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Tag: Southern Poverty Law Center

  • EDITORIAL: Alleged LAX Gunman And Conspiracy Theorist Paul Anthony Ciancia Becomes Author Of One Of History’s Unwanted Footnotes

    Paul Ciancia
    Paul Ciancia: Source: FBI.

    UPDATED 11:04 A.M. ET (NOV. 4, U.S.A.) Gerardo I. Hernandez, a 39-year-old Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officer described as a loving husband and father and dutiful employee, gave his life for his country Friday. In an awful and unwanted footnote, he became the first TSA officer killed in the line of duty.

    Officer Hernandez thus indelibly became linked in history to figures such as Edwin C. Shanahan, the first FBI agent to die in the line of duty (1925), and William Craig, the first member of the U.S. Secret Service killed while doing his job (1902). Shanahan was murdered by a car thief wielding an automatic pistol. Craig died in a horrific collision between a streetcar and carriage while protecting President Theodore Roosevelt. Like El Salvador-born Hernandez, Craig was not born in the United States. He was born in Scotland.

    A full fact set has not yet emerged in the death of Hernandez. What is clear is that Paul Anthony Ciancia, 23, was arrested after being shot by police Friday at Los Angeles International Airport. He initially was identified by the FBI as the suspect in a shooting death and the wounding of others at the airport. On Saturday, he was charged with Murder of a Federal Officer and Violence at International Airports.

    Ciancia used a “.223 caliber M&P 15 assault rife” he’d pulled from his bag at the TSA checkpoint inside Terminal 3, the FBI said in an affidavit filed yesterday in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

    Less clear is Ciancia’s full motive for making war against officers of his own country. Clues, however, are beginning to emerge.

    TSA officers flatly needed to die, according to a handwritten letter allegedly signed by Ciancia and cited in the FBI affidavit.

    The deaths at LAX would “instill fear” in the “traitorous minds” of TSA officers who survived, according to the letter cited by the FBI.

    TSA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). TSA officers guard passenger safety at LAX, one of the busiest airports in the world. Like many other facilities at which TSA officers protect passengers within the U.S. network of transportation and commerce, LAX is one of America’s great symbols of freedom.

    DHS was formed after the 9/11 terrorists hijacked four airliners and made prisoners of passengers engaged in the the simple act of pursuing their freedom. Three of the planes were used as weapons of mass destruction and deliberately flown into the World Trade Centers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. The fourth plane, intended to become another weapon of mass destruction in Washington, crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers began to understand what was happening and tried to overpower their murderous al-Qaeda hijackers.

    Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the four-pronged attack, the final minutes of their lives spent in unimaginable terror.

    Similar feelings about dying in a horrifying way were experienced by passengers and workers at LAX Friday: Ciancia, an American from New Jersey living in Los Angeles, allegedly was inside the airport with a weapon that resembled a machine gun. After hearing police bark commands to get down, passengers and workers fearing for their lives hit the floor and scrambled for cover. Some people cloistered themselves in restrooms and restaurants, torturing themselves with thoughts they’d made the wrong bet in the fog of sudden war and had corralled themselves as cattle, becoming more convenient targets for the slaughter.

    In an atmosphere of panic and perhaps fearing one or more gunmen also could be packing bombs, some people stampeded for the exits. Once outdoors, they remained fixed on the danger behind them and obliviously sprinted into traffic lanes. They could have survived the initial siege, only to have been killed by an approaching taxicab or perhaps even by a taxiing plane. Chaos breeds such tortuous fates. Events at LAX on Friday were a sort of personal 9/11 for many thousands of people, a mad dash to get out of a war zone.

    Ciancia had “five magazine clips of ammunition for his assault rifle,” the FBI said, noting that the letter specifically addressed TSA employees and painted him as a man on a mission.

    And Ciancia made what appears to be a formal declaration in the letter, in which he allegedly stated he’d made “the conscious decision to try to kill” multiple TSA employees.

    He started by firing “multiple rounds” at Hernandez, who was on duty and wearing his uniform, according to the affidavit. The officer was shot at “point blank range,” with Ciancia next moving toward an escalator.

    Upon peering back from the escalator at Hernandez and perhaps noticing movement, Ciancia “returned and shot the wounded officer again,” according to the affidavit.

