Tag: maine

Maine is fighting to stop a Nazi group from building massive HQ in the state

A neo-Nazi group is planning to build a huge headquarters in Maine – and the state is desperately trying to find a way to halt the development, The Daily Beast reported.

The group, which calls itself “Blood Tribe,” is planning a swastika flag march in Florida next month, just days after a racist mass shooter killed three Black people at a Dollar General in the city of Jacksonville. Its leader says it will be the biggest Nazi march since Hitler’s rallies.

But, “despite their far-flung recruiting efforts, it’s in Maine that Blood Tribe and its leader Christopher Pohlhaus are trying to establish themselves,” The Beast’s report stated.

“In the sparsely populated town of Springfield, Blood Tribe is buying up land, trying to establish a white supremacist hub — and getting its supporters banned from Airbnb in the process.”

Maine State Sen. Joe Baldacci is proposing legislation to stop the building of the “military-style” camp. Twenty-five states already have similar laws that prevent private groups of setting up training facilities, the Beast reported.

The proposed HQ would take up 120 acres of land in what Pohlhaus calls the “white state.”

According to Pohlhaus, the legislation is “not going to stop me at all.”

Keep reading

Christian Crowdfunding Site Hosting Neo-Nazi Trying to Build Whites-Only Community

The rightwing Christian alternative to GoFundMe is allowing a neo-Nazi leader to raise thousands of dollars on their platform, according to online records reviewed by VICE News.

GiveSendGo, which had already made headlines for allowing far-right groups like the Proud Boys raise millions of dollars off of its platform, is currently hosting a former Marine and neo-Nazi named Christopher Pohlhaus, who among other activities, wants to build an all-white community in Maine. 

Pohlhaus has commanded a sizable Telegram following for years and once gave a live stream on how best to hypothetically shoot truckers in order to disrupt the supply chain. He has also had connections to everyone from Riley June Williams—the January 6 attacker who broke into then Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office—to NSC-131, a neo-Nazi activist network in New England that was founded by a former member of a designated terrorist group. 

Despite those credentials, GiveSendGo, a site that promotes itself as the “#1 Free Christian Fundraising Site”, has yet to boot Pohlhaus from their platform. GiveSendGo was notified at least twice last year about the avowed neo-Nazi and his affiliations to the violent far-right. In September, an analyst at the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), a non-profit terrorism watchdog, contacted GiveSendGo to say Pohlhaus was using it as a platform for making money and establishing a white nationalist community. 

Pohlhaus served in the Marines for four years in the 2000s and gained prominence among the far-right when he promoted a countrywide and racist banner drop on the first anniversary of George Floyd’s murder. Pohlhaus then planned a migration among some of his followers to turn Maine into an all-white ethnostate. He took the cause to GiveSendGo, where Pohlhaus began to raise money for a homestead in a remote part of the state that could one day serve as a community and a place where his group can “train.” So far, records from the fundraising site show he has accumulated just over $2000, with two large donations over $800 each, coming nearly two months ago (the campaign also received 23 “prayers”, which is a button on GiveSendGo pages). 

Within that span of time, Pohlhaus caused outrage when he and several other members of his group, which he calls a tribe, showed up armed at a children’s drag queen story event in Ohio, giving the Sieg Heil salute with their arms, yelling racial slurs, and reportedly chanting “there will be blood!”

Keep reading

State Threatens to Take Baby Over Homemade Goat Milk Formula

Warning to all parents who use a homemade baby formula recipe for their children instead of feeding them toxic, GMO laced commercial formula.

DON’T tell a conventionally minded doctor it is made with raw milk else your baby might end up in foster care!

This is the nightmare Alorah Gellerson of Brooklin, Maine is experiencing right now because she made the mistake of telling her doctor about the homemade goats milk formula she proudly and carefully makes for her healthy, happy, three-month-old son Carson.

The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) quickly responded when the doctor reported Alorah and that’s when things got messy.

The state came in and threatened to take Carson away and put him in foster care unless Alorah followed DHHS orders to go and have the baby examined by a doctor.  Unbelievably, DHHS also mandated an overnight hospital stay and a switch back to store-bought GMO commercial formula.

Despite complying with every single DHHS demand, Gellerson, who receives state benefits, is still being harassed with threats of foster care for her son.  “I hope this all goes away. It’s been so terrible and hard on us. We’re just trying to live our lives and they keep bothering us. I just want it to be all over”, she said.

Keep reading

Former Maine gubernatorial candidate busted with kiddie porn

A lawyer who ran for governor of Maine twice was arrested on child pornography charges Friday.

Eliot Cutler, 75, faces four counts of possession of sexually explicit material of a minor under 12 after investigators found 10 files of children being exploited on his computer, according to The Portland Press Herald.

Culter may face additional charges as cops continued to look through terabytes of data on devices seized from two of the former Independent candidate’s homes, the article said.

Officials arrested Cutler at his farm in Brooklin even as the probe continued, prosecutors said. He was being held on $50,000 bail.

“Given the incredibly high bail of $50,000 cash, set on a Friday night after banks are closed no less, it is unclear whether the bail will be posted,” Cutler’s attorney Walt McKee told the newspaper.

The investigation stemmed from a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that someone in Maine had downloaded or uploaded an illegal image, the report said.

“It was a known piece of child pornography,” Hancock County District Attorney Matt Foster told the paper.

Cutler, a former member of President Jimmy Carter’s administration, ran for governor in 2010 and 2014 after working as a Washington DC attorney.

Keep reading

Maine Abolishes Civil Forfeiture, Now Requires A Criminal Conviction To Take Property

Maine became the fourth state to abolish civil forfeiture, a practice that enables law enforcement to confiscate millions of dollars worth of property without ever filing criminal charges. Taking effect on Tuesday without the governor’s signature, LD 1521 fully repeals Maine’s civil forfeiture laws, while simultaneously bolstering its criminal forfeiture process, which only authorizes forfeiture after a criminal conviction (apart from a few narrow circumstances, like the owner’s death or deportation). 

Although civil forfeiture is typically defended as a way to fight back against drug kingpins, in reality, many forfeiture cases have been remarkably petty. In Maine, half of all cash forfeitures were under $1,670. 

“It’s a very simple concept; you don’t lose your property unless you used it in the commission of a crime, or knowingly allowed someone else to use it in the commission of a crime,” bill sponsor Rep. Billy Bob Faulkingham wrote in May testimony supporting his bill. “It is time to end this work around that makes people prove innocence, rather than prosecutors proving guilt. This is one of the founding principles of our country.” 

Keep reading