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Al-Saqr posted:Question, why is it that an armed militia can occupy federal property and not get carpet bombed. or at least surrounded and arrested en masse. how is this not put in the bracket of terrorism or insurgent action? Because it's a useless shed in the middle of nowhere that no one cares about, and they haven't shot anyone. The only crimes they've actually committed are trespassing, probably breaking and entering, and maybe some property damage. Shockingly enough, there aren't any laws that say that non-violent protesters (if just saying violent things or carrying legally owned weapons made a protest violent then it'd be a whole lot easier for undercover officers to manufacture excuses to bust a protest) can be summarily slaughtered for conducting a sit-in. Occupy managed to occupy government property all over the country for months or (even years, in some areas) before anyone cared enough to disperse them, without anyone being killed by the cops. Modern anti-protest doctrine is that there's no point in messing with protesters that aren't in some really public place, threatening private property, endangering people, or obstructing people's lives. If there's no pressing need to deal with them immediately, and they're not in a particularly visible public place, then it's simplest to just wait them out - they'll fall out of the news cycle and lose visibility pretty quickly, and after a while they'll get bored and disperse on their own, without any need to endanger police officers or risk an escalation. If they break anything in the meantime, the protest leaders can be fined, sued, or prosecuted for it later once their supporters go home. Of course, local authorities often override that because mayors can't take letting protesters protest for extended periods, but the federal government has no problem waiting them out and turning them into "the assholes shutting down the refuge for everyone" rather than "the martyrs struck down by government goon squads".
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Jan 4, 2016 03:00
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Cythereal posted:See the militia's rhetoric in this case. They like and support sheriffs so long as the sheriffs support the militia, and will turn on them without hesitation or regret if the local law enforcement opposes the militia. Typically they like and support sheriffs because the sheriffs support whatever issues they're all on about (or can easily be induced to do so). It's easy for, say, a rich well-connected major local landowner to influence local authorities into favoring them, whereas federal authorities require much bigger connections. It's a lot easier to go to the same yacht club as a local police chief or town councilman than it is to go to the same yacht club as the director of the FBI or a US senator. Their "good old boys" network simply doesn't extend to federal authorities, so while they can easily convince local authorities to look the other way or convert all punishments to gentle wrist-slapping, they don't get jack poo poo from the feds - and it infuriates them, because they're so used to being untouchable feudal lords around town and hate being reduced to normal people who have to follow the same rules as everyone else. Hell, that's exactly what they're pissed about in this case in particular - a local judge and jury outright ignored mandatory sentencing requirements written into the law and gave them a slap on the wrist because "well, they're pillars of the community and didn't actually kill anyone", but higher courts overturned that verdict as illegal. Hieronymous Alloy posted:Maybe we're thinking of this the wrong way. Did it? I know many Occupy groups were left alone until it petered out on its own a year or so later. Several Occupy movements in major metropolitan areas were busted, like the ones in NYC and Chicago, but there's an important distinction there - those were typically in major areas of the city and busted by local police. The incentives there are different - mayors don't generally have the patience to watch protest marches through the middle of downtown every day for months on end, and local police departments are generally reluctant to be seen as sitting on their thumbs and ignoring something that's annoying rich white people who work in the area. The federal government, on the other hand, doesn't really care - they're more than happy to close the place for a couple months and sue the ranchers later for any losses. In the meantime, they can just blame the ranchers for the place being closed, which will erode their support in the local area.
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Jan 4, 2016 15:52
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Alter Ego posted:...and yet these guys aren't getting tear-gassed/tazed and arrested. Why is that, do you think? Because they're occupying a federal wildlife reservation, not a park in the middle of downtown. Remember when Occupy got tear gassed by federal agents? Neither do I - they were tear gassed by city police. zeal posted:If the FBI really has yet to set up a basic circumvallation of these dipshits and their birdwatching fort, I really have to question the competence of every level of the federal response to this. Why? They haven't hurt anyone and they're not endangering anyone or even really bothering anyone, except for whoever wants to go visit a wildlife refuge in winter. As things stand, the worst they can do is a little property damage, and they'll probably lose heart and disperse within a month or two - even if their occupation goes well, I doubt most of them can totally abandon their regular lives for all that long. Sending federal agents will only boost their morale and raise the risk of harm or escalation. There's simply nothing there important enough to be worth the risks of intervening right now. Occupying the building is a crime, yes, but not one worth an armed standoff over, especially given that these occupations always peter out on their own eventually. Plenty of people have brought up Occupy, but while a few Occupy groups faced conflict with the cops, plenty of others didn't! The reason Occupy isn't a thing amymore is because people gave it up on their own. Occupy Tallahassee, for instance, sat around in some low-visibility field near a construction site for maybe two years with no interference from the cops, then sent out a vague press release declaring "victory" and dispersed on their own. Now, another factor is that this is in no way urgent. Nobody's in immediate danger, and it's the middle of the winter. Right now, the only cost of them being there is that some federal employees get to collect their paychecks while sitting at home and worrying about their coffee mug. If they're still there in five months, law enforcement can always change their tune and send in agents or something. It's not a now or never thing - pressure can always be ramped up later. There's no hurry. Now, what if they were black leftists? The rhetoric against them would be totally different, but the response wouldn't be. The difference in treatment has far more to do with location and jurisdiction than anything else - in general, local police departments (especially in cities) are far more likely to quickly jump to a kick-in-the-doors SWAT team solution, whereas the FBI prefers to take things slow, safe, and thorough.
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Jan 4, 2016 22:32
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KomradeX posted:Okay fine we ignore them and than a few weeks later some one that was there goes and shoots up another Walmart cause everyone was all talk ,than a few months later they go and occupy another federal building or start a standoff over bullshit. Ignoring them and letting them fester is going to blow the gently caress up in our faces Or we can send officers in to arrest or disperse them, and maybe someone gets shot in the confusion. A few weeks later, someone goes and shoots up another Walmart, inspired by the heroes/martyrs of this occupation. Then a few months later an even larger and more unstable occupation happens somewhere else, the fires of the movement having been stoked by the violence. In other words, pretty much the same consequences as leaving it be, only with more violence, more hurt people, and a more heated atmosphere that makes further violence even more likely. Besides, the federal government always wins in the end. Bundy hasn't faced criminal charges, but he's still got an ongoing court case, and it's a lot harder to use an armed posse to stop a multi-million dollar fine than it is to stop a cattle roundup. Lycus posted:How are the snacks going to get to them? Is UPS going to deliver to the revolution? There's no blockade up, they can enter and leave freely right now. They're just hoping people will buy them stuff so they don't have to spend their own money on it.
