They have their Keystone Kops side, but the Brownshirts also started out with their stupidity on display, not taken seriously.
In the links at the bottom of this, the good people of Vermont ran the MM out of a town and the MM promptly got lost in the woods and inadvertantly became illegal aliens themselves when they stumbled across the U.S./Canadian border. They were up there (all FOUR of them) to demonstrate that they were NOT being discriminatory JUST about the SOUTHERN border (yeah, right).
Then, they were building a 10-miles fence in AZ on private property. Univision had cameras there, did the news professional gig of interviewing the token Hispanic president (Al GARZA), and then the camera panned over to a stack of concrete mix, the bags all showing the HUGH!1 logo in block all-caps, "MEZLA CONCRETO MEXICANO"!1 Priceless!1
As I say, they would be funny, but...
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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/business/30leonhardt.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&ref=media&pagewanted=all&oref=sloginTruth, Fiction and Lou Dobbs
By DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: May 30, 2007
The whole controversy involving Lou Dobbs and leprosy started with a “60 Minutes” segment a few weeks ago.
... Over the last few years, Lou Dobbs has transformed himself into arguably this country’s foremost populist. It’s an odd role, given that
he spent the 1980s and ’90s buttering up chief executives on CNN, but he’s now playing it very successfully. He has become a voice for the real economic anxiety felt by many Americans. ....
For one thing, Mr. Dobbs has a somewhat
flexible relationship with reality. He has said, for example, that one-third of the inmates in the federal prison system are illegal immigrants. That’s wrong, too. According to the Justice Department, 6 percent of prisoners in this country are noncitizens (compared with 7 percent of the population). For a variety of reasons, the crime rate is actually lower among immigrants than natives.
Second, Mr.
Dobbs really does give airtime to white supremacy sympathizers. Ms. Cosman, who is now deceased, was a lawyer and Renaissance studies scholar, never a medical doctor or a leprosy expert. She gave speeches in which she said that Mexican immigrants had a habit of molesting children. Back in their home villages, she would explain, rape was not as serious a crime as cow stealing. The Southern Poverty Law Center keeps a list of other such guests from “Lou Dobbs Tonight.”
Finally, Mr. Dobbs is fond of darkly hinting that this country is under attack. He suggested last week that the new immigration bill in Congress could be the first step toward a new nation — a
“North American union” — that combines the United States, Canada and Mexico. On other occasions, his program has described
a supposed Mexican plot to reclaim the Southwest. In one such report, one of his correspondents referred to a Utah visit by Vicente Fox, then Mexico’s president, as a “Mexican military incursion.”
When I asked Mr. Dobbs about this yesterday, he said, “You’ve raised this to a level that frankly I find offensive.”
The most common complaint about him, at least from other journalists, is that his program combines factual reporting with editorializing. But I think this misses the point. Americans, as a rule, are smart enough to handle a program that mixes opinion and facts. The problem with Mr. Dobbs is that
he mixes opinion and untruths. He is the heir to the nativist tradition that has long used fiction and conspiracy theories as a weapon against the Irish, the Italians, the Chinese, the Jews and, now, the Mexicans. .... E-mail: Leonhardt@nytimes.com
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=589Broken Record
Lou Dobbs' daily 'Broken Borders' CNN segment has focused on immigration for years.
But there's one issue Dobbs just won't take on.
By Heidi Beirich and Mark Potok
.... For more than two years now, Dobbs has served up a populist approach to immigration on nightly segments of his newscast entitled "Broken Borders." He has relentlessly covered the issue, although hardly from a traditional news perspective -- Dobbs favors clamping down on illegal immigration, and his "reporting" never fails to make that clear. He has covered the same issues, and the same anti-immigration leaders, time after time after time. In recent months,
Dobbs has run countless upbeat reports on the "citizen border patrols" that have sprung up around the country since last April's Minuteman Project, a paramilitary effort to seal the Arizona border.
But there's one thing Lou Dobbs won't do. No matter what others report about the movement,
Dobbs has failed to present mounting and persistent
evidence of anti-Hispanic racism in anti-immigration groups and citizen border patrols. ....
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17104568&BRD=2290&PAG=461&dept_id=569392&rfi=6Border Patrol chief doesn’t want Minutemen near agents (Laredo, Texas)
LAREDO MORNING TIMES ^ | 08/24/2006 | MIGUEL TIMOSHENKOV
The head of the Border Patrol said Wednesday he
doesn’t want members of the Minuteman Project working near his agents when they come to the Laredo area next month. The civilian group, which reports illegal immigrants to immigration authorities, is expected to start patrolling the border in the Laredo area on Sept. 11 and continue through Nov. 7.
Acting Chief Patrol Agent Reynaldo Garza of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Laredo Sector said he can’t prevent the civilians from coming to Laredo, but said
they won’t be allowed to interfere with official business. ....
Esquivel said that
if U.S. citizens should have any trouble with a member of the Minuteman Project, he or she should call the sheriff’s department or other law enforcement authority.
State Rep. Richard Raymond deplored the group’s plan to come to Laredo.
“They don’t have anything to do with this community,” Raymond said. “Here,
we reject the racism they practice.” ....
(Miguel Timoshenkov may be reached at (956) 728-2583 or by e-mail at timo1@lmtonline.com)
http://iapprovethismessiah.com/2006/08/moons-paper-and-minutemen.htmlWhere in Washington, D.C., is Rev. Moon? by John GORENFELD
Moon's paper and the Minutemen
Wonkette: if the Border Patrol is short handed, why not call out the Minutemen? You know, the more-bark-than-bite nationalist
“movement” that, according to the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center, Jerry Seper and the Washington Times
largely invented out of the ether? Mind you, we’re not complaining. We’re big fans of making mountains out of molehills...
