Articles from January 2020

Sovereign Citizen Movement and a Guy we used to know

Several times over the past decade, I’ve written on here about a guy we encountered in the SCA 20 years ago.  He was apparently sociopathic and caused a lot of trouble in our shire.  Years later, he went to jail for taking naughty pics of an underage girl.  He’s been in and out of court since.  I summarized our whole history with him, what I learned afterwards, and a criminal case which hit legal websites and Youtube, here:

So I googled a sociopath from my past

Take a minute to read that and you’ll know everything you need to keep up.  I describe the weird language he used to protest that he’s not a citizen of the US (Inc) but of the US.  Oh, and just as he finally resolved the case I describe in that post, guilty but time already served, he was busted–AGAIN–for violating the sex registry requirement.  This time, though, he didn’t take as long, didn’t go through all those lawyers, and just went ahead and pled no contest.  That was finally resolved last week.

Well, tonight’s newspaper has an article, “What is going on with Gbaja-Biamila’s language?”

The article explains:

“i man known as (Muhammed-Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila) am in the state of ‘man’ now: past: forthwith,” the handwritten note filed with the Brown County Clerk of Court reads in part. “Not a Defendant: Respondant  all benefits: maybe: waived by i.”

If you were the judge in the former Packers player’s divorce proceeding and received that note, you might be more than a little puzzled about what you were being asked to do.

But the peculiar language that Gbaja-Biamila and his associates have been using to baffle the Brown County court system and confuse the public in recent months is straight out of the “sovereign citizen” playbook born out of the white supremacist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, according to an expert in the subject.

Gbaja-Biamila’s associates, or “brothers,” as he refers to them, have filed equally cryptic documents in Brown County Circuit Court, where they are accused of carrying concealed firearms into a children’s Christmas pageant put on by Providence Academy, a Christian school that three of Gbaja-Biamila’s children attend.

Later on, the article states:

The language is a variation of the “sovereign citizen” movement, started 50 years ago by extremist groups like the Posse Comitatus, said Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow with the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism who has been studying the movement for 25 years.

At its core, the language is intended to deny the authority of police and courts, which proponents of the sovereign-citizen movement say have no jurisdiction over victim-less crimes and civil matters.
The movement started as anti-government ideology by white supremacists and anti-Semites in the United States in the late 1960s, Pitcavage said. Through natural attrition, those people began to die off, but the movement continued to expand across racial and ethnic boundaries and spread overseas, to other English-speaking countries.
…Proponents claim the U.S. government secretly enslaves its citizens by establishing them from birth as corporations rather than private individuals, by putting their names in all capital letters on legal documents — everything from birth certificates to driver’s licenses.
…Gbaja-Biamila told the Green Bay Press-Gazette recently that admitting to being a “person” rather than a “man” is to accept the state’s illegitimate authority. And like the sovereign citizens that Pitcavage talks about, Gbaja-Biamila believes police, prosecutors and judges have no business charging people with victim-less crimes.
…“Sovereigns believe that if they can find just the right combination of words, punctuation, paper ink color and timing, they can have anything they want — freedom from taxes, unlimited wealth, and life without licenses, fees or laws, are all just a few strangely worded documents away. It’s the modern-day equivalent of ‘abracadabra,’” the law center wrote in an article on its website.

The weird “i man” language is a new variant; the basic point is using language to make it sound like you’re not subject to the courts, and rejecting legal documents.  This all sounded familiar, so I went back to the bizarre document written by the guy I knew 20 years ago–let’s call him “J.”

Especially at the beginning and the end of J’s document, you can see the sovereign-citizen-style language.  I recall reading in the newspaper back around 2010 that J doesn’t have any documentation, despite being born a US citizen, and that’s on purpose to relinquish the control of the state over him.  It also made it difficult for the police to figure out who he was (he has a bunch of aliases).  I wanted to pull that up for you, but it looks like old articles have been purged.

J even filed a complaint against Scott Walker (and a bunch of other people), stating that

Scott Walker used his position as Wisconsin Governor to cover up acts of domestic terrorism, while criminally violating the due process and other rights of [J], effectively denying [J] his First Amendment guarantee to “redress of grievances” and access to various state and federal courts, to a jury trial, and litigation of the merits of [J]’s criminal RICO claims.

Ummmmmm….oookayyyy…..

From Wikipedia:

Writing in American Scientific Affiliation, Dennis L. Feucht reviewed American Militias: Rebellion, Racism & Religion by Richard Abanes, and described the theory of Richard McDonald, a sovereign-citizen leader, which is that there are two classes of citizens in America: the “original citizens of the states” (or “States citizens”) and “U.S. citizens”. McDonald asserts that U.S. citizens or “Fourteenth Amendment

citizens have civil rights, legislated to give the freed black slaves after the Civil War rights comparable to the unalienable constitutional rights of white state citizens. The benefits of U.S. citizenship are received by consent in exchange for freedom. State citizens consequently take steps to revoke and rescind their U.S. citizenship and reassert their de jure common-law state citizen status. This involves removing one’s self from federal jurisdiction and relinquishing any evidence of consent to U.S. citizenship, such as a Social Security number, driver’s license, car registration, use of ZIP codes, marriage license, voter registration, and birth certificate. Also included is refusal to pay state and federal income taxes because citizens not under U.S. jurisdiction are not required to pay them. Only residents (resident aliens) of the states, not its citizens, are income-taxable, state citizens argue. And as a state citizen landowner, one can bring forward the original land patent and file it with the county for absolute or allodial property rights. Such allodial ownership is held “without recognizing any superior to whom any duty is due on account thereof” (Black’s Law Dictionary). Superiors include those who levy property taxes or who hold mortgages or liens against the property.[20]

In support of his theories, McDonald has established State Citizen Service Centers around the United States as well as a related web presence.[21]

Writer Richard Abanes asserts that sovereign citizens fail to sufficiently examine the context of the case laws they cite, and ignore adverse evidence, such as Federalist No. 15, where Alexander Hamilton expressed the view that the Constitution placed everyone personally under federal authority.[20]

Some sovereign citizens also claim that they can become immune to most or all laws of the United States by renouncing their citizenship, a process they refer to as “expatriation”, which involves filing or delivering a nonlegal document claiming to renounce citizenship in a “federal corporation” and declaring only to be a citizen of the state in which they reside, to any county clerk’s office that can be convinced to accept it

It all sounds like not only is Gbaja-Biamila part of this sovereign citizen movement, but my husband’s old “nemesis” J is as well.  It’s all frickin’ nuts!  People wonder if G-B was knocked in the head too many times (he used to play for the Packers); I wonder the same about J….

 

A Troll E-mail–and the Trolls are Liars

Remember the troll brigade that frightened me out of my wits three years ago?  Well, I sure do, because they never quite went away.  (Story under the Trolls category.)

Though to my great relief, they started to leave me alone, they still harass their usual target, “S,” to this day.  They accuse him of being a catfish who’s really a woman named JO–an accusation perpetuated by a reality show which has been playing along to hide a scandal (while S insists on exposing the whole thing to reclaim his good name).  It’s all very Kafkaesque.

Meanwhile, S and I became friends, especially after the trolls targeted me.

Well, I have witnessed S’s gradual opening up online to the public.  He has a blog and a Twitter account; he has revealed more about himself to the world over time, including photographs and a podcast.

But his reticence to give out personal information is understandable when he’s being stalked.  You’ll note I don’t give out my personal identifying information out on the Interwebs, either, not even pictures!  Lots of bloggers and Tweeters use photograph avatars, but not me.  Whenever people click on my own About Me sections, they find pictures I drew of fictional characters or myself when I was young–but never a photograph.  And certainly no real names.  There are creepy people out there on the Net, ya know.

The other day, I finally got a chance to listen to S’s podcast, which for me was the final proof, because there was his (male) voice and a real person (verified) interacting with him; he said on the podcast that she’s come to visit him a few times.  Someone loosely connected to the reality show also claims to have met him.

The trolls tried to make him out to be some scary person who preys on others–but he’s actually very sweet.  He certainly never preyed on me.  The only people behaving in any kind of frightening manner, were the trolls.