    “The TSA officer was fatally wounded,” according to the affidavit.

    Ciancia then opened fire on “at least two other uniformed, on-duty TSA employees and one civilian passenger, all of whom sustained gunshot wounds,” according to the affidavit.

    A “sergeant and an officer of the Los Angeles Airport Police” shot Ciancia after pursuing him, according to the affidavit.

    As worried Americans watched CNN and other networks Friday for news about the attack, they heard Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti describing Ciancia as a man with enough ammunition to “have literally killed everyone in that terminal.”

    Americans also heard Leon Saryan, who was exercising his freedom at the airport Friday, tell of his chilling encounter with Ciancia. As reported by NBC News (italics added):

    . . . a witness said the shooter, calmly walking through the terminal with his weapon, approached him with a one-word question.

    “All he said was, ‘TSA?’ Just like that,” Leon Saryan told MSNBC.

    Saryan appears to have been permitted to survive for one reason and one reason only. He was not “TSA.”

    In Ciancia’s mind, this apparently meant that Saryan was not the enemy, meaning he was not the U.S. government or one of its employees. The young man apparently also had decided that he needed to kill federal officers in response to a perceived encroachment by the “New World Order.”

    Ciancia also referenced “fiat currency,” according to an AP report.

    The Southern Poverty Law Center, quoting a source, reported that Ciancia “also expressed antagonism toward the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its chief until she resigned in August, Janet Napolitano, the source said. Ciancia’s note called former Secretary Napolitano a ‘bull dyke’ and contained the phrase ‘FU Janet Napolitano,’ the source said.”

    The shootings occurred in Terminal 3. In mid-October, explosive devices made of dry ice were found in and around the area of Terminal 2 at LAX. Dicarlo Bennett and Miguel Angel Iniguez were arrested in that incident, which possibly was an excruciatingly mindless prank carried out by two contract workers who never got the memo that things that explode are incompatible with airport safety and the safety of millions of souls who exercise their travel freedom in the skies and at ticket counters and boarding and arrival gates on the ground.

    An actual attack allegedly carried out by Ciancia at the airport occurred just 19 days after the dry-ice incident.

    The Unwanted Footnotes Of Rogues

    In allegedly gunning down Gerardo Hernandez and wounding others, Ciancia joined Martin J. Durkin as the author of a terrible, tragic and unwanted footnote. Durkin was the car thief who shot the FBI’s Shanahan, making him the first FBI agent killed in the line of duty. Special Agent Shanhan was 27 when a Durkin bullet entered his chest and killed him.

    Although Shanahan returned fire, his death was “almost instantaneous,” the FBI said.

    Of course, what happened to Hernandez also reminded Americans of what happened to John Lennon in 1980 at the hands of Mark David Chapman, the author of Lennon’s terrible footnote: first former Beatle to die. Lennon was shot while exercising his freedom to walk in peace at his apartment building in New York City.

    And since it’s November and edging closer to the 50th anniversary (Nov. 22) of one of the greatest crimes in U.S. history, it’s hard not to recall yet-another author of an awful footnote that will live for the ages: Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic President to be elected and the first Catholic President to be assassinated. President Kennedy was killed while exercising his freedom to ride in an open convertible in Dallas. (Watch, listen, learn, remember).

    Martin Luther King Jr. left this world in 1968. The author of his terrible footnote — an assassinated winner of the Nobel Peace Prize — was James Earl Ray. King was exercising his freedom to stand on a hotel balcony in Memphis, Tenn.

    Another Senseless Death In America

    TSA officers wear uniforms and badges while conducting passenger screenings, but do not carry arms and have no power of arrest. The phrase “sitting ducks” to describe the typical TSA officer was used during television coverage of the LAX events Friday, leading to questions such as this: If the officers are sitting ducks, what are the passengers? Friday’s shooting death of Hernandez in his workplace — a workplace at which the public congregates while exercising its freedom to fly — naturally has led to questions about whether TSA officers should receive training in firearms and carry guns as a means of protecting themselves and the public.

    The PP Blog has no early answers to these questions. Nor does it understand how a gunman with a high-powered rifle somehow breached LAX security in a fashion that apparently permitted him to hunt uniform-wearing federal officers for sport in full view of the traveling public.

