October 21, 2016


News and Views


CLOSELY RELATED PROBLEMS IN BOTH GERMANY AND THE US – FOUR ARTICLES

These groups of Neofascist anti-government Germans, who are mainly men over 50 and “socially disadvantaged,” (GOTO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichsb%C3%BCrgerbewegung,) compare closely with the Sovereign Citizens of the USA, in that they are flagrantly disobedient of laws from driving permits to filing their taxes, and actually claim to have a parallel government to which they do owe allegiance. In one case several years ago in the US it went farther than that: a disgruntled Sovereign left a live rattlesnake in the mailbox of an innocent female civil servant who denied the man a permit which he requested. They are also tied together by strange and borderline insane beliefs, especially conspiracy theories. Their social creed amounts to a complete “freedom” from any restraints, including a central government.

I have noticed them popping up in the news since the Clinton administration’s ATF raid on the stronghold, complete with many weapons, in which a totally bizarre “religious” guru named David Koresh at Waco, TX had a compound. This undoubtedly unwise raid fueled an upsurge of anti-government activity, especially around the Southern and Western parts of the US, which has been increased in its ferocity by the US group National Rifle Association. They’re known for sponsoring the usefulness of their organization to prevent a citizen’s being overrun by “jackbooted thugs” from the US government. They advocate citizens’ arming themselves in ways like this German case, where the Bavarian had stored 30 weapons. When the local law authorities came to perform an inspection (which is not done in this country, but should be) the man opened fire on them and injured four officers. He lost his own life in the process.

Members of these hate-mongering antigovernment and racist groups are showing up in police forces in some parts of the US. Our problem is that the “freedom of association,” allows truly dangerous individuals to maintain their anti-social beliefs and behavior, and – according to one police chief – prohibits their firing or passing over an applicant due to his political/social associations or expressed views. Members of the modern day KKK are also found in our police ranks. We are in a time period when lots of citizens white and black are poor and undereducated. That doesn’t make a person “bad,” but if it leads him into following conspiracy theories or abusing a locally unpopular religious, ethnic, gender preferenced group, it should be illegal. That’s my opinion.

They also have websites with which to stay in touch with each other and recruit new members by their radical and openly hate filled talking points. I have no doubt they also coordinate criminal endeavors in at least some cases. We need some kind of control over blatantly evil groups while allowing Atheists, Unitarian Universalists, Masons, Black Lives Matter, Bernie Sanders new group Our Revolution, National Organization for Women, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and others who do advocate something – something good to continue undisturbed. I’m a member of Our Revolution. We don’t put rattlesnakes in people’s mailboxes, nor do we advocate violent overthrow of the US government. We need to review the Constitution to make room for benign entities while criminalizing firmly those who advocate unprovoked violence against anyone at all.



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-police-shooting-four-officers-injured-raid-far-right-reichsbuerger-georgensgmuend-bavaria-a7368946.html

Germany police shooting: Four officers injured during raid on far-right 'Reichsbürger' in Georgensgmünd
Officer in critical condition as search uncovers 30 weapons at house in Bavaria

Lizzie Dearden @lizziedearden Wednesday 19 October 2016


Photograph -- Bamberg-plot.jpg, Police uncovered a neo-Nazi plot to attack a refugee centre in Bavaria last year (EPA)
Photograph -- Some of the officers (not pictured) were seriously injured Getty Images
Photograph -- Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks

Related:
Germany's birthrate hits 33-year high after 900,000 refugees arrive
At least two dead and others missing after explosion in Germany
Syrian terror suspect Jaber al Bakr found dead in his cell in Germany


A police officer is fighting for his life in Germany after being shot by a right-wing extremist during a weapons raid.

The officer was one of four injured in a gun battle with a suspect named as Wolfgang P at a house in Georgensgmünd on Wednesday morning.

Officials said police were executing a warrant to confiscate legally-owned firearms after the 49-year-old refused mandatory inspections by local authorities.

A team of specialist officers launched the operation at 6am local time (5am BST) and were immediately met by gunfire.

Johann Rast, the chief of Central Franconia Police, told a press conference police found the suspect in a bedroom.

“He was hiding behind the door and shot through the closed door,” he said. “It is not yet clear how many shots were fired.”

Three hit an officer who remains in a critical condition, striking his helmet, elbow and edge of his protective vest. Another officer was shot in the arm, while two others were injured by flying glass.

Wolfgang P is believed to have been alerted to the police’s approach by blue lights and sirens, having a gun and bulletproof vest next to his bed.

The suspect was injured and taken into custody, with an arsenal of 30 weapons seized in subsequent searches of his home.

Officials said he calls himself a “Reichsbürger”, part of a far-right movement that claims the current German state is illegitimate and is alleged to have neo-Nazi links.

Joachim Herrmann, the Bavarian interior minister, described his shock at the shooting and said it was “clear” that Wolfgang P fired before police officers.

“To be part of the Reichsbürger movement is to be a right-wing extremist,” he added.

“We must take a closer look at the movement. The Reichsbürgers are not being dismissed as a group of nutters.

“It is obvious that these people, who are so consumed by their ideological beliefs, are willing to use violence against police.”

Mr Herrmann said the movement has been under “intensive observation” by state intelligence services because of elements' “far-right aims”, and that surveillance would increase.

Reichsbürgers adhere to their own self-declared government, known as the KRR, which issue their own version of official documents such as driving licences, while followers frequently spurn federal taxes or fines.

They are mainly known for aggravating German authorities by pursuing obscure legal claims rather than violence, but a member was wounded during a gun battle as he was evicted from his home in August.

Wolfgang P, who is unemployed and previously operated a martial arts school, had reportedly written “scurrilous letters” on the movement after joining in the summer. He remains in police custody.

A recent report by Berlin's state intelligence service describes the Reichsbürgers as “an extremely diverse range of small groups and individuals who believe in an ideological mixture of conspiracy theories, anti-Semitic and anti-democratic views, and who have been behaving increasingly aggressively for some time".

Germany remains on a state of high alert following a series of terror attacks by Isis supporters, including a suicide bombing in Ansbach and axe attack on a train.

But there is also growing concern over far-right movements, which have been gathering increasing support during tensions over the refugee crisis and sexual assaults in Cologne.

Centres for asylum seekers have been the target of arson attacks and racist graffiti, while police uncovered a neo-Nazi plot to attack refugee accomodation with explosives last year.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichsb%C3%BCrgerbewegung

Reichsbürgerbewegung
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reichsbürgerbewegung ("Reich Citizens' Movement") or Reichsbürger ("Reich Citizens") is a label for several groups and individuals in Germany and elsewhere who reject the legitimacy of the modern German state, the Federal Republic of Germany.

They maintain that the German Reich (or, occasionally, Prussia)[1] continues to exist in its pre-World War II borders, and that it is governed by a Kommissarische Reichsregierung (KRR, Provisional Reich Government), or Exilregierung ("government in exile").[2] There are a number of competing KRRs, each claiming to govern all of Germany.

Arguments[edit]
See also: Legal status of Germany

The self-described Reichsbürger ("Reich citizens") maintain that the Federal Republic of Germany is illegitimate and that the Reich's 1919 Weimar Constitution remains in effect. Most of their arguments are based on a selective reading of a 1973 decision of the Federal Constitutional Court concerning the Basic Treaty between West and East Germany.[3] The judgement held that the 1949 Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (Grundgesetz) itself assumes that the Reich, as a subject of international law, despite the German Instrument of Surrender and the Allied occupation, had survived the collapse of Nazi Germany, but is incapable of acting as a state because it lacks any organization, such as governmental authorities.[4]

The Reichsbürger do not, however, cite the Court's further holding that the Federal Republic is not a successor state to the Reich, but, as a West German state at that time partially, and today—since 1990—fully identical to it.[5] Instead they claim to have restored the governmental bodies of the German Reich and to be capable of acting on the basis of the Weimar Constitution.

History[edit]

The original Kommissarische Reichsregierung was founded in 1985 by Wolfgang Gerhard Guenter Ebel,[6] a former Reichsbahn traffic superintendent in West Berlin. Ebel, who appointed himself Reich Chancellor, claimed to be acting on the authority of the Allied occupation authorities. Some of the members of his "cabinet" later fell out with Ebel and established provisional governments of their own with names such as Exilregierung Deutsches Reich or Deutsches Reich AG (the latter being based in Nevada, USA).

KRRs engage in activities such as issuing currency and stamps, as well as promoting themselves through the Internet and other media. Where the number of their adherents allows, they also emulate the "re-established" institutions, such as courts or parliaments, of the Weimar Republic or of earlier German states. Temporarily a restored Reichstag existed as well as several Reich Ministers, state governments, and a Reichsgericht.

