#it's Depopulation Time in fallen america

[harrelltut]

卍 JEHOVAH Occult Witness Me [ME = U.S. Michael Harrell = TUT = JAH] as Nubian Archangel [NA = NĀGA] SATAN as I TERRORISTICALLY THREATEN II KILL ALL powerless TELEVISED govment politicians of fallen america wit’ My Magically Legal KILL [MLK = SHADOW GOVERNMENT] POWERS on My HIGHLY Official… U.S. ATLANTEAN [USA] EGYPTIAN HARRELLTV® Empire [HE = JAH] of Nubian ISRAEL [NI = NIBIRU] 卍

[tlatollotl]

Reservoirs in the heart of an ancient Maya city were so polluted with mercury and blue-green algae that the water likely was undrinkable.

Researchers from the University of Cincinnati found toxic levels of pollution in two central reservoirs in Tikal, an ancient Maya city that dates back to the third century B.C. in what is now northern Guatemala.

UC’s findings suggest droughts in the ninth century likely contributed to the depopulation and eventual abandonment of the city.

“The conversion of Tikal’s central reservoirs from life-sustaining to sickness-inducing places would have both practically and symbolically helped to bring about the abandonment of this magnificent city,” the study concluded.

The ancient Maya city of Tikal in northern Guatemala thrived from the second to ninth centuries. UC researchers found evidence of water pollution that could help explain why the city was abandoned. Photo/Jimmy Baum/Unsplash

A geochemical analysis found that two reservoirs nearest the city palace and temple contained toxic levels of mercury that UC researchers traced back to a pigment the Maya used to adorn buildings, clayware and other goods. During rainstorms, mercury in the pigment leached into the reservoirs where it settled in layers of sediment over the years.

But the former inhabitants of this city, made famous by its towering stone temples and architecture, had ample potable water from nearby reservoirs that remained uncontaminated, UC researchers found.

The study was published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.

Unravelling a mystery

UC’s diverse team was composed of anthropologists, geographers, botanists, biologists and chemists. They examined layers of sediment dating back to the ninth century when Tikal was a flourishing city.

Previously, UC researchers found that the soils around Tikal during the ninth century were extremely fertile and traced the source to frequent volcanic eruptions that enriched the soil of the Yucatan Peninsula.

“Archaeologists and anthropologists have been trying to figure out what happened to the Maya for 100 years,” said David Lentz, a UC professor of biological sciences and lead author of the study.

UC graduate student Brian Lane climbs out of the Perdido Reservoir. Photo/Nicholas Dunning

For the latest study, UC researchers sampled sediment at 10 reservoirs within the city and conducted an analysis on ancient DNA found in the stratified sediment of four of them.

Sediment from the reservoirs nearest Tikal’s central temple and palace showed evidence of cyanobacteria. Consuming this water, particularly during droughts, would have made people sick even if the water were boiled, Lentz said.

“We found two types of blue-green algae that produce toxic chemicals. The bad thing about these is they’re resistant to boiling. It made water in these reservoirs toxic to drink,” Lentz said.

UC researchers said it is possible but unlikely the Maya used these reservoirs for drinking, cooking or irrigation.

“The water would have looked nasty. It would have tasted nasty,” said Kenneth Tankersley, an associate professor of anthropology in UC’s College of Arts and Sciences. “There would have been these big blue-green algae blooms. Nobody would have wanted to drink that water.”

UC biologist David Lents said archaeologist and anthropologists have been trying for decades to understand why ancient Maya cities such as Tikal were abandoned. UC's research is contributing to the answer. Photo/Joseph Fuqua/UC Creative + Brand

Precious resources

But researchers found no evidence of the same pollutants in sediments from more distant reservoirs called Perdido and Corriental, which likely provided drinking water for city residents during the ninth century.

The towering city of Tikal rises above the rainforest. Photo/David Lentz

Today, Tikal is a national park and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Researchers believe a combination of economic, political and social factors prompted people to leave the city and its adjacent farms. But the climate no doubt played a role, too, Lentz said.

“They have a prolonged dry season. For part of the year, it’s rainy and wet. The rest of the year, it’s really dry with almost no rainfall. So they had a problem finding water,” Lentz said.

Co-author Trinity Hamilton, now an assistant professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, worked on the analysis of ancient DNA from cyanobacteria that sank to the reservoir bottom and was buried by centuries of accumulated sediment.

“Typically, when we see a lot of cyanobacteria in freshwater, we think of harmful algal blooms that impact water quality,” Hamilton said.

Finding some reservoirs that were polluted and others that were not suggests the ancient Maya used them for different purposes, she said.

UC geography professor Nicholas Dunning has conducted several research projects on the ancient Maya at places such as Tikal. Photo/Joseph Fuqua/UC Creative + Brand

Reservoirs near the temple and palace likely would have been impressive landmarks, much like the reflecting pool at the National Mall is today.

“It would have been a magnificent sight to see these brightly painted buildings reflected off the surface of these reservoirs,” said co-author Nicholas Dunning, head of geography in UC’s College of Arts and Sciences.

A model of Tikal at the National Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography in Guatemala City shows the impressive palace and temple reservoirs that fronted the city. UC researchers found toxic levels of mercury and cyanobacteria in two central reservoirs of Tikal. Photo/Nicholas Dunning/UC

“The Maya rulers conferred to themselves, among other things, the attribute of being able to control water. They had a special relationship to the rain gods,” Dunning said. “So the reservoir would have been a pretty potent symbol.”

UC’s Tankersley said one popular pigment used on plaster walls and in ceremonial burials was derived from cinnabar, a red-colored mineral composed of mercury sulfide that the Maya mined from a nearby volcanic feature known as the Todos Santos Formation.

A close examination of the reservoir sediment using a technique called energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry found that mercury did not leach into the water from the underlying bedrock. Likewise, Tankersley said, UC ruled out another potential source of mercury — volcanic ash that fell across Central America during the frequent eruptions. The absence of mercury in other nearby reservoirs where ash would have fallen ruled out volcanoes as the culprit.

Instead, Tankersley said, people were to blame.

“That means the mercury has to be anthropogenic,” Tankersley said.

