January 27, 2016


News Clips For The Day


THE LATEST ON BUNDY ARREST 1/26 AS OF 11:00 PM – SOME HALF A DOZEN ARTICLES. I HAVE CONSIDERED IT MORE IMPORTANT THAT I PRESENT THEM FOR READING THAN THAT I COMMENT ON THEM. I WILL ONLY SAY THAT I AM IMMENSELY RELIEVED AT THIS EFFECTIVE AND RELATIVELY BLOODLESS ARREST OF A SMALL BUT VICIOUS GROUP OF MEN, WHO TRIED TO SET THEMSELVES UP AS THE GOVERNMENT IN BURNS, OR. I DO HOPE THE FEDS WILL FIND SOME SUFFICIENTLY MEATY AND WELL PROVEN CHARGES TO PUT THEM ALL AWAY FOR TWENTY YEARS.



http://katu.com/news/local/leader-of-oregon-occupation-ammon-bundy-three-others-arrested

One dead, Bundys arrested after confrontation with FBI on highway
BY KATU.COM STAFF
TUESDAY, JANUARY 26TH 2016


HARNEY COUNTY, Ore. — One person is dead and several others, including Oregon occupation leader Ammon Bundy, were detained following a confrontation with the FBI and state police Tuesday night.

It all began with a traffic stop while Bundy and some of his followers were en route to a community meeting in John Day, about 70 miles away.

Shots were fired after FBI agents, Oregon State troopers and other law enforcement agencies made the stop on US Highway 395.

Ammon Bundy, Ryan Bundy, Brian Cavalier, Shawna Cox and Ryan W. Payne were arrested during the stop. Authorities said another person, Joseph Donald O'Shaughnessy, 45, was arrested in Burns.

They're all facing federal felony charges of conspiracy to impede officers of the United States from discharging their official duties, through the use of force, intimidation or threats.

One person, who was the subject of a federal probable cause arrest and has not yet been identified, died during the confrontation.

CNN is reporting it's unclear who fired first.

Federal law enforcement officers converged on the wildlife refuge after the arrests and were expected to remain at the site throughout the night. It was unclear how many members of the armed group, if any, were at the refuge when the law enforcement officers arrived.

The arrests come on the heels of the 24th day of the refuge occupation.

Bundy and about three dozen other individuals occupied the wildlife refuge earlier this month after two local ranchers, the Hammonds, were sent to prison for setting fires on federal land.

The Hammonds served no more than a year until an appeals court judge ruled that the terms fell short of minimum sentences requiring them to serve about four more years.

Ammon Bundy, the self-proclaimed leader of Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, occupied the refuge to protest federal land restrictions. He had said he prayed about the matter and "clearly understood that the Lord was not pleased with what was happening to the Hammonds."

WATCH: KATU's exclusive interview with Ammon Bundy and the Harney Co. Judge
Bundy told KATU News last weekend his group had no intention of using their weapons, "but we have them, and we're willing to stand with them in our own defense as we exercise our rights, and as we restore our rights back to our brothers and sisters."

Around the same time, KATU News spoke with Harney County Judge Steven Grasty, who expressed his worry regarding the situation.

"Somebody will do something stupid," Grasty said. "If it goes south, it'll go south because Mr. Bundy or his friends started something."

Gov. Kate Brown had repeatedly asked for assistance from federal authorities regarding the occupation in the days leading up to the shootout.

Several men have been arrested for various traffic infractions during the occupation, but none of them were directly related to the refuge occupation.

In March 2014, Ammon's father Cliven Bundy was at the center of an armed standoff with federal officials over grazing rights on government land. Federal officials backed away from seizing the Nevada rancher's cattle, but the dispute remains unresolved, and the Bureau of Land Management says the family has not made payments toward a $1.1 million grazing fee and penalty bill.

Stay with KATU News as this story develops.

KATU News ✔ @KATUNews
BREAKING UPDATE: FBI confirms 1 person dead - no details on their identity at this time. #LiveOnK2 #OregonStandoff
10:01 PM - 26 Jan 2016

RELATED LINK: Man joining Ore. occupation tells police, 'I will kill all of you' during traffic stop



http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/01/26/3743161/bundy-arrested/

Ammon And Ryan Bundy Arrested In Oregon; One Militant Dies In Shootout With Law Enforcement
By AVIVA SHEN
JAN 26, 2016 9:19 PM


Six members of the militia occupying the Malheur National Refuge, including Ammon Bundy, were taken into custody Tuesday night following a shooting nearby, according to the FBI.

The Harney County District Hospital in Burns, Oregon is on lockdown, and a section of the highway is also closed. The altercation occurred when the militia was on its way to a meeting in John Day, a neighboring town.

The FBI released a statement confirming that one militant died in a shootout. Another militant sustained “non life-threatening” injuries and was taken to the hospital.

Bundy and his militia have been occupying the federal property since the beginning of January, and law enforcement has been hesitant to remove them. But conflicts with local residents have escalated recently; members of the occupation have torn down their fences and reportedly vandalized other property in the town. Locals have grown angrier at the lack of action to remove the militia.

Two other militia members were arrested last week when they stole federal vehicles to drive to Safeway. Meanwhile, the militia has been trying to convene their own justice system to attempt to arrest local officials.

There are still members of the militia at the refuge and it’s unclear what impact tonight’s events will have on the ongoing occupation.



http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/01/15/3739909/oregon-standoff-malheur-grand-jury-explainer/

The Crackpot Alternative Legal System That Threatens To Escalate The Oregon Standoff
BY ALAN PYKE
JAN 15, 2016

Photograph -- A man dressed as continental army officer walks through the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge Sunday, Jan. 10, 2016, near Burns, Oregon.


Events in Harney County, Oregon, seem to be taking a turn toward escalation.

Armed men have been occupying a wildlife refuge for two weeks by now, saying they’re taking a stand against the federal government’s management of public land. They’ve recently stepped up their acts of protest: Earlier this week, they used a federal bulldozer to tear down a fence dividing private ranchlands from the public’s terrain at one edge of the refuge, which represents a more direct flouting of the law than even the occupation itself.

And now, they say they want to enact an alternative legal system throughout the region — one that’s governed by a bizarre set of principles that animate a wide swath of conspiracy theorists. Underpinning this new chapter in the Oregon occupation is a convoluted misinterpretation of American law and history that thousands of defiant Americans use each year primarily to protest their tax bills and fight minor bureaucratic disputes.

Here’s what you need to know about the “common law” practices being deployed by the Bundy bunch, and how these developments could put the complex situation in southeastern Oregon on a still-stranger path than it’s followed so far.

What exactly are the Bundys trying to do now?

The Bundy-led brigade hopes to replace Harney County’s elected leaders and sheriff with people who will operate the area according to the sovereign citizen movement’s interpretation of the law.

The occupation at the wildlife refuge is being spearheaded by a small group of people who support sovereign citizenship (and the Bundys have arguably become the most well-known faces of that movement). Individuals who identify as “sovereign citizens” believe they are not subject to the laws and orders of the United States government. In their view, the authority of local officials is moot if they follow those same government rules.

Now, the occupiers want to install a “lawful county government and a lawful sheriff” and make Harney County “the first constitutional county in the land.”

Who are they working with?

The militiamen have partnered with a man named Bruce Doucette, a self-proclaimed “Superior Court Judge.” Doucette appointed himself a judge last May under the legal system that sovereign citizens use. He’s intervened in local disputes before in Colorado, using his self-vested authority to try to order the arrest of a Colorado sheriff.

