The FBI Trickles Out Some Video from Oregon

The criminal complaint forming the legal basis for the arrests (and, strangely, not all occupants were hooked up; McConnell & the 18yo straphanger weren’t) contains (para 23) 3rd-hand to 3rd-hand source information from day-1 of the occupation (back on 2 January) that, in my view, inflamed or at least colored the perception by the FBI of the protestor’s intentions.

On an AAR note, going into a village for a meeting and taking along 3/4 of your core team and all of your recognized leadership… makes a nice handy basket of eggs the FBI knew about.

Why is everyone who believes the FBI/OSP acted with overkill, repeatedly labeled a “conspiracy theorist”?

Superb information and writing as usual.

I completely agree with your sentiments regarding the extreme desirability of avoiding violent civil conflict. Unfortunately, I am being steadily forced toward the opinion that that would be preferable to where we are headed both socially and politically.

God save America.

Very well written piece. There are, or should be a lot of lessons learned here.

I agree that there are issues with transparency in cases like this. The spinning and selective dispersal of information in an obvious attempt to sway opinions in court is just plain wrong. Cases like this really need to be investigated by an impartial. If not the question that remain will out live the participants, and doubt and mistrust grow.

One comment regarding TTP’s here is that the Feds, and OSP initiating the stop, should have had a better plan for their stop. Having an officer muzzling, and or firing at his own is bad. Yeah plans go wrong when real life intervenes, but this should not have happened. These guys had weeks to train and prepare. Should have trained this out.

Yes, this began with a prosecution that was questionable in the first place. But I think that even once the protest/takeover had begun so much of this could have been avoided. ONE Park Ranger with balls could have driven in there, said “The park is closed.” and driven on. I mean What would the protesters have done at that point? If they had been left out there with no one paying attention, then what? If the protesters had been given tickets for trespass, and not threatened with heavy weight federal felonies, this too would have helped avoid escalation.

In the end, not matter how you slice it these things end up as pissing contests. Unless cooler heads prevail.

***This whole mess began because a Federal prosecutor (like all of them an effete urbanite with many years in Eastern elite colleges) thought it would be amusing to make a felony out of some careless brush burnoffs by a couple of ranchers, and send the hayseeds to prison.***

Maybe. But it’s also possible that there may be a little more than that behind it:

Oregon shootout rooted in Clinton uranium trade?

http://www.wnd.com/2016/01/oregon-shootout-rooted-in-clinton-uranium-trade/#0JJ8qiCqZqAjTz17.99

Eh. Rappoport has been watching too many movies. I don’t think there were any nuclear physicists on either side of that standoff.

eh. a bit of ad hominem and all the clintonian and fedgov corruption is brushed away, eh. Mr ex-leo and veteran: you took an oath to defend the constitution, and now all you can do is stand back and defend those who burned it under your nose. some good ol’ boys (with little to zero experience and common sense in matters of defying our elite masters) from the hinterlands are in jail and one is dead. the whole episode stinks of infiltrators to ensure the Bundys were humbled for the Nevada standoff and payoff whoever bribed the clintons for mining access to our “public land”. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

The farce is strong with this one!

I grew up in the mid-atlantic metro/suburban area. I now live in a western state that has the land mass of all of New England and about a quarter of New York state combined. We have counties the size of (or larger than) east coast states. It is often amusing to hear people from “back east” use the word “rural”.

The completely different cultures are almost as foreign as moving from Rome (Italy) to Stockholm (Sweden), and that is only about half the distance. The reality is that centralized, far-removed government (D.C.) is mostly incapable of “understanding” let alone communicating with such disparate cultures. Adding to the problem is a subset of people (in these situations) who while priding themselves as being “constitutionalists”, are really just anarchists.

If you’re going to declare violent aggression against the Federal government, it pays to understand that THEY ALSO HAVE GUNS, that THEY LIKE THEIR LAWS, and that THEY’RE LIKELY TO TAKE YOUR THREATS OF LETHAL FORCE SERIOUSLY.

Also, if there’s a bunch of Feds pointing guns at you, lock your elbows, keep your hands in plain sight, and don’t repeatedly reach inside your coat. The only wonder here is that they let him do this multiple times before they shot him.

I don’t really know what the deal was with this crew, but from a purely tactical perspective he simply killed himself.

I would note that none of the Founding Fathers were stupid enough to do this kind of thing (and where people DID, they were killed/arrested). They operated from a carefully orchestrated position of strength-at least, as much strength as could be realized. John Adams didn’t just grab up a couple dozen of his BFFs and declare violence against the Crown.

-Andrew, @LawSelfDefense

When did Bundy ever articulate a threat to use lethal force? Did I miss something? Or are you suggesting that simply openly carrying a weapon can be legally construed as “threatening to use lethal force”?

That aside, Bundy and his crew NEVER should have allowed themselves to be photographed carrying rifles; that was stupid, and played right into the hands of the media and the Feds. Keep the rifles in the truck and carry concealed pistols during your occupation.

1) The Dipstick Army cleverly left out of all narratives that they had been stopped initially for several minutes, then fled that stop at high speed before running smack into the blocking force downstream. Clearly, that little detail slipped their minds. Color me surprised.

2) They also left out that Finicum missed clobbering an officer at the barricade by something between inches and a bare couple feet when he swerved into the snow bank at speed. I’m sure that sort of thing, on top of high-speed fight to evade arrest, made for a calmer response at the final destination – NOT.

3) It’s a lead pipe cinch no one told Finicum to leap out of the vehicle immediately, and begin prancing about in the snow.

4) It’s also dead certain no one at the scene told him either to reach his hands towards his jacket pocket, nor to produce ID and vehicle registration.

5) Absent bodycam video showing that he was shot at before his hands moved to his side, unprovoked, and based on the prior chain of Terminal Stupid leading up to that point, at the moment his hands go to his body/coat, he well and truly earned the f*ckton of .40S&W that subsequently flies at him at around 1000fps, because that’s what happens when you’re too stupid to live, and screw around with guns pointed at you. Whether he actually had a weapon available at that point is a matter for forensics, and not germane to the shoot/don’t shoot decision made a few seconds after he bounded out of the truck.

6) Felony traffic stops are a mature technology: had Finicum turned off the vehicle, tossed the keys out the window, and all the occupants taken their turns walking backwards and proning out for the cuffs at the first opportunity, or even the second one, they’d all be alive and otherwise unscathed in the federal pokey, as the other idiots are.

I watched this thing rather closely for 3 weeks. To this day I still have no idea why they occupied the refuge, let alone what they thought the result would be, other than the current Bag O’ Idiots all in federal custody.

The word the day before was that there was a spike in federal presence, in the order of several hundreds, the day before the traffic stop. And yet these clowns were driving all over the backwoods liken it was just another day only 24 hrs later. Clearly, IQ points were at a premium inside that compound, and found wanting on the day.

Considering how surgically the takedown was, it seems pretty clear that the feds had eyes and ears inside the compound, on the day, because without that, I doubt their outside surveillance would have been on the ball enough to pick out their targets and mount the op they did so quickly.

If their outsidesurveillance was that good, that begs the question of why the leaders were all out tooling around in a pick-up truck like they had Magic Invisibility or something.

That they didn’t go down in a blaze of glory is fortunate all around. Either they never intended to, or they were punks. If the former, non-violent resistance is not a tactic to apply after swatting a grizzly bear (in this case the USGOV, the entire point of the exercise) on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. Either way, they’ll probably ultimately have 20-50 quiet uninterrupted years to rethink things.

And even assuming the new orange jumpsuit posse were all sweetness and light on the side of righteousness, sweet suffering Shiva:

A one-vehicle convoy, no hardening, and no contingency plans except rabbit into the arms of the blocking force??

There are only about 100,000 SP4s from the sand box with more convoy and ambush sense than that, some of them with nothing but GEDs.

And now, it’s likely Pa Bundy’s cows won’t be the only critters in the family eating for free off the federal government for the next few decades.

Whatever the motivation, the execution of the occupiers’ plan and mission (I use the terms charitably) was simply unsalvageably stupid. The purported objects told them to eff off, and the local community told them to GTFO of Dodge. And they thought they could yell “Boo!” and cow Leviathan. As if.

And they managed to make the feds look like the restrained and reasonable ones, except to those irredeemably certain of Black Helicopters and global conspiracy.

This wasn’t a remake of John Brown, it was more like a remake of Murphy Brown.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes: Winter Wasteland Edition.

“Absent bodycam video showing that he was shot at before his hands moved to his side, unprovoked, and based on the prior chain of Terminal Stupid leading up to that point, at the moment his hands go to his body/coat, he well and truly earned the f*ckton of .40S&W”

I can’t agree with this; this video is one piece of evidence yes, but to say he was unprovoked based on this alone and that he deserved to be shot I think goes too far. Jumping out of that truck seems to have been the stupid thing to do I agree, but he clearly did it for a reason and as he gets out he has hands in the air again with purpose. We do not know what those reasons are, nor do we know exactly why they drove off from the initial stop.

It’s very easy to look at these things from where we sit now and think ‘that was pretty dumb’, but we also have to understand that on the ground things are never this simple. I see a man facing agents of the state with hands up being shot dead and to say absent more information he was in the wrong I do not think is enough. Mind, I am not saying that we need to come to the opposite conclusion either, just that this alone doesn’t look to me to be enough to determine ‘he well and truly earned the f*ckton of .40S&W’.

This video shows part of the story indeed, but it only presents more questions that need to be answered. Here is what I think, if they are able to release this information then they should also see it reasonable to release more; whether or not they do (and what it may contain of course) will itself be a data point.

These men were not actively attacking others with violence, they were (we are told) traveling based on agreements with the state made in deceit they were set upon by a large force of armed agents and one is killed and we see him plainly standing with hands in the air. Did he reach, didn’t he reach… maybe so. But it’s also an extremely convenient excuse for those that want to see someone put down.

Or to put it more clearly; if he was not shot prior to lowering his hands, they need to have it on video, and make it known.

you missed Aesop’s central point. This “FreeFor” Op was a clusterfuck from the moment the Hammond’s said “go away. We don’t want you around”. All the rest follows. The Bundy’s are good-hearted people, but brainless as a box of rocks. Score: FreeFor 2 (Bundy Ranch, Sugar Pine mine; not @ either, but helped finance/supply both), SlaveFor 1 (this debacle; I washed my hands of it from Day One, and said so at the time)

Ok, I’ll bite.

So what part of what I said was wrong?

Here’s a picture too.

No, we don’t see him plainly killed with hands standing in the air. You’re assuming he moved his hands down because he was shot. I’m assuming he moved his hands down because he was stupid. There’s no explicit evidence to know when the shooting started, but there’s ample evidence to point out that the stupid was pretty much non-stop for 23 days, so I think I have the preponderance of likelihood on my side.

Either way, had he remained in the truck with the other morons, he’s eating creamed chipped beef on toast in the federal lock-up in Portland OR now. Maybe even out via jury nullification in a few months. Instead of in an evidence meat locker.

If bodycam or dashcam footage with audio surfaces showing they executed him before his hands came to his side, go after those @$$holes. And while you’re up, I’d like a pony, and world peace, because those electrons are non-existent by this time.

Even if one guy was triggerhappy, the minute he drops his hands, the party for everyone else was justifiably on, and they reacted as any rational actor would, and it was certainly more than sufficient to finish him off. A shotgun or patrol rifle was involved by that point, IIRC. That merely makes a death under such circumstances tragic, as well as needless and stupid.

