“How come they just discovered that Golden Dawn is a criminal organization?”

Enraged at government inaction and police complicity in the brutal murder of Pavlos Fissas, fifty thousand protestors swarmed Athens for a march on the Golden Dawn’s headquarters on the 25th of September.

In an act that smacks of political theater and cold on the heels of the murder of Pavlos, the Greek government has finally arrested the leader and more than a dozen senior members and lawmakers of the neo-nazi party Golden Dawn.

From Reuters:

Party leader Nikolaos Mihaloliakos, spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris, three other lawmakers and more than 10 members of the party were arrested on charges of founding and participating in a criminal organization.

“Nothing can scare us!,” shouted a handcuffed Kasidiaris, flanked by hooded police officers carrying machine guns on his way to face a prosecutor.

[…]

The arrests surprised Greeks wary of political theatre in a country where little has been done to rein in a party that is widely viewed as neo-Nazi.

“It’s good that they arrested them, but I’m afraid that we will start killing each other now,” said Dimitra Vassilopoulou, a 58-year old housewife.

“Does the government actually mean it or is it just a tactic to impress us? Why didn’t they do anything when the immigrants were killed? How come they just discovered that Golden Dawn is a criminal organization?”

Gone with the Flag

How sad and pathetic…

( for more images, please visit the blogs Blood of my Kindred and Dead Confederates. <— Dead Confederate blog is  kind of “douche baggy” but the photos are they got are good, they are not blog roll worthy )

Those of you who are new to our blog will be interested to know that we’ve been keeping track of a group from Virginia calling themselves “The Virginia Flaggers.” Their premise is simple, if not typically pompous for the romantic fantasy of the old south: “honor history” by restoring the confederate flag to prominence in the capital of the old confederacy by flying it in public. Thus far, their actions consist of a handful of participants waving confederate flags in front of libraries, museums and public buildings, and their greatest successes consist of being a nuisance to drivers and pedestrians.

Their latest scheme to annoy as many drivers as possible is to erect a fifty-foot tall flagpole “somewhere” along the I-95 approach to southern Richmond. That “somewhere” has finally been revealed to be 2501 Old Bermuda Hundred Road, owned by James D and Barbara B Eaton(registration is required, but free). James D and Barbara B Eaton run Eaton Landscaping and Lawn Care, and they are in all probability nothing more than patsies set up by the flaggers. Let’s take the time to point out just how incredibly silly it is to hide the location of a FIFTY FOOT TALL FLAG POLE, because once the flag goes up, everyone’s going to know exactly where it is, and property records are freely available to the public. The worn-out “heritage not hate” argument has already been thoroughly dissolved by us and others. We’ve documented their embrace of openly racist hate groups and individuals and the blog Civil War Crossroads has demolished their weak academic posturing; you can find out more at the links provided.

Today is the day that the flag was to be unfurled. We were seriously contemplating whether this would even happen at all, given the recent internal strife that saw their head drop everything and put as much distance between her and the group as possible. We’ve speculated that the flag wouldn’t be going up at all, and as proof that we shouldn’t be playing the lottery, it went up.

We were taking bets on what the final disposition of this saga would be:

“mean people on the internet made us feel bad so we chickened out at the last minute”

“communist liberals made reams of undocumented, unverifiable death threats against us that we never bothered to report to the police, so we’re attempting to save face by defending it with video cameras and tazers”

Lurching and squeaking like a broken toy, the flaggers managed to unfurl a historically inaccurate, fifteen-by-fifteen sheet of made-in-china nylon along the southern approach to Richmond along I-95. It’s mostly hidden behind a line of trees, visible only from directly across the highway.

Considering the amount of difficulty encountered by simply attempting to erect a flagpole, this will probably be the beginning of the end of the Virginia Flaggers. We suspect it won’t be long before some other idiotic ideologue tries to emulate their confederate forebears and chase after a lost cause.