With its bright red color, cinnabar was commonly used as a paint or pigment across Central America at the time.

“Color was important in the ancient Maya world. They used it in their murals. They painted the plaster red. They used it in burials and combined it with iron oxide to get different shades,” Tankersley said.

UC associate professor Kenneth Tankersley. Photo/Provided

“We were able to find a mineral fingerprint that showed beyond a reasonable doubt that the mercury in the water originated from cinnabar,” he said.

Tankersley said ancient Maya cities such as Tikal continue to captivate researchers because of the ingenuity, cooperation and sophistication required to thrive in this tropical land of extremes.

“When I look at the ancient Maya, I see a very sophisticated people with a very rich culture,” Tankersley said.

UC’s team is planning to return to the Yucatan Peninsula to pursue more answers about this remarkable period of human civilization.

[themageiboline]

Musings of the Day - July 19th, 2022 - Strange Stones, Big Trees, and Nazis

So I’ve decided to start writing about my own thoughts, ranging from recently learned facts and concepts in psychology and meditation and the like as it relates to magibo, to updates on my own journey, to thoughts and concerns on current events as they similarly relate to the subject.

Today I’m gonna start off with a rather deep subject matter. I’m gonna be talking about a missed opportunity, a shameful chapter of my past and what it taught me, and how history rhymes out one shitty, depressing poem. Today, I’m talking about some weird stones in Georgia, big trees and conspiracy theories, and Nazi’s.

…I had come to realize this impulsivity towards a conspiratorial so-called skepticism that I once thought just a healthy part of being a concerned citizen was in reality a poisonous symptom of ignorance and fear that was historically responsible for everything from social ostricization to the rise of the Nazi’s in Germany.

Strange Stones, Big Trees and Conspiracy Theories, and Nazis

The Georgia Guidestones were anonymously erected in 1979 and had inscribed on them a kind of ten commandments of sorts, translated into eight different languages. In addition, their construction seemed to be inspired by some stone circles of old as it had various features directly correlating with astrological occurrences such as the solar equinoxes and solstices, leading to it being dubbed, “America’s Stonehenge.” Of the stated commandments, a couple in particular - one that advocated that humanity be maintained at a population under 500 million, and another that said reproduction should be guided to promote “fitness and diversity” - naturally and rightfully raised some eyebrows. This, however, must be understood under the context of a monument likely intended to be discovered by humanity after a nuclear apocalypse. The conspiracy theorists, as they love to do, ignored any of this context, and instead took it as a clear declaration of the Satanic New World Order plot of depopulation and genocide.

The stones fascinated me, and I always wanted to see them one day. But, as some of you might know, this is one item off the bucket list that will never be fulfilled. On the morning of July 6th, I checked my phone to see the news that my dreams of seeing the Georgia Guidestones one day had been shattered - literally. Overnight an as of yet unknown individual drove to the stones and detonated a bomb on one of the slabs, shattering it to pieces. Shortly thereafter the local authorities tore down the rest of the monument over concerns for public safety, and right wing nationalist conspiracy theorists and religious fanatics all over the Internet rejoiced - even including at least one sitting member of congress that I know of, as well as a failed local candidate who made it part of her platform to tear down the “satanic” monument.

I’ll shamefully admit I too had, once upon a time, excessive “concerns” over the monument. Influenced at an impressionable young age by Alex Jone’s bullshit rants and documentaries which I found entertainingly wacky and far fetched (…but sometimes, maybe he’s right!) and an unhealthy amount of Glenn Beck’s show, viewed with the world famous logical deduction and critical thinking skills of a twelve year old, had fallen for the Just Asking Questions JAQ-off schtick, hook line and sinker. To anyone new to the internet terminology of a “JAQ-off” or just looking for a good mockery of it, I recommend this South Park skit, as it pretty well parodies the kind of supposedly “thought-provoking” content these types produce. Rather this is your kind of humor or not, you’ll have a pretty good idea what I’m talking about after that one minute clip, and hopefully coming away with a good laugh too.

But overtime, and as I learned about history, and especially the history of Nazism in Germany, I had a few rather grim realizations and started to see a certain direction this conspiratorial echo chamber started pointing in, and I didn’t like it one bit. More and more, I saw this conspiracism becoming a fuel to “other” those political dissident to those that espoused them. Democrats became “demonrats,” Republicans that didn’t fall in line were filthy “RINO’s” (or Republicans In Name Only,) or from the more “libertarian” (yet, at that time in 2016 increasingly less libertarian and more just generally capitalist and nationalist) everyone had become “Agenda 21 agents / statists / globalist shills / etc” for daring to think maybe environmental protections are a good thing. I started to realize that among many of my friends parents, the Satanic Panic was alive and well. Magic: The Gathering was a plot to turn the children onto witchcraft and a popular craft brewery with a goat head motiff was clearly part of the plot, because goat heads are of the devil. As a long time eccentric, naturalistic pagan that hasn't always had the words to describe it, the Satanic Panic part is especially really uh, fun. Don’t even get me started on the gross slippery slope based othering of the LGBT+ community as groomers and pedophile enablers.

As I learned about Nazi Germany and the conspiracy theories that fueled it, I couldn’t shake off the uncanny parallels. Most notably, the conspiracy theory of blood libel alleged that a secret cabal of Jewish bolshevik globalists were plotting to abduct and sacrifice children in the blood libel ritual, and ultimately take over the world. Today, the most extreme fringes of the far right conspiracy theory bubble including the unhinged rants of Alex Jones I listened to and laughed off claims that a secret cabal of satanic communist globalists are plotting to abduct, abuse, and drain the blood of our children for “adrenochrome,” and ultimately take over the world.

Now most of our modern rising tide of far right, socially conservative authoritarianism doesn’t buy into the totality of these conspiracies, but it doesn’t have to. They’ve bought into it enough that it’s relatively normal to hear an unhinged uncle rant about the “DEMONRAT” party, or the goddamn RINO’s that won’t fall in line with the Party. They’ll hear that someone said they’re against fascism and immediately presume them a domestic terrorist threat. When they hear of a voluntary drag queen story hour at a public library, they picture a pedophile degenerate groomer that’s an existential threat to “our children.”