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Jan 4, 2016 22:47
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Lotka Volterra posted:This describes pretty much every non-major wildlife refuge, national park, national grassland, national forest, state park, etc. in the country. Should we cede all of this land to insane militiamen to be destroyed because "welp, it's in the middle of nowhere!" A better question is "how many federal agents should lay down their lives to evict these people from this land by force, as opposed for waiting for them to run out of vacation days and go home so that the land can be seized back without any harm to federal employees"? An armed standoff should always be a last resort, not the first one.
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Jan 4, 2016 22:56
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Anosmoman posted:What if they stay "for years" as they plan? When should they be evicted and how many federal agents should lay down their lives to do it? By then, there'll only be a couple of them left. Pretty hard to earn your livelihood protesting in another state, and unlike Occupy, these guys probably don't still have their parents paying their rent. They'll thin out within a few months, and if needed, an intervention against the few remaining holdouts will be much safer.
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Jan 4, 2016 23:31
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the trump tutelage posted:Someone explain to me how setting a fire on fed land somehow covers up poaching or is somehow less conspicuous than a few blood splatters in the middle of nowhere. Someone saw them doing it, and interrupted their hunt to kick them off the land, and therefore would have known exactly where to look for evidence. Hence the fire.
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Jan 5, 2016 06:19
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Condiv posted:again, people said this after bundy ranch. and what's to stop these guys from taking the lack of federal attention to mean they need to do something more violent to get martyred? If they do something more violent, we can shoot them then. "We should shoot them for this non-violent crime because they might commit a violent crime later" is something the police should be doing less of, not more of. If they get bolder later, they can be dealt with later. Condiv posted:i'd believe this if this poo poo wasn't being instigated by some of the same people who did the bundy ranch stand-off and walked off with no punishment. a light touch doesn't seem to have diffused this behavior at all, now instead of just actively threatening leos these idiots are occupying a federal building and actively threatening leos They aren't "threatening LEOs", as there are no LEOs there to threaten. And it's too early to say that Bundy got off with no punishment, since his court case is still ongoing. More importantly, punishment won't make a drat bit of difference. Someone who goes and shoots cops isn't scared of consequences. The ones we really have to worry about getting violent are the ones that are genuinely ready to lay their lives down for the movement, and those are only going to be energized by harsh punishments, not dissuaded. The ones who fear punishment and consequences won't do anything too serious in the first place. We'll just end up with fewer harmless events like this to give feds a good preview of who to watch out for, and more crazies willing to fight to the death against the government and endure any punishment to be a right-wing martyr. Besides, President Trump will pardon them all anyway, so there's no point handing out prison sentences.
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Jan 5, 2016 15:47
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Anyhow, it looks like some action is being taken. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/05/oregon-wildlife-militia-standoff-power-cut-off quote:Authorities plan to cut off power to militia at occupied Oregon refuge
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Jan 5, 2016 15:54
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Jewel Repetition posted:I heard some of the yeehawdists felt like federal agencies were bullying to try to get them to sell their land. It seems that their land is fairly intermingled with the federally-owned land, to the point where the shortest route between one section of their land and another section of their land might be over a tract of land owned by the feds. Previously, when moving their cattle from point A to point B, they were permitted to move their cattle across the shorter route through federal land, as long as they notified federal authorities and requested approval far enough in advance, didn't leave their herd on federal land for more than a certain period of time, and so on. Naturally, they routinely ignored and broke those rules and restrictions, which led to that permit being revoked. So they've made up a story about the feds wanting their land, in an attempt to tap into the same anger people get when they hear about a poor black neighborhood being eminent domain'd by the city so that it can be bulldozed in order to build a shopping center or highway. Nonsense posted:None of them will see jail time, they won't even be questioned, they'll be allowed to leave, the right declare victory, and they'll still get to go home to seeing Obama being impeached on the news over squashing gun rights. No jail time, but they will be fined for the damages done. Cliven Bundy may have "won" his little standoff, but it didn't make his court case - or the million-plus dollars of back fees he owes - go away, and most of the militiamen camping out on his ranch gave up and went home after they failed to crowdfund their daily bills and ended up having to go home and back to work. The federal government can afford to wait and take their sweet time; these guys can't.
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Jan 5, 2016 22:01
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Horking Delight posted:If someone gave me food late at night I'd thank them gratefully and talk about how much I appreciated it and how delicious it was. I wouldn't say it was "very needed" or that I was "very hungry". They're just talking up any morsels of food given to them by anyone as proof of their popular support locally or nationwide, and are therefore vastly exaggerating their need. It's a lot harder to brag about "we're so supported by the community that someone gave us some soup" if you're saying you don't need food because you're so well-prepared. By claiming to be on the brink of starvation and super grateful for every bite, they're more likely to get basic charity from people, which they can then turn around as evidence of how much people support their cause. Lyapunov Unstable posted:sounds like 1-2 weeks depending on the size of the "bags" and how theyre rationing (theyre probably already out of food) Most of them probably aren't staying much longer than that anyway. They can't leave their cattle/job/family/whatever unattended forever; sooner or later most of them will have to get home and back to their daily lives. The mortgage doesn't pay itself, and I doubt any of these yahoos have years worth of living expenses socked away that they're willing to blow on this. For all their rhetoric, they'll run out of money long before the federal government does. Astrofig posted:That's assuming they know how to cook---most of it is easy poo poo that a middleschooler could make like mac and cheese, ramen cups, canned soup----the gently caress are they going to do with bags of raw flour, uncooked oats and raw potatoes? Did they think to bring a camp stove? (And fuel for it?) If not, they could just go out and pick one up. It's not like they're blockaded in or anything - they're still able to enter and leave freely.
