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?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

A Second Vermont Republic Founder Joins The Culture War

I know, it's been months since I last posted but, really, the Vermont secesher movement is pretty much dead here. Other than the occasional post at his hate site (no, I won't link to it), publisher Rob Williams, hasn't really been doing much of anything. Sure, he's tried to get his tired message out about "the Empire" out by piggybacking at other's events but Vermonters have pretty much got his number: hate. He's also been waging a bizarre anti-Bernie Sanders campaign, relying on the past writings of failed secessionists like the still dead Thomas Naylor, a lightweight by the name of Greg Guma, and his own whiny scribblings that point to the attacks of anti-Semite Stephen Lendman. Secesher Peter Diamondstone has played along with the campaign; you can read about Diamondstone's failure here.

I'd figured that this was the end of the line for the largely ineffectual SVR crowd and, for all intents and purposes, it is. It's founder dead, his successor completely failed, and the original SVR leadership scattered and silent. All except for Kirkpatrick Sale.

Sale was part of the 60's era SDS organization. He writes useless books devoted to his cramped worldview and, of course, secession. And he writes letters to his now local paper in Charleston, SC, about, of course, secession. He retired to SC from NY State a few years ago as things unraveled for his friends here at SVR in Vermont. In his retirement, Sale followed his dead friend's lead and has published some really dumb stuff but probably nothing quite as stupid as this recent op-ed in Charleston's The Post and Courier. In it, Sale offers secession as the solution to the U.S. Supreme Court's Obergefel v. Hodges marriage equality decision.

"That is why I believe that the death of states’ rights is really a clarion call for states to defy the federal government and assert their rights independent of Washington and its minions."

"I care not how it be done..."

In his piece Sale essentially says "to hell" with the 5th and 14th amendments to the Constitution and cavalierly proposes conflict between Americans and their government. How'd that work out the last time around, Kirk? 500, 600 or 800 American dead, right?

I have little doubt Sale won't find takers for his proposal among the evangelical nutters that have spent the summer fuming over SCOTUS's decision. Sale's op-ed closes with:

"For if it is not done now, it will not be done ever."

That's probably the only thing that Sale got right in his op-ed.

You can read the op-ed here and a very good response can be found here. 'Course, Sale has been whining about "gay power" to whoever who'll listen for months.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

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.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

Memorial Day, 2015

Memorial Day means many things to its observers but I thought a few words from a Confederate general, mass murderer and founder of the Ku Klux Klan, Nathan Bedford Forrest, might have surprising relevance for today's would be secessionist, including the Vermont type. Forrest is a time honored favorite amongst neo-Confederate, Lost Cause deadenders

From the Galveston Daily News of June 3, 1875:

"In Memphis, last week, a number of Federal officers and soldiers participated at the decoration of Confederate graves. As a result, Generals [Gideon Johnston] Pillow and Forrest addressed a letter through the Memphis papers to surviving Confederate soldiers and veterans of 1812, Florida and Mexico, requesting them to participate in the Federal ceremonies on Sunday last [i.e., on Memorial Day]. From this letter the subjoined is extracted:"

"However much we differed with them while public enemies, and were at war, we must admit that they fought gallantly for the preservation of the government which we fought to destroy, which is now ours, was that of our fathers, and must be that of our children. Though our love for that government was for a while supplanted by the exasperation springing out of a sense of violated rights and the conflict of battle, yet our love for free government, justly administered, has not perished, and must grow strong in the hearts of brave men who have learned to appreciate the noble qualities of the true soldier."