Pretty much like this whole sorry escapade by the Children’s Crusade, 2016 Edition.

If you’re going to take on the Guvmint, because Evil Leviathan, ROWYBS.

But when you go about it this window-licking retardedly, don’t look surprised or BMW about the @$$full of lead you’ll receive as justified payment from its minions.

The precedent for this sort of thing goes back beyond the Bonus Army all the way to the Whiskey Rebellion.

This was nothing but a group-participation Darwin Award, Second Class.

AESOP,

+1

“You’re assuming he moved his hands down because he was shot.”

Let me clarify. I should have said “I see a man facing agents of the state with hands up and then being shot dead”, which we do see. I didn’t mean to make the point that I think he was shot before he reached, which if you read further into my post I did state.

“I’m assuming he moved his hands down because he was stupid.”

I don’t believe we should, nor should we be expected to assume anything.

If this is the only evidence that is presented then that should have thinking people consider, what is it they are unwilling to let us see? Additional data would have been collected and should have been preserved. Are you really saying that you fully expect them to have purged this evidence and that if they did, you are perfectly happy coming to the same conclusion based solely on this?

That is what I can’t agree with.

We saw what amounts of lying and covering up they were willing to attempt at Ruby Ridge and Waco, nearly a quarter-century in the rear view mirror. Anybody who thinks Efram Zimbalist Jr. still works at the FBI is sadly disappointed. So are those who think it’s Lavrenti Beria. The truth most times is somewhere between the two.

AFAIK, the blocking stop, and the shooters there, were all OSP. Their vehicles were quite properly nosed in, so any dashcam footage will probably be looking the wrong way. I have no knowledge whether or not the OSP officers who shot routinely wore bodycams.

What I do know without question is that Finicum took off from a felony stop at high speed, and no more forethought than the average room-temp IQ perp, nearly hit another officer attempting to either avoid the collision at the blocking position because he was going faster than his brain could think, or was making a futile attempt to get around it; then he jumped out of the truck, and began prancing around in snow drifts with half a dozen guns pointed at him (as an assumed fleeing armed felon). Endangering himself, everybody in the vehicle, and the guys behind the vehicles blocking his escape.

These are the actions of a panicky foolish jack@$$.

And they are what ultimately got him killed.

I’m not happy about that, but it’s simply gravity working when you jump off a cliff.

The fact that they didn’t subsequently hose down the vehicle’s other occupants points out that this didn’t have to end this way for him. Frankly, I still hope the others walk via jury nullification, which would be a bitter pill for the feds to swallow, and pretty much justified all around. If they convict on some petty wrist-slap offense and token fine, same-same. But if the state of OR subsequently decides to take the other truck occupants for wrongful death because of Finicum’s demise, the defendants haven’t got a leg to stand on, and will likely go down for that if nothing else. Actions have consequences, which is apparently a new thought to this bunch of clowns, as it is for everybody else they’ll be sharing residence with when the bars slam.

The takeaway is not to lash up with a bunch of malcontents with delusions of competency, with no idea on what they want to accomplish, and even less on how to go about it, because they’ll get you killed or imprisoned.

If you’re willing to risk that for something worthwhile with people who have a clue, then by all means, ante up knowing the odds, or at least go out like Butch and Sundance, rather than like Moe and Curly.

Doing it with this cluster of clowns is beyond tragic, and approaching comedy – except for that dead guy bleeding out in a snow bank due to a terminal deficiency of wisdom, intelligence, and common sense.

This is reply to Aesop:

“The fact that they didn’t subsequently hose down the vehicle’s other occupants points out that this didn’t have to end this way for him.”

Watch the full video. It appears they may have hosed down the vehicle post Finicum being shot. What are those flashes and snow flying absent any other evidence?

E sop, because it is apparent the fucking dumbass LEO jumped in front of the truck – actually broke cover and moved toward a moving vehicle… your comment regarding him being in danger is… pointless.

While I respect and appreciate your insight into medical/1st responder/nurse shit; and the stuff you wrote about e Bola and how the entire fucking world would be contaminated and dead by now… I will also respectfully request that you read and learn and not pontificate about gunfighting, and the ‘conclusions’ you draw from aerial video with no audio (which is insufficient to allow us to make any substantive points of fact). So, while medically you win – when it comes to a running gunfight, you don’t know fuck all.

For whatever you may think, one thing is certain – wise, or not; planned or not… LaVoy had the trusting heart of someone who – because of examples like Ferguson and Baltimore – expected white ranchers to be treated as well as black thugs – or moslems. Either way, let us not speak ill of the dead. Especially those who died with their boots on for their beliefs, and who had balls at least 100 times bigger than yours.

Thanks so much for your kind words, Grandpa. I’m sorry I missed them earlier. Your concern for the size of my testicles is touching, though rather unseemly. The rest of your benedictions remind me of a quote from Shakespeare somewhere…something about sound and fury…it’ll come to me eventually.

As to your points on topic, I was unaware until this that serving as a voluntary bullet sponge was considered “gunfighting” in any sense of that word; unless we count the one Mr. Finicum is alleged to have been carrying and reaching for at the time of his death, in which case, I offer the sage advice that a pistol under your coat is trumped by 10 guys with weapons already drawn and pointed at you. Shall we check the video on that, and see if I got that right?

If he was, in fact, actually unarmed, it makes his departure from the vehicle, and leaping and staggering in the snow all the more puzzling, but certainly no more sensible and just as ill-advised. Of course, as you noted, I’m just an amateur, and I defer to those with more experience getting stopped by the police with their guns out and a blockade across the roadway.

I also saw the running part, but I missed any other gunfighting he participated in. After that he seemed to just lay there and do a lot of bleeding. Drawing on my medical expertise, that mainly just takes cardiac output, brief though it was, and no notable testicular fortitude; I’d even presume that in law enforcement, it happens to other fleeing suspects somewhere in the country at least once a day, to no one’s particular surprise or admiration. If Mr. Finicum thought that alone, on a deserted road in the middle of Nowhere OR was the same thing as rioting in Ferguson MO, and that the FBI and OSP were as inept as the law enforcement and civil authorities (I’m being charitable again) in the vicinity of those St. Louis suburbs, I’m pretty sure he got the last surprise of his life right there, on that day.

It probably hurt, too.

Had he played no active and culpable part in his own demise, it would indeed be speaking ill of the dead to task him for his lack of sense. As it was pretty much entirely his own fault right up to the staccato finish, I see nothing wrong with using him as a negative lesson worth learning.

To return your benedictions, I hope your balls aren’t hurting too much now either.

In re-reading what I wrote, I don’t see how you thought I had ‘concern’….

In reading your response, you again draw significant conclusion from bad video; which is to be expected; since that was the intent of the agency releasing it.

Again, you have expertise in medicine, and I applaud it. I read without comment, as I believe I can learn – much as the post you had on dealing with gsw on the range or elsewhere. I find the insight and lessons valuable. Perhaps a good suggestion would be that, in light of the man’s death; you keep the critique of his actions and etc. out of it, and read and learn of what can be gleaned from this situation from those who have expertise in this area.

And I do appreciate your concern for my possible pain, but there’s nothing you could do or say that causes me any concern – only mirth, nurse.

Astonishing as it may seem, I’m expert on any number of topics not directly germane to my current employment, having come to my current career after having lived quite a bit of life already. In my personal experience, that’s true for just about everyone on the planet, and is not customarily regarded as any sort of amazing.

But as it happens, I have quite a bit of expertise in appraising human stupidity, as its direct and daily results provides the overwhelming bulk of my living.

I therefore have no difficulty recognizing it post mortem in this instance.

The more I have heard and read after the fact, from people present at the event in question, the less doubt I have about my original appraisals:

Finicum was apparently, according to witnesses friendly to him on the day, running on emotions rather than brains in the moment, and was taunting the officers to shoot him and alternately shouting and demanding that they let him go on his way. After he exited the vehicle, in his final moments alive.

Such utterly indefensible and irrational behavior under the muzzles of multiple trained guns confirms pretty conclusively that he had completely lost his sh*t and had a death wish. Both of which entirely explains all of his panicky actions from the initial flight to avoid arrest, onwards until he dropped his hands to his coat.

Absent a unicorn flying in with exculpatory first-person video and audio of the event to the contrary, the best lesson to learn from such behavior is simply “Don’t be that guy.”

The second best is that flashing red lights mean “Pull over now, and don’t be an idiot afterwards.” (I’m not certain personally, but I’ll hazard a guess they covered that information at some point in the driver education and licensing requirements Finicum had to pass to get a driver’s license.)

QED

Samoe of your best writing on a blog full of great writing Hognose. Chapeau!

It looks to me like he repeatedly reached under his coat while moving, when he could’ve just stood there with his hands up. The only reasonable thing for the cops to do under those circumstances is assume he’s going for a weapon and engage him.

If he was attempting to draw a weapon he did a remarkably poor job of it. Perhaps he had the hammer snag on his clothing or something similar, because I don’t see that he completed the draw, and he was at it for quite a while before falling. It looks to me like the cops gave him plenty of time to put his hands back up before firing.

Oddly, when he attempted to drive by the roadblock, it looks like one of the agents ran right out in front of the oncoming vehicle and was knocked down. I wonder what that was about?

Eh, I’m mixed on this.

Aesop is absolutely right. Why the hell were Bundy and his buddies gallivanting around? If you’re going to pick a fight with Leviathan, make sure you stay where your harpoons are near at hand. I’ve heard some talk that it was a trap — the invitation to the talk was to lure them out — in which case, wow, the ‘federales eunt domus’ crowd is better off than before, because the average intelligence has increased.

I mean, geez, I’m not a soldier, and I could’ve told them that was a dumb idea, especially with the amount of heat the FBI was probably absorbing from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to wrap this thing up.

That being said, I’m gonna be blunt: anything that comes out of the feds’ pieholes is going to get reviewed with a fine-toothed comb and a magnifying glass, because they have NOT been playing kosher for a while. They better hope they hand pick that jury nice and neat; be a shame if someone decided to dig their heels in and refuse to convict. No sir, I do not trust them. I would sooner trust a drug addict with my credit card.

I would like to note one other thing, in Hognose’s excellent summary:

“But it’s disturbing the degree to which this feels like the period of Bloody Kansas and the John Brown Raid. People are divided, bitter, and bloody-minded. We know where the failure to find a political resolution to the widening schism in the 1850s wound up. ”

This, a thousand times this. In some ways we are WORSE off than we were in 1850. The divide between statists and liberty-minded folks makes the one between the Civil War-era States look like chump change.

***“But it’s disturbing the degree to which this feels like the period of Bloody Kansas and the John Brown Raid. People are divided, bitter, and bloody-minded. We know where the failure to find a political resolution to the widening schism in the 1850s wound up. ”*** [via hognose]

Just so. And after the FBI churchburning at Waco on 19 April 1993, so we saw the 19 April 1995 destruction of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on 19 April 1995. Similarly, we may have a 24-month wait for the blowback from the Oregon killing/s.

