Rolling Stone has done a couple of stories on the white militia occupation in Oregon. Here are two of them.
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WTF Just Happened to the Oregon Militia, Explained
by Tim Dickinson
Rolling Stone
1/27/16
The FBI has cut off the head of the snake of the militia
occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge outside Burns, Oregon.
The FBI announced Tuesday night that it had arrested eight militia
members and that the leader of the standoff, Ammon Bundy, is in custody.
One militant is dead, another wounded. Here's what you need to know.
Did federal officials finally raid the wildlife refuge?
No.
The militants got cocky and went on a road trip. The FBI intercepted a
group of six occupiers traveling on the state highway to John Day, an
east Oregon city 70 miles north of Burns, where militants had been
scheduled to appear at an anti-government rally Tuesday evening.
Who did the FBI capture?
The FBI arrested Ammon
Bundy and his brother Ryan; the Bundy brothers' bodyguard, Brian "Booda"
Cavalier; the occupation's security chief
Ryan Payne; and Shawna Cox, a south Utah woman who had occasionally
served as a spokesperson.
Did the militants put up a fight?
The FBI only reports that "shots were fired" and that one militant died. The FBI did not identify the deceased. However,
The Oregonian confirms that
LaVoy Finicum — the Arizona rancher better known to cable TV viewers as
"Tarp Man" — was the one killed. Finicum had previously touted his
willingness to
die for this cause, insisting he would not be going to prison: "I have no intention of spending any of my days in a concrete box."
How have anti-government groups reacted to Finicum's death?
On the Bundy Ranch
Facebook page,
Finicum is already being held up as a martyr: "LaVoy has been murdered
by goverment [sic] officials.... One of liberty's finest patriots is
fallen. He will not go silent into eternity. Our appeal is to heaven."
Was anyone else hurt in the shootout?
Another
militant sustained what the FBI called non-life-threatening injuries.
Ryan Bundy reportedly received a superficial gunshot wound and was taken
to a nearby hospital for medical treatment.
Audio posted on the Bundy Ranch Facebook page says, "Ryan has been shot in the arm."
Were there other arrests Tuesday night?
Near Burns,
Peter Santilli, a patriot talk radio host from Ohio who had joined the occupiers, was
arrested by the FBI. A militant named Joseph Donald O'Shaughnessy was arrested by Oregon state police.
In Arizona, where he had traveled home to visit his family, the
anti-Muslim militant Jon Ritzheimer also surrendered to the FBI. On
Facebook hours earlier, Ritzheimer wrote, "the Feds know I am here and
are asking me to turn myself in." Ritzheimer posted a
video in which he can be seen hugging his daughters, saying, "Daddy's gotta go — he's gotta go away for a little while."
What were the militants charged with?
According to the
FBI, surviving militants are
being charged with "a
federal felony charge of conspiracy to impede officers of the United
States from discharging their official duties through the use of force,
intimidation, or threats."
What's the status of the remaining occupiers?
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, the occupation was ongoing. But a showdown there may be
imminent.
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How the Oregon Militants' plans went sidewats
by Tim Dickinson
Rolling Stone
1/5/16
The armed standoff in
remote southeast Oregon, where white militants led by the Bundy clan
have taken over federal buildings at a wildlife refuge, isn't going
according to plan.
The would-be insurrectionists are undermanned, undersupplied and
exhausted. They've been unable to provoke the confrontation with federal
agents that they chest-thumpingly declared themselves
willing to die in.
And they've found themselves roundly mocked on social media as
"Yee-hawdists" in the service of "Y'all Qaeda," "Yokel Haram" or
"Vanilla ISIS."
Taking up arms against the federal government is no laughing matter,
of course. And if the militants were black, brown or Muslim, they'd
likely be dead by now. But for a group of heavily armed Christian white
dudes play-acting at revolution, things could hardly be going worse.
On Monday night, in fact, one Bundy brother
told Oregon Public Broadcasting the
militiamen might be willing to move along now — if the community
requests it: "This is their county – we can't be here and force this on
them," Ryan Bundy said. "If they don't want to retrieve their rights,
and if the county people tell us to leave, we'll leave."
How did the Bundy plan for revolution go sideways? The troubled
evolution of the plot can be traced via Ammon Bundy's social media
presence.
December 29
The grand scheme to take a "hard stand" against federal "tyranny"
took shape in the days after Christmas. In a
video posted December
29, Ammon Bundy, son of the infamous deadbeat rancher Cliven, decried
the "tremendous abuses" faced by a pair of Oregon cattlemen convicted of
arson by the federal government. "We have to say that either we're OK
with these gross, blatant violations of the constitution… or we make a
stand," Bundy declared.