He is also a conspiracy theorist. Doucette believes the earth is actually flat — “But if you go outside place a globe on the ground and pour water on it dose it stay on the globe ???” — and that both the Boston Marathon bombing and 9/11 attacks were hoaxes perpetrated by the government.

“Their intentions and our intentions of what we wanted to do coming out here are exactly the same,” Doucette told supporters on a conference call Wednesday. “Not only do they want to give property back to the people and do that lawfully, but they also have a lot of information on the current county government and it could go all the way up to the White House.”

“People are gonna go to jail over this one,” he added.


How would this all work, exactly?

The group appears to be planning to convene a 25-person “grand jury” to hear charges against the people who currently govern Harney County. Such a proceeding would likely revolve around both the criminal arson trial that put local ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond in a California prison for the next four-plus years, but could also draw in other local grievances against duly appointed and elected officials whom anti-government radicals believe are illegitimate.

A people’s jury of this sort has no actual authority beyond the ideology — and guns — of the people serving on it. That’s where the potential for violence comes in in Harney. Insofar as people like Doucette and the Bundys believe this “grand jury” would give them legitimate authority to go arrest people, it is a crackpot idea.

By contrast, informal criminal trials have sometimes been used as a tool of peaceful protest. Vietnam War protesters convened a “war crimes tribunal,” for example, to put high government officials on trial — and create a formalized record of the protesters’ grievances.

“It’s sort of a classic means of protest, calling yourself a jury,” Reason magazine books editor and author of The United States of Paranoia Jesse Walker said in an interview. “So is this going to be one of those things where they have a [Vietnam era]-style grand jury and they issue pronouncements, but it’s just meant as a form of public protest? Or is it a case where maybe there are some hotheads there who think they now have the right to go out and arrest the sheriff or something like that?”

Why do they think they need an alternative legal system?

These parallel legal structures, including Doucette’s imaginary judgeship and the “grand jury” he might empanel to go after Harney officials, are the logical endpoint of a much more complex web of legalistic paranoia.

The core belief in play, according to a 2010 article from J.J. MacNab published in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s magazine, is that at some point in U.S. history, the Constitutional system of government was silently usurped by a shadow government that opens up corporate entities associated with every American born.

Sovereigns believe this shadow authority uses those corporations as borrowing leverage to keep the country financially afloat, MacNab wrote, effectively making every American that abides by that government’s rules a slave. Believers go through a process called “redemption” to sever their personhood from the government’s corporate entity established in their name, and from that point forward seek to resist any action that’s premised on federal authority rather than their own conspiracy theories.

“It’s an alternative legal history,” Walker said. It can be understood as a sort of wacky parallel to some of the grand legal battles waged in courts by mainstream organizations. Civil rights cases brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, for example, often stem from an argument that the governing interpretations of the constitution and other laws are incorrect and should be changed.

“People legitimately accuse x, y, and z of being unconstitutional all the time,” said Walker. “This is the same thing, but being done from a place of extreme crankery.”

What are the legal arguments sovereign citizens make?

According to MacNab, sovereigns have developed a thorny mish-mash of legal tactics they call “common law.”

“There’s this whole history of sort of folk legal beliefs that often come up in context of the tax resistance movement, the tax protester movement,” said Walker. “People claim that under one imagined doctrine or another they don’t have to pay federal income tax, things like that. The sovereign citizen arguments are sort of in that family of beliefs.”


A sovereign citizen named David Myrland who allegedly plotted to “arrest” a Washington mayor provides an example of how sovereigns’ legal ideas look in practice. This is an excerpt from a brief he and another sovereign filed as part of a lawsuit against the prosecutors who put him in prison for three years for threatening officials:

For this federal-judge: David-Wynn: Miller’s-correction of the vassalees-fiction-syntax-grammar-pleadings is with the correction-participation-claim of this babble-indictment-evidence and: bad-probation-syntax=grammar-evidence. (Why did the vassalees do this case with a void-communications?) For the void-drogue-law, void-oath of an office, void-judge’s-oath, void-docking-court-house-vessel in the Washington-state-dry-dock and: void-original-lodial-land-title.

Strings of hyphenated word salad are the primary tool in the arsenal. But they’re far from alone.

“Common law” practitioners like Doucette became such a nuisance in the 1990s that the Anti-Defamation League pulled together a lengthy encyclopedia of their tactics for judges and attorneys to use when confronted with the oddly formal ravings. That compendium — entitled “Idiot Legal Arguments: A Casebook for Dealing with Extremist Legal Arguments” — details scores of different specific tactics by which sovereign citizens seek to prove that while they may be subjects of individual states, they are in no way bound by the United States government.

In one Florida county, for instance, a sovereign citizen woman named Donna Lee Wray submitted 10 separate filings in a fight to avoid having to get a license for her dog. After two months, MacNab wrote, the prosecutor gave up and dropped the case. Wray had won: She would not pay the $20 the county charges for a dog license.

By contrast, Wray’s husband Jerry Kane took the same ideology to the ugliest ends possible. Jerry and his teenaged son Joe killed two police officers in Arkansas in 2010 after the two pulled the Kanes over on the highway. Father and son were both killed later that day in a shootout with other officers.

So will this lead to violence in Oregon?

Not necessarily. While sovereign citizens who reject the American legal system in favor of their own are numerous, sovereign citizen extremists who seek out violence with authorities are very few.

“Most sovereign citizens are nonviolent. They make a nuisance of themselves in lawsuits or sometimes in petty harassment, and it can be really annoying. But the people who actually shoot people are a fringe within the fringe,” Walker said.

MacNab has estimated as many as 300,000 Americans make use of the sovereigns’ eccentric legal code to fight personal court battles. “While many sovereign citizens own guns, their weapon of choice is paper,” MacNab wrote.

A 2015 report from the Department of Homeland Security backs up this point. The report assessed the threat level of the sovereign citizen ideology after multiple police shootouts with such people made the news in 2014. The report listed 24 incidents of sovereign citizen extremist violence over a four-year period starting in 2010, and warned that such “SCEs” pose a threat to law enforcement and government agencies.

But such violence was likely to “remain at the same sporadic level, consisting primarily of unplanned, reactive violence targeting law enforcement officers during active enforcement efforts” rather than involving pre-planned terrorist-style attacks, the report said.

Still, the report’s characterization of SCE violence isn’t wholly comforting when applied to the Oregon situation. “[E]ven when SCEs plot their violence over time, it is often in direct response to an on-going personal grievance, such as an arrest or court order. In almost all of the 24 incidents we reviewed, the targets were the specific individuals who the SCE perceive violated their rights, rather than public symbols or anonymous representatives of the government,” it says.

In Harney County, the specific targets of grievance for those who feel the Hammonds were improperly prosecuted include a state judge and the local sheriff. If Doucette’s court decides to swear out arrest warrants for those men, and the Bundys decide to go out and execute those warrants at gunpoint, things could quickly get bloody.

Does that mean this legal ideology is harmless?

Not quite. The fact that this legal crankery almost exclusively yields nuisance lawsuits and bureaucratic squabbles rather than bloodshed does not mean the ideas behind them are harmless.


Such crackpot notions and “common law” magical thinking will be leading well-intentioned people onto the wrong side of the law all around the country regardless of the ultimate outcome in Harney County, Walker said.

