KKK group aims to adopt highway for litter control

From left, Knighthawk, April Hanson and her husband Harley Hanson, members of the International Keystone Knights Realm of Georgia, perform a traditional Klan salute along the portion of highway they want to adopt allowing them to put up a sign and do litter removal near Blairsville, Ga., Sunday, June 10, 2012. The Ku Klux Klan group wants to join Georgia's "Adopt-A-Highway" program for litter removal, which could force state officials to make difficult decisions on the application. (AP Photo/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Curtis Compton)

From left, Knighthawk, April Hanson and her husband Harley Hanson, members of the International Keystone Knights Realm of Georgia, perform a traditional Klan salute along the portion of highway they want to adopt allowing them to put up a sign and do litter removal near Blairsville, Ga., Sunday, June 10, 2012. The Ku Klux Klan group wants to join Georgia's "Adopt-A-Highway" program for litter removal, which could force state officials to make difficult decisions on the application. (AP Photo/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Curtis Compton)

From left, Knighthawk, April Hanson and her husband Harley Hanson, members of the International Keystone Knights Realm of Georgia, perform a traditional Klan salute along the portion of highway they want to adopt allowing them to put up a sign and do litter removal near Blairsville, Ga., Sunday, June 10, 2012. The Ku Klux Klan group wants to join Georgia's "Adopt-A-Highway" program for litter removal, which could force state officials to make difficult decisions on the application. (AP Photo/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Curtis Compton)

ATLANTA (AP) ? A Ku Klux Klan group is trying to join Georgia's "Adopt-A-Highway" program to clean up litter on a mile-long stretch of road, creating a quandary for state officials hesitant to acknowledge a group with a violent, racist past on a roadside sign.

The International Keystone Knights of the KKK applied last month to adopt part of Route 515 in the Appalachian Mountains. The Georgia Department of Transportation is meeting with lawyers from the state Attorney General's Office on Monday to decide how to proceed.

The program enlists volunteers from groups and companies to pick up trash. Each group that volunteers is named on a sign along the road it adopts.

April Chambers, the KKK group's secretary, said she applied for the program to keep the scenic highway beautiful, not for publicity.

"I live in the mountains and I want to keep them beautiful," Chambers said, adding that tourists frequently litter along the road as they pass through. "We didn't intend on this being big. I don't know why anybody's offended by it."

State Rep. Tyrone Brooks said he welcomes the opportunity to educate Chambers and the group about the Klan's legacy of violence and racism ? which he experienced first-hand as a civil rights activist in the fight to end segregation in the South.

"I'd like to sit down with this young lady and say, 'Your organization tried to kill me,'" Brooks said Monday, adding that he finds even the notion of a highway sign identifying the Ku Klux Klan as a civic group "insulting and insane."

Brooks, who is president of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials, said the group will pursue legal action should the KKK's application be approved.

"If the state would allow them to plant their name on one of its public highways in the home of Martin Luther King Jr. and Jimmy Carter, we would have to fight it with all of the resources at our disposal," Brooks said. "If we lose, we would ask the state to abolish the program. It's not worth it."

Ed Martin, who moved to Union County from Tennessee seven years ago, said the community is the only place he has ever felt at home ? until now. Martin said littering is not a problem in the area. He said the only trash on the highway would be a sign promoting a Klan group, something he doesn't want to have to drive by every day.

He said the sign would be a divisive symbol in the community.

"Listen, there ain't a whole hell of a lot of black people in Union County, but everybody here gets along," Martin said.

According to the latest Census figures, the county is 97 percent white and less than 1 percent black.

Attorney General spokeswoman Lauren Kane confirmed that the agency met with the Transportation Department on Monday. Transportation Department spokesman Jill Goldberg confirmed that the International Keystone Knights of the KKK did apply to the Union County Adopt-A-Highway program on May 21. Both agencies declined to comment on the matter until a resolution was reached.

The Georgia KKK chapter is not the first such group to attempt to sponsor highway cleanup.

In Missouri, lawmakers renamed two stretches of highway for civil rights matriarch Rosa Parks and Abraham Joshua Heschel ? a rabbi who narrowly escaped the Nazis in World War II and later marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. ? after the state allowed a neo-Nazi group to "adopt" those sections of road.

In Kentucky, the transportation department accepted a white-separatist group's contract to participate in the state's highway cleanup program, fearing an unsuccessful legal battle.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 rejected Missouri's attempt to thwart a similar effort in that state, maintaining membership in the program cannot be denied because of a group's political beliefs.

Chambers said group members believed they had been approved for the program and were told only late last week that their application was under review. She said the International Keystone Knights were planning their first cleanup for Saturday, and may still proceed even without the Adopt-A-Highway designation.

Still, she feels the group is being discriminated against.

"It's alright for blacks or Latinos or anybody to have their own groups," she said. "It's alright for churches to adopt a highway. But if white folks stick together, we're racist."

The group's website says it requires members to be white Christians of non-Jewish descent, and to believe in the U.S. Constitution and racial segregation.

Mark Potok, senior fellow at Southern Poverty Law Center, said the effort is little more than a publicity stunt.

"I think this is simply another attempt by the Klan to somehow portray itself as a kinder, gentler group rather than the terrorist organization that it has historically been," Potok said. "On the other hand, they're very likely to win a court battle because the state agencies can issue regulations regarding things like this but they have to be neutral toward ideology."

Brooks said the Klan is not a civic-minded group, like a garden club, church or Rotary chapter.

"Those other groups don't have a history of terrorism," he said.

