There are a couple of firsthand accounts of what happened yesterday out in Oregon and how Robert ‘LaVoy’ Finicum wound up getting shot and killed. The accounts differ substantially. I’ve seen a lot of emotional reaction to the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and I’ve haven’t cared for any of it. I’m upset that Mr. Finicum lost his life regardless of whether he’s wholly responsible for his death or not. I think the guy was disturbed and needed help. And I don’t think anyone was in a real position to give it to him except the other folks who were occupying the refuge with him, and they all seem to be nearly as far gone as he was.
I understand that it’s upsetting that these people can defy the federal government, local and state police, issue threats, wave their guns around, and get treated with caution and deference when some of our citizens get gunned down by police without so much as a warning. I still think it’s a moral failing for anyone to call for these people to be shot or to celebrate when they get killed.
I don’t agree with what they’re doing on any level. I think a lot of these people are bad apples. Some of them are mentally imbalanced. Some of them are simple criminals who have now crossed a line and deserve to be incarcerated. But the proper thing to do is to be patient and try to negotiate with them because we shouldn’t be issuing death sentences to people just because they’re breaking the law. And there’s no vital interest here that dictates that law enforcement needs to risk a shootout that puts many lives at risk.
I’m very disappointed in people who have been calling for the government to bring the hammer down. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
And, as careful as the government has been, now we have a martyr and things could escalate as a result. The important thing is to try to defuse the situation so it stays isolated.
And, these principles are universal. So, yes, urban police forces should be using similar amounts of patience and restraint in dealing with potentially violent people. The answer to Tamir Rice isn’t to race in and gun down the remaining folks at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. The answer to Tamir Rice is to do what the Feds did at Malheur. Don’t shoot first and ask questions later. Form a perimeter, assess the danger, protect civilians, and negotiate if possible.
We shouldn’t have a death penalty at all, but particularly not without legal due process. If you don’t have to put yourself in a situation where you may have to kill someone, then avoid it.
depends on your definition of “bring the hammer down”.
I’m not celebrating Finicum’s death, but I’m sure as hell dancing in the streets at the arrest of the terrorists who are in police custody.
For my $$$, let the asses stay in their own little cocoon on Malhuer. Shut down the roads. No more interviews, no more snack runs, no more going off to meetings and turn off the lights. If they want to chicken out and slink off cross country, arrest them when they get back on the radar.
Let the bastards starve in the dark.
And if in the process they damage artifacts, use the federal database to access protected confidential information about Fed employees which will later be used in some sovereign citizen cluster fuck, what then?
They’ve already done all that. Now what?
You cut them off, cut off the water, cut off the power, and give them 24 hours. This crap of waiting it out and then doing nothing just encourages more of these. After the debacle of the Bundy deal a year ago, it was obvious that more was coming. And if nothing happens here, more will happen.
You let the 24 hour period expire, approach them in a vehicle with high levels of protection, and arrest them all. If they fire on federal officers, you bring the hammer down, and take them out one way or another.
This crap has been building for 30 years. Inadequate, insufficient response has encouraged more of this insurrection. It’s time to end it.
Here’s what I don’t understand about the handling of violent standoffs. Surely some sort of gas could be devised that knocks people out without permanent effects on their health. One whiff and you’re out cold for an hour. I mean … with all of our military technology why don’t we have a mechanism to release a cloud of harmless knock-out gas over the area where the standoff is occurring? So Finicum’s car is stuck in the snow bank, with 5 armed people inside. As soon as it stops moving, the cops toss a cannister of knockout gas into the area, wait for it to work and cuff Finicum & Co. What am I missing? If we can make a cruise missile that hits a specific building from 3,000 miles away, why can’t we come up with a humane way to incapacitate people holed up with guns? I mean, we can examine DNA from 20 years ago and solve crimes – why can’t we come up with a non-lethal way to incapacitate criminals?
Interesting idea, but it just wouldn’t work. The car is a small place – too much of anything will kill you, and the gas might be too much. Or too little.
Once force is involved, the guys on the other side have guns too, and getting close enough to toss in a gas grenade is too close for their weapons. So, your idea is an interesting one, but I don’t see it as workable.
Ah yes, the gas of peace
Because introducing a chemical into the human body to shut down consciousness is complex and dangerous. Heck in very controlled environments like a surgery room where every relevant factor about the individual concerned can be known mistakes still happen.
I have a little knowledge from my military experience, and things get real complex when trying to achieve something like this.
The dosage to knock out a 250lb man might very well kill a 100 lb woman. Individual health risks also would play in, along with other conditions like weather, physical characteristics of the environment. Modes of carrying said agent that allows the proper dosage to achieve unconsciousness with out possible fatal outcomes from over dosages, are also problematic.
It is much harder to achieve what you want, so the authorities responsible for controlling people in situations like this fall back on riot control agents. Overload their senses, then step in and achieve physical control. Determined individuals still have limited abilities for resistance in a riot control scenario. I have first hand experience from the US Army “gas chamber training” exposure to base this one on. People who hold views like Robert `LaVoy’ Finicum did, most probably would still start shooting when a riot control agent is deployed.