Essentially, I had come to realize this impulsivity towards a conspiratorial so-called skepticism that I once thought just a healthy part of being a concerned citizen was in reality a poisonous symptom of ignorance and fear that was historically responsible for everything from social ostricization to the rise of the Nazi’s in Germany. As I heard the news soon after that of the Guidestones that wildfires threatened the historic thousands year old giant Sequoias in California (a threat that, for this year at least, seems to be effectively mitigated), I wonder if this bucket list site will too come to an end before I can see it. I also can’t help but remember the now infamous comments of the Congresswoman Majorie Taylor Greene Jewish Space Laser Lady, asserting that increasing wildfires in California might be the result of a secret cabal of rich bankers (who happened to be Jewish) putting a giant laser in space and using it to start fires so they can blame it on global warming and destroy the American economy as part of a plot for world domination. Because apparently she thinks we’re living in a James Bond movie, only if the plot was written by a Nazi er, excuse me, a “concerned patriot.”

So now I’ve once again sat and pondered over the past few days, concerned. I’m thinking about the concerning insights my time in these circles gave me, how readily even years ago so many of them talked about committing terroristic violence on political dissidents “when the time comes.” I think about how we’ve already seen unprecedented , historic in the worst way kinds of events unfold. Just Asking Questions became Demanding Answers (but only the ones we like) became let’s Make America Great Again… By violently storming the capital, threatening to hang political dissidents, and for the keyboard warriors at home, ecstatic supportive posts on Facebook at the events, and at rumors that Trump might declare himself effectively dictator all to be soon deleted as they realize their little coup attempt had failed. The Guidestones were really just some old relic of Cold War fears, as interesting as they were, and their destruction isn’t such a big deal at the end of the day. But it is a sign of the times. History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme, and right now this song is sounding pretty bleak.

[scienceblogtumbler]

Ancient Maya reservoirs contained toxic pollution

Reservoirs in the heart of an ancient Maya city were so polluted with mercury and blue-green algae that the water likely was undrinkable.

Researchers from the University of Cincinnati found toxic levels of pollution in four central reservoirs in Tikal, an ancient Maya city that dates back to the third century B.C. in what is now northern Guatemala.

UC’s findings suggest droughts in the ninth century likely contributed to the depopulation and eventual abandonment of the city.

“The conversion of Tikal’s central reservoirs from life-sustaining to sickness-inducing places would have both practically and symbolically helped to bring about the abandonment of this magnificent city,” the study concluded.

A geochemical analysis found that two reservoirs nearest the city palace and temple contained extremely high and toxic levels of mercury that UC researchers traced back to a pigment the Maya used to adorn buildings, clayware and other goods. During rainstorms, mercury in the pigment leached into the reservoirs where it settled in layers of sediment over the years.

The study was published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.

Archaeologists and anthropologists have been trying to figure out what happened to the Maya for 100 years.

 David Lentz,UC biology professor and lead author

Unravelling a mystery

UC’s diverse team was composed of anthropologists, geographers, botanists, biologists and chemists. They examined layers of sediment dating back to the ninth century when Tikal was a flourishing city.

Previously, UC researchers found that the soils around Tikal during the ninth century were extremely fertile and traced the source to frequent volcanic eruptions that enriched the soil of the Yucatan Peninsula.

“Archaeologists and anthropologists have been trying to figure out what happened to the Maya for 100 years,” said David Lentz, a UC professor of biological sciences and lead author of the study.

Full Gallery 

UC graduate student Brian Lane climbs out of the Perdido Reservoir. Photo/Nicholas Dunning

For the latest study, UC researchers sampled sediment at 10 reservoirs within the city and conducted an analysis on ancient DNA found in the stratified sediment of four of them.

Sediment from the reservoirs nearest Tikal’s central temple and palace showed evidence of cyanobacteria. Consuming this water, particularly during droughts, would have made people sick even if the water were boiled, Lentz said.

“We found two types of blue-green algae that produce toxic chemicals. The bad thing about these is they’re resistant to boiling. It made water in these reservoirs toxic to drink,” Lentz said.

UC researchers said it is possible but unlikely the Maya used these reservoirs for drinking, cooking or irrigation.

“The water would have looked nasty. It would have tasted nasty,” said Kenneth Tankersley, an associate professor of anthropology in UC’s College of Arts and Sciences. “There would have been these big blue-green algae blooms. Nobody would have wanted to drink that water.”

Full Gallery 

UC biologist David Lents said archaeologist and anthropologists have been trying for decades to understand why ancient Maya cities such as Tikal were abandoned. UC’s research is contributing to the answer. Photo/Joseph Fuqua/UC Creative + Brand

Precious resources

Researchers found lower but still toxic levels of mercury in sediments from more distant reservoirs called Perdido and Corriental, which also would have provided drinking water for city residents during the ninth century.

Full Gallery 

The towering city of Tikal rises above the rainforest. Photo/David Lentz

Today, Tikal is a national park and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Researchers believe a combination of economic, political and social factors prompted people to leave the city and its adjacent farms. But the climate no doubt played a role, too, Lentz said.

“They have a prolonged dry season. For part of the year, it’s rainy and wet. The rest of the year, it’s really dry with almost no rainfall. So they had a problem finding water,” Lentz said.

Co-author Trinity Hamilton, now an assistant professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, worked on the analysis of ancient DNA from cyanobacteria that sank to the reservoir bottom and was buried by centuries of accumulated sediment.

“Typically, when we see a lot of cyanobacteria in freshwater, we think of harmful algal blooms that impact water quality,” Hamilton said.

Full Gallery 

UC geography professor Nicholas Dunning has conducted several research projects on the ancient Maya at places such as Tikal. Photo/Joseph Fuqua/UC Creative + Brand

Reservoirs near the temple and palace likely would have been impressive landmarks, much like the reflecting pool at the National Mall is today.

“It would have been a magnificent sight to see these brightly painted buildings reflected off the surface of these reservoirs,” said co-author Nicholas Dunning, head of geography in UC’s College of Arts and Sciences.