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=635Anti-Immigration Movement
Newspapers Inflated Minuteman Numbers, Report Finds
The report,
"Creating the Minutemen," is based on an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) analysis of 581 articles and editorials printed in major U.S. newspapers between January 2005 and February 2006. The ACLU has been highly critical of the Minutemen, and ACLU volunteers closely monitored the group.
The first of those articles, "Volunteers Set to Monitor Border Crossings," by
Jerry Seper of the hard-right
Washington Times, reported that
240 volunteers had signed up. By early March, Seper was reporting that the number of volunteers had "
more than tripled," came from every state, and
included 16 pilots with aircraft.
During the last two weeks of March 2005, the media hype shifted into overdrive. Fifteen journalists reported the Minuteman Project had signed up "at least
1,000 volunteers." The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin ran a March 23, 2005, article headlined "
2,000 volunteers expected for Minuteman Project."
http://www.boston.com/news/local/vermont/articles/2005/10/16/volunteers_get_cold_reception_in_vermont?mode=PFVolunteers get cold reception in Vermont
They run into protest and walk through wild to watch Canada border
By Yvonne Abraham, Globe Staff | October 16, 2005
NEWPORT, Vt. -- It's hard to save the United States from illegal immigrants when you can't find the border. ....
But these Minutemen were forced out of town by a larger crowd of protesters, who denounced their opposition to illegal immigration as
a front for racism. ....
Back on the bike path, the three Minutemen trudged on in the rain. Finally, they knocked on Amy Audet's door to ask directions.
The border, she told them, was in the opposite direction.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/30/AR2005103000822.html On Patrol in Vt., Minutemen Are the Outsiders
Along the Border, Group Targets Illegal Immigrants
By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 31, 2005; Page A02
.... They began scouting out potential sites several weeks ago, poking around this hamlet with a downtown almost directly on the border. It was in Derby Line that they had their first problem with the elusive border. On one scouting expedition, member Bob Casimiro said
they became, for a moment,
illegal visitors in Canada.
Then came their first official patrol two weekends ago, which was dogged by protesters who assembled downtown and shouted slogans such as
"Take your hate out of our state." The Minutemen had to patrol a bike path away from town, and then -- as the Boston Globe reported -- got lost and had to ask a local for directions. .... :WashPost/Take-Hate-out-of-our-State
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/12/AR2005111200954.htmlMinutemen, Go Home
Sunday, November 13, 2005; Page B06
UNWITTINGLY, THE leader of a local group whose self-appointed mission is to photograph, spy on and bother undocumented day laborers in the town of Herndon, put his finger on the dilemma of illegal immigration the other day. "What we want, bottom line in Herndon, is for the illegal aliens to leave," said George Taplin, leader of the town chapter of the Minuteman Project, a national organization bitterly opposed to illegal immigrants. "And if there is no work, they will."
Ah, but there you have the problem:
There is work -- enormous amounts of work, particularly in the Northern Virginia suburbs. In fact, in an area with virtually no unemployment, the market is desperate for immigrant labor, documented, undocumented or falsely documented. It helps keep the economy growing, and immigrants come here because they know they are needed and there will be plenty of work. Anti-immigrant crusaders such as Mr. Taplin may not like it, but unless they have discovered a magic formula for shrinking the regional economy in boom-'burbs such as Fairfax County, no amount of spying on, photographing or hassling undocumented day laborers and their employers will eliminate this irrepressible demand for labor.
Of course,
anti-immigration cranks such as the Minutemen know that, so what they are really up to is simple harassment. They train their still and video cameras on day laborers with families to feed and rents to pay and on the employers that pick them up for work. They jot down license-plate numbers and talk to each other with walkie-talkies. They convey the information they collect to the Internal Revenue Service, which, to put it mildly, has bigger fish to fry.
Reveling in self-importance, the Minutemen and their ilk say they are plugging enforcement gaps that the federal government has left open. In fact
they are underemployed amateurs more interested in posturing than problem-solving. In Vermont one such group got lost in the woods while hunting for undocumented infiltrators and had to ask for directions, the Boston Globe reported. Some spent their Saturday "patrol" sitting in lawn chairs in a field, staring at a tree line. People like these would dearly love to deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants. But that's not going to happen.
Rather than
harassing undocumented workers and staring at trees, the Minutemen should heed Dean Boyd, spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He told The Post's Karin Brulliard: "Law enforcement is best left up to professionals."
Dead link: U.S.Citizen Hispanic Austin, TX, councilman told to Go Back to MX by MM:
http://www.statesman.com/search/content/news/stories/local/12/17minutemen.htmlhttp://www.boingboing.net/2005/04/15/snapshots_of_volunte.htmlSnapshots of volunteer "Minutemen" on US/Mexico border
Posted by Xeni Jardin, April 15, 2005 8:39 AM
Investigative reporter and Boing Boing pal Mark Ebner spent last week embedded with the "Minutemen" in and around Tombstone, Arizona. For those unfamiliar with US/Mexico border politics, these are the volunteer border patrol militias comprised of heavily armed, grumpy-looking white people who have self-organized to stem the flood of wannabe janitors, dishwashers, and nannies who threaten our national security. Ebner's report will appear in Globe magazine next week, available at your grocery check-out stand. Meanwhile, enjoy the new face of Homeland Security!
Pro-MM / LoneWacko:
http://lonewacko.com/blog/archives/004214.htmlhttp://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2005/08/minutemen-home-for... 
Minutemen: A home for extremists
Monday, August 08, 2005
This is a recent Minutemen rally. And yes, that's a Nazi flag there, third from the right.
Well, I've been saying all along that the Minutemen's core demographic is constituted of right-wing extremists, including many outright racists.
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