“To me it’s the equivalent of somebody giving shitty alternative health advice. This is alternative legal advice,” Walker said. “I have seen people get themselves into a lot of stupid, unnecessary trouble following this kind of bullshit argument.”
Unnecessary trouble is sort of the Bundys’ brand. They first rose to prominence while resisting attempts to enforce a million dollars in back fines and fees that paterfamilias Cliven Bundy owes for illegally grazing his cattle on protected lands. They’ve made their presence felt at other tense encounters between businessmen and law enforcement in Utah, Montana, and elsewhere.


Now, after law enforcement have declined to deliver a barrel-to-barrel standoff on the Malheur preserve, the Bundys appear ready to turn to “common law” practices to escalate tensions there. Their presence has already endangered a hard-won sense of community among the various private and public interests on and around the Malheur public lands. If they do indeed try to arrest Harney officials, the consequences for the Bundys and locals alike could be far more serious.

“People are throwing their lives away thinking they can be protected by these magic arguments, and then ending up in jail,” Walker said.



http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/01/21/3741450/native-american-artifacts-oregon-standoff/

Bundy Militia Post Video Of Themselves Messing With Native American Artifacts
BY CARIMAH TOWNES
JAN 21, 2016

Photograph -- FILE - In this Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016, file photo, members of the Burns Paiute tribe watch a news conference held by their leaders in response to the armed occupation of the nearby Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns, Ore. A leader of the Oregon Indian tribe whose ancestral property is being occupied by an armed group opposed to federal land policy said Wednesday that the group is not welcome and needs to leave. (AP Photo/Manuel Valdes, File)


As the armed occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge nears its fourth week, the militia is now raking through Native American artifacts housed on the property.

In a new video posted to the Bundy Ranch’s Facebook account, several ranchers search boxes of artifacts that belong to the Paiute tribe. As members of the group sift through documents and objects, holding them up to the camera, LaVoy Finicum talks about how poorly the artifacts have been stored and proposes a dialogue with local Paiute.

“We want to make sure these things are returned to their rightful owners and that they’re taken care of,” he says, noting rat droppings in some of the boxes. “This is how Native Americans’ heritage is being treated. To me, I don’t think it’s acceptable,” Finicum concludes.

Members of the tribe have repeatedly slammed the militia, telling the ranchers to “get the hell out.”


“We as Harney County people can stand on our own feet,” Jarvis Kennedy of the Burns Paiute Tribal council said at a press conference earlier this month. “We don’t need some clown to come in here and stand up for us.”

The tribe occupied the land surrounding the wildlife refuge for 6,000 years, before settlers and the federal government pushed them out. According to Kennedy, the tribe still views the territory as theirs, given their aboriginal rights. But the tribe has worked closely with the refuge to preserve the 4,000 artifacts housed there.

Some members of the militia, including leader Ammon Bundy, have already destroyed property during their occupation. In an escalation of the standoff, they tore down a fence between public lands and a rancher’s private property, which the rancher says was done without his permission. Burns residents report the militia is harassing them and vandalizing other property in the town.


The Paiute fear that the artifacts could be damaged as well, prompting the tribe to send a letter to the U.S. Attorney and the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife Service demanding the ranchers be prosecuted if they “disturb, damage, remove, alter, or deface any archaeological resource on the refuge property.”

“I don’t know what these people are doing if they are doing things to just get a rise or to be martyr—all they are doing is making enemies out of the people they professed to support,” Charlotte Roderique, chairperson of the Burns Paiute tribe,” told Indian Country Today Media Network. She previously explained that the tribe has entrusted the refuge with protecting its cultural rights.

On Wednesday night, Gov. Kate Brown called on the federal government to intervene and end the standoff.

“The residents of Harney County have been overlooked and underserved by federal officials’ response thus far. I have conveyed these very grave concerns directly to our leaders at the highest levels of our government: the U.S. Department of Justice and the White House,” she said.



http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/01/07/3737011/bundy-trump-chair/

Official Member Of Trump Campaign Joins Oregon Militia
BY ALAN PYKE
JAN 7, 2016

Photograph -- This Wednesday, April 16, 2014 photo shows Jerry DeLemus, of Rochester, N.H., talks, about heading a group of self-described militia members who have been camping on rancher Cliven Bundy’s ranch near Bunkerville, Nev. AP Photo: Ken Ritter


The co-chairman of Donald Trump’s New Hampshire “Veterans for Trump” group has arrived in Burns, Oregon, to assist the small cadre of armed men who are seeking to provoke a standoff with federal officials there.

That not-quite-standoff began over the weekend when a handful of men led by Ammon Bundy decided to turn a much larger peaceful protest over a decision to send two ranchers back to jail for arson into an armed struggle. The group’s numbers are small – especially compared to the 300 who reportedly joined the peaceful protest of the re-sentencing – but they have now been reinforced by Jerry DeLemus, a former United States Marine living on the opposite side of the country.

Trump himself has said little about the situation in Oregon, following the pattern of most of the GOP primary candidates. But on Tuesday he seemed to tell The Hill it was time for the Bundy crew to pack it in and go home. “You have to maintain law and order, no matter what,” he said.

It is at least the second time DeLemus has ridden to the physical aid of a Bundy. When Ammon’s father Cliven had his cattle impounded by the Bureau of Land Management in 2014 over more than $1 million in unpaid fines and fees for his use of public lands, DeLemus and his son drove 41 hours in three days to come help.


The impromptu militia DeLemus helped lead in Bunkerville, NV, eventually pushed the agency to return Bundy’s cattle under threat of violence. “If they made one wrong move, every single BLM agent in that camp would’ve died,” another leader of the group named Ryan Payne bragged to the Missoula Independent later. “We had counter-sniper positions on their sniper positions. We had at least one guy – sometimes two guys – per BLM agent in there.”

DeLemus’ job in Bunkerville was “chief of security,” according to RawStory, which reports he was personally responsible for dismissing the members of the Bundy brigade who later went on to kill two police in Las Vegas before being killed themselves by other officers. He says he’s come to Oregon to help ensure the younger Bundys and their adherents find a peaceful resolution and leave the refuge safely.

In a Facebook post explaining his decision, he also warned that a military psychological operation was taking place. “We must be level headed and remember there is a psyops war happening as well and all who were at Bunkerville know well what I’m talking about,” DeLemus wrote.

When a GQ reporter asked the Granite State man in 2014 how he thought the Bunkerville standoff might end, he said there was a “good chance” that federal agents would return and kill every member of Bundy’s brigade, promising his crew would shoot back if it came to it. “And I’ll tell you what, they’ll have a bloody nose, and I’ll tell you what: the American people will rise up,” he said. “Go ahead.”

DeLemus told reporters from the conspiracy theory-driven Next News Network at the time that “there’s great risk we may not come home” from Bunkerville. And a year earlier in New Hampshire, he told a crowd of Tea Party types that “We are in a similar position our Founding Fathers found themselves in and their decision to stand was equally difficult.”

He also believes President Obama is secretly Muslim, according to a June 2014 Facebook post about the return of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl after five years as a captive of the Taliban. (The opening sequence of the podcast Serial’s current run of episodes on Bergdahl features Trump’s voice saying, “Y’know in the old days deserters were shot,” to raucous applause.) “You are a race baiter and a sure sign of how little time America has left,” he wrote to the president in another post.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/violence-as-move-made-to-end-militia-takeover-of-malheur-national-wildlife-refuge-in-oregon/

Oregon militia standoff takes a deadly turn
CBS/AP
January 27, 2016


BURNS, Ore. -- Federal and state officials were restricting access on Wednesday to the Oregon refuge being occupied by an armed group after one of the occupiers died in a shootout during a traffic stop and eight more, including the group's leader Ammon Bundy, were arrested.

