2b. Since the pro­gram was record­ed, Udo Voigt of Ger­many’s NPD (the Fed­er­al Repub­lic’s largest neo-Nazi par­ty) was appoint­ed to the Euro­pean Par­lia­men­t’s Civ­il Rights Com­mit­tee.

“Neo-Nazi Holo­caust Denier Joins EU Par­lia­ment Civ­il Rights Com­mit­tee” by Caitlin Mac­Neal; TPM Livewire; 7/8/2014.

 A neo-Nazi from Germany’s ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive Nation­al Demo­c­ra­tic Par­ty joined the Euro­pean Union’s par­lia­ment in May and on Mon­day took a seat on the body’s Civ­il Rights Com­mit­tee, accord­ing to Jew­ish World News.

Udo Voigt has praised Adolf Hitler as “a great Ger­man states­man” and once claimed that “no more than 340,000″ Jews died in the Holo­caust, as opposed to the 6 mil­lion fig­ure agreed on by his­to­ri­ans, accord­ing to the Guardian.

Voigt led the NDP from 1996 to 2011, and dur­ing that time he led the par­ty in an increas­ingly nation­al­ist direc­tion. In 2009, he was con­victed of glo­ri­fy­ing the Waf­fen SS. The Ger­man court unsuc­cess­fully attempt­ed to out­law the par­ty in 2006, and anoth­er attempt is cur­rently under­way.

Voigt in 2007 con­sid­ered nom­i­nat­ing Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, for a Nobel Peace Prize. The Guardian has an exten­sive account of his incred­i­bly con­tro­ver­sial actions and state­ments here.

Fol­low­ing out­rage over Voigt’s assign­ment to the Civ­il Rights Com­mit­tee, EU Pres­i­dent Mar­tin Schulz denounced Voigt’s beliefs.

...

A spokesman for the Euro­pean Jew­ish Con­gress called for mem­bers of the EU par­lia­ment to keep Voigt from gain­ing pub­lic­ity for his views.

“It does the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment no cred­it to have peo­ple sit­ting on its civ­il lib­er­ties com­mit­tee who have obvi­ously not only shown no com­mit­ment to civ­il lib­er­ties, but have sought to under­mine them and to pur­vey a racist and intol­er­ant agen­da through­out their polit­i­cal career,” a spokesman told EurAc­tiv.

3. In our ongo­ing cri­tique of Bit­coin, we’ve not­ed that it appears to be an “op,” exe­cut­ed by Siemens spin­off Lan­tiq, which was cap­i­tal­ized by Gold­en Gate Cap­i­tal (staffed by alum­ni of Bain Cap­i­tal, Mitt Rom­ney’s firm.)

New­er readers/listeners should note that Siemens func­tions as some­thing of a quar­ter­mas­ter for BND–German’s for­eign intel­li­gence ser­vice, evolved from the Gehlen “Org.”(We have done four pro­grams to date on Bit­coin: FTR #‘s 760, 764,770, 785.)

In a reprise of a pre­vi­ous and appar­ent­ly ongo­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of Bit­coin, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an “Armaged­don” in the Bit­coin world pro­duced by con­cen­tra­tion of own­er­ship looms.

Once again, the GHash.io min­ing pool is at the cen­ter of the plot. Because it had gar­nered con­trol of 51% of the Bit­coin mar­ket, it could “dou­ble-sell” coins and com­pro­mise the integri­ty of the entire net­work.

It is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing to note that just exact­ly who owns GHash.io is a mys­tery, as is the true iden­ti­ty of “Satoshi Nakamoto,”–the inven­tor of Bit­coin.  Again, we feel we nailed it in FTR# 760.

” . . . . Mak­ing mat­ters worse, no one knows who is behind GHash or CEX. The own­ers of the Nether­lands-based com­pany (which lists a Lon­don mail­ing address) are noto­ri­ously secre­tive, mean­ing that the bit­coin com­mu­nity – which at this point rep­re­sents sev­eral bil­lion dol­lars in wealth and untold future val­ue – are left trust­ing a shad­owy enti­ty not to behave bad­ly with its new­found pow­er. . . .

