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Colorado Sovereigns Charged With “Paper Terrorism” Going Down One by One
Colorado Sovereigns Charged With “Paper Terrorism” Going Down One by One
In March, eight individuals were arrested along Colorado’s Front Range for threatening and harassing elected officials using a tactic that the FBI calls “paper terrorism.” This tactic included sending Colorado officials — such as judges, county administrators and district attorneys — unofficial versions of subpoenas, arrest warrants and liens.
Those who were charged were all part of a group that calls itself The People’s Grand Jury of Colorado, which assigned itself the mission of ousting government personnel that the group believed to be in office illegally.
The fringe philosophy that underscored these actions is the “sovereign” ideology: a catch-all for individuals who believe that they are only subject to common law, and therefore not to all of the statutory laws of the United States at its different levels – federal, state and local.
As Westword explained in our May 23 cover story: “Sometimes calling themselves ‘constitutionalists’ or ‘freemen,’ individuals who subscribe to a sovereign ideology often don’t believe they are required to follow any regulations drafted and passed by politicians — things like tax codes or driver’s license rules — because the U.S. government has been corrupted and sovereigns are not under contract to adhere to all of its laws.” …
Trump insists ‘I am the least racist person’ amid outrage over remarks
US president condemned by UN and African Union, as ex-ambassador warns his comments ‘are disorienting for our partners.’
Donald Trump has defended himself amid international outrage over offensive comments he is accused of making about some African, Central American and Caribbean countries, insisting: “I am not a racist.”
The US president was condemned by the United Nations and the African Union (AU) after it was reported that he had referred to Haiti, El Salvador and nations in Africa as “shithole countries” during a White House meeting last week.
As Trump headed to dinner at his golf club in Florida on Sunday, he was confronted by a reporter: “What do you say to people who say you’re a racist?”
The president said: “No, no, I’m not a racist. I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed, that I can tell you.”
Trump was at his golf course on Monday as the US marked Martin Luther King Jr Day. The president retweeted a video of his weekly address, with words including: “Dr King’s dream is our dream. It is the American Dream.”
But his alleged comments continued to reverberate. On Sunday, congressman John Lewis, who marched with King for voting rights in Selma, Alabama in 1965, told ABC: “I think he is a racist …
The uncertainty around H-1B visas is more unnerving than the rules themselves
Seeking Clarity
What are you doing?
The Donald Trump administration’s flip-flop over H-1B visas has the Indian IT sector on edge.
India’s largest software exporter Tata Consultancy Services, for instance, is more worried about the lack of clarity over the policy than the possibility of tougher norms itself.
“The immediate concern of H-1B is that there are a few more bills that are being talked about, but none of that has played out as of now,” TCS human resources head Ajoyendra Mukherjee told reporters after the company announced its earnings for the October-December 2017 quarter.
Indian IT companies are among the biggest beneficiaries of the H-1B visas, topping the list of employers sponsoring them. A major section—nearly two-thirds—of the industry’s revenues comes from North America.
In recent months, the Trump administration has tightened the norms for H-1B visas that allow professionals to work in the US for up to six years. Among other things, it has resorted to temporarily suspending the premium processing of the H-1B, introducing bills that call for a raise in the minimum wage levels, and asking for a higher number of “requests for evidence” for H-1B applicants. …
White House cellphone ban set to take effect Jan. 16
The White House announced the personal cellphone ban last week, amid the furor surrounding the publication of excerpts from Michael Wolff’s White House tell-all, “Fire and Fury.”
White House chief of staff John Kelly sent a memo to staff on Wednesday detailing the upcoming ban on personal cellphones in the West Wing — and cautioning that violators could be subject to “disciplinary action.”
The ban, according to a copy of the memo obtained by POLITICO and confirmed by two White House officials, goes into effect on Jan. 16. It bans “all portable electronic devices” not issued or authorized by the White House from “being carried into or otherwise possessed” in the West Wing from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday, except federal holidays.