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Jan 6, 2016 15:25
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http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/05/tension-grows-as-militia-prepares-for-fourth-night-in-oregon-standoffquote:Yet as the militia prepared for their fourth night on Tuesday, a tense energy infused the surrounding community, where federal agents set up office in the local school district headquarters and held courthouse meetings with US prosecutors and others on how to solve the lingering occupation.
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Jan 6, 2016 15:31
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zeal posted:I sort of get why the locals or the feds decided not to post people on the roads into the refuge, but surely they could've guessed that leaving the militiamen free to move as they please means they'll bring in more people and supplies I doubt they care. Food's unlikely to be the limiting factor here. If you dropped everything in your life and flew out to another state to camp out in the woods on short notice, how long do you think you could stick around there before you started paying massive costs in your personal life? These guys aren't cultists holed up in their own compound, they're regular workers, business owners, and retired guys who ditched their jobs and families to go play militiaman out in the woods. Even if they have plenty of food, only a few of them can count on still having a home to go back to if they keep this camping trip going for more than a couple of months. These guys all going home on their own because they ran out of vacation days or left their cattle unsupervised too long is the perfect end to this whole pathetic affair - and will just go to show that most of these guys were just bluffing and weren't really even prepared to sacrifice their jobs or homes for the cause, let alone their lives.
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Jan 6, 2016 17:56
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Guy DeBorgore posted:I look forward to the day when this innovative law enforcement strategy is applied to more dangerous situations, like an unarmed black person being pulled over for a traffic violation. Unfortunately more than one law enforcement organization exists in the US, and not all of them agree on tactics. The FBI generally isn't the one shooting unarmed black people, and it's a safe bet these people would be facing a drastically different response if they were facing down, say, the NYPD. Mystic_Shadow posted:I think people are just mad that legal left-wing protests like Occupy Wall Street are taken down by force by local police, with students getting tazed and maced, while at the same time these right-wing assholes get to point weapons at federal officers / take over federal property and the response is "gee I guess we shouldn't do anything because it might lend credibility to their movement." That's because those people lack anything more than a superficial sense of nuance, and are so busy rushing to a kneejerk response based on what they already believed to be the case that they miss crucial details. Can you really not think of any other differences between the two situations besides political alignment when you complain that OWS was evicted by local police from privately-owned property after two months, but these assholes have yet to face a major crackdown from federal agents after occupying federal land for four days? Clearly the only reason that the FBI isn't treating these guys out in the woods the same way the NYPD treats black people is because of skin color, there's no other possible reason that federal authorities aren't committing the same atrocities that totally unrelated law enforcement agencies have used in a few cherry-picked instances!
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Jan 6, 2016 22:40
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Mormon Star Wars posted:The issue isn't that people want a raid to happen for redneck blood, the issue is that the "and a couple of months afterwards they will be arrested or fined" never happens. In the Bundy Ranch incident people literally threatened reporters and townsfolk and there were no arrests or fines, everyone just went home realizing that they can do whatever the gently caress they want with no consequences at all. Well, the Bundy militia people didn't go home after the standoff. They stuck around for at least a month, camping out on Bundy's ranch to protect him and running wild in the local area (including stuff like setting up checkpoints on nearby roads) while the local sheriff refused to get involved and loudly blamed everyone but himself for the standoff. Most of them went home after they ran out of money and crowdfunding sites shut down their attempts to crowdfund their expenses, but there's probably a couple still hanging around. Federal investigations take a long time, and the feds typically refuse to confirm or deny their existence until charges are filed. The FBI investigation of the Alaska Peacemakers Militia (whose founder was eventually sentenced to 26 years for various weapons charges and conspiracy to commit murder) took 20 months, and that was a centralized group with a defined structure and their own weapons caches. On the other hand, they're almost certainly wary of pulling the trigger too early, since the Bundy standoff people didn't actually do anything more than stand around with guns and chat about shooting federal agents. Many would argue that that is more than enough, but the Feds are likely wary of a repeat of the Hutaree militia case (a two-year investigation into a radical Christian militia which believed that law enforcement was "Satan's Army", was amassing a cache of illegal weapons, and talked about going to war to overthrow the tyranny of the government), where a judge disagreed and dismissed the charges as not concrete, saying that "Vague antigovernment hate speech simply does not amount to an agreement [to violently overthrow the government] as a matter of law". It's likely that the government is monitoring the Bundy standoff guys and looking for something more solid to charge them with, since they have a federal judge's ruling that a shared "strong dislike – perhaps hatred – of the Federal Government and law enforcement at every level", "desire to spark a war with the federal government", and a desire to "harm or kill law enforcement agents" do not amount to "concrete agreement to forcibly oppose the United States Government". Failing to charge militia members may hurt the government's image, but hauling them into court only for a judge to throw the whole thing out as "protected speech" is a whole lot more damaging, and there's no way the FBI will risk that again anytime soon. They won't charge anyone till there's an ironclad case. Iowa Snow King posted:Why is the Sheriff the level of authority they're willing to accept? Sheriffs are usually locally-elected good old boys who went to the same high school as them and therefore are much more likely to cut them a break or look the other way or hold the same fringe beliefs they do.
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Jan 7, 2016 17:12
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DeusExMachinima posted:On public roads? I thought that was just a rumor. The local Congressional representative said so, at least. As far as I can tell, the media had largely lost interest by then, so no journalist actually went and confirmed it for themselves one way or the other.