The group, which has included people from as far away as Arizona and Michigan, seized the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Jan. 2. They want federal lands turned over to local authorities.

The confrontation came amid increasing calls for law enforcement to take action against Bundy for the illegal occupation of the wildlife refuge.

Details of the fatal encounter were sparse. It happened as Bundy and his followers were heading to a community meeting late Tuesday afternoon in John Day, about 70 miles north of Burns.

Law enforcement personnel monitor an intersection of closed Highway 395 in Burns, Oregon, Jan. 26, 2016, during a standoff pitting an anti-government militia against U.S. authorities.
Law enforcement personnel monitor an intersection of closed Highway 395 in Burns, Oregon, Jan. 26, 2016, during a standoff pitting an anti-government militia against U.S. authorities. ROB KERR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
CBS News correspondent Carter Evans reports that Bundy's brother, Ryan Bundy, 43, was shot but has non-life-threatening injuries. Ryan Bundy was among those arrested.


Play VIDEO
Armed activist leader in Oregon on standoff with federal government
Arizona rancher Robert "LaVoy" Finicum, a spokeman for the protesters, died in the shootout, according to the Bundys' father, Cliven Bundy, who spoke with CBS Portland affiliate KOIN-TV.

"Ryan Bundy had been shot in the arm. LaVoy Finicum had been murdered, cold bloodedly murdered," Cliven Bundy told KOIN-TV.

Arianna Finicum Brown confirmed that her father was the man who died, the Oregonian reported. The 55-year-old was a frequent and public presence at the refuge, often speaking for the group at news conferences.

"This is where I'm going to breathe my last breath, whether I'm 90, 95 or 55," Finicum told The Associated Press on Jan. 5. " ... I'm going to not spend my days in a cell."

Arizona cattle rancher Robert "LaVoy" Finicum talks to the media at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon, Jan. 5, 2016.
Arizona cattle rancher Robert "LaVoy" Finicum talks to the media at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon, Jan. 5, 2016. JIM URQUHART/REUTERS
The FBI and Oregon State Police would only say the man who died in the police shooting was wanted by federal authorities, and said no more information would be released pending identification by the medical examiner.

Jason Patrick, one of the leaders of the occupation, told radio station Oregon Public Broadcasting that five or six group members remain inside the refuge.

For weeks law enforcement vehicles have been noticeably absent from the roads surrounding the refuge. On Wednesday, however, marked law enforcement cars were dotted throughout the region. The FBI and Oregon State Police said they were setting up checkpoints and only allowing ranchers who own property in specific areas to pass.

Police and news media have converged on the nearby town of Burns, where most hotels are booked to capacity.

Brand Thornton, one of Bundy's supporters, said he left the refuge Monday and wasn't sure what those remaining would do.

"The entire leadership is gone," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "I wouldn't blame any of them for leaving."

Thornton called the arrests "a dirty trick" by law enforcement.

In addition to Ammon and Ryan Bundy, those arrested were: Brian Cavalier, 44; Shawna Cox, 59; and Ryan Payne, 32 - apprehended during the traffic stop on U.S. Highway 395 Tuesday afternoon. Authorities said two others - Joseph Donald O'Shaughnessy, 45, and Peter Santilli, 50 - were arrested separately in Burns, while FBI agents in Arizona arrested another, Jon Eric Ritzheimer, 32.

From left to right, from top to bottom, Jon Eric Ritzheimer, 32, Ammon Bundy, 40, Shawna Cox, 59, Ryan Payne, 32, Peter Santilli, 50, Joseph Donald O'Shaughnessy, 45, Ryan Bundy, 43, and Brian Cavalier, 44, are seen.
From left to right, from top to bottom, Jon Eric Ritzheimer, 32, Ammon Bundy, 40, Shawna Cox, 59, Ryan Payne, 32, Peter Santilli, 50, Joseph Donald O'Shaughnessy, 45, Ryan Bundy, 43, and Brian Cavalier, 44, are seen. ROB KERR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES/MULTNOMAH COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE VIA GETTY IMAGES
Each will face a federal felony charge of conspiracy to impede officers of the United States from discharging their official duties through the use of force, intimidation or threats, authorities said.

KOIN-TV reports Ritzheimer organized an anti-Islam protest in Phoenix in May and that he's a self-described extremist and gun-ownership activist.

Santilli is a right-wing online talk show host who has been embedded with the group since the occupation began, KOIN-TV reports.

Law enforcement previously had taken a hands-off approach, reflecting lessons learned during bloody standoffs at Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge, Idaho, during the 1990s.

Many residents of Harney County, where the refuge is located, have been among those demanding that Bundy leave. Many sympathize with his criticism of federal land management policies but opposed the refuge takeover.

"I am pleased that the FBI has listened to the concerns of the local community and responded to the illegal activity occurring in Harney County by outside extremists," Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley said in a statement.

The Bundys are the sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a high-profile 2014 standoff with the government over grazing rights.

The group, calling themselves Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, came to the frozen high desert of eastern Oregon to decry what it calls onerous federal land restrictions and to object to the prison sentences of two local ranchers convicted of setting fires.



OTHER SUBJECTS OF INTEREST


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-is-open-to-idea-of-nominating-president-obama-to-supreme-court/

Hillary Clinton is open to idea of nominating Obama to Supreme Court
By REBECCA SHABAD CBS NEWS
January 27, 2016


Hillary Clinton on Tuesday said she was open to appointing President Obama as a Supreme Court justice.

At a campaign event in Decorah, Iowa, a voter asked the Democratic presidential contender if she would consider making such a move.

"Wow, what a great idea. Nobody has ever suggested that to me. Wow, I love that, wow," the Democratic presidential candidate responded. "He may have a few other things to do, but I tell you that's a great idea."

Clinton acknowledged that the next president might have the opportunity to appoint several Supreme Court justices. Nearly half of the court -- four of the nine justices -- has served on it for 20 to 30 years and are either over the age of 80 or approaching it.

"We need new justices who actually understand the challenges we face," Clinton said.

But it won't be as easy as voters might think. The Senate would have to approve the next president's Supreme Court appointments.

"He's brilliant and he can set forth an argument and he was a law professor. He's got all the credentials," Clinton added about Mr. Obama's qualifications. "Now, we do have to get a Democratic Senate to get him confirmed, so you're going to have to help me on that."

The president taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review when he attended Harvard Law School.

But it may not be a position Mr. Obama necessarily wants. In an interview with The New Yorker in 2014, the president was asked if he would ever consider becoming a judge.

"When I got out of law school, I chose not to clerk," he said. "Partly because I was an older student, but partly because I don't think I have the temperament to sit in a chamber and write opinions."



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/isis-terror-recruiting-europe-belgium-france-denmark-sweden-germany/

Which European countries have produced the most ISIS fighters?
By CHRISTINA CAPATIDES CBS NEWS
January 25, 2016

Photograph -- isis-fighter.png, An ISIS militant is pictured in a recruitment video. YOUTUBE


While the Middle East remains the most dominant source of ISIS fighters, about a fifth of all foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria now come from Western Europe, according to the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR). Of those, Europe's largest countries have technically produced the most fighters. The ICSR estimates that France, for example, has sent 1,200 people to Sunni militant organizations in Iraq and Syria; and that both the United Kingdom and Germany have each contributed somewhere between 500 and 600 people. Larger populations, larger numbers of fighters ... that stands to reason. The countries that produce the most ISIS fighters per capita, however, are a bit more surprising.

