That’s a direct quote from the militant idiot in Oregon. He’s very upset that people are sending them dildos — someone spent $17.90 to ship a sex toy as commentary to them. But in the category of spending and wasting money, I’d like to know how much he has spent on military-style weapons.
But what bugs me most in the video is the first line: So we went and picked up some mail
. Really? These armed assholes have seized control of a bit of federal property…and they’re treated so lightly that they’re driving back and forth into town to pick up their mail and go to restaurants? What kind of takeover and siege is this? I can agree that some restraint is a good idea — please don’t charge in with tanks and guns blazing — but come on. When the criminals come into town to have a burger at McDonald’s and pick up their butt plugs at the post office, arrest them.
It’s terribly mean to be sending these brave soldiers things like that when all they want is a little food.
On a related note, does anyone know where I could order a couple of fresh durian fruit to be sent to them?
@1 Splendid idea. I’m sure they’d love a bit of nice, fresh fruit.
“These armed assholes have seized control of a bit of federal property…and they’re treated so lightly that they’re driving back and forth into town to pick up their mail and go to restaurants?”
At this point, it’s not a standoff. It’s an over-polite host allowing uninvited guests to stay as long as they like.
Hehe. With this in the news, I hope they’re ready to get an absolute crapload of dildoes, of all shapes, sizes and colors.
Y’know, when they begged for people to mail them snacks, I was thinking “what are they doing using the postal system if they are so upset with the federal gov’t?” If you’re going to have a hate-on for the federal government, have the courage of your convictions, militia men! No more post office for you.
Dildos are hateful? Interesting take.
Going to go with the obvious answer on this one: it is not a seige. It should be, and would be (or worse) if they were black, but they aren’t so it isn’t.
The comments on the Banter article are fun, they’re discussing the important things in life – condiments!
I wonder what they’ve spent on their little act of terror. They probably spent more on gas just getting there. I understand from my son that those guns they like to brandish cost a lot.
There’s two possibilities here, and they aren’t mutually exclusive. This town’s police consider the building they’ve taken over of such complete unimportance that they’d prefer to just ignore these idiots until they go away, or this town’s police really are the police from the Boondocks, tolerating this son of a powerful white man and his shenanigans to avoid any trouble. Maybe they’re bowing to the father when he passes by.
Caine
Well, they apparently define themselves so much by their genitals that they feel threatened in their whole existence by a plastic dick..
+++
But yeah, don’t allow the fuckers to just come and go
Yeah, people really shouldn’t be buying those criminals dildos. They should be sending *used* ones. It’s far more sensible.
*pssst* White.
Sending used dildos seem like waste of a used dildo. Send used diapers instead.
You couldn’t be more wrong. (I’m being polite here since this is the fallacy of the Argument from Complete Ignorance.) FWIW, I’ve been by Malheur NWR a few times back in the dark ages and had friends in school from this area.
1. Harney county is the size of Massachusetts. It has 7,400 people. Five sheriff deputies. There are varying reports of militia numbers, the lowest is about 25. The local sheriff is outnumbered by 5 to 1 by heavily armed kooks of dubious sanity.
2. It’s really not up to local law enforcement anyway. They aren’t trained in dealing with wild eyed seditionists with lots of weapons who use the words death and die often.
Malheur NWR is federal. I’m not entirely sure of jurisdiction myself but most likely if falls under local, state, and federal jurisdiction. If federal laws are being broken, it is up to the FBI and DHS.
3. Malheur NWR isn’t an obscure place. It’s a 75,000 acre wildlife refuge. It’s an important part of the national wildlife refuge system with a vast population of birds including some that are rare i.e. swans and Greater Sandhill cranes. It is also popular with segments of the public, the birding community, and it offers fishing, hunting, hiking etc..
There are plans to set up a commercial fishery on Malheur Lake. It’s full of trophy size carp and they want to get rid of them by making them into fertilizer. I don’t think this will happen for a while. Who wants to get killed just to fish for…carp.