    On this Sunday — after trying to distill all sorts of deeply disturbing information about the death of Officer Hernandez since the news broke Friday — the Blog has reached only one conclusion: Despite his lack of the power of arrest and an employment designation that likely makes him an nonpolice officer, Hernandez should be accorded full police honors, including casket watch, honor guard, funeral commander, pallbearers, flag team and firing party, if consistent with the wishes of his widow.

    It is particularly disturbing that TSA officers trying to prevent the next 9/11 and protect symbols of freedom that are the vulnerable equivalents of the toppled Twin Towers and the damaged and rebuilt/refortified Pentagon have become fodder for late-night comedians and targets of the insipid headline taunts of Matt Drudge.

    Janet Napolitano, now the president of the University of California and a former U.S. Attorney, two-term governor of Arizona and DHS Secretary, was called names that would peel paint while at DHS. The treatment she received from Drudge was a national disgrace that served to fuel animosity toward TSA officers.

    It is one thing to criticize public officials, agencies and employees; it is quite another to subject them to hysterical ridicule. Far too many Americans have been conditioned to believe the TSA consists of gropers and malingerers eager to carry out orders from their Orwellian controllers in Washington.

    Officer Gerardo I. Hernandez was exercising his freedom to be employed and not be harassed — let alone murdered — at his workplace. But this is no ordinary case of workplace violence. No, it is a case in which a self-appointed soldier went hunting for the officer and others like him.

    Hernandez met his awful fate Friday on a beautiful day in Los Angeles, which had served up a day not unlike the one experienced in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. He appears to have been murdered by a lone-wolf domestic terrorist who preemptively sought to paint himself a patriot and great defender of freedom.

    The most deeply disturbing thing about the alleged word choices of Ciancia — the rants against federal employees, “fiat currency,” the Federal Reserve and the “New World Order” — is the striking similarity to rants and conspiracy theories that often appear on the Ponzi boards by other self-styled defenders of freedom.

    Ciancia would have been a perfect recruit in that utterly corrupt universe, a young malcontent in search of an intellectually lazy philosophy that reimagines organized fraud as a noble way to make a living while reimagining federal agents as the bad guys who deserve to suffer.

    With Ciancia, the intellectual and emotional detachment appears to have become so complete that he licensed himself to kill federal agents, create widows and widowers and alter the psychological trajectories of children and thousands of other innocents — all while hijacking the blanket of patriotism and pretending he was a soldier for freedom.

    Rest in Peace, Officer Hernandez.

  • RECOMMENDED READING: ‘Sovereign’ Reports: Mayor Of Fayetteville, N.C., Retracts Proclamation Declaring ‘Moorish American Week’; New Jersey Man Allegedly Declares He’s A ‘Sovereign’ After Bizarre Encounter With Allentown (Pa.) Police In Middle Of The Night

    Part of the Moorish American Week proclamation. Fayetteville was one of 11 American cities reportedly to approve the proclamation, which has led to questions about whether government officials simply rubber-stamped a document that claimed a "sovereign Theocratic Government" had been formed inside the United States.

    As the website of the purported “Moorish American National Government” informs visitors that 11 U.S. mayors “have issued official proclamations in recognition of Moorish American Week,” the mayor of Fayetteville, N.C., tells the Fayetteville Observer that he is withdrawing the proclamation he approved.

    An obscure group called “Moorish Americans” has “attempted to file court documents claiming sovereignty from the U.S.,” the newspaper reports.

    On a page of its website, the Moorish American National Government publishes a “Proclamation Of Status And Jurisdiction Of The Moorish Americans.”

    “In the course of human events,” the Moorish proclamation begins, “The Founding Fathers of The United States brought forth on this Continent two new Nations. One, themselves, a conglomerate of Pale Skin Descendants from the Nations of Europe.

    “The other Nation,” the proclamation continues, “a Comity of Olive Skin Nationals extracted from various Countries affixed indigenously to the North Western and South Western Shores of Africa, yet latent in slavery. Now, in the plan of Universal Justice, it has become necessary for the latter, standing in their Proper Person, to proclaim their true Free National Status, thus dissolving the political bands and assumable jurisdictions of the former.” (Emphasis added.)

