With each passing day, more gun-toting people arrive
Weirdly sympathetic reporting in the Chicago Tribune on the armed criminals at Malheur.
Several dozen armed men and women now control this federal facility in remote southeastern Oregon, a growing siege staged to protest the imprisonment of two local ranchers and a federal government that they say is out of control. They spend their days concocting strategies, meeting with reporters and well-wishers, and organizing mundane chore charts, all while remaining on hair-trigger alert to any effort to infiltrate their ranks or forcibly end the occupation.
On stolen property, using stolen equipment, with the use of lethal weapons. The Trib almost sounds as if the government has no right to evict the armed criminals who are trying to steal the Refuge.
There is no visible law enforcement presence for miles; the occupiers are free to come and go as they please. Still, the group’s members are certain that their movements and communications are being monitored by police and the FBI. They listen for drones, stare down passing vehicles and keep a 360-degree watch from a 150-foot observation tower adjacent to the compound. They are on guard.
They’re also violent criminals. They’re not the victims here.
On this day, the threat quickly dissipates. “All stations be advised the provocateur is driven off,” a voice crackles over a hand-held radio a few minutes after the commotion in the kitchen.
But it’s a brittle peace. LaVoy Finicum, a 54-year-old Arizona rancher and one of the group’s leaders, says the siege will continue until the federal government cedes control of the 187,000-acre refuge to Harney County.
“It needs to be very clear that these buildings will never, ever return to the federal government,” says Finicum, who wears a cowboy hat and a Colt 45 pistol holstered on his hip.
As he continues to live in and use a federal facility that belongs to all of us, not to him and his armed buddies.
Ammon Bundy sits at a desk in a refuge administrative office. A documentary crew working on a film about Western land use is peppering him with questions. He is soft-spoken, articulate, impassioned and certain of his positions.
After the crew leaves, he admits that he is tired. Asked if he wishes things had unfolded differently, he sits up and leans forward.
“Everything is happening just like it’s supposed to,” he says. “That’s what you have when you have divine guidance that is assisting. The right people come. The right words are said.”
Now the Trib tells us something I didn’t realize, which is that the feds are not only not evicting the thieves, they’re not stopping new ones joining the theft.
With each passing day, more gun-toting people arrive, from Alabama, Utah, North Carolina, Georgia. The vast majority are white men, but others are coming, too.
A woman from California, who would identify herself only as a mom, said she came to be on the right side of history.
And Brendan Dowd, who is black, drove from Colorado Springs to “fight against all the negative things the federal government is doing.” Dowd, 31, said it was “time for the people to stand up and take control.”
I won’t even try to deal with all the ironies of that.
But anyway – what in hell is everyone doing, letting more armed people join in? I get that they don’t want a bloodbath and martyrs and another Timothy McVeigh, but they could surely close the fucking road.
For now, the protesters remain firmly in place. The FBI has established a command center in Burns at the small city-owned airport outside of the town center, but law enforcement continues to maintain a low profile. And a resolution feels very far away.
On Thursday, a supporter drove to the refuge from neighboring Nevada to drop off 180 pounds of frozen meat. The occupiers are hunkering down, ready for whatever.
Near the refuge entrance, Corey Lequieu sits on an ATV with an AR-15 rifle slung across his lap.
The 45-year-old Army veteran from Nevada has just finished a four-hour shift in the observation tower. If the feds come, he says, he’ll be ready.
“What’s the worst they can do – kill me?”
Back in Burns, a clerk at one of the town’s few motels said the FBI has booked rooms through March.
Are we a failed state?
Is no one suing the police or whatever agency is supposed to be handling the crime and not acting the protection of the public? Surely someone should be losing a job.
I don’t know. I’m gobsmacked by this.
The assumption is always that the people in charge know what they’re doing. (Otherwise we’d have to face the fact that they don’t.)
So I’m wondering: what are they doing? What’s the strategy here? Does anyone know? Do they have a strategy?
I assumed they were going to turn off water and supplies to these Keystone Kowboys and then wait for them to get bored. No gunshots. No martyrs. But apparently not. What could possibly be the idea behind just letting these guys do whatever they like?