___

Online:

http://www.dot.ga.gov

Follow Haines on Twitter at http://twitter.com/emarvelous

Associated Press

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Remembering the lives lost on D-Day anniversary

Remy de la Mauviniere / AP

U.S. WW II veteran Clarence Mac Evans, 87, from West Virginia, who landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944, with the 29th Infantry division, walks among the graves at the Colleville American military cemetery, in Colleville sur Mer, western France, on June 6, before the start of the ceremony commemorating the 68th anniversary of the D-Day. Clarence MacEvans is searching for the tombs of 17 of his fellows who died on D Day.

Remy de la Mauviniere / AP

Wreathes are being laid at the Memorial of the Colleville American military cemetery, in Colleville sur Mer, western France, on June 6, during the ceremony commemorating the 68th anniversary of the D-Day.

Remy de la Mauviniere / AP

A bird stands on one of the 9387 tombs at the Colleville American military cemetery, in Colleville sur Mer, western France, on June 6, the day of the commemoration of the 68th anniversary of the D-Day.

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Norwegian gunman describes hunting down teenagers

OSLO, Norway (AP) ? Norwegians who lost loved ones on Utoya island relived the horror Friday as far-right fanatic Anders Behring Breivik described in harrowing detail how he gunned down teenagers as they fled in panic or froze before him, paralyzed with fear.

Survivors and victims' relatives hugged and sobbed, trying to comfort each other during the graphic testimony.

"I'm going back to my hometown tonight. My husband, he's going to drive me out to the sea, and I'm going to take a walk there and I'm going to scream my head off," said Christin Bjelland, whose teenage son survived the attack.

Breivik's defense lawyers had warned their client's testimony would be difficult to hear. Still, the shock was palpable in the 200-seat courtroom as the self-styled anti-Islamic militant rolled out his gruesome account, without any sign of emotion.

A man who lost a son squeezed his eyes shut, his pain palpable. A man to his left put a comforting hand to his shoulder, while a woman to his right clutched onto him, resting her forehead against his arm.

Tore Sinding Bekkedal, a 24-year-old survivor of the massacre, left the courtroom during Breivik's testimony.

"I could not care less about what he says or the way he says it," Bekkedal said. "I do not care about him as a person."

Breivik has confessed to the July 22 bombing-and-shooting rampage that killed 77 people ? 69 on Utoya and eight in Oslo. But he rejects criminal guilt, saying the victims had betrayed Norway by embracing "Islamic colonization."

Looking tense but focused, Breivik spoke calmly about the shooting rampage, beginning with a ferry ride to the island, where the governing Labor Party holds its annual summer youth camp. He was disguised as a policeman, carrying a rifle and a handgun. He also brought drinking water because he knew he would become parched from the stress of killing people.

Breivik's first victims were Monica Boesei, a camp organizer, and Trond Bentsen, an off-duty police officer and camp security guard.

"My whole body tried to revolt when I took the weapon in my hand. There were 100 voices in may head saying 'Don't do it, don't do it,'" Breivik said.

Nonetheless, he pointed his gun at Berntsen's head and pulled the trigger. He shot Boesei as she tried to run away. Then as they lay on the ground, he shot them both twice in the head.

Breivik said the first shots pushed him into a "fight-and-flight" mode that made it easier to continue killing.

He couldn't remember large chunks of the 90 minutes he spent on the island before surrendering to police commandos. But he recalled some shootings in great detail, including inside a cafe where he mowed down young victims as they pleaded for their lives.

Some teenagers were frozen in panic, unable to move even when Breivik ran out of ammunition. He changed clips. They didn't move. He shot them in the head.

"They cannot run. They stand totally still. This is something they never show on TV," Breivik said. "It was very strange."

The main goal of the trial, now in its fifth day, is to determine whether Breivik was sane or insane ? two medical evaluations have come to opposite conclusions.

"He's completely emotionless," said Paal Groendal, a psychologist who watched Friday's hearing but was not among those who examined the confessed killer.

"He remembers details about smashed windows. But he doesn't remember if it was a boy or girl he shot. .... It seems like he doesn't remember people. To him they are details," Groendal said.

Breivik hunted down victims, luring teens from their hiding places by telling them he was a police officer who was there to protect them. When they came out, he gunned them down.

He said his goal was to kill all of the nearly 600 people on the island. He said he had considered wearing a swastika to instill fear, but decided against it because he didn't want people to think he was a Nazi.

"You will die today Marxists," Breivik recalled shouting.

One man tried to attack him. "I push him away with one hand, and shoot him with the other," Breivik said.

Another man tried to "dodge the bullets by moving in zigzag, so that I couldn't shoot him in the head," he said. "So I shot him in the body instead, quite a few times."

Breivik said he deliberately used "technical" language in order to keep his composure.

"These are gruesome acts, barbaric acts," he said. "If I had tried to use a more normal language I don't think I would have been able to talk about it at all."

Earlier, Breivik said he took to the Internet to glean information, studying attacks by al-Qaida militants, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

He paid particular attention to the World Trade Center bombing in New York and McVeigh's 1995 attack on an Oklahoma City government building, which killed 168 people and injured over 600.

Breivik said he also read more than 600 bomb-making guides.

He called al-Qaida "the most successful revolutionary movement in the world" and said it should serve as an inspiration to far-right militants, even though their goals are different.

"I have studied each one of their actions, what they have done wrong, what they have done right," Breivik said of al-Qaida. "We want to create a European version of al-Qaida."

Breivik claims to belong to an anti-Muslim network called the "Knights Templar," which prosecutors say they don't believe exists.

If declared sane, Breivik could face a maximum 21-year prison sentence or an alternate custody arrangement that would keep him locked up as long as he is considered a menace to society. If found insane, he would be committed to psychiatric care for as long as he's considered ill.

____

Associated Press reporter Bjoern Amland and APTN senior producer David MacDougall contributed to this report.

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