150 armed Militia occupy federal property in Oregon.

[Simon_Jester]

It is very hard to find people from that era who were not, by modern standards, "assholes."

[Thanas]

That's funny, I find it pretty easy.

[Alyrium Denryle]

It is very hard to find people from that era who were not, by modern standards, "assholes."

Charles Darwin was pretty decent. So was Alexander von Humboldt, who was not even a horrible antisemite in early 19th century Prussia.

[Civil War Man]

Back to the topic at hand, yesterday the FBI finally cut off cell access and internet reception for the militants who are still there

After 30 days of near-continuous digital broadcasts on YouTube, Periscope and Facebook, the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge has gone offline.

David Fry, one of the four remaining militants who has frequently posted videos of the group on YouTube, said Sunday morning that they had lost access to the Internet.

Fry’s videos have been the only visual public record of the final stage of the occupation, after the FBI erected checkpoints and the press withdrew Wednesday morning.

One of the last videos showed the group inhabiting a makeshift tent, sitting in folding chairs, with a fire burning in one corner. One of the men, Jeff Banta, appeared to have a handgun tucked in the pocket of his parka. A white truck was parked in the background.

Fry also told OPB Sunday morning that the FBI made it so the occupiers can’t make outgoing calls on their cellphones.

By Sunday afternoon, the four militants remaining at the refuge, who have regularly spoken with media, appeared to be unwilling or unable to answer most incoming calls as well.

Fry briefly answered a call at 1 p.m., but said only that his phone was running out of battery and hung up. In the past, Fry has used a car to keep his phone charged.

Calls placed to Fry and two others, Sean and Sandy Anderson, have gone straight to voicemail, promoting a busy signal or the message “the person you are trying to reach is not accepting calls at this time.”

In one of the last videos Fry posted before the group went silent, he captured a phone call between the group and Doug Giddings, the Sheriff of Idaho County, Idaho, Saturday.

Sheriff Giddings’ jurisdiction includes Riggins, Idaho, current hometown of two of the final occupiers, Sandy and Sean Anderson.

Giddings told OPB a community member from Riggins asked him to reach out to the group, and he agreed.

The Idaho sheriff said he’d met both of the Andersons in person previously, and offered to meet them at the FBI’s checkpoint to secure their safety.

He said he doesn’t know much about Sean Anderson, but said Sandy Anderson had attended school in Riggins, moved away when the town’s mill burned down, and recently returned. He said she works at the local Chevron station.

“She’s a good person, she’s just upset with the government. She put herself in that situation, but I’d sure like to help her get out if it,” Giddings said. “They are in fear of the federal government right now. They don’t trust anything they say.”

Giddings expressed sympathy for the occupiers viewpoints, and called the federal felony charge of conspiracy to impede federal officers many of them face overreach on the part of federal prosecutors.

“So you spend six years in prison, because you occupy the building. If it was a state crime it’d be a misdemeanor,” he said.

But Giddings said, regardless, he encourages the Andersons to surrender and accept the possibility of facing arrest.

“I encouraged them to do that, to save their lives,” he said. “They think they’re kind of lost either way, so how to do you change their mindset?”

[Simon_Jester]

That's funny, I find it pretty easy.

I shall amend my last statement.

From literally all of history, or from the entire population of a period of several decades, we can usually find people who were decent by modern standards. However, such individuals are few and rare. They lived among a vast sea of people who we today would call "assholes" due to overwhelming racism, sexism, business practices we have since deemed illegal, and so on. Many of whom were honorable and respectable by the standards of the time, but would be horrible people by modern standards.

[Thanas]

I do not share that view of history. In my opinion, the vast majority of people has always remained basically decent. You had to go out of your way to be an asshole (like, say, join the colonial military). Your basic farmer in Europe was not a part of genocidal actions and probably did not know much about them anyway.

To be an asshole you need to make a conscious decision to not care.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I do not share that view of history. In my opinion, the vast majority of people has always remained basically decent. You had to go out of your way to be an asshole (like, say, join the colonial military). Your basic farmer in Europe was not a part of genocidal actions and probably did not know much about them anyway.

To be an asshole you need to make a conscious decision to not care.

I think here in large part Simon and I are looking at the views people hold, not just their propensity to commit genocide. A large proportion of people in the early-mid 19th century were of the view that indigenous people were inferior and in one form or another were in need of Civilization (white man's burden, yadayada). Today, we hold this view to be generally repugnant.

Views like this both Darwin and Humboldt held in disdain.

Joining a colonial military is also not something I would necessarily hold as being sufficient reason to render one an asshole, given other issues surrounding militaries at the time (widespread abject poverty and conscription, for example).

[Lonestar]

Man, no comments?


FBI has plopped some armored vehicles around the building and barricaded the remaining 4 in. It looks like they are very upset that "Internet Trolls" are now randomly calling them and harassing them. Two (Dave and Sandy) appear to be determined to do suicide by cop. Dave called the FBI team leader saying that they were cold and needed more propane and Mark the FBI guy said "bummer, it's pretty warm in our cars".