“Such portable electronic devices may be carried into or otherwise possessed in the West Wing at other times,” the memo says.
Credentialed reporters may carry personal devices in areas of the White House to which they have access, including the Lower Press Office and the Upper Press Office. But they may carry their devices into the rest of the West Wing only if they are entering the area in a “professional capacity and are escorted by a member of the White House staff.” …
Is this the beginning of the end of Trump’s real estate empire?
The Trump name is being scrubbed off skylines from New York to Toronto to Rio as the brand backfires.
It takes all of 30 seconds for the doorman at Trump Place to kick me out of the building. “Ma’am, you need to leave,” he says, when I tell him I am a journalist. Then he practically shoves me out the marble lobby, back through the revolving doors .
Tensions are high at Trump Place, 200 Riverside Boulevard. The luxury condominium complex on New York’s Upper West Side is currently embroiled in an increasingly contentious legal battle with the Trump family. Like many of the towers bearing the Trump brand, 200 Riverside Boulevard isn’t actually owned by the Trumps; it simply licenses the name, which is plastered on the building in big brass letters. And now many residents don’t want it any more.
Audrey Nelson lives with her boyfriend in Trump Place. Speaking to me on the street outside, she explains that the condo board surveyed residents about the Trump branding following the 2016 election. “Most people want to get rid of it,” she says. But DJT Holdings, a company largely owned by Donald Trump, got wind of this and was threatening the building with legal action. “I don’t think we’re supposed to talk about it,” says another resident, eyeing me suspiciously.
Plastering the Trump brand – which can cost tens of millions of dollars to lease – on your luxury hotel or apartment complex once added a veneer of prestige and upped profitability; Trump used to boast it would increase a property’s value by 25%. Licensing his name certainly seems to have increased his personal fortune. A financial summary Trump issued when he kicked off his presidential campaign in 2015 valued his “real estate licensing deal, brand and branded developments” at $3.3bn – the most significant single source of what Trump then claimed to be an $8.7bn total net worth.
While these numbers are impossible to verify and have been the subject of much debate, it is unambiguous that the Trump brand has traditionally been a source of considerable value. That may no longer be the case. …
When the Army Planned for a Fight in U.S. Cities
In 1968, one retired colonel warned that urban insurrections could produce “scenes of destruction approaching those of Stalingrad.”
In January 1968, Colonel Robert B. Rigg, a retired Army intelligence officer, published an article in ARMY magazine that captured the attention of an establishment reeling from recent riots in Watts, Detroit, and other American cities. He argued that those disturbances might be relatively mild precursors to a coming rebellion in the streets––that during the next few years, “organized urban insurrection could explode to the extent that large American cities could become scenes of destruction approaching those of Stalingrad in World War II.”
As he envisioned it, those disaffected by the Vietnam War or poverty or racial injustice might at any time attempt a guerrilla uprising in their cities, where man has invariably built “a finer jungle for insurrection” than any in nature.
“Rooftops, windows, rooms high up, streets low down, and back alleys nearby could become a virtual jungle for patrolling police or military forces at night when hidden snipers could abound, as they often do against U.S. and allied forces in Vietnam in daylight,” he wrote. “Could local police or National Guard units carry out such search-and-destroy campaigns in the cement-blockjungles of high-rise buildings?”
He didn’t think so.
“Urban guerrillas could shoot down the streets, drop fire bombs, and not even need mortars,” he wrote. Hostages could be taken. The Communists might even try to fuel the flames of insurgency. And while social, economic, or political reforms might succeed in staving off such rebellions, he reasoned, they might not; thus his call for “an effective system of intelligence in the ghettos,” including deep penetration by undercover cops and military intelligence, along with Army preparations to fight pitched urban battles here in America. …
Twelve charged for defying California city’s ban on feeding homeless
• Police issue citations to volunteers giving out food and socks
• El Cajon says ban aims to tackle outbreak of hepatitis A
A California city has brought charges against 12 people who defied a ban on feeding homeless people at a neighborhood park, as officials try to rein in a hepatitis A outbreak that has killed 20 people and prompted mass vaccinations and the bleaching of streets.