The use of either a knock out gas or riot control agent is also problematic because both would be filtered out by the wearing of personal protective devices like a gas mask. This is why military personnel who think they possibly face such possibilities pro actively wear said protective equipment. No reason to expect militia types to not do the same, if they perceive the same threat to them and their goals.
There are no simple easy answers when the divide is this deep.
Yeah, with all the accusations against Cosby, people seem to overlook that if he administered meds to a large number of women under uncontrolled circumstances that incapacitated all of them, chances are he damn near killed a few of them.
Pretty sure the refuge isn’t on ‘town’ water or anything. I expect there’s a well there, so you can’t cut off the water. Apparently, you can’t cut off the power without affecting neighboring ranches unless you get closer than they’re comfortable with. I think what they’re doing now establishing checkpoints and scooping them up if they come out is probably the best option.
All except primitive wells require electricity to pump water.
What’s your point, Dataguy? or are you just trolling? You want a Waco type disaster? With lots of martyrs so Posse, Birchers, Aryan Nation, Klan and just all around crazies have a rallying point?
I want the rule of law, which conservatives supposedly support, to be enforced. And if it turns out like Waco, which was a suicide deal, fine by me.
End up with a bunch of them dead, and the next group will think twice. Let them walk away, and it will happen over and over.
“End up with a bunch of them dead, and the next group will think twice. “
This is not how humans work, Mr. Cheney.
So, then, your suggestion is to let sedition, armed insurrection, and theft from the public purse go without consequence.
Well, fuck that mangy dogshit. I am tired of this sovereign citizen crap, this Sagebrush revolution crap. It just feeds on itself, gets stronger every time the morons in the FBI let it go.
I say let’s take these fuckers out, and do so with MAXIMUM prejudice. We did it to the southron traitors, except we let them all get away at the end. That didn’t work for shit. Now we are letting these fuckers get away with it again, and it ain’t working for shit.
No my suggestion is that there are fewer statements that history has proved wronger than: “End up with a bunch of them dead, and the next group will think twice. “
If you pull a gun on a Federal agent, you should be either dead or in jail. Period. End of story.
And all this blather you are mumbling is just so much enabling of more felonies.
All I’m mumbling is the painfully obvious point that this is incorrect: “End up with a bunch of them dead, and the next group will think twice.”
If the next group fails to think twice then they need to die as well. Preferably en masse and more or less immediately. They are armed terrorists and they’ve been permitted (under ruse of Second Amendment rights) to exist and grow and burrow deeper and deeper, like a plague, into the fabric of American life. It’s long past time they were permitted to continue their infestation. It’s unhealthy for all of us to permit them to exist any longer.
As I said down below, if that means war, then it means war. They started it, illegally and with malevolent, perhaps treasonous, intent. Our entire adult lives, since the Reagan revolution, their presence and potential for damage has been a constant violation of the freedom from fear the rest of America believes in.
Hey, I’m a pacifist, too. But not when it comes to an army against us permitted bases in our backyards.
So, you’re a “pacifist” but “if that means war, then it means war”? With all due respect, what does that even mean?
Maybe it helps to look at a non-US situation, for example: England and Ireland. The English (in one interpretation) have been invading and conquering the Irish for the last 800 years, trying to force their way of life upon them, and trying to force the Irish to stop struggling for independence and self-determination. And in every generation for 800 years, the Irish have resisted.
It’s a cautionary tale for those who argue that violence is the solution.
I’m not a pacifist, but I’m also not blind to the fact that when a government starts martyring members of a fanatical political sect, that doesn’t weaken them.
You are articulating a very Cheney/Rumsfield approach to the use of force. Kill the bad guys en masse. Problem solved. But again, to the dismay of every repressive regime in the history of history, that is simply not how humans work.
This is a serious problem and requires a serious solution, not the ‘bang bang shoot ’em up’ summer blockbuster theory of political change.
It’s called enforcing the law. And brigands that band together with guns begin to take over public lands, it’s time for law enforcement to do their jobs, catch the criminals, and put them away.
So you believe that the law says, “they need to die, preferably en masse and more or less immediately?”
You are aware, I’m sure, that many people on the right agree that any criminal activity should be met with maximally lethal response. You’re also aware, I’d assume, that it is the GOAL of terrorists to provoke such a response. Because it strengthens them.
And I’d bet that you have no trouble seeing through the counterproductive right-wing response to terrorism (kill ’em all and let Allah sort ’em out!), which is driven by fear and tribalism and bloodlust, and plays right into the terrorists’ hands.
I guess you are in the “roll over and just give them anything they want” coalition.
Pathetic.
