Plan B Forum

What You Need To Know About The Oregon Militia Standoff

GRAPHIC January 4, 2016
VOL 52 ISSUE 00

During a rally in Oregon for two ranchers convicted of arson, a group of anti-government protesters initiated the armed occupation of a federal building at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Here is everything you need to know about the militia standoff:

Where is the standoff taking place?

The headquarters of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, future capital of the Free Republic Of America.

How did this start?

Protests began after local ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond were ordered to return to prison because their time already served for committing arson did not meet minimum-sentencing laws, which, to be fair, often do more harm than good and are certainly worthy of reevaluation.

Who are the ranchers protesting against?

Gub’ment.

Why did the ranchers take over the federal wildlife building?

You big-city folk wouldn’t understand.


How many people are involved in the standoff?

An estimated 150 militia members who would otherwise be armed and spouting anti-government rhetoric somewhere else.

What are the protesters’ demands?

$5 million in cash and safe passage to 1874.

Is there legitimacy to their complaints?

Compared to the plight of the Oregon’s nearly extinct short-tailed albatross? Absolutely not.

Who is Ammon Bundy?

An American patriot who is currently living inside a government wildlife building in the middle of Oregon to defend ranchers who burned down 130 acres of federal land.

Are the protesters violent?

They have vowed to only seek a peaceful overthrow of the entire U.S. federal government.

How long are they planning to stay?

As long as their supply of whiskey and bison chili lasts.

What is the militia ultimately hoping to achieve?

Garner enough attention over next few weeks to be brought onstage during rally for a low-polling GOP candidate.

Is the protest going to work?

Nope.

A group of around a dozen armed men have taken over a remote federal building on a wildlife reserve in Oregon as part of a protest against government "tyranny", demanding that the land be handed over to local ranchers.

Despite the fact that a few of the actors have carried out similar actions over land use before, they appear not to have planned this stand-off in the snowy, desolate area very well.

The group have vowed to stay in the building "as long as it takes" and have said they are not afraid to kill or be killed if law enforcement tries to remove them.

The group aren't exactly defending their cause from ridicule. It has emerged that before the group even got to the site, one of their number put out a call on Facebook for "supplies and snacks":

The responses were heartening..

http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/o ... ZJglh9sRjx

Every successful revolution starts with takeover of closed visitor center with gift shop.

the same tactic worked before in the same place with the same people

The shadow of Waco and other botched law enforcement sieges of the 1980s and 1990s is looming large over the standoff in south-eastern Oregon, where federal agents are avoiding anything that smacks of confrontation with the armed anti-government activists who have occupied a remote wildlife refuge since the weekend.

Where once federal law enforcement agencies might have been itching to meet the activists’ defiance head-on, now they are virtually invisible – apparently believing they have much more to lose from triggering violence than they have to gain by waiting the protesters out.

The reason, according to former federal agents and experts on rightwing extremism, is a vivid institutional memory of the bloodshed that marked standoffs with radical rightwingers in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992 and at Waco, Texas, the following year. Those operations not only led to loss of life on both sides – more than 80 people died in the fire that ended the siege of the Branch Davidian religious compound outside Waco – they also provoked scandal, investigations, congressional hearings, and years of further confrontations with radical groups outraged by the way the federal authorities behaved.

“What we’re seeing is definitely related to lessons learned at Ruby Ridge and Waco and Marion, Utah and other sieges since then,” said Mark Pitcavage, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. “From a law enforcement perspective, if you try to use force to resolve the situation, there’s a risk that one or more of the extremists involved may be killed and turn into martyrs. You can end up spawning far more retaliatory acts of violence than whatever harm the initial incident could have caused.”

At least one Waco veteran, an FBI hostage negotiator who has long since retired, has been hired back as a government adviser on the Oregon standoff. Another, the former head of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, Danny Coulson, said it was gratifying to see the bureau take what he called a “laid-back posture”.

“Less is better here,” Coulson said. “Let ’em talk … The commander on the ground should be engaging in very close dialogue with the group’s leader, person to person. Sooner or later, the wives are going to get sick of the sight of their husbands screwing around out there, or they’ll need to go get cigarettes. It will end the right way.”

rubato wrote:Since no one else mentioned it:


Not good feng shui


yrs,
rubato

The one single thing that could probably do the most to end this, would be for the press to pack up and go home.

wesw wrote: