150 Militia Take Over Makhuer National Wildlife Preserve Headquarters

[mick silver]

Oregon tribe: Armed group 'desecrating' their land



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TERRENCE PETTY and MANUEL VALDES

January 6, 2016




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Some Ranchers Worried About Federal Raid

Some of the armed ranchers occupying a federal facility in Oregon say they're concerned about a raid, and that they'll be arrested. Officials in the area say they're trying to resolve the situation peacefully. (Jan. 6)













BURNS, Ore. (AP) — The leader of an American Indian tribe that regards an Oregon nature preserve as sacred issued a rebuke Wednesday to the armed men who are occupying the property, saying they are not welcome at the snowy bird sanctuary and must leave.
The Burns Paiute tribe was the latest group to speak out against the men, who have taken several buildings at the preserve to protest policies governing the use of federal land in the West.
"The protesters have no right to this land. It belongs to the native people who live here," tribal leader Charlotte Rodrique said.
She spoke at a news conference at the tribe's cultural center, about a half-hour drive from Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which is being occupied by some 20 men led by Ammon Bundy, whose father Cliven was at the center of a standoff in Nevada with federal officials in 2014 over use of public lands.
Ammon Bundy is demanding that the refuge be handed over to locals.
Rodrique said she "had to laugh" at the demand, because she knew Bundy was not talking about giving the land to the tribe.
The 13,700-acre Burns Paiute Reservation is north of the remote town of Burns in Oregon sagebrush country. The reservation is separate from the wildlife refuge, but tribal members consider it part of their ancestral land.
As with other tribes, the Burns Paiutes' link to the land is marked by a history of conflict with white settlers and the U.S. government. In the late 1800s, they were forced off a sprawling reservation created by an 1872 treaty that was never ratified. Some later returned and purchased property in the Burns area, where about 200 tribal members now live.
Bundy's group seized buildings Saturday at the nature preserve in eastern Oregon's high desert country. Authorities have made no attempt to remove them.
At a community meeting attended by hundreds of people in Burns on Wednesday evening, cheers erupted when Harney County Sheriff David Ward said it was time for the group at the refuge to "pick up and go home."
"We can work through it like adults, peacefully, with a united front," Ward said.
The standoff in rural Oregon is a continuation of a long-running dispute over federal policies covering the use of public lands, including grazing. The federal government controls about half of all land in the West. For example, it owns 53 percent of Oregon, 85 percent of Nevada and 66 percent of Utah, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The Bundy family is among many people in the West who contend local officials could do a better job of managing public lands than the federal government.
"It is our goal to get the logger back to logging, the rancher back to ranching," Ammon Bundy said Tuesday.
The argument is rejected by those who say the U.S. government is better equipped to manage public lands for all those who want to make use of them.
Among those groups are Native Americans.
The Burns Paiute tribe has guaranteed access to the refuge for activities that are important to their culture, including gathering a plant used for making traditional baskets and seeds that are used for making bread. The tribe also hunts and fishes there.
Rodrique said the armed occupiers are "desecrating one of our sacred sites" with their presence at refuge.
Jarvis Kennedy, a tribal council member, said: "We don't need these guys here. They need to go home and get out of here."
Randy Eardley, a Bureau of Land Management spokesman, said Bundy's call for control of the land to be transferred makes no sense.
"It is frustrating when I hear the demand that we return the land to the people, because it is in the people's hand — the people own it," Eardley said. "Everybody in the United States owns that land. ... We manage it the best we can for its owners, the people, and whether it's for recreating, for grazing, for energy and mineral development."
Bundy's group, calling itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, says it wants an inquiry into whether the government is forcing ranchers off their land after Dwight Hammond and his son, Steven, reported back to prison Monday.
The Hammonds, who have distanced themselves from the group, were convicted of arson three years ago and served no more than a year. A judge later ruled that the terms fell short of minimum sentences requiring them to serve about four more years.

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Petty reported from Portland, Oregon.

[mick silver]

­In Oregon, Myth Mixes With Anger

By NANCY LANGSTONJAN. 6, 2016
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TO outsiders, one of the puzzling aspects of the anti-government militia’s takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is its location. Twenty-five million birds a year visit the refuge in the high desert of southeastern Oregon, but few people have heard of it. Yet Malheur is a place of bitterly contested human histories that remain potent today.

