Mark Downey, a Christian Identity leader, has died at the age of 63, according to the white supremacist website, Stormfront. The cause was lung cancer.
“Pastor” Mark Downey, as he was commonly known by in white supremacist circles, spent decades promoting Christian Identity, a racist and antisemitic doctrine that heavily influenced right-wing extremism in America. Christian Identity asserts that whites, not Jews, are the true Israelites favored by God in the Bible.

The case of a schoolteacher in Florida suggests a subversion strategy long advocated by alt-right leaders — but if it's happening, it's likely arising from the simple need for hate to hide its face.......

There were warning signs, hints, that the children’s youngish schoolteacher was not everything she appeared to be. Or rather, as she explained it to the well-known white nationalist being interviewed as a guest on her weekly podcast out of Florida, she was much more than they suspected. But everyone looked the other way.

On Monday, December 4, the day after the first Sunday in Advent, a group of Christian clergy and leaders of other faiths gathered in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. They were there to challenge the pending Republican plan to rewrite the nation’s tax laws—a plan that will shower billions of dollars of tax breaks on the wealthy while effectively raising taxes on those making less than $30,000 a year....


Instead, the group left the rotunda and walked to the United Methodist Building down the street. There, the faith leaders announced the launch of a new national Poor People’s Campaign, cochaired by Barber and the Reverend Liz Theoharis, a Presbyterian minister and codirector of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The campaign will employ direct action and civil disobedience, as well as public education and voter registration, to draw attention to issues and mobilize disenfranchised citizens.

Come Saturday morning, Catterall and her friends joined a broad swath of faith groups from across the religious spectrum who participated in the Washington protest, each making the religious case for ending gun violence — often at the urging of their youth.

It’s a good time to reflect on what this war — the longest in U.S. history — has cost Americans and others around the world.
First, the economic costs: According to estimates by the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the war on terror has cost Americans a staggering $5.6 trillion since 2001, when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.
$5.6 trillion. This figure includes not just the Pentagon’s war fund, but also future obligations such as social services for an ever-growing number of post-9/11 veterans.
It’s hard for most of us to even begin to grasp such an enormous number.
It means Americans spend $32 million per hour, according to a counter by the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Mike Pompeo said all Muslims are 'potentially complicit' in terrorism. He's unfit to be secretary of state..........

The secretary of state is the chief diplomat responsible for guiding the foreign policy for the United States of America, and the face of America in the world — including the Muslim world. And soon, the man holding that job will be a former right-wing Tea Party congressman who once, among other Islamophobic statements and actions, accepted an award from a hate group labeled the “largest anti-Muslim group" in the country by both the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center