“Hmm­m­mm! A “noto­ri­ous­ly secre­tive,” “Nether­lands-based company”–doesn’t sound good. We won­der if this is anoth­er prop­er­ty of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work? Cer­tain­ly, the gen­er­al pro­file fits their front orga­ni­za­tions.

Front and cen­ter in the Bit­coin cheer­ing sec­tion are sup­port­ers of the Aus­tri­an School of economics–Ludwig von Mis­es, Friedrich von Hayek et al.Adamantly opposed to “guvmint in’fer­ence” in mar­kets, they advo­cate unreg­u­lat­ed finance. Bit­coin illus­trates in bru­tal­ly dra­mat­ic fash­ion why reg­u­la­tion is very much need­ed.

“Crypto-‘Armageddon:’ Researchers Claim Min­ing Con­cen­tra­tion Threat­ens to Destroy Bit­coin” by Michael Car­ney; Pan­do Dai­ly; 6/16/2014.

Here we go again. For the umteenth time in recent mem­ory, the sanc­tity of the bit­coin net­work is fac­ing an exis­ten­tial threat from a large and over­ly secre­tive orga­ni­za­tion. It’s not an exchange or wal­let ser­vice this time around that has the atten­tion of cryp­to-cur­ren­cy watch­ers, but rather a large min­ing pool, specif­i­cally GHash.io, the self-described world’s “#1 Cryp­to & Bit­coin Min­ing Pool.”

So why is the bit­coin world up in arms over GHash? On sev­eral occa­sions last week, one last­ing a full 12 hours, the group, which is owned by cloud-min­ing ser­vice CEX.io, con­trolled more than 50 per­cent of the glob­al com­pu­ta­tional pow­er direct­ed at min­ing bit­coin.

With such con­trol, GHash (or any group that finds itself in a sim­i­lar posi­tion) could manip­u­late the integri­ty of the bit­coin net­work by poten­tially dou­ble-spend­ing coins, block­ing or revers­ing trans­ac­tions by com­pet­ing min­ers, extort­ing increased trans­ac­tion pro­cess­ing fees from the net­work, or wag­ing a dis­trib­uted denial of ser­vice (DDoS) attack against the entire bit­coin net­work – col­lec­tively, a so-called “51 per­cent attack.” In oth­er words, it’s a major threat to bitcoin’s foun­da­tional dis­trib­uted, and there­fore trust­less, nature.

Cor­nell researchers Ittay Eyal and Emin Gün Sir­er were the first to rec­og­nize the 51 per­cent event, call­ing it “armaged­don” in a Fri­day blog post, and describ­ing GHash as a “de fac­to monop­oly.”The pair, who have long been thought lead­ers on the con­cepts of 51 per­cent attacks and “self­ish min­ing,” write:

GHash is in a posi­tion to exer­cise com­plete con­trol over which trans­ac­tions appear on the blockchain and which min­ers reap min­ing rewards. They could keep 100% of the min­ing prof­its to them­selves if they so chose. Bit­coin is cur­rently an expen­sive dis­trib­uted data­base under the con­trol of a sin­gle enti­ty, albeit one that requires con­stantly burn­ing ener­gy to main­tain — worst of all worlds.

It’s a his­tor­i­cal first for any enti­ty to cross the 50 per­cent thresh­old, although GHash has been close before, approach­ing 45 per­cent in Jan­u­aryof this year. At the time, GHash issued a press release, pub­licly com­mit­ting to nev­er reach­ing the feared 51 per­cent thresh­old (real­ly, any­thing greater than 50 per­cent). So much for that promise.

To be clear, GHash doesn’t own 50 per­cent of the glob­al min­ing pow­er, it sim­ply “con­trols” it. This dis­tinc­tion is impor­tant, but does not nec­es­sar­ily elim­i­nate the threat the group pos­es. GHash has in the past claimed to own only half the hard­ware pro­vid­ing the hash­ing pow­er that it con­trols, with the rest con­tributed by third-par­ty min­ers that allo­cate min­ing pow­er to its pool. Nonethe­less, the bit­coin net­work has rea­son to be fear­ful of this con­cen­tra­tion of pow­er.