***This, a thousand times this. In some ways we are WORSE off than we were in 1850. The divide between statists and liberty-minded folks makes the one between the Civil War-era States look like chump change.*** [observation Toastrider]

Also true. But the described divide is more akin, I believe to that of patriotic Finnish nationalists [*Whites*] versus the Communist/Socialist forces [*Reds*] in Finland during the four-month-long 1918 bloodletting generally known as the Finnish Civil War [Red terminology] or the War of Independence [Whites’ term] of Jan-May, 1918. Though but 4 months in duration, it resulted in a national casualty count of about two percent of the total male population of 3.2 million people; it took four years of the American Civil War, 1861-1865 . to roughly double that number. But even more interestingly, only around one fatality on four was what could reasonably be called a combat casualty; the rest were summary executions, dispatch of enemy wounded, executions or starvation in prison camps, or later retaliatory killings by the victors- which happened to be the White forces. Among other procedures: the introduction of previously untrained and inexperienced trainees to the realities of their new trade by having the rookies bayonet the enemy prisoners…after which they weren’t rookies anymore. And the Socialists and Liberal Democrats of the world bitterly recall those deaths,m and if you ever wondered why they get into such a tizzy about the people of the country having weapons with bayonet lugs on them, now you know.

There are differences and similarities between the conditions that spawned the Finnish bloodletting and the present conditions in this country, of course, and you can consider a few of them detailed at the following links, as a starting place, at least:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/finnish-civil-war.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Civil_War

http://warfarehistorian.blogspot.com/2014/02/finlands-civil-war-1918-red-white-suomi.html

Events are much more carefully managed than in the past. It’s not some conspiracy, but rather apathy amongst the populace and greater strides in channeling energy. The USG has learned to rob men of their cinematic last stands. Soft control (ie, control via incentive structures) is the name of the game. In any other country on Earth this would’ve been a bloodbath.

***“But it’s disturbing the degree to which this feels like the period of Bloody Kansas and the John Brown Raid. People are divided, bitter, and bloody-minded. We know where the failure to find a political resolution to the widening schism in the 1850s wound up. ”*** [via hognose]

Just so. And after the FBI churchburning at Waco on 19 April 1993, so we saw the 19 April 1995 destruction of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on 19 April 1995. Similarly, we may have a 24-month wait for the blowback from the Oregon killing/s.

***This, a thousand times this. In some ways we are WORSE off than we were in 1850. The divide between statists and liberty-minded folks makes the one between the Civil War-era States look like chump change.*** [observation Toastrider]

Also true. But the described divide is more akin, I believe to that of patriotic Finnish nationalists [*Whites*] versus the Communist/Socialist forces [*Reds*] in Finland during the four-month-long 1918 bloodletting generally known as the Finnish Civil War [Red terminology] or the War of Independence [Whites’ term] of Jan-May, 1918. Though but 4 months in duration, it resulted in a national casualty count of about two percent of the total male population of 3.2 million people; it took four years of the American Civil War, 1861-1865 . to roughly double that number. But even more interestingly, only around one fatality on four was what could reasonably be called a combat casualty; the rest were summary executions, dispatch of enemy wounded, executions or starvation in prison camps, or later retaliatory killings by the victors- which happened to be the White forces. Among other procedures: the introduction of previously untrained and inexperienced trainees to the realities of their new trade by having the rookies bayonet the enemy prisoners…after which they weren’t rookies anymore. And the Socialists and Liberal Democrats of the world bitterly recall those deaths,m and if you ever wondered why they get into such a tizzy about the people of the country having weapons with bayonet lugs on them, now you know.

There are differences and similarities between the conditions that spawned the Finnish bloodletting and the present conditions in this country, of course, and you can consider a few of them detailed at the following links, as a starting place, at least:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/finnish-civil-war.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Civil_War

http://warfarehistorian.blogspot.com/2014/02/finlands-civil-war-1918-red-white-suomi.html

As always, thank you for the thoughtful insight and analysis! You really nailed it, again. Like most of the country I’ve been scratching my head wondering “what were these guys thinking?”*. On the one hand as a fellow westerner I feel a bit of kinship and empathy for their issues with the Gubberment, but- there were SO many better ways to go about airing their grievances than this (like pick any other option). Frusterating that the Bundy brothers and company will spend far more time in prison than any terrorist does in Gitmo, yet the Bundys are far less harmless by comparison.

*the local paper offered some insight from a participant. They may have been/ are hoping for far more support: http://news.hjnews.com/allaccess/idaho-sumo-wrestler-who-swam-across-bear-lake-returns-from/article_d0ccfab1-d197-5945-9b7b-8d7565bc88d1.html

well, obviously. And once the Hammonds said “go away, we will not resist”, the operation lacked that central magnet (vs. Bundy Ranch) necessary to draw in the scattered iron filings that currently comprise FreeFor. Had an intelligent (ex)-soldier (a Hognose, Rawles, Max. V. etc) been in charge, he would have looked over the psycho-political terrain at the outset, and decided: “no, doesn’t feel right. We’re going to pass on this one”

I have to think this was, at least in large part, a case of learning the wrong lesson from a previous situation. Recall the Bundys and friends vs BLM troops in Nevada. One suspects that some portion of team Bundy learned a lesson that went something like; “If we all hang together, and we got guns, and we walk up and look ’em straight in the eye, they’ll cave in.” It may well have felt like that was what happened when they walked up and took their cows back. And it’s always tempting to think that the Police, at least the little guys actually on the line, really, deep down, in their hearts, know we’re right and they’re doing wrong. So they won’t shoot us.

Wrong. As noted elsewhere the Government can be quite indifferent to financial or property damage, and even the physical harm of at least it’s lower ranking agents. But Lese Majeste is a capital crime. Embarrass them in public and they will never forget and never forgive.

Wafa Wafa, Wasara Wasara.

Their embarrassment is now redeemed with Mr. Finicum’s blood, and the payoff of the Hammond’s land for those who know whose palms to grease. It would be enlightening, but certainly sad, to know what threats against the families of the Hammonds were made to insure they went peacefully to prison after already serving time for the “terrorism” of making the grass grow greener on their allotments. Kafka could not have written more diabolical plots about the Stalinist regime!

i expected more from the militia guys. It was not even sporting; come on, some counter-snipers, body armor, a convoy of vehicles, Bueler? Bueler?

The occupiers (Bundy, et al) nor Oathkeepers and Pacific Patriot Network

are NOT militia; stop reinforcing the propaganda. OK and PPN perhaps prevented a full-on WACO-type assault after their arrival on the scene, they were NOT part of the occupation. The occupiers WERE a loose-knit group of good ol’boys hopped up on some infiltrator’s line, predestined for an “example” to be made of. Let us hope those in the Liberty Movement learn a little more about fourth generation warfare; and that infiltrators are everywhere.

Thanks for the substantive and thoughtful writing Hognose. As for some of the responses, there is a lot of arm chair quarterbacking going on. I have some comments and will do my best to back it up with substance.

First, I have done some research and believe more is going on than meets the eye. Though complicated, it is within our grasp, as we learn together. Here are my thoughts:

1. These men should not be taken as outright fools. The core of these men are generational ranchers and have given their life to build multigenerational fortunes. They are not slaves to the “job market” like many reading this. Their fortune is tied up in passing a way of life to their children’s children. They are the “salt of the earth” and should be respected for their hard work and courage and faith.

2. That being said, they ARE up against a “leviathan” of which there is no easy answers. They have been in this fight for many years, of which we are just now getting a window into it. (Now for the substance.)

3. The Hammond’s are one of the few standing in that county and is in jail. He is NOT in jail for burning BLM land (that is the excuse used by the crooked judge). He was being pressured to sell his land to the BLM and refused. These ranchers are NOT looking for a mere free hand-out for pasture grazing. This is the core of their argument given in a room full of ranchers not long before they were apprehended. (It is long and substantive.), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqL9NGRTGss&feature=youtu.be

4. They were beginning to win over local support once heard. Here are two examples: Harney County fire Chief, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB6m7x3QDAg

and Local rancher, https://youtu.be/Dgy5hOcL6PA

5. Motive for traveling: Think about it, the feds had many opportunities to stop them previously. Why now? Where were they going and why? There were over 400 people waiting for them at their destination. Maybe they had some important information our government does NOT want out.

6. The fight is in the “courts” for now: listen to Ammon Bundy’s lawyer. The media will not give you this one. Bear with it…it is very substantive and gets better with time. (maybe someone can find a video of the whole press conference). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXKCmzjtLLE

7. Finally, these are fallible men. Yes, there are a number of avenues of approach they could have taken and could have been smarter in many ways. It’s easy to judge from our vantage point but what if you were there? But, maybe they just wanted to get a ball rolling and, if so, they have been effective. For many of us it is a civics lesson.

Hopes this has cleared some things up.

Stop with the conspiracy theory bullshit. The Feds decided rightly the best place to stop them was when they left their location, which is a pretty smart move. No reason to storm the fort when you can get the people to leave. As for these guys aren’t slaves to the job market like many. Yeah cause they depend on a large amount of government handouts.

Seans, by “government handouts” you mean that the feds stole land and then charged for ranchers to use it?

SOTM,

I hope that the medium does not make my reply seem disrespectful:

I will not call them fools, but I will advance that anyone still holding onto the idea (…fortune is tied up in passing a way of life to their children’s children. They are the “salt of the earth” and should be respected for their hard work and courage and faith.) is hopelessly naive. That is history, and as I am sure you know, that is another country.

All, and I do mean all, of those cultural affects are and have been decline to the point that in a few short decades will no longer exist. Yes, there may be a small percentage of holdouts struggling along in a hard scrabble hand-to-mouth existence, but the overall picture is bleak.

The western U.S. is changing. The administration of the forests and open lands is increasingly being changed, using the model of what is now the reality of “public lands” on the east coast. (Think of how unusual it would be for people to try ranching in U.S Forests in PA, VA, or other similar locations.) With the combination of aggressive regulation, ecotyrannists outspending (by millions) farmers and ranchers in Federal courts to limit land to tree hugging, and children (thoroughly permeated by .gov school theory) leaving the farm (not to return), this is a dying culture. This last dynamic (.gov schools, where the entire culture and value set that is taught is antithetical to their cultural presuppositions), in and of itself, is enough to dissolve everything they think that they want to retain. It is over except for the crying.

In credit to AESOP’s post, these guys had as much of a chance of “success” as that guy in front of the tank in Tiananmen square. It may seem gallant to someone looking at the photo, but the tank tread feels nothing.

No disrespect taken. The picture is “bleak” and it is a “dying culture.” Many small towns are dying in our country, which is attributed to the global economy. (A small farmer or rancher cannot compete with a world market, so they are being bought out by large cooperate entities or the government.) But I and many others are not ready to throw in the towel. There are still a few, very few, pockets of freedom. (I, for instance, live in the only county in my state where no building codes are required, for now. A friend of mine was building a house for his family and one of the cities attempted to force him to go through building inspections because he was tied into the city water. The neighbors rose up to his defense and they backed off. It is next to impossible if you have limited funds to build a home for your family because all the fees the state wants in a regular county.) Though a small example, it shows there is power in the people if it is wielded with wisdom.

What worries me more though is the masses who do not have a clue and are droned out. Among them, as you mentioned, are the “bleeding hearts” who want no human presence on public lands.

“Motive for traveling: Think about it, the feds had many opportunities to stop them previously. Why now?…Maybe they had some important information our government does NOT want out.”

Actually I think you asked the right question, but you went a little too far.

Pretend you are the Feds for a moment. What are your goals?

1) End the standoff on OUR terms, not Bundy’s terms.

2) Use lethal force against some, or all, of the Bundy group, to discourage this type of thing from happening again. Pour encourager les autres, as Hognose likes to say.

3) Use lethal force…but, absolutely don’t get any Federal agents killed. “Everyone goes home at the end of their shift!”. So you need to put together a tactically solid ambush.

4) Thoroughly document, with video and audio, the use of lethal force against the Bundy group.

5) Publish video and audio to ensure (a) you win the case in the Court of Public Opinion, (b) you make the Bundy protesters look as dangerous as possible, and (c) you teach future protesters what happens when you stand up against the Feds.

So- how do you best accomplish these goals? First, you have to stage a confrontation that leads to delivering lethal force. And, this can’t just be a confrontation, but a solid ambush. And most important, you have to control all video and audio of this ambush, which means you cannot stage the ambush at the Malheur Refuge (which presumably is under video cameras controlled by the media, or the Bundys, or both) — you have to arrange it in a remote area NOT currently under any third-party video monitoring. A remote stretch of road will do nicely, and there are certainly plenty of these in the area. So, you wait until Bundy and/or some of his leadership ventures out of the Refuge. You allow them to move freely on and off the Refuge for a few weeks, in order to give them a false sense of security, and track their movements. Once you get an idea of how they move tactically, and they have begun to let their guard down, and you get some people on the inside so you can get some advance notice of their itineraries, you stage the ambush. Deploy airborne assets to ensure aerial video, and to track them; put GoPro cameras on your agents and their vehicles. Put your roadblock on a blind curve to get inside their OODA loop; once they hit the roadblock, get your cameras rolling and look for your first opportunity to shoot. Hopefully you can goad someone (or someones) into drawing their weapon(s) in which case you will produce good ground-level GoPro video from many different angles demonstrating that the Bundys are violent aggressors; if you can’t get them to draw, then simply shoot on even the slightest suspicious movement, knowing that the aerial footage can almost certainly be used to support almost any narrative you decide to use, and destroy the ground-level GoPro video.

This plan produces four possible outcomes:

(1) Someone from the Bundy camp draws a weapon on the Feds, and maybe even gets a shot off before being shot down in a hail of gunfire. You release all your video, and you get to kill one of the Bundys. Best possible outcome.

(2) You can’t get them to draw a weapon on you. Not a perfect outcome, but as long as they made any kind of irregular movement, you get to kill them and then trot out the aerial video which will support an appropriate narrative.

(3) You can’t goad them into either firing, or even drawing, or even making anything like a vaguely threatening movement that can be captured from aerial video. But, you shoot (and hopefully kill) at least one of them. Destroy all video evidence, and then it turns into He Said/She Said, and you at least get the deterrent value of a kill.

(4) You can’t goad them into either firing, or even drawing, or even making anything like a vaguely threatening movement that can be captured from aerial video. And you don’t shoot at them, for whatever reason, and you simply arrest them. This is by far the least preferred outcome, as all you do is end the confrontation without producing a kill, and without producing any video that you can use to portray the Bundys as dangerous aggressors.

The risk/reward on all four outcomes is net positive, and on outcome (1), it is gigantically positive. Kudos to the Feds on putting together a terrific plan, and solid execution. While they didn’t get the knockout win that (1) would have produced, they got outcome (2), which is a solid tactical win for the Feds.

I agree. Maybe I do go too fare, however, with the amount of traveling they did previously I am assuming the Feds could have conducted a similar ambush multiple times before.

I thought right away that they planned that ambush with the intent to do it far away from the media eyes and ears. Another thought is that according to the woman in the truck that was released, the shooting started before the truck stopped in the snow, and Levoy was trying to divert the fire away from the truck. But who knows? All I know for sure now is, my respect for OSP and LEO in general has gone completely in the shitter. I’m actually glad I failed to become an OSP game cop. I scored in the 97th. percentile on the written exam, but my disability prevented me from passing the physical test. Then over the years, I began to see the corruption and lawlessness in the agency.

Your perspective on this Hognose is the one I’ve been waiting to read; orders of magnitude superior to that “Do you understand now?” and other site. One wearies of emotional one liners.

On the great divide in these United States. As a (trying to be) serious Catholic, (Benedictus sit nomen Domini Nostri Jesu Christi), my perspective on the divided points of view is necessarily religious and moral. The current unpleasantness of pretend marriage illustrates the split clearly. Driven by a lust for power and dominance, laws are proclaimed contrary to the natural law, i.e., what those not out of their minds call right and wrong. (Remember, it was once legal to own people based upon skin color. Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott decision said to It is now ‘legal’ to murder children, and deal in the parts. Robbie George, of Princeton, makes this very clear saying, “Opposed to slavery? Don’t own one. ” And touching here on that other recent unpleasantness, Lincoln’s Speech on the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise, please read it, might also be called his Munich speech). Nevertheless, once one goes down the path of man-made (positive) law may overrule natural law, the Gulag looms. Who would have imagined that the Justice Department, (a Lynch mob), would sue the Little Sisters of the Poor, over contraception? (On that issue, I strongly recommend Charles Rice’s book, Contraception and Persecution. He wondered if Obamacare might be equivalent to Germany’s Enabling Legislation. And while I’m inside the parentheses, also find Solzhentzyn’s Templeton award speech.) The country has strayed a long way down the wrong road.

One more long quote, please bear up, from Centesimus Annus of John Paul II. (“His words” refers to Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum. By the way, Leo XIII was very brilliant.) John Paul II: ” His words deserve to be re-read attentively: “To remedy these wrongs (the unjust distribution of wealth and the poverty of the workers), the Socialists encourage the poor man’s envy of the rich and strive to do away with private property, contending that individual possessions should become the common property of all…; but their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that, were they carried into effect, the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are moreover emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community”.39 The evils caused by the setting up of this type of socialism as a State system — what would later be called “Real Socialism” — could not be better expressed.

13. Continuing our reflections, and referring also to what has been said in the Encyclicals Laborem exercens and Sollicitudo rei socialis, we have to add that the fundamental error of socialism is anthropological in nature. Socialism considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socio-economic mechanism. Socialism likewise maintains that the good of the individual can be realized without reference to his free choice, to the unique and exclusive responsibility which he exercises in the face of good or evil. Man is thus reduced to a series of social relationships, and the concept of the person as the autonomous subject of moral decision disappears, the very subject whose decisions build the social order. From this mistaken conception of the person there arise both a distortion of law, which defines the sphere of the exercise of freedom, and an opposition to private property. A person who is deprived of something he can call “his own”, and of the possibility of earning a living through his own initiative, comes to depend on the social machine and on those who control it. This makes it much more difficult for him to recognize his dignity as a person, and hinders progress towards the building up of an authentic human community.”

This is how I see the great divide. Forgive the tangled threads; my skills are putting bits of wood together to the 64th of an inch. Words on electrons are beyond me.

Myself I thought it a bit of poor political theatre and I agree with them enough to say I generally side with them versus the Aesop types who luvs them some uniforms, but this was to be expected. The Fedgov played it well versus the stupidity they showed at the first Bundy debacle.

Anyway to keep this short Max Velocity at his site has a different take on this shoot and I think he has the expertise to make such comments and conclusions.

I don’t love me any such uniforms, and it’s churlish to suggest otherwise. But things here were far less than the Bundytards of the world would like to tell it, and that entire herd of monkeys still hasn’t found an orifice in the football to conjugate with, despite their ceaseless efforts. Doubtless their soon-to-be roommates can provide some much-needed outlet for their sexual frustrations.

Let’s take this at face value from the Malheur occupant side: You’re one of the guys at the refuge, and think all government and all law enforcement is in a never-ending conspiracy to deprive you of your rights, always, and whenever possible.

Fair enough.

So given that, WTF are you doing driving around in a one-car parade, with all your high-value targets inside that vehicle, with no idea WTF is around the next blind curve???

The last time anyone made a move this stupid, he was riding in an open-car motorcade in Dallas, with similar results.

I can’t imagine anyone from Geo. Washington to Schwarzkopf, let alone Pvt. Snuffy, riding in a single jeep through enemy-occupied territory, but these guys thought nothing of the like.

See if you see around that next blind curve, and spot the problem there.

These yobos were too stupid to live, and ultimately, that turned out to be exactly the penalty for the stupidest one, on the day. The true miracle is that only one of them managed to get himself killed in the process; I’d have bet on many more, based on the apparent IQ average in this thing from Day One.

So these revolutionary geniuses end up making the government forces look restrained and reasonable.

“Great job, Brownie.”

The problem with being an outlaw is, living outside the law means you’re entirely beyond any recourse to its protections.

I keep meaning to post Winston Blair’s message from Unintended Consequences. The one where he holds up an example of smart resistance and one of stupid.

So, peacefully occupying a minor forestry installation and speaking one’s mind about government excess is grounds for being shot from ambush and left to bleed out?

And camping out in city squares, fornicating and defecating in public (and on “public” vehicles) and calling for confiscation of private property warrants what?

Rioting, looting and burning entire urban districts precisely because the law functioned properly, should be answered how?

Impoverishing the populace several generations in advance, exporting unique technology to sworn enemies, colossal waste, release of enemy prisoners, persecution of loyal servants, leaking ultra sensitive information, betraying allies, illegally joining foreign treaties, waging undeclared wars……comes with the 00 license to kill, a get out of jail free card, and a tucked sock from the grateful apparatchiki?

Please forgive my churlishness for asking. Thanks for this, though: “living outside the law means you’re entirely beyond any recourse to its protections”. To whom does the law apply, and to whom does it not? Is a nation of laws wholly under them, or partially? Who can properly understand the law anyway, these days, since it fills whole rooms and is written in language that the eggheads that wrote it hardly understand, and the folks that are supposed to enforce it seem to roll a die for how and when to apply it?

Please, what other options are worthy of being considered the effort? Voting? Same dung, different suit, business as usual. Street protest? In these parts, that gets you provocateurs within and without throwing fireworks and starting fights, and then the watercannon and teargas open up, and nothing changes; the same tactics will be used on you, they’re old and proven. At least this Oregon thing has reached folks…..the ones with eyes to see and ears to hear, and a little initiative to inform themselves. The rest don’t matter, they’ll go with the flow, whether it’s to ship the scapegoats to the ovens or to demand the wall comes down. What would you suggest? Would your employer approve, or is the hammer hovering, dependent upon your political reliability, in this day of parallel construction?

Nice try, “S”.

When you’re waving guns around, there’s nothing “peaceful” about an “occupation”.

If you doubt it, we can have the police agency of your choice try it the same way at your house, and we can discuss your likely response.

An armed takeover is a felony. Getting apprehended for a felony is what generally passes for “law” for a paltry 900 years since Magna Carta. Perhaps you’ve heard of that.

When you evade arrest for same, and subsequently give probable cause for deadly force use, you frequently end up dead.

QED

Knowing that, you either take your medicine like a man, without BMWing, or you try to stack the odds so you don’t have to, by not doing every single stupid thing this crowd did.

If they’d merely wanted to speak their minds about government excess, they had a plethora of forums available, and still do. Despite the earnest claims of our former SecState about rogue videos, they seldom, if ever, lead to riots and murders as a result.

Pointing out that the authorities in other places and times were incompetent to exercise their office in other situations doesn’t relegate all agencies to a similar level of incompetence. So clearly, the OSP and the FBI aren’t the same as the Ferguson PD or any number of eastern police departments. That shouldn’t come as news to anyone. You’re essentially crying because all police forces everywhere aren’t the Keystone Kops and Inspector Clousseau? Srsly?

I’m really sorry if that reality puts a burr under in your underpants, but that’s how it was.

Churlishness lies in trying to excuse that level of reasoning.

As for the rest, it has nothing to do with the subject at hand.

If you want to agitate for something else, go ahead on. Get a website, print a newsletter, do podcasts.