"Let us all, then, join their comrades who live, in spreading flowers over the graves of these dead Federal soldiers, before the whole American people, as a peace offering to the nation, as a testimonial of our respect for their devotion to duty, and as a tribute from patriots, as we have ever been, to the great Republic, and in honor of the flag against which we fought, and under which they fell, nobly maintaining the honor of that flag. It is our duty to honor the government for which they died, and if called upon, to fight for the flag we could not conquer."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

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.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

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!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

Vermont State Police Report neo-Nazi Graffiti In Charlotte, VT

In a press release yesterday the Vermont State Police reported an incident involving neo-Nazi graffiti at the old Charlotte, VT train station. Their press release reads, in part:

SUMMARY OF INCIDENT: On this date and time VT State Police Williston received a vandalism complaint from VTrans (Vermont Transportation Agency). They received a report of graffiti vandalism at this location. A trooper responded and noted a significant amount of graffiti painted on the structure, to include but not limited to swastikas, anti-Semitic and racist statements.

Charlotte, home to Vermont's 1%, was the longtime community of residence of the now dead founder of the Second Vermont Republic, Thomas Naylor. Naylor was a raving anti-Semite with strong ties to the Holocaust denial community that includes Iran's propaganda arm, PressTV, as well James Edwards notoriously racist and anti-Semitic program called The Political Cesspool. Edwards is also a figure of importance at the racist League of the South where, when he lived, Naylor maintained ties for many years. Interestingly, before he died Naylor conspired with Canadian neo-Nazi, Sebastian Ernst Ronin, to create a "white homeland" in northern New England and the Canadian Maritimes.

Perhaps the Charlotte graffiti holds a deeper meaning; that is, an act meant to honor a past resident who harbored such sentiments.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

Second Vermont Republic Co-founder, Kirkpatrick Sale, Throws A Hissy Fit Over The "Clout" of Uppity Gays

In a recent op-ed published by the Charleston, SC Post Courier Second Vermont Republic co-founder and editor at large for its defunct print publication VT Commons, as well as a raging anti-Semite who argues that the State of Israel should be "undone," gets his panties in a knot over the successes of the gay rights movement. That's easy to understand given that it's coming from a committed and vastly unsuccessful secessionist, as well as a past South Carolina delegate to the racist, neo-Confederate Southern National Congress, long affiliated with the Southern secessionist hate group, the League of the South which shares his obsession about gay marriage.

Besides not seeming to know much about cultural matters, how law suits develop, how politicians evolve in tandem with the American body politic and a host of other questions, Sale seems truly ignorant when it comes to the nature of progress. Unsurprisingly, Sale is little troubled by the state of Indiana's effort to institutionalize discrimination, bullying, and disparate treatment.

There's a lot in Sale's op-ed to criticize but his opening crap about Indiana's overtly discriminatory "Religious Freedom" act as "innocent" perhaps says more about Sale's crackpot biases than I ever can. He also erroneously states that boycotts were threatened; fact is, business voted with its feet as did our own State of Vermont in discouraging travel and business to Indiana that would make their employees, state or otherwise, second class visitors.

Perhaps if Sale and his ilk hadn't so profoundly ineffective in their own secessionist endeavors he wouldn't have felt so moved to pen this lame op-ed:

How Did Gay Power Get Such Clout?
by Kirkpatrick Sale
Apr 11 2015

The recent flap over an innocent law in Indiana protecting religious rights got taken, even before the ink was cold, to be an attack on homosexuals, particularly same-sex marriages, and quickly drew national attention. A powerful gay-rights lobby went into immediate and high-powered action, threatening boycotts and protests, and it didn’t take days before the law was amended.

How did this lobby develop such power, with instant media and political clout, and how is it able to cow elected officials so effectively?

Well, it’s not because it represents a significant part of the American population. In fact, a recent poll by Gallup published in The New York Times estimates that there are only approximately 3 million homosexual men in the cities of the United States, a finding that comports well with previous studies. Perhaps the most comprehensive one was by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention using 2013 census data, which estimated 1.6 per cent of the population as lesbian or gay, and roughly 0.7 per cent as bisexual. What all that means is that a tiny percentage of the American population is not straight heterosexual — say, 2 percent, or 6.2 million people.

My question is: why do they have so much influence in American society, politics and culture? Why is the dispute over same-sex marriage front-page news and the source of multiple lawsuits? Why are there now gay characters peppered throughout television series and openly gay sexual acts depicted, and even whole series given over to homosexual and lesbian themes? Why did Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State put forth gay rights — actually the whole gamut, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender — as an important American cause?

