You Will Anyway: Has the Potential to End Badly

Saturday, January 9, 2016

Has the Potential to End Badly

UPDATE: Apparently, the newcomers have gone.

Members of the Pacific Patriot Network, a consortium of several groups from Oregon, Washington and Idaho, arrived mid-morning, carrying rifles and sidearms and clad in military attire and bulletproof vests.

[...]

The Pacific Patriot Network members say they don't support the refuge takeover, but agree with Bundy's crusade against federal land managers.

[...]

[Members] guarded the refuge entrance with guns drawn and masks concealing their faces.

[...]

Their leader, Brandon Curtiss, said the group came to "de-escalate" the situation by providing security for those inside and outside the compound.

Oregon Live

I don't think Mr. Curtiss knows the meaning of the word "de-escalate".

"We are not the militia, and we are not a militia," he said, adding that [they're] "here for everybody's safety, on both sides."

[...]

They aren't staying in the compound, Curtiss said, but are patrolling the perimeter of the reserve.

[...]

Todd Macfarlane, a lawyer acting as a mediator, said occupation leader Ammon Bundy doesn't want the armed visitors there.

Bundy's message: "We don't need that. We don't want it and we're asking you to leave."

[...]

The ornate sign that used to greet visitors with "Welcome To Your National Wildlife Refuge" now advertises the headquarters of the "Harney County Resource Center" in white block letters over a blue background.

[...]

LaVoy Finicum, one of the group's most vocal members, said the Bundy crew appreciates the Pacific Patriot Network's help, but "we want the long guns put away." Bundy didn't appear at the daily morning news conference.

Is he planning on slipping away quietly before the shit hits the fan?

Bundy and the group have a standing offer from Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward to avoid arrest if they leave peacefully. It's unclear whether that offer comes with a deadline.

If that's unclear, then probably not.

Law enforcement authorities including the FBI and sheriff's deputies from across the state have converted the Burns junior high school into a makeshift command post with around-the-clock security.

That seems like a crappy, calculated decision. No school until this is resolved, forcibly involving the area public.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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"It takes only a bit of knowledge of history to realize how dangerous it is to think that the people who run the country know what they are doing." -- Howard Zinn

"It’s not about not having something to hide; it’s about having something to lose. What we lose when we’re under observation is our humanity...Rights are inherent to our nature, they’re not granted by governments, they’re guaranteed by governments. They’re protected by governments." -- Edward Snowden

"Terrorism is the willingness to kill large numbers of people for some presumably good cause.” -- Howard Zinn

"What we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons." -- Jill Stein

"We should always remember that the danger to societies from security services is not that they will spontaneously decide to embrace [Stasi style] mustache twirling and jackboots to bear us bodily into dark places, but that the slowly shifting foundation of policy will make it such that mustaches and jackboots are discovered to prove an operational advantage toward a necessary purpose.” ~ Edward Snowden

"America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." ~ Mayer Rothschild

"News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising." ~ LACUNA

"What matters in journalism isn't politics, which are as universal and inescapable as breathing. What matters -- along with a fundamentally adversarial attitude toward government, without which "journalism" is simply public relations -- is integrity, transparency, evidence, coherence, and principle. These are the principles on which we should evaluate the quality of journalism, and their absence is why some journalists are so desperate to get you to focus on something else." ~ Barry Eisler

"There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack." ~ Molly Ivins

"The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." ~ James Thurber

"The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher plane....When you hold up your arm and swear to uphold the Constitution, you don’t say, 'Except in wartime.'" -- George McGovern

"I’ll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one." ~ Bill Moyers

"When did hope become a political dynamic? Hope is right below wishful thinking and right above performing a rain dance on the scale of activity." ~ Rich Hall

Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.