It’s hateful or it’s ludicrous? he said it was both (and giggled)…but, humor/sarcasm/satire is not the same as hate……need to send these fools a dictionary…..
“Picked up some mail”? So these government-dependent debutantes want the taxpayer to pick up the tab for their cattle grazing, AND to fund their parcel delivery service?
I know the term “welfare queen” is sexist, but since these kooks are guys, and since the term would likely make them deliciously livid, would it be a bad thing to refer to them as welfare queens?
My bad, hateful and ridiculous…….
Hard to say what to do. It’s fun to play armchair general but that is about it.
1. The governments don’t know either. I’ve read a few interviews with various officials from local to DHS. They seem totally lost and there are no tactics or strategy.
I/we have an excuse. It’s not my training or job. They don’t have that excuse.
2. Five years or so ago, the GOP congressional right wingnuts made DHS disband their right wing terrorism investigation unit. Which they promptly did. Interviews with former DHS officials indicate that DHS doesn’t really track these groups very well. They don’t have good intelligence on who they are, where they are, or what they can and will do.
I haven’t seen any indication that they are going to fix this either.
I’ll play armchair admiral just for fun. I don’t have any real great ideas either. Maybe no one does.
The law enforcement goal should be to minimize the number of dead people and win the PR battle. In the long term it should be to enforce the laws and hold the criminals responsible like any other citizen who breaks the laws.
1. Let them hang out 30 miles from nowhere in the cold and snow for a while. A few months or till summer.
Don’t these guys have jobs, families, and responsibilities? (The might not, seeming to be socially marginal.)
Time isn’t on their side. They will get bored and run short of money. The militias are attention seekers but the US attention span is very short. The US public has little support for them and they can likely do enough pointless vandalism to lower that some more.
2. They need to enforce the laws eventually. Simply document who breaks what laws and put out warrants for their arrest. Time isn’t on their side here either. They can spend years hiding from the law but they probably can’t spend their whole life doing so.
Charge them for trespassing, destroying government property, vandalism, and whatever else is applicable. They get a trial, lawyers, and a jury just like any other citizen. If this happens a few years down the line, so what?
defaithed @ 16:
How about The Tailcoat Riders™?
A comment I saw on an article about this:
With the Bundy militia in Oregon, this would appear to be a good time to collect on the over a million owed by Cliven Bundy in Nevada. At the very least the government should send out arrest warrants for the folks who pulled guns on Federal agents.
Evidently the Bundy Militants want to talk to local people.
Hope nobody shows up. They deserve to be ignored. Doubt if they would take the hint though.
Nerd, #23
Or better yet: Reply with “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
raven @14:
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service operates all National Wildlife Refuges. Most, like Malheur NWR, are on federally owned land. FWS has its own (very well trained) law enforcement officers (usually one or two per refuge or group of refuges (in some circumstances there can be many more) who specialize in natural resource protection and management (which includes hunting and fishing). Though they have training in dealing with armed hostile subjects (of whatever stripe), that is not their specialty. There are FWS Special Agents who do specialize in non-resource crimes, though in most cases the NWR has an agreement with the local law enforcement agency which allows, in this case, the local sheriff to make an arrest on federal land. These agreements are normal.
In a case like this, I can almost gaurantee that the incident has been seconded to the FBI and DHS which has the resources and experience to deal with terrorists. One of the difficulties, though, is that both the FBI and the DHS have basically backed off completely on even tracking right-wing hate groups, sedition groups, and terrorist groups. The GOP thought it unfair that right-wing terrorists were being called terrorists like the brown terrorists.
Yes, federal laws are being broken. Lots of them. Most of which will involve both fines and prison time. Waiting them out is, to me, the right choice. The terrorists want a confrontation in which it looks, once again, like the federal government is picking on conservative citizens. Much better to wait until they come out on their own.
raven @18:
To me, letting things go seems like a good idea. These idiots want to make the government look evil. Right now, they are making themselves look like idiots.
The DHS/FBI should, in my opinion, arrest anyone leaving the buildings. They should cut off power. They should cut off communications except for one phone going to the incident commander. They should set up cell phone blockers around the building. Cut ’em off, let ’em stew, let ’em surrender.
Of course not. These are white Christian conservative men populating these groups. Were they brown, or liberal, or women, or any religion other than Christian or (in a pinch) Jewish, no problem tracking them.
Sad that the SPLC does a better job of tracking domestic terrorists than the federal law enforcement agencies.
whywhywhy @22:
Not to pile on with the bag-of-dicks care packages (or send the wrong message to a group of people who seem to be genetically incapable of irony) but since I’ve seen the video I’ve really been resisting the urge to send them some Gun Oil.
Hateful? Hateful? You have the wrong word, sir.
The feelings that you arouse are not hate, but contempt, derision, ridicule, & c.
You are too pathetic to be worth hating.
There was an intention to cut off the power, but that is proving more difficult than thought: Cutting the power to the refuge would also cut the power to several nearby ranches. That apparently means that to cut the power to the refuge, “They” would have to physically enter the refuge and literally, physically, cut the powerlines.
Welfare Princes?
Or simply: Welfare Boys
I’d say that people should send douchbags, but it seems that the Bundy-gang already has a sufficient number of them.
@Ogvorbis #25:
Given that the Bush government happily gave anti-terrorism support (and cold, hard cash) to multiple countries around the world whose authoritarian governments had quickly re-labelled their various outlawed political opponents as terrorists after 9/11, this seems unusually hypocritical even by GOP standards. Maybe it is true after all, that one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter…
@Rich Woods
My understanding is that the definition of terrorist/terrorism is whatever the government wanted to call it.
raven:
Are you not a fan of ‘turning the power and water off’?
Maybe.
As noted by 28 blf, they can’t turn the power off easily because some of the locals also lose power. The MWLR water supply is a well (probably) so if the power goes, there goes the water.
They won’t lack for water. A trout stream goes into Malheur Lake and there is snow on the ground.
Ogvorbis @25: “Yes, federal laws are being broken. Lots of them. Most of which will involve both fines and prison time. Waiting them out is, to me, the right choice. The terrorists want a confrontation in which it looks, once again, like the federal government is picking on conservative citizens. Much better to wait until they come out on their own.”
My problem here is that based on past performance the Feds are almost certain not to follow up and actually arrest these clowns at any future time.
Note that Cliven Bundy is still grazing his cattle on federal land, he’s still not arrested for anything, he still hasn’t paid, and none of the nutbags at his compound who were, at the very least, brandishing weapons at federal agents have been arrested either.
They won.
And that’s why this bunch of terrorists is currently occupying a federal building, because Bundy won and they (reasonably I think) expect to win too. Not in the sense of actually getting the government to sign over huge tracts of land to them, but in the sense that they believe they can break the law with impunity.
The power is still on, the water is still on, they come and go to town as they please, apparently the US government has decided that a bunch of white Christian terrorists making threats and occupying federal buildings is entirely permissible and will not be penalized in any way.
I’m not bloodthirsty, I don’t want to see agents storming the place and shooting the terrorists. But I do think that allowing them to win, AGAIN, is a terrible idea both from a philosophic (equality under the law) standpoint and from a concerns about future terrorist acts standpoint.
If they get away with this, as they seem so very likely to, the next bunch will escalate again.
I see no evidence at all to lead me to the conclusion that after they wander off they’ll be arrested and charged with anything, so far all evidence points to them, again, winning. And that frightens me deeply.
The Feds revised their protocols for this type of situation after Waco and Ruby Ridge. Essentially became hands off. But this case is different. It isn’t the Feds attacking peoples homes. It is responding to the take-over of government property, with any action taking place on government property.