I have no objection to seeing homosexuals enjoy equal rights and establish a place in our culture. What I am asking is how did such a tiny percentage of the public get to have such sway over American life, when comparable minorities, at least in terms of numbers, have nothing like that influence.

There are nearly 15 million Asians in the United States, but do we see them massing for their rights and demanding that there be Asians on TV shows, or even whole networks devoted to their cause? Do the Polish-Americans, said to be some 9 million people, ask for Polish characters and Polish themes in movies, and measure, with full media attention, how many Polish characters there are on ABC Family and Fox? Are the 6 million American Jews boycotting stores that sell pork?

American Indians, who by any measure deserve some primary place in our national conscience, number a little over 5 million people, just under 2 percent. Every so often, mostly around Columbus Day, you hear something about activists asking for more Indians in Hollywood films (or at least real Indians playing Indian parts). But for at least 40 years, American tribes have been owed something like $3.2 billion that the American government has earned from mineral and other extractions from Indian lands, and while there have been Indian protests and lawsuits, it has remained an invisible issue for most Americans. And even the scandal of the Bureau of Indian Affairs losing $2 billion of that money and not being able to find it has not caused any national attention. And remember, these are the people against whom we committed genocide.

I suppose it could be said that it is the fault of these people for not organizing, not learning how to control the media, not sufficiently proving that their rights have somehow been violated. The homosexual community, especially after Stonewall and in the face of AIDS, was a masterful example of how to achieve all of that, and it took plenty of hard work, devotion, money and skill to do it.

But there’s something more than that. Indians, after all, have organized, have protested, have sued, and their moral claim is the highest of all, yet their collective political and media power is minuscule. There is something more in the homosexual cause that seems to get to American hearts and minds and make their claims to equal anti-discrimination protection legitimate. Something that even convinces more and more Americans that the bizarre idea of marriage between two people of the same sex, which for most of human history was not only not proposed but for the most part not even thought of, is not only legal but morally uplifting. There is something more playing at the American psyche that has seen gay marriage gain public support faster than any other social cause I can think of in the last 50 years.

I am not, alas, able to identify that “something more” with any precision. My initial instinct is to say that it has to do with the victory in America’s cultural wars of the academic skullduggery known as political correctness. Once everything is judged by p.c. standards, all minorities, no matter how small or what their characteristics, must be accorded equality, and if they have been denied that for a long time their case is especially strong. And that matters most in the area of sex and gender, an area that Americans are uneasy about in the first place. Hence the cause of homosexuality, and the attendant unusual gender orientations, has come to the American psychic, and thus political, fore.

Kirkpatrick Sale lives in Mount Pleasant, SC.

Charlestonians respond here and here.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

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.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

The Second Vermont Republic's Rob Williams Has Another Reason to Hate Lincoln - The Jews

I first learned of the Second Vermont Republic's Rob Williams when I heard him prattle on about the Lincoln historical revisionism of a neo-Confederate by the name of Thomas DiLorenzo on a local radio program back in 2007. Williams, an adjunct staff member at Burlington's Champlain College, was challenged for presenting "academic nonsense" on the program, and nonsense it was. Rob is a longtime sufferer of Lincoln derangement syndrome.

Lincoln Derangement Syndrome (n): "A deeply-embedded psychosis held by some Lost Causers and defenders of Southern Heritage™, indicated by the reflexive, knee-jerk response to any criticism of the Confederacy, by pointing out that (1) Abraham Lincoln held personal views about African Americans that were racist, (2) the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free any slaves, or (3) that Lincoln’s public policy position toward the institution of slavery changed over time. There is no known cure."