Activities[edit]

As of 2009, there was no reliable count of the number of KRRs then existing, but the KRR FAQ, an online registry maintained by a German jurist, lists some 60 persons or organizations associated with operating competing KRRs. Several (though by no means all) KRRs have links to far-right extremist or neo-Nazi groups,[1] and are under observation by the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Some KRRs are ready to issue, for a fee, "official" documents such as building permits, driving licences, etc., which their adherents or gullible citizens may attempt to use in everyday life.[2] In one instance, Wolfgang Ebel's KRR issued an "excavation permit" to the Principality of Sealand (a micronation), who then had men dig up a plot of land in the Harz region in search of the Amber Room for two weeks, until the landowner hired a private security service to drive them off.[7] Similarly, in 2002 Ebel's KRR "sold" the Hakeburg, a manor in Kleinmachnow south of the Berlin city limits formerly owned by the German Reichspost (and therefore, according to Ebel, by his KRR) to one of the two competing governments of Sealand, thus creating, in their view, an enclave of Sealand in Germany.[8]

KRR adherents have also on occasion refused to pay taxes or fines, arguing that the laws providing for such sanctions have no constitutional basis. In the ensuing judicial proceedings, they refuse to recognize the courts as legitimate.[9] Some also pursue their activities abroad. In 2009, after Swiss authorities refused to recognize the "Reich Driving Licence" of a German KRR adherent, he unsuccessfully appealed the case up to the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland.[2]

Wolfgang Ebel's original organization, in particular, continues to attempt enforcing its asserted authority through attempts at intimidation.[7] According to Ebel, his "government" has issued more than 1,000 "arrest warrants" against people who have disregarded documents issued by the KRR. These warrants inform the addressee that, once the Reich Government is in power, they will be tried for high treason, for which the penalty is death.[7] Ebel has also admitted owning a "government helicopter" painted in the national colours, but has denied using it for intimidating fly-overs.[7] Multiple attempts to prosecute Ebel for threats, impersonating a public servant and so forth have failed because, according to German prosecutors, all courts have found him to be legally insane.[7]

List of Reichsbürger groups[edit]

The numerous small groups and individuals making up the movement are mainly active in the states of Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Bavaria. According to German authorities, there are a few hundred adherents in Germany, of which 150 to 200 in Brandenburg. Most Reichsbürger are male, over 50 and socially disadvantaged; and many adhere to right-wing, anti-semitic and Nazi ideologies.[10]

The following is a non-exhaustive list of KRRs that have received media coverage.[11]

Fürstentum Germania, based at Krampfer Palace, established 2009, claims 300 adherents.[12]
Interim Partei – Das Reicht[9]
Zentralrat Souveräner Bürger, based in an inn in Schwanstetten[13]
Ur, based in Elsteraue. Its leader Adrian Ursache was injured in a 2016 shootout with police.[14]




https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/sovereign-citizens-movement
Southern Poverty Law Center
ASSOCIATED EXTREMIST PROFILES:
James Timothy Turner
Ozark, Ala.

SOVEREIGN CITIZENS MOVEMENT

The strange subculture of the sovereign citizens movement, whose adherents hold truly bizarre, complex antigovernment beliefs, has been growing at a fast pace since the late 2000s. Sovereigns believe that they get to decide which laws to obey and which to ignore, and they don't think they should have to pay taxes.

The strange subculture of the sovereign citizens movement, whose adherents hold truly bizarre, complex antigovernment beliefs, has been growing at a fast pace since the late 2000s. Sovereigns believe that they — not judges, juries, law enforcement or elected officials — get to decide which laws to obey and which to ignore, and they don't think they should have to pay taxes. Sovereigns are clogging up the courts with indecipherable filings and when cornered, many of them lash out in rage, frustration and, in the most extreme cases, acts of deadly violence, usually directed against government officials. In May 2010, for example, a father-son team of sovereigns murdered two police officers with an assault rifle when they were pulled over on the interstate while traveling through West Memphis, Ark.

The movement is rooted in racism and anti-Semitism, though most sovereigns, many of whom are African American, are unaware of their beliefs' origins. In the early 1980s, the sovereign citizens movement mostly attracted white supremacists and anti-Semites, mainly because sovereign theories originated in groups that saw Jews as working behind the scenes to manipulate financial institutions and control the government. Most early sovereigns, and some of those who are still on the scene, believed that being white was a prerequisite to becoming a sovereign citizen. They argued that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guaranteed citizenship to African Americans and everyone else born on U.S. soil, also made black Americans permanently subject to federal and state governments, unlike themselves.

The Sovereign Belief System

The contemporary sovereign belief system is based on a decades-old conspiracy theory. At some point in history, sovereigns believe, the American government set up by the founding fathers — with a legal system the sovereigns refer to as "common law" — was secretly replaced by a new government system based on admiralty law, the law of the sea and international commerce. Under common law, or so they believe, the sovereigns would be free men. Under admiralty law, they are slaves, and secret government forces have a vested interest in keeping them that way. Some sovereigns believe this perfidious change occurred during the Civil War, while others blame the events of 1933, when the U.S. abandoned the gold standard. Either way, they stake their lives and livelihoods on the idea that judges around the country know all about this hidden government takeover but are denying the sovereigns' motions and filings out of treasonous loyalty to hidden and malevolent government forces.

Though this all sounds bizarre, the next layer of the argument becomes even more implausible. Since 1933, the U.S. dollar has been backed not by gold, but by the "full faith and credit" of the U.S. government (in fact, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ended private ownership of gold in large amounts in 1933; governments could still sell gold for dollars to the U.S. Treasury for a fixed amount after that, until that practice was ended by President Richard Nixon in 1971). According to sovereign "researchers," this means that the government has pledged its citizenry as collateral, by selling their future earning capabilities to foreign investors, effectively enslaving all Americans. This sale, they claim, takes place at birth. When a baby is born in the U.S., a birth certificate is issued, and the hospital usually requires that the parents apply for a Social Security number at that time. Sovereigns say that the government then uses that birth certificate to set up a kind of corporate trust in the baby's name — a secret Treasury account — which it funds with an amount ranging from $600,000 to $20 million, depending on the particular variant of the sovereign belief system. By setting up this account, every newborn's rights are cleverly split between those held by the flesh-and-blood baby and the ones assigned to his or her corporate shell account.

The sovereigns believe evidence for their theory is found on the birth certificate itself. Since most certificates use all capital letters to spell out a baby's name, JOHN DOE, for example, is actually the name of the corporate shell identity, or "straw man," while John Doe is the baby's "real," flesh-and-blood name. As the child grows older, most of his legal documents will utilize capital letters, which means that his state-issued driver's license, his marriage license, his car registration, his criminal court records, his cable TV bill and correspondence from the IRS all will pertain to his corporate shell identity, not his real, sovereign identity.

The process sovereigns have devised to split the straw man from the flesh-and-blood man is called "redemption," and its purpose is two-fold. Once separated from the corporate shell, the newly freed man is now outside of the jurisdiction of all admiralty laws. More importantly, by filing a series of complex, legal-sounding documents, the sovereign can tap into that secret Treasury account for his own purposes. Over the past 30 years, hundreds of sovereigns have attempted to perfect the process by packaging and promoting different combinations of forms and paperwork. While no one has ever succeeded, for the obvious reason that these theories are not true, sovereigns are nonetheless convinced with the religious certainty of a true cult believer that they're close. All it will take, say the promoters of the redemption scam, is the right combination of words.

Numbers

It is impossible to know how many sovereigns there are in the U.S. today, in part because there is no central leadership and no organized group that members can join. Instead, there are a variety of local leaders with individualized views on sovereign citizen ideology and techniques. Those who are attracted to this subculture typically attend a seminar or two, or visit one of the thousands of websites and online videos on the subject and then simply choose how to act on what they've learned. Some start by testing sovereign ideology with small offenses such as driving without a license, while others proceed directly to taking on the IRS as tax protesters.

In the mid-1990s, the IRS estimated that there were approximately 250,000 tax protesters in the U.S., people who believe that the government has no right to tax income. Not all of them were full-blown sovereign ideologues. Since the late 1990s, an abundance of evidence suggests that the sovereign citizen movement's growth has been explosive, although there have been no more recent IRS estimates because Congress in 1998 prohibited the agency from tracking or labeling those who file frivolous arguments in lieu of paying their taxes. But a conservative estimate of the number of all kinds of tax protesters today would be about 500,000.

Using this number and information derived from trials of tax protestors and reports from government agencies, a reasonable estimate of hard-core sovereign believers in early 2011 would be 100,000, with another 200,000 just starting out by testing sovereign techniques for resisting everything from speeding tickets to drug charges, for an estimated total of 300,000. As sovereign theories go viral throughout the nation's prison systems and among people who are unemployed and desperate in a punishing economy, this number is likely to grow.

Tactics

The weapon of choice for sovereign citizens is paper. A simple traffic violation or pet-licensing case can end up provoking dozens of court filings containing hundreds of pages of pseudo-legal nonsense. For example, a sovereign was involved in 2010 in a protracted legal battle over having to pay a dog-licensing fee. She filed 10 sovereign documents in court over a two-month period and then declared victory when the harried prosecutor decided to drop the case. The battle was fought over a three-year dog license that in Pinellas County, Fla., where the sovereign lives, costs just $20. Tax cases are even worse. Sovereign filings in such legal battles can quickly exceed a thousand pages. While a normal criminal case docket might have 60 or 70 entries, many involving sovereigns have as many as 1,200. The courts are struggling to keep up, and judges, prosecutors and public defenders are being swamped.

The size of the documents is an issue, but so is the nonsensical language the documents are written in. They have a kind of special sovereign code language that judges, lawyers and other court staff simply can't understand (nor can most non-sovereigns). Sovereigns believe that if they can find just the right combination of words, punctuation, paper, ink color and timing, they can have anything they want — freedom from taxes, unlimited wealth, and life without licenses, fees or laws, are all just a few strangely worded documents away. It's the modern-day equivalent of "abracadabra."</i>

Since most sovereigns favor paper over guns, when sovereigns are angry with government officials, their revenge most often takes the form of "paper terrorism." Sovereigns file retaliatory, bogus property liens that may not be discovered by the victim until they attempt to sell their property. Sovereigns also file fake tax forms that are designed to ruin an enemy's credit rating and cause them to be audited by the IRS. In the mid-1990s, a period when the sovereign movement was also on the rise, several states passed laws specifically aimed at these paper terrorism tactics.

Recruits

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, most new recruits to the sovereign citizens movement are people who have found themselves in a desperate situation, often due to the economy or foreclosures, and are searching for a quick fix. Others are intrigued by the notions of easy money and living a lawless life, free from unpleasant consequences. Many self-identified sovereigns today are black and apparently completely unaware of the racist origins of their ideology. When they experience some small success at using redemption techniques to battle minor traffic offenses or local licensing issues, they're hooked. For many, it's a political issue. They don't like taxes, traffic laws, child support obligations or banking practices, but they are too impatient to try to change what they dislike through traditional, political means.

In times of economic prosperity, sovereigns typically rely on absurd and convoluted schemes to evade state and federal income taxes and hide their assets from the IRS. In times of financial hardship, they turn to debt- and mortgage-elimination scams, techniques to avoid child support payments, and even attempts to use their redemption techniques to get out of serious criminal charges.

Once in the movement, it's an immersive and heady experience. In the past three decades, the redemptionist subculture has grown from small groups of like-minded individuals in localized pockets around the nation to a richly layered society. Redemptionists attend specialized seminars and national conferences, enjoy a large assortment of alternative newspapers and radio networks, and subscribe to sovereign-oriented magazines and websites. They home-school their children so that a new generation will not have to go through the same learning curve that they did to see past the government's curtain to the common-law utopia beyond.

While the techniques sold by promoters never perform as promised, most followers are nonetheless content to be fighting the battle, and they blame only the judges, lawyers, prosecutors and police when their gurus' methods fail. While most have never achieved financial success in life, they take pride in engaging the government in battle, comparing themselves to the founding fathers during the American Revolution.

Violence

When a sovereign feels particularly desperate, angry, battle-weary and cornered, his next government contact, no matter how minor, can be his final straw. The resulting rage can be lethal. In 1995 in Ohio, a sovereign named Michael Hill pulled a gun on an officer during a traffic stop. Hill was killed. In 1997, New Hampshire extremist Carl Drega shot dead two officers and two civilians, and wounded another three officers before being killed himself. In that same year in Idaho, when brothers Doug and Craig Broderick were pulled over for failing to signal, they killed one officer and wounded another before being killed themselves in a violent gun battle. In December 2003, members of the Bixby family, who lived outside of Abbeville, S.C., killed two law enforcement officers in a dispute over a small sliver of land next to their home. And in May 2010, Jerry and Joseph Kane, a father and son sovereign team, shot to death two West Memphis, Ark., police officers who had pulled them over in a routine traffic stop. Later that day, the Kanes were killed in a fierce shootout with police that wounded two other officers.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redemption_movement

Redemption movement
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The redemption movement consists of supporters of an American conspiracy theory[1] called Redemption theory, which involves claims that when the U.S. government abandoned the gold standard in 1933, it pledged its citizens as collateral so that it could borrow money. Other similar theories claim this collateral action happened in 1913 with the establishment of the Federal Reserve System. The movement also asserts that common citizens can gain access to funds in secret accounts using obscure procedures and regulations. The Redemption movement is related to the sovereign citizen movement.[2]

According to the theory, the government created a fictitious person (or "straw man") corresponding to each newborn citizen with bank accounts initially holding $630,000. The theory further holds that through obscure procedures under the Uniform Commercial Code, a citizen can "reclaim" the straw man and write checks against its accounts.[3]

There have been many well-publicized convictions of citizens attempting to take advantage of this theory. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regards the instructors and promoters of Redemption schemes as fraudsters[4] while the Internal Revenue Service has included the "straw man" claim in its list of frivolous positions that may result in the imposition of a $5,000 penalty[5] when used as the basis for an inaccurate tax return.[6]

Redemption theory[edit]

The Redemption movement is based on a theory developed in the 1980s by Roger Elvick, who has been called a "founding father" of the modern redemption movement.[7] The theory is, in part, that for every citizen's birth certificate issued in the U.S. since the 1936 Social Security Act, the government deposits $630,000 in a hidden bank account linked to the newborn American and administered by a Jewish cabal. Redemptionists assert that by completing certain legal maneuvers and filing a series of government forms, the actual person may entitle himself or herself to the $630,000 held in the name of the doppelganger persona created for him or her at birth, and may then access these government funds using "sight drafts". The government views these sight drafts as "rubber checks" and the entire scheme as fraudulent. The federal government has convicted the practitioners of fraud and conspiracy.[1]

Other important documents in this theory are

the security agreement
power of attorney
copyright notice
hold-harmless agreement
Form UCC-3
notice of security agreement
birth certificate bond
Form 56 (notice concerning fiduciary relationship)
Form W-8BEN (serving notice to the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury of the correct status of the issuer of the bond and countering any presumption that the issuer might be considered to be a fictional entity)
declaration of status
Form 1040-V
Form 1099-OID[8][9]
Notice of International Commercial Claim in Admiralty Administrative Remedy[10]

It is held, however, that the UCC-1 merely creates a rebuttable presumption, which can be overcome if a man or woman is receiving some sort of benefit from the state as a slave. It is held to be important to not sign documents such as W-4 forms, or if one is to sign them, to also write "under duress".

One element of the theory states that Americans are U.S. nationals, not U.S. citizens, and can therefore avoid taxes by changing their filing status from "U.S. citizen" to "non-resident alien". This argument has been repeatedly rejected by federal courts.[11] Classes are often set up to teach the intricacies of the theory, and books have been published about it in the underground press. Canaanite law is held to be an important source of law and The Wizard of Oz (presumably because of the scarecrow character, i.e. the "straw man") and The Matrix trilogy are held to have important symbolism in reference to this theory,[12] and there is also said to be some connection to the New World Order.[13][14]

Legal status[edit]

Several people who have followed Roger Elvick's instructions have been convicted.[15][16][17][18][19][20] The Internal Revenue Service has included the "straw man" claim in its list of frivolous positions that may result in the imposition of a $5,000 penalty[5] when used as the basis for an inaccurate tax return.[6] Likewise the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regards the instructors and promoters of Redemption schemes as fraudsters.[4]

A 2011 NPR report claimed some of the people associated with this movement were imprisoned in a highly restrictive Communication Management Unit.[21]

Promoters[edit]
Roger Elvick[edit]

In June 1991, Roger Elvick was found guilty by a federal jury in Hawaii of conspiracy to impede justice in connection with federal tax filings under 18 U.S.C. § 371[22] On September 30, 1991, he was fined $100,000, and was sentenced to five years in federal prison and three years of supervised release.[23] Elvick was the national spokesman for the white supremacist group Committee of the States and the president of Common Title, a farm loan scam.[24] He served his time and was released from the federal prison system on December 8, 1997.[25] While incarcerated he was further convicted in another conspiracy.[26] Upon release from prison he restarted the scheme in Ohio, where he was convicted in April 2005 of forgery, extortion and corruption.[1]

Legal status[edit]

Several people who have followed Roger Elvick's instructions have been convicted.[15][16][17][18][19][20] The Internal Revenue Service has included the "straw man" claim in its list of frivolous positions that may result in the imposition of a $5,000 penalty[5] when used as the basis for an inaccurate tax return.[6] Likewise the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regards the instructors and promoters of Redemption schemes as fraudsters.[4]

A 2011 NPR report claimed some of the people associated with this movement were imprisoned in a highly restrictive Communication Management Unit.[21]



https://ccrjustice.org/home/get-involved/tools-resources/fact-sheets-and-faqs/cmus-federal-prison-system-s-experiment

Center For Constitutional Rights
CMUs: The Federal Prison System’s Experiment in Social Isolation
March 31, 2010

Download the PDF of the CMU Factsheet here.

What is a Communications Management Unit (CMU)?

In 2006 and 2008, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP or “Bureau”) secretly created the Communications Management Units (CMUs), prison units designed to isolate and segregate certain prisoners in the federal prison system from the rest of the BOP population. Currently, there are two CMUs, one located in Terre Haute, Indiana and the other in Marion, Illinois. The CMUs house between 60 and 70 prisoners in total, and over two-thirds of the CMU population is Muslim, even though Muslims represent only 6 percent of the general federal prison population.

Unlike other BOP prisoners, individuals detained in the CMUs are completely banned from any physical contact with visiting family members and friends. Other types of communication are also severely limited, including interactions with other prisoners and phone calls with friends and family members.

Individuals detained in the CMUs receive no meaningful explanation for their transfer to the unit or for the extraordinary communications restrictions to which they are subjected. Upon designation to the unit, there is no meaningful review or appeal process that allows CMU prisoners to be transferred back to general population.

Many CMU prisoners have neither significant disciplinary records nor any communications-related infractions. However, bias, political scapegoating, religious profiling and racism keep them locked inside these special units.

The Bureau’s purpose and process for designating federal prisoners to the CMUs remain undisclosed to the public.

Who is detained in the CMU?

The Bureau claims that CMUs are designed to hold dangerous terrorists and other high-risk inmates, requiring heightened monitoring of their external and internal communications. Many prisoners, however, are sent to these isolation units for their Constitutionally-protected religious beliefs, unpopular political views, or in retaliation for challenging poor treatment or other rights violations in the federal prison system.

At the Marion CMU, 72 percent of the population is Muslim, 1,200 percent higher than the national average of Muslim prisoners in federal prison facilities. The Terre Haute CMU population is approximately two-thirds Muslim, an overrepresentation of 1,000 percent. The Muslims detained in these two CMUs are both African American (many who converted during their time in the prison system) and prisoners of Middle Eastern descent.

CMUs also house individuals with “unpopular” political views, such as environmental activists. Many of these prisoners were brought to the CMU as a calculated means to “integrate” the units after critical press attention to the targeting of Muslims. Also commonly detained in the CMU are prisoners who have been active in organizing prisoners’ rights, participated in lawful social justice movements, organized worship sessions, or filed grievances based on mistreatment and/or conditions of confinement. Although the Bureau maintains there are broad guidelines determining who is eligible to be sent to these isolation units, thousands of prisoners in the general population fit the criteria – begging the question, why these men?

The CMU: An Experiment in Social Isolation?

Unlike other prisoners in the BOP, CMU prisoners are forbidden from any physical contact with their children, spouses, family members and other loved ones that visit them. They are not even allowed a brief embrace upon greeting or saying goodbye. While the BOP claims these units were created to more effectively monitor communications, there is no security explanation for banning physical contact during visits as visitors are comprehensively searched before visits, and prisoners are strip searched before and after visits. The ban on physical contact during visits contradicts the Bureau’s own policy recognizing the critical importance of visitation in rehabilitation and prison re-entry. The CMUs’ visitation policy is even more restrictive than that of the BOP’s notorious “supermax” prisons, where prisoners have over four times more time allotted for visits than prisoners in the CMU.

The Bureau has also placed severe restrictions on phone access. As with visits, the Bureau has recognized the importance of telephone communications with family and loved ones in the rehabilitation process as well as in maintaining family relationships during incarceration. In spite of this, CMU prisoners were until recently permitted only one 15 minute call a week— when, in apparent response to threatened litigation, the Bureau permitted one extra 15 minute call a week. Other BOP prisoners receive 300 minutes a month for phone calls.

Prisoners in the isolation units are barred even from contact with other prisoners in the general population. In addition to the stigma of being placed in what is widely know as the “terrorist” unit, individuals detained in the CMU have limited access to educational and other opportunities, including programs that facilitate reintegration and employment efforts upon their release.

Secrecy, Transparency and Accountability in the Federal Prison System

These isolation units have been shrouded in secrecy since their inception. CMUs were created without public knowledge and without the opportunity for the public to comment as required by law. In 2010, the BOP attempted to redress this violation by, three years after the fact, finally disclosing CMU policy for public comment. Furthermore, individuals are designated to CMUs with no explanation and without a way to seek return to the general population—a due process violation that allows for the abuse of power, retaliation and racial and religious profiling.

Multi Media

Interactive CMU History Timeline
NPR's CMU timeline

NPR's Margot Williams and Alicia Cypress have created an interactive timeline of the history of the CMUs.

What is Aref v. Holder?

Aref, et al. v. Holder, et al. is a federal lawsuit challenging the policies and conditions at the two CMUs, as well as the circumstances under which they were established. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed the case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in March 2010 on behalf of several plaintiffs, including prisoners and their family members. The defendants in the lawsuit include Attorney General Eric Holder; Harley Lappin, Director of the BOP; D. Scott Dodrill, Assistant Director of the Correctional Programs Division of the BOP and Leslie Smith, head of the Counterterrorism unit of the Federal BOP.

In November 2012, CCR amended its complaint to bring new retaliation claims based on previously-secret documents. These documents, gathered through the litigation, revealed that the BOP assigned CCR’s clients to the CMUs because of their Constitutionally-protected political activism and speech.



http://ccrjustice.org/home/what-we-do/our-cases/aref-et-al-v-lynch-et-al

Aref, et al. v. Lynch, et al.

In 2006 and 2008, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) secretively created two experimental “Communications Management Units” (CMUs) in Terre Haute, Indiana, and Marion, Illinois, designed to isolate certain prisoners from the rest of the prison population and the outside world. Prisoners in CMUs are banned from any physical contact with friends and family, and their access to phone calls and work and educational opportunities are extremely limited. CCR filed Aref v. Holder (now Aref v. Lynch), challenging policies and practices at the CMUs, in the U.S District Court for the District of Columbia, on April 1, 2010. The case is part of CCR’s broader efforts to challenge mass incarceration, discrimination, and abusive prison policies.

The plaintiffs in Aref are low- or medium-security prisoners who were designated to the CMU despite their clean or near-spotless disciplinary histories. Not a single one has been disciplined for any communications-related infraction within the last decade, nor for any significant disciplinary offense. Though the creation of the CMUs marked a dramatic change in BOP policy, they were opened without the required public notice and opportunity to comment.

Discovery materials in Aref reveal that incomplete and inadequate procedures have been used to designate and retain prisoners at the CMUs. These procedures have been marked by missing paper trails and political and religious discrimination, amounting to a truly Kafkaesque form of imprisonment. For example, prisoners are not told why they have been transferred to a CMU until after they arrive. Even then, the reasons they are provided are frequently vague, inaccurate, and/or completely false, and they are given erroneous – and even impossible – instructions for earning their way out of a CMU. Policies governing the CMUs are often unclear and interpreted differently by different BOP decision-makers. In addition, 60 percent of CMU prisoners are Muslim, though Muslims comprise only 6 percent of the federal prisoner population.

Since the CMUs were created, the designation and review process has denied prisoners due process at every step. CCR’s lawsuit asserts that designation to a CMU involves serious deprivations and restrictions, and these units must be brought into line with constitutional requirements.



https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/08/24/meet-borderkeepers-alabama

Meet the Borderkeepers of Alabama
Hatewatch Staff
August 24, 2016


A vigilante anti-immigrant group called the Borderkeepers of Alabama is sending teams of men clad in camouflage and equipped with thousands of dollars in military weaponry to patrol for undocumented immigrants in Arizona and New Mexico.

The group, which has been operating since at least 2014, claims as many as eight volunteer “teams” of "redblooded Americans" who, it says, "travel to border towns to work closely with local residents and governmental agencies to limit illegal transient activity." It is one of the latest groups in the nativist extremist movement, which peaked in 2010 and has diminished dramatically since then, to engage in armed citizen border patrols.

Although the Borderkeepers says its mission is to “secure our nation’s border” against undocumented immigrants and drug smugglers, some of its members would like to go far beyond that. In a comment left on a fellow group member’s post some two years ago, an Irvington, Ala. man who goes by the name “Jon Anderson,” proposed massive violence. “Need 240 bravo’s mounted every 100 yards and shoot everybody who tries to force their way in,” he wrote. The M240 Bravo is a machine gun that can fire nearly 16 bullets per second and rip through targets 1,200 yards away.

Another member, identifying himself as Wesley Vance of Montgomery, Ala., said earlier this year that he had travelled some 2,500 miles to join the antigovernment occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. Twenty-seven of those occupiers were arrested after a 41-day standoff and now face federal felony conspiracy charges. Vance was apparently not one of them.

“Crying fuckin shame the feds are going to investigate the feds,” Vance wrote on March 8, referring to a probe of the apparently justified police killing of Lavoy Finicum, an occupation spokesman who tried to draw a gun on arresting officers. “They murdered lavoy is the bottom line. Shot the man three times in the back. I wish the fuckin faggots would come to my house!” A few days earlier, he wrote that “patriots are so oppressed and scared of the government, they are scared they will die.” In his own case, Vance boasted that he would “DIE BEFORE I GET ON MY KNEES AND BOW DOWN TO THEM AND LIVE IN FEAR.”

Photograph -- Vance (right) poses with Pete Santilli, a well-known antigovernment mouthpiece who was among those charged with conspiracy and other crimes following the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore. The photograph was posted to Vance’s Facebook page on January 24, 2016.

A poster who apparently is not a Borderkeepers member responded to Vance’s comments: “All this country needs are about 100,000 patriots to arm up and start killing off some of these fucktard liberals!”

“Agreed,” Vance replied.

The group has managed to stop at least some border crossers at gunpoint. In an August 2016 Facebook post, Jimmy “Bull” Bonham, an administrator of the group’s Facebook page, said that members had managed to detain two out of a group of four drug smugglers. He wrote that the “bp” — the Border Patrol — had then taken “140 pounds of dope” that the Borderkeepers had apparently seized from the men. It is unclear how closely the Border Patrol may have worked with the Borderkeepers.

"Jon Anderson" posted a photo of himself in a police uniform while appearing to be sitting in a squad car in late July. The photo was since removed from his Facebook page.

But the group, many of whose members appear to engage in serious military training, may have connections to others in law enforcement. In April, Anderson posted a photo of an application to a police department in southern Alabama. He has since posted photos of himself in uniform and in a squad car, suggesting that he was indeed hired. A few other members of the group’s Facebook page list connections to law enforcement agencies, but these alleged ties have not been verified.

Early on in the group’s operations, in 2014, it was working out of a patrol base in Brownsville, Texas, known as “Camp Lone Star.” But in August of that year, camp boss Kevin “KC” Massey was arrested for being a convicted felon in possession of firearms. The camp closed, and Borderkeepers operations moved to the west.

Brian "Geezer" Henderson (left) with Jerry "Ghost" Karl on a border operation. Henderson was tagged in this photo by a fellow Borderkeeper on April 18, 2016.

Locals do not remember Camp Lone Star fondly. The owner of the property told reporters that he regretted loaning it, and said participants “jeopardized my safety.” Another local resident told the Texas Observer earlier that the group “makes us feel less safe, not more safe,” and added, “I just hope they leave soon.”

Despite all the military equipment and tough talk, Borderkeepers operations do not always go very professionally. According to posts on the group’s Facebook page, a member named Brian Keith Henderson — a Tuscaloosa, Ala., man who “liked” Anderson’s post about turning the border into a kill zone — mistook a cactus plant for some kind of threat. “What the hell is that?” he reportedly yelled before training his assault rifle of the wholly innocent cactus and very nearly blasting it to smithereens.

Henderson was kicked out of the group as a result. Henderson, whose writings make clear that he subscribes to the radical antigovernment “sovereign citizens” movement, now leads the Three Percent United Patriots of Alabama. Many members of that group are also members of the Borderkeepers Facebook group.

Henderson exposes his sovereign citizen leanings in one of several 2014 posts to his Facebook page.

The apparent leader of the Borderkeepers of Alabama is Ron “Cornbread” Stone, one of its Facebook page administrators and the primary organizer of its border teams. Other principals are also Facebook moderators, including a woman who identifies herself as Lisa Marie and Bonham. The group’s Facebook page asks that donations be sent to “A.D. Vance” of Clanton, Ala.

Ron “Cornbread” Stone (left) and Jimmy “Bull” Bonham posing for a photograph during a border operation. The photo was posted to Ron Stone's Facebook page on July 24, 2016.

The nativist extremist movement of which the Borderkeepers is a part began around 2005 and swelled to some 319 groups, many of which used “Minutemen” as part of their names, by 2010. Since then, it has declined to some 20 groups. That is largely because much of the movement’s fire was stolen by state legislatures that passed harsh anti-immigrant laws like those of Arizona and Alabama. Donald Trump’s more recent attacks on immigrants have had a similar effect.

Jerry “Ghost” Karl, an Arizona militia leader who leads Borderkeepers operations in Arizona, put it like this to a reporter with WIAT-TV of Birmingham: “Trump talks about building a wall. Well, we’re that wall right now.”



Bureau of Prisons keeps certain prisoners whose crimes are usually not criminal, but social, in two "experimental" prison units across the country incommunicado, and held with none of our GUARANTEED civil rights. It began in 2006 and 2008, under George W. Bush, probably using the USA PATRIOT Act or something similar. Unfortunately, under Obama it continues. The articles I found so far do not tell whether or not the legislature is involved in it, or simply the Executive. Could this be part of the “Unitary Executive” theory of the Bush lawyers who allowed torture to be used in Iraq and perhaps also at Guantanamo Bay? NPR reported it in 2011, so I don't think this is a paranoid delusion.

I want to see something done with prisoners like these, who are half hate-filled or perhaps “evil” and half truly nuts. The CMUs don’t sound like the right thing, however, because it is blatantly illegal and, in my opinion, cruel. It is just possible, and hopefully true, that the Feds are trying an experiment to change the inner intellectual and emotional wiring on these true “hard cases” rather than simply cracking down on unpopular opinions floating around the country. There is no information as dangerous as disinformation, especially when it is being preached to very uneducated and mentally unsound individuals; giving birth to wild-eyed and intensely anti-governmental dogmas of hate and fear, so widely since the late 1990s. I would understand it if that were their probable reasons for the CMUs, but merely to silence dissent is unconscionable.

A friend of mine in DC said that some psychiatric researchers took street alcoholics right off their doorways in which they were sleeping, made them bathe and shave and dress in good clothing, took them off the drugs and alcohol, in a similar way to this with the aim of using extensive therapy to “fix them” so that they wouldn’t want to drink anymore. It didn’t work. The only external force that ever works is a group like AA or a church. Changing our tangled masses of neurons has to be an inside job, born of a sincere desire to change, and with long term support of some kind and guidance toward new thought patterns. There are “drunk farms” all over this country, and very expensive they are, too; but if they do not incorporate a group like AA with peer groups and principles to be followed, they don’t tend to work in the long haul. A mind is a hard thing to change.



UPON HAPPIER THINGS, HOPEFULLY


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/internet-disrupted-dyn-hit-by-ddos-cyberattack/

U.S. internet disrupted as firm gets hit by cyberattack
CBS/AP
October 21, 2016, 11:21 AM


Twitter experienced renewed outages Friday afternoon following hours of internet disruption that took down numerous sites earlier in the morning across the U.S. East Coast.

A wave of reports of problems accessing many popular websites came after the servers at a major internet management firm were hit by a cyberattack.

New Hampshire-based Dyn said its server infrastructure suffered a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which occurs when a system is overwhelmed by malicious electronic traffic.

In a statement provided to CBS News, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it was aware of the attack and is “investigating all potential causes.”

The scale of the attack led to suspicions that it might be state sponsored, but ZDNet security editor Zack Whittaker said the evidence is not yet clear. “It may or may not have been sponsored by some state-sponsored actor, at this point it’s simply too early to tell,” he told CBS News.

DDoS attacks are nothing new, but Whittaker said they’ve been getting “worse and worse” recently, and this one “must be off the charts.”

Dyn issued a series of statements about the service disruption early Friday local time, tweeting that as of 9:20 a.m. ET, “services have been restored to normal.”

However, the company detected another wave of DNS attacks just before noon and acknowledged that the problem was not yet solved. “We are continuing to mitigate a DDoS against our Managed DNS network,” it said.

The level of disruption caused was hard to gauge, but Dyn provides internet traffic optimization to some of the biggest names on the web, including Twitter, Netflix, Airbnb, Spotify, Visa and others, and users of many sites were reporting problems.

Jason Read, the founder of Gartner Inc.-owned internet performance monitoring firm CloudHarmony, said his company tracked a half-hour-long disruption early Friday in which roughly one in two end users would have found it impossible to access various websites from the East Coast.

Read said that Dyn provides services to some 6 percent of America’s Fortune 500 companies, meaning a big potential for disruption.

“Because they host some major properties it impacted quite a few users,” he said.

The site Downdetector.com, which tracks service outages, lit up with reports of problems accessing Twitter and other sites Friday morning.

twitter-outage-downdetector-map.jpg
Red zones on this map from Downdetector.com indicate widespread reports of Twitter outages Friday morning, Oct. 21, 2016. DOWNDETECTOR.COM

According to CNET, Twitter initially reported that during a two-hour window, “various Twitter domains including twitter.com may have been inaccessible for users in some regions, due to failures resolving particular DNS hostnames.”

Several hours later, Twitter reported the problems were back: “The earlier issues have resurfaced & some people may still be having trouble accessing Twitter. We’re working on it!”

Several sites, such as coder hangout Github, said they were experiencing problems, although it was not immediately clear whether the issues were linked to the cyberattack.

Security experts have expressed growing concern over denial-of-service attacks. In a widely shared essay titled “Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet,” respected security expert Bruce Schneier said last month that major internet infrastructure companies were seeing a series of worrying denial-of-service attacks.

“Someone is extensively testing the core defensive capabilities of the companies that provide critical internet services,” he said.




http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hacked-emails-show-clinton-pushed-for-charity-meeting-in-morocco/

Hacked emails show Clinton pushed for charity meeting in Morocco
CBS/AP October 21, 2016, 8:58 AM

Play VIDEO -- Kaine on WikiLeaks: "You can't assume that they're all accurate"


WASHINGTON -- Hacked emails reveal internal disagreement among top aides to Hillary Clinton about her determination to hold a Clinton Foundation summit in Morocco that later drew attention over its reliance on large financial pledges from foreign governments.

Clinton aide Huma Abedin bluntly wrote in the January 2015 email that “if HRC was not part of it, meeting was a non-starter” and then warned: “She created this mess and she knows it.”

It was an uncharacteristic remark from a confidant known for her abiding loyalty to Clinton over the years.

The hacked email was among more than 4,000 messages posted Thursday on the website of the WikiLeaks organization. The emails were stolen from the accounts of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman.

In Wednesday’s final presidential debate, Donald Trump said he doubted the conclusion by U.S. intelligence officials that the Russian government is behind a string of recent targeted cyberattacks and subsequent leaks to influence the election.

“[Clinton] has no idea if it’s Russia, China or anybody else. Hillary, you have no idea. Our country has no idea,” Trump said on the debate stage.

Clinton sharply criticized the Republican nominee for using the stolen emails to attack her, as well as a past statement encouraging hackers to leak more.

“I find it deeply disturbing,” she said, adding that a number of U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian hackers “at the highest levels of the Kremlin.”

Podesta has warned that some emails may have been edited or altered by the hackers prior to release, though the Clinton campaign has yet to publicly identify an instance of that happening.

In her email, Abedin told Podesta and current Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook that the lavish May 2015 meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative was based on a $12 million pledge from Moroccan King Mohammed VI to host the event.

“The King has personally committed approx. $12 million both for the endowment and to support the meeting,” Abedin wrote.

Clinton Foundation records do not show any direct pledge of funding from the king or government of Morocco to the charity. Commitments to the charity’s CGI program are agreements only to aid the program’s international projects, not to directly fund the Clinton Foundation itself.

The Clinton Foundation has faced ethical concerns before for its foreign government ties.

Officials at the charitable organization have said before that they would need to curb their donor policy if Hillary Clinton becomes president. Trump, Clinton’s general election opponent, has seized on the Clinton Foundation, alleging that Hillary Clinton and her aides gave megadonors special access while she was secretary of state.

Clinton was no longer serving as secretary of state at the time of the meeting in Marrakesh. Sponsor donations have sometimes been used to defray the costs of meetings for CGI, the foundation’s program of worldwide charity and development projects.

Politico has reported that the meeting was partly supported by a pledge of at least $1 million from OCP, a Moroccan phosphate export firm whose directors at the time included several top Moroccan government ministers, including the heads of the nation’s foreign affairs and interior ministries.

Among the other listed attendees were several corporate figures who had met with Clinton when she was secretary of state or were long-time political fundraisers.

They included entertainment magnate Haim Saban and his psychologist wife, Cheryl, who are bundlers for Clinton’s presidential campaign and met with her several times during her State Department tenure. Other philanthropic attendees included political backers Jay Snyder and Steven Wozencraft.

The internal email exchange between Abedin, Mook and Podesta reveals that there was internal disagreement ahead of time over Clinton’s push for the Moroccan meeting.

“Came up on our call with HRC. John flagged the same issues we discussed, Huma. HRC says she’s still considering,” Mook wrote.

The Clinton campaign was not immediately available to comment on the newly released WikiLeaks email.

In her message, Abedin said that Clinton’s personal appearance at the planned meeting was a key element in the Moroccan decision to host the event.

“The condition upon which the Moroccans agreed to host the meeting was her participation,” Abedin wrote. She added that “CGI also wasn’t pushing for a meeting in Morocco and it wasn’t their first choice.”

But days after OCP’s role in the Marrakesh meeting was publicized, Clinton decided not to attend. Her decision came despite a November 2014 email in which Abedin insisted “no matter what happens, she will be in Morocco hosting CGI on May 5-7, 2015. Her presence was a condition for the Moroccans to proceed so there is no going back on this.”

A week after the donation from OCP was revealed in April, the Clinton Foundation announced it was tightening its policy on donations from foreign governments, agreeing to allow financial gifts only from six nations that had previously supported the foundation’s health, poverty and climate change programs. Those nations were Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom.

In August, former President Bill Clinton said that if his wife is elected, the family’s foundation would no longer accept any donations from foreign governments or corporations, or from U.S. companies.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/government-allege

National Security
Government alleges former NSA contractor stole ‘astonishing quantity’ of classified data over 20 years
By Ellen Nakashima
October 20 at 5:42 PM

Photograph -- The National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Md. Patrick Semansky/AP)
Related: [Read the government argument to keep former NSA contractor Harold Martin in jail ]
Play Video -- This NSA leaker has a few things in common with Edward Snowden Play Video1:39; A federal contractor suspected in the leak of powerful National Security Agency hacking tools has been arrested and charged with stealing classified information from the U.S. government, according to court records and U.S. officials familiar with the case. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
Related: [NSA contractor thought to have taken classified material the old-fashioned way]
Related: [Read Harold Martin’s arguments to be released from detention]


Federal prosecutors in Baltimore on Thursday said they will charge a former National Security Agency contractor with violating the Espionage Act, alleging that he made off with “an astonishing quantity” of classified digital and other data over 20 years in what is thought to be the largest theft of classified government material ever.

In a 12-page memo, U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein and two other prosecutors laid out a much more far-reaching case against Harold T. Martin III than was previously outlined. They say he took at least 50 terabytes of data and “six full banker’s boxes worth of documents,” with many lying open in his home office or kept on his car’s back seat and in the trunk. Other material was stored in a shed on his property.

One terabyte is the equivalent of 500 hours’ worth of movies.

Martin, who will appear at a detention hearing in U.S. District Court in Baltimore on Friday, also took personal information about government employees as well as dozens of computers, thumb drives and other digital storage devices, the government memo said.

The government has not alleged that Martin passed any material to a foreign government, but contends that if he is released on bail he could do so.

Though he lacks a valid U.S. passport, the government said Martin could still flee to a foreign government that might wish to help him. Prosecutors said he has communicated with unnamed people in Russian and in June downloaded information on Russian and other languages.

The prosecutors also said Martin had an “arsenal” of weapons in his home and car, including an assault-rifle-style tactical weapon and a pistol-grip shotgun with a flash suppressor.

In a complaint unsealed earlier this month, the government charged him with felony theft of government property and the unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials, a misdemeanor. The prosecutors said that when an indictment is filed, they expect charges to include “violations of the Espionage Act,” offenses that carry a prison term of up to 10 years for each count.

Prosecutors will argue Friday that Martin, 51, of Glen Burnie, Md., presents “a high risk of flight, a risk to the nation and to the physical safety of others,” and that he should not be released from jail.

“The case against the defendant thus far is overwhelming, and the investigation is ongoing,” said Rosenstein, Assistant U.S. Attorney Zachary Myers and trial attorney David Aaron. “The defendant knows, and, if no longer detained, may have access to a substantial amount of highly classified information, which he has flagrantly mishandled and could easily disseminate to others.”

Continued detention without bail is necessary, prosecutors said, because of “the grave and severe danger that pretrial release of the defendant would pose to the national security of the United States.”

Martin’s attorneys argued in a memo filed Thursday that their client is not a flight risk and should be released under court-approved conditions pending trial. “The government concocts fantastical scenarios in which Mr. Martin — who, by the government’s own admission, does not possess a valid passport — would attempt to flee the country,” wrote public defenders James Wyda and Deborah L. Boardman.

Martin’s wife and home are in Maryland, they said. He has served in the U.S. Navy. “There is no evidence he intended to betray his country,” they said. “The government simply does not meet its burden of showing that no conditions of release would reasonably assure Mr. Martin’s future appearance in court.”

The government also alleged that Martin took a top-secret document detailing “specific operational plans against a known enemy of the United States.” Prosecutors did not name the enemy. The document, prosecutors said, contained a warning, in capital letters, that said: “This conop [concept of operations] contains information concerning extremely sensitive U.S. planning and operations that will be discussed and disseminated only on an absolute need to know basis.”

Martin was not involved in the operation, the government said, and had no need to have the document or know its specifics.

Another document found in his car contained handwritten notes describing NSA’s classified computer systems and detailed descriptions of classified technical operations, the prosecutors said.

In an interview before his arrest, Martin denied having taken classified material and only admitted to it when confronted with specific documents, prosecutors said. He had access to classified data beginning in 1996, when he was with the Navy Reserve, and that access continued through his employment with seven private government contractors.

The government alleged that Martin was able to defeat “myriad, expensive controls placed” on classified information.

They said the devices seized show he made extensive use of sophisticated encryption. He also used a sophisticated software tool that runs without being installed on a computer and provides anonymous Internet access, “leaving no digital footprint on the machine,” they said.

In August, a cache of highly sensitive NSA hacking tools mysteriously appeared online. Although investigators have not found conclusive evidence that he was responsible for that, he is the prime suspect, said U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. That is the event that set off the search that turned up Martin, the officials said.

In July, according to the prosecutors’ memo, he watched a video about how law enforcement authorities catch computer users who wish to remain anonymous on the Internet. “He has a demonstrated ability to conceal his online communications and his access to the Internet,” the prosecutors said.

To support their argument that Martin poses a danger to the community, they noted that in late July, he went to Connecticut to buy a “Detective Special” police-package Chevrolet Caprice. While searching his house, the FBI also recovered 10 firearms, only two of which were registered, the government said. Prosecutors said a loaded handgun was found in a case on the floorboard of the Caprice, in violation of Maryland law.

Martin’s wife, Deborah Vinson, was “very upset” to learn about his arsenal, prosecutors said, and asked the FBI to take custody of the firearms because she was afraid that he would kill himself if he “thought it was all over.”

If Martin had taken the classified material “for his own edification, as he has claimed, there would be no reason to keep some of it in his car, and arm himself as though he were trafficking in dangerous contraband,” prosecutors said.




SANDERS AND HILLARY TODAY


http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/20/top-clinton-advisor-pressed-on-hacked-emails-falls-flat-on-her-face-video/

ELECTIONS
Top Clinton Advisor — Pressed On Hacked Emails — Falls Flat On Her Face [VIDEO]

Photo of Christian Datoc
CHRISTIAN DATOC
Reporter
10:14 AM 10/20/2016

Video -- Hacked emails loom over Clinton campaign 0:00 -- 1:48


Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden dodged questions about emails published by WikiLeaks during a Thursday morning interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo.

Cuomo noted that in the emails Tanden — a longtime Hillary Clinton advisor — wrote “[Hillary’s] inability to just do a national interview and communicate genuine feelings of remorse and regret is now, I fear, becoming a character problem (more so than honesty).”

“This is interesting to hear that inside, you guys were having the same discussion that people were having outside,” Cuomo continued. “What happened when you said these things to Podesta and others?”

Instead of answering the question, Tanden chose to instead criticize anyone who decided to read the inner workings of the Clinton campaign.

“I’m just not going to play that. I’m sorry,” she told Cuomo. “Any email I sent was personal from my personal account to someone else’s personal account. I was not on the campaign. I was a formal outside adviser with my own thoughts, and so honestly, I’m just telling you right now, Chris, that the reality of this is that i think Marco Rubio is right about this.”

”People should not be using this as weaponizing the emails or personal emails of anyone and sending them,” she added before Cuomo cut her off.

“Neera, if this had been Kellyanne Conway to Dave Bossie, you would be giving me all your deepest thoughts about it right now,” Cuomo stated. “You don’t like it because it’s your email. You’re ducking it. You’re not having high ground.”

Follow Datoc on Twitter and Facebook
Tags: Chris Cuomo, CNN, Elections 2016, Neera Tanden, WikiLeaks



https://www.rt.com/usa/363638-podestaemails-wikileaks-release-clinton/

Should Hillary be disqualified
Should Hillary Clinton be disqualified from being President? Tell us! Go to campaigns.townhall.com/hillarys-emails

WikiLeaks has released a new batch of emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta. The latest tranche comprises of around 1,577 mails, bringing the total released so far to 25,000.

Trends
US Elections 2016
WikiLeaks has said it will release around 50,000 mails in total in the lead up to the presidential election on November 8.

RELEASE: The Podesta Emails Part 14 https://t.co/5SMuhJtDo9#imWithHer#PodestaEmails#PodestaEmails14pic.twitter.com/hCUGbnpKBn

RELEASE: The Podesta Emails Part 14 https://t.co/5SMuhJtDo9#imWithHer#PodestaEmails#PodestaEmails14pic.twitter.com/hCUGbnpKBn

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 21, 2016

The leak comes just a day after WikiLeaks revealed the first batch of emails involving an account Barack Obama was possibly using before winning the election in November 2008.

F**k these a**holes
When the New York Times ran an article about Clinton’s email server in July 2015, the campaign were not happy.

The campaign sent a letter to the Times executive editor voicing their “concerns” about the “inaccurate” article, which detailed federal inspectors’ request for a criminal inquiry into Clinton’s use of a private email server. The use of the word “criminal” was their biggest issue. The Times later removed the word, after making other corrections to the piece.

“It’s great,” Tanden said on July 30, “F**k these a**holes.”

“Love it!” Palmieri responded. “Thanks, Neera.”

Tanden then adds that although it "is probably very unhealthy," she's "going to war on this on twitter."

In another email chain, which discusses the letter, between the Clinton campaign’s Director of Communications Jennifer Palmieri and press secretary Brian Fallon, the latter cites his primary worry.

“My only concern is stating the article inflicted damage on our campaign. Certainly true but I worry that if we leak the letter, it could be misinterpreted as us admitting the email controversy in general is hurting us,” he says.

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Best of the worst: Here are the most shocking WikiLeaks #Podesta emails so far http://on.rt.com/7sk9
5:24 AM - 21 Oct 2016

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Best of the worst: Here are the most shocking WikiLeaks Podesta emails so far — RT America

As WikiLeaks continues to release emails from Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, RT brings you a round-up of the most scandalous details released so far.

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Bernie's proposal "sucks"

A January 2016 email from Podesta discusses Bernie Sanders’ healthcare plan. “His actual proposal sucks, but we live in a leftie alternative universe,” Podesta writes in an email to Judd Legum, editor at ThinkProgress.

Ruthless Podesta

Podesta is shown to take leaks seriously, threatening to fire a member of Clinton’s staff as an example to others, even if their hands are clean.

Following the discovery that a CNN source had insider knowledge of Clinton lining up an interview with NBC journalist Andrea Mitchell, Podesta says in a mail from March 2015, “I am happy to fire someone for leaking whether they did or they didn't just to make the point."

George Soros

Phone numbers for contacting controversial tycoon George Soros are apparently revealed. In an email from Sara Latham to Podesta three numbers are listed, described as “cell”, “home M-Friday” and “home weekends”.

ChPodesta is known for his enthusiasm for UFOs. © Lucy NicholsonPodesta urged to involve Obama in extraterrestrial disclosure meeting, emails reveal

Jeb the jerk

Jeb Bush is described as a “jerk” by Robby Mook, campaign manager for Clinton, in a mail to Podesta which discusses Clinton’s speech at a fundraiser in Colorado. The mail, dated August 4, 2015, is titled ‘Hitting Jeb tonight’.

VP criteria

Clinton’s camp reveal their criteria for becoming a VP candidate in a mail where Paul Harstad from Democracy Alliance suggests to Podesta that Lt Governor of California Gavin Newsom be selected for the role.

Harstad’s reasoning is that Newsom is “tall, very good looking, looks clean cut, and has a young attractive family.” His family's financial struggles and working class background make him an ideal candidate, according to the mail.

“Importantly, I think he is young enough, attractive enough and progressive enough to attract Millennials and Bernie Sanders supporters,” he adds.

“$”

An email from Podesta titled ‘$’ in the late stages of Obama’s bid for the presidency in 2008 reveals that Louis Sussman donated $50,000 to his campaign. Sussman would go on to be confirmed in the Senate in July of the following year, days after he was announced as the new US ambassador to Britain.

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#PayforPlay? Clintons’ financially fueled favors revealed in latest #PodestaEmails http://on.rt.com/7siw
2:19 PM - 20 Oct 2016

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WikiLeaks’ latest release of the Clinton campaign manager’s emails adds merit to growing allegations that the Democratic presidential nominee considered and indulged in the so called “pay for play”...
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Bill's AIDS comments

Bill Clinton is criticized for a speech he made in December 2011 in which he said that the price of AIDS drugs should be lowered in the US.

Sent by Ira Magaziner, then-CEO of consultancy firm SJS advisors and CEO and vice chairman of the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), the mail says the comments could “seriously jeopardize our negotiations to continually lower prices in poor countries.”

Magaziner claims that CHAI are in the process of sending Clinton recommendations on how to proceed with the fight against AIDS, but that his comments preempted their counsel on a complicated matter.

“We have always told the drug companies that we would not pressure them and create a slippery slope where prices they negotiate with us for poor countries would inevitably lead to similar prices in rich countries” Magaziner says.

Amitabh Desai, director of foreign policy at the Clinton Foundation, says he will pass the concern onto Clinton.

Hugs for McCain

Obama’s 2008 campaign is revealed to be planning a prank on his Republican opponent John McCain. In a mail from March 2008 from consultant Paul Begala he suggests to Podesta’s team that they deploy a “guy in a Bush mask” to every John McCain event carrying a sign reading “John, Give Me a Hug!", or he could shout "Hey, John, give me a hug!"

“The cost is minimal – how much does a rubber Bush mask cost? All we'd need is a volunteer who would be willing to wear a blue suit, blue shirt, red tie – and a Bush mask,” Begala says, with ambition to eventually increase the prank to “a chorus of Bushes begging for hugs.”

Susan McCue, then-CEO of ONE, an advocacy campaign to reduce extreme global poverty, suggests that college Democrats would be willing to do the job.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network)

RT (TV network)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Russia Today" redirects here. It is not to be confused with Rossiya Segodnya or Russian Federation Today.

RT, originally Russia Today, is a television network funded by the Russian government.[5][6] It operates cable and satellite television channels directed to audiences outside of Russia as well as providing Internet content in various languages, including Russian.

RT International, based in Moscow, Russia, presents around-the-clock news bulletins, documentaries, talk shows, debates, sports news, and cultural programmes about Russia.[3] RT operates as a multilingual service with conventional channels in three languages: the original English language channel was launched in 2005, the Arabic language channel in 2007, and the Spanish language channel in 2009. RT America (since 2010),[7] and RT UK (since 2014) offer some locally based content for those countries.



https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-10-21/bernie-sanders-is-running-a-shadow-campaign

2016 ELECTIONS
Bernie Sanders Is Running a Shadow Campaign
OCT 21, 2016 10:00 AM EDT
By Leonid Bershidsky

Photograph – Sanders followers; PHOTOGRAPHER: LEONID BERSHIDSKY


In Colorado, Bernie Sanders isn’t just acting as a surrogate for Hillary Clinton. He’s also holding separate events to keep his movement and its issues alive in a state he won handily in the June Democratic primary. Now he is urging his followers to support a ballot measure to establish the nation’s first universal health care system. It will probably be defeated, yet his backers, who have settled for a bird in the hand this year, are certain they own the future.

Changing demographics may be on on [sic] their side, and what happens in Colorado could be a model for the rest of the U.S. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the European-style changes Sanders has passionately advocated for the U.S. will take place anytime soon.

On Oct. 17, about 2,000 people -- few of them older than 25 -- gathered on a football field at the University of Colorado Boulder to hear Sanders make an impassioned plea for Amendment 69, which would move the state to a health care system much like the one in Germany, where I live. The students shifted impatiently and made disappointed noises every time a local speaker took the microphone: They’d come to hear Bernie. They did a “Feel the Bern” chant, like the old days, and they surged forward when he appeared. They booed when he did a Donald Trump imitation, ripping into pharmaceutical companies’ “yuuuuge” profits, and they clapped when he said health care is a basic human right.

The Sanders cause is very much alive in a state where, less than eight months ago, I saw caucus organizers attempt to deal with the unprecedented crowds of millennials that turned out for their 74-year-old hero. In the Denver high school I visited, votes were held in parking lots and stairwells. Clinton lost to the Vermont senator by a 19-point margin.

Colorado was expected to be a battleground state this year. It hasn’t been. Most of the time, Clinton has enjoyed a big lead over Trump in the polls. The same people who ensured Sanders’s primary victory could do the same for her in the general election.

MILLENNIAL POWER

JoyAnn Ruscha, who was political director for the Sanders campaign in Colorado and a Sanders delegate at the Democratic National Convention, recalls bursting into tears when the senator moved that Clinton be nominated by acclamation.

“I’d known for weeks, months, that she would win,” Ruscha says. “But it’s like being in a relationship, breaking up and then seeing that person again. You think you’re OK, but you’re not.”

Now Ruscha is helping the Clinton campaign, though not as a staffer. She says that much of the grassroots activity that took Clinton by surprise during the caucus season has now shifted to her. “Many former staff and big volunteers are building in the Latino community what they did for Sanders,” Ruscha says.

Trump is an important reason why these young people, who mocked Clinton and called her corrupt last winter and spring, are now working for her. Trump has never missed a chance to appeal to Sanders supporters, telling them Clinton hadn’t won fairly -- but he hasn’t made inroads with the idealistic young people who turned out in force for Bernie.

I asked State Representative Jonathan Singer, another Sanders supporter and delegate, why he and other backers of the Bernie revolution decided to throw their support behind Clinton instead of waiting four years and get another shot at the big prize.

“Well, do you burn the village to save the village?” he answered. “The Nazis’ opponents also wanted them to fail at governing so they could win the next election. But will there be a next time? Can we afford a Trump Supreme Court?”

Singer, who remains idealistic after 12 years in Colorado politics and two terms in the legislature, says he’s come to believe in U.S.-style coalition politics, in which alliances are made before elections, not after them as in Europe. In 2000, he voted for Ralph Nader and watched George W. Bush snatch victory away from Al Gore.

“I wish Nader had realized that he couldn’t win, come to Gore three days before the election and said, ‘I’ll tell my voters to vote for you if you do this on these three top issues,’” Singer says. “It could have turned out differently.”

Sanders did just that: He offered his support to Clinton in exchange for progressive changes to the Democratic platform and a tangible leftward shift in her program. If it weren’t for Sanders and his calls for free higher education, Clinton wouldn’t be talking about free community college; if it weren’t for his universal health care advocacy, she wouldn’t be pushing a public option in health care, a government-run coverage plan to compete with private insurers; if it weren’t for Bernie’s stringent opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, she’d probably still be for it.

After the election, Sanders’s supporters are looking forward to seeing their guru ascend the ranks of Senate leaders, with far more influence than he had as a maverick throughout most of his career.

They also say their candidate’s success in their state has elevated their status with the Democratic Party hierarchy.

After the primary, Singer got a call from the Colorado Democratic Party, asking him to co-chair the state convention. “I wouldn’t have been standing in front of 5,000 people if it weren’t for Bernie Sanders,” he says. “Now the door is open a crack.”

Neither Ruscha nor Singer sees a future for the Sanders movement outside the Democratic Party: Both are in their 30s, and they predict that they and others like them will gradually take over the party. In Colorado, the millennial population is 28 percent of the total, the seventh biggest share among U.S. states, and Denver is one of the most millennial-dominated metropolitan areas in the U.S. Now that Sanders has galvanized the generation’s political activity, it may be a matter of a time before these voters start dictating the agenda and even the rules of politics.

“This is the last election of the two-party paradigm,” says Jill Hanauer, founder and president of Project New America, a Denver-based strategy and policy research company that works for a range of progressive and Democratic-leaning organizations. “Millennials don’t wake up thinking about ideological and party labels. It’s all about the issues that are important to them.”

Hanauer’s theory is that quality-of-life issues -- from reproductive health to the environment -- are going to be increasingly important, and a political candidate’s affiliation will matter less and less. That’s easy to imagine in Colorado, where more voters are registered as unaffiliated than as Democrats or Republicans. Rules, Hanauer says, may start changing to fit this evolving no-party landscape: Colorado, for example, may open its primaries to independents rather than just to registered voters, and different voting systems, such as ranked choice, may gain broader acceptance.

DREAMS MEET REALITY

The idea of changing the system from within, however, carries the risk that the dreamers and revolutionaries will get used to compromise -- the kind of baby steps Clinton is offering the Sanders base.

Colorado’s Amendment 69, also known as ColoradoCare, is an interesting test case.

It would set up a nonprofit organization with all Colorado residents as members. The organization would collect 10 percent of all incomes to provide universal health coverage. ColoradoCare proponents say it would be as extensive as a current Platinum plan under Obamacare, covering 90 percent of medical costs without any deductibles. An elected board of 21 trustees would run the organization, deciding whether to ask for higher contributions if necessary, or expand or cut coverage.

If I lived in Colorado, Amendment 69 would get my vote, and not just because the required contribution, at about $532 per month on the median household income, is lower than two 40-year-old Colorado adults currently have to pay in Obamacare premiums for skimpier coverage.

Residents of Germany pay 14.6 percent of income to a “sickness fund” -- a public organization like the one proposed by the Colorado amendment -- to receive full coverage. The system is highly efficient, with short waiting times, tiny co-pays and high quality of care. Germany’s average life expectancy of 81 is two years higher than the U.S.’s.

In Colorado, though, there is major opposition to Amendment 69. The Denver Post called for a “resounding ‘No’” in an editorial that described ColoradoCare as a “government-run” system, which it is not, pointing to the trustees’ broad powers, saying the “tax” to finance it would be too high and warning against an experiment no other state has tried. At the rally in Boulder, Sanders raged against special interests -- namely the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies -- spending “millions” to defeat the proposition.

In August, the independent Colorado Health Institute analyzed the program and concluded that it would run an increasing deficit from its inception. Although it would provide coverage to the 6.7 percent of Colorado residents who are currently uninsured, the institute said increased use of the universal program would eat up most of the savings from cutting out insurance companies and reducing paperwork, and ColoradoCare wouldn’t be able to catch up with growing health care costs.

The institute noted, though, that the ColoradoCare board could find ways to cut expenditures. “While our analysis does not contemplate large savings from reducing provider rates, reductions in compensation could significantly improve ColoradoCare’s bottom line,” the report said.

If ColoradoCare tried to drive a hard bargain, some doctors would probably leave the state, as opponents of the measure fear, but others would stay or even flock to it, attracted by the ease of doing business with a single payer, under a universal set of rules, rather than a host of insurance companies. This could significantly lower their overheads and increase the time they could actually work with patients.

Polls show, though, that Coloradans will probably reject Amendment 69 by a two-thirds majority. Even millennials will vote against it, albeit by a thinner margin.

“Good ideas don’t usually make it the first couple of times,” says Singer, who supports ColoradoCare. He was one of only two legislators who backed recreational marijuana legalization before it got on the popular ballot and was approved. The measure has been a fiscal success and it hasn’t led to increased out-migration or higher crime rates, as its opponents feared, so Singer believes a similarly bold experiment with health care will pay off.

I don’t quite share the optimism of Sanders supporters who have now flocked to Clinton: It’s hard to say how authentic her leftward shift is and how much of a backlash her easily reversible, cautious domestic policies may cause. Will her compromises teach those who have “felt the Bern” to settle for less and perhaps eventually for little change at all? I think they might. Then, the millennial-dominated “new American majority,” which Hanauer predicts will soon take over, won’t move quickly to resolve the problems that made this election year so ugly and divisive.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:
Leonid Bershidsky at lbershidsky@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Max Berley at mberley@bloomberg.net



EXCERPT -- “This is the last election of the two-party paradigm,” says Jill Hanauer, founder and president of Project New America, a Denver-based strategy and policy research company that works for a range of progressive and Democratic-leaning organizations. “Millennials don’t wake up thinking about ideological and party labels. It’s all about the issues that are important to them.”


I personally do hope to see the end of both the two parties as all powerful voting blocs against which no person of new ideas and an active conscience can possibly win. Not only is it unfair to those not in the direct line of descent – specifically Sanders this time – it prevents the addition of new issues to explore and push, such as a wide open Environmental policy, from endangered species to Global Warming.

I say it that way, because I have become convinced, not by one particular statement, but by “the preponderance of the evidence,” that the Dems are no longer the party of the people, but just a huge slush fund for whoever wants to win an election. If that means, and I hope it does, that the Dems will splinter, allowing the “left wing” to go to a party of our own, I will be greatly relieved.

If in future the Progressives of all named parties need to band together to elect a candidate of our choice, or as we are this year, to prevent an emotional and philosophical monster from being close to a win, we can and should do that. In this case, Sanders’ group OurRevolution is in place to receive recruits. We need to work with the Green Party, in my view, rather than against them. We could maintain a regular communication with a possible end of merging later. For now, of course, we should all vote for Hillary.