Or does someone at the FBI think they’re cute when they’re mad? :eyes bugging out in puzzlement:
My admittedly layman level understanding is the practise is: cut off what you can, get concessions for what they want back. Power? Water? Food? Okay, but we want something from you, then…
Dunno if that’s happening behind the scenes? Hope so, I guess. _More_ pushy jerks with guns in there sounds like not such a good direction to me, though.
But the opposite of that is what’s happening. More armed people are joining them, and people are bringing masses of supplies. According to this story there’s no law enforcement at all except for some FBI agents in Burns, which is 30 miles away. Nothing is being cut off, and more is being allowed in. It makes NO sense.
It did seem like what they wanted to do was basically be low key – do nothing to raise sympathy for these bozos or turn them into martyrs on the assumption that when the beer ran out they’d get bored and go home because no one was paying them any attention. That might explain the not cutting off the water or food supplies. While in some cases that can be a good thing, hunger and thirst makes it more likely people will do something desperate. If you’re trying to bore them out ( or even hope that they’ll implode – start shooting each other, “Well, what can be expected from such unstable people?” – good negative publicity for this kind of plan – look, the police did nothing and they shot each other!)
The one thing that does occur to me is that one should never underestimate the level of incompetence present in a managerial line… is it possible that the Feds weren’t actually aware that numbers were growing? Or are they hoping that the larger the group, the harder to maintain a tight group control. More people means more complicated interpersonal relations – especially with people who were not core group members to start with and may not see 100% eye to eye with the core group. We all know that the larger groups like this grow, the more likely they are to schism and fall apart. Are the FBI hoping this will happen?
So, two possible solutions- the FBI are on top of things and are hoping that the group will fall apart on their own, and are allowing extra people in to hasten that process (and to cover the emplacement of one or more agent provocateurs?) Or the FBI are incompetent and didn’t consider people joining, are reacting too slowly or may not even have known that extra people had joined in.
That is, of course, assuming this report is accurate.
Maybe they’re waiting for there to be enough people there to do airstrikes. We use those against terrorists. Although since they are also treasonous, I suppose the could be in prison for that.
A single Bradley IFV would end this in a hail of 25mm rounds would end this lawlessness.
Alas, I think you’re right OB… the State of Oregon is fail.
The more fish enter the net, the larger the harvest?
I don’t know, but since they’re terrorists, maybe getting them to collect themselves in one place is strategic.
I understand that it isn’t possible to neatly cut the refuge’s water supply from the outside without also cutting the water supply to neighboring farms.
On closer reading, I do really get the impression law enforcement just doesn’t give a rat’s ass about this site or its actual law-abiding clients.
Do they perhaps care that these deeply antisocial, armed screwballs are likely to be emboldened by the near complete lack of consequences and the legitimacy this confers upon them in sympathetic fringe media? Do they at all care that this is likely to lead to open season on similar facilities elsewhere? Or shall we let obnoxious jerks with guns and a total lack of respect for educated opinion on land use that conflicts with ‘just give it to me’ run them _all_, now?
However it gets there, these guys are going to have to pay some fines and serve some time. And it’s going to have to ring out from those who understand these things every time the slackjawed idiots of talk radio whine about it: contrary to your infantile libertarian fantasies, you belong to a larger community. There are rules and obligations that go along with those rights you do get so excited about. And you can’t just take what you want with guns.
This just seems to me part of a larger pattern of not caring. Our town has some problems with our water supply, and our mayor threatened to arrest anyone who came out to test it for the EPA. The EPA shrugged their shoulders and said, OK we won’t come out if you don’t want us to. He’s regarded as a hero by the local population, who have children drinking water that is bad for them but have been so brainwashed by anti-government sorts that they think that’s better than allowing the government to enforce laws designed to protect those children.
We also have a local tea partier who has refused to pay his property taxes, and the city government seems to believe they are helpless to do anything about it. Why? Because…see above. The people running the government these days are about as anti-government as the people who are carrying the guns in wildlife preserves.
Holy shit. That’s beyond depressing.
In Oregon standoff, local sheriff embraces the spectacle
There is no shortage of future McVeighs out there. And NOTHING is going to effect their beliefs and intentions. Confrontation and appeasement are equal confirmation for these pigs.
And it still needs repeating that an entire political party, in a two-party state no less, has been co-opted by klepto-anarchists.
Klepto-anarchists, I like that.