I used to play games like this too, but I quit SCA after my sophomore year.
The SCA tried to take over national forests? I thought they were LARPing.
That's what they wanted you to think.
This seemed pretty inevitable to me, after they did the same kind of thing at the Bundy ranch and didn't suffer any consequences (and even came away thinking they'd won an important battle against the federal government).
The feds seem in a bind here--it's difficult to handle this in a way that doesn't lead to a massacre or encourage similar acts (either by cracking down too hard, or not hard enough).
The glaring contrast between this and Tamir Rice's shooting has been, correctly, frequently pointed out.
Also: not to justify scumbag behavior of any sorts, but the inciting incident does sound a little shitty. Kinda surprised you can do time, finish your sentence, then have an appellate court said the first court misruled and you need to go back for more. While that's not double jeopardy, it's uncomfortably close to it.
Ranchers use Fed lands to graze cattle. Sometimes invasive grasses (juniper) can ruin feed lands. Standard procedure to set fires to burn out bad grass, but dangerous and illegal. Hammonds got warned a couple times, then arrested. Did some time, but then got resentenced. Details are sketchy.
And then instead of plain arson, they got charged under Federal Anti-Terrorism acts, with mandatory no-parole 5 year terms for 70-yr-old.
There is other stuff, ranchers vs BLM.
6: Ha. This is just what the guy with the John Wayne-backed-by-American-flag pic is arguing in a friend's FB feed! I'm no fan of mandatory minimums, but you kind of have to expect it to get overturned when a lower court rules that way.
The misruling seems to have largely been a matter of ignoring a mandatory minimum sentence, so it's hard to argue that they were wrong as far as that goes.
The longer the story* about the case the less sympathetic the Hammonds seem to me, as well. It sounds like a particularly assholish ranchers V. basically everyone else type of conflict, where things escalated to a dangerous level and finally the courts got involved.
*Multiple incidents with warnings, setting fires behind firefighting camps, all sorts of sketchy confrontations with hunters and/or poaching deer themselves,
5. I think the closest thing to an easy/safe solution would be what I assumed the Federal government was doing with the Bundy ranch incident: just casually wait until they all get bored posing and go home and then show up at their houses a few months later and arrest them. But they never did the second part and I have no idea what they were thinking overall.
I hope nobody gets shot, but I also hope that, unlike in the previous Bundy incident, white trash peckerwood dipshits who point firearms at agents of the U.S. government get busted.
I looked it up in more detail - just because he was sentenced with reference to a provision of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act doesn't mean he was charged with terrorism - he was convicted of federal arson, and that crime had a significant minimum sentence which the Act somewhat increased. (I'm eager for the Bundyites to start assailing mandatory minimum sentencing.)
8: Link skips over some important points, I think.
There is a difference between setting a grass fire on open Oregon range and say, setting the White House on fire that is conflated as terrorism under "arson on Federal property." The law was more likely aimed at the latter.
Whatever, I didn't expect anything as close to a sane fair discussion here as we would get in an urban cop shooting. We love or hate the cops depending on who they are targetting, just like our enemies do.
Ammon Bundy said the goal is to turn over federal land to local ranchers, loggers and miners. He said he met with 10 or so residents in Burns on Friday to try to recruit them, but they declined.
Ha, figured that'd put me in with the wrong sort of bedfellows. So maybe my feeling is this: it was right to correct the misruling and for them to serve the full term (I mean, I would expect that if, say, this was a civil rights case and a racist local judge had handed out a grossly short sentence), but couldn't it have been done before they served their sentence? Still seems cruel.
The Hammonds do sound awful. Arson, especially in the grazing backcountry, seems like a weird thing, more like malevolent negligence (if that's even a coherent term?): in these cases it doesn't sound like there was much destruction of property or any injury, but there was the potential for a catastrophe and so it's prudent to have fierce penalties to prevent it from happening. And they did it multiple times, jeez.
It's not so much malevolent negligence, but just old school practices from back when nobody cared about nature. To use an analogy that should be banned under federal statute, it seems to me like when a factory dumps pollution in the river because that's what they've always done and the new EPA rules are the problem.
Plus, these guys owned 12,000 acres. Maybe it's mortgaged to the max, but maybe they figured they were too rich to go to prison.
This part is pretty great, though:
An attorney for Steve Hammond said in a court filing that his actions "arose out of his belief that there was something wrong with a system that authorized commercial hunting of wildlife that temporarily wandered onto barren public land from private land lush with forage."
Sentencing arsonists under an anti-terror statute is bullshit, though it is somewhat satisfying that a measure meant to target EarthFirst! type environmental activism is falling on the shoulders of ranchers, who were a lobby pushing for that type of law to begin with.
Although it's fun to imagine the comeuppance of these sovereign citizens being aggressively treated by federal agents, obviously the unconscionability lies in the disparity of treatment per dal in 5. (I'm reading federales tread lightly in these cases because they don't want another Branch Davidians incident; if only there was similar effort to avoid another Michael Brown incident.)
16: But throw in that there's other people's property involved--even if you don't respect nature, you probably respect property rights, right? Oh, right--feds.
17: Even out there, that's a lot of land. Zillow isn't much help here, but I found a 5.5k acre lot in Eastern Washington for $2.2 million.
As for the guys in the building, how much food is in a wildlife refuge headquarters? Just starve them out. Turning of the water probably won't help because Oregon water comes from the sky for free.
Good point -- why didn't the commentariat call for the arrests of Tamir Rice for felonious pretend-play or John Crawford for malicious shopping? White liberal hypocrisy in the only answer.
Those were Hammond's wild animals!
I thought InGen got a patent on the genome?
if only there was similar effort to avoid another Michael Brown incident.
Yes. While I completely agree with the message, it is a little--disconcerting? weird?--to see people practically calling for these guys to all be shot up right now, under the banner of consistency. I don't think the situation calls for that yet, and we should obtain consistency by having law enforcement being just towards people of color. But that die has already long been cast.
Would we know that this group had taken up residence in the building if they hadn't staged an elaborate rally and pretty much asked people to follow and watch?
The #YallQaeda hashtag gives me hope for humanity.
Even though y'all isn't really a westernerism.
Ah, according to my determined Twitter scrolling, it started here and was about college football in the South.
College football gives hope for humanity and scholarships.
I'm not rooting for a bloodbath. But really every single person who committed a crime in connected with the Bundy stand-off needs to be arrested now, and these people need to understand they are heading for prison as well.
Prison is kind of a waste of money for many people. If convicted, they should be sentenced to study Constitutional Law until they stop claiming that everything they do DEFENDS THE CONSTITUTION.
