In the ongoing shit show that is the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, the last four holdouts have livestreamed the final hours of their quixotic pointless and boneheaded quest to light off the second American revolution. It was more pathetic than I ever thought possible. Nevada legislator and gun rights calendar model Michele Fiore tried her level best to interfere with the FBI negotiations, engaging in a lengthy phone conversation with the occupiers and offering to “lead them to safety”, I assume “safety” meaning “towards the news cameras in the best possible lighting”. Noted televangelist Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s more political son, has also volunteered to cover himself in publicity by negotiating with the occupiers. But in the best news I’ve heard in days, Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher, bigot and tax cheat that inspired this whole fiasco has been arrested in the Portland airport where he was on his way to join up with the remaining occupiers. He is being charged offenses related to both the current standoff and the one at his ranch last year. source: http://www.ktvz.com/news/first-look-the-latest-on-day-40-of-malheur-refuge-occupation/37923590
For a deliberately ignorant and boneheaded review of the occupation, you could turn to Kimberly Fletcher at “The Blaze”
I mean seriously:
I find it interesting that the occupiers of the refuge were labeled as militants while the occupiers of Wall Street were simply “protestors.”
I will spell it out for her in small words. The Occupy movement, and the Black Lives Matter movement are unarmed and want reform and accountability. That makes them nonviolent protesters. The boneheads in Malheur are armed to the teeth and talking about coups, and revolution. That makes them militants. It the weapons and embrace of military rhetoric and tactics that makes them “militants”. They are militants because they self identify as a militia.
Yesterday I realized that this movement could be compared to the Luddite revolts of the early 1800s. There, skilled weavers and spinners revolted against factories and factory owners whose output meant that the craft these professionals used to feed their families was effectively worthless, and without income they faced eviction and starvation. Ranchers and their political allies had depended on BLM policies that ignored any kind of environmental considerations for the land which it leased out to ranchers, miners and other extraction industries. I think the “new” (most of which date back to the 1970s) environmental rules, while more burdensome than the previous BLM policy of “feh, whatever”, wouldn’t even be a big deal if there hadn’t been 40+ years of free trade agreements to accompany them. I seriously doubt many ranchers would care if they could only run X number of cattle on their allotment if that X number gave them anything like the return they used to be able to get before they had to compete with beef from South America. Even so, “the government” and “the BLM” are convenient scapegoats for every factor that has made ranching less powerful politically and less profitable in places where it has traditionally been the largest industry.
Let’s remember that “ranchers” are being used as a proxy for every person or company that wants to get its hands on free government land. Despite being relatively big deals at the local level, there really isn’t enough money in ranching to get the kind of legislative support they receive. That money comes from extraction industries like mining and oil drillers and fracking companies, that stand to make billions if they can get the feds to give up its ownership of millions of acres of western land. It would not surprise me if some people hang on to unprofitable ranches solely for the value of the minerals and water beneath the ground in anticipation of the day when a republican administration lets them buy the land for pennies on the dollar. The ranchers are only the most photogenic of the groups that want to hoover up federal land, mining and other extraction industries don’t get the same kind of nostalgic preferential treatment from the public.