    Among the claims made by “Moorish Americans” in the proclamation approved by Fayetteville and other cities was that the Moorish had “formed a sovereign Theocratic Government.”

    ‘Moorish’-Related Litigation

    The PP Blog used “justia moorish” — without the quotes — in a Google search. (Justia.com is a resource that publishes court filings and judicial rulings.) The Google search returned several references to litigation in which “Moorish” was a term in case stylings.

    As one example, this Justia page shows a ruling in the Northern District of Illinois in which a federal judge weighed the confusing issues in a lawsuit by an entity known as the Moorish Science Temple of America against the city of Berwyn, Ill. As another example, this Justia page refers to a case filed in New Jersey federal court on Dec. 21, 2011.

    That case references the “MOORISH SCIENCE TEMPLE OF AMERICA 4TH & 5TH GENERATION and ATTORNEYS IN FACT ON BEHALF OF THE ESTATE OF CHESTER R. JENKINS, JR.” as plaintiffs, with the defendants listed as “SUPERIOR COURT OF NEW JERSEY, JOHN DOE, CHARLES M. RAND and MAUREEN B. MANTINEO.”

    No case filing is accessible through the Justia link.

    A ruling in a different case in Wisconsin federal court is available through this Justia link. The case is styled “Anchorbank FSB v. Moorish Science Temple of America.”

    Meanwhile, a ruling in a case in which Soloman Seales Jr. is listed as the plaintiff and “Branch Moorish Science Temple and Unknown Gerard” are listed as the defendants is available through this Justia.com link. That case was filed in Missouri federal court, and Seales is described as a “prisoner” who brought the action against the Moorish entity.

    Separately, the Charlotte Criminal Lawyer Blog reported in July 2011 that a “Moorish Nation” Defense is clogging up the court system in Mecklenburg County, N.C. Charlotte, a famous American city, is the county seat of Mecklenburg County.

    From the Blog:

    “The details of this strategy vary throughout the nation, but the underlying theory is that a defendant is of Moorish decent, and is not subject to the laws of the United States,” wrote attorney Brad Smith. “According to the Mecklenburg County version, the defendant takes on a new name, and declares that he cannot be prosecuted for any crimes which occurred under his prior name.”

    The “Moorish Defense,” Smith wrote, “is nothing more than a scam” that may cause harm to defendants accused of crimes.

    Visit the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center to acquaint yourself with some of the strangeness associated with purported “Moorish Americans” who are gaining a toehold among some people of African descent while Moorish adherents engage in behavior similar to adherents of the “sovereign citizen” movement.

    Although the “sovereign citizen” movement was largely white and has racist roots, those “roots have been virtually forgotten by increasing numbers of black Americans who have melded it with selective interpretations of the teachings of pioneer black nationalist Noble Drew Ali, who founded the exclusively black Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA) almost 100 years ago,” SPLC reports.

    Strange ‘Sovereign’ Event In Pennsylvania

    The Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call is reporting that a New Jersey man was arrested this week on charges of indecent exposure, open lewdness, public drunkenness and disorderly conduct.

    After police stopped the man amid reports he had urinated in front of a 7-Eleven convenience store at 3:05 a.m. on Feb. 16, the man allegedly declared his purported sovereignty and told an officer to “kiss” something, the newspaper reported.

    Read the Morning Call story on what the man allegedly told police.

     

  • Man Accused In Murder Of Prominent Arizona Couple Tells Judge He Reserves ‘Right To Uniform Commercial Code,’ Raising Specter Of ‘Sovereign’ Killer

    EDITOR’S NOTE: As the PP Blog was preparing this story for publication today, Michael Crane was charged with a third murder. The victim, Bruce Gaudet, was found in a burning home Jan. 26, four days before the fire at the home of Lawrence and Glenna Shapiro.

    The story of the Shapiro homicides and Crane’s first court appearance in their deaths is below . . .

    Lawrence Shapiro, 79, and Glenna Shapiro, 78, were found murdered late last month in Arizona. Lawrence was a physician, his wife of more than 50 years an educator. For nearly 30 years, she was the leader of what became the Arizona branch of the National Kidney Foundation. The PP Blog encourages its audience to visit this remarkable Blog, an homage to the remarkable lives of the Shapiros.