In what universe is a five year sentence for clearly deliberate arson (the absolute minimum!) constitutionally disproportionate? The only possible perception of unfairness -- that they served some time and had to go back to prison -- was caused by a bizarre ruling by the original District Court judge. The idea that this is even close to a federal overreach that people should be handwringing over is so so stupid.
This probably wouldn't be a bad time for the Federal government to show up at the Bundy ranch with a bunch of arrest warrants and whatever equipment is involved in seizing cattle.
I'm in a bloodthirsty mood this morning, but fuck this. They're terrorists, and if they weren't white men, we'd have droned the shit out of them. If they were black men, we would have shot them if they so much looked like they were causing trouble for the feds. Give them three chances to surrender, then mow them down.
They are indeed terrorists but the sentiment in 35 is such preening bullshit. If they were black or muslim or whatever else and took over a remote outpost in the woods, then announced that they were armed and were going to occupy the site until someone arrested them, the Feds and the local cops would behave in exactly the same way -- surround, try to de-escalate, don't intervene unless there's an immediate threat of violence and, if there is, intervene with force.
I don't give a fuck. We already did that with the last stand-off, and it's just empowered them. Until there are casualties on the rancher side, heavily armed white supremacist dickwads are going to think they own the West and do whatever the hell they want. We'll just hold our breath until they finally murder a forest ranger or BLM worker.
36 The last step in that has to be arrest. Failure to arrest the last batch of whackos just empowers the next batch. Because they use the lack of arrest as a sign that their legal arguments have some kind of merit.
Obama should just make a public announcement proposing a ridiculously severe gun control program and thanking them for their service to the federal government of the United States of America in making it possible.
38
We need arrest, and we need forcible arrest with the possibility of casualties if they don't comply. Like I said, give them three chances, then call in the Oregon national guard to take them out. We bombed out a neighborhood in Philly for resisting arrest. Here some tanks might do the job.
I don't actually think using the horrible, tragic response to MOVE should be a blueprint for anything.
We certainly don't need another Ruby Ridge or Waco and the consequent Oklahoma City blowback by storming in and shooting these fools.
They definitely need to be arrested, after the situation has calmed down. What Charley said in 38 and 31.
I was only able to watch the first 2.5 minutes of this video, but it comes off like the testimony of an incipient suicide bomber.
Right. I was thinking of responding to 24 with "No one's actually calling for these guys to be shot up; we just want them arrested in the way that other violent criminals should be arrested, with minimal necessary force." But with Buttercup actually calling for violence, I can't really say that any more.
No one should be calling for more than the minimal necessary use of force; it's just that 'minimal necessary' should include enforcing the law, rather than letting these nitwits set fire to whatever they feel like.
I'm trying to figure out if an intolerance for tongue-and-cheek violent hyperbole is a gendered thing or simply a tone issue with written comments.
I think it's literally the issue dalriata raised in 24 -- that this is a bad time to be advocating law enforcement violence, even hyperbolically. Partially because it doesn't work all that well as hyperbole when it's the sort of thing that really does happen all the time.
(That is, I'm unfortunately prone to violent rhetoric as tongue-in-cheek hyperbole myself, but it works for me in contexts where actual violence is thoroughly improbable. Where real people really injuring or killing each other is genuinely something that might happen, advocating it clangs for me.)
51
Except it doesn't happen with heavily armed homicidal white supremacists in the West. Part of that is a calculation (not wanting to piss them off more), part of it is that law enforcement shares some of the core values, and a big part of it is we're willing to see white males as humans with complex motivations in a way we're not for other people. That we use disproportionate force with other groups but not angry white men just highlights this disparity even more.
Sure, in the abstract. But if you're talking about evening out the disparity, when it's a disparity that involves for real killing people that there's no need to kill, I get uncomfortable with rhetoric that even jokingly argues for making it fair by killing more people indiscriminately rather than the reverse. I mean, you can use rhetoric that makes me uncomfortable, lots of people do. But that's where the twitchy response comes from.
"The jury convicted both of the Hammonds of using fire to destroy federal property for a 2001 arson known as the Hardie-Hammond Fire, located in the Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Area. Witnesses at trial, including a relative of the Hammonds, testified the arson occurred shortly after Steven Hammond and his hunting party illegally slaughtered several deer on BLM property. Jurors were told that Steven Hammond handed out "Strike Anywhere" matches with instructions that they be lit and dropped on the ground because they were going to "light up the whole country on fire." One witness testified that he barely escaped the eight to ten foot high flames caused by the arson. The fire consumed 139 acres of public land and destroyed all evidence of the game violations. After committing the arson, Steven Hammond called the BLM office in Burns, Oregon and claimed the fire was started on Hammond property to burn off invasive species and had inadvertently burned onto public lands. Dwight and Steven Hammond told one of their relatives to keep his mouth shut and that nobody needed to know about the fire."
Also worth noting that the people charged reported to jail already and have said that neither Ammon Bundy nor any of the other wackjobs out there speak for them in any way.
Sure, but if white supremacist militiamen want to commit suicide by cop, I am not going to mourn the loss of their lives, and I'm not going to advocate not following protocol for humanitarian reasons. Maybe this is where I am more bloodthirsty, but I value the lives of law enforcement over white power terrorists. These people have chosen of their free will to to seize federal land with weapons and threaten the lives of others. One of the possible outcomes of that choice is death, and the only reason the feds should try to minimize bloodshed is for strategic reasons.
Turning of the water probably won't help because Oregon water comes from the sky for free.
Not out in Burns it doesn't. At least, not very much. Eastern Oregon is pretty dry and sage brushy.
Shorter me: If white supremacist terrorist groups want to commit terror, the only calculation should be how to end their terrorist threat permanently.
One of the possible outcomes of that choice is death, and the only reason the feds should try to minimize bloodshed is for strategic reasons.
Okay, now this doesn't sound like hyperbole, and I do strongly disagree with it. The reason the feds should minimize bloodshed is that law enforcement is always supposed to minimize bloodshed to the extent compatible with keeping the rest of the public safe. Use of force should be applied evenhandedly, sure. But I'm really committed to 'evenhandedly' meaning that force is applied minimally against everyone, as opposed to unnecessarily killing people regardless of their ethnicity.
And 'minimally against everyone' includes 'minimally against people who are genuinely violent criminals'. Force is necessary sometimes to protect the public and for law enforcement to protect themselves, but that doesn't make it okay to use force indiscriminately just because the targets are criminals. Punishment for crime happens after a trial. Everything before a trial should involve minimum necessary violence.