Mak­ing mat­ters worse, no one knows who is behind GHash or CEX. The own­ers of the Nether­lands-based com­pany (which lists a Lon­don mail­ing address) are noto­ri­ously secre­tive, mean­ing that the bit­coin com­mu­nity – which at this point rep­re­sents sev­eral bil­lion dol­lars in wealth and untold future val­ue – are left trust­ing a shad­owy enti­ty not to behave bad­ly with its new­found pow­er.

To be clear, GHash has not abused its pow­er yet. But if history’s taught us any­thing it’s that pow­er cor­rupts. Mak­ing mat­ters worse, the com­pany was pre­vi­ously accused of using its enor­mous size advan­tage to bul­ly a gam­bling site via dou­ble-spend­ing attacks.

Eyal and Sir­er write:

No one knows the ulti­mate aims of GHash. The peo­ple who join the GHash pool do so because GHash has zero fees — these peo­ple are essen­tially opti­miz­ing for short term prof­its over the long term well-being of the cur­rency. All of these are pre­cisely the points we cau­tioned about. So this is when we get to say “We told you so.”

The pair go on to advo­cate a “hard fork” in the code­base under­ly­ing bit­coin, with the goal of accom­plish­ing three core fix­es: dis­in­cen­tiviz­ing min­ing pools, com­bat­ting self­ish min­ing, and mak­ing min­ing activ­ity more trans­par­ent. They con­clude, sar­cas­ti­cal­ly:

Or we can car­ry on as if noth­ing of impor­tance hap­pened. GHash will be on their best behav­ior for the next few weeks, and Bit­coin will limp along. What will bring the actu­al demise of Bit­coin is the sub­ject of a future blog post, but this is by no means the end. Peo­ple can still use Bit­coin to buy drugs, trin­kets from Overstock.com, and maybe even grilled cheese from a food truck. There is an after­world. And for every­thing else, there is dirty fiat and Mas­ter­card.

As Eyal and Sir­er point out, the poten­tial of 51 per­cent attacks has been known for some time. As a whole, the bit­coin com­mu­nity lead­ers have been quick to write off the risks of such a sce­nario, offer­ing two com­mon jus­ti­fi­ca­tions. First, we’re told that the invest­ment required to cre­ate a min­ing pool would dis­in­cen­tivize a pool’s par­tic­i­pants from ever con­duct­ing such an attack. But, as the Cor­nel report explains:

…[this] assumes a sta­tic world. Instead, the min­ing rigs have a fair­ly short use­ful life­time. If a min­er knows that they will be over­taken by the next gen­er­a­tion of hard­ware about to be unleashed by a com­pet­ing min­ing pool, it will have a def­i­nite time hori­zon for extract­ing every last bit of val­ue, and that plan may not have room in it for a voy­age to the moon.

Sec­ondly, naysay­ers are quick to argue that the min­ing com­mu­nity and bitcoin’s core devel­op­ers will eas­ily rec­og­nize such an attack and will there­fore pre­vent the bad actors from harm­ing the broad­er bit­coin net­work. At best, this seems like an ide­al­is­tic view of like­ly events. Even if such an attack were rec­og­nized and ulti­mately inter­rupted, the trust-erod­ing effects – both with­in the com­mu­nity, but more so with­in main­stream con­sumers and media – would be stag­ger­ing. Assum­ing that no harm will come of even a brief 51 per­cent attack couldn’t be fur­ther from the truth.

...

A GHash spokesper­son told Cryp­to­Coin­News:

…we would nev­er do any­thing to harm the Bit­coin econ­omy; we believe in it. We have invest­ed all our effort, time and mon­ey into the devel­op­ment of the Bit­coin econ­omy. We agree that min­ing should be decen­tral­ized, but you can­not blame GHash.IO for being the #1 min­ing pool.

Bit­coin was cre­ated specif­i­cally to avoid the need to trust any cen­tral­ized author­ity, be it a fed­eral gov­ern­ment, the Fed­eral Reserve, the World Bank, or oth­er­wise. The fact that the cryp­to-cur­ren­cy com­mu­nity is now con­fronting this sce­nario is a legit­i­mate threat to the entire exper­i­ment.