Cliven Bundy apparently flew out to PDX last night(I assume to visit his son who is in jail) and was promptly arrested.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Man, no comments?


FBI has plopped some armored vehicles around the building and barricaded the remaining 4 in. It looks like they are very upset that "Internet Trolls" are now randomly calling them and harassing them. Two (Dave and Sandy) appear to be determined to do suicide by cop. Dave called the FBI team leader saying that they were cold and needed more propane and Mark the FBI guy said "bummer, it's pretty warm in our cars".

Cliven Bundy apparently flew out to PDX last night(I assume to visit his son who is in jail) and was promptly arrested.

Sorry. I was too busy doing my happy dance. The same one I did when Jerry Falwell died.

[Raw Shark]

Points to the FBI for style.

[Lonestar]

What's great with the Cliven Bundy arrest is that the FBI knew then that he didn't have any firearms on him, since he went through TSA(I assume). Probably the best time to snatch him.

[Borgholio]

According to USA Today, he is facing federal charges for the Nevada standoff. Looks like he made the same dumb mistake his son did...left the safety of his holdout thinking he was invincible. Today is a good day.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/worl ... /80219266/

[The Romulan Republic]

I'm worried about what will happen with the remaining people in the refuge, and the possibility that they will insist on a futile bloody last stand. Or for that matter that the FBI will do something stupid and excessive, though they've been fairly careful thus far.

But I am so fucking happy that the scumbag Cliven Bundy has finally be arrested. It is so overdue, and so deserved. Makes my fucking day.

May they throw the book at him.

[Civil War Man]

I'm worried about what will happen with the remaining people in the refuge, and the possibility that they will insist on a futile bloody last stand. Or for that matter that the FBI will do something stupid and excessive, though they've been fairly careful thus far.

Turns out apparently last night the FBI moved in and surrounded them, and they've agreed to turn themselves in sometime this morning, so unless they said that as a ruse so they can go out in a blaze of glory later, it looks like your fears may be unfounded.

Link

BURNS, Ore. (AP) — The last four armed occupiers of a national wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon said they would turn themselves in Thursday morning after law officers surrounded them in a tense standoff.

The development came as Cliven Bundy — who led a Nevada standoff with federal officers in 2014 and who is also the father of the jailed leader of the Oregon standoff — was arrested in Portland.

The four occupiers yelled at officers to back off and prayed with supporters over an open phone line as the standoff played out on the Internet Wednesday night via a phone line being livestreamed by an acquaintance of occupier David Fry.

Fry, 27, of Blanchester, Ohio, sounded increasingly unraveled as he continually yelled, at times hysterically, at what he said was an FBI negotiator. "You're going to hell. Kill me. Get it over with," he said. "We're innocent people camping at a public facility, and you're going to murder us."

"The only way we're leaving here is dead or without charges," Fry said, who told the FBI to "get the hell out of Oregon."

Fry and the three others are the last remnants of a group led by Ammon Bundy that seized the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Jan. 2 to oppose federal land-use policies. The three others are Jeff Banta, 46, of Elko, Nevada; and married couple Sean Anderson, 48, and Sandy Anderson, 47, of Riggins, Idaho.

Fry said Wednesday the group was surrounded by armored vehicles.

Cliven Bundy, the father of occupation leader Ammon Bundy, flew into Portland International Airport Wednesday night and was arrested by authorities. He was booked into the lockup just before 11 p.m. according to Multnomah County Jail records.

The 74-year-old Nevadan was at the center of the standoff with federal officials over use of public lands. The Oregonian reports he now faces a conspiracy charge of interfering with a federal officer related to that standoff at his ranch.

The FBI confirmed Cliven Bundy's was taken into federal custody but declined to provide a reason or other details, saying further information would be released by the U.S. Attorney's office in Las Vegas, which did not respond to a phone call early Thursday.

Ammon Bundy had been demanding that the Oregon refuge be handed over to locals.

A Nevada legislator, Michele Fiore, called the occupiers earlier in the evening to try to get the occupiers to calm down. Fiore said she could help them only if they stayed alive.

"I need you guys alive," said the Republican member of the Nevada Assembly who was in Portland earlier in the day to show support for Ammon Bundy, who remains jailed. Fiore told occupiers Wednesday night she was driving to the refuge to try to help negotiate their exit from the refuge. The occupiers prayed with Fiore and others as the situation dragged on for hours Wednesday night.

Sean Anderson said late Wednesday he spoke with the FBI and that he and the three other holdouts would turn themselves in at a nearby FBI checkpoint at 8 a.m. Thursday.

Anderson relayed the news to Fiore.

"We're not surrendering, we're turning ourselves in. It's going against everything we believe in," he said.

Greg Bretzing, special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon, said in a statement the situation had reached a point where it "became necessary to take action" to ensure the safety of all involved.