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  Op-Ed Contributor: Bird-Watching, Patriotism and the Oregon StandoffJAN. 6, 2016
  
  

Years ago, when I first visited the refuge, I stumbled upon five dead coyotes tossed across a trail, their necks sliced open, blood clotted on their fur, paws hacked off, entrails draining into the river. Ranchers on the edge of failure feel threatened by predators snatching away their calves, and some lash out against that threat. But these five dead coyotes signaled more than just economic anxiety — they were emblematic of past hatreds that are still a powerful force in the Malheur basin. Anger at predators, environmentalists and federal managers who threaten the mythic past of cowboys on the range is as strong there as anywhere in the West.
In the late 1970s and the 1980s, many Western ranchers, miners and loggers felt increasingly threatened, partly by globalization, which created new competition, and partly by federal regulations that seemed to value wildlife more than people. What became known as the Sagebrush Rebellion gave locals a focus for their concern.
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  Protesters in Oregon Seek to End Policy That Shaped WestJAN. 5, 2016
  
  

Environmentalists, they argued, were conspiring to destroy America, starting with rural communities. Many ranchers bitterly complained about the federal land management agencies. They felt powerless, hemmed in by policies they had little hand in shaping. They feared that economic gains were passing them by.
These complaints contain elements of truth: Rural communities in the West are poorer than urban communities, and environmental protections enacted since the 1980s have reduced grazing on federal lands. But locals told an interesting version of this history. Before the federal agencies came, they said, we lived in paradise. The grass was thick, the water was abundant and the towns were thriving. We were independent, working out our problems. When the feds came, they stole our resources, and our economies collapsed.
The implication was clear: If they got rid of the federal government, they’d have control over their land and lives again.
This version of history bears little resemblance to the actual past. Before the federal agencies came to eastern Oregon, large ranching operations from California had monopolized hundreds of thousands of acres of rangeland. Irrigation developers controlled water, cattle barons controlled the grass, and settlers were essentially locked out. Tensions were high.
During the 1890s, a populist, anti-monopolist rhetoric emerged among settlers and news editors. The local newspaper deplored the fact that the great Western ranges were passing into “the hands of a few big cattle or sheep companies,” and predicted that soon “an aristocracy of range lords and cattle kings would rule our mountains and plains.” In 1897, Peter French, the cattle baron who controlled the largest ranching empire in America, along the Blitzen River, was murdered by an angry homesteader. Arson, violence and grinding poverty flourished.
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In the first decades of the 20th century, the conservationist William Finley paddled a little boat through the marshes of the basin and came upon a colony of egrets slaughtered by plume hunters, the young left to starve. Out of hundreds of thousands of egrets that had once nested in Malheur Lake, only 121 were left.
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8 hours ago Until I visited my cousin in Prineville in October last year, I was not aware that sections of Oregon like Prineville have one of the...
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8 hours ago Thank god for history professors. Yes kids, the humanities are important.
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8 hours ago Pone of the best things about the area I live in - they are required to lock the asylum doors at all times.