The broad­er mar­ket seems to agree with this con­cern, push­ing the price of bit­coin down more than 16 per­cent in a few days, from a near-term high of $655 on Tues­day, June 10 to a low of $553 on Sun­day the 15th– cur­rently, the Coin­desk Price Index sits at $589. This drop fol­lows a recent upswing in price fol­low­ing a pro­longed bear mar­ket that coin­cided with the col­lapse of Mt. Gox. As of this moment, GHash con­trols rough­ly 35 per­cent of glob­al hash­ing pow­er while the next largest known group, Dis­cus Fish, con­trols 16 per­cent.

GHash doesn’t need to con­duct a 51 per­cent attack for their hash­ing pow­er con­cen­tra­tion to be a major issue. The sim­ple fact that the bit­coin net­work must look over its shoul­der to won­der if (or when) such an attack will arrive is enough to desta­bi­lize the sys­tem.

4. If you thought that cam­paign finance had become a sticky wick­et in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Cit­i­zens Unit­ed and McCutcheon deci­sions, you might be bit­ter­ly amused by the lat­est devel­op­ment in the lubri­ca­tion of the wheels of democ­ra­cy.

The Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion has giv­en the nod to accept­ing Bit­coins as cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions.

The avail­able evi­dence sug­gests that Bit­coin is prob­a­bly an Under­ground Reich “op” with roots in the cyber-fascis­tic lib­er­tar­i­an milieu.

Fans of Cit­i­zens Unit­ed and McCutcheon will be thrilled to know that one mys­te­ri­ous com­pa­ny con­trol 51% of the total of the cur­ren­cy in exis­tence.

Long live the Repub­lic!

“Pol­i­tics Jumps on Bit­coin Wag­on” by Fre­dreka Schouten; USA Today; 5/9–11/2014.

The Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion (FEC) unan­i­mous­ly approved its use as a polit­i­cal dona­tion Thurs­day. Com­mis­sion­ers imposed sev­er­al con­di­tions. Among them: No anony­mous bit­coin con­tri­bu­tions will be allowed, and cam­paign trea­sur­ers must scru­ti­nize the dona­tions for “evi­dence of ille­gal­i­ty.”

Jim Harp­er of the industry’s Bit­coin Foun­da­tion, said the FEC’s move lends fur­ther legit­i­ma­cy to the­cur­ren­cy. “It’s anoth­er part of the grow­ing body of reg­u­la­tion that estab­lish­es bit­coin as a co-equal part of the finan­cial ser­vices sys­tem,” he said.

Rep. Jared Polis, a lib­er­al Demo­c­rat from Col­orado, imme­di­ate­ly announced his cam­paign would begin accept­ing the dig­i­tal mon­ey. He praised the FEC for its “for­ward-look­ing stance” to rec­og­nize “the rights of indi­vid­u­als seek­ing alter­na­tives to gov­ern­ment-backed cur­ren­cies to par­tic­i­pate in our demo­c­ra­t­ic polit­i­cal process.”

It’s not clear how quick­ly the cur­ren­cy will spread through the elec­tion land­scape. Offi­cials with the com­mit­tee work­ing to elect House Democ­rats said they had no imme­di­ate plans to accept bit­coins.

Even with­out the for­mal approval of reg­u­la­tors, the Lib­er­tar­i­an Par­ty began accept­ing Bit­coin about a year ago and has col­lect­ed the equiv­a­lent of about $10,000, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Wes Bene­dict said.

5. Deriv­a­tive of the fas­cist doc­trine stem­ming from the Aus­tri­an school of eco­nom­ic the­o­ry, Bit­coin is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the milieu of Edward Show­den and the lib­er­tar­i­an wing of the GOP.

A horrifying–though predictable–story from the Dai­ly Mail illus­trates the moral, prac­ti­cal and philo­soph­i­cal bank­rupt­cy of lib­er­tar­i­an phi­los­o­phy.

Kid­die porn freaks (with an appar­ent sadis­tic bent) have been using Bit­coin to finance online videos with the chil­dren being tor­tured with lit cig­a­rettes.

Aside from the poten­tial for such activ­i­ty to be uti­lized by orga­nized crime syn­di­cates and intel­li­gence ser­vices for a vari­ety of pur­pos­es, this will  cer­tain­ly obvi­ate the need for rig­or­ous sur­veil­lance of the inter­net.

