SPLC's Intelligence Report | Page 15

NORTH CENTRAL REGIONAL JAIL (DEEGAN); CONTRIBUTED (FLAGGERS) Deegan doctor, I was a sex machine inventor, swinger, BDSM master, porn actor and producer for 14 years, so I’ve seen it all,” Van Thiel wrote on his site.  Things fell apart on Oct. 2, when Van Thiel, 52, was arrested and detained at the Clark County Detention Center on state charges of practicing medicine without a license, possession of a firearm by a felon, possession of illegal drugs, and illegally providing drugs. They got worse a few weeks later when prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo said he intends to seek murder charges against Van Thiel, on the theory that medical care dispensed by someone who isn’t a licensed physician shows “reckless disregard for human life.” It could be months before those charges are filed. Van Thiel has represented himself in numerous past actions, but it appears that the murder charge drove him into the arms of actual licensed attorneys. Even they couldn’t help, however. Describing Van Thiel as a person who “seems to present more of a danger to the community than a serial murderer,” Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Ann Zimmerman rejected public defender Steve Lisk’s request to set bail at $20,000, and pegged it instead at $1 million. ▲ Stone Mountain, Georgia Nov. 14, 2015 About 40 so-called “flaggers” gathered at the nation’s largest Confederate memorial to protest a proposal by state officials to add a “Freedom Bell” dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr. to the monument. The demonstration was promoted in advance by the International Keystone Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the League of the South, an assortment of antigovernment “Patriot” groups, and Defend Stone Mountain, which apparently was created just for the protest and lambasted the “traitors” who were seeking to “tarnish” the site. The idea of erecting the monument to the slain civil rights leader comes from a line in his famous “I Have a Dream” speech — “Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.” Stone Mountain is known for huge sculptures carved into the side of the mountain that depict Confederate heroes Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis, and also was the site of the Nov. 25, 1915, birth of the “second era” Klan. The sculpture was planned and started by Gutzon Borglum, who also created the Mount Rushmore monument to U.S. presidents and was a leading member of the Klan, which helped finance it. The recent protest there was one of more than 350 in support of Confederate symbols that followed attacks on the Confederate battle flag, which had been embraced by racist mass murderer Dylann Roof. spring 2016 13