Full Gallery 

A model of Tikal at the National Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography in Guatemala City shows the impressive palace and temple reservoirs that fronted the city. UC researchers found toxic levels of mercury and cyanobacteria in two central reservoirs of Tikal. Photo/Nicholas Dunning/UC

“The Maya rulers conferred to themselves, among other things, the attribute of being able to control water. They had a special relationship to the rain gods,” Dunning said. “So the reservoir would have been a pretty potent symbol.”

UC’s Tankersley said one popular pigment used on plaster walls and in ceremonial burials was derived from cinnabar, a red-colored mineral composed of mercury sulfide that the Maya mined from a nearby volcanic feature known as the Todos Santos Formation.

A close examination of the reservoir sediment using a technique called energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry found that mercury did not leach into the water from the underlying bedrock. Likewise, Tankersley said, UC ruled out another potential source of mercury — volcanic ash that fell across Central America during the frequent eruptions. The absence of mercury in other nearby reservoirs where ash would have fallen ruled out volcanoes as the culprit.

Instead, Tankersley said, people were to blame.

“That means the mercury has to be anthropogenic,” Tankersley said.

With its bright red color, cinnabar was commonly used as a paint or pigment across Central America at the time.

“Color was important in the ancient Maya world. They used it in their murals. They painted the plaster red. They used it in burials and combined it with iron oxide to get different shades,” Tankersley said.

Full Gallery 

UC associate professor Kenneth Tankersley. Photo/Provided

“We were able to find a mineral fingerprint that showed beyond a reasonable doubt that the mercury in the water originated from cinnabar,” he said.

Tankersley said ancient Maya cities such as Tikal continue to captivate researchers because of the ingenuity, cooperation and sophistication required to thrive in this tropical land of extremes.

“When I look at the ancient Maya, I see a very sophisticated people with a very rich culture,” Tankersley said.

UC’s team is planning to return to the Yucatan Peninsula to pursue more answers about this remarkable period of human civilization.

Featured image at top: UC researchers Nicholas Dunning, left, Vernon Scarborough and David Lentz set up equipment to take sediment samples during their field research at Tikal. Photo/Liwy Grazioso Sierra

source https://scienceblog.com/517102/ancient-maya-reservoirs-contained-toxic-pollution/

[algeroth]

From Hollywood to Silicon Valley, California projects an image as an economically thriving, politically liberal, sun-kissed El Dorado. It is a multiethnic experiment with a rising population, where the percentage of whites has fallen to 38 percent.

California’s Great Red North is the opposite, a vast, rural, mountainous tract of pine forests with a political ethos that bears more resemblance to Texas than to Los Angeles. Two-thirds of the north is white, the population is shrinking and the region struggles economically, with median household incomes at $45,000, less than half that of San Francisco.

In the same state that is developing self-driving cars, there’s the rugged landscape of Trinity County, where a large share of residents heat their homes with wood, plaques commemorate stagecoach routes and the county seat, Weaverville, is an old gold-mining town with a lone blinking stop-and-go traffic light.

The residents of this region argue that their political voice is drowned out in a system that has only one state senator for every million residents.

This sentiment resonates in other traditionally conservative parts of California, including large swaths of the Central Valley, which runs down the state, and it mirrors red and blue tensions felt in areas across the country. But perhaps nowhere else in California is the alienation felt more keenly than in the far north, an arresting panorama of fields filled with wildflowers and depopulated one-street towns that have never recovered from the gold rush.

“People up here for a very long time have felt a sense that we don’t matter,” said James Gallagher, a state assemblyman for the Third District, which is a shorter drive from the forests of Mount Hood in Oregon than from the beaches of San Diego. “We run this state like it’s one size fits all. You can’t do that.”

Many liberals in California describe themselves as the resistance to Mr. Trump. Residents of the north say they are the resistance to the resistance, politically invisible to the Democratic governor and Legislature. California’s strict regulations on the environment, gun control and hunting impinge on a rural lifestyle, they say, that urban politicians do not understand.

The state’s stringent air quality and climate change regulations may be appropriate for technology workers, Mr. Gallagher said, but they are onerous for people living in rural areas.

“In the rural parts of the state we drive more miles, we drive older cars, our economy is an agriculture- and resource-based economy that relies on tractors and trucks,” Mr. Gallagher said. “You can’t move an 80,000-pound load in an electric truck.”

A recently passed gas tax, pushed through by the Democratic majority, will disproportionately hurt rural voters, he said.

Taxation and hunting are two issues northerners are quick to seize upon when criticizing laws they feel are unfairly imposed by the state. But there are also more fundamental issues related to incomes and job opportunities that split California into a two-speed economy.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, unemployment rates hover around 3 percent. In the far north, where many timber mills have shut down in recent years, unemployment is as high as 6 percent in Shasta County and 16.2 percent in Colusa County.

Resentment toward the rest of California has a long history here — there have been numerous efforts to split the state since its founding in 1850. After the presidential election, a proposal to secede from the union, driven by liberals and known as Calexit, gained attention.

Residents here have long backed a different proposal for a separate state, one that would be carved out of Northern California and the southern reaches of Oregon. Flags of the so-called State of Jefferson, which was first proposed in the 19th century, fly on farms and ranches around the region.

Jefferson, named after the president who once envisioned establishing an independent nation in the western section of North America, is more a state of mind than a practicable proposal. Many see it as unrealistic for a region that has plenty of water and timber but perhaps not enough wealth to wean itself away from engines of the California economy.

However, two recent initiatives have channeled the deep feeling of underrepresentation.

In May, a loose coalition of northern activists and residents, including an Indian tribe and the small northern city of Fort Jones, joined forces to file a federal lawsuit arguing that California’s legislative system is unconstitutional because the Legislature has not expanded with the population.

The suit, filed against the California secretary of state, Alex Padilla, who oversees election laws in California, calls for an increase in the membership of the bicameral Legislature, which since 1862 has capped the number of lawmakers at 120.