59
I don't disagree with that, but I think we have different ideas of what "minimal use of force" will be for public safety. I spent the entire 90s and early 2000s reading monthly anti-hate group reports on these militiamen in the NW, so I don't have any qualms that they are anything but violent white supremacist terrorist organizations whose end goal is to overthrow the federal government and murder ethnic minorities. 8 years of Obama seems to finally be pushing them over the edge into serious action.
Agree with 59 and 60. On the other hand (as I have said elsewhere), taking up arms against a government with history's largest military while stating "I would prefer to die a free man" does imply acceptance of certain inherent risks.
And yes, they should be arrested if they can be safely, but whether they'll cooperate is up to them.
I see the Lincoln-was-a-tyrant crowd is out at Unfogged.
I guess I'm generally with LB here too, but of someone is determined to commit suicide by cop, it's often the case that accommodating that wish is going to end up the minimal necessary force.
Avoiding arrest in the interest of avoiding bloodshed is less than minimally necessary.
Ninth Circuit decision, if anyone's interested: http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2014/02/07/12-30337.pdf
Nearly 2 years ago.
Also how about trying to avoid needlessly creating martyrs that boost recruitment for violent extremist movements. Have we learned nothing these past 15 years?
68
Which is why I said this:
Shorter me: If white supremacist terrorist groups want to commit terror, the only calculation should be how to end their terrorist threat permanently
Permanently doesn't mean the initial terrorists are dead, it means ending the conflict in a way that produces no further related acts of terrorism.
I don't disagree with that, but I think we have different ideas of what "minimal use of force" will be for public safety.
if white supremacist militiamen want to commit suicide by cop, I am not going to mourn the loss of their lives, and I'm not going to advocate not following protocol for humanitarian reasons.
68 gets it right. The most effective way to disarm such people -- so to speak -- is to render their histrionics pathetic. Starve 'em out. Let them pace around and pace around dramatically with no results whatsoever, until it becomes clear that they're unwanted drama queens. Contra 56, it does not appear, as far as I can tell, that they're actively threatening the lives of others. They're not pointing guns at hostages, say.
The linked post provides some background on the larger project in some parts of the west to transfer lands from the feds to the respective states.
68
On the flip side, these people don't have much support from the community, and how many young men actually want to die for the cause is unclear. No one in Burns wants to go near them with a 10 foot pole. Crushing them now could send a message that playing Civil War doesn't end well. Treating them with serious respect *also* risks giving them enough cache the can attract ne'er do wells from around the country.
I don't know, from a long-term perspective, what the best way to end this sort of terrorism is. Kid gloves didn't work, and just empowered them further. Harsh crackdown might risk creating martyrs, or it might eliminate the people actually willing to die over liberating a national park.
The thought does occur that, so far, these particular "white supremacist terrorists" have killed exactly zero people.
I don't have any qualms that they are anything but violent white supremacist terrorist organizations whose end goal is to overthrow the federal government and murder ethnic minorities
... but they just have a really, really poor work ethic? Certainly compared to Norwegian Nazis (either present-day Breivik types or the quislings of our grandparents' generation) their body count is pretty low.
Except it doesn't happen with heavily armed homicidal white supremacists in the West.
And if you look just a few inches further down, someone who actually can remember the 1990s writes
"We certainly don't need another Ruby Ridge or Waco".
If they were black or muslim or whatever else and took over a remote outpost in the woods, then announced that they were armed and were going to occupy the site until someone arrested them, the Feds and the local cops would behave in exactly the same way -- surround, try to de-escalate, don't intervene unless there's an immediate threat of violence and, if there is, intervene with force.
In fact, if they were black and Muslim and took over a remote outpost three blocks from the White House, then the Feds would indeed respond in exactly that way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Hanafi_Siege
I think the problem with the Bundy ranch thing was that they just let the people walk away and didn't do anything to them afterwards. It's pretty much the same individuals here, and they've clearly (possibly accurately) gotten the idea that they can strut around playing daring revolutionary without anything happening to them. If some of them want to board up the windows and hold out at the visitor's center I don't know if there's any real value to going in there (and probably ending up shooting them). But waiting around outside it and arresting anyone who leaves (individually) seems reasonable enough. Or they could have the townsfolk invite their leaders to a community meeting in a kind of maybe-we'll-support-you-here way* and then just have a bunch of federal marshalls waiting for them there, like those hilarious "You won free tickets to a football game!" things that the police occasionally do to get people with outstanding warrants to show up at the station.
*Also "BUNDY LED MILITIA ARRESTED AT PIZZA PARTY STING" would be an almost irresistible headline, I think, and would make them look like a bunch of clods.
74 is all very sensible. And I suppose if they all decide to march out together, then wait a couple of days and pick them up at home.
The Hammonds have a long and interesting history (via Edroso on the Twitters.)
56: The same old chickenhawk soup the right was slurping at Kent State almost fifty years ago? Looks as if that stuff never expires.
76 certainly is revealing. The longer article above mentions a previous issue but describes it in a way that makes it sound a lot less serious than that version does.
When I was referring to people calling for a violent state reaction in this situation, I meant on Twitter, but as you can see this is an opinion some hold, above and beyond the look-at-the-disparity-with-Tamir Rice/#BLM/police travesty-du-jour comments.
I agree with everything that LB said. We have both a strategic desire to not create new backlash incidents, and an ethical one to not kill people if it can be avoided, even if they're really horrible people like the Bundys. (Or the Hammonds, not that they're directly involved anymore.) And maybe it can't be avoided, but I doubt we're there yet. I like the "wait and arrest 'em later" solution many have said. But if we do get there, I hope that the agents/troops/whatever are fully decked out with cameras: the chronology of who shot when needs to be as clear as possible.
"I shot the sheriff,
Because of white supr-em-acy.
I shot the sheriff,
but I think it was in Constitution defense."
You have to practice saying "Constitution" very fast for that to scan.
Can't we just build a big wall around the building? Maybe with an opaque lid?
It'd be inhumane unless you remembered to poke some holes in the lid for air.
34 gets it right, and waiting them out is the right strategy, but I don't see any harm in letting them breathe tear gas in the meantime.
I like the idea in 82-83. If the white supremacists have violins, perhaps they can enchant all of Times Square with beautiful melodies.
Prince Albert never needed any air holes.
Just the one that was already there and the other to hold the chain.
Remember Ruby Ridge, sheet, I remember Huey Newton, Baader-Meinhof and AIM. Used to be a time when the "Left" wasn't limited to admiring and identifying with only broken bodies lying in blood.
Just got into a habit of not supporting or defending law enforcement and State violence not only because that weapon doesn't belong to me and is not to be trusted but because trying to be on the side of authority would change me in unwelcome ways.
Alienation is a commitment, a mission!
That doesn't mean the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but I don't have to go out of my way to pick a side.
Trying to alienate property from the public by threats of violence so that it can be used for private profit is something that I have no problem picking a side against.
You'll never get your Baader-Meinhof merit badge that way, Mobes.
And I only recently learned that "Soul on Ice" wasn't a skating show.
These guys are clearly trying to bait the authorities into a disproportionate response so they can look like the victims; most obviously, they deliberately chose to seize the refuge building on a day when they knew it would be closed and unoccupied. The other building they've talked about seizing (I'm not sure from the reports if they actually have) is a seasonal BLM firefighting station, also currently unoccupied. Patience seems like the right strategy to me.
89: Someone has arrived who can discuss a previous era of the Federal gov't appropriating common grazing lands for the use of private commercial gain. It isn't as if the Comanche and Sioux didn't have a personal interest in open range.
There is no doubt in my mind that commercial interests are driving the present Oregon controversy, and that the Feds are using power to serve a constituency.
Tourism? Pristine wilderness parks for turning the satoyama into a museum?
"Hammond" and "Bundy" sure don't seem very much like Dakota names or anything, but I could be wrong
I was thinking the authorities should set up some loudspeakers blaring gangsta rap at high volume, like they did with Noriega in Panama City back in '90. But that's probably not appropriate for a wildlife refuge.
Wildlife loves John Tesh. Just saying.
96: The metal dome will be soundproof. The sound system will play Peter, Paul, and Mary, interrupted five times a day by a call to prayer.
I hope they're at least jamming the wi-fi signal. Its going to get boring there right quick with nothing for those guys to do but sit around reading the Constitution.
So, what about Vanilla ISIS as a term?
Bonsaisue just told me about "heehawdists"
So join in the Online Army,
Snark is the weapon we bring
Though they may have won all the battles,
We had all the good zings.
Yokel Haram is also good. And a little more accurate: they're not southern, and they're insurgents, not terrorists (although they probably do associate with some likelys).
I like Mark Kleiman's charge of seditious conspiracy.
Yokel Haram does sound like a whiter shade of pale.
This was in my FB feed: http://www.hcn.org/issues/20/582 Charming.
People at the bar liked Vanilla ISIS. If you can't trust drunken smokers, the terrorists have won.
I recently thought the feds should have used drones to kill Bundy's cattle.
If the authorities do in fact cut off food and water supplies, these guys will up the ante by poaching the hell out of anything they can find to shoot, right? I assume they've got a full complement of survivalist gear in with the arsenal. It's an interesting quasi-hostage situation in that respect. How many violations of wildlife protection acts should you tolerate to avoid a shootout? Plenty, right?
The "Mormon extremist" reading.
I honestly don't know what the level of survival in the woods competence of this type of idiot would be expected to be: I'm sure they're hunters, but would it occur to them to kill and butcher an animal because they were hungry, as opposed to giving up because the snacks ran out? "Eat the entrails first, they're the best part" seems like it might be a bridge too far for this type.
I was sort of assuming the police wouldn't let them leave the building to hunt. A guy wandering by himself in the woods is easier to arrest than a guy holed up in a building with friends.
Come to think, what's the potential for trucking in bears? Lots of bears.
I'm sure nothing would excite them more than being able to post a social media picture of them eating a spotted owl.
If they're still on social media in the next few days, the feds have screwed up.
117: Probably true, but if that were the chosen escalation, they would make an awesome spectacle tramping out arm in arm, reciting the Constitution and/or scripture, on their way to shoot rapidly fleeing flocks of birds.
It's a common misconception that birds flee the Constitution because they are afraid of it. They are actually rushing out to spread the word to other birds.
The man identifying as Captain Moroni said he was inspired by the call, and that the inspiration was validated by God in the form of a flock of geese he saw flying.
GEESE! It is the geese!
I have held doubt about the geese ever since I heard this Frankie Lane song, which seriously, you should listen to. Men are helpless against geese flying overhead.
I vote for Vanilla Isis as well.
They're in a building and able to truck in supplies, since they're guarding the place with semi-automatic rifles. They probably do know how to hunt but have no reason to.
I'm also calling bullshit on them being not violent. "We're peaceful as long as we get everything we want, but the minute you try to evict us from the federal property we've seized we'll shoot you" is not being peaceful, it's getting your own way. Plenty of violent extremists aren't violent if people give in to their anti-social demands, but that doesn't mean we should capitulate to their threats simply to avoid violence.
125.last I think appears in most parenting advice books.
Somebody should price this out. If enough militia types go board themselves in the building, it might be cheaper to pay a few agents to keep them in check than to put all them in prison, let alone give them trials.
Heh. The fly paper theory in action.
125.last: no, sorry, you actually have to do violent things to count as being violent.
129.2: I'm not sure that works without a clearer definition of "do violent things". If the bank tellers cooperatively hand over the money and so don't get shot, does that make the armed bank robbers non-violent?
129.2: But armed robbery is, legally, a violent crime whether you hurt anybody or not.
Thank you, ajay, for giving me a reason to close the browser and go back to work. Sincerely.
Almost all of us have some circumstances under which we'd use violence. Not sure it's very helpful to say that makes us all violent people.
Almost all of us have some circumstances in which we'd help another person with their wounds, and indeed it isn't helpful to say we're all doctors. 135 is beneath you, ajay.
You break the analogy ban and I'm the one who's sunk to a new low?
Although a surprisingly large percentage of the people who comment here are, in some sense, doctors. You are, and in an even more strained sense I am. (Very peculiar marketing decision by law schools. "Sure, we'll call it a doctorate. Who's going to stop us?")
138 to 136.
To 135, I think plausibly threatening violence is enough to make you a violent person, and Vanilla Isis has certainly done that.
I didn't say you'd sunk to a new low.
And I don't think analogies are out of place. You can clearly be a violent person without constantly engaging in violence, and it clearly takes more than there being some threshold at which you'd engage in violence to be a violent person. The same applies to, say, "helpful". I think it's perfectly reasonable to call someone whose credible threats of violence are always heeded (and who therefore never actively engages in specific violent acts) violent, in a second-potentiality/first-actuality sort of way.
138.last - I'm pretty sure that's the origin of the MD too, so I guess there's some precedent for it. I have yet to see anything resembling a good justification for calling the law school version, though. At least the MD involves a lot more than three years of classes.
(Analogies are, of course, out of place here. It's like picnicking right next to a "Keep off the Grass" sign. People do it, but it's forbidden.)
(Damn. Screwed up again.)
142 is sort of like saying "ceci n'est pas une analogie."
Now would be an excellent time for arrests and prosecutions on any Bundy Ranch crimes for which the statute hasn't yet run and the prospective defendants can be picked up individually, starting with the Bundys' old man if possible.
I'm not seeing the incompatibility between making fun of these guys and recognizing them as a standard American problem. Is the issue that "Vanilla Isis" implies that they're foreign? Fine, call them the Mickey Mouse Klan.
Not fine with me. I really enjoy "Vanilla ISIS."
And really, nothing is more American than Vanilla Ice. It's hard to remember that far back, but didn't he actually wear some kind of red-white-and-blue weirdness at least sometime? I have an image of a patriotic looking jogging suit, but maybe I made it up.
He did wear that. While singing about shooting a 9mm. It's really about as American as pecan pie.
I think of pecan pie as a Texan thing, not an American thing.
147: Lots of Muslims don't best love any of Qaeda, Boko Haram, Isis, jihadi puns. (It seems.)
Via Saladin Ahmed on Twitter, for example: "Frothing racists with guns aren't 'American Taliban.' They're not 'white ISIS.' They've been around for centuries & they're 100% home-grown" or "The worst insult you can throw at extremists is to compare them to Muslims?"
But I did laugh a lot at "Four Loko Haram."
MC Hammer was as American as apple pie. Vanilla Ice wasn't quite that American.
151: Actually it's the state dessert of Oklahoma.
When I first became aware of Vanilla Ice, I had a dread he'd turn out to be Canadian. Ducked that one.
Would it comfort you to know that even if Vanilla Ice is American, there is a white Canadian reggae musician that calls himself Snow?
152/153: This has surprised me. These are groups that have been derided as un-Muslim, so I thought analogy to their names would be fair game. (With "jihad" as the exception, since that's a word meaningful to all Muslims--although if its meaning is being debased, that's mostly happening from within the community.)
I saw these puns not as claiming these American groups are not part of a long American tradition--at a minimum it's just so blindingly obvious that militias have been around a long time, you don't even have to get into the long history of white hegemonic violence---but more just insulting them by analogizing them to an enemy of similar or greater levels of extremism hated by both the speaker and the right-wing idiot. And by most Muslims, at that. For presumably two out of the three, those groups aren't hated because they're Muslims.
150: No, if he were a true American he'd have talked about the .45, not that Eurowimp 9mm.
Or you could call them "patriots," which is what the Southern Poverty Law center calls them.
It's how they distinguish American white supremacy from nei-nazism, as it differs somewhat in its ideology of hate.
Maybe it's been a light day for absurdity, but Ahmed's tweet is the most absurd comment I've read today. Are the members of Isis the paradigmatic example of Muslims now? Donald Trump couldn't have said it better.
109 is kinda all that needs to be said about #hashtagstrategy or #hashtagtactics for this incident. However, I'm grimly amused by the thought that these dudes' supporters must take the many #BLM comments as prima facie evidence of vast left-wing conspiracy.
Threatened violence isn't violence. Did they ever give someone a Nobel Prize for threatened chemistry?
Jacobin looks at the Bundys in Oregon Margaret Corvid
The improbable logic of many liberals is that state violence can be held to a moral rubric, that the deeply corrupt American state, bound to the functional psychopaths of the one percent who rule it, can be induced to be fair.It cannot. The current US state is racist and venal; it doesn't call the Oregon gunmen terrorists and doesn't mow them down because their occupation cannot threaten it even a fraction as much as Black Lives Matter actions have.
How we respond to those calling for blood in Oregon makes manifest the crucial dividing line between liberals and socialists.
A socialist approaches the state with critical caution.
But the Jacobin is naive.
The liberal really doesn't have to think the State is fair and can understand the State as corrupt, venal, and racist.
She just has to believe, that at least temporarily, that she can direct it, use it, manage it to destroy her enemies.
No idealism necessary. Always been so.
Arthur Chu does not approve.
Hasn't the clock run out on that guy yet?
Maybe leave a number we can call you at, Flip?
Cowliphate is one I just heard (subject to same Muslims in a box blah blah blah criticism)
I'm still unclear as to how many buildings these guys have taken over, and whether or not they're allowed to have people drop off supplies. Surely local law enforcement can prohibit car access/deliveries within a certain perimeter. Has this happened yet?
The NYT says the cops aren't making any effort to keep them from coming and going.
One interesting result of this situation is that it reveals how little understanding the national media has about public lands management in the West. All kinds of confusion of different agencies and types of land (mostly by bloggers etc. rather than journalists per se, admittedly).
I think they're trying to avoid giving them even the appearance of a siege.
175 strikes me as smart. Deprive them of any cause for drama and make them look like the ass clowns they are.
I'm not sure I agree all that much with 176. It feels a little bit too much like "let them invade Czechoslovakia so it doesn't look like we're at war."* Letting terrorists do whatever they want because they have weapons and have threatened to kill people and we don't want to make a fuss seems like a lack of strategy and a sign of weakness. They already showed they were ass clowns when they invaded and occupied federal property with assault rifles. What we need to do is enforce the law.
*Double apologies for the analogy and the Godwin
I think a lot of the calls to action aren't appreciating how far into the boonies that refuge is. Like, several hours west of Boise but another several hours east of Portland. That area is desolate as hell. It's a great spot to let Captain Moroni freeze his nuts off for a couple weeks.
Yeah, it's out in the middle of nowhere, but I think a lot of the people laughing about this don't realize how insane and dangerous these people are. The militiamen are part of a loose conglomeration of people who went nuts when Bush I declared a new world order (though they switch out the n for a j). The NW is filled with tons of insane radical anti-government* white supremacist nutjobs who are attracted to the low population density and relative whiteness of the region. It's not ok to set up a white power homeland in Malheur county forest simply because there aren't any people there.
*they were a step away from cracking when they thought government was just run by the Jews, but now that there's a black man in the white house, they've pretty much gone over the edge.
It's a great spot to let Captain Moroni freeze his nuts off for a couple weeks.
Yep. Enjoy the winter, you dumbasses. Highly recommended: Those Jamokes In Oregon Aren't Terrorists, They're Jamokes.
179: A common law enforcement mistake is to rush into a situation where time is on your side. These guys have holed up in a spot thirty miles from the closest town whose natives are clearly not fans. Daytime highs around there aren't even reaching freezing with it dipping back into the teens and single digits at night. They'll get worn down. The attention won't last. It'd be crazy to rush in there at the peak of media attention when they're all still fresh.
I've gotta agree with apo and gswift on this one. I don't know if the cops are right on the strategic approach, but tactically, leaving these guys alone right now and letting them wear themselves out from boredom seems to be working so far. They don't seem to have any local support whatsoever, and a big photogenic confrontation with the feds seems to be what they want, so depriving them of that will probably deflate their ambitions in the short term. Longer-term, the feds should of course do something so as not to embolden them further, and I'm not at all sure they will, but for now letting them stew seems fine.
So long as they all end up in jail, fine.
The link in 180 is indeed quite good.
158: Maybe "Heehawganah" would be better, if comparisons to Isis are offensive to Muslims? (we do really need a centralised list of who isn't a real Muslim one of these days, there seem to be so many of them.)
I don't see anything wrong with the idea that the federal government should stand back and let them freeze themselves half to death like a bunch of idiots in that refuge, but the fact that they're not even closing off exits and stuff* does seem worrying. It's one thing to (wisely) avoid charging in when time is on your side, but they don't seem to be doing anything at all right now. And that wouldn't be especially bad either if they didn't have a history of just letting these (genuinely very dangerous) groups do what they want for a while and then letting them walk away free from any consequences, but they do. It might be bad to create the impression of a siege by restricting access to the site, but at the end of the day you've got a bunch of armed people seizing a federal building and declaring that they won't leave until certain demands are met and, honestly, I think at that point the ship has sailed.
*They don't really even need to close them down entirely - it's probably better that the idiots in there stay fed so they don't start trying to shoot down whatever animals wander by. But a set of roadblocks where people going in or out can have their ID recorded and be asked questions like "are you aware that these people are committing real, serious, Federal prison charges?" and "you understand that there is such a thing as aiding and abetting right?"
I only just learned the Bundys are Mormon. As far as I can tell regular Mormons and not some conservative offshoot. Does the Mormon church have any clout here? Are they going to kick them out?
Why? Just because they're a large gathering of only men doesn't mean they're gay.
My favorite part of this so far is that Bundy (the son) had taken out a federal loan to support his business.
187: Probably won't kick them out, but there has been an official LDS Church message of disapproval.
185: I laughed. I am totally up for expanding this to other non-Muslim-related terrorist groups. Inbred Army Faction? (Of course, at some point it just nasty stereotyping of rural Americans, although I suppose that Rubicon's also been crossed...)
"Maybe "Heehawganah" would be better"
One lot are a bunch of heavily armed paranoid white guys who want to overthrow an inept and seriously flawed government in order to establish a monoracial homeland run under their set of politico-religious principles and kick out the swarthy Muslims because they think God told them to do so.
The other lot... but you're well ahead of me here.
Yeah, while letting them sit in the cold indefinitely seems perfectly reasonable, I am very confused by letting people drive supplies in and out. These people are criminals, and should ultimately be arrested, not allowed to wander around freely.
Tactically, what the police are doing makes sense. I think what galls people is that there don't seem to have been any consequences for Bundy and his cronies the last time they strutted around breaking the law and waving guns in people's faces. Waiting these clowns out is fine, but I agree with 183: are they at least going to be prosecuted when this blows over? One law for conservative white guys who play dress up with their guns and a different law for the rest of us doesn't seem right.
168: My thought was more along the lines of "Salon is still around?"
Mildly related, ISTR being told at great length that the RAF was the Red Army Fraction, not the Red Army Faction, because a Fraction is a component of an ideologically consistent overall movement defined merely by focus on a specific functional or geographic area (so the Partida Halfordista de Los Angeles is a Fraction of the overall Halfordismo movement, as is the All-Union Halfordismic Brotherhood of Amtrak Employees), whereas a Faction is a part of the overall movement that disagrees with the rest of it on ideological grounds, like the Thornist-Deviationist Faction who believe that, after Halfordismus is achieved, the Maximum Leader's female ninja bodyguards should wear one-pieces rather than bikinis.
the Thornist-Deviationist Faction who believe that, after Halfordismus is achieved, the Maximum Leader's female ninja bodyguards should wear one-pieces rather than bikinis.
Not spandex body suits?
Also, 195 is sensible - the SPLC is concerned about roughly the same issue, according to the NYT article.
Right. There's a huge difference between "There's no need to get pointlessly aggressive and start shooting if we don't have to," which I think is excellent policing, and "There's no reason to enforce the law against idiots occupying federal property with guns," which encourages idiots to keep doing this sort of thing until someone does get hurt.
196.last: To each according to her abilities, ajay.
186: It's the "Roach Motel" approach. Once enough of them have gathered in one place, a few Hellfires and "Someone was careless refueling their generator" takes care that group.
Yeah, it sounds like these guys can't see any way for themselves to lose -- they win if the authorities try to get them out, they win if the authorities do nothing. I'm not sure how that element of the delusion affects the calculus. The trick is to get them to declare an important victory while being led away in handcuffs, I suppose. (But they'll still grandstand to no end during the trial...)
I myself am skeptical that Timothy McVeigh would have led a peaceable life had it not been for Waco, but maybe I give him too much credit for ambition and drive there.
Developments:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/05/oregon-wildlife-militia-standoff-power-cut-off
A federal government official told the Guardian that authorities were planning on Monday to cut the power at the refuge.
"It's in the middle of nowhere," said the official, who is based in Washington, DC, and has knowledge of the planned response to the militia. "And it's flat-ass cold up there."
The official, who asked not to be named, said they were not privy to the FBI's plan of action. However, they said the US Park Service, which is leading the crisis management reaction to the occupation in liaison with the FBI, planned to cut the power to the building where the militiamen are spending their nights.
"After they shut off the power, they'll kill the phone service," the government official added. "Then they'll block all the roads so that all those guys have a long, lonely winter to think about what they've done."
Snowstorms are expected in the wilderness surrounding the refuge on Tuesday, which is some 30 miles from the town of Burns. At night, temperatures are forecast to plummet to -8C (18F).
Bundy has repeatedly said the group is prepared for the long-haul. However during a tour of the site on earlier in the day, the Guardian was shown a food storage room that did not look like it could sustain a dozen men for more than a few weeks.
It included a cardboard box of apples and oranges, a few dozen pots of instant ramen, 24 cans of chicken noodle soup, a similar number of cans of sweetcorn, peas, beans and chili, and 20 boxes of macaroni and cheese. There were also three sacks of potatoes, one bag of flour, another of rolled oats, boxes of raisins, a single bag of pretzels and one granola bar.
Message from the sheriff. Who knows, they seem to have been appealing to him personally before, so maybe it'll deflate a bit.
Yeah, it sounds like these guys can't see any way for themselves to lose -- they win if the authorities try to get them out, they win if the authorities do nothing. I'm not sure how that element of the delusion affects the calculus. The trick is to get them to declare an important victory while being led away in handcuffs, I suppose. (But they'll still grandstand to no end during the trial...)
I myself am skeptical that Timothy McVeigh would have led a peaceable life had it not been for Waco, but maybe I give him too much credit for ambition and drive there.
There were also three sacks of potatoes, one bag of flour, another of rolled oats, boxes of raisins, a single bag of pretzels and one granola bar.
Since they're all armed to the teeth, I'm picturing the mother of all Mexican standoffs when they're down to that last bag of pretzels (I'm sure manly men like these would rather starve than lower themselves to eating granola).
LISTER: We're going to die, aren't we? How much food is there?
RIMMER: There's half a bag of soggy smoky bacon crisps, a tin of mustard powder, a brown lemon, three water biscuits, two bottles of vinegar and a tube of Bonjella gum ointment.
LISTER: Gum ointment?
RIMMER: Yes, it was in the first-aid box. It's that minty flavour. It's quite nice.
LISTER: It's quite nice if you smear it on your mouth ulcer, but you can't sit down and eat it.
RIMMER: You may have to.
LISTER: That's it? There's nothing else?
RIMMER: Just a Pot Noodle. Oh, and I found a tin of dog food in the tool cupboard.
LISTER: (Sighs.) Well. Pretty obvious what gets eaten last. I can't stand Pot Noodles.
I'm kind of amazed the power and phones weren't already cut. I mean, why subsidise an armed occupation? I wouldn't put it beyond these bozos to be ringing up premium phone lines non-stop just to stick it to the man.
It sure looks like they're basking in the attention at the moment - the Bundy Ranch Facebook page says "navigate to the refuge and look for the media trucks".
210: They took over the refuge on Saturday - if the federal government ever accomplishes anything nonviolent in two business days I'd be amazed.
Well this is kind of violent, as in it's a response to an armed takeover of federal property.
Hey, wait a minute. This is a perfect time to finally go back take Cliven Bundy's cattle! All the bozos are 700 miles away!
"Then they'll block all the roads so that all those guys have a long, lonely winter to think about what they've done."
It's too much to hope for that they mean this literally, and that their plan is just to barricade the whole thing and refuse to let anyone leave until April isn't it.
At night, temperatures are forecast to plummet to -8C (18F).
Which is warmer than it was here today at noon.
I don't know how many of these guys went to college, but they're eating like freshmen now.
go back take Cliven Bundy's cattle!
I thought of that too.
How long before the snacks run out and they get all Donner party in there?
Seriously? Not long. I am real good at estimating food quantities for groups. Fifteen people? Who are rationing from the start? Maybe a week and half.
Are Mormons allowed to consume long pig? How about under duress? I think Halford or gswift would know.
Since eating birds is now on-topic: I had dinner last night with a guy who made the claim that, in the US, it's illegal to serve wild game in a restaurant, but not so in France. Thus, it's common in France to see wild birds (duck, pheasant, etc.) on a restaurant menu, and if it says something like canard sauvage that means the bird was hunted and then sold to a butcher. Whereas duck on the menu is the US is farm-raised duck.
I have no idea if any of that is true, but it was an interesting conversation.
220: come on, humans can survive for, what, three weeks on no food at all? and these guys have plenty of stored calories.
I have no idea, but I do know that in at least some places you can donate a deer that you shot to a food pantry.
Unless access is controlled the wait them out strategy is hopeless. These guys don't seem to have anything better to do and they can just take turns using the building as their own private vacation home.
Eh. Gswift says it is a several hour drive from the closest big city. Enthusiasm for that will wane.
226 The Bundy brothers, at least, grew up in rural Nevada. The guy from Anaconda is from Anaconda -- these guys aren't going to be missing city lights.
Maybe issue citations, and send an unarmed federal marshal to serve each a summons requiring them to appear in federal court.
They won't be missing city lights, but they won't have a whole lot of replacements willing to stock the place and maintain the occupation either.
I would really to see Married With Children rebooted with this version of a Bundy clan.
There's a Safeway in Burns, a mere 40 minutes away, and a Walmart in Bend, 3 hours. They're probably fine for supplies as long as they can come and go.
Pick up a generator, fuel, restock cheetos, etc.
Safeway is a union shop (or was in Nebraska in the 70s). They probably don't want to go there.
And they aren't welcome in Burns anymore.
Being able to come and go makes waiting them out completely ineffective.
[A]fter Halfordismus is achieved, the Maximum Leader's female ninja bodyguards should wear one-pieces rather than bikinis.
There shall be no one-piece nonsense under the Flip-Order! No maillots, no racerbacks, no "full coverage for your problem areas," for there shall be no problem areas! All areas shall be unproblematic! [reclines in gilded chaise, demands grapes]
[reclines in gilded chaise, demands grapesalmonds]
222: Not allowed to sell wild-caught game in the US. Restaurants could probably give it away. Venison and bison are also farm-raised when you get them in the US or Canada.
Why do we do this? Because market hunting made or almost made a lot of species extinct in North America. You used to be able to get Eskimo Curlew pie in NYC/Chicago/Boston restaurants. I know someone who was working on estimating historic wild bird populations based on hotel restaurant menus.
Why doesn't France do this? Because they killed off most of the vulnerable species hundreds of years ago and now they're eating species that are generally resilient. But there's a reason people eat ortolan with masks on.
But there's a reason people eat ortolan with masks on.
I like to think it's because the chef is mocking the gourmands and it's actually snickers bar swith crushed toothpicks smashed inside.
Round butts keep you more warm if seated on something cold. Also, Sir Mix A Lot gets sprung. Science has yet to form a conclusion about the thermodynamics of that.
238 - A lot of hunters give away meat to local foodbanks (in states where that's allowed at least - I think it's still banned in Minnesota), so that supports the idea that it's legal for places that serve food to give it to people for free even if they can't sell it to them.
I checked and it's still fine in MN. There was a big freakout a few years ago when it turned out that there was a lot more lead in venison than they expected and some rules changes happened but it looks like everyone has moved on since then. ('More' here means 'you get a bunch of lead dust when the bullets fragment and it spreads farther as well so it's not just pieces of lead that you can spit out after you bite on them.')
Hunter donations are great. I thought there were some restrictions because of non-certified butchering? At least I know some culled deer* couldn't be donated to homeless folks in California for that reason. Which is such a waste. I hope at least they went to a zoo.
*the presentation I watched was actually about trying to convince people that a) introduced deer at Point Reyes were bad; and b) that the deer should be culled rather than slowly not-breed to extinction using $$$ birth control.
And I just learned that California condor populations are not recovering because of lead in carcasses! But hunters love their lead (although it's been banned in waterfowl shot for decades [frowny emoji]).