But at last count, your potential audience is about a dozen guys short. And if it wasn’t for guys like them, John Adams wouldn’t have been needed to defend British soldiers after the Boston Massacre.

If anything, Leviathan is getting better at this since the 1770s, thanks to these idiots: the redcoats won’t be on trial, there’s no popular sentiment against them, and there was only one mob casualty.

Go, Team F**ktard!

Doing the job the government can’t do itself!

“So, peacefully occupying a minor forestry installation and speaking one’s mind about government excess is grounds for being shot from ambush and left to bleed out?”

Christ on a popsicle stick, that’s every bit as retarded as the people who say Mike Brown was shot for walking down the middle of the street.

Between the “occupying a minor forestry installation” and the gun shots, there was some running from the cops, attempting to run over a police officer, and reaching of hands into the jacket. He got pulled over for “occupying a minor forestry installation”; he got shot for the other shit.

Brown was shot after a strongarm robbery and attacking a police officer in an attempt to steal a weapon. Shooting cured his malady. His supporters rioted because melanin and were showered with millions to placate them, when they should have been arrested. There are times when I agree with watercannon and CS in party-pack quantity. However, I disagree with the things done to produce such a useful rabble, and disagree with what will be done to them once their usefulness is over. They’re still people. Some few of them are precious to the God that died on the “popsicle stick”. He sees, He remembers, and He punishes.

Where was Mr Finicum going to run to, in knee-deep snow in the wilderness? Let him run; there are plenty of Only Ones In Need Of PT to follow a 54-year-old at a safe distance, cued by drone. When he gets cold and the adrenalin is gone, send a sweet-talker. Or, how about sending a local sheriff to talk some sense into him back at the “reserve”, since getting all Fed! Kowtow Before Me! in his face (yet again) is guaranteed to offside him? How about defusing this last year, or any of the years before, by not stealing and lying and threatening (all illegal, or is that only for Helots?). Mr Finicum hadn’t shot anyone, destroyed anything, or said he would….he has repeatedly and clearly stated otherwise. Curious RoE in effect here, no?

I reckon he distanced himself from the truck to draw fire away from the others. He did come out with hands up and empty…and absent any better evidence, he may have been ordered to lift his coat to show his customary belt rig wasn’t there, he may have stumbled, he may also have just been shot. I’ll give him the benefit of these doubts, rather than concluding and approving his death as suicide by Cop Who Must Not Be Fwightened Into Firearm Incontinence.

Why did the nameless enforcement idiot run out from his unwise cover directly behind the blocking car, nearly under the wheels of the truck? Unless he has spectacularly poor reflexes or coordination, I’m guessing he was taking instinctive action to stop the truck going around the roadblock, not dodge a car which was clearly already going to miss his cue-ball/cover. Maybe he was going to tackle it, or maybe more likely, shoot into it? Using his stupidity or incompetence or whatever as further grounds to support the unnecessary escalation of violence is wrong. More evidence, please! I will continue breathing normally, as I don’t expect any from The Usual Suspects. Btw, I hear Hillary won’t be indicted after all, The Phone Has Spoken.

So far, this is a hugely successful op. An effective leader with a legitimate grievance marginalised and neutralised, rampant dissent, and likely many lists made where folks are sorted into categories, based on their responses. And the BLM landgrab continues, the antigunners get another boost, and fence-sitters are nudged a little closer to toppling over into Camp Fed, at least until the real festivities kick off. What do you think things will be like when there is guaranteed to be nothing in that jacket pocket to draw? I live it daily, and it is not nice; you don’t have gangs of young muslims on the street giving you the stink-eye, but you have guns. Want to swap? I’ll take your worst safe-queen and let you have a tenth of the diverse vibrancy.

On the other side of the balance sheet, this could be the Task Force Smith episode necessary to learn from, because this will happen again. Malheur was a poor choice, many mistakes made…learn and move on. Thanks for replying, btw, never thought the famous Tam would deign to speak with this nobody.

Aesop: “When you’re waving guns around, there’s nothing “peaceful” about an “occupation”.

If you doubt it, we can have the police agency of your choice try it the same way at your house, and we can discuss your likely response.”

Well, they’ve got all the guns and they’re already behaving like the occupation, trend negative. They soft-soap the proven barbarians they imported, and crush anyone daring to disobey Mama Merkel and the Brussels Politburo, especially in righteous self defence. I’m probably on an elevated watch list by frequenting and posting on sites likes this (hangouts of the mostly non-lunatic fringe of folks most likely to not go all the way with the New Reich). Whether or not one of the many opfor constellations pay a house call or it happens elsewhere, someone in the mid-term near future will try a shot or a stab or a bash at me for one reason or another; but I pray it will not be because I let myself be provoked into foolishness.

There is no expectation of “Restoring the Consitution” here, we don’t have one. Funny that, article 146 of our Base Law states we were supposed to get one ratified by referendum of the entire German people once unification and peace were accomplished. The Four Power agreement at reunification hasn’t resulted in that, so I guess we’re still not at peace, which would explain Nato occupation and a few other peculiar things going on here. Heck, we only finished paying off WW1 just a couple of years ago; the mortgage on WW2 is still bleeding us, and not just financially. If you transatlantics realise you won’t be getting your “golden age” back either then that’s a step in a sensible direction.

Personally, I think Malheur has been poorly run. It was an opportunity squandered. It was a trap: to continue flushing, isolating and neutralising opposition; and for scaring the sheeple audience into continued inaction. I’ve read over at Captain’s Journal that there may be a Uranium-Clinton-Russia complication involved,no surprise if that is the case; and that Mormon eschatology plays a large part in certain key players’ motivations in this latest comic-opera. That last one is a worry indeed….watch out, that would be an easily exploited spark.

Displaying weapons so openly and mouthing off, now that’s stupid, especially at a theatre production like Malheur. Some of those folks are nutters, some of them are provocateurs, some are just amateurs on the edge of despair but with the guts to stand. Mr Finicum shouldn’t be tarred with the wrong brush, and the freaks should be excluded from any sane associations. Why are some of these highly suspicious folks waltzing away while Mr Finicum is left holding the baby? Doesn’t the whole thing stink?

Malheur should have been all cameras, showing fluffy bunnies, and a carefully chosen cross-section of endearing folks with legitimate grievances asking politely but firmly for a fair go. Sure, exercise your 2nd Amendment and be glad you have it and the means; but subtly, so the folks in the know get the message, and the 300 million idiots out there aren’t spooked. A better choice for a firmer stand would be some densely wooded mountainous region close to major population centres in the east, where communications are robust, supplies and cover ready to hand; but again, with top notch PR and media folks runnińg the show. The cammies and field gear will come later…..just don’t be the first to play that card, or in the inevitable American Spring you will have no sympathetic population to hide in.

Aesop, I haven’t got a beef with you over these things, it’s my understanding of your stance on Mr Finicum’s death and your thinking that underlies it; i include all this other stuff as background and amplification for what I want to say to you. I believe he was set up, in part due to his own poor judgement; and I’d like to contribute to this not happening again, to another Finicum.

We need government and police, but in their proper place. They are out of line, over there and over here. They are not all incompetent, nor have they been. Not all of them are bad. Don’t put straw-man arguments in my mouth. People in groups act differently to when they are alone; we need good men in various offices and functions, not alienate them by justifying corrupt actions by the group-think addled. Justifying the Finicum killing will do that, as will yelling yeehah and rushing off to fiascos like the current Malheur. He shouldn’t have been there, he did things he shouldn’t have, but he shouldn’t have died for these misdemeanors. We’re being played here, all of us, and we need to stop these petty emotional internecine fights because the marionette we face is being handled very well. We also need to get real about just what is at stake and what the object of our faith is, because that’s the vital and only thing to carry us through what is coming.

It’s a long term game, and simply to survive without capitulating is a win; forget this nebulous construct “liberty”, hollow constitutions, the Westphalian nation-state and life as we’ve known it, and think more along the lines of the Waldenses and the Hebrews. Cultural preservation in the midst of sustained persecution, including genocide; culture being the personality of a group, consisting of the sum of the individuals. The future we’re being dictated is a sustainable global 1 billion people by 2030……where do the other 7 billion go, and in what manner? Running from “felony stops”, as some will do? Just call it “Shot while trying to escape”, like what Mr Finicum did. I want no part of Team F’tard OR Team Leviathan and dislike being shoehorned and being talked past, so I won’t do it to you; I’d like to know your true colours all the same, that is if you really know.

Got it, S.

All this arm-waving is just chiming in from 4,000 miles away about how this was wrong, because reasons.

That the police, even in your liberty-strapped region, don’t come on into your house at 3AM and stage “peaceful protests” like the Malheur shenanigans is a fact you gloss over artlessly, because the answer would show the difference, even with your line of reasoning.

So maybe instead of injecting all the justified butthurt about Frau Merkel’s reign of terror on your gentle people into this situation, you maybe deal with what actually happened in OR on the day, far from your culture and experience, before you filter everything through it to tell us what went down in another hemisphere, or how to view it. Maybe with a few less black helicopters.

It’s instructive that the local residents and ranchers there, the very people these idiots claimed to be “helping,” first told them to pack it up and GTFO weeks ago, and many times since. This demonstrates not only asinine hardheadedness for not doing so with all due haste, but that they weren’t under any sort of rational control or taking any forethought at any point in this sorry spectacle. So tell me, how do you handle rogue groups of lawless and armed hooligans in your neck of the woods? And do you build shrines to the ones who get killed?

Finicum died because he was stupid, and no one “set him up” for that, except himself.

No one held a gun to his head and made him go there in the first place, or drive the truck that day, or flee a felony stop when it was attempted, or jump out of the truck after nearly hitting a blockade and one of the officers manning it. He had agency and free will, and every one of those stupid moves – which he owns 100% – combined to finally get him killed. Once he moved his hands to his jacket, it was going to go down exactly as it did.

If anyone anywhere can prove he was shot while his hands were still up, and that initiated the movement of his hands down to his side, and subsequent hosedown, by all means go off on the shooter(s). Best of luck with that unicorn hunt, but who knows? Someone might yet come up with the goods, if they exist.

Based on the other moves, even just in that 10 minutes, you’ll be fighting an upstream battle against the Stupid.

Had Finicum broken that chain of stupid any of ten other places, even after the initial stop, he walks away alive, unharmed, and in custody.

When someone is playing Cops & Robbers, “Come along quietly” means just exactly that. When you’ve been playing that game doing it openly armed for three weeks, and have told both local and federal agents, by word and deed, you and your posse have no intent to comply with their instructions, they take you a your word, and you get what you anted in for, good and hard.

By the same token, if an unjustified shoot didn’t happen, both the accused and their apologists should own up, and move along, and stay away from the Tard Army; they’ll get you killed exactly like this every time.

Only a miracle and extremely inept federal enforcement prevented this with the Bundys the first time around, x 100.

Welcome to what happens when they know their business: one idiot gets center-punched, the rest are in custody or soon will be. Anyone who didn’t expect that from Day One of this bonehead escapade is, exactly as I’ve said, too stupid to be playing in this arena.

Frankly, I’m embarrassed that there are so many as two adult people anywhere that didn’t know this before they even set out on this utterly pointless and foolish affair, let alone rode this clown show to such an utterly predictable ending.

Aesop,

“I don’t love me any such uniforms….”.

The hell you don’t ! You’re a statist if there ever was one. You certainly didn’t indicate any love or compassion for fellow citizens standing up to the badged thugs acting under color of law !

In your numerous screeds in this thread’s remarks, you’ve done nothing but denigrate and belittle fellow citizens who stood up against the scum I know as “government”. You so much as stated Mr. Finicum DESERVED to die at the hands of trigger happy, Oregon badged thugs. It wouldn’t surprise me if you masturbated to the thought of Mr. Finicum’s life blood draining out in the cold snow of the government ambush site.

Your hubris has always amazed me. Not impressed me. You’ve outdone yourself with your extensive ad hominems and derogatory tirade against fellow citizens who stood up against the heavy and unconstitutional hand of those known as “government”. Your demeaning words of hate against the occupiers, were unnecessary. But, they were indicative of your know-it-all, hubristic mentality.

You are no friend of Liberty and Freedom.

You are pitiful.

Dan,

You’re still around?

And as well-behaved as ever, I see.

So, before your screed gets purged, tell us why you aren’t at Malheur, with the “patriots”?

Better things to do, or just too warm and comfy under that bridge?

I’m pretty sure that if there was any self-pleasuring going on, it was you, in unabashed pride over this ad hominem masterbatorypiece, vented from the bowels of your spleen in a veritable orgy of Internet Manliness. It rocked! Walk tall. And you spelled the words right too. Congrats, man. Full props.

On your way out, maybe apologize to the host for soiling the porch.

I decided to take a closer look at Mr Finicum….here’s a vid of his on Youtube (there are many). He speaks from beyond the grave. This was no anarchist, this was Old America, he knew the law and upheld it. No wonder things have come to this. Fundamental Transformation, remember.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gioIUdfAiTk

RIP, LaVoy.

“Soiling the porch” ? If anyone needs to apologize for defecating at this locale, it is you.

Aesop,

Asking me why I wasn’t at Malheur is typical of the infantile response that could be expected of you. The real question that should be asked of you is:

“How did you make all your bombastic commentary and observations against the Malheur occupiers, when YOU yourself were not there ?”

So now the best you can manage is “I know you are, but what am I”??

How the mighty have fallen, Dan.

This is simple:

You weren’t at Malheur because you don’t believe your own words about them.

I wasn’t there because I do believe they were a 48-legged clusterf**k, as noted.

And you used “bombastic” incorrectly. My verbal takedown was concise and economical. Doing it bombastically would have taken more than the 3 minutes I spent. (But you spelled it right; good work!)

Kudos for sticking to attacking me, rather than addressing any of the woeful shortcomings of the Headless Chicken Posse. You’re always consistent and classy that way. Rage on, brave poo-flinger. Mike, Peter, and Mickey say “Hey Hey.”

An interesting bit of information: “…or Finicum very well could have killed a father and daughter in Jeep who became witnesses to what happened next.”

provide in a scene by scene analysis by Bob Owens:

http://bearingarms.com/lavoy-finicum-murdered-forced-oregon-police-shoot/

As I mentioned, the aerial video can support virtually any narrative that one chooses to concoct.

The fact that they released aerial video, and have withheld (obviously pending destruction) any ground-level video, tells you everything you need to know about how this ambush was staged and executed.

The only questionable(?) thing I see in your analysis is that when they came around that blind curve and saw the roadblock, the driver veered off to the side to avoid what would have been (probably) fatal crash.

Try stopping a loaded pickup truck going 30-40mph on a (probably) slick road – not happening in that available distance. Done that in a car once, don’t EVER want to have to do it again.

He had to know that his vehicle wasn’t going to drive around that block through three or four feet of snow but was trying to what was in effect a death trap.

I kinda suspect that the feds eta al were hoping he would hit the block and take care of their problems without the need for any arrests. After the truck stopped the rest of the incident is certainly open to interpretation, which will be strongly influenced by which side one stands on. (Was he trying to draw a weapon or was he grabbing his side where he just been shot or just off balance or…) And on and on and on.

You realize had he hit that roadblock, he probably would have killed some of the guys behind it. They probably werent wanting that to happen.

Probably would have killed some of the guys behind it? That’s absurd. You are familiar with the laws of physics, right?

Darn it …trying to AVOID what…

“But it’s disturbing the degree to which this feels like the period of Bloody Kansas and the John Brown Raid. People are divided, bitter, and bloody-minded. We know where the failure to find a political resolution to the widening schism in the 1850s wound up. Anyone who wants the current schism to go there is out of his ever-lovin’ mind.”

Amen, and I (as always) enjoy reading your thoughtful writing.

I, too, am distressed and of divided mind like many of the commenters.

Something occurred to me that I think is worth saying, related to your comment: I proudly served in the US Armed Forces for 8 years, and would do it again (during that period decades ago during the Cold War). That country and the Republic I served is long gone, though. Only 15 years ago, on 9/11, I immediately ran down to the blood center to donate, thinking they would need lots of blood for the survivors. And when I got there, I had to get in line behind hundreds of other people who had the same idea. We were still America, then. Now, we’re like that movie “2016” except it’s even worse than what was portrayed in that movie.

Today? If NYC or the imperial centers of power had something like that happen, today? I’m getting a beer and popcorn and am going to enjoy the show. 1861, indeed.

^this. You can love your Country but not your Government. Those who serve, including the agents in this takedown, do so to protect the America you reference. I agree, something has changed, the least of which is an acute distrust of the Government because we are living in Oceania. Combined with a knowledge that you could be the next Hammond getting jammed up over nonsense by some pissant with a 2 yr CJ degree because he is backed up by a lawless monstrosity that no longer serves justice judiciously causes regular people to be “bloody minded.”

I expect that after this election cycle when we “feel the bern” the “resolution to the widening schism” will be real and legitimate calls for secession. I know that I resent NYC and DC telling me how to live. That resentment gets more palpable the further south and west you go. My way of life is under attack and I am pissed. I’m not alone.

On the refuge protest, I am sympathetic to the cause of Federal overreach/land ownership but it was a fools errand especially after the Hammonds reported to prison. Hold the $hithole building for another week, keep the rifles in the truck while working out a deal with the sheriff to plea to trespassing misdeamors and be done with it. Get cuffed and stuffed for the cameras in your cowboy outfit and be home for dinner. Win/win. That refuge metaphorically and literally wasn’t a hill to die on.

One other point, .gov has been fortunate to deal with poorly planned protests by relative simpletons. What are they going do when some serious people with brains that can plan, marshal resources, and fight find a hill they are willing to die on? Seem far fetched? I hope, but no so sure.

You don’t need to imagine that last bit, Bdk. Look at the chicken-with-head-cut-off behavior displayed during the D.C. sniper attacks. Generated by one guy with a rifle, a sedan with a modified interior (so he could shoot out of the trunk), and dragging around an idiot teenager.

I don’t doubt there are smart people working for the feds. But the political climate is making it less and less likely that someone who tells the truth will be in charge, versus someone who tells his superiors what they want to hear.

I am not talking about some cowardly criminal act of terrorism , quite the opposite. The chicken little routine is noted though. I am talking about a protest that holds the high moral ground being conducted by people in a way that most Americans would have a hard time disagreeing with. Perhaps some BAMOFOS capture VA headquarters in DC during off hours to protest Veteran treatment, as an example.

Excellent analysis, Hognose. Appreciate your efforts in this one (particularly) and the blog (in general).

My biggest takeaway, aside from how Bundy et. al. bungled the situation, is how the Federal Government handled the issue:

It’s easy to make fun of bureaucrats and their famed aversion to common sense and reason. But hidden in all of this coverage, lurking there if you choose to see it, is the fact that some as yet unspecified Agent of the Government (someone of a rank lofty enough that his or her I.Q. should have been near extinguished by the dearth of oxygen) just handled a particularly thorny problem in a particularly deft manner.

This is not the norm. And that should scare all of us.

Deft? Why did they have a vehicle in the first place?

The deft way to handle it would have been to turn off their water and electricity. Set up a wide perimeter, immobilize their vehicles, and wait for the surrender. Anyone who gets a hundred yards from the building, before tbeing asked, hose him down with water.

Make them crawl out naked if you want. Make them recite the pledge of allegiance, too. They would have gotten thirsty quickly.

First question that must be answered. Do you trust our government to operate in a honorable and ethical manner? It is a all or nothing question.

Overall this whole thing has given me a profound feeling of sadness, mostly due to how I perceive our government and its relationship to the governed, but also in how this playing out. I don’t / can’t trust our government anymore. There have been too many proven examples of malfeasance to warrant any trust. It is with that precept that I viewed the provided video. (side note, Has it been determined what the video platform was? Was it a drone, fixed wing, or rotary craft?)

I am immediately suspicious that there is only one source of documentation released. I believe that it is reasonable to expect there to be other sources of documentation (ground based) and am suspicious that its not being made available. I think that if it turns out that no other documentation is made available and the excuse that no other sources exist is provided, that will be a indicator. If no other sources exist, then it was by planned intent. Anyone with enough professional planning skills to run this operation would have considered documentation to support the legal action and I can reasonably assume its absence is by design and motivated by less than ethical intent, not professional incompetence.

One thing is certain from that video. Considering the circumstances, the individual that got out of the vehicle gave the LE plausible reason to fire due to his hand movements. He was known to be armed, he was known to have made statements that he would resist until death, and he had established that he would resist arrest by fleeing the first stop. He gave that to them. I want to convey that plausible reason and rightful are two separate things. I don’t consider it a rightful shoot, he was foundering in the snow, he wasn’t going anywhere. They had enough firepower focused on him that the situation could have been allowed to “develop” another second or two.

I think any comparisons to the Founders is a bit of a stretch. The Founders were (at the very least) upper middle class, if not considered “rich”. The men involved in this action were middle class working men. The Founders were operating in the population centers. These guys, in the middle of no where.

Right now the Patriot movement (or whatever you want to call it) is about as disorganized a militia as one could get. This occupation action was not supported by a majority by any stretch, and has been heatedly debated in the various forums since initiated.

As for the future? My perspective is that I see another civil war on the horizon. I don’t know if its just a natural progression that all governments face as a matter of life cycle. Or if its something that needs to be induced. Regardless, I don’t trust my current government to operate with any semblance of ethics. I have, within my fellow citizens, a large group that wants a form of government that I do not agree with (the progressive socialists) and never will. The level of absolute nonsense that is emanating from our “society” is insane. I live in a “The Emperor has no clothes” world where it is blatantly obvious someone is pissing on my leg while they are telling me its raining. I mean really, how much more gay marriage, transgendered, safe space, micro aggression, you can keep your Dr., IRS, VA, Benghazi, Email, White Privilege, Immigration, put women in combat units, we own all the land for the public but you cant use it, should I be expected to take? It is just so intellectually insulting that I find myself literally angered. I see evidence that others see our environment from a similar perspective.

How this plays out forward? If I knew that, Id be a lotto winner. I think we will see acts of retribution. If you consider that this happened (if not within, very close to) the patriot “redoubt” , the .gov just took a giant shit on their front lawn. I think that this “occupation” act that occurred and up coming acts will be viewed as historically significant events leading up a sizable conflict. I just don’t see how it could be avoided, we are too divided. The worst thing about this, is I see our conflict coinciding with a conflict in Europe and the global implications are horrendous.

May God have mercy on our souls….

“Considering the circumstances, the individual that got out of the vehicle gave the LE plausible reason to fire due to his hand movements.”

Really? You can tell that from the aerial video?

Of course you can’t. You see a few herky-jerky movements, which due to the extremely limited amount of information that the aerial video provides, are completely devoid of any context of what was happening on the ground in real time. No context = no meaning. Those movements could easily have been a reaction to being shot. No way of knowing.

Again- the aerial video can support dozens of different scenarios that you may wish to concoct. It provides enough evidence to support infinite speculation, but not enough evidence to be conclusive about anything.

Although I’ll keep to myself opinions on this entire sorry affair I want to say that was among the finest pieces you’ve ever done.

“To the officers, at the time, this may have looked like he was going for a gun. In the overhead video it doesn’t look like that, but the guys on the scene didn’t have eyes on the overhead video, they had eyes on Finicum a mere three or four yards away”

It’s quite impossible to determine from the aerial footage what FInicum was doing with his hands. If the Feds shot first, then he could simply have been reacting to being shot. Or, as you mentioned, he might have lost his balance in the snow. Since we can’t see him pull a gun in the pictures, our baseline assumption has to be that he didn’t pull one.

We simply have to assume the Feds are lying, because if they weren’t, they’d produce more conclusive video. You KNOW that the Feds must have deployed at least half-a-dozen GoPro cameras on the ground there, because why wouldn’t they? It’s pretty easy to work out: if your videos document the results you want the public to see, then you publish them; if they don’t, then destroy them and pretend they didn’t exist, and use the airborne video which has no audio and can support almost any narrative.

It’s pretty easy to agree that the tactics employed by Bundy and the occupiers were a total clusterf*ck all the way around. But strategically, you can make the case that they did some good:

1) They successfully drew attention to the Hammond case. How many people were aware of this miscarriage of injustice before Bundy got involved?

2) They successfully drew attention to the BLM’s shenanigans, and the overall corruption of Federal land management. There are a lot of conservative people in the eastern parts of this country who knew nothing about the BLM until now; anybody who bothered to pay attention got an education. I know I did.

3) The Feds fired the first shots of this war. Whether or not Finicum attempted to draw a pistol, it is obvious that he never got a gun into his hand, and never got a shot off. If we learned anything from the American Revolution and the War for Southern Independence, it’s that the side that fires the first shot loses.

Thanks or a great writeup. Of course, it’s great because I’ve been making almost all of your points with friends, ha ha!

I am from the Midwest (26 years), lived in the East (16 years), and now the West (16 years). We spend a lot of time in Eastern Oregon, including the area where this happened. We were just there in early November, two months before this broke out. I am acquainted with a business associate of the Hammonds, the ranchers whose jail terms triggered all of this.

While I have always regarded the Bundys as fools (especially their prattling about the Constitution, which anyone who does some homework will realize does NOT support their claims), it is equally true that the BLM and Fish and Wildlife Service have been arrogant and lawless. It is easy for me to understand why the Hammonds became embittered, and why many ranchers in the West are aggrieved.

The prevailing view among liberals, not just in the East, is extremely aggravating. These are the same people who cheered the rioters in Missouri and Maryland, along with the vandals of “Occupy Wall Street,” all of whom caused FAR more property damage and disruption. And now, liberals have a sudden law ‘n order attack? Give me a god damned break.

For an excellent view of this, read the speech at the link below from Greg Walden, the congressman who represents the area. His remarks have gotten widespread attention in Oregon, but have been completely ignored by the condescending worthies of the big city liberal media.

Black lives matter, but the lives of the people who feed us ain’t worth shit.

http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2016/01/post_227.html

One tiny quibble. That footage was filmed from an airplane, not a helicopter.

Assessment plus update to the original post here:

http://www.maxvelocitytactical.com/2016/01/comment-video-bundy-arrestst-finicum-killing/

Interesting post but as you point out, we are all reading a lot into the chicken entrails of a single video. If your analysis is correct, the truck will be shot full of holes. That seems unlikely to me (too hard to hide it, too many people knowing about it).

Having listed to the accounts from both Victoria and Shawna, I expect that a lot of the account of “hundred of rounds” was more down to their perception, and inability to distinguish non lethal (flashbangers, gas etc) from lethal incoming.

I’m not staking anything on the vehicle being ‘riddled’ by live fire. Clearly there was some lethal live fire, and at minimum a lot of noise and impacts onto the vehicle. Only seeing the vehicle will clear up whether there was any, or to what extent, live rounds into it.

Well, at least they didn’t burn the refuge down with everyone in it…..like before.

Maybe its time to post the names of the OHP at the scene and specifically the OHP shooter.

D.O.,

“…..post the names of the OHP…..and specifically the OHP shooter.”

Why ? Are you implying that some brave, righteous, Freedom-loving citizen will impart justice upon one of the aforementioned, badged thugs ?

If so, methinks you are sadly mistaken.

Dan III,

Well said, excellent comment. Finally we agree on something.

SF0321,

This is not necessarily the best venue for stating this, nevertheless, I thank you for your kind comment. Actually, there is much more you and I agree upon than we both realize.

How is your health ? Still hiking ?

We all know what will happen, whitewash of the LEOs and charges against many bystanders. From a legal perspective, however, the test for LEOs is the same as everyone else-were the shooters acting reasonably in apprehension of the danger of death or great bodily harm from the victim(s), and that assumes the shooters didn’t create the dangerous situation in the first place. I don’t think the shooters in this case would have an easy time establishing such a defense if they ever had to go in front of a jury………

We live in a Banana Republic Police State where Officer Friendly is MIA, and there is no rule of law.

Two things-

At Waco, the ATF management crew was informed two weeks before the raid that their affidavit, in support of their warrant, was falsified, as there was no such thing as an EZ-M16 kit, nor anything in the way of an AK-47 upper receiver. DEA Dallas called their bluff, and that was the reason DEA refused to join the raid. Additionally, Koresh had no drug related connections.

In the video-

A routine tactic used by uneducated, ill trained cops, is to get their quarry out of the car, then have two or three cops give him conflicting commands, as appears here. One yells freeze. One yells put your hands up. And one yells show me some ID. The result, and the tactic, hasn’t changed in the 37 years I’ve been in LE.

All you people living back east and not among ranching people….STFU! You have no idea of the mindset out here and how the BLM lords it over their perceived peasants.

MS Summer,

Many of us “back east” do not specifically know of the BLM’s tyranny against you ranching folks. Granted. But we DO know that fedgov scum is fedgov scum regardless of which point of the compass that scum occupies.

Thank you for your effort to wake up the shills.

This whole ‘cops just gotta get home after their shift…no matter what’ is absurd. But that mindset has developed into ROI that means cops shoot first and ask few questions afterwards.

Used to be that true peace officers dealt with threats with a much more sane approach. It not only wasn’t proper to just shoot because the subject has a gun in hand, but even less so due to seeing the subject ‘reaching under clothing’ , ‘reaching to waistband’ and other theoretical what ifs and maybes.

A subject would most likely not be fired upon unless the subject fired first.

Now, a flimsy unsupported notion of feeling ‘in fear of my life’ seems to justify almost any shooting done by police, including the many household pets they shoot (funny that the lawn care folks; contractors; postmen; fed-ex and UPS drivers; plumbers and the like seem able to deal with neighborhood pets without resorting to violence).

This is the result of a mindset reset that occurred when peace officers became Law Enforcement Officers.

Imagine if the fire department had a similar pattern of behavior:

Wow, look at that house burn. But just watch it burn, don’t go near it, don’t worry that there may be people inside needing rescue, just wait until it’s completely burnt down, else you might get injured, even killed, and be unable to go home to family after their shift.

And I sure as hell am not about to label brave men that stand up to American tyranny as ‘stupid’.

I will say this about the disparity between Post Office and Police responses to barking dogs: every mail carrier gets a block of instruction and recurrent training on dog safety. It is very rare for cops to have this — even K9 officers and designated animal control officers.

My first thought when I saw the video of the shooting was that it looked like a suicide by cop.

Mr Finicum may have decided to martyr himself for the cause.

Then again he may have just panicked.

Panic has killed more people than cancer.

The linked article is EXCELLENT; thank you for your work. It seems journalism isn’t quite dead after all, nor is it always an epithet.

I’m not sure how the pingback thing works, but I didn’t post that link, nor am I the author of that article or “The Captains Journal”.

I’m not sure where Herschel Smith (the author) got his rank, but I know I got mine the same place as Cap’n Crunch.

Oh…..ok. Still a good article and site though.

The specter of Bleeding Kansas, writ large, occurred to me some time back. The “Right-Left” chasm we are looking into now could take us there again.

Passing by and noticed the comments on responses to dog encounters by various agencies.

I am less than proud to state I was a mail carrier for a very long time and branch safety representative.

Dog encounter orientation or training is very minimal.

Carriers are advised to avoid any encounter, including with holding delivery.

Carriers are instructed not to confront hostile or potentially hostile animals.

In the event a confrontation arises, one uses his satchel as shield and retreats facing the threat.

We had pepper spray which is marginally effective and can waft back into your own face.

Technically, a carrier who escalates past those means can be in hot water depending on the situation.

I have taped as many as three cans together at times.

I have managed to avoid being eaten alive by kicking the living shit out of a really big and vicious Shepherd.

People would be amazed to know how their pets act when they are guarding the place in their absence.

I was a farm kid and learned about animals and associated dangers.

I did a lot of martial arts at one period.

I have a few scars including stitches from dog encounters.

I was not your average friendly mailman.

I have seen grown men who were mortally afraid of little puppies. It was weird to see.

The pukes who shoot dogs are cowards and ignoramuses. They would shoot a person just as fast.

There are dogs which will fuck you up. There are perps who will kill you.

I still got a slug in one lung from a gunfight near Cambodia.

Shooting first can be preferable.

I live in a rural area where the best and the brightest tend not to go into law enforcement.

I think they were hyped up and primed and that he panicked and ran about waving his arms and a warrior wannabee county mountie plugged him.

Shoulda complied.

There is a lot of guessing who to blame with the lack of details. Every law enforcement officer involved knew the names of every person in this convey and they knew a lot about Robert ‘LaVoy’ Finicum demeanor and his family history. The point is they never had to escalate this situation in a remote area with no wittedness. The talks had advanced to the point that this standoff was very close to being over. The people would have all went home and the law had all the time to arrest them one at a time if they indeed violate the law. They had this planed to escalate to a gun fight. Their battle cry was to get this over sooner rather than later.

There is a lot of guessing who to blame with the lack of details. Every law enforcement officer involved knew the names of every person in this convey and they knew a lot about Robert ‘LaVoy’ Finicum demeanor and his family history. The point is they never had to escalate this situation in a remote area with no wittedness. The talks had advanced to the point that this standoff was very close to being over. The people would have all went home and the law had all the time to arrest them one at a time if they indeed violate the law. They had this planed to escalate to a gun fight. Their battle cry was to get this over sooner rather than later.

author,

I did not appreciate your point of view. Oh, the “writing” is very well executed,

but the content? If I didn’t see all the praise from followers, I would think you

were from the “authorities.”

LaVoy could barely keep his balance in that deep snow (I know because I walked

in deep snow yesterday) and he was not reaching for a pistol to shoot at the

59 cops surrounding him. He likely reached for his hip…first shot, which would

be a reflex/unintentional, and by the time he processed that shot, he had been shot dead.

The truck? The driver came around the curve at some speed…instead of smashing into

the barricade of trucks, he swerved sharp left. He got stuck in the deep snow. That wasn’t

an escape attempt, it was crash avoidance.

Like it or not, the Fed gov “owns” those big ranch lands, and are on the cusp of taking it.

One way or another. Instead of making a fair market offer to these ranch owners (and

truthfully many ranchers have chosen this option) and buying the land back…the Fed

has chosen to torture the “hold-out” ranch owners.

There isn’t going to be any “civil war” or a “divorce” to carve up the country. The most

likely outcome of all this financial turmoil is a breakdown within the big cities, and small

cities too, as financial resources are reduced to a trickle. People never fight unless they

are losing things. Read history.

So if some people are running around shooting each other and burning business buildings

down…who cares? That is already happening/happened/and will happen. City dwellers are

realizing the corps are dumping toxins into municipal water supplies, hither and yon.

GMO everything is causing disease. Phony proxy wars are destroying the MENA. To protect

the petro dollar? NWO? Agenda 2030? Zika virus? It is all BS, and they will not leave us alone.

Small communities may survive “the war against the people” but don’t count your chickens

just yet. People are so twisted they will be bribed with ease. Plus, they watch TV.

I have no white guilt.

Suzanna

To Aesop (reply function missing on your latest reply, are we bursting Hognose’s website seams?)

“Got it, S.

All this arm-waving is just chiming in from 4,000 miles away about how this was wrong, because reasons.”

Yes, praise modern technology that lets us communicate. I can see your arms waving too, and this got started by me waving back.

“That the police, even in your liberty-strapped region, don’t come on into your house at 3AM and stage “peaceful protests” like the Malheur shenanigans is a fact you gloss over artlessly, because the answer would show the difference, even with your line of reasoning.”

If I were stockpiling arms, or effectively inciting violence, or negatively influencing the operations of the New Reich, there would be a visit. As it is, I’m breaking no laws and neither do I expect the BRD to camp in my living room claiming redress for me stealing land. Haven’t I made it clear that I regard the Malheur thing as a very poorly run production in pursuit of legitimate redress? If or when the vibrant diversity or the Gestapo arrive, I’ll respond appropriately.

“So maybe instead of injecting all the justified butthurt about Frau Merkel’s reign of terror on your gentle people into this situation, you maybe deal with what actually happened in OR on the day, far from your culture and experience, before you filter everything through it to tell us what went down in another hemisphere, or how to view it. Maybe with a few less black helicopters.”

I did tell you I was giving you some background and amplification to my thoughts on Mr Finicum’s situation and behaviour, and to try to get some from you that illuminates your stance on it a little more than “he had it coming”; a hasty and shallow judgement imo, since he was not one of the inflammatory hotheads. Why haven’t they been lured out, set up, and neutralised? Because this op was to cut the effective head off the snake. As to my remoteness from Oregon, let’s see how many others in this comment thread were there in order to qualify to speak of it.

“It’s instructive that the local residents and ranchers there, the very people these idiots claimed to be “helping,” first told them to pack it up and GTFO weeks ago, and many times since. This demonstrates not only asinine hardheadedness for not doing so with all due haste, but that they weren’t under any sort of rational control or taking any forethought at any point in this sorry spectacle. So tell me, how do you handle rogue groups of lawless and armed hooligans in your neck of the woods? And do you build shrines to the ones who get killed?”

Apparently the loyalists in 1776 expressed similar requests to the rebels; considering it is always the minority that matters for one side or the other on an important issue and the masses follow, your views resemble that of a totalitarian. As in, might and numbers make right, not the actual morality of the thing. In my neck of the woods, you proceed very cautiously. In addition to the rogue government, we now have their muslim auxiliaries, and there will be a reaction from hotheads that has been foreseen, provoked, and is part of the overall plan. Smart folks play the long game, and avoid entanglements; survival is the game right now, let the idiots exhaust themselves in the first and second innings. And no, I don’t build shrines, though I do carefully consider events like this from many angles, such as who benefits, the methods, the mistakes, how I’m affected; and how to spot and handle people who wear reversible coats.

“Finicum died because he was stupid, and no one “set him up” for that, except himself.

No one held a gun to his head and made him go there in the first place, or drive the truck that day, or flee a felony stop when it was attempted, or jump out of the truck after nearly hitting a blockade and one of the officers manning it. He had agency and free will, and every one of those stupid moves – which he owns 100% – combined to finally get him killed. Once he moved his hands to his jacket, it was going to go down exactly as it did.”

From what I’ve read the John Day expedition was encouraged by a potentially sympathetic Sheriff there, and the travel arrangements were suspiciously expedited by Mark McConnell. As I said earlier, more info would be great but since this whole fiasco is riddled with maskirovka as well as derp, we have to run with what we have. Unless you have secret sources we’re drinking from the same stream, so how do you get to speak your mind on it and I don’t? Is there free speech in this thread, or are you gagging me? Why didn’t the ambush commander permit the convoy to proceed to the Sheriff as Mr Finicum requested, and make his arrest there?

“If anyone anywhere can prove he was shot while his hands were still up, and that initiated the movement of his hands down to his side, and subsequent hosedown, by all means go off on the shooter(s). Best of luck with that unicorn hunt, but who knows? Someone might yet come up with the goods, if they exist.

Based on the other moves, even just in that 10 minutes, you’ll be fighting an upstream battle against the Stupid.”

It was a forced error…happens all the time on the competitive sports field. I’ve also just read that the aerial platform was a manned recon ship and this video quality is deliberately severely degraded from; for the purpose of stirring discord and uncertainty.

“Had Finicum broken that chain of stupid any of ten other places, even after the initial stop, he walks away alive, unharmed, and in custody.

When someone is playing Cops & Robbers, “Come along quietly” means just exactly that. When you’ve been playing that game doing it openly armed for three weeks, and have told both local and federal agents, by word and deed, you and your posse have no intent to comply with their instructions, they take you a your word, and you get what you anted in for, good and hard.”

And no further along with progress in the redress of grievances; that is, if the intent was really to arrest, which could have been done successfully and peaceably. The robbers here are not Mr Finicum and the ranchers, it is the BLM! All other avenues have proven ineffective!

“By the same token, if an unjustified shoot didn’t happen, both the accused and their apologists should own up, and move along, and stay away from the Tard Army; they’ll get you killed exactly like this every time.”

Agreed, completely. Internal security needs to be tight.

“Only a miracle and extremely inept federal enforcement prevented this with the Bundys the first time around, x 100.

Welcome to what happens when they know their business: one idiot gets center-punched, the rest are in custody or soon will be. Anyone who didn’t expect that from Day One of this bonehead escapade is, exactly as I’ve said, too stupid to be playing in this arena.”

Part of leadership is knowing the limits of subordinates competence. The real controllers of the whole fed show know the tools they are wielding and the nature of their opponents. They’re very good at it and are winning. In a way, Mr Finicum’s statement “I’m going to the Sheriff…..just shoot me then” is a strategic rabbit punch. If the PR side had been better managed, Team Leviathan would be shown to have soiled the bed on this one. However, cellphone service was cut as part of this “felony stop” and the cellphone recordings from inside the car haven’t been seen….memory holed? Normal procedures aren’t working. Witness all the scandals and encroachments, nothing else is holding it up, let alone rolling anything back. It is better that a sane and rational man sacrifice himself to sabotage the Leviathan methods. They rely on intimidation and perception; martyrdoms can seriously screw that up, and so can a metastasising insurrection, which is why Malheur must be shut down fast, and the Finicums weeded out.

“Frankly, I’m embarrassed that there are so many as two adult people anywhere that didn’t know this before they even set out on this utterly pointless and foolish affair, let alone rode this clown show to such an utterly predictable ending.”

At least they’re doing something in this very important affair; it’s a shame it is run stupidly. These are necessary learning experiences, and your performance is at a charitable D-. Supporting the sane ones may stave off the storm a little longer, and save some of the smarter ones for the hard times ahead when the gloves really come off. The hotheads and provocateurs will have their day…this wasn’t it, which is why the ambush had to happen. The initiative is still with Team Leviathan.

S,

You’ll pardon me if I don’t swallow pronouncement about proper policing behavior from Deutschland without a large grain of salt. It’s a cultural thing here.

Had Mr. Finicum broken as few laws as you have, he could and should expect similar treatment. As it was, he committed several felonies in the last few minutes of his life alone, ignoring the entire rest of his 55 years on this earth, particularly the 23 days prior to that. Consequently, carping about why the police paid him their attentions in this incident is simply pointless.

And nota bene I never said “He had it coming” or anything like. I said that once his hands moved down towards his clothing, he earned the “Open Fire” Award from all present, as have countless other individuals under similar circumstances going back decades and decades. That he was one of a miniscule number who saw any of this as a smart move, makes him both de facto and de jure an inflammatory hothead.

And one lacking evidently any common sense or judgment skills when he got in over his head, which was as soon as the red and blue lights came on in the rear view mirror, if not the minute he joined that entire ship of fools. It was a fatal once-in-a-lifetime character flaw.

As you’ve already indicated you won’t support your hotheads over there when things get sporty, kindly don’t encourage ours here. They confuse easily, as events have clearly demonstrated. Free speech means that our Congress can’t tell you to shut up; nothing more. Other people are free to tell you or me or anyone else, even right here, to butt out of something that isn’t their business. I submit that living in Germany, you have bigger fish to fry over there about now than this sorry spectacle.

And why on earth would anyone in charge of an arrest detail let a truckload of armed felons move from an isolated stretch of snowbound nowhere, into a town populated by numerous innocent bystanders, and replete with untold means and avenues of escape, and myriad ways for things to go to crap in a hurry? That would have been insanity. that they were silly enough to think they were free to move about the countryside after defying federal law enforcement instructions underlines their general stupidity about reality in general, on both an individual ad a group level.

The easiest way to deal with getting arrested is to comply, rapidly, with the arresting officers’ instructions. Not flee, nearly crash, and then run around like a headless chicken in the middle of a circular firing squad.

An even better question is why provoke this entire thing at all? It accomplished nothing good, except to serve as a negative lesson, and provide grist for the mills of actual totalitarians.

Might doesn’t make right, but when the people you’re nominally trying to help tell you to GTFO, it’s probably time to pull the plug on your bathtub flotilla, and shamble off. Not instigate a high speed chase and turn what could have been a simple arrest into a deadly shooting. But as I said, these clowns demonstrated no logic or common sense at any point in this entire affair.

Notwithstanding internet gossip, I suspect the video was in fact from a UAV; if not, then the idiots in question had to know they were being surveilled constantly from a helicopter or airplane in close proximity before the chase vehicles even pulled into sight behind them, or else they were total oblivious morons.

In any event, the arrests were successful; that they were not peaceable depends on both parties’ co-operation, and Finicum elected to try a different approach, which ended poorly for him.

Trying to blame that on the BLM is simply retarded non-sequitir BS. The refuge clowns tried without any success to link A to Q, and they’ll fare no better in court. They may as well try the Twinkie Defense, or plead insanity outright, which has a better pedigree at trial.

There is no metastasizing insurrection over this; most folks are merely gawping in utter astonishment that anyone thought any of this was a good idea. The brighter ones in position to do anything immediately, went to any length necessary to avoid the whole thing altogether.

This was no “important affair”; it was a demonstration of brainless amateurish hubris combined with unbridled jacktardery, a combination as lethal as matches and dynamite, or ethanol and car keys.

Everyone sane, from both sides, farts in its general direction.

The Sagebrush Rebellion predates this incident by decades, and all this circus did is make some of them look as silly and irrational as the guys in custody were. That’s a good thing only for the very government they oppose. When you help your enemies and embarrass your friends, which side are you really on?

I believe on your side of the pond that’s called an “own goal”. Those perpetrating one, AFAIK, are seldom if ever lionized, unless we count throwing them to same.

100 agents, 40 Federal Trucks. They fired over 100 rounds and killed one man “reaching for a weapon”.