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Horrified, Mr. Finley did his best to publicize Malheur’s remaining bounty of waterfowl, shorebirds, egrets, herons, cranes and ibises. In 1908, he persuaded President Theodore Roosevelt to designate Malheur Lake a wildlife refuge. But Congress denied any funding for its management, water rights were not granted and, as droughts hit and lake levels dropped, settlers squatted on the lake bed. By the 1930s, after four decades of overgrazing, irrigation withdrawals, grain agriculture, dredging and channelization, followed by several years of drought, Malheur had become a dust bowl.
Ranches failed, livestock starved, homesteaders went bust and the primary occupation in the valley became suing one’s neighbor over water rights.
Continue reading the main story Write A Comment Conservationists won a major victory in 1934 when French’s former cattle empire was sold to the refuge, ensuring it had the water needed to flourish. John Scharff, the refuge manager from 1935 to 1971, worked closely with ranchers to establish grazing leases that funded the restoration of former wetlands and won public support for the effort. By 1968, cattle use was nearly as intense as during the days of the cattle barons. Ranchers still imagined themselves as the rugged individualists of their romantic past, though they had become heavily subsidized, grazing their herds on refuge meadows for fees that were often lower than those on private lands.
In the 1970s, government concern grew over the effects of grazing on waterfowl, trout and aquatic health. When Mr. Scharff retired, the new refuge manager had the difficult task of restoring wildlife habitat by reducing cattle numbers. By law, on federal wildlife refuges, the first priority is wildlife. Other uses are allowed when they enhance wildlife habitat, but not when they harm it. Nonetheless, when the new manager lowered the number of grazing permits, controversy erupted over cows versus birds — anger that continues to simmer in the basin.
When mythic histories supplant the complexities of the past, the results can be lethal. Equitable futures for Western public lands won’t be achieved when ideologues swagger in, brandishing guns and taking over federal buildings. Rather, they develop from the hard work of collaboration, like the 2013 effort that brought together the local community, tribes, conservation groups and the state and federal governments to develop a new management plan for Malheur. These are the efforts that best respect the region’s history while pointing the way to a sustainable future.

[mick silver]

Ammon Bundy Compares Oregon Standoff to Rosa Parks and Everyone Is Livid

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On Wednesday, Ammon Bundy, posted a tweet about the ongoing anti-government standoff led by a group of armed ranchers in Oregon, and Bundy's statement is drawing fire from all who read it.
"We are doing the same thing as Rosa Parks did," Bundy wrote. "We are standing up against bad laws which dehumanize us and destroy our freedom."

Read more:
°'No, White Militiamen, You're Not Treated Worse Than Black Lives Matter Activists'
°'Ammon Bundy, Armed Militiamen Seize Control of Federal Wildlife Refuge Facility in Oregon'

The group leader's name has swept through the news this week after being identified as a member of an anti-government group that, on Saturday, stormed a federal building in Oregon. After hundreds marched through the city of Burns, Oregon, a number of supporters took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in an anti-government protest over land disputes. The Oregonian reported that up to 100 armed supporters were occupying the federal building, though its been contested that the real number of occupiers is closer to a dozen or less.

We are doing the same thing as Rosa Parks did. We are standing up against bad laws which dehumanize us and destroy our freedom.

Drawing a parallel between a civil rights crusader and the armed protest did not sit well with Twitter users.

@Ammon_Bundy you got it twisted you are nothing like Rosa Parks or MLK. Neither used guns or had racist companions! #burnsoregon

@Ammon_Bundy you terrorists are no Rosa Parks and it's an insult to her to compare yourselves to her.

@Ammon_Bundy What kind of gun did Rosa Parks use when she stood up by sitting down?

Nice try. Rosa Parks didn't hijack a bus with an assault rifle because she didn't want to pay the bus fare. @Ammon_Bundy

@Ammon_Bundy Never in my life have I meant this more: You. Have got. To be. SHITTING. Me.

@Ammon_Bundy Rosa Parks did not have a gun. Also, your white privilege is showing.

@Ammon_Bundy You are nothing more than an armed bully who's taking what he wants by force. Un-American. #burnsoregon #OregonUnderAttack

@Ammon_Bundy Rosa Parks was armed with courage. And when she was arrested, she complied with law enforcement. You sir, are NO Rosa Parks.

@Ammon_Bundy You do realize that Rosa Parks was arrested for not complying don't you? She surrendered peacefully.

@Ammon_Bundy Rosa Parks was fighting lynching, murder, segregation, racism, separate but unequal. You have nothing in common with us.

Yet for some Twitter users reacting to the statement, words simply weren't enough to express their outrage.