A little patience may prove useful at first, and since this isn’t private property, and those militants present are armed, it creates a different PR situation. If, after a few weeks, the government takes more decisive action, it won’t be seen my the general populace as the government invading somebody’s home.
Then charging the Bundy militants with domestic terrorism will be seen as appropriate.
I actually think the government, right now, is doing exactly the right thing in regards to these idiots.
The are desperately seeking a confrontation so why give it to them? The longer they sit there, the more they look like a pack of unemployed lunatics. I say just wait for them to vacate on their own and then send them a bill for the cleanup. They can take it out of their small business loans and withhold it from their federal tax returns.
@35, I would like what you want as well, but that’s the short game and plays into their hands. Sure, by the Feds sitting back they can claim some sort of victory but it’s not the victory they really want. They want validation ours is an evil government who will stop at nothing to crush real red-blooded white Christian American men. Without that validation they lose relevance.
Yes, this scenario is likely to be repeated, and each time they will get the same response. It really won’t take long for everyone else to see there’s no validity to their claim. They’re ready to be martyrs but they cannot be the aggressors. The dimmest among them know that if they commit the first act of violence, the government will be fully justified and have the backing of the American people to respond. Even within their bubble they still have to win hearts and minds.
The Count @ 38:
Well, they are winning dildos.
@40: Like!
Sounds like they need some cheering up:
https://shipyourenemiesglitter.com/
nastes
I fail to understand how the fools with large guns are not simply being arrested for criminal trespass. I came across this amusing story, apparently the local birders are fed up with these jerks. http://thelapine.ca/79-year-old-bird-watcher-takes-down-oregon-militant-with-old-high-school-wrestling-move/
They wanted snacks, they’re getting dildos. So I guess they are being literally told to eat a dick.
Personally, I would have immediately secured the perimeter and told them nobody and no supplies get in, and nobody was going to try to get them out of there. I would have cut the power and phones, and jammed the cellular frequencies in the area, and then sat and waited. These guys started this siege with 20 boxes of mac & cheese, a case of ramen noodles, sacks of potatoes and rolled oats, and little else. The standoff would have been over in days. Apparently these guys and the location are so irrelevant, the authorities don’t want to spend the money to do even that.
The authorities know who these guys are. I understand the strategy is to wait them out, not give them even the satisfaction of a “being surrounded”, give them plenty of rope to hang themselves, and when they get tired of being ignored and go home, arrest them. Already they have them on armed takeover of a government facility, motor vehicle theft, criminal damage to property, illegal access of a government computer system, harassment, and possibly more.
And the authorities better damned well nail these guys’ asses to the wall when this is over. The feds backed down during the Bundy ranch fiasco in 2014, and that prompted this. If the feds don’t crack some heads this time, it will happen yet again, and it’ll only get worse.
rogerfirth wrote:
Everyone assumed that was the strategy last time the Bundys were in the news. It seems that the strategy was to wait them out and then let them get away with everything. I hope this strategy isn’t the same as the last one, because next time they’ll do something even more ostentatious.
With any sort of luck these goobers will sneak off into a corner with a double-ended, prostate-tickling, rabbit-eared dildo and find it a better penis substitute than their guns.
Tethys @42
Based on the other news stories on thelapine.ca your link appears to be a Canadian version of The Onion.
This is apparently not satire:
http://www.wweek.com/2016/01/13/bundyland/
The rancher whose property borders where the Bundy Bunch removed a fence is not too happy about it, and is repairing it:
http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/01/rancher_i_didnt_know_anything.html
I’m still unclear on the concept of seizing a bird sanctuary. Did the waterfowl align themselves with ISIS? Does the leftist politics of woodpeckers concern them?
treefrogdundee:
Leaving aside that it is an occupation, not a seizure, the answer is symbolism.
