syndicalist/distributist economics, radical decentralization, “archeofuturism” and other ENR-inspired ideas, anti-globalism, peak oil theory, anti-Cultural Marxism, anti-political correctness, anti-imperialism, a Spenglerian view of history, pan-secessionism, race-realism, a strident yet reasonable environmentalism, a social conservatism that is measured and libertarian, neo-paganism within a wider spirit of religious toleration, and criticism of mass immigration in the name of civilizational survival and self-preservation.  In other words, all of the best and most far-sighted contemporary ideas are being pulled together into a unified and syncretic whole.

Not many people know that; fewer still care about these assholes.  These Naylor mourners are typical of his scumbag followers.

Readers of this blog may also recall that I'd posted about how Naylor had conspired with a Canadian fascist, Sebastian Ernst Ronin, to establish a white, racist homeland in northern New England and the Canadian Maritime provinces. As noted above by Keith Preston himself, Preston was a part of this failed conspiracy but by which he cemented his reputation as a white separatist, anti-Semite and all around scumbag. Here's that post:

Before His Death Thomas H. Naylor Collaborated in a Proposal to Create a White Homeland in Vermont
Thursday, December 20, 2012

Thomas H. Naylor, founder of the unsuccessful attempt to secede from the Union called the Second Vermont Republic, had a long history of cozying up to racists, Holocaust deniers, anti-Semites, secessionists and white separatists.

What is not so well known was his involvement with a Canadian racist and anti-Semite, Sebastian Ernst Ronin, and of their plan to make Vermont part of a "White Homeland." Ronin, much as Naylor was on the American and Vermont political scene, is an extremist nobody on the Canadian political landscape.

I'd first noted Naylor's ties to the "New Acadia" or "Novacadia" proposal that a new confederation be formed from upper New York state, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and the Canadian Maritime provinces after an appearance he'd made in June, 2007 on FOX TV's Bill O'Reilly dreck here.

Naylor then began to conspire with Ronin, who was well known even then as a Canadian racist, in April of 2008 to create this new confederation of New England states and Canadian provinces, according to Ronin. Naylor wrote about these discussions concerning the new confederation here, and even urged that Vermonters contact this Canadian racist pig.

Hell, they'd even made a map of the White (10), Native (3), Hispanic and Black (New Ebony? Really?) Homelands.

They never (particularly in Naylor's case) got around to making clear how the relocations might have been accom- plished, but given Ronin's fondness for WWII Nazis and Naylor's hatred for the State of Israel, I'm sure that there was some sort of operational "final solution" that they had in mind.

In his tribute to Naylor this week, Ronin referred once again to their plans for a White Homeland in Vermont that can be found here. Ronin wrote (and it was never declaimed by Naylor):

"Novacadia:captures the three Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, and the three New England states of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, and part of northern New York; Second Vermont Republic in place and Novacadia Independence Party pending; this is new nation #4 that defies an international boundary; White Homeland Six"

Ronin's piece makes explicit that they'd brook no dissent from the blacks, the browns, the natives and the Jewy types.

"The designations of Native, Negro and Mestizo homelands does not mean that we have to make either the RVI or RPN friendly to Native, Negro or Hispanic input, although some may be inevitable as per federal legislation (witness the example of the British National Party); it simply means that we retain our political position to speak on behalf of Whites and negotiate on their behalf, but within a political context that recognizes all other continental ethnic/racial players, except for Zionist Jews and non-Jews."

What wasn't clear is how they'd deal with the fags, although subsequent to the enactment of the Civil Unions law in Vermont, Naylor had said that'd still be up for re-discussion in his SVReich.

One of Naylor's toadys, Rob Williams, recently described Naylor to the press as being "irascible." If Williams were being honest, he'd have described Thomas Naylor as a lying, hateful, insane prick. Clearly, from what we know of Naylor's expulsions of the insufficiently obsequient secesher drones and his condemnations of the vast majority of Vermonters (99%+) failure bow to his every dictum, Naylor would have become, like similarly deranged autocrats, more than a tyrant in Vermont, Novacadia or whatever other fictional principality/republic that he sought to create out of nothing.

Despite their professed regrets regarding his passing at his memorial service today in Charlotte, VT, no one in their right mind will possibly miss the crap that he's done in the furtherance of his secesher, racist, anti-Semitic vision for Vermont. Real Vermonters will have no trouble putting Naylor out of their thoughts - forever.

And much like Thomas Naylor and Rob Williams, Preston's antipathy to the civil rights organization who's brought so much financial pain to Preston's butt buddies in the neo-Nazi movement and the Klan, the Southern Poverty Law Center:

"In other words, the SPLC and others of their ilk are our mortal enemies, and should be given no recognition whatsoever. To recognize them, to attempt to rebut or accommodate them, is to grant them legitimacy. We should treat them as we would treat an enemy army during wartime."
Source

Normally, one would try to kill the "enemy army during wartime," but I don't want or need to put words into Preston's pudgy mouth. He does himself in.

Absent from Naylor, Ronin or Preston's scheme to create a white homeland is any pretense for an electoral process. Idiots though they all are, none were so deluded to believe that the public would support such a hate based scheme. I have little doubt that Preston's supporters will find the jewel in this shitpile of an idea. Fortunately, the reality based public will see it for what it is - a hate based political entity with no chance of coming to fruition, ever.

You can read much more of a self-produced compendium by Preston, a rotund, crypto-fascist, segregationist, anti-Semitic, homophobic scumbag if the ever was one, whose ongoing love affair with the Vermont seceshers touchstones, tropes and obsessions is here

UPDATE 5/23/14 5:45 PM: Keith Preston was interviewed today on the Thomas Woods Show. Thomas Woods is a founder of the League of the South and sympathizer for the poor, poor Southron slavers who were so, so oppressed by 19th century anti-abolishionists. Yuck!

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