@Ammon_Bundy NO. pic.twitter.com/znFZEifvhW

@Ammon_Bundy pic.twitter.com/6UddIIzQiW
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@jjsnyder76 @StrangerOnFire @Ammon_Bundy pic.twitter.com/53BmHaH8rc

@Ammon_Bundy pic.twitter.com/0ucxw7c43s
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@Ammon_Bundy did he say Rosa Parks? pic.twitter.com/ELr1379aWv
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@Ammon_Bundy pic.twitter.com/FYtTlzKX9n

@Ammon_Bundy Bitch, please. #Oregonstandoff pic.twitter.com/E09S1GRUhO

@Ammon_Bundy pic.twitter.com/ogPryzTLWV

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Source: Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesThe dispute concerns ranchers' allegedly unlawful use of state land, including the supposed coverup of illegal deer hunting by setting fire to the pasture where the animals were hunted, in an attempt to conceal the remains.
The state has convicted two ranchers, a father and son named Dwight and Steven Hammond, of arson, according to CNN. The Hammonds say the fire was lit in an attempt to protect from wildfires on their property, and that the government is encroaching on their land rights. Yet according to CNN, Oregon U.S. attorney Billy J. Williams claims the poaching ruling was just.
"The facility has been the tool to do all the tyranny that has been placed upon the Hammonds," Bundy said, according to the Oregonian. "We're planning on staying here for years, absolutely," he added. "This is not a decision we've made at the last minute."
The fiasco comes at a time of heightened conversation about gun control in America. After a seemingly endless series of mass shootings and gun violence in the U.S. in recent months, President Barack Obama addressed the nation on Tuesday to announce landmark policy decisions about gun regulation in America.
During his address, Obama evoked the Second Amendment more than once: He said, "I believe in the second amendment, that guarantees a right to bear arms," and added, "I believe that we can find ways to reduce gun violence consistent with the second amendment."
Here's a series of photos of the ongoing conflict in Oregon:
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Source: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

[mick silver]

One Map Shows Who Really Deserves to Be Angry in Oregon

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Ammon Bundy and the armed ranchers in Oregon have one overreaching goal in its ongoing standoff with federal officials. "Once [the people] can use these lands as free men, then we will have accomplished what we came to accomplish," Bundy said in a video posted to Facebook on Saturday, according to NBC. In other words, they want the United States federal government to back off.
But if there's any group that has a legitimate gripe with the U.S. government over ownership of local land, it's not Bundy's white, anti-government group. It's the indigenous tribes native to the land now known as the state of Oregon.

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Source: Native Lives Matter Facebook The above map was posted on Facebook by the group Native Lives Matter to drive home the point on land sovereignty. Leaders in Oregon's native community have also pointed out the irony of the Bundy occupation in recent days. "I'm, like, hold on a minute, if you want to get technical about it ... the land belongs to the Paiute here," Selena Sam, a member of the Burns Paiute Tribe council, told Reuters.
But unlike Bundy's gang, the Paiute haven't decided to grab guns and provoke a standoff because it's precisely that type of violence that forced them off their land in the first place. "I feel like it's happening all over again but to a different set of people," Sam continued. "They're like, 'Let's grab some guns.' We have a different approach."
h/t Reuters

[mick silver]

Extremist Group Calls for Oregon Militants to Be “Willing to Die”

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When armed occupants stormed a federal wildlife refuge in Harney County, Oregon, on Saturday, protest leader Ryan Bundy told Oregonian politics reporter Ian Kullgren that he was willing to kill and be killed if necessary to sustain the occupation.
Now, he's receiving support in some influential circles. The Oath Keepers, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as "a fiercely antigovernment, militaristic group," has come out in support of the of the Bundys, with Oath Keepers founder and president Stewart Rhodes posting a passionate letter to the group's website Tuesday.
"This is an armed occupation of a government building and the only people staying there should be the armed men who are willing to die there with Ammon Bundy and his brothers and a couple of embedded reporters," said Rhodes, who stressed that women and children stay away from the scene. "If adults want to visit them and put themselves at risk, that is their choice, but don't bring children. If a dozen men die in a shootout, that is one thing, but if children die, there will be a civil war."