But now Williams has a new reason for his hatred; Lincoln's relationship with Jews. Followers of this blog know that I have exposed repeated instances of anti-Semitic posts at Williams' SVR hateblog by his stable of anti-Semitic hatebloggers Carol Moore, Dennis "Hit List" Morrisseau and Jacqueline Brook, to name only a few (and, no, I don't link to his hatesite any longer). In a post this past week at the Lincoln Institute we learn:

New Exhibit on Lincoln and Jewish Americans

The New-York Historical Society’s newest exhibit, “Lincoln and the Jews,” is an exploration of Lincoln’s personal relationships with his Jewish contemporaries and his impact on nineteenth-century Jewish life in America. The New York Times covered the exhibit in a recent article:

"Lincoln played an important role in turning Jews from outsiders in America to insiders,” said Jonathan D. Sarna, a historian at Brandeis University and the author, with Mr. Shapell, of the new, separately published book “Lincoln and the Jews,” which inspired the show. “It’s a subject that has really been overlooked.” "Lincoln’s lifetime coincided with a dramatic increase in America’s Jewish population, which grew from about 3,000 in 1809, the year of his birth, to roughly 150,000 in 1860. Growing up in the Midwest, he probably encountered few or no Jews in person until he became a young man. But at a time when anti-Semitism and nativism ran high, the show notes, there is no evidence of Lincoln harboring any animus toward Jews."

The Times story continues:

"Lincoln’s lifetime coincided with a dramatic increase in America’s Jewish population, which grew from about 3,000 in 1809, the year of his birth, to roughly 150,000 in 1860. Growing up in the Midwest, he probably encountered few or no Jews in person until he became a young man. But at a time when anti-Semitism and nativism ran high, the show notes, there is no evidence of Lincoln harboring any animus toward Jews."

“When it came to personal interactions with Jews or issues that had an impact on Jews, Lincoln did the right thing on every occasion,” Harold Holzer, a prominent Lincoln scholar and the exhibition’s chief historian, said in an interview."


"Lincoln, the exhibition shows, did much for Jews, individually and as a group. But just how affected was Lincoln by his encounters with them?"

"Deeply, Mr. Sarna argues. The encounters, he writes in the book, helped push Lincoln past a “parochially Christian” understanding of American identity. In what he called his “most controversial claim,” not made by the show, Mr. Sarna writes that the ecumenical phrase “this nation, under God” in the Gettysburg Address may have been meant as a “silent homage” to Jews who fell on the battlefield, one that “reimagined America in language that embraced Jews as equals.”

So much to hate with so little time, eh, Rob?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

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.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

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?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

In and Out; the Loser Edition

The outcome of the 2015 Burlington, VT mayoral election was never in doubt; the only question was how strongly would the Democratic incumbent, Miro Weinberger win by and how badly would the Vermont secession flack Greg Guma lose by.

Weinberger defeated Guma by a factor of ten, garnering more than two thirds of the votes cast. Guma's distant third place showing was only matched by the last place loser who's campaign consisted primarily of hanging out at a coffee shop. Guma credits his miserable showing to "Matt for the strategic intelligence and social media savvy." That would likely be Matt Cropp who has yet to run an open campaign that was ever been even remotely successful. My personal favorite campaign was his stint as campaign manager for the 2010 secesher gubernatorial candidate Dennis Steele for whom far fewer than one percent of Vermont registered voters cast a ballot. Subsequently, Cropp penned a not quite concession posting that promised a lot for the future, declared Hancock, VT to be the secesher provisional capital, and then disappeared until his next electoral loss. Cropp went on to lose a bid for a board seat at City Market and for a local credit union. The Guma shellacking will be another significant notch on Matt's electoral guns.

Maybe Matt can craft a Guma concession message that proposes an outsized role for Guma in the next three years of the Weinberger administration. Certainly as the only candidate to run a negative ad in the campaign, Guma's earned something.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

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.


For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

Cascadia? Nuts!

Years ago secession guru, anti-Semite and a co-founder of the Second Vermont Republic, Kirkpatrick Sale, made the surprising admission that a good many of the secessionist organizations listed at his Middlebury Institute (much to Middlebury VT's chagrin) were little more than websites comprised of only a few or one member. While he described his own group as an "umbrella" organization, it too was little more than a website maintained by another anti-Semite like Sale called Carol Moore.

