Previously: Militia Occupies Federal Building in Oregon After Rancher Arson Convictions
Russia Today reports:
Ammon Bundy, the leader of the armed group occupying a federal wildlife refuge near Burns, Oregon, and four others have been arrested by law enforcement amid gunfire, according to the FBI.
At 4:25 pm on [January 26], the FBI and Oregon State Police "began an enforcement action to bring into custody a number of individuals associated with the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. During that arrest, there were shots fired", the Bureau said in a statement.
The FBI said one person who was "a subject of a federal probable cause arrest is deceased". He said they are not releasing any information on the person "pending identification by the medical examiner's office".
One person suffered non-life threatening injuries and was taken to a local hospital for treatment. He was arrested and is in custody.
The arrested individuals include:
- Ammon Edward Bundy, age 40, of Emmett, Idaho.
- Ryan C. Bundy, age 43, of Bunkerville, Nevada.
- Brian Cavalier, age 44, of Bunkerville, Nevada.
- Shawna Cox, age 59, of Kanab, Utah.
- Ryan Waylen Payne, age 32, of Anaconda, Montana.
CNN, NYT, Washington Post, BBC, OregonLive.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Phoenix666 on Thursday January 28 2016, @02:42AM
No, I have a "grew up in the Rockies and have known ranching and farming families all my life, whose ancestors homesteaded; and my own family which homesteaded across America before crossing over into being scientists and engineers" view of homesteading. So I have first-hand accounts from my grandparents, who grew up in homestead households, and my great-grandparents, who lived on until I was 20, first-hand knowledge from friends and acquaintances who still ranch and farm, and formal education in school about the history of "how the West was won."
There were lots of forces that drove the passage of territories into statehood, including but not limited to Manifest Destiny, Gold rushes, the Indian Wars, the railroads, and cultural inertia, but none of them obviate the transition from open grazing land to federal lands ranchers could still graze their herds on.
And for what it's worth, Dances with Wolves was a movie about Indians, not about homesteaders. If you're gonna cite movies to belittle someone's contribution to a conversation about ranching in the West, you'd better brush up on your Westerns.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2016, @10:12PM
Yeah, well apparently your argumentative skills are VERY narrowed down to single-topic. Dances With Wolves reference was about how a remarkably one-sided, idyllic, and over-simplified view of Native Americans vs. Evil White Guys approach is being applied by your remarkably one-sided, idyllic, and over-simplified view of homesteaders vs. Evil Gubmit views. Sorry if it was too nuanced; I included the words "view of" immediately in front of "homesteading" to show that I was applying the tenets of that movie to the topic of homesteading, but I apologize and I will refrain from complicated forms of expression.
And yes, you are right, there were many reasons that drove the population to want Statehood, but quite frankly, your deeply rooted ancestral views going back three generations don't mean shit because they are irrelevant to the subject owing to the fact that they were already living in a state of the US. You see, when the territory became a state, it became subject to the conditions of being a state. Your revered grandparents can't say "50 years ago this is what we did". If you want to take your specific state as an example, they became a state under a number of conditions including:
I don't question whether you have the same misguided, self-serving and selfish beliefs as the Bundys, but get off your fucking high horse with your attitude if those were the conditions in fucking 1876 that they signed on to, and I think it is very easy to say that they've reaped far more benefits from being a state than they lost. So contrary to your myopic beliefs, it isn't an urbanite outlook looking down on ranchers, it is calling out blatant and unabashed entitlement attitude.