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Source: Mic/YouTubeIn his open letter, Rhodes claimed that his sources within U.S. Special Operations indicated a "detachment" from the Joint Special Operations Command had been dispatched to the area to handle the occupation. In warning of a violent demise, Rhodes invoked the stories of Waco and Ruby Ridge, two similar standoffs ultimately broken up with deadly and controversial force by the federal government.
Rhodes' strident sentiment, however, was not universally shared on the ground. Dwight and Steven Hammond, the ranchers whose prison sentences for arson sparked the original protest, turned themselves in to federal authorities on Monday afternoon. Through their lawyer the Hammonds publicly distanced themselves from the Bundy occupation, the lawyer writing to the local sheriff, "Neither Ammon Bundy nor anyone within his group/organization speak for the Hammond Family."
Local Oath Keepers and aligned organizations also said that they had reservations about the operation.
"The Oath Keepers [and] the Pacific Patriots Network did not endorse nor do we support the way they took over or occupied the refuge." Joseph Rice, a coordinator for a local Oath Keepers branch and co-founder of the PPN, told Mic. "If there are media standing around watching everything, cooler heads should prevail. Nobody wants any type of armed standoff or conflict."

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Source: Mic/Getty ImagesWith the occupation joined, Rice said that the Oath Keepers were providing logistical support including a call to action for individuals to go to the protest area and serve as a neutral buffer between government forces and the occupiers, and to donate what they could.
"I witnesses ranchers coming and donating supplies to the folks at the refuge," he said. "I witnessed one guy come in and give 50 pounds of elk meat."
White also said that his group was united with the grievances of the Bundys, the heart of which lay in a land dispute between the federal government and locals. In Oregon, the U.S. owns more than 50% of all land, which is administered by the Bureau of Land Management. Bundy and the Oath Keepers want that control delegated to local government.
Despite differences in tactics, Rice was overall praiseful about the renewed attention to the issue. "You are having a dialogue and conversation with me," he told Mic. "If those guys hadn't don't this, you'd never call me."
Fair enough.

[EE_]

[JohnQPublic]

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infiltrate
divide
conquer

[madfranks]

But if there's any group that has a legitimate gripe with the U.S. government over ownership of local land, it's not Bundy's white, anti-government group. It's the indigenous tribes native to the land now known as the state of Oregon.

Sure, but look what these "indigenous tribes" have to say:

The leader of an American Indian tribe that regards an Oregon nature preserve as sacred issued a rebuke Wednesday to the armed men who are occupying the property, saying they are not welcome at the snowy bird sanctuary and must leave.

Useful idiot native americans siding with the government that killed most of them rather than the people fighting this government.

[monty]

Militia leader Ammon Bundy discusses . . . . .

[Ares]

Oregon standoff: Idaho group arrives to 'secure perimeter, prevent Waco-style situation'

BURNS — Members of a group from outside Oregon arrived on Friday at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to "secure a perimeter" around the compound and prevent "a Waco-style situation."

The arrival of the "3% of Idaho" was the latest development in the situation outside Burns, where an armed occupation of the refuge by an Ammon Bundy-led militant group entered its seventh day.

"They just keep an eye on everything that is going on" to make sure "nothing stupid happens," Bundy said Friday afternoon outside refuge headquarters.

"If they weren't here," Bundy said, referring to the Idaho group, "I'd worry" about a Waco-style siege by federal officials.

The group's website says it stands for "freedom, liberty and the Constitution. We will combat all those who are corrupt." The website displays the motto, "When Tyranny Becomes Law, Rebellion Becomes Duty!"

Brandon Curtiss, the president of the 3% of Idaho, would not reveal in a phone interview how many people his group was sending, although a handful of them had already arrived at the bird sanctuary. Some had what appeared to be handguns on their hips. Curtiss said he was on his way to the refuge.

He also declined to reveal specifically whether the group would circle the refuge headquarters or form some other sort of perimeter.

Curtiss and Chris McIntire, another group spokesman, called the situation a "double-edged sword" – the perimeter is meant to protect the occupiers from an outside attack but also to protect the Harney County community from those who arrive in solidarity with Bundy's cause but may be prone to violence, they said. The Idaho group is here to keep the situation "peaceful" and reassure the community that it isn't in danger, they said.

McIntire said the majority of the group's members would be heading for Eastern Oregon on Friday.

Curtiss and McIntire both emphasized that the perimeter would not be military or paramilitary in nature.

The group's arrival came a few hours after Bundy informed reporters that the militants would not immediately accept Sheriff Dave Ward's offer to peacefully escort the occupiers out of town.

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