Sure, the now dead baas of SVR, the Dixie singin' Thomas Naylor was also a member of MI but that was pretty much it. The MI organized and sponsored a couple or three poorly attended (primarily by racists from the League of the South, the Alaska Independence Party and the Hawaiian independence movement) conferences, mostly in the Deep South, that were little more than gatherings of the same small group of committed racists and anti-Semitic secesher assholes - Michael Hill, Donald Livingston, Rob Williams, Naylor, Sale, the Dexters, ad nauseum. Stunts, really, designed to get some AP and FOX News coverage and accomplished little more. Except for the overtly racist LoS, they've stopped even doing that. All the "big plans" - Town Meeting articles, constitutional conventions, candidates standing for elective office - have come to naught, as well as to an end.

Recently the San Francisco Chronicle ran a piece titled "Cascadia Secession Apparently Not As Easy As It Sounds" on the Left Coast secesher group Cascadia Now! After a word salad interview of seemingly one of its few members, Brandon Letsinger, the Chronicle lays bare the phoniness of the group. (Note: The group claims thousands of members but offers no proof, much as Naylor once claimed that more than 60,000 Vermont voters supported secession but when the time came to vote far less than 1% of Vermont's registered voters supported the secesher gubernatorial candidate, a number comparable to the average of spoilt ballots in an election.)

Then the Chronicle's Caille Millner got down to it:

"When it came to the question of how this republic might come about, however, Letsinger was more circumspect. He thinks politics are “irrelevant, negative, and toxic.” Cascadia, he emphasized, is about “an identity” to connect the region’s 15 million people."

"To this end, Cascadia Now! has a soccer team (they want to play Quebec), a poetry festival, and a Scouting Association. They have their own beer, “Cascadian dark ale,” made with hops from the region."

"The crowd seemed pleased. Cascadia sounded like great fun until the next speaker, Joshua Clover, took the podium."

"Clover is a 52-year-old UC Davis literature professor who specializes in political economy. He came prepared with his own PowerPoint slides; he wanted to tell the crowd about the history of secession movements in the 20th century. (I told you Kadist was sly.)"

"Cheerfully, Clover talked about how previous breakaway movements around the world had led to battles, purges, invasions and sieges."

"As the bodies stacked up, I could feel the energy in the room shift into discomfort."

"What had happened to the hops? Where had the positive identity gone?"

"As for freedom from the shackles of the empire, well, Clover didn’t think Cascadia would have that, either — not in today’s global market. 'It’s unclear what regionalism could mean unless a place is prepared to, say, make its own refrigerators.'"

"Right now, Clover said in a buoyant voice, all of the world’s refrigerators are made in China."

"Clover wasn’t done yet. He layered a demographic map of the United States over that of Cascadia. Look at the dots, he urged us. Cascadia is 'a peculiarly non-diverse region with the exception of some native peoples for whom previous secessions have proven deadly.'"

"Cascadia, he said, represented 'demographic anti-blackness.'"

"It took the audience a few moments to come up with questions after Clover sat down."

"But his gimlet-eyed view of Cascadia’s Happy Valley had an unexpected benefit: Some audience members discovered that they had a few doubts about this whole secession thing."

"An audience member asked Letsinger about the steps that Cascadia had taken to reach out to the region’s indigenous people. Letsinger said that they had engaged in outreach, and that some of the tribes had “similar values” about environmentalism and activism. Cascadia’s values, he added, were attractive enough that others would come to them."

"But the question persisted, and Letsinger got annoyed: 'I’ve heard this, the idea that this movement is not diverse enough so you need to reach out to these people. We see that as a colonization of our values.'"

"The idea that a suggestion to reach out to historically oppressed people would cause the Cascadia movement such suffering! It was so dazzling, so bizarre, that I almost missed the next question."

"'Cascadia seems more like a brand, like a shared narrative fantasy,' said an audience member. She wanted to know, essentially, what the plan was to make the idea more concrete."