Officials in El Cajon, east of San Diego, argue that the ordinance aims to protect the public from hepatitis A, which has mostly affected those who are homeless or use drugs, by preventing the person-to-person transmission of pathogens. But activists have decried it as a draconian measure to criminalize homeless residents.
Jen Loving, a Bay Area advocate who has followed the situation, said it reflected a broader breakdown in trust, with locals losing confidence that their elected representatives have effective solutions for what, in other contexts, might be recognized as a humanitarian disaster.
“From afar, it feels like a community struggling with crisis and wanting consensus in a comprehensive solution to this problem,” said Loving. “This points to a much bigger issue all around the country. All communities are starved for long-term solutions for decreasing homelessness.” …
6 Things We Only Believe Today Because Of Propaganda
The Man wants us to believe any number of ridiculous things, from trickle-down economics to tinfoil hats being “crazy.” Right, like “Tubthumping” just gets stuck in your head out of nowhere — we know what cellphone towers really do, whitey. We accept such absurd concepts as the obvious lies they are; untruths perpetuated solely to further powerful interests. But some of the most seemingly innocent facts we never even think to question were in fact originally churned out by the propaganda machine. For example …
#6. Tobacco Companies Invented Type A/B Personalities To Avoid Blame For Heart Attacks
Type A personalities are stressed workaholics prone to angry outbursts, while Type Bs are more relaxed and agreeable. Those are all of the types. Clearly, there are no people who fall outside of those definitions.
But why did such a reductive categorization take hold in American culture? Oddly enough, it’s because of cigarettes. It turns out that for years, the tobacco industry was involved in both financially influencing studies about and propagating the idea of this binary personality system. Yep, Type A / Type B personalities are “to a large extent a construct of the tobacco industry.”
But it’s not like they could bribe thousands of medical professionals to go along with them, right?
See, Big Tobacco needed to come up with a reason people who smoked were more prone to heart attacks, but for some reason didn’t want to say “our bad.” They eventually settled on the idea that some people are just naturally on the verge of blowing an artery all the time, and if those same people also tended to de-stress with nicotine, then the connection between smokers and people who have heart attacks would be nothing more than a coincidence. They proceeded to fund every psychological study that pushed the two personality types, then did everything they could to make sure the American public accepted it. So the next time you hear someone describe themselves as a real “Type A” personality, tell them the truth about where that comes from. Then, for fun, tell them to calm down. Listen close and you might even hear the artery pop! …
The UAE has built the world’s largest desalinated water reserve—under a desert
Water Water Everywhere
Pipe by pipe is the water reserve built.
In 1960, the United Arab of Emirates had about 90,000 people. Today, it has 100 times as many. That wouldn’t have happened purely because someone found oil in the desert. The country’s residents need water, and a lot of it.
Oil has helped, of course. It has allowed the country to build large, expensive, and energy-intensive desalination plants. Such is the UAE’s love for water that it now lists among the world’s highest consumers of water, at about 600 liters per day per person.
Today (Jan. 15), at the launch of the 2018 International Water Summit in Abu Dhabi, the country took a big, bold step to ensure water security for its residents. The Abu Dhabi Water & Electricity Authority unveiled the world’s largest reserve of artificially desalinated water.
The reserve exists in an aquifer under the Liwa desert at the southern edge of the country, about 160 km away from the desalination plants located at the coast. It contains about 26 billion liters of water, and needed 26 months to fill it up. In case of emergencies, the reserve can provide about 100 million liters of water per day to the country’s residents. …
Adapt or Die Is Marchionne’s Stark Farewell Message to Carmakers
• Most autos will have some electrification by 2025: Fiat CEO
• Carmakers should ‘quickly’ split best brands, lesser assets
Sergio Marchionne, one of the longest-serving CEOs in the automotive industry, has a blunt warning: Carmakers have less than a decade to reinvent themselves or risk being commoditized amid a seismic shift in how vehicles are powered, driven and purchased.
Developing technologies like electrification, self-driving software and ride-sharing will alter consumers’ car-buying decisions within six or seven years, the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV chief executive officer said in an interview in Detroit, ahead of this week’s North American International Auto Show. The industry will divide into segments, with premium brands managing to hold onto their cachet while mere people-transporters struggle to cope with the onslaught from disruptors like Tesla Inc. and Google’s Waymo.
“Auto companies need to quickly separate the stuff that will be swallowed by commodity from the brand stuff,” Marchionne said.
Marchionne has witnessed major changes already leading Fiat for almost 14 years, overseeing the combination with Chrysler in 2014 and the 2016 spinoff of Ferrari NV. The 65-year-old executive, who studied philosophy and law before finding his way into the auto business, is known as an iconoclast, trying to force mergers and backing away from mass-market sedans to focus on SUVs — a shift others are now emulating. In a two-hour interview, the dual Italian-Canadian citizen discussed his vision for the industry and confirmed plans to step down next year. …
500 years later, scientists discover what probably killed the Aztecs
Within five years, 15 million people – 80% of the population – were wiped out in an epidemic named ‘cocoliztli’, meaning pestilence.
In 1545 disaster struck Mexico’s Aztec nation when people started coming down with high fevers, headaches and bleeding from the eyes, mouth and nose. Death generally followed in three or four days.
Within five years as many as 15 million people – an estimated 80% of the population – were wiped out in an epidemic the locals named “cocoliztli”. The word means pestilence in the Aztec Nahuatl language. Its cause, however, has been questioned for nearly 500 years.
On Monday scientists swept aside smallpox, measles, mumps, and influenza as likely suspects, identifying a typhoid-like “enteric fever” for which they found DNA evidence on the teeth of long-dead victims.
“The 1545-50 cocoliztli was one of many epidemics to affect Mexico after the arrival of Europeans, but was specifically the second of three epidemics that were most devastating and led to the largest number of human losses,” said Ashild Vagene of the University of Tuebingen in Germany.
“The cause of this epidemic has been debated for over a century by historians and now we are able to provide direct evidence through the use of ancient DNA to contribute to a longstanding historical question.” …
Japanese city on alert for deadly fugu blowfish
Fugu – the Russian roulette of dining?
A Japanese city has broadcast emergency warnings to prevent people consuming blowfish, after potentially deadly portions were mistakenly sold.
A local supermarket in Gamagori city sold five packets of fugu fish without removing the livers, which contain poison.
Three have been found but two remain missing.
The delicacy is so poisonous that the smallest mistake in its preparation can be fatal.
Each year there are several cases of fugu poisoning in the country, but not all are lethal.
City authorities in Gamagori, in central Japan, have activated an emergency system, urging people to return the potentially lethal portions.
“We are calling for residents to avoid eating fugu, using Gamagori city’s emergency wireless system,” which broadcasts over loudspeakers located around the city, local official Koji Takayanagi told AFP.
Fugu, an expensive seasonal winter dish, is eaten raw as sashimi or cooked in soup.
The fish’s livers, ovaries and skin contain the deadly poison tetrodotoxin and special training and a licence are required to prepare the fish. …
Cursed are the cheesemakers: Spain and Mexico locked in manchego dispute
Mexican government leans away from Trump and seeks to update 2000 EU deal but fight over naming rights shows no sign of ending.
One is a revered sheep’s milk cheese, as Spanish as acorn-fed pigs, a famously insane knight errant or the napkin-strewn floor of a tapas bar.
The other is a mild cow’s milk cheese, sometimes bulked out with vegetable oil, that is sold cheaply in Mexican supermarkets and stuffed into quesadillas.