[newstfionline]

California’s Far North Deplores ‘Tyranny’ of the Urban Majority

By Thomas Fuller, NY Times, July 2, 2017

REDDING, Calif.--The deer heads mounted on the walls of Eric Johnson’s church office are testament to his passion for hunting, a lifestyle enjoyed by many in the northernmost reaches of California but one that Mr. Johnson says surprises people he meets on his travels around America and abroad.

“When people see you’re from California, they instantly think of ‘Baywatch,’” said Mr. Johnson, the associate pastor of Bethel Redding, a megachurch in this small city a three-and-a-half-hour drive north of San Francisco. “It’s very different here from the rest of California.”

Mr. Johnson lives in what might be described as California’s Great Red North, a bloc of 13 counties that voted for President Trump in November and that make up more than a fifth of the state’s land mass but only 3 percent of its population.

From Hollywood to Silicon Valley, California projects an image as an economically thriving, politically liberal, sun-kissed El Dorado. It is a multiethnic experiment with a rising population, where the percentage of whites has fallen to 38 percent.

California’s Great Red North is the opposite, a vast, rural, mountainous tract of pine forests with a political ethos that bears more resemblance to Texas than to Los Angeles. Two-thirds of the north is white, the population is shrinking and the region struggles economically, with median household incomes at $45,000, less than half that of San Francisco.

Jim Cook, former supervisor of Siskiyou County, which includes cattle ranches and the majestic slopes of Mount Shasta, calls it “the forgotten part of California.”

In the same state that is developing self-driving cars, there’s the rugged landscape of Trinity County, where a large share of residents heat their homes with wood, plaques commemorate stagecoach routes and the county seat, Weaverville, is an old gold-mining town with a lone blinking stop-and-go traffic light.

The residents of this region argue that their political voice is drowned out in a system that has only one state senator for every million residents.

This sentiment resonates in other traditionally conservative parts of California, including large swaths of the Central Valley, which runs down the state, and it mirrors red and blue tensions felt in areas across the country. But perhaps nowhere else in California is the alienation felt more keenly than in the far north, an arresting panorama of fields filled with wildflowers and depopulated one-street towns that have never recovered from the gold rush.

“People up here for a very long time have felt a sense that we don’t matter,” said James Gallagher, a state assemblyman for the Third District, which is a shorter drive from the forests of Mount Hood in Oregon than from the beaches of San Diego. “We run this state like it’s one size fits all. You can’t do that.”

Many liberals in California describe themselves as the resistance to Mr. Trump. Residents of the north say they are the resistance to the resistance, politically invisible to the Democratic governor and Legislature. California’s strict regulations on the environment, gun control and hunting impinge on a rural lifestyle, they say, that urban politicians do not understand.

The state’s stringent air quality and climate change regulations may be appropriate for technology workers, Mr. Gallagher said, but they are onerous for people living in rural areas.

“In the rural parts of the state we drive more miles, we drive older cars, our economy is an agriculture- and resource-based economy that relies on tractors and trucks,” Mr. Gallagher said. “You can’t move an 80,000-pound load in an electric truck.”

A recently passed gas tax, pushed through by the Democratic majority, will disproportionately hurt rural voters, he said.

Taxation and hunting are two issues northerners are quick to seize upon when criticizing laws they feel are unfairly imposed by the state. But there are also more fundamental issues related to incomes and job opportunities that split California into a two-speed economy.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, unemployment rates hover around 3 percent. In the far north, where many timber mills have shut down in recent years, unemployment is as high as 6 percent in Shasta County and 16.2 percent in Colusa County.

Despite a go-it-alone ethos, residents of the 13 counties in the northern bloc are much more likely to receive government medical assistance than those in the Bay Area. In the north, 31 percent take part in Medi-Cal, the California Medicaid program, while the Bay Area rate is 19 percent, and California’s overall figure 28 percent.

United States Representative Doug LaMalfa, a Republican representing Northern California’s First District, blames regulations that have shut down industries for the economic disparities.

“They’ve devastated ag jobs, timber jobs, mining jobs with their environmental regulations, so, yes, we have a harder time sustaining the economy, and therefore there’s more people that are in a poorer situation.”

Because incomes are significantly lower than the state average and the region is so thinly populated, tax revenue from the far north is a fraction of what urban areas contribute. In 2014, the 13 northern counties had a combined state income tax assessment of $1 billion, compared with $4 billion from San Francisco County.

Resentment toward the rest of California has a long history here--there have been numerous efforts to split the state since its founding in 1850. After the presidential election, a proposal to secede from the union, driven by liberals and known as Calexit, gained attention.

Residents here have long backed a different proposal for a separate state, one that would be carved out of Northern California and the southern reaches of Oregon. Flags of the so-called State of Jefferson, which was first proposed in the 19th century, fly on farms and ranches around the region.

Jefferson, named after the president who once envisioned establishing an independent nation in the western section of North America, is more a state of mind than a practicable proposal. Many see it as unrealistic for a region that has plenty of water and timber but perhaps not enough wealth to wean itself away from engines of the California economy.

However, two recent initiatives have channeled the deep feeling of underrepresentation.

In May, a loose coalition of northern activists and residents, including an Indian tribe and the small northern city of Fort Jones, joined forces to file a federal lawsuit arguing that California’s legislative system is unconstitutional because the Legislature has not expanded with the population.

The suit, filed against the California secretary of state, Alex Padilla, who oversees election laws in California, calls for an increase in the membership of the bicameral Legislature, which since 1862 has capped the number of lawmakers at 120.

The lawsuit argues that California now has the least representative system of any state in the nation. Each State Assembly member represents nearly 500,000 people and each state senator twice that.

“This arbitrary cap has created an oligarchy,” the lawsuit says.

By contrast, each member of the New York State Assembly represents on average 130,000 people; in New Hampshire, it’s 3,330 people for each representative.

Mark Baird, one of the plaintiffs, says residents of California’s far north feel as though they are being governed by an urbanized elite.

“I wake up in the morning and think, ‘What is California going to do to me today?”’ said Mr. Baird, a former airline pilot who owns a ranch about an hour’s drive from the Oregon border. In a grass valley framed by low-lying hills, Mr. Baird’s pastures are filled with his small herd of buffalo and a few pens of horses and donkeys.