"Unfortunately, making Cascadia concrete would require, well, politics. Letsinger wanted to keep talking about bioregionalism, about creating a brand that was “open source,” about how Cascadia Now! makes all of its own merchandise."

"I felt the evening’s vision of freedom and positivity ebbing quickly away, and I felt so bad for Letsinger that I didn’t even ask him to explain his statement about colonization. Instead I asked him about how Cascadia could avoid the violence that had plagued so many other breakaway movements throughout time."

"'It’s a good question,' he said, and admitted that violence would be a breaking point for him personally."

"He wanted a model more like Scotland, where the voters had had a choice. But the voters in Scotland voted not to secede, and that election had a degree of seriousness that I hadn’t gotten from this discussion. I walked out of Kadist with new questions, like:"

"Does Cascadia really want to secede? Or do they just want a good beer?"

Caille Millner is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: cmillner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @caillemillner

Oddly enough, early SVR member and longtime syncophant, Peter Buknatski a.k.a. "Petey Sweety," was a registered at the Vermont Secretary of State's website as an owner of Second Vermont Republic Beer, Ale and Brewing or some such nonsense which has likewise come to naught. Little wonder then that Williams got some serious wood over the alcoholic aspect to the article in his own post at his hate blog (Note: I do not link to Williams' hate site; it's easily found if you have to.)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

Snake Oil, Vermont Secesher Style

Some of you may remember the imbecile who ran as the failed Vermont secession gubernatorial candidate of the Second Vermont Republic back in 2010, Dennis Steele (more than 99% of Vermonters voted for someone other than Steele). Being the sharp political strategist (not) that he was, he used imagery in his campaign honoring the admitted murderer Che Guevara.

Well, he's back as a distributor of an addictive product, nicotine laced e-cigarettes whose marketing has been roundly condemned by the Vermont Health Department . And he wants a state subsidy for his nicotine peddling. Here's what he had to say to WCAX:

"In my opinion they (the state) should subsidize what we are doing or just leave us alone (by not taxing e-cigarettes like tobacco products) and let us help people get off the analog or combustible cigarettes (emphasis mine).

Yet at his NEK Vapor website Steele emphatically states in his FAQs:

Will I be able to quit smoking using the e-cig?

"The electronic cigarette is an alternative to smoking and is not a smoking cessation device. Some people have quit smoking using the electronic cigarette but we make no such claims as to effectiveness for that purpose and e-cigs are not sold for that purpose."

Really? Which is it, Dennis? Talking out of both sides of your mouth is a common failing of most secessionists. If it's bad for Vermonters - secession, imagery of an admitted murderer (which he continued to distribute after his campaign said he was dropping the Che crap), or an addictive nicotine product - Steele's right there to peddle it to you.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

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.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

In and Out - Part IV

Two weeks ago when I reported that Greg Guma's doomed to failure campaign for the office of mayor of Burlington (the usual result of Guma's several campaigns for public office) was on again I noted that Guma was setting out with a negative campaign style. That was hardly surprising given that Guma is a Vermont secession flack and dabbles in Vermont secesher historical revisionism. Secessionists and their allies are notoriously negative in their endeavors, laying on lots of hate to make their point. Proving so, Guma began his campaign by calling an opponent a "Republicrat," a pejorative from the Burlington political scene of the 80s. Vermont secessionists are promoting Guma's campaign as an "INSURGENCY" at their hate site (no link will be provided to the hate site).

For a little history, Greg Guma's first press conference on Friday, Feb. 6 was a flop. Described by Seven Day's Alicia Freese as "sparsely attended," Guma's presser elicited no public interest. Stung by this perhaps, Guma launched his first video ad that he admits is "reminiscent" of an attack style. Using wildly out of scale graphics to represent potential development on Burlington's waterfront, Guma's ad uses an ominous sounding, "in-a-world" style narration, including a target placed over the present mayor's face followed by a gunshot. You can read more about the ad here and see the target on Mayor Weinberger's face here. As a result of the outcry from the public, Guma has deleted his Palinesque target and gunshot, the only acknowledgement of which may be this vaguely worded, "(The ad) has been edited to comply with campaign regulations" on his campaign website.