While the trolls stalked me three years ago, one of them, M, sent me an e-mail which frightened and appalled me very much–especially since I had no idea she even knew about me or was watching my Twitter.  She was now “against” the other trolls, even though she was still trolling and harassing S.  I tried to find out more about her, and posted something on Twitter about what I found–and she sent me this message in my blog Feedback:

Hey I’m M that the “trolls” target on Twitter. By trolls I mean “S’s” trolls. To be fair, “S” a.k.a. JO targets me as well. I can briefly explain what’s going on from my perspective, I hope. FIRST of all, “S” and “L” are not real. Period. Both are played by JO. There’s many videos on YouTube that I’ve put up regarding this catfish scenario, and I use to run a blog about the catfish and her blog posts/twitter updates. It was all in fun. Until the trolls began to shame JO for being heavy and/or gay. I at that point began documenting their behavior and displaying it on my blog. Specifically their Twitter behaviors. I’ve been keeping an eye on the happenings of both JO and the trolls for months due to some legal stuff coming up. Believe me, once it’s over you’ll hear about to what I’m referring. Anyhow I noticed the trolls had also targeted you and it looks like recently you said they accused you of being me. You referenced me as unsavory? I am not cut of the same cloth as those trolls hence why I’m their target. I don’t care if you do or don’t believe “S” is real. It’s your life and that’s not my business. I’m not involved in this lame drama to educate anyone. I have no twitter account currently as I deleted mine almost a year ago. I just want you to know that people are documenting the “troll” behavior for a greater good and soon I imagine you will see exactly what I mean. I hope they leave you alone but be careful, they are not your normal trolls and will attempt to bleed the online drama into your real life.

Hm.  This looks even more bizarre now, and M’s hints at coming “legal stuff” turned out to be nothing more than M trying to threaten and slap people with restraining orders.  I could see in online court records that the restraining orders never really went anywhere.

Meanwhile, JO has nothing of consequence on her criminal record, certainly nothing connected to any kind of scam or predatory behavior, which would be amazing if she truly did all that she’s accused of by these trolls.

There was even a stunt where the trolls pretended M was dead, but she’s still alive–Either that, or Wisconsin now allows ghosts to vote with a valid ID.  (Wisconsin makes voting records easy-peasy to check.)

The funny thing is that re-reading and posting M’s message still gave me the shakes 3 years later.  Notice how she distances herself from the other trolls even though she was originally one of them–“Well, I am not like them!”  I remember posting after this that I wanted no more contact from trolls.  M had sent me several other messages with fake names, so it also scared me to see that SHE was the anonymous person I thought was a friend.

Another point that scared me was the end, that “they are not your normal trolls and will attempt to bleed the online drama into your real life.”  This also went along with other scary things about the trolls that she had written in her anonymous messages to me.  That made me even more frightened of the trolls at the time.

Shortly after this, another troll even posted this comment:

Nyssa I’m sorry that I have been targeting you to tell you S is a scammer. U are right he does exist. I’ll tell my twitter trolls to leave ya alone now.

Another troll said she was lying, but I kept the comment up to kind of rub it in the trolls’ faces.  You can see it here.

Fortunately, that all died down for me, but they have a new target now, the person I mentioned above who was on the podcast with S.  She knows S personally, but the trolls have been hounding her about him being a catfish.  She validated me, making me feel like any normal person would be frightened of what they did–that I wasn’t just being hysterical.  I can also help her now.

It’s good to have other people to talk to who know what it’s like.  That helped me after the Richard/Tracy breakup at the beginning of this decade, talking to someone else they treated the same way: Todd.  It validates your experiences and emotions, makes you feel like you’re normal and your abuser is the problem.

I didn’t post M’s e-mail before, probably because I was so frightened at the time.  But now that S has proven himself to the world, I have more courage to pull out this bit of the story from where it had been hidden away for so long–and maybe, by doing so, I can heal myself.  Also, I’m amazed to see that the three-year anniversary of this ? show is on Monday, so this can commemorate!

I’m turning off comments because the trolls may still come in here.  After all, they still watch me sometimes, as I can see every time I post something on here about them.

A Troll E-mail--and the Trolls are Liars 1

 

Some groups think Trump is the Messiah?

So I’m checking out the blog of a fundamentalist who claims that Trump is indeed the Antichrist at the End of the World–not sure whether to believe, but curious how he counters objections and explains his points.  Then I come across this:

But nevertheless, Orthodox Jews do believe their messiah will be Jewish and of the house of David – which is true of the True Messiah, Jesus. But they do not recognize Jesus, and so they still search for their Jewish messiah, a false christ, the Antichrist. Please watch my video.. https://youtu.be/F-UxKCzsURI – This video observes that some Orthodox Jews are searching Donald Trump’s ancestry to find a link to King David. –Brother James, Misconception: Antichrist Will be Jewish and Not a Gentile

The video led me to this article in the Christian Post: Some Rabbis in Israel Believe Trump Could Be Messiah or His Forerunner, End Times Author Says  Lots of crazyness is there; especially note this:

“We would say the second coming is about to happen, but their messiah is going to be a false messiah. He’s going to be the anti-Christ, right? I also don’t believe Donald Trump is the antichrist. So I think the smart ones in Israel are looking at him right now, saying, he is God’s, what we would call, John the Baptist. He is God’s messenger. When he takes over in January there is a 5777 countdown to the appearance of the messiah,” Horn added.

The Jerusalem Post reported last month that Shas Chairman and Minister Aryeh Deri said Trump’s election could herald the coming of the messiah due to the blow he expects the next president will strike against the “non-Orthodox Jewish hold on the U.S. government.”

(So–If Trump is the forerunner, could the messiah be–Putin?)

Some groups think Trump is the Messiah? 3

I checked the Jerusalem Post link and did a little googling, and there is indeed such a person as Deri making such claims about Trump.  Meanwhile, Netanyahu has been doing everything he can to benefit from friendship with Trump, which has been fulfilling his wishlist.  Netanyahu has been playing into Trump’s narcissism, even naming a Golan Heights settlement after him.  ABC News reports an Israeli group is selling a special-edition Trump coin.

From Henry Siegman’s What my escape from Hitler’s Germany taught me about Trump’s America:

Since its founding in 1948, Israel has presented itself to the world as an avatar of democracy and guardian of the moral truths the world needs to learn about the Holocaust. Yet its governmental leaders and a majority of its Jewish citizens—led by its prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu—have fully embraced Trump (as well, in some instances, as the authoritarian leaders embraced by Trump).

Giant posters and photographs of Trump were recently plastered on the streets and public places of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Declaring “Trump is a friend of Zion” and “Trump Make Israel Great,” they expressed adoration of the man who doubled down on his insistence on the moral equivalence of neo-Nazis in Charlottesville and the Americans who took to the streets to express their abhorrence of these racists and anti-Semites.

So I don’t know how pervasive a belief in Trump as the messiah/forerunner actually is in Israel.  But there are certainly groups pushing the idea.  And to see a malignant narcissist such as Trump–one of the worst people this world has ever produced–viewed as a messiah is frightening.  He has a lot in common with, say, Hitler or Nebuchadnezzar.  Many of us see him as far more likely to be the Antichrist at the End of the World.  Or at least one of many antichrists which have popped up throughout history.

Meanwhile, I keep finding various accounts that some Evangelicals don’t bother fighting climate change because they see it as the End of the World rapidly approaching–meaning Christians finally triumph over their enemies.

Whether you believe or not that the Bible truly prophesies the End of the World, complete with plagues and the Beast (Antichrist) and one-world government etc., many people do believe and behave accordingly.  And we have several facts in front of us.

One is that climate change is real and is already leading to catastrophe around the world: erosion, fires, mass extinctions, floods, extreme heat, extreme storms, etc.  People are already losing their homes and being forced to move because of it; animals and other creatures are also on the move.  I’ve seen reports that farmers know very well that climate change is real, because they’re being forced to change their practices.  With or without prophecy, climate change could lead to the End of the World if we do nothing about it.

Another fact is that some groups of people are venerating Trump for various reasons, making him into a god.

No matter what you believe about biblical prophecy, these are very dangerous factors that could turn the End of the World into a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I don’t know about you, but I’d rather fight back, not sit back and allow this to happen because of our own stupidity.

 

%d bloggers like this: