Thanks to New Times Web Editor Jonathan McNamara, you can now watch Phoenix muralist Francisco Garcia creating the Blue Boy image that so freaked out the little town of Pine-Strawberry, Arizona, that he was ordered to take it down and replace it with the image of a cabin. McNamara squeezed…
I haven’t given much thought to Holocaust-denier David Irving since July, when I covered his appearance at the Phoenix diner Jerry’s. There he spoke to a group including local neo-Nazis such as Harry Hughes, J.T. Ready, and Jesse Curnow, as well as Mexican-flag-burning lesbian nativist Laine Lawless. Though the event…
SS IGNORANT Supposedly intelligent, respectable people do some really dumb stuff sometimes. Case in point: Former GOP gubernatorial hopeful Mike Harris, who ran third behind Don Goldwater and Len Munsil in the 2006 Republican primary for governor. Munsil won that battle and went on to get his lunch handed to…
The lead item in my Bird column this week, titled “SS IGNORANT,” is about 2006 Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Harris and his flirtation with white supremacy. Read the article for all the gritty details. I didn’t have room in the column for the photos of Harris, screenshots of his NewSaxon…
Joe claims ABC just happened to be in town when the sweep started in this Channel 3 piece Following up on my blog post of yesterday, wherein I quoted sources telling me that Arpaio’s latest anti-immigration sweep was done with an out-of-town film crew in mind, specifically one from ABC national…
Sounds like Joe Arpaio’s been fibbing on Twitter, at least according to the White House. Vice President Joe Biden was in town for a meeting with local Dems in downtown Phoenix, and according to Biden’s deputy press secretary Annie Tomasini, Joe just showed up, desperate for publicity as always. “Sheriff…
Sheriff Joe’s PR flacks are working overtime. They just sent out a press advisory on a new countywide anti-immigration dragnet beginning today. What they don’t tell you in the statement is that Arpaio and Co. have set up the sweep for an out-of-town camera crew from a major broadcast network,…
Who’re worse, behavior-wise, the nativists or the neo-Nazis? Sure, neo-Nazis are nefarious and nuts. But the nativists make the neo-Nazis look urbane by comparison. And in some ways the nativists are more violent, despite the fact crazy old crones with canes and old dudes in mobility scooters are overrepresented in…
In a speech today before the Center for American Progress, the think-tank that essentially acts as the Obama administration’s gray matter, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano spoke about comprehensive immigration reform, mostly from a law-enforcement perspective. Afterwards, Napolitano fielded questions about her old Arizona political ally Sheriff Joe…
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Susan Brnovich has set a “firm trial” date of December 14 in the case of alleged “Salon Bandit” and former New Times scribe Joe Watson. Brnovich ordered all subpoenaed witnesses to appear in court on that date. Watson, who has been incarcerated in county jails…
SKIN BUSTERS I’m not the type for formal to-dos. The dress code kills me. Last time I wore a suit was for Methodist Sunday school, back before I’d had my first smoke. I made an exception for the Anti-Defamation League of Arizona’s Torch of Liberty Award Dinner, held recently at…
I’m not going to weep any tears for CNN’s erstwhile token nativist Lou Dobbs, who resigned on air Tuesday, handing a victory to Latino groups who’ve sought his ouster through the Basta Dobbs campaign, led by activist/writer Roberto Lovato’s Presente.org.Dobbs has been a despicable opportunist, cynically dousing the anti-immigration bonfire with gasoline,…
California videographer and activist Naui Ocelotl Huitzilopochtli captured some cool footage of Saturday’s Nazi march and demo at the Arizona state Capitol, including a little confrontation with a swastika-licker from Missouri that I had. Didn’t amount to much. Plus, there was a DOJ guy right beside us, and cops all…
Lynne Stevens has always been one of the odder figures in the local anti-immigrant movement, mainly because she doesn’t fit the profile of angry old coot, as personified by her peer, convicted public urinator Buffalo Rick Galeener. A persistent protester of Salvador Reza’s Macehualli Day Labor Center, and of the ongoing…
Some 150 anarchists and other counter-demonstrators showed their mettle yesterday afternoon against a troop of around 60 neo-Nazis, mostly from out-of-state, who marched from 12th Avenue and Adams down to the Arizona state Capitol, flipping sieg heils and crying, “White power” all the way. The anarchists, who made up the majority…
If you haven’t seen J.T. Ready on the boob tube lately, you haven’t been watching TV. Seems like the wannabe Ernst Roehm of the East Valley has been getting his moment in the media sun defending the views of the National Socialist Movement, even though he states in this interview…
There’s no great irony in the fact that a week after the neo-Nazi anti-immigration rally at the Arizona state Capitol this Saturday, there will be another anti-immigration rally at the Capitol on November 14, this one put together as a Tea Party Against Amnesty and Illegal Immigration. It’s being spearheaded…
BURKE’S BUMBLE CBS 5’s recent special report on Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s pattern of retaliation against anyone who criticizes or opposes his office put some serious wind into the sails of Joe foes. Though it was not so much the partial recounting of Joe’s enemies list in the nearly 10-minute segment…
There’s one group talking a big game about confronting the neo-Nazi scum at the state Capitol this Saturday: the anarchists, the traditional foes of goosesteppers going all the way back to the Spanish Civil War, and then some. They’re often badmouthed in many activist circles here in town for being…
Let’s not mince labels, here: The neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement members who’ll be rallying at the state Capitol this coming Saturday afternoon are lowlife degenerates. And I don’t just mean that their anti-Semitism, outright racism and adoration of mass-murderer Adolf Hitler (you know, the guy that’s always on the History…
AlterNet scribe Isabel Macdonald’s scored again. You’ll recall her as the Brooklyn-based journalist who along with cameraman Mark Read captured Arpaio losing it a few months back. This, during an interview with our corrupt top cop in his offices. I posted some of Macdonald’s hilarious footage to my blog of…
Like we needed more evidence of the insidious culture of corruption that pervades the entire Maricopa County Sheriff’ Office: Check out this video from Channel 12 News, as reported on by Joe Dana. According to Dana, the video is of a court hearing last week for jail inmate Antonio Lozano,…
