Armed Occupiers at Oregon Refuge Rejected Offers to Leave or Negotiate | Southern Poverty Law Center

“There doesn’t have to be bloodshed in our community,’’ the Harney County sheriff said.Those who “have issues with the way things are going in our government” have a responsibility as citizens to act in an appropriate manner, Ward said. “We don’t ‘arm up’ and rebel,” he said, but rather should “work through the appropriate channels.”“This can’t happen anymore,” he said in a halting voice. “It can’t happen in America, and it can’t happen in Harney County.”Bill Williams, the U.S. attorney for Oregon, who traveled from Portland to Burns for the mid-day press conference, told reporters the community of Burns and Harney County clearly have been “disrupted by the armed occupation.”“We continue working toward resolution and will do so with the primary goal of restoring normalcy to this community,” the state’s top federal law enforcement officer said in his first public comment on the Malheur occupation.The arrests came a week after Oregon Gov. Kate Brown spoke publicly for the first time about the Malheur occupation after being told by federal officials to remain silent as the FBI said it was taking a “deliberate and measured” response without initially setting up roadblocks.Turning up the heat, the Oregon governor called the White House, the FBI director and the U.S. Attorney General, demanding that the FBI take action and “move quickly to end the occupation and hold all of the wrongdoers accountable.” The following day, an FBI negotiator made contact with Ammon Bundy via cell phone as news reporters listened in on a road near the Burns airstrip where the FBI established a command post. But those negotiations went nowhere when Ammon Bundy wouldn’t participate in a follow-up session with the FBI negotiator.Word of Finicum’s death lit up social media. When the two vehicles were stopped, “everyone obeyed orders to surrender except” Finicum and Bundy’s brother, Ryan Bundy, who was shot and wounded, CNN reported.Already, antigovernment and militia groups — including the Bundy family that was behind a still-unresolved standoff with federal authorities in 2014 — are spouting conspiracy theories that Finicum was unarmed, had his hands up and was shot and murdered.

Source: Armed Occupiers at Oregon Refuge Rejected Offers to Leave or Negotiate | Southern Poverty Law Center

“Black Americans for a Better Future” Super PAC 100% Funded by Rich White Guys

Mercer, co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies on Long Island, is best-known politically for donating $11,000,000 to Keep the Promise I, a Super PAC backing Ted Cruz’s presidential run.Beyond Mercer’s support of Black Americans for a Better Future and Ted Cruz, Mercer has a long and peculiar history of donations to political and philanthropic causes.The Mercer Family Foundation has given over $1.4 million to the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, which is stockpiling huge amounts of human urine to “revolutionize the evaluation of personal chemistry.” In 2010 Mercer spent $600,000 in an effort to elect OISM’s co-founder Arthur Robinson to Congress. (OISM is eager to collect as much urine as possible, so if you would like to donate a sample of your own, the details are available here.)BABF appears to exist solely as a vehicle for Washington, D.C., consultant Raynard Jackson, who is African-American. Jackson is quoted on his firm’s website stating that “You have a fundamental right to pursue business interests with the least amount of interference from the government.” Jackson has elsewhere accused Barack Obama of “relentless pandering to homosexuals.”

Source: “Black Americans for a Better Future” Super PAC 100% Funded by Rich White Guys

First Muslim woman in space uses tech to help others achieve their dreams | The Memo

Anoushesh is well-established on the tech scene, starting her first internet telecommunications company back in 1993, the year of the first web browser, and later co-founding device-connecting platform Prodea Systems in 2006.Anousheh Ansari, the first Muslim woman in space. Pic: NASANow, in a new inspiring project, the computer scientist is using her company’s innovative technology to further empower people in remote and rural areas in India.“I go to rural Rajasthan, and there’s a 4G network,” Ansari said. But many people don’t have the devices to access the internet, she explained.The entrepreneur is now currently rolling out technology that turns TVs into two-way communication screens with internet access.

Source: First Muslim woman in space uses tech to help others achieve their dreams | The Memo

Oregon militia leader’s plea to refuge holdouts: ‘I love you … go home’

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Following his arrest, Ammon Bundy urged protesters still standing their ground at the Malheur national wildlife refuge to ‘please stand down’

Militia leader Ammon Bundy presented a loud-and-clear message to the protesters who continue to stand their ground at the occupied refuge in rural Oregon: It’s time to go home.

After a Wednesday afternoon hearing in federal court in Portland, Mike Arnold, Bundy’s lawyer, read a statement from Bundy, who was arrested on a remote highway on Tuesday afternoon in a confrontation and shootout with police that resulted in the death of protest spokesman LaVoy Finicum.

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