Belgium, for example, now has more citizens fighting in Iraq and Syria per capita than any other European country (40 for every million people). In fact, the total number of fighters the ICSR estimates Belgium has sent overseas (440) is not far behind the numbers of much larger countries like the U.K. and Germany. The next two European countries with the most foreign fighters are equally surprising: Denmark (with 27 fighters for every million people) and Sweden (with 19). Are these figures indicative of larger problems? Are they clues to thwarting the next horrific attack? The ICSR's full list, as of January 2015, is below.

Country Estimate Per capita
Belgium 440 40
Denmark 100-150 27
Sweden 150-180 19
France 1,200 18
Austria 100-150 17
Netherlands 200-250 14.5
Finland 50-70 13
Norway 60 12
United Kingdom 500-600 9.5
Germany 500-600 7.5
Ireland 30 7
Switzerland 40 5
Spain 50-100 2
Italy 80 1.5



“Larger populations, larger numbers of fighters ... that stands to reason. The countries that produce the most ISIS fighters per capita, however, are a bit more surprising. …. Belgium, for example, now has more citizens fighting in Iraq and Syria per capita than any other European country (40 for every million people). In fact, the total number of fighters the ICSR estimates Belgium has sent overseas (440) is not far behind the numbers of much larger countries like the U.K. and Germany. The next two European countries with the most foreign fighters are equally surprising: Denmark (with 27 fighters for every million people) and Sweden (with 19). Are these figures indicative of larger problems? Are they clues to thwarting the next horrific attack? The ICSR's full list, as of January 2015, is below.”


I’m no expert on the characteristics that encourage something like radicalization among a minority group, but the degree of patriotic nationalization of the immigrants and of the host nation alike seems to me to be the basic issue, plus the degree of abusive treatment by the majority. The more socially oppressive the dominant group is, the more rancorous the underclass are. They may group together to rebel, radicalize in other ways, or simply live a life of violent crime. That’s just like children in hardcore poverty areas, who have a very hard life economically and socially, and those things breed a generalized anger. Some of those kids will humbly try to deal with their situation by trying to be more obedient and clever, but many will instead become more and more aggressive, possibly to the point of criminality and violence.

Likewise, the degree of overall legal permissiveness in the host nation probably has an effect. I’ll bet North Korea has fewer openly disaffected and organized groups of all kinds. To some degree their type of extremely harsh punishment causes fear and intimidation, which works to fulfill their purpose of controlling absolutely, because any disagreement by an underling brings hard time in prison at least. France, on the other hand, is a bastion of democracy and liberal thinking, but there is a rightist exclusion of Islamic people going on right now, and an upsurge of neofascism across the world, unfortunately including Western Europe and the US. Such exclusionary extremists stimulate discord, though they often operate under the guise of, in the US, “law and order.” That slogan became the watchword in the late 1960s of those who elected Richard Nixon. They were all too often White Supremacists also, though they opposed all non-Protestant religions like Judaism and Catholicism as well, and now they are putting pressure on Islam. The key difference in my view is that our central government is not doing such oppressive things, at least not until the Tea Party gets into power.

I took an interesting survey course in the 1960s called Modern Civilization, in which the rise of various cultural trends in history were examined for their origins and main proponents. The professor said a very interesting thing. An oppressed population doesn’t usually revolt when they are fully intimidated, but when they are, relatively speaking, more hopeful, free and powerful. The peasants in France didn’t rise up in the late 1700s, but the Middle Class. That really is interesting. Now how Belgium falls in the spectrum on these various characteristics is what I think needs to be studied.

I googled “neoFascism antiIslamicism Belgium” and found at least a dozen articles including Wikipedia (See Gray Wolves Organization.) From my experience here in the US such organizations seem to be “antiEverybody,” and never seem to consider themselves to be radicals rather than “conservative.” It’s a terrible situation leading to great cruelty and injustice, but it’s a built-in part of human nature. Wolves and humans, after all, have a great deal in common!

Even wealthy, educated and intelligent people are frequently exclusivity oriented, so it’s not merely a kind of stupidity. I think it’s mental illness, but is sometimes a characteristic that is idealized in the “cult of personality” groups such as the avid followers of Hitler, who mobbed his speeches and shouted their approval of his every action. That’s one of the things that bothers me most about Donald Trump – the avid nature of the crowds who follow him. It’s really like a cult, though not a religious one. Their egotistical but paranoid leader shouts out the societally abusive things that they secretly believe in, as long as they personally aren’t the designated scapegoat, and they crown him their leader. Group hysteria is a very dangerous thing.



http://news.yahoo.com/fbi-arrests-milwaukee-man-said-planning-temple-attack-215856133.html

FBI: Man plotted machine gun attack on Masonic temple
Associated Press
GREG MOORE and TODD RICHMOND
January 26, 2016

Photograph -- Samy Mohamed Hamzeh is seen in an undated photo provided by the Waukesha County (Wis.) Sheriff’s Department. Federal prosecutors charged 23-year-old Samy Mohamed Hamzeh on Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016, with unlawfully possessing a machine gun and receiving and possessing firearms not registered to him. Federal agents said Tuesday that Mohamed Hamzeh wanted to storm a Masonic temple with a machine gun and kill at least 30 people in an attack he hoped would show "nobody can play with Muslims" and spark more mass shootings in the United States. (Waukesha County (Wis.) Sheriff’s Department via AP)


MILWAUKEE (AP) — A Milwaukee man wanted to storm a Masonic temple with a machine gun and kill at least 30 people in an attack he hoped would show "nobody can play with Muslims" and spark more mass shootings in the United States, federal agents said Tuesday after the man's arrest.

Federal prosecutors charged 23-year-old Samy Mohamed Hamzeh on Tuesday with unlawfully possessing a machine gun and receiving and possessing firearms not registered to him. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney, Dean Puschnig, didn't immediately respond to a question asking why charges were limited to gun possession. Hamzeh's attorney, federal defender Ronnie Murray, didn't immediately return email and voicemail messages left after business hours.

According to an FBI affidavit, agents were tipped off in September that Hamzeh planned to travel to Israel in October to attack Israeli soldiers and citizens in the West Bank. He abandoned those plans due to "family, financial and logistic reasons," the affidavit said, but refocused his efforts on a domestic attack.

Hamzeh discussed his plans extensively with two FBI informants. The affidavit said the FBI started recording his conversations with the informants in October.

Hamzeh and the two informants traveled to a gun range on Jan. 19 and practiced with a pistol. Afterward they took a tour of a Masonic temple in Milwaukee. The affidavit does not name the temple and Puschnig declined to identify it.

Masons are members of a fraternal organization that carries out a variety of activities including charity work. Wisconsin has nearly 11,000 Masons in 180 lodges, according to Frank Struble, grand master of Free and Accepted Masons in Wisconsin. The organization is not a religion.

Struble said the allegations were "hard to hear." He said he knew which Masonic center had been targeted but declined to identify it.

"Masons are a part of an organization that helped build this country," Struble said. "I can understand from that standpoint where someone who is against this country would target us."

The owner of a downtown Milwaukee gym said she recently fired Hamzeh after hiring him as a trainer just a few weeks ago.

Delia Luna of 9Round Kickbox Fitness described Hamzeh as "very intense, very militant" as a trainer and said he didn't fit the atmosphere she wanted to create.

"He didn't mix well," Luna said.