Mr. Baird complains of restrictions on the types of guns he can own. “It’s tyranny by the majority,” he said. “The majority should never be able to deprive the minority of their inalienable rights.”

The second initiative is a proposed amendment to California’s Constitution that would change the method for dividing districts of the Legislature’s upper house, the Senate. Instead of being based on population as they are now, Senate seats would be tied to regions, giving a larger voice to rural areas in the same way the federal Senate does.

Mr. LaMalfa, who lives on a farm, says California’s urban denizens think of the rural areas as their “park,” and deplores what he describes as trophy legislation to protect animal species.

“You have idealists from the cities who say, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to reintroduce wolves to rural California?’” Mr. LaMalfa said. He has a half-serious counterproposal: “Let’s introduce some wolves into Golden Gate Park and the Santa Monica Pier.”

[leftpress]

The Bizarre Far-Right Billionaire Behind Trump's Presidency

When all seemed to be falling apart for Trump this summer, one shadowy billionaire offered up his own massive political infrastructure, which included Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway, and saved Trump’s campaign from demise

July, 2016 and a very disorganized Trump campaign is headed into an equally chaotic Republican National Convention. The latest fundraising numbers for June are dismal, and according to CNBC, Trump is second guessing his decision to make Mike Pence his running mate, making last minute phone calls to assess the pick just days before the event. Past GOP candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney have decided to skip the convention. So have both former Bush presidents. One day before the convention and there’s still no official list of speakers. Nevertheless, July 18th roles around and the GOP has to move forward with the show. 