Perhaps criticism of Guma's ad was best said by Burlington City Council president Joan Shannon in an email to the press that labeled Guma's ad claims as "absurd and inaccurate," adding,

"I urge Greg Guma to stop airing the ad immediately, so we can go back to the kind of honest, fair, civil debate that Burlingtonians expect from their politicians. Debating the issues and visions for Burlington is an appropriate debate to engage in. Putting a target on anyone’s head followed by the sound of a shot is something we all should be speaking up against, no matter our views on the mayor or development."

Here, here.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

He-e's Ba-ack!

Second Vermont Republic honcho and the self-described "Very Foreign Minister" of the secessionist movement, Dennis Morrisseau, has been keeping a very low profile for months. Yesterday he popped up at the Vermont State House to protest the General Assembly even having a hearing on proposed gun control legislation. Morrisseau went so far as to threaten the removal from office of any legislator who dared to support such legislation.

"Anyone voting ‘yes’ for that bill, according to opponents, will pay for it with their political lives. On the Statehouse lawn, an orange, 10-foot-tall sign greeted people arriving at the hearing Tuesday with a message: “We will vote you all out.”

“And it means everybody – all of you,” Dennis Morrisseau said, waiting in line outside the House chamber before the hearing. “These bills need to disappear.”
Source

You see, in Morrisseau's world of crazy the only thing that counts is his point of view - no discussion.

This isn't Morrisseau's first or even second time to the "vote'em all out" rodeo. In 2009, 2010 and 2012 he secretly conspired with secesher candidates to replace all of Vermont's senators. He called his plan "The 30." He never recruited more than a half dozen half-hearted candidates. He's also repeatedly claimed to have a plan to "Fire Congress." He's failed at that too. You can read some of his crazy about all of that here. Morrisseau has proposed capping the number of children that brown people can have in Vermont to two; he's given free one way (out of town) tickets to Burlington homeless people in the 1980's; he proposes capping income and assets in Vermont; he proposes replacing teachers with older students.

You can read much, much more about Morrisseau's desire to be the "Very Foreign Minister" of SVR here.

But what should be a concern to legislators and the security staff at the Vermont State House is Morriisseau's history of advocating for "hit lists" of people he hates. I wrote at length about that here. Here's just a small sample of what Denny had to say then:

"I have suggested here and elsewhere that we should begin to post the perps’ names and physical addresse on a permanent electronic board somewhere, so that nature can begin taking it’s course. [On the thoery(sic) that a few such take downs would have some chance of stopping what is coming if we do not act.]"

"I include “international financiers” and certain Likudniks and media moguls on my personal list."

To me, a nationwide assault on the entire sitting Congress en masse, and known to all, pitched to all as the only possible peaceful revolutiong(sic), does have a shot if presented right that might allow us to regain the power of we the people. Thus it could defeat what I agree is a massive and evil zionist design. And it would save decent people of all cultures……" d m, w pawlet, vt By: dennis morrisseau . February 12, 2012 . 5:35 pm

Morrisseau has been wildly unsuccessful in all of his various elective runs during the past four decades and was 100% unsuccessful in replacing any of the members of Vermont's Senate in 2010 and 2012, his candidates finishing in the single or less percentile but he has been a threatening presence and State House security would be wise to take note of his visit.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

In and Out - Part III

Vermont secession flack Greg Guma is back again. His on again, off again plan to run for Burlington's mayoral job is now back on with a quiet last minute signature roundup for inclusion on the ballot. That's not as hard a job as it might sound; one need only stand with a clipboard in front of the Post Office and the one hundred and fifty signatures will probably be had in a few hours. Hell, I've signed nominating petitions for people I thought hadn't a prayer to win since I believe even a loser deserves a grab for the brass ring.