Federal agents said that on Jan. 19 and into the early morning of Jan. 20, Hamzeh discussed his plans to attack the temple with the informants, telling them they needed two more machine guns — the group apparently already had one — and silencers. They planned to station one person at the temple's entrance while the other two went through the building, killing everyone they saw. They then planned to walk away from the scene as if nothing had happened.

"I am telling you, if this hit is executed, it will be known all over the world ... all the Mujahedeen will be talking and they will be proud of us," Hamzeh said, according to the affidavit. "Such operations will increase in America, when they hear about it. The people will be scared and the operations will increase. ... This way we will be igniting it. I mean we are marching at the front of the war."

Hamzeh added that he hoped to kill 30 people, "because these 30 will terrify the world. The (expletive) will know that nobody can play with Muslims."

He added, "We are here defending Islam, young people together join to defend Islam, that's it, that is what our intention is."

According to the affidavit, Hamzeh met with two undercover FBI agents on Monday. They presented him with two automatic machine guns and a silencer. He paid for the weapons and silencer in cash and put them in the trunk of his car. The agents then arrested him and recovered the guns and silencer.

Hamzeh's arrest marks the Milwaukee area's second brush with a mass shooting in less than four years. A white supremacist named Wade Michael Page fatally shot six people at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, a Milwaukee suburb, in 2012. Page shot himself in the head after a police officer wounded him.

Last month Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire on a social services center in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people. They later died in a shootout with police.



“A Milwaukee man wanted to storm a Masonic temple with a machine gun and kill at least 30 people in an attack he hoped would show "nobody can play with Muslims" and spark more mass shootings in the United States, federal agents said Tuesday after the man's arrest. …. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney, Dean Puschnig, didn't immediately respond to a question asking why charges were limited to gun possession. Hamzeh's attorney, federal defender Ronnie Murray, didn't immediately return email and voicemail messages left after business hours. According to an FBI affidavit, agents were tipped off in September that Hamzeh planned to travel to Israel in October to attack Israeli soldiers and citizens in the West Bank. He abandoned those plans due to "family, financial and logistic reasons," the affidavit said, but refocused his efforts on a domestic attack. …. Masons are members of a fraternal organization that carries out a variety of activities including charity work. Wisconsin has nearly 11,000 Masons in 180 lodges, according to Frank Struble, grand master of Free and Accepted Masons in Wisconsin. The organization is not a religion.”


One of the most interesting things to me in this article is the fact that the targeted group is the Masons. Masons have been a built-in feature of daily life here in the South. They have been suspected of being political and social radicals across Europe earlier, however, probably because they, like the Jews, have a separate set of precepts and they don’t march in lockstep as the Christians do. They are also very secretive about their initiations and system of status ranking. They have been suspected of various intrigues or imagined crimes. They go back as an organization more than 1,000 years, with the rise of trade unions. All such unions had secretive rituals and economic/loyalty pledges, by which they helped break the back of the Feudal system.

The following article from the Net points toward the kind of public suspicions that were held against Masonry, however, which could be why they were targeted by Hamzeh for bombing. See: http://www.bilderberg.org/masons.htm. Freemasons: The silent destroyers - deist religious cult based on the Knights Templar. The fact is, that any group who are powerful and secretive may be arrested or worse by a traditional society with a strong unifying point like the Christian religion.

“The owner of a downtown Milwaukee gym said she recently fired Hamzeh after hiring him as a trainer just a few weeks ago. Delia Luna of 9Round Kickbox Fitness described Hamzeh as "very intense, very militant" as a trainer and said he didn't fit the atmosphere she wanted to create. "He didn't mix well," Luna said. While the news article refers to “them,” it means the two FBI Agents who set up the sting rather than a group of accomplices. The photo attached to this article of the would be shooter shows a man who is technically handsome, but the smug half-smile on his face makes him completely unattractive. He will be in prison for quite a while, I hope.



http://phys.org/news/2016-01-phylogenetic-analyses-fairy-tales-older.html

Phylogenetic analyses suggests fairy tales are much older than thought
January 20, 2016 by Bob Yirka

CHART -- Phylogenetic analyses suggests fairy tales are much older than thought
Approximate locations of Indo-European-speaking populations in Eurasia. Points are colour-coded by linguistic subfamily: red, Germanic; pink, Balto-Slavic; orange, Romance; green, Celtic; blue, Indo-Iranian; Turquoise, Hellenic; grey, Albanian; brown, Armenian. Credit: Royal Society Open Science, Published 14 January 2016.DOI: 10.1098/rsos.150645


(Phys.org)—A pair of researchers has conducted a phylogenetic analysis on common fairy tales and has found that many of them appear to be much older than has been thought. In their paper published in Royal Society Open Science, Sara Graça da Silva, a social scientist/folklorist with New University of Lisbon and Jamshid Tehrani, an anthropologist with Durham University describe the linguistic study they carried out and why they believe at least one fairy tale had its origins in the Bronze Age.

Fairy tales are popular the world over, some so much that they have crossed over into multiple societies—Beauty and the Beast for example, has been told in one form or another across the globe. Modern linguists and anthropologists have set the origin of most such fairy tales to just prior to the time they were written down, which would make them several hundred years old. But this new research suggests they are much older than that, with some going back thousands of years.

To come to these conclusions, the researchers applied a technique normally used in biology—building phylogenetic trees to trace linguistic attributes back to their origin. They started with 275 fairy tales, each rooted in magic, and whittled them down to 76 basic stories. Trees were then built based on Indo-European languages, some of which have gone extinct. In so doing, the researchers found evidence that some fairy tales, such as Jack and the Beanstalk, were rooted in other stories, and could be traced back to a time when Western and Eastern Indo-European languages split, which was approximately 5,000 years ago, which means of course that they predate the Bible, for example, or even Greek myths.

The researchers placed confidence factors on different results, depending on how strong the trees were that could be built—some were obviously less clear than others, but one fairy tale in particular, they note, was very clear—called The Smith and The Devil, they traced it back approximately 6,000 years, to the Bronze Age.

Notably, Wilhelm Grimm, of the famous Grimm brothers who published many fairy tales back in 1812, wrote that he believed the tales were many thousands of years old—that notion was discredited not long after, but now, the researchers suggest, they believe he was right all along.

Explore further: Wrens eavesdrop on the neighbors

More information: Comparative phylogenetic analyses uncover the ancient roots of Indo-European folktales, Royal Society Open Science, Published 14 January 2016.DOI: 10.1098/rsos.150645 , http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/1/150645
Abstract

Ancient population expansions and dispersals often leave enduring signatures in the cultural traditions of their descendants, as well as in their genes and languages. The international folktale record has long been regarded as a rich context in which to explore these legacies. To date, investigations in this area have been complicated by a lack of historical data and the impact of more recent waves of diffusion. In this study, we introduce new methods for tackling these problems by applying comparative phylogenetic methods and autologistic modelling to analyse the relationships between folktales, population histories and geographical distances in Indo-European-speaking societies. We find strong correlations between the distributions of a number of folktales and phylogenetic, but not spatial, associations among populations that are consistent with vertical processes of cultural inheritance. Moreover, we show that these oral traditions probably originated long before the emergence of the literary record, and find evidence that one tale ('The Smith and the Devil') can be traced back to the Bronze Age. On a broader level, the kinds of stories told in ancestral societies can provide important insights into their culture, furnishing new perspectives on linguistic, genetic and archaeological reconstructions of human prehistory.