Armed insurrection against the US should be met with a strong, lethal, and definitive measure of force. Unlike you, I do not want to give away the store for a moment of peace. That was the approach of Chamberlin, who obtained from Adolf Hitler “peace in our time” by giving him the Sudetenland. Giving thieves and bandits stuff does not work. It just makes them more greedy and demanding.
OMG! You totally got me. I fell for that hook, line, and s.
Very embarrassing–but well-played.
can’t we just do what we’ve been doing, wait for them to get bored or hungry and pick them up a few at a time and put them in jail?
That’s gets the enforcing the law and still protects due process or am I missing something?
OK, as long as we actually do that.
But Clive Bundy, the father, who owes $1,000,000+ in grazing fees, is still out and about. Why is that?
I’m for playing it your way, SO LONG AS we do eventually put them in jail and get them to pay for their theft, sedition, and so forth. If they get away with it, that is not acceptable.
well we won’t know that for a while as this ends and the prosecutions begin
Didn’t work so well last time. In fact, it lead to several hundred dead federal employees and a large group of their children.
Your referring to Oklahoma City? I suppose they should have negotiated with Timothy McVeigh and not have that dreadful man hunt for him, right? Because that was so oppressive and just like the Right wing.
Funny the reaction to Waco wasn’t what you fantasise it to be.
No the right wing reaction to Waco was the
Oklahoma City Bombing …….
funny you seem to callously dismiss the truth for your violent fantasy.
Good thing we learned from Waco and didn’t prosecute McVeigh isn’t it? Otherwise there would have been a chain reaction of bombings.
Your reasoning here eludes me;
If the ATF had done at Waco what they did in Oregon, and surrounded David Koresh outside the compound instead of a full frontal assault, the results would most probably been like Oregon, possibly even without any bloodshed. Koresh was known to go jogging and other trips outside Mount Carmel.
Always better to go after someone outside their bunker if at all possible, like they did in Oregon. More control if you are mostly orchestrating the events. As long as Bundy et al held up inside the park, they orchestrated events to a large degree, if the feds didn’t want a Waco repeat. The feds waited till they got complacent enough to think they could go and try to start a second front, and sprung a trap on them at a place and time of the feds choosing.
As far as not prosecuting McVeigh et al,….
as Spock would say illogical.
He outright committed premeditated murder with a large explosive device.
I don’t get your point.
Waco was handled wrong from the git-go
The poseurs in Oregon were holding out wanting another direct assault, the feds learned and have adapted newer tactics to prevent unnecessary escalation, it worked quite well this time.
While I agree with the general tenor of your post and certainly don’t celebrate Finicum’s death, I think it’s pretty accepted practice that if you are actively shooting at law enforcement (or the military), then they have every right — responsibility, even — to shoot back.
And if they’re not shooting at law enforcement?
Then you arrest them.
But the reports of a gunfire exchange implies that someone was shooting.
Did you read the firsthand accounts?
I don’t consider them particularly trustworthy. Why should I?
Well, there are two accounts and one of them has to be completely wrong because they’re in diametric opposition. To me, McConnell’s is completely believable – the 18-year old girl sounds like a propagandist.
See my post with her audio … not at all too different as she too states Finicum got in the car and drove off contrary to police/fbi order to stop and disarm. They drove off for several minutes and crashed as the car approached a roadblock and gunshots were fired. By her own account she was flat on the floor, not a position to be a reliable witness of the events. She was scared, emotional, angered about the law enforcement meaning business. As armed militia you don’t mess around when confronted by law enforcement. No martyr to me, just a stupid gun toting fool seeking the limelight of a favorable press coverage. Never contemplated defeat by legitimate lethal force from the federal government.
I’m not too broken up about it either. That doesn’t mean I’m rooting for a fight to the death. But doing nothing sends the wrong message and emboldens these morons. Based on what little we know, the feds appear to have handled the road block about as well as they could. That of course assumes there isn’t something more we don’t know. Obviously, none of us would approve the summary execution of any of these schmucks. But it’s clear from Finicum’s prior comments that he had no intention of surrendering. I consider this a suicide.
This is bullshit and you know it. They were a heavily armed force acting against the law. How else did they execute the take over of the preserve in the first place. Individual incidents after that are irrelevant, and you know it. Hell. That these armed militias are permitted to exist in the first place is the primary concern and you elide any concern about that completely in this inane post.
A group of moronic, mentally ill white men flagrantly break the law, seize property, post violent, seditious anti-cop screeds and wave guns around for weeks, and are treated with extreme diffidence and care…while unarmed black teenagers are routinely shot and killed.
It’s rare for me to say this, but if the story holds up, it sounds like law enforcement did a good job here. They separated the leaders, took them someplace remote, offered them a chance to surrender, and the only one killed is the one who charged at them. What more could you possibly as of them?
They’re supposed to give the public lands to the ranchers, and then spurn the Federal government.
Well, for one thing, I want my fucking money back. The money that these seditious criminals stole in the way of grazing rights which they used and did not pay for.