The two cheeses share a name, manchego, but they have about as much in common as a Spanish tortilla and its Mexican namesake. That is how they have come to be at the centre of a standoff that is slowing down a major trade deal between Mexico and the European Union.
Manchego makers in Spain say their product has a denomination of origin and want Mexican cheeses to stop carrying the same name.
Ismael Álvarez de Toledo, president of the Spanish Brotherhood of the Manchego Cheese, is adamant that there is only one product worthy of the name – and it is made from the milk of sheep in the region of La Mancha.
“[Mexican manchego] is an insipid cow’s milk cheese that sometimes doesn’t even look like a cheese because it sometimes comes in slices for making sandwiches,” he said. “The only thing it’s got in common with our cheese is the name. But it’s a fake name.” …
The New Age of Astrology
In a stressful, data-driven era, many young people find comfort and insight in the zodiac—even if they don’t exactly believe in it.
Astrology is a meme and it’s spreading in that blooming, unfurling way that memes do. On social media, astrologers and astrology meme machines amass tens or hundreds of thousands of followers, people joke about Mercury retrograde, and categorize “the signs as …” literally anything: cat breeds, Oscar Wilde quotes, Stranger Things characters, types of French fries. In online publications, daily, weekly, and monthly horoscopes, and zodiac-themed listicles flourish.
This isn’t the first moment astrology’s had and it won’t be the last. The practice has been around in various forms for thousands of years. More recently, the New Age movement of the 1960s and ’70s came with a heaping helping of the zodiac. (Some also refer to the New Age as the “Age of Aquarius”—the 2,000-year period after the Earth is said to move into the Aquarius sign.)
In the decades between the New Age boom and now, while astrology certainly didn’t go away—you could still regularly find horoscopes in the back pages of magazines—it “went back to being a little bit more in the background,” says Chani Nicholas, an astrologer based in Los Angeles. “Then there’s something that’s happened in the last five years that’s given it an edginess, a relevance for this time and place, that it hasn’t had for a good 35 years. Millennials have taken it and run with it.”
Many people I spoke to for this piece said they had a sense that the stigma attached to astrology, while it still exists, had receded as the practice has grabbed a foothold in online culture, especially for young people. …
Chinese ‘rainbow dinosaur’ had iridescent feathers like hummingbirds
There’s not a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There’s an iridescent dinosaur.
An illustration of a reconstruction of the iridescent dinosaur which had rainbow feathers, named Caihong juji, unearthed in China, is shown in this October 31, 2016 photo released on Jan. 15, 2018.
Scientists on Monday announced the discovery of a crow-sized, bird-like dinosaur with colorful feathers from northeastern China that lived 161 million years ago during the Jurassic Period.
They named it Caihong, the Mandarin word for rainbow. Microscopic structures in the exquisitely preserved, nearly complete fossil unearthed in Hebei Province indicated that it boasted iridescent feathers, particularly on its head, neck and chest, with colors that shimmered and shifted in the light, like those of hummingbirds.
The discovery “suggests a more colorful Jurassic World than we previously imagined,” said evolutionary biologist Chad Eliason of the Field Museum in Chicago, one of the researchers in the study published in the journal Nature Communications.
Using powerful microscopes, the scientists detected within the feathers the remnants of organelles called melanosomes responsible for pigmentation. Their shape determines the color. Caihong’s feathers had pancake-shaped melanosomes similar to those of hummingbirds with iridescent feathers.
Much of its body had dark feathers, but ribbon-like iridescent feathers covered its head and neck. While it possessed many bird-like characteristics, the researchers doubted it could actually get airborne. Its plumage could have attracted mates while also providing insulation. …
THE CURIOUS CASE OF GIANT CONCRETE ARROWS THAT STRETCHED FROM NEW YORK TO CALIFORNIA
DAY TRIPPERS
When the U.S. Post Office introduced airmail service in 1920, the mail could only be flown during daylight hours, when pilots could see where they were going. In an age before sophisticated navigation systems, flying after dark was just too dangerous. The pilots who transported the mail navigated by following roads, rivers, railroad tracks, and prominent landmarks as they made their way across the country. When these landmarks weren’t visible, they didn’t fly.