(cf. “occupy movement”, “public property”; also, “tragedy of the commons”)
It ain’t waterfowl who own the premises.
Obviously not, since woodpeckers have no politics, leftist or otherwise.
(Your sarcasm is weak)
It was a joke alluding to the fact that occupying (or seizing or trespassing or whatever other word you please to use) a wildlife refuge is not the act of brave patriots resisting a tyrannical government (as they in their delusion believe themselves to be) but is rather a sad cry for attention from a pack of nitwits. I hope to the Flying Spaghetti Monster you didn’t take me seriously.
John Morales
srsly
irony meters should be able to detect sarcasm, however weak
is yours in the shop?
Sorry, but I’m a wildlife guy by education and by trade. They barged into a wildlife refuge and set up shop in a (many degrees removed) colleague’s office and rifled through her stuff and prayed to their idiot god. They want to be able to shit all over the ecosystem public trust as they see fit.
I fucking hate them and I don’t care who knows it. Hate is not always a bad thing.
This is kind of cruel. I think we should send them a bunch of actual snacks. Sugar-free ones, so they don’t get diabetes or anything. I found an excellent deal on a 5 pound bag of Haribo sugar-free Gummi Bears; what say we pool our finances and send a few?
chigau,
The fact that he identified it as sarcasm suggests that he detected the sarcasm in those comments.
Ogvorbis@25 & rogerfirth@44: Besieging Y’all Queda and cutting communications plays right into the conflict that they want. If you lift the siege, they win. If you starve them out or assault the reserve, they win by propaganda victory. The best thing is to let them look like idiots.
Besides, do you think that any right wing radio show host that caters to the “Patriot” movement would resist the urge to invent Federal atrocities if these clowns were cut off? They could do a lot of damage with a Waco/Ruby Ridge-style narrative.
Marissa@54: Maybe someone can convince Frito Lay to produce a couple bags of WOW Potato Chips to send them too.
Tethys, #42
For white men, declaring that the government will come after you if you commit a crime grants you protection from arrest.
Maya, #56
I guess that is yet another white privilege we have learned about. The “government is against us” is a tactic only white people can actually use while committing obvious crimes and get away with. Those that the government truly is against (black people in particular) could hardly pull this off. Sad.
Saad @58
Yeah, that’s the part that just jumps out more and more at me. It’s already well known that the laws aren’t the same for non-white people as they are for white people and when you add rich and conservative to that list, it seems to become a situation where you can break whatever laws you want without having to even feign being concerned about jailtime or consequences.
And the fact that things like this keep demonstrating that is really bad for our society, because those assholes have been getting way bolder about openly breaking laws. See George Zimmerman and his shooting of Trayvon Martin or all the torture camps Joe Arpaio has run and how these Bundy fanatics have continued to escalate.
And that’s kind of what happens when we have a system that is as unjust as ours and is this obviously applied unequally, where a bunch of white assholes can openly seize government buildings but a black kid can’t play on a playground before being gunned down by a cop who “views him as a threat”. It sends a crystal clear message that the justice system doesn’t exist and it’s all about enforcement of hierarchy and systems of racial and class oppression.
And that can’t sustain indefinitely, because more and more people will give up on the notion of viewing our enforcement of law as anything more than a gang of thugs for the rich and that means more and more distrust of law enforcement and more and more rich white assholes like this doing whatever they want because they’ve got the law enforcement of the entire country acting like it’s their right to do so.
And eventually, that will suck for assholes like this, because eventually the groups they are hurting will have enough of this and take matters into their own hands. And no one wins when that happens.
On besieging, I think a more interesting question is why no one brings up besieging playing into the hands of other criminals… when those criminals are not white. Like no one goes, oh, if we raid that Triad compound, it’ll just play into their narratives and put us at risk, maybe we should just let them be.
