Hasson’s arrest underscores a potential threat emanating from the armed forces — the infiltration of the military by violent hate groups or white supremacist organizations seeking to recruit service members with firearms and explosives training.
The FBI sounded the alarm over this issue in an investigation concluded in 2008, which warned that “the military training veterans bring to the movement and their potential to pass this training on to others can increase the ability of lone offenders to carry out […]
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Saturday, March 16th, 2019
Liam Stack, - The New York Times
Stephan: Here is an article outlining the parameters of the growing American 5th column. Perhaps because America has not had major social violence on its homeland in living memory we can't see what is becoming increasingly obvious. How big is it? Well Trump, according to fivethirtyeight, is at 41.4% approval. Not every one of these people are part of it, of course, but many are, either directly or through sympathetic support.
Personally, I don't see how anyone can support Trump and the people with whom he surrounds himself. But clearly, millions of Americans do, facts are facts. This trend is a growing crisis like a small erasure size lump in a woman's breast. If not dealt with it will grow and metastasize into something lethal.
The number of hate groups in the United States rose for the fourth year in a row in 2018, pushed to a record high by a toxic combination of political polarization, anti-immigrant sentiment and technologies that help spread propaganda online, the Southern Poverty Law Center said Wednesday.
The law center said the number of hate groups rose by 7 percent last year to 1,020, a 30 percent jump from 2014. That broadly echoes other worrying developments, including a 30 percent increase in the number of hate crimes reported to the F.B.I. from 2015 through 2017 and a surge of right-wing violence that the Anti-Defamation League said had killed at least 50 people in 2018.
“We’re seeing a lot of bad trends,” Heidi Beirich, the director of the intelligence project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in an interview on Wednesday. “There are more hate groups, more hate crimes and more domestic terrorism in that same vein. It is a troubling set of circumstances.”
Ms. Beirich said the increase in extremist activity tracked by her team began in earnest in the early days of the 2016 presidential election, when anxieties over immigration helped propel President […]
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Saturday, March 16th, 2019
Eugene Scott, - The Washington Post
Stephan: Those of us who place a priority on wellbeing must take our stand. Nonviolent social transformation is the only form of change that works, and lasts. It is up to each of us to make that happen by the hundreds of small choices we make each day, always choosing the option that is the most compassionate, life-affirming, and fostering of wellbeing. The alternative is violence, misery, and death.
Credit: The Sun Nigeria
The New Zealand mass shooting that left 49 dead is part of a disturbing trend: violent acts perpetrated by racists and far-right extremists.
Though the primary gunman has not been named, he allegedly took pains to link the violent assault on two mosques to his politics. Police said that shortly before the shooting, he released a manifesto describing his hatred for Muslims and immigrants.
“The 74-page document states that he was following the example of notorious right-wing extremists, including Dylann Roof, who murdered nine black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., in 2015,” my colleagues reported. It was “littered with conspiracy theories about white birthrates and ‘white genocide” and “is the latest sign that a lethal vision of white nationalism has spread internationally. Its title, ‘The Great Replacement,’ echoes the rallying cry of, among others, the torch-bearing protesters who marched in Charlottesville in 2017.”
Elsewhere, there are references to President Trump and Candace Owens, a black conservative activist, mentions that seem designed to troll.
The New Zealand violence […]
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Hannah Ritchie, - BBC News
Stephan: What do people around the world die from, and how do the nations compare one with another? Interesting and important questions, I think, and here are some answers based on well-grounded data.
In 1950, global average life expectancy at birth was only 46. By 2015, it had shot up to over 71.
In some countries, progress has not always been smooth. Disease, epidemics and unexpected events are a reminder that ever-longer lives are not a given.
Meanwhile, the deaths that may preoccupy us – from terrorism, war and natural disasters – make up less than 0.5% of all deaths combined.
But across the world, many are still dying too young and from preventable causes.
The story of when people die is really a story of how they die, and how this has changed over time.
Causes of death around the world
About 56 million people in the world died in 2017.
This is 10 million more than in 1990, as the global population has increased and people live longer on average.
More than 70% die from non-communicable, chronic diseases. These are not passed from person to person and typically progress slowly.
The biggest single killer is cardiovascular disease, which affects the heart and arteries and is responsible for every third death.
This is twice the rate of cancers – the second leading cause […]
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