Lead is better for bullets. Denser and softer (so less wear on the barrel) than the alternatives.
Wasn't lead banned long ago for war?
I believe lead is better for barrels but that's not what I heard from people trying to change hunter behaviours. Hunters prefer lead because it's heavy and more accurate. They're selling the steel bullets on being the sort used to hunt big game in Africa so hunters should keep their accuracy.
I heard the "better for barrels" about shotguns, back in the day when they were starting to talk about banning it from waterfowl hunting. But I think "denser" covers the same ground as "heavy and more accurate."
248: I think you're thinking of dum-dum bullets, not just lead ones. The kind of bullet you use to hunt a deer (because you want to kill it instead of wounding it) would often be illegal in war.
They make "wad cutter" bullets, but those turned out to not be what I thought they were.
Oh, I was thinking of non-jacketed lead-ball bullets that just go splat without any deliberate engineering along those lines, but I'm not seeing that in the summaries of the relevant conventions; maybe those were abandoned for other reasons. (Does "steel bullet" conventionally mean steel all the way through?)
I've always thought it was just a steel jacket and then you get shot by young Vincent D'Onofrio.
245: What I did learn was that the rule is that hunters in MN are supposed to take the carcass directly to one of the licensed processors, without any steps in between, if they want to donate. So the butchering, checking for lead, etc. happens there and there isn't a problem with random pieces of meat just showing up with who knows what in them. I don't know what the hunters get to keep though if they do that - maybe they get to pick out some of the meat to be reserved for them after processing that doesn't get sent down the line?
They probably get the antlers. The poor don't have the right enzymes to digest antlers.
247. Hear, hear!
We've got way too many deer and not enough hunters. This early winter has been so mild the deer aren't doing anything but the deer equivalent of relaxing on a couch and eating grapes ... acorns, anyway. In past years we've gotten some very nice venison fillets, sausage, and chili. This year? Zero deer taken, which I guess is good in some way ... until the ice weasels come.
Also mild weather does nothing against the deer ticks or winter moths: "Can you say 'frass'?"
Steel is generally not used as bullet material. Some military rounds have a steel core inside the lead. Typical full metal jacket rounds are lead with a copper jacket. Your big game bullets for Africa are going to be either a ginormous lead alloy solid or maybe some type of jacketed lead round with an exposed nose for controlled expansion. Also a common design in regular hunting rounds, the African ones are just much bigger and geared towards max penetration. Hornady I believe still has a big game round that's lead core with a steel jacket with the steel jacket clad in copper to spare the barrel.
When going lead free on a regular hunting round you're usually going with some kind of copper solid like the ones made by Barnes or Hornady.
Kate Beckinsale and the Lone Ranger use silver.
Why do we do this? Because market hunting made or almost made a lot of species extinct in North America
In the UK they just have restrictions on which species you can sell. So you can buy wild venison or farmed venison perfectly legally, or any other animal on the list of game, but you wouldn't be allowed to buy (for example) osprey, or hoopoe.
Hoopoe stinks to high heaven. Eating it sounds like it would be its own punishment.
It's listed as one of the animals in league with the Devil in "The Name of the Rose" and I always wondered why. That must be it.
It is listed amonh the unclean birds in Deuteronomy but mentioned with positive associations twice in the Qur'an. It famously lines its nest with shit and should therefore be known as the poopoe.
In the UK they just have restrictions on which species you can sell. So you can buy wild venison or farmed venison perfectly legally, or any other animal on the list of game, but you wouldn't be allowed to buy (for example) osprey, or hoopoe.
And it also means you have to watch out for shot when eating game birds at a restaurant. I eat it so rarely that I usually forget and end up getting a nasty surprise.
I eat at Arby's enough to remember.
Apparently they can fetch their own snacks?
I really hope this is some headfuckery so they can just arrest them one by one at the grocery store, but I'm not exactly confident.
There are going to be similar strict limitations on taking migratory birds across a lot of countries due to treaties, right? I have trouble Googling this because most of the hits are about US and Canadian implementing legislation, but the UK seems to be a signatory.
But people are reporting some changes coming soon:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/05/oregon-wildlife-militia-standoff-power-cut-off
It really is fucked up. Have the Bundy's suffered any consequence of last year's standoff? At all? Have they even paid their back grazing fees? Have they had to move their cattle off BLM land?
(I suppose I could look this up.)
I don't mind if the mills of god grind slowly, but I do want to see them turning.
I really like the tone struck in
"After they shut off the power, they'll kill the phone service," the government official added. "Then they'll block all the roads so that all those guys have a long, lonely winter to think about what they've done."
That was easy. Wikipedia says they haven't paid their back fees and do continue to graze on BLM land as of the end of 2015. Fucked up, indeed.
They should just shoot the cows from a helicopter.
A black helicopter, for the sake of form.
I genuinely think shooting their cattle would be a good use of drones.
273 is enraging. As is 267. I really don't understand.
Everything except the going out to buy snacks (and I guess maybe even that in the right circumstances) would seem totally reasonable and prudent to me if it wasn't for the fact that the feds seem to have just decided to forgive and forget the whole Bundy ranch thing. As it is I'm genuinely worried that that's their plan for dealing with this too - just wait for the guys to leave and tell the BLM to go clean up their refuge center and go on with their lives.
I genuinely think shooting their cattle would be a good use of drones.
Hellfire missiles aren't cheap, and a cow is probably almost as cost-ineffective a target to use them on as an ISIS headbanger. (about $1500 for a grown steer, $58,000 for an AGM-114, replacement cost of an ISIS foreign fighter maybe $500 in transport costs, plus $50-$200 for equipment).
This is a clear case for letters of marque. Issue hunting licenses for Bundy's cattle as long as they are on public land. Shooter gets to keep the meat. The answer to a crazy guy with a gun is another crazy guy with a gun, is what I'm saying. One answer, anyway. My answer.
Just a small suggestion. It's much, much easier to move a living cow to where you are going to process it than to shoot the cow and carry the meat out.
Guardian latest (from yesterday):
Locals at the meeting demanded to know why federal officials are allowing the militia to come into town to restock supplies. Officials assured them they were handling the standoff and that law enforcement personnel from 35 other Oregon counties had offered backup. Yet it remains unclear what the army of federal and local officials will do.
Fulton also said a plan to turn off power at the site, first reported by the Guardian, had run into snags. Local power officials at the meeting said the move would also cut power to several surrounding ranches and that the only way to isolate the wildlife refuge would be to send men to the site to cut the local lines.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/05/tension-grows-as-militia-prepares-for-fourth-night-in-oregon-standoff
Dropping a cow across the lines would work.