And who here believes for a second that if a radical sect of Black Lives Matters or something tried to occupy a federal building like this to call attention to the murder of young black men, that the feds would hesitate to go in in full SWAT mode?
slithy:
Regardless of gender the welfare queens are also non-existent! At least, to my knowledge, none have been brought forth or prosecuted. I think this was one of the lies put forth by that professional liar Ronald Reagan
Saad@58,Cerberus@59,60:
I am not talking about no consequences for Y’all Queda. I was pointing out that militaristic wankery will only make the problem much worse. (The last decade and a half of war should be proof enough that violence does not “solve” terrorism, but makes the problem worse.)
For the record, I’m a critic of police violence against protesters like Black Lives Matter. I am well aware of the legacy of white supremacy that makes it easy for law enforcement to do the right thing in this instance. That legacy doesn’t change the fact that sitting this out and let these militiamen get bored of the effort is the right thing to do.
These people are not anonymous and arresting them individually once they disperse is easier and safer than trying to do it collectively than when they are all egging each other on to be martyrs for the cause.
[sarcasm]But by all means, the problem with law enforcement is not the brutality, but with the fact that the brutality isn’t spread equably. “Every cop a Judge Dredd” should be the selling point of US law enforcement.[/sarcasm]
I fantasize about building a jail around the bird sanctuary, locking the door, and going home.
But seriously if leaving the supply lines open for these guys is a PR victory for them, doing nothing is an even bigger PR victory. What are they, royalty, just because they are white?
I meant if *closing* the supply lines is a PR victory for them. Sorry typo.
I just want to say that I despise the term “y’all queda”. It reeks of classism. Not all southerners are goobers, and not all goobers are southerners (and the idiots in Oregon are more likely westerners). Also”y’all” is characteristic of African American English as well as southern dialects (and it fills a gap in the English pronoun system wonderfully).
So can y’all stop using it?
What a Maroon @ 65: Fair enough. I apologize for using the term and stop doing so.
Thanks, Maya, I appreciate that.
I read another article that showed one of the guys goes home so he can work a few days, then travels back to the Amazing Patriot Stand Off. It is amazing to me the ease of which they just go back and forth. I can understand being cautious with the whole armed group, but one guy?? I don’t see why they are incapable of arresting these fools one on one.
Privilege!
I have a solution to tow problems:
1. They are domestic terrorists and should be treated as such. Round them up and if they resist bomb them. Send the survivors to Guantanamo. It was built to hold and try terrorists.
2. The resulting mock outrage from the Rethuglicans when their favorite kind of terrorists being incarcerated there will guarantee the immediate closure of this blot on the landscape. President Obama gets his wish.
Thats it we can all go home now and go back to sleep till the next time.
Maya @62
I don’t think they should be brutalized. I think they should be arrested.
There’s this annoying culture where people, including police, seem to think that jail is “too terrible” to put white rich men into and so we might as well not arrest them.
And incidents like this just reinforce this public notion that “jail is for non-white people and the poor” because those “are the criminal classes”. And it’s a little tough to swallow knowing the overkill given to anyone who doesn’t have the overwhelming social power that these yahoos are trading on.
I don’t want to see that brutality happen to them. I want to see them lead off in handcuffs. I want to see the rest of the Bundy lawbreakers brought into federal trial. I want to see a world where it’s not just death and injustice for anyone marginalized and assholes like this get to act out their LARPing fantasies because apparently all the money we’ve been throwing at police departments and “security” doesn’t include anything on what to do to actually peacefully arrest white people when they break the law and threaten the lives of others including sworn officers.
It’s the disconnect that stings and is really underscored and it shouldn’t be fixed by being brutal to these assholes. It should be by balancing the system so that the laws are enforced equally and in a manner that is humane.
multitool @63
Apparently, yes.
Apparently if you are a white male from a wealthy background and so long as your victims aren’t other rich white men, the cops will just let you do whatever the fuck you want.
Big mistake.