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GOP Convention “Keep on singing […] USA, USA” The convention is considered a disaster. It exposes a party in disarray. Delegations from Iowa and Colorado stage a walkout over a critical rules vote. Delegates chanting, Denver 7 Broadcast “Roll call vote, roll call vote […] Right there in the top right you can actually see Kendal Unruh in blue. She’s one of the leaders of the never Trump or dump Trump movement, trying to get the rules changed at the start of the convention to let delegates vote their conscience.” Subsequent polls show Trump trailing Clinton in need-to-win swing states. Coupled with a string of bad press stories, including Trump’s fight with the family of a fallen Iraq vet, the Trump campaign seems to have lost its momentum. Joe Scarborough, MSNBC “Donald Trump is just not doing what is required to win.” In a surprise move, the Trump campaign shakes up it’s leadership at the eleventh hour, bringing on far-right editor in chief of Breitbart News Steve Bannon along with former Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway. Days later, David Bossie, head of the corporate advocacy group Citizens United, is brought on as deputy manager of the campaign. The campaign also hires the data mining firm Cambridge Anayltica tasked with probing the American voters mind. At a glance, these last-minute developments look desperate and disjointed. Dana Perino, FOX “I don’t know what they’re doing. I wish I could tell you.” But a closer look reveals something different. It reveals a hidden connection between these players, a thread between this seemingly random cast of actors. Enter billionaire hedge fund manager Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah. They’ve been eyeing Trump ever since their first choice, Ted Cruz, dropped out of the primaries back in May. SOT — Ted Cruz “We are suspending our campaign.” Robert Mercer is part of a new class of billionaires, along with the Koch brothers for example, who’ve used the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which allows for unlimited amounts of cash contributions in US elections, to set up their own powerful political infrastructures that today they rival that of the two major parties. The fuel behind Mercer’s influence, along with most of the top activist billionaires in America, is the absurd sums of money he accrues at the investment company he runs, Renaissance Technologies, based on Long Island, New York. Its famed Medallion fund is one of the most successful hedge funds in investing history, averaging 72 percent returns before fees over more than 20 years, a statistic that baffles analysts, and outranks the profitability of other competing funds, like the ones George Soros and Warren Buffet run. In 2015, Mercer had single-handedly catapulted Cruz to the front of the Republican field, throwing more than $13 million into a super PAC he created for the now failed candidate. But with the Trump campaign faltering and struggling for support, there’s a second chance for the Mercers to make a big bet. The Trump campaign is well aware of this. In fact, sources within Mercer’s super PAC would later tell Bloomberg news that moments after Cruz drops out of the race, Ivanka Trump and her wealthy developer husband, Jared Kushner, approach the Mercers, asking if they’d be willing to shift their support behind Trump. The answer is an eventual but resounding yes. In the months leading up to Trump’s presidential win, the Mercers would prove a formidable force. Beginning after the disastrous Republican convention in July, they would furnish the Trump campaign not only with millions of dollars but with new leadership. But they would furnish him with something more: a vast network of non profits, strategists, media companies, research institutions and super PACs that they themselves funded, and largely controlled. Carrie Levine, Center for Public Integrity “I think what you’ve seen is a lot of these organizations in this network come out to play a role in the 2016 elections.” With the Mercer family in the picture, the post-convention shake-up starts to make sense. Take Steve Bannon. He and Robert Mercer have been close for years. And Mercer is a top investor in Breitbart news, where Bannon was chief editor. Mercer’s also funded a number of Bannon’s media projects. Kellyanne Conway also comes out of this network. Before becoming co manager of Trump’s campaign, she headed up operations for Robert Mercer’s super PAC when it was supporting Ted Cruz. Deputy campaign manager David Bossie was president of Citizens United before joining the campaign, an organization Mercer has heavily funded since at least 2010. Cambridge Analytica, the mysterious data mining firm that received grudging praise after predicting the race’s outcome more accurately than any other polling company, is also heavily funded by Robert Mercer, and was employed by the Cruz campaign before Mercer switched over to Trump. In fact, the Mercers’ political infrastructure is so entrenched, that Rebekah Mercer herself sits on the 16 person executive committee of Trump’s transition team. Mercer’s foray into the White House may seem to have been born partly out of luck, especially with Trump instead of Cruz as his stalking horse. But his rise to power was systematic, and it was years in the making. The web of connections Mercer’s built over the last decade is vast and complex. It includes efforts to dismantle tax law and weaken the IRS; it’s about funding quack scientists and conspiracy theorists who blame the government for, among other things, playing a role in the San Bernadino massacre and of colluding with the United Nations in using climate change as an excuse to implement environmental laws meant to depopulate America’s midwest. It’s about pouring money into the neoconservative John Bolton Super PAC, which props up candidates who ascribe to Bolton’s very hawkish foreign policy. But one of Mercer’s earliest activist ventures was financing a slew of fringe documentary projects that’ve helped raise the profiles of people like Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann and most notably, the director of those films, Steve Bannon. Bannon, who was previously a naval officer and Goldman Sachs investment banker, made his first documentary in 2004 about Ronald Reagan. It retold his biography using washed out, black and white archival footage of the Hollywood actor, painting him as brave protector of western democracy from the threat communism. In the Face of Evil “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this the last best hope of man on earth or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.” The film wasn’t a commercial success. According to the reviews, it was a flop. But it developed a cult following. And it revealed that there was an untapped audience for this sort of film, which demonized America’s current establishment while lamenting the death of old-time conservatism under Reagan. In the Face of Evil would also connect Bannon to conservative author Peter Schweizer, who’s namesake book the film was based on.  It would also connect him to another rising conservative figure Bannon met at a screening of his Reagan film in Beverly Hills, a man Bannon recalled in a Bloomberg piece who came up to him after the showing like a “bear,” he said “who’s squeezing me like my head’s going to blow up and saying how we’ve gotta take back the culture.” His name: Andrew Breitbart, a conservative commentator who for the next few years would join Bannon and Schweizer in their efforts to establish a fresh conservative narrative, with Breitbart himself focusing on an idea for a new media company, something partly inspired by a trip to Jerusalem and the need to create an outlet "that would be unapologetically pro-freedom and pro-Israel", something that would come to fruition in 2007 and that he would call breitbart.com. “One of the things I admired about [Breitbart],” Bannon said in that Bloomberg story, “was that the dirtiest word for him was ‘punditry’ […] Our vision—Andrew’s vision—was always to build a global, center-right, populist, anti-establishment news site.” But that wasn’t all. What Bannon, Schweizer and Breitbart really wanted to forge was a multi-teared effort to push their agenda. They wanted to fund Schweizer’s books and Bannon’s films. They wanted a research wing. Ultimately, they wanted to create a media infrastructure big enough to pump their ideology into America’s national discourse. But they needed more investors. And they needed large investors, people who could fund this giant operation for a sustained period of time, because what this right-wing trio had set out to do wasn’t to simply start a business. It was to transform America’s rage, it’s largely white, rural, working class discontent into a political movement that would storm Washington, first in the form of the Tea Party, and again six years later in the form of Trump. That influx of cash would come from the organization more famous now for the Supreme Court decision it inspired than for the media and political work it’s done for decades, thanks in part to funders like the Koch brothers and, of course, Robert Mercer. The pro-corporate advocacy group Citizens United was created in 1988, and for years it had pumped out television ads, films and other forms of media content that sought to put pressure both on Democrats as well as more moderate Republicans to embrace a far-right, corporate-friendly approach to politics. Citizens United Promo “Remember that the left controls Hollywood. They control entertainment. They control the movies. They control television. They control mass media. They control certainly journalism. And so, what Citizens United has figured out is that through the media, they can in fact move public opinion. They can shape America, and thereby shape Washington.” It was that effort that gave rise to the film Hillary: The Movie, which in turn lead to the supreme court case that changed the way politics is done in the United States. It’s worth noting that the Citizens United decision to allow for unlimited campaign contributions through super PACs didn’t originate from any billionaire or corporation directly complaining about contribution limits. It originated from this documentary, which Bannon directed, and which FEC rules barred from being shown because it fell under the category of “electioneering communications.” Essentially, union and corporate funded groups like Citizens United couldn’t air anything critical about a candidate within 30 days of the primaries, and 60 days of the general elections. The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down