We here a great deal about “free­dom” these days, par­tic­u­lar­ly in con­nec­tion with the inter­net.

Real free­dom, how­ev­er, can only exist when mar­ried to respon­si­bil­i­ty. The prop­a­ga­tion of activ­i­ties such as the one described in the sto­ry below under­scores the deprav­i­ty of many of those who argue for an unmon­i­tored inter­net, on which “any­thing goes.”

 “Dis­turb­ing New Inter­net Child Abuse Sees Tod­dlers Raped and Burned Live on Web­cam as Pae­dophiles use Bit­coin to Stop Being Traced, Warns Police Chief” by Kier­an Cor­co­ran; Dai­ly Mail; 4/21/2014.

One of Europe’s top police offi­cers has warned of a sick­en­ing online trade in child tor­ture porn.

Rob Wain­wright, the direc­tor of Europol, said offend­ers are using the untrace­able online cur­rency Bit­coin to pay for depraved ‘shows’, per­formed live on web­cams, which see young chil­dren raped and burned.

He said: ‘The lev­el of deprav­ity seems to be descend­ing year on year, frankly, includ­ing what seems to be in vogue now, which is live web­cam ‘shows’ of tod­dlers not just being raped but being burnt with cig­a­rettes.

Scroll down for video

Sick­en­ing: Mark Wain­wright warned that online preda­tors were pay­ing to watch chil­dren be raped and burned live on web­cam

‘Sor­ry, but it’s hap­pen­ing online and it’s extreme­ly dif­fi­cult for us to iden­ti­fy.’

Mr Wain­wright warned that Bit­coin — a ‘cryp­to-cur­ren­cy’ based on math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­lae and inde­pen­dent of any gov­ern­ment or cen­tral bank — is prop­ping up a crim­i­nal black mar­ket.

He also warned that police and politi­cians were strug­gling to keep up with the pace of online crime, thanks to wide­spread anonymi­ty online, and easy access to encryp­tion tech­nol­ogy which can make crim­i­nals almost impos­si­ble to track down.

Mr Wain­wright warned that the prin­ci­ple that everyone’s online activ­ity should be anony­mous by default needs to be chal­lenged in order to police the inter­net effec­tive­ly.

(*fur­ther enhanc­ing the require­ment for a vir­tual panop­ti­con — par­ticipo)

He crit­i­cised the slug­gish response from the police, politi­cians and big busi­nesses, say­ing that equiv­a­lent lev­els of crime in the phys­i­cal world would be ‘front page news.’

Every­thing you need to know about bit­coin

Black mar­ket: The Bit­coin cryp­tocur­rency is being used for ille­gal activ­i­ties, Mr Wain­wright warned

–Black mar­ket: The Bit­coin cryp­tocur­rency is being used for ille­gal activ­i­ties, Mr Wain­wright warned
He told The Times: ‘It is frus­trat­ing that we are not get­ting the mes­sage out, at least not loud enough for leg­is­la­tors to hear it.’

The Inter­net Watch Foun­da­tion pres­sure group has recent­ly claimed to have found evi­dence of an email scam direct­ing peo­ple to under­ground web­sites where the sick ‘shows’ could be seen in exchange for Bit­coin.

6a. Once again, the “lead­er­less resis­tance” strat­e­gy has claimed vic­tims, with the Cliv­en Bundy Freiko­rps fig­ur­ing among the ide­o­log­i­cal assig­na­tions of the Las Vegas killers.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy here is the fact that Jer­ad and Aman­da Miller were sup­port­ers of Ron Paul, Eddie the Friend­ly Spook Snow­den’s Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of choice. Nazi fel­low-trav­el­er Glenn Green­wald, Snow­den’s jour­nal­is­tic leak­er of choice, ran legal inter­fer­ence for the “lead­er­less resis­tance” strat­e­gy as an attor­ney.

Green­wald’s pro-bono efforts on behalf of his mur­der­ous Nazi clients helped to insu­late advo­cates of the sort of thing the Millers did in Las Vegas against civ­il lit­i­ga­tion aris­ing from the actu­al­iza­tion of their prin­ci­ples.