    What leaps off the pages is a story of love and profound respect and gratitude for two human beings who touched people of all stripes. It is simply unthinkable that they allegedly were bound and their Paradise Valley home set ablaze, with the Shapiros inside.

    A suspect has been charged with their murder and other crimes. His name is Michael Lee Crane. He is 31 years old, and declined his first chance to have the court appoint an attorney for him.

    This is the Maricopa County video of his initial appearance after being charged with the murder of the Shapiros.

    What he said at that appearance after being advised he’d been charged with murder, armed robbery, burglary, arson of an occupied structure and kidnapping — and after he listened to an exchange between the prosecutor and the judge over the possibility that the death penalty could apply in the case — provides a glimpse into a chilling mind-set.

    “Do you have any questions, sir?” the judge asked, after setting cash bond at $3 million.

    “Umm, no — but I have a statement I’d like to make,” Crane replied.

    The judge advised Crane against making any statements, but he ignored the advice.

    “I would like to reserve my right to Uniform Commercial Code 1-207, and the Uniform Commercial Code 1-103,” he said.

    Here is a man charged with taking human lives and burning the bodies, and yet he spouts the Uniform Commercial Code to the judge — something  fantastically incongruous in the context of the charges against him.

    “The Uniform Commercial Code does not apply to criminal proceedings, sir,” the judge said.

    It is unclear from the video whether the judge was wondering if she’d just arraigned a “sovereign citizen.” She did not utter the phrase.

    Read “Return of the Sovereigns” on the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center for some background on why “sovereign citizens” and the Uniform Commercial Code have become entwined.

    Although Crane did not declare his belief system at the proceeding, questions are now being raised about whether the Shapiros met their fates at the hands of a “sovereign citizen.”

  • REPORTS: FBI Arrests Purported ‘Sovereign Citizen’ And Fugitive Shawn Rice After Arizona Standoff

    Shawn Rice, a purported “sovereign citizen” the FBI described in March 2011 as a “fugitive,” has been arrested in Seligman, Ariz.

    The Arizona Republic is reporting that the arrest occurred at 5:30 p.m. local time yesterday after a standoff that ended peacefully after negotiations with Rice, who had barricaded himself inside a house.

    Rice, whom federal prosecutors in Nevada said was 48, was charged in Nevada with money-laundering and conspiracy in March 2009. His initial arrest occurred as a result of a sting in which he allegedly agreed with Samuel Davis, 56, of Council, Idaho, to launder proceeds from what the men believed was a bank-fraud scheme.

    In reality, according to federal prosecutors, Rice and Davis were conducting business with undercover FBI agents posing as scammers.

    Davis, another purported “sovereign citizen,” pleaded guilty to the charges in March 2011. He was sentenced in October to 57 months in federal prison. Rice, though, became a fugitive, the FBI said.

    It was not immediately clear how the FBI learned yesterday that Rice was in Seligman. The arrest occurred while much of the nation’s attention was focused on the holidays.

    The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has described Davis as a redemptionist-seminar tax scammer and “one of the elders in the Guardians of the Free Republics, a sovereign group that claims to have recently set up ‘common-law courts’ in all 50 states.”

    It is becoming somewhat common for “sovereign citizens” to conduct “trials” — occasionally inside places such as restaurants — at which fellow “sovereigns” implicated in crimes and within the jurisdiction of real courts are “acquitted.”

    Prior to his guilty plea, Davis advised customers of his tax scheme “that everything is going as planned,” SPLC reported.

    Rice is known as “Rabbi Shawn Rice,” SPLC reported.

    “According to the court records, from March 2008 through the date of the Indictment, Davis and Rice allegedly laundered approximately $1.3 million of monies for FBI undercover agents,” federal prosecutors said in March 2009. “Davis and Rice were told by the undercover agents that the monies were proceeds of a bank fraud scheme, specifically from the theft and forgery of stolen official bank checks. Davis and Rice laundered the monies through a nominee trust account controlled by Davis and through an account of a purported religious organization controlled by Rice. Davis and Rice took approximately $74,000 and $22,000, respectively, in fees for their money laundering services.”