I agree we shouldn’t be done with them. On top of years in prison, we should confiscate anything they own. I was speaking only of the arrest. I think it was well handled. I would be delighted if the only arrests that ended in a death involved a known criminal gun fanatic charging the cops.
I never was a fan of the strategy of going in with all guns blazing, but you do need a plan to ensure that in the long run the miscreants don’t keep their ill-gotten gains and, at least until today, it wasn’t clear at all that there was any such plan.
Indeed. And what, pray tell, is LE’s plan going forward. Because of the ridiculous way that they “handled” this stand-off, combined with the utter mis-handling/not handling the previous Bundy stupidity, it’s quite likely that more this kind of stupidity will continue and possibly get worse.
I am truly for everyone’s right to protest peacefully, but this was not a peaceful protest.
What we have with Bundy, his sons, and others in the area is a defiance of Federal rules, which is costing YOU and ME large amounts of money. Bundy stole grazing from federal lands, MY FEDERAL LANDS, and is encouraging others to do the same. And this is happening.
It’s sedition, and it needs to have consequences. Which Obama and the others have not brought. So why the fuck not?
What makes you think there haven’t been (and won’t be) consequences?
Looks to me like a clear case of suicide by cop.
He clearly stated he would prefer death to jail
This man had already been publicly humiliated and lost his primary source of income. Both were well deserved, but it’s not like he had much to live for. He could be a martyr or a joke. I’m not surprised at his choice.
Bringing the hammer down on them was not wrong, Booman.
It would have been wrong NOT to bring the hammer down on them.
I’m sorry the guy got killed as well, but when you play with fire, you can get burned.
My thoughts exactly. Booman’s not wrong very often in my opinion. But this time he’s off base.
I’m very disappointed in people who have been calling for the government to bring the hammer down.
It would be nice if you would have defined this. They could have set up a blockade, or whatever, and starved those clowns to death. It seems only now that LE has set up a perimeter and stuff of that nature. Why wait a month to do that? Allegedly, power couldn’t be cut with out plunging most of the county into darkness. I find that hard to believe. Anyway, there were steps that the Feds could have taken a lot sooner to end this nonsense.
The Bundy boys did this after they were allowed to stand off the police at their ranch. Notice that even after all of the Bundy boys tough talk they surrendered instead of acting like Butch and Sundance going out with guns a blazing screaming freedom.
The first mistake was not locking these people up at the Bundy ranch inaction caused this to happen. These militia types believe they win when there are no consequences for their actions.
These cowboys are reliving the legends of cattle drivers trampling homesteads of farmers, illegal grazing on Indian reservations. Are these comboys socialists at heart … public lands are for free?
The only law in territories not yet incorporated into statehood was lead coming from the barrel of a gun. These gun toting idiots, united as so-called militants, based on the US Constitution of the right to bear arms in opposition to King George of England. We’re not living history of the War of Independence, George Washington is remembered in our books on American history and monuments.
Legends and heroes of the West are rarely law enforcement officers, most common are the talented comboys faster on the draw of a gun than his opponent. A natural selection of sorts before Darwin’s theories. Powerful persons hired the fast guns to impose their rule of law. The West was a test in the survival of the fittest. Community spirit and formal enforcement of law came as the settlers set-up villages and towns. Than there is divine interference, the religious element of white people expanding across the Great Plains to the West. In God We Trust.
○ American Frontier:
Manifest Destiny was the belief that the United States was pre-ordained to expand from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast.
○ The Paiute Tribe of Utah
○ EcoWatch: Why the BLM Battle at Bundy Ranch Matters
Posted earlier in my diary – Oregon Standoff: Finicum Preferred Death Above Arrest.
The death of one deranged traitor at the hands of law enforcement doesn’t bother me too much. Especially when they were able to arrest eight other almost-as-deranged traitors at the same time without shooting any of THEM.
Sounds like a damn good job by law enforcement. I’m not going to feel bad for cheering that. Which is not the same as cheering the death of a deranged traitor.
However, if they go to trial, and the jury is another bunch of deranged traitors which is certainly possible, what then?
This all started with the Sagebrush Revolution, and the feds didn’t respond appropriately. Now this is the next generation of the same deal, and we have the same crap going on. All that the Feds can do is make it very very hard to go this route.
Then they’ve won. The Rule of Law is absolute. No vigilantes. No right wing vigilantes, no left wing vigilantes. The Law.
haven’t you read about how sheriffs (always outgunned) managed to keep the peace in the Old West?
It’s always about negotiation and outsmarting your adversaries.
The Law ain’t The Law for long if it’s in a coffin.
And a sheriff might need to make an occasional example of someone, but he’ll make his job much harder if he goes around killing people.
Actually, from what I’ve read most of them were corrupt and in league with the monied interests.
○ Legends and Heroes of the Old West
These cowboys are reliving the legends of cattle drivers trampling
homesteads of farmers, illegal grazing on Indian reservations.
Are these comboys socialists at heart … public lands are for free?
LOL If they try them in THAT county, I suspect they won’t have any friends.