At dusk, airborne planes landed at designated airfields near railroad lines. The mail they were carrying was then loaded onto trains, which hauled it through the night until daybreak. Then the mail was loaded onto a new airplane and flown again until dark. At that rate, it took about three and a half days to get mail from New York City to San Francisco, only a day less than sending it entirely by rail, and at much greater risk and expense. If airmail service was going to survive, it was going to have to get much faster, and that meant flying at night. But how?
A SHOT IN THE DARK
On February 21, 1921, the post office launched a night-flying experiment when it sent two planes east from San Francisco, and two more west from New York. The planes were flying the first stretch in what was, in effect, a cross-country relay, much in the way that the Pony Express had operated 60 years earlier. When the pilots landed, their mail sacks were transferred to another airplane with a fresh pilot, who flew the mail to the next stop. As the planes made their way across the country, small towns along the route lit the way by keeping large bonfires burning through the night.
That was how the experimental flights were supposed to go, but that’s not exactly what happened. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
CAUTION: Some language may not be appropriate for work or children.
President Trump continues denying that he referred to Haiti and Africa as “shitholes” during a meeting on immigration.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
You say tomat-ah, I say tomat-oh.
It’s hard to know which triple acronym the President prefers more: XXX or KKK.
Stephen makes a case for the Hawaii employee who notified the entire state of an imminent, imaginary ballistic missile.
THANKS to CBS and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for making this program available on YouTube.
CAUTION: Some language may not be appropriate for work or children.
Seth takes a closer look at how Trump has pulled off another successful pivot — this time from a conversation about whether he’s mentally unstable to a conversation about the fact that he’s a racist.
THANKS to NBC and Late Night with Seth Meyers for making this program available on YouTube.
FINALLY . . .
Golf, three TVs and Big Macs in bed: my week in the life of Donald Trump
Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury intimately described how the 45th US president spends his ‘executive time’ in the White House. Could our intrepid reporter walk a mile in his shoes?
Donald Trump is usually in bed by 6.30pm, watching three television screens and eating cheeseburgers. He has a separate bedroom from his wife, Melania, and is obsessed with cleanliness. The president prefers to eat at McDonald’s and similar fast food restaurants because he has a fear of being poisoned. He spends his evenings phoning friends to chat, going to sleep late.
We know this, and more, thanks to Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury. Some of the book’s most intriguing revelations are those relating to Trump’s personal life – how the president of the United States actually spends his time, and who he spends it with. Fire and Fury reveals a lonely, bizarre existence. But there must be some attraction to this way of life. I decided to find out. I would live as Trump. For a bit.
Day one
Mimicking the life of a 71-year-old man who spends a large portion of his time in bed eating junk food is a daunting task. I spend Sunday getting my apartment Trump-ready. According to Fire and Fury, when Trump moved into the White House he asked for two extra televisions to be installed in his bedroom, so he could have three channels playing at once. I cobble together three screens. There is a TV playing Fox News – Trump’s favourite. The president professes to hate CNN and MSNBC, but he professes it with a level of knowledge that suggests he watches both channels, so they are playing on a desktop computer and my laptop.
At 6.30pm, I get into bed. Trump is usually in bed by that time, Wolff wrote, “with a cheeseburger, watching his three screens and making phone calls” to friends. I don’t usually talk to my friends on the phone. But after an hour in bed, with only a rightwing news channel for company, I am quite bored. I call my best friend, Ruth. She doesn’t answer. I call her again. She still doesn’t answer. I leave her a message saying I’m calling to “catch up”. Ruth texts me an hour later. It says: “What do you want you little bitch?” I don’t phone her again. …
Ed. More tomorrow? Probably. Possibly. Maybe. Not?