“Hatri­ot Pol­i­tics Cre­at­ed the Las Vegas Killers” by Jon Avlon; The Dai­ly Beast; 6/9/2014.

The obses­sive­ly anti-gov­ern­ment Hatri­ot move­ment moved from cul­ti­vat­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries to real killing on Sun­day in Las Vegas.

The Wingnut Bon­nie and Clyde duo, Jer­ad and Aman­da Miller, stormed into CiCi’s Piz­za and shot two metro cops, Alyn Beck and Igor Sol­do, at close range while shout­ing “This is a rev­o­lu­tion!” They flung the Tea Party’s favorite coiled snake Gads­den flag and a swasti­ka on the still-warm corpses and then moved to a near­by Wal­mart to mur­der a shop­per before turn­ing the guns on them­selves.

But the crime scene chronol­o­gy only tells part of the story—because the Millers’ Mas­sacre had been brew­ing for a long time, vis­i­ble online. Their Face­book pages detail a descent into a mur­der­ous rage, rail­ing against a tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ment and par­rot­ing talk­ing points from fright-wing radio hosts such as Alex Jones and mili­tia move­ment groups such as the Three Per­centers while “lik­ing” the pages of con­ser­v­a­tive activist groups rang­ing from the Her­itage Foun­da­tion to Free­dom­Works and the NRA. Miller’s pro­file pic­ture was a skull wear­ing an Amer­i­can flag ban­dana against a back­drop of crossed knives over the word “Patri­ot.” . . .

. . . . Police sources con­firm that the Millers con­spired to infil­trate an uniden­ti­fied court build­ing and exe­cute pub­lic offi­cials. The Las Vegas Review-Jour­nal report­ed Mon­day that Kel­ley Field­er, who called the Millers “best friends,” said they left her with a box of doc­u­ments that offi­cials report includ­ed a writ­ten plan to mur­der court offi­cials. The box was recov­ered Sun­day dur­ing a police search of Fielder’s apart­ment. The search also found three emp­ty rifle cas­es and an emp­ty box used for hand­cuffs.

Jer­ad Miller’s anti-gov­ern­ment fren­zy was whipped up by the extreme right wing echo cham­ber. Ear­li­er this year, Miller respond­ed to calls to stand with Cliv­en Bundy in and declared com­mon cause with the rene­gade ranch­er. “I will be sup­port­ing Clive Bundy and his fam­i­ly from Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment slaugh­ter,” he wrote. “This is the next Waco! His ranch is under siege right now! The fed­er­al gov is steal­ing his cat­tle! Arrest­ing his fam­i­ly and beat­ing on them! We must do some­thing, I will be doing some­thing.” When Miller returned from Bundy’s ranch, he post­ed that “BLM [Bureau of Land Man­age­ment] snipers were all over the place.” . . .

. . . . Jer­ad Miller was a prod­uct of his envi­ron­ment, the unhinged right wing echo cham­ber and its con­stant drum­beat about gov­ern­ment tyran­ny being imposed on free­dom-lov­ing cit­i­zens. “Either you stand with free­dom, or you side with tyran­ny,” Miller wrote on his Face­book page in March. “There is no mid­dle ground. We have delud­ed our­selves into such a notion. There is no grey area.”

Miller was a vocal sup­port­er of lib­er­tar­i­an Ron Paul, post­ing dur­ing the fall of 2012: “Ron Paul is the only hope for Amer­i­ca and we have all failed him, our chil­dren and our grand­chil­dren by fail­ing to demand fair cov­er­age of all pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates. . . .

6b. There was anoth­er shootout  involv­ing law enforce­ment offi­cers and a ‘sov­er­eign cit­i­zen’:

“BLM Shoot­ing Sus­pect Is Anti-Gov­ern­ment Con­spir­acy The­o­rist With Pend­ing Gun Charge” by Dylan Scott; TPM Muck­raker; 6/17/2014.

The man accused of shoot­ing two law enforce­ment mem­bers in Cal­i­for­nia, includ­ing a Bureau of Land Man­age­ment ranger, has had at least one pre­vi­ous run-in with law enforce­ment and has described him­self as the tar­get of a mas­sive gov­ern­ment con­spir­a­cy.

Brent Dou­glas Cole, 60, was named by the Neva­da Coun­ty Sheriff’s Office on Mon­day as the sus­pect in Saturday’s shoot­ing that also left him wound­ed.

Anna Fer­gu­son, assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney for Neva­da Coun­ty, con­firmed to TPM that Cole was also fac­ing mis­de­meanor charges in Neva­da Coun­ty Supe­rior Court for alleged­ly car­ry­ing a loaded firearm. He was charged on Jan. 26.

On Tues­day, the Union news­pa­per in Neva­da City, Calif., pub­lished an arti­cle that quot­ed from court doc­u­ments in the case. The doc­u­ments showed Cole believed he was the tar­get of a mas­sive con­spir­a­cy:

Offi­cers act­ed with­out war­rant or any prob­a­ble cause to seize my per­son using a swat team style assault, and then start­ed look­ing for some­thing to charge me with. I was attacked and molest­ed, uncon­sti­tu­tion­ally arrest­ed, unlaw­fully incar­cer­ated, repeat­edly intim­i­dated and coerced to plead guilty to hav­ing com­mit­ted a crime, held in secret for five days, and my prop­erty and lib­erty tak­en from me since Jan­u­ary 26, 2014. I am being per­se­cuted for being a gun own­er, and for exer­cis­ing my inher­ent Right by unwit­ting or unknow­ing accom­plices of a sedi­tious con­spir­acy against rights insti­tuted by for­eign pow­ers inim­i­cal to the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.

That’s in line with online pro­files, reviewed by TPM, that appear to belong to Cole and sug­gest some­one obsessed with mul­ti­ple con­spir­acy the­o­ries, includ­ing 9/11 trutherism, flu­o­ri­dated water and anti-semit­ic beliefs.

The South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, in research shared with TPM on Tues­day after­noon, linked Cole to an online pro­file in which he described him­self as “a sov­er­eign Amer­i­can Cit­i­zen attempt­ing to thwart the obvi­ous con­spir­acy and sub­terfuges of pow­ers inim­i­cal to the Unit­ed States.”

“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,” the SPLC has writ­ten in its sum­mary of sov­er­eign cit­i­zen beliefs.

Some­one using the name Brent Dou­glas Cole uploaded Google doc­u­ments that were pur­port­edly filed in his defense for the Jan­u­ary arrest. Those doc­u­ments have not been inde­pen­dently ver­i­fied by TPM, but they car­ry the same case num­ber as the firearms case.

In the doc­u­ments, Cole described him­self as “a statu­tory Attor­ney Gen­eral of the Unit­ed States” and claimed the Cal­i­for­nia law under which he had been charged vio­lated the Sec­ond Amend­ment. He also spelled his name in a man­ner typ­i­cal of mem­bers of the sov­er­eign cit­i­zens move­ment, using low­er­case let­ters and unusu­al punc­tu­a­tion: “brent-dou­glas: cole.”

A Face­book pro­file attrib­uted to a Brent Cole, and which also linked to the alleged doc­u­ments in the firearms case, includ­ed this quote from June 5:

“The con­vic­tion of police that they are endowed with the author­ity and autho­riza­tion to to what­ever they wish to do to any­one, with­out any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, and incur no lia­bil­ity or cul­pa­bil­ity for crim­i­nal acts com­mit­ted must end.”

Cole also post­ed a num­ber of news arti­cles on Face­book sym­pa­thetic to the Bundy Ranch mili­tia, includ­ing a April 16 post about “an Infowars expose con­nect­ing the land grab to Har­ry Reid and a Chi­nese-backed solar farm.”

...

Accord­ing to the Union news­pa­per, the BLM ranger had con­tacted the Cal­i­for­nia High­way Patrol for assis­tance in its inves­ti­ga­tion of vehi­cles at the Tahoe Nation­al For­est. It was dur­ing that inves­ti­ga­tion that the two offi­cers were con­fronted by Cole and exchanged gun­fire. The shoot­ing took place near the South Yuba Riv­er camp­ground, accord­ing to the sheriff’s office.

The two law enforce­ment agents suf­fered non-life-threat­en­ing injuries in the inci­dent. Cole suf­fered mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds, accord­ing to the Union, and was hos­pi­tal­ized as of Mon­day.

...