○ FBI blockades Oregon wildlife refuge, urges remaining occupiers to leave | WaPo |
As Sheriff Ward said today in an emotional address to the press, if the occupation was only impacting the occupiers miles away from town isolated at the refuge, they could have waited a lot longer. But it was tearing the county apart, people were being threatened (Ward’s family left the county out of fear).
I would add that it was also harming the public interest in continued management at the refuge, harming new business interests that had sprung up in town to create a fishery and fertilizer business out of the actions to remove invasive carp form the aquatic system. It was harming the lives of the ten refuge staff who couldn’t work and have been living in fear (and may for the rest of their lives -“patriot” movements have long memories).
This needed to end, and LE found the best possible tactical moment to remove the leadership with minimal threat to innocents. And now they are dealing with half a dozen hardliners who vow to continue on – but who lack even a fig leaf of a connection to the land ownership issues.
I just wish they had arrested f…ng Cliven Bundy at the same time.
There is also this issue about all of the strife and dissension this armed stand off was causing for many citizens in the surrounding areas. As stated, below, I don’t understand why it took LE so long to come up with the plan they created, and it’s ridiculous that the OR sheriff has to practically apologize for what happened. The Bundy gang set up an armed stand off, and LE feels forced to apologize for finally arresting them. Why? Oh, white male supremacists.
As stated, below, I regret Finicum’s loss of life, but as opposed to numerous black males, Finicum had many and ample opportunities to walk away with his life in tact. Finicum made a clear choice to charge LE… as opposed to black males walking away from cops with no guns anywhere on their person.
The stand off had a negative impact on citizens in the area, who were patient about this situation for several weeks. Enough’s enough. I’m all for peaceful protests, especially if they make a logical point. This wasn’t peaceful, and it’s really unclear what outcome this gang of thugs wanted.
Sounds to me like the a .lot of Booman posters are echoing right wing attitudes towards them damned A-rab terri’sts.
Nice.
If only you’d make the same kind of fuss about the economic and political terrorists who have succeeded in taking the U.S. down like a motherfucker over the past 50+ years, I wouldn’t say anything.
But you don’t…not effectively, anyway and never with such bloodthirsty vigor…so I am saying something.
It’s going to be “He said.” “No, HE said!!!” from here on out. Objective truth disappears with the first bullet. It’s always the first real casualty. Everything else follows.
I actually expect the Feds to overreact, Waco style. The militias, too. It’s going to get nasty. Nastier
Watch.
AG
I hope so. These armed militias are a devastating infestation from the deep south to the upper midwest to the northwest. Hell. They’re everywhere lurking and hiding and they scare the shit out of me. Now they are more and more often permitted open carry and concealed carry and it’s already “Nastier” than it ever should have been allowed to become. And silly, so-called “progressive” relativists can’t tell the difference between murderous thugs and boy scouts any more. These militias have been defacto enforcers for the “economic and political terrorists” you cite as the root of the problem. Take them out and you immediately weaken the power of the super-rich and religious right forces that have taken democracy away from the rest of us. It’s long past time for them to end.
What would you do? Invite them to the White House to negotiate? It was allowing them defy a Federal Court order that led to this.
Are the cops always wrong? Then why do we have cops? Maybe we should just plead with the Bundy’s and El Chapo’s of the world to please be nice boys?
Political power is the power of the rods and axes. You forget that at your peril.
It’s regrettable, imo, that the Feds/FBI/State PD, etc, waited so long to do something. I can only speculate that it took them a month to come up with this plan. Well, okay, I guess. I think LE was also all along attempting to encourage them to give up and go home.
It’s been obvious from Day One that the original family that these doofheads were allegedly “supporting” (the father/son who got sent back to jail for setting fire to Fed lands) didn’t want this to happen and asked them to go away.
My understanding is that the citizens in Burns and surrounding area were opposed (although some were sympathetic) to the Bundy gang staying there and kept asking them to leave. Plus the Paiute Indians really wanted to them to leave, esp when these criminal miscreants apparently “built” roads and put or tore down fences and other property/ecological damage to this preserved land.
While I “get” that the Feds didn’t want a “shoot out at the ok corral” thing going on, it seems like it just took damn long to bring this to conclusion. These crooks were able to run around, buy stuff, go to meetings, build roads, etc. WTF?
Same as it was with the prior Bundy stand-off, where the Feds turned tail and ran and the Bundy’s still – to my knowledge – have not paid their legal fees for abusing OUR lands for their very munificent financial gain and benefit.
I do not celebrate Finicum’s loss of life, but it does seem as if he had BIG issues and intent on becoming some sort of martyr to his “cause.” Unfortunate, but it’s certainly not like he, and the others, weren’t given millions of chances to leave peacefully and in tact. And it’s even LIKELY that had they left early on, they would not have even been charged with anything… they could have staged their “protest” and then left. But they didn’t.