Journal reference: Royal Society Open Science
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torbjorn_b_g_larsson4.2 / 5 (5) Jan 21, 2016
Seem consistent with story telling in general. Technically I think religious fairy tales roots in the Bronze Age as well, making both the secular and the religious telling of magic stories as old.


Zzzzzzzz3 / 5 (1) Jan 21, 2016

Looking at subject matter in Fairy Tales, I have often wondered about the origins of tales of "little people", "trolls", "good folk", "changelings", etc..... Humans have always been quite concerned about others outside their immediate community/group. Its possible these tales have far older origins, from the time when our direct ancestry and other branches of the human evolutionary tree were contemporaries.

I don't think there should be any difference at all. You have nice examples of that in the Germanic tale of Frau Holle, once part of the Germanic religion and later a cautionary fairy tale. The opposite must also be true.
Whydening Gyre1 / 5 (2) Jan 22, 2016

Looking at subject matter in Fairy Tales, I have often wondered about the origins of tales of "little people", "trolls", "good folk", "changelings", etc..... Humans have always been quite concerned about others outside their immediate community/group. Its possible these tales have far older origins, from the time when our direct ancestry and other branches of the human evolutionary tree were contemporaries.

Here's a far out speculation for ya...

What if they are anthro related neuro-translations of much earlier time in evolution "memories". Evolving DNA is essentially a memory device, after all...
Osiris11 / 5 (1) Jan 25, 2016


Anything that linguistically traces us back to our original language possibly learned from our bioengineers at the 'Eden' lab site under what is not the Persian Gulf. Now must look for connections between the oldest languages, linguisto-archaeologically speaking. Somewhere back there may be an original(s) of the Torah part of what we call our Bible. May contain even older books or other books..... IN a verrry strange language indeed and on media or even data cubes 13,000 or more years old

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Talking together about inner feelings and observations is one of the things that is common to nearly every individual born in the company of others in every culture, family and spiritual group down through time. After all there was no TV! I think they also had musical instruments, no matter how simple and humble, made artistic images and objects, singing and dancing to the music. Some of the mythical elements probably had to do with religious rituals and cults as well.

Folk tale elements aren’t the only thing that have been found in modern stories from the Alaskan Innuit to the reindeer herding Sami of Northern Europe. A suggestion of, of all people, Santa Claus, was linked with a Sami midwinter ceremony. The shaman rides in under the moon pulled in a sleigh by a reindeer with red tassles on its’ antlers. The Shaman then climbs to the roof of the hut-like dwelling and enters by the smoke hole in the top to deliver gifts. See the following article for more on that -- http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/europe/head-to-finnish-lapland-the-home-of-santa-claus-the-sami-people-andlordi-1789728.html. The human belief in magic is innate, I think, starting with a leaf that loosens its’ grip in a slight wind and falls rustling to the ground, with no apparent explanation. Spooky! What’s up in that tree?

This causes fear in a superstitious and profoundly ignorant human creature, and from that comes the search for explanations. Pretty soon you have a growing myth to be told to one’s children at night around the campfire, when the imagination is most active. Anything can become a troll, a werewolf, or a fairy princess. Along with “cautionary tales” come stories about the origins of all things – creation stories, ancestor stories, almost forgotten scraps of a past reality such as the myth of King Minos of Crete, the Minotaur and also very likely, the “Minoans.” Many anthropologists now do think that the story of Atlantis, which supposedly blew apart and vanished into the sea, may be a snapshot in time of the very real explosion of a massive volcano on Santorini, the island which was called Thera in classical times, and which is widely believed to be the origin of the Atlantis story.

The cultural remainders found there are on the island of Thera are believed by many scholars to be those of a wealthy and powerful society called the Minoans. They traveled the Aegean in ships as traders and perhaps conquerors. One article I read supposed that the Minoans may have been the society which the Israelites of Old Testament times called the Philistines. The art and pottery which the writer found on their Mediterranean coastal territory, located beside modern day Israel, was of extreme elegance and beauty, fitting for a great society.

None of that theory is proven, but it is very likely to be true. The Minoan dwellings found there had large and beautiful wall paintings picturing young men and women jumping over the back of a bull, or what is usually called “bull dancing.” (This story element could also provide a link with the Spanish tradition of bull fighting, in which a man deals face to face with a huge and violent bull.) Now think again about the mythical monster the Minotaur.

What I think happens in folk traditions is that bits and pieces of actual history, but rarely whole stories, are told over and over through generations to form not one but a number of related stories, and then when the tale is carried into a town somewhere by mysterious strangers and told there to entertain them for their hospitality, as Odysseus did in the Odyssey, some parts of the story are split apart into story elements and often connected together with some other elements from the host group, to form the beautifully bizarre stories which we call myths.

I have always wondered whether the “magic beans” bought by a peasant boy named Jack, from a “strange looking” stranger (a Chinese man, perhaps) were planted outside his house to grow overnight into a huge bean vine that went all the way up into the sky. Have you ever seen the pesky but magnificent kudzu plant, as you were driving through the American South on your way to Myrtle Beach? It easily could be the origin of the “magic bean.” Kudzu is grown in China to make everything from food to sandals. It probably originated there as a useful cultivar, where instead of being considered an invasive species, it is a useful plant. (See the website books.google.com for a nonfiction book called “Food in China: A Cultural and Historical Inquiry,” By Frederick J. Simoons. If “Jack The Giant Killer” had only known what to do with kudzu he could have made a fortune selling his varied and useful items at the fair. Instead, he climbed up into the cloud layer on it and fought a giant in deadly combat. He was clearly a hero, not a tradesman.




http://www.npr.org/2016/01/26/464284016/modern-rent-parties-highlight-the-need-for-affordable-housing#

Modern Rent Parties Highlight The Need For Affordable Housing
PAM FESSLER
Updated January 26, 2016
Published January 26, 2016

Photos available on news site:

Photograph -- Classical violinist Tim Fain, who played music in the movies Black Swan and Twelve Years A Slave, performs during a concert in Tom Wall's apartment in Annapolis, Md.
Brandon Chew/NPR
Photograph -- Wall (left) listens to violinist Fain perform during the Make Room concert at Wall's apartment in Annapolis, Md. The concert is a fundraiser to help Wall pay his rent and shine a light on the growing lack of affordable housing.
Brandon Chew/NPR
Photograph -- Donnie Lehman (left), Chris Cable and Cyril Syoboda introduce each other before the Make Room concert at Tom Wall's apartment. Lehman used to be homeless, living on the streets, before Wall brought him in as a roommate.
Brandon Chew/NPR
Photograph -- Tom Wall sits in his bedroom before the Make Room concert begins on Jan. 18. Around 20 people gathered in Wall's small apartment to attend the concert and to help him, and others like him, pay the rent.
Brandon Chew/NPR
Photograph -- Jennifer Carter, 30, stands in a dormitory area that she shares with her two young children at The Road Home Community Winter Shelter facility in Midvale, Utah. AROUND THE NATION
Photograph -- Donnie Lehman (left), Chris Cable and Cyril Syoboda introduce each other before the Make Room concert at Tom Wall's apartment. Lehman used to be homeless, living on the streets, before Wall brought him in as a roommate. Brandon Chew/NPR

Related articles:
There's Shelter, And Then There's Housing. Utah Claims Muted Victory
Amy Thompson lives in teacher housing in Hertford County. She's a first-year science teacher in the district. NPR ED


When people had trouble paying the rent in the early 1900s, they might hold a party in their homes, with music and dancing, and sell tickets at the door. Now, a nonprofit group is holding a modern-day version of the rent party to shine a light on the growing lack of affordable housing.

The new parties aren't exactly like the old ones, which were mostly held in Harlem. There's no dancing, food or tickets. But there is music, as was the case recently in Annapolis, Md., where about 20 people gathered in Tom Wall's small apartment to help him, and others like him, pay the rent.

Wall, 67, used to be a lawyer in the housing and finance industry. He had to quit when he had a stroke in 2011. But then he and his wife couldn't pay the mortgage on their house, and the lender moved to foreclose.

The couple moved to the apartment last summer. But Wall's wife, Peggy, died three weeks later of cancer. He now lives on $2,300 a month from Social Security, but his $1,600-a-month rent eats up more than two-thirds. Wall is like a record number of American families — 11.4 million — that spend over half of their incomes on rent. It's especially difficult for low-income families, who have little left over for food and other necessities.

Wall used to be well off. Now, he's barely making it.

If You Build Affordable Housing For Teachers, Will They Come?
Homeless veterans face an uphill climb — and not simply because of the tight housing markets in cities. Even if they've found open properties, and have the rental checks to pay for them, some landlords are still reluctant to accept them. U.S.

Homeless Veterans Face Challenges Beyond The Rental Check
"Stuff happens," Wall says. "Nobody plans to fail. But sometimes circumstances beyond your control happen in life, and you're challenged with what are you going to do about it."

So recently he hosted a concert in his living room by classical violinist Tim Fain, who played music in the movies Black Swan and Twelve Years A Slave. The nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners coordinated the concert as part of its campaign, called Make Room. The event is being filmed and will be posted online, along with several other concerts highlighting families with similar housing problems. (You can watch some of the concerts here.)

Fain, who had just flown in from appearing with the Pittsburgh Symphony, told Wall's guests — seated on folding chairs and two small couches — that he appreciates how scary it is not knowing when the next check will arrive.

"I think about this," Fain said. "Being a self-employed artist, nobody's looking out for me really."

Housing experts say it doesn't take much to get in a bind. Almost 2 million Americans who pay more than half their incomes on rent are seniors, often with fixed incomes. Others are workers whose wages have gone down over the past decade while rents keep going up.

In the audience was Donnie Lehman, who lost his masonry job in 2010 and has been unemployed ever since.

"I lost my house [and] found myself literally homeless," Lehman said.

Then Wall invited him to crash at his place. Wall has been trying to make ends meet by bringing in roommates when he can, although Lehman has no money right now.

Everyone in Wall's apartment appeared captivated as Fain played. No one passed the hat. Instead, there's an online fundraising campaign to help Wall and the others with their rent.

The real goal is to get people talking more about what can be done to address the lack of affordable housing, whether it's more public aid, tax incentives for developers or higher wages.

Fain ended to loud applause. And Wall is thankful for the support. But he says he isn't sure the campaign will make all that much difference in the long run.

"I have to say that, by and large, I think it's going to fall on deaf ears," he said.

Wall notes that the federal government has been cutting back on housing aid in recent years, and state and local governments are also strapped for cash. So, as he nears 70, he is looking for some part-time work to avoid eviction.

Two friends have also offered to let him live with them for free. But he says he is not ready yet to admit defeat.



“When people had trouble paying the rent in the early 1900s, they might hold a party in their homes, with music and dancing, and sell tickets at the door. Now, a nonprofit group is holding a modern-day version of the rent party to shine a light on the growing lack of affordable housing. The new parties aren't exactly like the old ones, which were mostly held in Harlem. There's no dancing, food or tickets. But there is music, as was the case recently in Annapolis, Md., where about 20 people gathered in Tom Wall's small apartment to help him, and others like him, pay the rent. …. He now lives on $2,300 a month from Social Security, but his $1,600-a-month rent eats up more than two-thirds. Wall is like a record number of American families — 11.4 million — that spend over half of their incomes on rent. It's especially difficult for low-income families, who have little left over for food and other necessities. …. Fain, who had just flown in from appearing with the Pittsburgh Symphony, told Wall's guests — seated on folding chairs and two small couches — that he appreciates how scary it is not knowing when the next check will arrive. "I think about this," Fain said. "Being a self-employed artist, nobody's looking out for me really." Housing experts say it doesn't take much to get in a bind. Almost 2 million Americans who pay more than half their incomes on rent are seniors, often with fixed incomes. Others are workers whose wages have gone down over the past decade while rents keep going up. …. No one passed the hat. Instead, there's an online fundraising campaign to help Wall and the others with their rent. The real goal is to get people talking more about what can be done to address the lack of affordable housing, whether it's more public aid, tax incentives for developers or higher wages. …. Wall notes that the federal government has been cutting back on housing aid in recent years, and state and local governments are also strapped for cash. So, as he nears 70, he is looking for some part-time work to avoid eviction.”



When I was young and living in DC I shared housing almost always. I didn’t have an apartment all to myself most of the time. I personally enjoy that. I do want my own room, however. I like some companionship and if possible, friendship, but I don’t like the “up too close” relationships of marriage partners or, in general, family members.

Of course in my younger years in the South, most unmarried women (“spinsters”) lived in the family home as a matter of course. They took care of the elders until they died and then inherited the house. Even though it may have been very poor housing, it was shelter. They shared work and expenses and made some money if they could. “Po folks” frequently shared space.

Perhaps we need to go back to doing that more frequently, if of course the government won’t make some mandatory housing laws which landlords have to obey. Many “slum landlords” let their building degenerate to a dangerous point, attracting drug dealers, etc. The people who live there sometimes pay an unconscionable rent level and live with rodents. We need harsh laws against that, as there are against “usury.” There is also essentially abandoned housing owned usually by absentee landlords and totally ignored as to its’ condition. Those buildings would be very useful, if the owner were legally required to upgrade the condition to that of a decent living environment and then offer it as “affordable housing.” If they keep the rent low, they can still make money on it, and it won’t be an eyesore. A group who lives in a house like that would be a few more individuals who are not living on the street. That’s progress.

Nowadays it’s almost as if young people think they should live like people of means whom they see on TV. It’s always a mystery where those TV folks’ money comes from. That funny show called “Two And A Half Men” shows two extremely quirky brothers, only one of whom makes much money at all. The older brother, a song writer who makes a good living on advertising jingles, is the “wealthy” one. Though he complains constantly about the more meager income of his brother, a chiropractor, he seems to have a true brotherly bond with him. The show is also the farthest thing from a serious minded story, so no real life issues matter.

When I was in DC I was in a rent-controlled building at Dupont Circle, of which there were quite a few. Some of them were owned by “slum landlords,” but others were pretty well kept. The good news was that the rent was much more reasonable than in the posh neighborhoods like Georgetown. City rent, however, does tend to be higher than in small towns. People who are hit by a string of expensive misfortunes can be left like this former lawyers, using a dangerously high proportion of their income on rent.

When Bernie Sanders is elected President (my fingers are crossed!) I hope he will enact a law that a larger proportion of “affordable housing” will be designated in each neighborhood, or at least in well placed locations near public transportation and shopping areas, and that a CAP will be set on rents, even in expensive areas. The man in this story is not at all an uncommon case. Life in a city is full of interesting things to do and see, but -- except in Washington, DC – the entertainment and other amenities all cost a noticeable amount of money.

I’m glad I have a simpler and cheaper way to live now, and my main entertainment is doing this blog. Reading the news is really fascinating if you skip some of the headline stories and choose the most entertaining instead. “Important” stories are like business law; they are not always fascinating.