that rule opened up the floodgates for unlimited campaign spending, which Citizens United and its billionaire and corporate donors seized upon. Citizens United has been heavily funded by the Koch Brothers and their network of donors, which Mercer joined early on. But in 2010, Mercer decides to extend his reach and influence beyond the confines of that network, beginning first with Breitbart News, which at the time had hit a bit of a rough patch. Andrew Breitbart had put out a misleading video that showed a Department of Agriculture official, Shirley Sherrod, making what people characterized as racist remarks towards white people. Sherrod was fired, and when it came out afterwards that the clip had been manipulated, Sherrod sued Andrew Breitbart. The lawsuit fell on the heels of another false video exposé Breitbart had done a year earlier involving the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as ACORN, which had resulted in their loss of private and government funding. After the Sherrod video, the media virtually blacklisted him along with his site from mainstream. The hiccup prompted Mercer to capitalize on the event. According to Bloomberg news, he puts upwards of $10 million in the company later that year, making him a top investor. The next two years are spent expanding and sharpening these media connections. Bannon continues to produce documentaries, including The Undefeated, featuring the rise of Sarah Palin, as well as Occupy Unmasked, which aimed to discredit the 2011 protest movement. Occupy Unmasked (Breitbart): “These people feel morally justified to commit crimes.” Schweizer continues publishing his books, most notably Clinton Cash in 2015, which Bannon adapted into a documentary and which fueled the right’s obsession with Hillary Clinton and the sources for her foundation. Meanwhile, Mercer is quietly lubricating his political and financial empire, doling out money to a whole slew of conservative non profits such as the Heartland Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the CATO Institute, Citizens United and many more. Then, in 2012, Andrew Breitbart dies suddenly from a heart attack. Wolf Blitzer, CNN “[…] dead at the age of 43. Breitbart was certainly a driving force in the Tea Party movement as well as a very influential political voice on the internet.” Mercer and Bannon, who was a board member at Breitbart, quickly rearrange leadership roles in an effort to not lose any momentum. In fact, Breitbart’s death seemed to have been a morbid blessing for the group. Breitbart, unlike his compatriots, had always been more of an old-school, more moderate conservative. He’d worked at the Drudge Report, which many saw as a bullhorn for the Bush administration. More surprisingly, he’d been a researcher for Arianna Huffington, and helped create an early model for what would become the liberal Huffington Post. So: Mercer, Bannon and Schwiezer crank up the heat. In the months after Breitbart dies, Bannon is made executive chairman of breitbart.com. Schweizer, meanwhile, founds a new research group that focuses on feeding content to Breitbart news and Citizens United for their documentary projects called the Government Accountability Institute, where Mercer is a top funder while Bannon sits on the board. These shifts are all taking place in the shadows of the presidential race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Romney epitomized the GOP establishment, and Mercer must have been reluctant to give to his campaign: he ended up throwing about a million dollars into a super PAC supporting Romney, a paltry number compared to the $15 million he spent on Trump, and the $13 million he spent on Cruz. Romney’s loss was a heavy defeat for Republican voters around the country. With so many Americans still struggling to get back on their feet after the 2008 economic crisis, his defeat angered many GOP voters. Some blamed Obama and the Democrats. Others blamed the Republican establishment, including Romney himself. But at the NYU Club in New York, moments after the news of Obama’s reelection, one unsuspecting voice would take a small group of wealthy donors by storm, blasting the Romney team for dropping the ball on their data mining and canvassing operations. That woman was Rebekah Mercer, Robert Mercer’s daughter. After Romney, Rebekah became her father’s right hand. Before that, Robert Mercer’s role in his political dealings was to supply money to the people he admired and trusted, people like Bannon, Schweizer and Breitbart. Rebekah wanted to change that. She wanted accountability over the money her father spent. And Romney’s failure provided an opportunity to step into the republican arena and assert her and her father’s agenda. Between 2012 and 2016, she would take formal leadership positions at the think tanks and non profits her father funded. She became a director at Peter Schweizer’s Government Accountability Institute. She took over the Mercer Family Foundation. And more recently, she managed her father’s super PAC, alongside Kellyanne Conway. She and her father began to engage more in what you might call a kind of sniper fire politics, investing money in very specific races and causes. Carrie Levine “We’ve seen Robert Mercer put money into super pacs in races that have something to do with often tax. This cycle he gave money to a super pac backing a primary challenger to senator John McCain in Arizona. McCain is a Republican and he was the cochair of the senate committee that investigated Renaissance’s tax strategies.” McCain would later say he thought Mercer was doing this because of that investigation, which was looking into whether RenTec had avoided more than $6 billion in taxes over the course of 14 years. For the 2016 Republican primaries, Robert Mercer decided to put his support behind Ted Cruz and so did Bannon. But as Cruz faltered and took positions that ran counter to Bannon’s conservative agenda, like supporting the TPP, Mercer and Bannon began questioning their support of a candidate who was too obviously trying to appease both the disgruntled American voter as well as corporate interests in Washington. In the end, Cruz’s evangelical christian persona failed to cover up his true identity, which was as a Harvard-educated lawyer who’d worked for years in Washington including as a young clerk in the Supreme Court. Robert Mercer seldom makes public appearances and he never talks to the press. The only time he’s spoken publicly was in 2014, after he received a lifetime achievement award from the Association for Computational Linguistics. In the hour-long acceptance speech he gives in Baltimore, Maryland, Mercer spends almost all of his time talking about his passion for computers. Robert Mercer “I loved everything about computers. I loved the solitude of the computer lab late at night. I loved the air-conditioned smell of the place. I loved the sound of the discs whirring and the printers clacking.” None of his remarks are political, except for one comment he makes, when he’s talking about the time he worked at the Air Force weapons lab in New Mexico, and the one day he discovered how to make their computers run 100 times faster. Robert Mercer “A strange thing happened. Instead of running the old computations in 1/100 of the time, the powers that be at the lab ran computations that were 100 times bigger. I took this as an indication that one of the most important goals of government-financed research is not so much to get answers as it is to consume the computer budget. Which has left me ever since with a jaundiced view of government-financed research.” Mercer doesn’t quite fit into an established upper class. He isn’t exactly a Wall Street type, and neither are the 300 employees, many of whom are, like him, advanced mathematicians and physicists, who work at Renaissance Technologies’ brainchild, the Medallion fund. Carrie Levine “I think it’s interesting to note that this is a guy who has a programming background, a coding background who didn’t start out on Wall Street and so he’s come to this through sort of a different route […] He’s spoken very little about his political giving and so we can’t say a lot about his motives, at least not [from] what he’s said.” The fund is known for its secrecy. It’s been closed to outside investors since 2005, and what exactly they trade isn’t fully understood. What is known is that what Mercer along with retired Renaissance Technologies founder James Simons and co CEO Peter Brown have done is master the math behind something called quantitative trading, which involves gaming the stock market using advanced algorithms and data analysis to create unprecedented profits.   Bill Black, former bank regulator “All they do is make one group of literally billionaires slightly richer than another group of billionaires […] but they add absolutely nothing to the economy or the world effectively.” 2016’s list of biggest political donors is stacked with billionaires who’ve made their money by engaging in what amount to different forms of gambling. The largest donor of the cycle, Tom Steyer is a hedge fund manager. The second, Sheldon Adelson, is a casino magnate. The third, Donald Sussman, is a quant fund manager. Strangely enough, founder of Renaissance Technologies James Simons, who’s one the Democrats’ largest donors, is number 5 on the list, while his colleague and Republican counterpart Robert Mercer is number 7. Bill Black “It’s not a coincidence that the enormous amounts of wealth go to people who are connected with gambling, but recall that they don’t gamble. Adelson is the House. The House, mathematically, is going to win. And the idea at the hedge fund is that is, again, to have better math than the other billionaires so that you have — statistically you’re going to win.” Casino capitalism has given people like Robert and Rebekah Mercer riches and power beyond most people’s imagination. But the role of activist billionaires in American politics isn’t new. It’s just become stronger as wealth is concentrated in fewer hands, with the top 1 percent of Americans today holding on to 40 percent of the country’s wealth, and with much of that increase taking place in the finance and energy sectors of the economy. The rise of people like Robert Mercer and the Koch brothers reflects how billionaires have gradually taken more direct control over politicians and the state. Bill Black “One of the things that is really useful if you’re a billionaire and that you get your money by doing nothing socially useful, is to valorize what you’re doing and to demonize anyone that might actually restrict it by law, regulation even social mores. And propaganda is historically, the answer to that.”