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Jan 7, 2016 18:33
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Anosmoman posted:No reason to confront them directly but I also see no particular reason to stand idly by as people truck food and supplies in there. Doesn't really matter. After all, they're buying those supplies with their own money, while also continuing to pay for their homes and their families, and they're not pulling paychecks to sit there and play survivalist. The militiamen who settled on the Bundy ranch were running out of money within a month. Even if they had ten years worth of food stockpiled, they still wouldn't be able to dump their normal lives and stay out there for more than a couple of months. Cutting their supplies would be a concern if they were genuinely willing to give up their old lives and devote everything to this struggle even if it means sacrificing their home and livelihood, like cultists and real crazies, but most of this crew doesn't have that sort of devotion. A few of them are already talking about how they aren't willing to take a bullet for this and how they need to go home soon, and it hasn't even been a week. They'll be gone well before they run out of food, and the Feds will spend the next year and a half painstakingly investigating each one of them and doing a meticulous inventory of even the tiniest damages they've done to the place. SedanChair posted:I place no value on the lives of white militia members. Do you? Man, so edgy. Personally, I believe all human lives have value, regardless of their skin color or political beliefs. And to be honest, it really does shock me to see how many people here disagree! Potential BFF posted:None of the goofy teahadists have anything larger than a .50 bmg. Drive up an MRAP or other armored vehicle and tear gas them, queue "patriots" puking their guts out and weeping. Sounds like a good way to make sure that the next militia standoff involves militants cobbling together IEDs and taking hostages (for "self-defense", of course), rather than sitting in an empty building watching Fox News and comparing cowboy hats. Mr. Wookums posted:Racism is over in this country, obviously, so the fact that authorities are allowing the protest shows that these freedom fighters are not actively endangering public safety. When authorities act with force: assassinate terrorist black panther leaders, execute minorities with no warning, breakup OWS etc... it's because they were obviously actively endangering public safety. The reason this protest is allowed by authorities and other ones weren't is because different authorities were involved! If these yahoos were pulling this poo poo in the NYPD's jurisdiction the whole drat building would've been burned down by now. The modern-day FBI is not generally responsible for shooting unarmed minorities or breaking up left-wing protests. It's highly inaccurate to lump the FBI in with the local police departments that engage in that behavior, especially since the FBI is the entity that investigates civil rights violations by those local police departments.
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Jan 7, 2016 21:04
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Mormon Star Wars posted:Because they won't be arrested in a month, or ever, much like the people at the Bundy ranch that threatened hotel employees in the nearby town for working at a hotel that the feds had the temerity to stay at. They won't even be fined. It's a bit soon to say "ever". FBI investigations of organized, centralized militia groups with defined plans to carry out unprovoked violence usually take well over a year - the feds, unlike local cops, tend to be slow, thorough, patient, and willing to keep their cards close to their chest and not reveal their investigation till after it's done. There's no reason that an investigation of random yokels with guns and violent rhetoric would go faster, especially since there's far less to build a case on. cunny mcalister posted:If I'm that far off base in understanding how the law in a unified country should work, then please help me. I literally don't understand why these should be considered different cases other than the authority enforcing the law. The US has three major levels of law enforcement (basically. it's pretty complicated), each one of which is largely independent of the other two. There's local police departments, which mostly hand out traffic tickets on local roads, harass black people for no reason, and impose the mayor's will (unless the mayor is a Democrat). There's state police, who hand out traffic tickets on the highway. And there's the FBI, which busts white supremacist groups and organized crime gangs while investigating hate crimes and civil rights abuses committed by police departments and government agencies. Mr. Wookums posted:The FBI itself is only 50 years removed from performing those civil rights violations including loving with OWS Considering that literal segregation was only outlawed 51 years ago, I'm not surprised that the FBI was racist 50 years ago! Their role, purpose, and doctrine have changed a lot since the days when it was still okay to bring live ammo to suppress a protest. And rest assured, they're surveilling and infiltrating militias too, they didn't just single out OWS for equal treatment. Radbot posted:If the FBI teaching Muslim boys how to make bombs and then arresting them is legitimate, arresting these dudes for conspiring to overthrow the government is far, far more legitimate. "His diatribes evince nothing more than his own hatred for – perhaps even desire to fight or kill – law enforcement; this is not the same as seditious conspiracy." - a real-life federal judge throwing out all charges against an armed militia group dedicated to war and revolution against the US government (which they called the "Army of Satan"). This is probably the number one reason why the feds are so slow to arrests against the Bundy militiamen, by the way. Failing to arrest militia members may look bad, but arresting them only for the charges to get thrown out by the judge outright legitimizes the militias. The feds aren't going to move forward with anything less than an ironclad case, and they're not going to settle for a sentence of a year or two for minor crimes. Which means that the feds aren't going to prosecute anyone for just the Bundy standoff, since if I'm reading this right, the maximum federal sentence for someone who "forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates, or interferes" with a government official without making physical contact or inflicting injury is one year. That's why the FBI isn't just going to prosecute them for their role in the standoff - they're also digging into the past of each and every one of them, carefully surveilling them for any hint of escalation or further plans, and identifying which ones are the best targets for potential future stings. Hell, this could even be one of them. Law enforcement already outright stated in one of the press conferences that there were undercover agents around.
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Jan 7, 2016 22:17
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Volkerball posted:OWS idea of civil disobedience was sitting down and blocking a sidewalk, where they were pepper sprayed and dragged away. If only they had guns and said if anyone points a gun at me, I'll point a gun at them, they wouldn't have been forcibly relocated, and the protest would've been more effective. Actually, they occupied privately-owned land. For two months! Clearly the failure to evict these protesters in less than one week, when OWS was evicted by a totally different law enforcement agency after eight weeks, is a sign of favorable treatment toward OWS. They're not even blockading the protest to prevent people from freely entering and leaving, a clear sign of unequal treatment and biased treatment compared to OWS which they also did not blockade. Honestly, it sounds to me like you're the one arguing for unequal treatment here.