Guma has embraced the Vermont secessionist establishment by having his mayoral campaign announcement posted at Rob Williams' anti-Semitic hate blog this week (no, I don't link to Rob's hate site). In it Guma outlines his aginner, largely revanchist intent for Burlington's future.

It's apparent that Guma's decided to run a negative campaign from the start. He's already indulged in name calling by dredging up a slur from the 70s to call Mayor Miro Weinberger a Republicrat. He's constructed a "thumb-on-the-scale" unscientific poll about Weinberger. Despite having participated in the Progressive Party caucus in early December of 2014' Guma now "dismissed the suggestion that as another Progressive-minded candidate, he risked taking votes away from Goodkind (the winner). "I don't think those kinds of labels make as much sense as they used to ..." Right. Guma got one vote at the caucus, presumably his own, and now the results don't mean shit about his appeal to progressive voters. For further evidence of the sour campaign Guma intends run, one need look no further than his blog. Outrageously he equates the development plans for the Burlington College property to heinous crimes committed by priests against children; his over the top rhetoric suggests equivalency between a land deal and the rape of children by both priests and the institution of the Roman Catholic church:

"So, the "school without walls" and the cloistered catholic campus near the lake. How did they get entangled? The answer begins with secrets, the first about what went on in the church -- and on that property."

"In the end dozens of former residents came forward, and revealed a dark, sordid history of physical and sexual abuse by nuns, priests and staff. Like other parts of the church, the diocese ultimately found itself under attack and in serious financial trouble. By May 2010, it had paid almost $20 million to settle 26 lawsuits. More were to follow. Selling the land was urgent to help cover up to $30 million in legal settlements for the abused..."

[snip]

"This land has seen more than enough secrets, loss and pain."

Such an disgracefully contrived connection makes a little more sense when you factor in Guma's reliance on an endorsement and help from failed political operative Matt Cropp:

"Matt Cropp, outreach coordinator of the Vermont Employee Ownership Center and an NPA (Neighborhood Planning Assembly) leader, writes, "By joining the race, he's bringing some vitally important issues to the conversation, such as reversing the de-funding and marginalization of the Neighborhood Planning Assemblies over the last decade, ensuring that the temptation to cut sweetheart deals with politically connected developers is tempered by a robust, transparent, and participatory review process, and devolving certain powers (such as the appointment of commissioners) from City Hall to Burlington's neighborhoods."

In return for such a ringing endorsement at a Cropp event, Guma promised to support giving the group $5,000 in walking around money should he become mayor (as if the decision to do so was to be his alone).

Here's what I've said earlier about Cropp the political apparatchik:

"I noted in his blog post that Guma seemed to rely most heavily on the counsel of Matt Cropp. That's a mistake that most Burlingtonians will get to breath a collective sigh of relief over. For those of you (and that's probably most of you) unfamiliar with Cropp, he's a political loser of the first order. Among, but certainly not all of Cropp's failures was his failed effort to gain a seat on the City Market board of directors; his failure to takeover a credit union's board; his failure to make a go of a provisional capital for his secessionist, so-called Second Vermont Republic in Hancock, VT in 2010; his failure to follow through on any of his promises made after his disastrous management of the 2010 secesher campaign of Connecticut native Dennis Steele's gubernatorial effort (99.24% of the voters gave their vote to someone other than Steele); and, perhaps most tragically, when Cropp was Thomas Naylor's secesher embed in the Burlington Occupy group, his group's advisory to the City of Burlington that they'd be assuming responsibility for the homeless in City Hall Park was followed within a day of their letter to the City by the suicide of one of the homeless (nice one there, Matt!)."

"Looks like everyone gets to dodge a bullet here. Imagine a Guma administration with a loser like Cropp in some position of importance. According to Guma, Cropp is now setting his sights on Burlington's neighborhoods. My advice to the residents of those neighborhoods - MOVE!!!"

Having watched secesher campaigns like these bumble along over the years my money's on a disappointing last place finish for Team Guma.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

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.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

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




* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

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.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.