Bretzing said one of the occupiers rode an ATV outside "the barricades established by the militia" at the refuge. When FBI agents tried to approach the driver, Fry said he returned to the camp at a "high rate of speed."

The FBI placed agents at barricades ahead of and behind the occupier's camp, Bretzing said.

"It has never been the FBI's desire to engage these armed occupiers in any way other than through dialogue, and to that end, the FBI has negotiated with patience and restraint in an effort to resolve the situation peacefully," he said in a statement.

Authorities had for weeks allowed the occupiers to come and go freely from the remote refuge, leading to criticism from local and state officials that law enforcement wasn't doing enough to end the situation.

Ammon Bundy and others were arrested Jan. 26 on a remote road outside the refuge, but the four holdouts remained.

On Wednesday night Sandy Anderson said after the group was surrounded: "They're threatening us. They're getting closer. I pray that there's a revolution if we die here tonight."

Her husband, Sean Anderson, said in the livestream: "We will not fire until fired upon. We haven't broken any laws, came here to recognize our constitutional rights."

The occupiers said they saw snipers on a hill and a drone.

The standoff was occurring on the 40th day of the occupation, launched by Bundy and his followers to protest prison terms for two local ranchers on arson charges and federal management of public lands.

Bundy was arrested last month as he and other main figures of the occupation were traveling to the town of John Day. Four others were also arrested in that confrontation, which resulted in the shooting death of the group's spokesman, Robert "LaVoy" Finicum. The FBI said Finicum was reaching for a gun.

Most of the occupiers fled the refuge after that. Authorities then surrounded the property and later got the holdouts added to an indictment charging 16 people with conspiracy to interfere with federal workers.

At first, Bundy urged the last holdouts to go home. But in response to the grand jury indictment, he took a more defiant tone from jail.

As for Cliven's arrest, if they actually manage to hit these assholes with more than a slap on the wrist and make the charges stick, then the Feds just pulled off some kind of massive next level rope-a-dope.

[Borgholio]

As for Cliven's arrest, if they actually manage to hit these assholes with more than a slap on the wrist and make the charges stick, then the Feds just pulled off some kind of massive next level rope-a-dope.

Even if it IS just a slap on the wrist, it sends a message. The message is that you go too far then you'll get arrested. The feds are not a bunch of spineless cowards, they will remember you for years, and you will have no choice but to hold up as a prisoner in a bunker or a private ranch for a very VERY long time if you want to feel safe. A lot of the people in Oregon just gave up and went home...basically saying, "Fuck it, not worth it. I want to go home." Those people are not likely to want to go through that again.

[Knife]

Seems they didn't surrender yet, waiting for some congress critter from Nevada who supports them (odd, a congresswoman supporting a separatists rebel group) and Grahm's kid who is driving there.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm worried about what will happen with the remaining people in the refuge, and the possibility that they will insist on a futile bloody last stand.

It's fairly easy to NOT oblige people who want a bloody last stand. Just don't attack them. It's still winter in there, all you have to do is stop anyone from feeding them and your "idiots in a building" problem will solve itself.

[Dominus Atheos]

Seems they didn't surrender yet, waiting for some congress critter from Nevada who supports them (odd, a congresswoman supporting a separatists rebel group) and Grahm's kid who is driving there.

This is the congresswoman:



She's a state congressperson so I'm sure really likes the idea of "returning federal land to the states".

[Broomstick]

My goodness - sex appeal and guns, I can see how she got elected.

[Napoleon the Clown]

Who else thinks they should let Cliven and his kid share a cell? It would be the most awkward "roommate" situation imaginable. I can't help but wonder if Cliven tried to negotiate with federal agents in Nevada, who were all "Oh, yeah. We won't stop you visiting your son." Then he lands and other federal agents are all "Sup? We got a call you were coming here. Let's go see your son."

There's stupid criminals, then there's these assholes...

[Knife]

Sigh, that poster is disturbing.

[Flagg]

What the fuck is some state congress cunt from Nevada doing sticking her ignorant, hick, flyover county, and rhinoplastied nose into shit going down in fucking Oregon?

And what business does some gun-toting, micro-dicked, elementary school dropout holed up with fellow hickshits from outside of Oregon have telling the FBI to "get the hell out of Oregon"? Don't these hypocritical ignor-anuses believe in "states rights"?

Also, I saw in a video I can't seem to post or link to that these fuckwits said "We're not surrendering, we're just turning ourselves in!"

[Civil War Man]

It's over now. After apparently repeatedly threatening to kill himself, the lone holdout (David Fry, the same guy who expressed his admiration for ISIS) surrendered.

[Borgholio]

Yep, finally we're done. Now they just need to clean up their mess and people can enjoy that area just in time for spring.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/us/or ... .html?_r=0

[Flagg]

It's over now. After apparently repeatedly threatening to kill himself, the lone holdout (David Fry, the same guy who expressed his admiration for ISIS) surrendered.

Yeah, all 4 left the Furher Bunker and were taken into custody peacefully.