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Jan 7, 2016 22:46
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Radbot posted:Sorry, we've decided that asking ourselves why unarmed minorities are dragged away and sometimes murdered over protests while self-declared traitors armed to the teeth are given the benefit of the doubt is not worth talking about. Because the unarmed minorities are protesting in the jurisdiction of racist police departments known for treating minorities badly, utilizing excessive force against pretty much anyone who inconveniences them, and often exacting illegal violence against them for no reason. In fact, they're often protesting because of that illegal and unreasonable racist treatment. These self-declared traitors, on the other hand, are protesting in the jurisdiction of a law enforcement agency known for being slow, measured, and methodical, has a doctrinal and institutional aversion to engaging in violence if it is at all avoidable, is very careful of recent court decisions that hold that declaring yourself an enemy of the United States willing to wage war against them is "mere words" and protected speech, and is so much better on racial issues that it's the organization that investigates other law enforcement agencies accused of racism. cunny mcalister posted:Says the guy that refuses to believe that a guy that hasn't been charged with a prior standoff with federal agents doing a similar action is completely unrelated. The area believes the children aren't safe, why is that? Why would this district take a week off because there is no threat? If nothing is happening, why isn't life going on as normal? Because, again, there are different agencies involved with different doctrines, methodologies, and assessments. The school closures were almost assuredly ordered by local government officials or the local sheriff, not the federal government. The local authorities probably don't completely 100% trust the FBI's assessment that they're a non-threat which doesn't need to be raised, just like how the CIA called the FBI a bunch of wusses when they suggested maybe using humane, friendly interrogation strategies instead of torture. Mr. Wookums posted:The FBI was acting against minority civil rights groups well past segregation (which was irrelevant to the FBI) into at least 1972. Oh, the FBI was still racist a mere forty-two years ago, just eight years after the Civil Rights Act? Color me shocked! Court decisions have generally held that if the only reason someone isn't committing terrorism is because they can't afford a bomb, then providing them a fake bomb doesn't count as the government forcing them to commit a crime. And yeah, as it turns out, the FBI actually does provide fake bombs to radical militia members as part of sting operations. Sorry that that's an official FBI press release, so it doesn't come with the same sob story about how poor and misunderstood and harmless the violent anti-government anarchists with militant histories were, but I'm sure if I tried hard enough I could find a tearful account from some far-right rag about how those guys were bullied in school and just hate cops because their dad was an abusive sex offender, or whatever. Mr. Wookums posted:Why were they classified as a terrorist organization? Were they? I thought that was just hyperbole from Radbot because he thinks only terrorists are subjected to FBI surveillance.
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Jan 7, 2016 23:23
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Mr. Wookums posted:Did the FBI also provide that milita (not terrorists) with the attack's planner, logistics to carry out the attack, housing, jobs and money to purchase the weapons? I'm pretty sure the Occupy Cleveland sting is quite different from how you characterized it, though in an unusual move for me, I'm not going to go back and double-check the source again because that tearful Rolling Stone defense of the violent anarchists from the mean old feds was such infuriatingly dishonest, fallacious garbage that I don't ever want to look at it again. More to the point, who cares? If you want to blow up a bridge, sign up to blow up a bridge, buy explosives to blow up a bridge, and go out to blow up a bridge, then you're clearly a threat who was looking for an opportunity, not a harmless youth who just hates his dad and lost his sense of community or whatever the gently caress the liberal defense for those shitheads was. If a FBI informant starts a fake militia to overthrow the government and stockpiles fake bombs, does that mean that the people who join that militia and try to use those fake bombs are innocent and harmless? quote:Yes, and what we know from the FBI's internal memos also contracts your stance that they're awesome and do not do bad things anymore for purely political reasons. I see nothing in those memos that supports your claim that OWS were "treated like terrorists" - if they had been, we'd be talking about them posthumously. They were subject to surveillance and watched for potential terrorist threats, but that's not the result of some super nefarious bank conspiracy to destroy leftists - even if the overall movement is non-violent and peaceful, it still needs to be watched, since it assuredly attracted radicals, anarchists, anti-government activists, and people with violent leanings, and some of them might meet and organize within OWS or radicalize others around them. cunny mcalister posted:If they are peaceful, how would the raid be risky? Armed raids are inherently risky and can easily convert a peaceful situation into a violent one, even if used against unarmed protesters.
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Jan 8, 2016 18:28
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Talmonis posted:People are upset that 2 didn't happen to these exact people last time. The counterpoint of "the BLM is making a case against Cliven Bundy" rings hollow to a lot of people. It's actually true, though. FBI investigations into militias take years, not months. Also, they generally thoroughly investigate to find everything the target has ever done wrong and put them away for years, rather than pulling the trigger on a prosecution for nothing more than trespassing on federal property (0-6 months in jail) and impeding or intimidating a government official (1 year maximum sentence). Also, the FBI is super interested in piling up a long list of concrete actions these people are taking, since the Hutaree prosecution got slammed down for too reliant on "mere words" and minor infractions and insufficient evidence that every single member personally shared the leadership's openly stated goals. Mr. Wookums posted:I would think someone who advocates that the Feds treat all equally should care. And yes, they are innocent; it's entrapment even if the crime is domestic terrorism. No it's not. The law is quite clear on this - if you hand someone a bomb and tell them "go blow up this bridge" and they do it, then it's not entrapment, because the proper response to "go blow up this bridge" is "hell no". If a government agent gives you a bomb and you try to commit an act of terror with it, then you're still a terrorist, even if the government agent helps you pick out a target for that terrorist act you said you wanted to commit. Talmonis posted:Intimidation, Assault with a deadly weapon (Aiming guns at cops), Tresspassing, Grand theft Auto, Breaking and Entering, Burglery, Tax Evasion (just spitballing there, but likely), and whatever else they could hit him with under RICO for the ranch shitshow. If they cared that is. The US's legal system no longer allows people to be prosecuted for "crimes they probably committed, of course I don't have any proof but they're obviously guilty, just look at them". And loving RICO? Are you kidding me? Are you insane?
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Jan 8, 2016 23:21
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Volkerball posted:jfc What are you expecting from people who waited a whole week and only showed up when no police crackdown was forthcoming? I think you're overestimating the significance of anyone who arrives this late in the game The only thing they're doing by showing up now is incriminating themselves, and the FBI is certainly inclined to let them. Letting reinforcements come freely also makes it super easy to slip in informants and undercover agents. Seriously, for anyone who's wondering why the feds are acting the way they are, the Hutaree case is required reading. A high-profile militia prosecution ending in a six-month slap on the wrist or having the charges outright dismissed by a judge would lead to consequences a thousand times worse than letting them run free for a couple of years while the FBI builds an ironclad case.