That's when Bundy, fighting tears, issued a call to action to his
family's militant, anti-government supporters: "I'm asking you — and you
know who you are: You that came, and you that felt to come, to the
Bundy Ranch — I'm asking you to come to Burns [Oregon] on January 2, to
make a stand."
December 31
Almost from the beginning, there were
warning signs that this plot wasn't gelling, because of internal strife
in the "patriot" community. In his
next video,
posted on New Year's Eve, a nervous looking Ammon Bundy calls out to
militia members across the country. He pleads with them to flout the
orders of militia leaders who, he reveals, had been calling for a "stand
down" — instead of a standoff — in Oregon.
Looking into the camera lens, Bundy says: "I am wanting to talk to
the individual, to the patriot. This is not the time to stand down," he
says, "It's time to stand up. And come to Harney County. We need your
help. And we're asking for it. No matter what your leader says… you need
to get to Burns on the 2nd."
January 2
Bundy did find followers, including men like John Ritzheimer, the Arizona man who organized the
gun-toting protest of the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix last October. Ritzheimer ventured to Oregon and declared himself, in a
goodbye video to his family, "100 percent willing to lay my life down to fight against tyranny in this country."
Seizing an unoccupied federal complex wasn't the tricky part.
Following a demonstration on the streets of Burns on Saturday, January
2, the Bundy militiamen drove 30 miles south to execute their takeover
of the compound at the federal Malheur National Wildlife Refuge — which
was closed for the weekend, and to which somehow they had obtained a
full set of keys.
The Malheur complex has more than half a dozen buildings, and one, major strategic asset for men with guns:
a massive fire-watch tower, easily converted for use by snipers.
In the immediate aftermath of the Saturday takeover, Bundy talked a big game:
"We're planning on staying here for years, absolutely," he said. "This is not a decision we've made at the last minute."
The militants also told reporters that their numbers were legion —
as many as 150.
Oddly, however, Bundy also issued a
call for backup:
"Those who... feel the need to stand, we're asking them to come. We
have a facility that we can house them in. We need you to come and be
unified with us so we can be protected," he said.
January 3
By light of day it becomes clear the
militants' manpower was greatly exaggerated: Credible estimates from
visitors to the complex put their number at fewer than two dozen, and
perhaps as low as
15 men.
And this skeleton crew is clearly struggling to secure the sprawling
complex in the bitter cold of the Oregon high desert, where temperatures
drop into the single digits at night.
By Sunday night a visibly exhausted Ammon Bundy made a new
call for reinforcement,
invoking his divine inspiration: "I know that what we did is right. I
know the Lord is involved, and I know that we're going to see great
things come from this," Bundy said. "But we need you. We need you," he
pleaded. "We have a group of wonderful people here that are strong.
We've got good numbers. But there is a lot to do, and we will eventually
get tired if we do not have help. We also need more of a defense. Need
to make sure that there is enough people here that nobody comes down
upon us — and that is a very real reality right now. So we need you to
come and we need you be part of this."
January 4
The militant's preparedness for an
as-long-as-it-takes standoff was similarly laughable. By Monday, it was
clear the militants were under-resourced, and hungry. Supporters put out
a call online to send
"supplies and snacks."
Another
self-described "patriot," Maureen Peltier, took
to Facebook with a laundry list of desired supplies, including foil,
hygiene needs and locks, and provided an address where supporters can
send them.
Ironically, the same folks who are seeking a local overthrow of the
federal government still seem to have confidence the government will
deliver their mail.
As the standoff has dragged on, the federal government seems content
to let the militants freeze in isolation — and tire of their
make-believe revolution.
Even once-reliably anti-government Republicans are turning their
backs: Ted Cruz, who once sympathized with Cliven Bundy's stand against
the Obama administration's
"jackboot authoritarianism," has called on Bundy's sons to "
stand down."
The Harney County Sheriff released a
statement saying flatly: "It's time for you to leave our community."
Even the wife of one of the two local ranchers — for whose honor and
justice the militants claim to be ready to lay down their lives — has
been throwing shade:
"I don't really know the purpose of the guys who are out there,"
she told Oregon Public Broadcasting.
Where We Are Now
Instead of building the fearsome
anti-government insurgency of their fever dreams, the hungry, dirty,
exhausted Bundy militants are looking more and more like the Gang That
Couldn't Shoot Straight. Here's hoping they have the sense to lay down
their weapons before their true marksmanship is tested.
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