I find it outrageous when considering how black youth are willfully murdered on a frequent basis by LE, who get away with it. And typically the black youth has done nothing to merit to being murdered in cold blood.
I support citizens’ rights to protest PEACEFULLY, even for causes with which I don’t agree. Yet this gang was brandishing guns and threatening everyone, but they got away with it for almost a month.
Occupy protests happened for a while without much interference, but then all the SWAT teams went in and kicked citizens around. Citizens got arrested on the flimsiest of charges, all while MANY citizens clapped and cheered for them being tossed in the clink with little evidence of wrong-doing.
BLM suffers similar fates, and LE is quick file specious charges on peaceful protestors wherever they can find a loophole.
I think these FACTS need to be pointed out over and over, albeit I think I’m preaching to the choir here. But what happened was ye olde older white male supremacist privilege writ large. One set of laws/treatment for them, and something very very different for minorities and dirty f*cking hippies.
As others have pointed out, the fact that Feds have done precious little to actually collect fees from Cliven Bundy and his criminal outfit speaks volumes. IF LE chooses to lightly tap these crooks on the wrist, rather than tossing the book at them (lawfully), then we can only expect more of same thing. And it will continue to escalate.
Bundy, Jr’s gang didn’t really even have something worth “protesting” for, other than that they believe that they’re entitled to free stuff. But it’s the blahs and the dirty messicans and the dreaded muzlinz who’re the lazy freeloaders with their hands out expecting something for nothing. Yeah… yeah… that’s the ticket. Rightwing projection writ large
Agree except for this:
While frustrating for observers, and particularly frustrating, inconvenient, etc. for those that live in the area, the delay in official actions were critical to minimize the loss of life and damage.
First, give the guys ample opportunity to get bored, etc. and go home.
Second, sympathetic observers get bored and are less likely to join the “cause” when nothing much seems to be happening by the authorities.
Third, wait long enough to be confident that other crazies have lost interest in the whole “stand-off” thing and aren’t on the way to join it.
Fourth, lull the occupiers into a state of complacency and they can do anything they want and get away with it.
Fifth, nab the leaders in as close to an everyday and extremely low level threat situation as possible. And the possibility of collateral damage was close to zero.
Without their leaders, those remaining at the Refuge will fold soon enough.
And sixth, let one of them martyr himself (with your help) so that the people who have finally lost interest immediately grab their guns, hop into their pickups and either head for Malheur (Which means “bad air” in French. Nice.) or go looking for another piece of bad air to go occupy.
Watch.
It’s going to happen.
AG
P.S. Do not overestimate what we laughingly refer to as “law enforcement” in the boonies, Marie. Someone I know well is now a highly placed police officer in a rural area of this country. His tales of police incompetence…including so-called “sheriffs,” who are usually just politicians w/a gun, and local state police as well…are funny in a horrifying sort of way. It appears to me that most of the cops he supervises were too damned dumb to get away with being criminals, so they joined the police force instead.
The attention span, of even crazies, for one dead guy that accomplished nothing as he went down, is about the time it takes to get him in the ground or cremated.
Have to be a bit larger than that in life for others to seek revenge in the name of the dead guy.
Who is John Galt?
A make-believe character by a very bad writer.
Why do you ask?
AG
“Malheur” does not mean “bad air”. It means “misfortune”.
Ahhh…I knew I should have paid better attention in high school french class.
OK…redo:
AG
Yes “mal aria” means bad air. Wrong language.
Aside from the opportunity to capture a lot of the leaders, the calls for reinforcements were actually drawing some people to the standoff and that increased the pressure. So I dont think the boredom idea was too successful.
Since this story hit, how many black men have been shot by police without the story being nationally covered? Finicum had publicly stated his desire for a “death-by-cop”.
Finicum also had many ample opportunities to leave without anything happening to him. He made a choice to have an armed stand off, as opposed to many black males, who aren’t doing anything wrong and don’t have guns.
Making these guys into martyrs is seriously wrong. They aren’t.
Now stories are surfacing that they are requesting that other wackos in some self-defence network come to their aid. If that happens, and if the Feds allow it, we are well and truly fucked. Because this shit, once it gets loose, is very hard to re-bottle.
So, the next 48 hours are going to be very interesting. I sure hope they find a way to cut the power. Of course, the jerks can then burn down the station, and come out having fucked us over.
Letting it go this long was a mistake, I believe.
Letting it go AT FIRST was perhaps ok, but the longer this went on, the dumber it got. Citizens in the surrounding areas, including the Native Americans, made it very clear that they disagreed and wanted them gone.
Permitting this gang of thugs to stay for so long, go in and out of town willfully and at random, go shopping, steal govt property, destroy land, etc, is unconscionable. Why LE thought this was the right solution – over time – is way beyond me.
Sure give them a week or so to do their “protest,” then attempt to get them to go peacefully, if possible. But don’t permit them to roam around the countryside and hold news conferences, etc. Really, that was just stupid. And now the chickens have come home to roost.
I’d love to think this is the end to this foolish situation, but I have concern that it probably isn’t.
And why has Bundy not been arrested for non-payment of what is reported to be $1,000,000+ in grazing fees? Others are watching, and have started to not pay their fees.
This is what I don’t understand about the Cliven Bundy situation. So he wants to gather a posse and avoid going to jail? Ok. Then why haven’t we locked him out of the US economy? Frozen his assets. Impounded any cattle he sells so no one is willing to do business with him, and if they try to get around it and are found, haul THEM into jail or levy heavy fines on them?
Maybe he can ride it out for years on charity smuggled in, but what happens when he passes away? His offspring can continue to occupy the land in the same way until they run out of outside support or get tired of it all. It would at least show others that while if you can avoid going to jail with enough gun toting idiots supporting you, the consequences are still really bad. I totally agree that the response to Cliven Bundy that has been the true disaster.
Finicum’s death gives me no joy, and I don’t know if the police response was reasonable; as many have mentioned, it still sounds more careful and professional than many law enforcement encounters with black people. But allowing these guys to run around waving their guns, threatening public officials and their families, and basically demonstrating that if you add violent threats and guns to your protest, you get treated with more respect has its own toxic consequences. I haven’t been calling for law enforcement to “bring the hammer down”, but I have been frustrated with the apparent impunity with which these guys can threaten people. Five year old children in Harney Country are afraid of being shot. If it was just a sit-in protest, that’s one thing, but the repeated threats of violence (while stroking their death penises) are just not acceptable. That’s a form of terrorism, and it cannot be tolerated.
The right balance is difficult, but I think not letting these guys come and go as they please and getting care packages is a good approach, especially after already showing so much restraint (to the point of seeming detached).
totally disagree. the occupiers arrived there, they claimed, in support of a local resident. LE allowed enough time to make clear that the local residents didn’t want them. if they’d shut them down right away, similar groups in the network would have tried the same thing elsewhere to create confrontation on their issues. see my comment below. everyone seems to think this is Cleveland or OWS in lower manhattan. there’s a large scale context involved and presumably most to the le and blm are local residents and know their context
The FBI has set up a cordon around the site. There will be no more snack runs, but I’ve heard that they still have 500 pounds of potatoes.
Are they planning to cook vodka?
No way the Feds are allowing that.
If you want to know what’s happening there and who the players are, a good resource is JJ MacNab on Twitter. She’s been following these guys for years, and is writing a book (due in the Spring) about the militia movement in the US. Her Twitter feed is fascinating. She has good sources.
https://twitter.com/jjmacnab
There was some faulty setting of expectations from the beginning in which the county sheriff acted as the good cop to allow the intimidation of carrying arms to work the magic of intimidation. That led the leaders to think they had the run of the region if not the state. They miscalculated that the the patience of the Feds was not unlimited.
They were stopped at a traffic stop. It seems like Finicum thought he could avoid the traffic stop by going to see the county sheriff. I’m not sure that that was how the officers there were trained to respond to suspects (how they assert a violation of the law) who are fleeing, which is the generous way of putting what happened. The folks who allowed the arrest kept their cool and depended on their attorneys to come in.
It’s kind of hard to take seriously guys whose beef with a federal government that comes close to allowing them to use federal property for there own private profit but nonetheless insists on grassland loading that will ensure that these guys can live off the land that they have for some time and not overgraze it. And not think that the other federal land is there when they do overgraze it or hit an exceptionally dry year. That’s just welfare with chaps and a ten-gallon hat.
In my opinion, actions might have gotten misinterpreted from an assumption of too much freedom just because they were packing weapons.
But it is hard to tell from the outside whether this is a protest or a revolt or just how serious the folks there are about the issue as opposed to the drama.
Protests are like that. That’s why normal political processes, instead of processes wrapped in corruption tend to work better for administering countries. One wonders what was going on at the BLM when these folks were happier.
What’s been missing from the coverage of the Bundy gang was their radical Mormonist religion. Early on Ammon Bundy said, in reply to a question that the Native Americans had given up their claim to the lands. No one asked why. This:
In 34AD Jesus came down off the cross (he did not die there), came to America and spread Christianity among the Native Americans. But they strayed from the true faith. That’s why Native Americans lost claim to the land. They weren’t good Mormons prior to Joseph Smith inventing Mormonism.
When you are dealing with God and guns the outcome is generally poor.
It’s kind of hard to prevent suicide by cop if you’re waving a gun.
Still, everyone wants to see any videos at the scene.
They should have been arrested immediately. And if they were all big and bad and opened fire on the federal law enforcement……They should have been mowed down.
If that had been BLM taking over a local Park District with no weapons, there would be body bags lining the street.
The folks who were arrested are now cooling their heels in the Multnomah County jail in Portland a few miles from where I live. It would not be incorrect to say that they were lulled into complacency. These doofuses were headed to a meeting in John Day, another eastern Oregon town, when arrested. Pretty clearly law enforcement was in fact tracking them and took the opportunity to act.
Booman, this was a totally reasonable action by law enforcement, led by the FBI. Our governor here in Oregon had been asking the feds to do something. So had the sheriff. And the local population was fed up with the militia folks, who had been swaggering around and even doing surveillance of the cops! The Harney County sheriff issued a statement to that effect last week.
And yes, it is really too bad that one of the militia fools got himself killed. I hope the cops have video.
And as of Wednesday night, all but a handful of the militia have in fact left the Malheur Wildlife Refuge.
I’m really disappointed to read the violent fantasies by one commenter here.
The criminal complaint in federal court
Getting winged put some sense in his sorry ass?
JUST IN: Ammon Bundy tells Oregon
occupiers to stand down and go home!
Statement from Oregon governor Kate Brown. She describes her motivations in asking the feds to act against an armed gang intimidating the people of the town of Burns.
Sure I must be reading this post wrong, BooMan, but it’s just wierd. These guys went in to public lands and took it over by force with guns and malevolent intent.
Repeat: they took it over by force with deadly weapons against the law. They were deadly, armed criminals the moment they took it over.
How is it it “two wrongs” for Federal law enforcement to react immediately to put them down? Implied comparisons to police shooting unarmed kids in cities or the (unarmed, peaceful) Occupy movements across the country a few years back are ridiculous. How does the dictum “two wrongs don’t make a right” apply here in any way?
These guys should have been taken out or put down the day after they invaded public lands at gunpoint and took it over. And if that means war against the armed militias hiding out throughout the deep south and northwest, then lets have it. These guys are the real terrorists among us and they’ve been terrorizing us across the country for over thirty years now. They are the enforcers of the religious right and the super-rich, and they’ve made this country a much more dangerous place to live for all of the rest of us.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/09/18/author-of-dhs-extremism-report-maligned-by-righ/189952
Back in 2009, the Dept of Homeland Security issued a report about the threats posed by rightwing extremists, such as these citizens militias and so forth. The report was written while GW Bush was President, but the reaction from so-called “conservatives” was immediate and predictable: how DARE anyone question these white supremacist males toting guns and advocating violence (and implementing it, as well)??
So when Obama became POTUS and appointed Janet Napolitano head of DHS, she pretty much deep-sixed the report. And then everyone was just supposed to STFU and fahgedaboudit.
Some people criticize the Southern Poverty Law Center, but they’ve been following and identifying these rightwing hate groups for years. But some say that it’s wrong for them to do that. Why? No one else appears to be.
And why is that? More and more, I’m inclined to agree with your premise:
“They are the enforcers of the religious right and the super-rich, and they’ve made this country a much more dangerous place to live for all of the rest of us.”
Apparently there is evidence – but I haven’t searched it out, so don’t know for sure – that the Koch brothers have been funding at least the initial group who took over these federal buildings on federal land armed to the teeth with lots of guns and threatening violence.
I’m not in favor of Ruby Ridge/Waco style of “shoot outs at the OK corral” methods to deal with these criminal miscreants. But I see them as criminals. They are not peacefully occupying public buildings to make demands/statements, which I feel is our right as citizens. Rather, they are heavily armed thugs demanding that the government give them free stuff.
Whatever. It’s not surprise to me that the ever incompetent FBI has no real plan to deal with these thugs in some sort of rational way. That’s what our tax dollars “buy” – incompetents at the Alphabets who sit around twiddling their thumbs hoping these gun fetishists will just “go away.” Good luck with that, and good luck to us all.
Again, why can’t the govt do something more pro-active in recovering OUR fees from Bundy, Sr, who has been breaking the law, apparently for decades? Why can’t their be liens on his property or garnishments or similar? I’m not sure what legal remedies are available, but I feel pretty certain that something could be done. Yet again, the feds – this time in the guise of the IRS – sits around twiddling its thumbs waiting for Bundy, Sr to “do something.”
Here’s a clue: these wait and see strategies ain’t working. Time for some different sort of action to take place.
The only thing I regret is the PR value they get from it.
I’m really glad that law enforcement finally acted to seize the ringleaders, but holy cow, it’s more than a bit disturbing to see commenters treating a police action as some sort of frigging blood sport.
“…it’s more than a bit disturbing to see commenters treating a police action as some sort of frigging blood sport.”
Not sure what you’re talking about. Care to clarify?
Four groups involved in the situation: local residents, local law enforcement, fed employees, and the occupiers. the first three groups are overlapping with personal ties that go way back – the fed employees are local residents, so is local le, I include the paiutes among local residents. the refuge occupiers are outsiders. now, how to manage the dynamic without loss of life? the occupiers tried for weeks to gain local support, and failed.
Cross-posted from my diary – Oregon Standoff: Finicum Preferred Death Above Arrest.
The last four at the refuge are holding out. But they’ll surrender or try to make a break for it. But they can’t get far.
They didn’t leave when they had the chance. Now they can be arrested.