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Jan 10, 2016 03:55
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Booourns posted:So I have to wonder, if a group of Afghani Muslim immigrants did what the Bundys are doing right now, would people be saying we can't do anything about it because it might spark another 9/11? Depends on whether they did it in the middle of downtown in a major city, or on federal land in the middle of nowhere. kartikeya posted:The only 'lesson' this and the previous Bundy standoff are teaching is that the feds will back down if you have enough guns and are willing to be terrorists to get your way (and have a lot of politicians and pundits that will yell for you, that's a bonus). "Not getting your poo poo wrecked in a brutal raid" is not the same as "getting your way". Cliven's little standoff didn't make his legal troubles go away, and although I can't believe I have to say this, neither the government nor anyone else will honor Ammon's self-declared expropriation of the land. Also, the FBI busts anti-government militias all the time. We just don't usually hear about it because they bust real militia groups planning real attacks, not collections of random idiots spontaneously gathering to engage in civil disobedience and talk tough to the cameras. ToastyPotato posted:This is great until you apply this thinking to the first Bundy ranch stand off. What happens when, before they are arrested (because slow and steady wins the race), they break the law again somewhere else? Hold back and wait another 6 months? Then they get charged for both things? It isn't rocket science. It's not like a few months in prison is some super huge deterrent that'll stop them from ever making trouble ever again.
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Jan 10, 2016 07:19
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Vienna Circlejerk posted:The Bundy ranch standoff went the way it did because the BLM decided not to press the issue. It was the BLM's shitshow, top to bottom. And also because local law enforcement refused to get involved and instead publicly blamed the BLM for the standoff happening in the first place. SedanChair posted:The longer they wait, the more likely future killers will congregate there. McVeigh was at Waco loitering around and talking to press. Good. It's better for them to come out and publicly associate with this stuff now, rather than sitting at home watching it on TV and keeping their radical views secret until their violent attack is ready to be launched. General_Disturbed posted:In actual reality land, they continue to get more supporters showing up every day. A lot of the militias that were condemning them early on are showing up now, heavily armed. They've been going around to the FBI staging area and the sheriff's staging area with their assault rifles doing shows of force, and making any law enforcement they see take their stupid pamplets that have their list of grievances on them. As far as militias are concerned, everything's a victory. What's most important is that the militias are seeing that no violence came of this. That's why it's not a problem that militias are showing up and shacking up with them this late in the game. The ones to be concerned about are the ones who showed up on Days 1 and 2 ready to die for the cause, not the ones who waited a full week for fear of violent crackdown before they finally worked up the nerve to show up and pass out pamphlets. Sure, maybe it'll lead to another occupation in this style - but now that they've seen that they're not going to have SWAT teams lurking in every shadow, it's less likely that violence will be involved (purposely or accidentally) in those future acts of civil disobedience. And just in case there's any violent wackos getting inspired by this, everyone who shows up is going to end up on an FBI watchlist anyway! CommieGIR posted:gently caress, they really are going to stay, are they. It hasn't even been a month yet. Occupy Wall Street lasted two months before being kicked out, IIRC, and some Occupy movements in other areas lasted years. Have some patience, geez. Don't worry, it won't last as long as Occupy did since these are grown adults with businesses and families, not burnout hippies and bored college kids living off their student loans, but they're still right in the midst of their fifteen minutes of fame, so they're not going to leave while attention-seeking elected officials are making pilgrimages to worship at their altar. Thump! posted:Stealing and defacing government property is certainly a crime, isn't it? Yeah. It's probably a misdemeanor punishable by a three-digit fine or a couple months in prison. Hardly worth breaking out the tear gas for. Condiv posted:lol no, this is not a demonstration. occupy wall street was a demonstration. this is violent insurrection. they are threatening the lives of others, claiming government property for themselves, etc. and yes, justice needs to be done swiftly, because taking 6 months-2 years to do anythig only emboldens these people. and you should be right with me right now since they already did something like this two years ago with no repercussions. Wow, this is just the wrongest post. Literally every single sentence in it is incorrect. Not that it matters though since every time I post verified and verifiable factual information, often with links to the source, I'm met with nothing more than opinion-laden totally unsourced hyperbole about how this terrifyingly violent treasonous rebellion is going to inspire a revolution and conquer the country if not utterly crushed by law enforcement, which will be easy because they're so weak and dumb and helpless and their few supporters will abandon them at the first sign of violence!
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Jan 14, 2016 17:49
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Condiv posted:i don't think they'll conquer the country, but further violence? yeah that's a very real concern. and no one's asking for them to be utterly crushed, just for them to be arrested and made to answer for their crimes. guess that's just too much to ask huh? FBI investigations of centralized, organized militia groups typically take two years or more. These yahoos are neither centralized nor organized, so it'll take longer. Rushing it is a good way to get the charges dismissed and the case thrown out by a judge, given the extremely troublesome and inconvenient precedents set by previous attempted militia prosecutions. Arresting them all on the spot only for a judge to knock it all down to minor misdemeanors is approximately a thousand times worse than letting them roam free for a while would be. Even a cursory reading of the outcome of the Hutaree case explains exactly why the FBI are being so timid about it - they want a case that goes well beyond merely "ironclad", and they're willing to wait as long as it takes to build one. Intel&Sebastian posted:But that doesn't mean I'm going to make up excuses for them on the very valid question of: why aren't they doing even the bare minimum to discourage them from being there? Or curb their broadcasts asking for backup and supplies? Because the FBI doesn't want to discourage them from being there. If they want to go out and commit crimes without actually physically harming anyone, that is in fact super convenient for the FBI - it means that these guys are out there creating plenty of criminal activities and property damage that can be used against them later, it means that the radicals are coming out in public to openly announce their beliefs and indicating through their actions exactly how far they're willing to go (which makes it a lot easier for the FBI to identify potential threats than if they're sitting at home keeping their plans secret for fear of armed government reprisal), and more. Besides, the chances of the situation here escalating drop with every passing day; better to leave this as a safe honeypot until it burns out on its own. After a judge smacked them down in Hutaree for prosecuting people based on "mere words", the FBI must be salivating at the thought of all the actual actions they're going to be able to bring to a judge this time. Before you get your hopes up, though, let me assure you that any prosecution based on this occupation won't be soon. First they'll be going through every inch of this place, cataloging every scuff or scratch on a piece of government equipment and comparing it against undercover agents' notes to determine who to blame it on. Everybody who showed up within the first three days is going to get investigated carefully and deeply (many were already on the FBI's radar) and watched for future association with anti-government groups, or possibly even targeted by stings. And if Bundy tries to parlay this together into an organized group that continues to exist after the occupation ends, then the FBI agent who responds to reporters' questions is going to have the damndest time trying to keep the gigantic grin off his face as he says "no comment" over and over and refuses to confirm or deny the existence of an investigation.