If you tell them to stop sending you plastic dicks you are just going to get more plastic dicks. It’s like the government and these militia people, if a behavior gets you what you want you will keep using the behavior. Pretty basic psychology. We want to bother you so if you are bothered by plastic dicks you may just get flooded with them. That’s what I want to see anyway. The dildo-shopped pictures and now this really seem to pluck at a nerve.
These people thrive on attention, especially attention that makes their target audience (y’know, the seven-fingered moonshine-swilling good ol’ boys whose family trees look like M. C. Escher took up topiary…?) get an anti-gubmint woody.
What’s their kryptonite? Ridicule.
Normally I’d say “lack of attention,” but the problem here is that the longer this is allowed to go on, the more people like them will copycat them because it is playing into their narrative (“the government is powerless and corrupt”).
So what we need to do is make them utterly, completely, gut-bustingly, gasket-blowingly ridiculous. Literally, in the last two cases. See, I doubt there’s a lot of TP there, and most of us know what the sugarless Gummi Bears do to people. Odds are, though, that these guys don’t.
After the dildos, their reaction will likely be “Finally, something nice” and they’ll snarf the lot. And then the fun will begin. It’s the perfect combination of juvenile, scatalogical, visceral, humiliating, and memorable; a perfect (shit)storm of embarrassment. I can’t think of anything else that would cause so much damage with so little expense and effort.
Cerberus@71: I also want to see these militiamen peaceably arrested. The difference is that I believe that willful conflict escalation by law enforcement won’t lead to a peaceful outcome.
As far as brutality goes, have you seen the other posts in this thread? There have been “HaHa Only Serious” suggestions of bombing and to repeat the same military-style tactics that resulted in other incidents turning violent and spawning additional waves of domestic terrorism.
I understand being angry and upset that two different standards of law enforcement conduct are being applied; but I don’t think feeding that part of the brain that wants vengeance for past injustices and wants to engage in tit-for-tat retaliation is helpful.
The best response in my opinion is the urge to make them laughingstocks. Marrissa with the Haribo sugar-free Gummi Bears, the many people sending them dildos, Jordan Klepper threatening to regift his unwanted Christmas presents, etc. It is a non-violent way of conveying our contempt and lack of support.
And the reason waiting them out and not forcing a confrontation isn’t weak or letting them win? The US government isn’t giving into their demands that the two arsonists be set free, allowing free grazing of cattle on federal lands, or giving them the violent showdown that they think will trigger a second civil war. And it is working at getting them to leave.
Maya,
I do understand this isn’t a simple situation. And I can see the sense in not confronting them. But Suppose the government avoids confrontation and they eventually pack up and leave. How will they then be arrested and prosecuted? How would that arrest not lead to violent showdowns and them thinking they’re starting a second civil war.
I mean they have committed multiple crimes. Not prosecuting them literally means the government is saying white men angry with the feds are above the law. I mean they already have sort of done that by letting them go this far.
Saad@75: How? A combination of old-fashion investigation and the modern police state surveillance capabilities (not an endorsement of those by the way). It also helps that the militiamen have been giving their names to reporters.
Once you get them to disperse, individual arrests are less likely to erupt into violence. You would get some outrage from the right-wing media, but nowhere near the sort that you would get from storming the reserve.
To reiterate, if no arrests end up being made, I agree that would be a massive injustice. But I don’t think the FBI is stupid enough to do that again after the consequences of not taking action following the Bundy Ranch standoff.
To HolyPinkUnicorn: “Not to pile on with the bag-of-dicks care packages (or send the wrong message to a group of people who seem to be genetically incapable of irony) but since I’ve seen the video I’ve really been resisting the urge to send them some Gun Oil.”
Thats why their mummy asked everyone to send cans of vanilla creamer. They need something to add flavor to those cold and lonely winter nights spent with their jumbo-sized double-ended dildos.
First arrest, and he is a doozy:
http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/01/protester_arrested_in_burns_dr.html