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Jan 14, 2016 18:35
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McDowell posted:^ Good riddance to bad rubbish. There is no innocence, only degrees of guilt. A Winner is Jew posted:Idiots are dead and I won't shed a tear for them because it would be a waste of my valuable time. SquadronROE posted:Can the cops just get some artillery and shell the hell out of that place? Or if they don't want to damage the precious woodland, they could just hose it down with a few hours of M2HB fire. Intel&Sebastian posted:I'll go on fox news with their facebook pictures and declare them no angels. McDowell posted:No lives matter. Thump! posted:They deserve the machine gun then, nothing short of it. Mow them down like wheat. Is this the rumored left-wing empathy and concern for personal freedoms at work? Because it really reads more like fascists demanding the slaughter of their political opponents based on weak pretexts. Good to know it's okay for police to kill non-violent protesters en masse over minor property crimes and "mere words" as long as they're white and own guns!
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Jan 14, 2016 20:39
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Turtle Sandbox posted:So are the terrorist calling to themselves as terrorist now, or is it still a protest / militia? Some are, some aren't. Doesn't really matter though, since federal court precedent says the FBI isn't allowed to assume that everyone there agrees with the statements of any particular member (even the leader), so it's only significant for the potential future prosecution of the specific person who says it.
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Jan 14, 2016 20:41
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Who What Now posted:You heard it here first folks, it is everyone's God-given rights* to break into any building you want, point your guns at and threaten to kill whoever you want, and steal whatever you want, whenever you want. I dunno, usually the police threads get all whiny when local cops shoot someone who has committed no violence solely because they possessed a gun, broke into a building, committed a property crime, or said scary things! Typically it's suggested that the police should have nonviolently talked them down, and that it would be inappropriate to escalate a situation against someone who has yet to use violence, even if they said something threatening but made no effort to follow up on that threat with action. Laws which allow law enforcement to presume that someone is violent and use lethal force against them simply because they possess a firearm are also a popular target for criticism. Unless they're both white and right-wing, apparently, in which case every angry word about taking down the government should be treated like a murder charge and followed up with violence!
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Jan 14, 2016 20:49
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UV_Catastrophe posted:When a comparable left-wing protest eventually happens, I am 100 percent sure that the authorities will thoughtfully consider using a gentle response like the one used in Burns, Oregon and will definitely not stomp them out of existence using every dirty trick in the book. Remember when the FBI blockaded Occupy Wall Street - a comparable sit-in, except that it was on privately owned land in the middle of a city - on Day One to prevent food and people from entering or leaving, and dispersed them by force in less than a week? No, me neither. You and a lot of other people in this thread are literally making up persecutions that never happened in order to fuel your absurd persecution complexes. Your Dunkle Sans posted:You're leaving out the parts about seizing a federal building while armed, slashing the sheriff's tires, stalking and threatening his wife, etc. That tends to push it from punching down to up. Sheriff's free to arrest them any time he wants if they're loving with him or committing crimes in Burns. The feds can't prevent him from doing so. Tias posted:This stuff never ceases to amaze me. I mean, sure, you decide the rules don't apply to you, and the older guy you drink brake fluid with down by the tracks says there's legal precedent for thinking so if you just mutter enough about naval flags and sovereignty when the cops come. Rather than needing magic words to avoid the law, many sovereign citizens believe that the law doesn't apply to anyone in the first place, and that the entire modern legal system is an incredibly elaborate ruse designed to trick and intimidate people into waiving that exemption. The believe their "magic words" are just a way of exercising and defending their rights, just like a white college kid repeating "I do not consent to this search of my vehicle" over and over as a cop reaches for the bag of weed under the driver's seat. To them, being arrested and hauled into court is just the state putting on a show of legal theater to scare them into accepting the court's authority. Typically a sovereign citizen believer's brush with the system is something minor like traffic tickets or unpaid taxes, so it's not often they get tazed or jailed; when they do, they believe it's police brutality or illegal confinement and hold faith that their magic words will get the cops and the court punished for this so-called abuse. Talmonis posted:On that first day, I would have set up a small roadblock with the FBI and cooperation from the local Sheriff's department and state police. I'd demand they disperse, and that if they cooperated within a set time, they would be free to leave. Fined later. Uh-huh. What happens when they don't? If they just stand there, politely but firmly trying to stroll past the blockade? Either the feds move aside and are rendered impotent, or they intervene with physical force to prevent the militiamen from coming out and boom, they've just escalated the situation with violence. The FBI has fifty-some years of proof in their history that standoff tactics simply don't work for de-escalating a situation. In fact, they're exactly how peaceful protests turn into massacres - if law enforcement agents create a barrier, then they are creating a situation in which they have to use violence to prevent protesters from passing it. It's a golden opportunity for the protesters, and is unlikely to bring any particular value to law enforcement beyond "looking tough" and setting up for a firefight. Volkerball posted:It's emboldened them. If it had emboldened them, they wouldn't be making a point of going unarmed. It's nothing more than the same "crap, we didn't get the response we hoped for...now what?" malaise that struck Occupy before too long.
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Jan 15, 2016 21:22
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Talmonis posted:Then the FBI arrest them. The police, FBI, etc. have the authority to enact force (meaning touching you, using handcuffs, etc.) to arrest you. This....shouldn't be that hard to comprehend. Hands behind your head, there's a good lad. Any and all shooting would be started by militia, and then ended by the law, letting the survivors get a nice long stay in Federal supermax. And what if they don't cooperate? Then the law enforcement agents have to escalate with physical force! And when it becomes a physical scuffle, there is plenty of opportunity for either side to get scared and start shooting, when both sides are already in close quarters. This is how peaceful protests become massacres - the police turn a confrontation physical, an officer gets spooked in the melee and starts shooting, everyone else hears gunshots and starts shooting as well, and bam. kartikeya posted:edit: And oh yeah, they're not going to cut the power because that would also 'escalate things'. FFS. Actually, they can't cut the power because it's physically impossible to do so remotely without also cutting off the power to neighboring ranches. The only way to cut the power to just that building is at that building. But who needs facts when you have wild hyperbole? Torpor posted:Just send the power company out no need to get law enforcement involved. Think the power company will send people without a police escort?
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Jan 16, 2016 01:19
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Who What Now posted:Then shoot them. Typically it doesn't go well for agencies that engage in extrajudicial killings of protesters engaging in civil disobedience. Failing to cooperate with an arrest isn't a death penalty crime. Iowa Snow King posted:Someone should send them one of those sex toys that's just like a headless, limbless torso I don't understand why so many people are wasting their money to send these guys garbage. Buy a decent dinner or something, it'll last longer than the three seconds of mild annoyance they might experience before they chuck it in the trash.
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Jan 16, 2016 06:18
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Intel&Sebastian posted:Still waiting on an explanation here main painframe. Luck? A number of people were injured during the Ferguson protests, including several serious gunshot wounds that very well could have been fatal. A mumber of police officers were also injured, yet shockingly the cops didn't just mow down the crowd like you seem to think they should do at the slightest hint of danger. Also, Ferguson didn't meet the conditions I described in the first place - though there were a number of violent clashes that very easily could have led to disaster, there was no siege, and in any case the police had little choice but to intervene since some of the protesters were openly rioting, which makes it hard to call Ferguson "peaceful".
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Jan 16, 2016 23:12
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Who What Now posted:Armed protestors also are not "peaceful". That hasn't once stopped you from calling them that, though. Weird, huh? Now what could be different about these protesters compared to Ferguson that would make you give them more benefit of the doubt, I wonder... Wait, so mere possession of firearms which they aren't using is just as non-peaceful as looting and damaging businesses while throwing rocks at the police? I'm not pro-gun, but merely possessing a legally owned weapon which you have the right to carry does not, by itself, constitute violence.
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Jan 17, 2016 04:59
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Mr Interweb posted:So they have all these weapons on them, but they have no intention of using? Wouldn't it be easier to leave them at home, if that were the case? I imagine some of those AR-15s would be quite heavy to carry around all day for no reason. Plenty of people carry guns around all day without using them. Roland Jones posted:Threatening a shootout is, as these people have done, repeatedly. It was the basis of their whole thing; "we're taking this land and we'll shoot anyone who comes to kick us out." They haven't threatened a shootout. What they have said (for the most part) is similar, but not quite that. Some individuals have probably threatened a shootout, but per the Hutaree precedent, those views can't be assumed to be shared by the others.
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Jan 17, 2016 06:11
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:At that point, you're not doing the gandhi/mlk/jesus thing any more. You're doing something else. It's substantively, mechanically different from nonviolent protest and works along different premises. Note that I'm not saying it can't work. It may even be necessary in some circumstances (how far would MLK have gotten without Malcolm X or the Panthers?) but it's fundamentally different from non-violent passive protest. The problem is that you and others are presenting this as a binary thing where every protest is either a) on par with Gandhi and Jesus loving Christ, or b) treasonous armed revolution, with no middle ground in between. Are these guys dedicated and devoted followers of the pacifistic non-violence movements pioneered by civil rights leaders in the mid-20th century and adopted wholeheartedly by left-leaning protest movements in the 60s and 70s? No, absolutely not. However, they have yet to actually do anything violent or harm anyone, and the lack of real violence makes them "non-violent" in my book in spite of the presence of items that could potentially be used in self-defense. mugrim posted:That seems dumb on so many counts. If you're really afraid of OKC 2.0, why let these guys get their message out constantly and rile up their nutter base? Because a federal judge personally stomped all over a major FBI prosecution of another anti-government militia a few years back. The Hutaree dismissal set a very nasty precedent for the FBI (and a very encouraging one for militia groups), so the federal government is very anxious to avoid the mistakes they made there and build a case that goes well beyond merely being "ironclad". As long as these guys aren't actually hurting anyone, the FBI is more than happy to sit back and let them rack up criminal charges so that when the prosecution finally comes to a head, they'll have plenty of meticulously-documented criminal actions to wave in front of the court so some jackass judge won't declare the whole thing "mere words" and "political speech" and throw the charges out on the spot again. The influence of the Hutaree case on the FBI's handling of this occupation is very apparent; the whole thing was tremendously embarrassing and led to a radical anti-government militia being let off with nothing more than a few gun charges, and there is absolutely no way the FBI is interested in seeing that happen again. To quote the NYT article on the acquittal: quote:Professor Henning predicted that the Hutaree’s acquittal “will make the F.B.I. more hesitant to intervene early on when you’re talking about domestic threats.”
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Jan 19, 2016 00:50
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kartikeya posted:So. This is my question. Are you just being deliberately ignorant of the fact that people are in danger and they are causing harm, or does stalking, terroristic/death threats, a great deal of destruction of public property and native sacred and historical sites, violation of privacy of Federal employees (arguably endangering them since this led to some of the stalking and threats), and now what appears to be outright kidnapping not count as 'harm' or 'danger' in your view? I said "as long as they're not actually hurting anyone", which I think was a pretty clear set of goalposts, so I don't know why you're trying to shift it to something nebulous like "harm" or "danger", other than the fact that you can't possibly stretch the line I offered to include damaging public property. mugrim posted:If this was in the planning stages I would understand that, but it's full on execution. What's the debate? Whether a judge will call it "trespassing and damaging federal property, six months in jail for a few of them" or "criminal sedition and conspiracy to overthrow the government, fifteen-plus years for everyone". The occupiers are still racking up crimes, still attracting more crazies, have got to be thoroughly infiltrated by undercover agents by now, and have yet to physically harm anyone. Given that it is now much more difficult than it used to be for the feds to extrapolate nonviolent crimes in court up to something like sedition, they're just helping the militia if they stop this early. At this point it's basically just a honeypot, and considering the Hutaree precedent, the FBI is in no hurry to say "okay, we've got enough evidence, let's break this up". Hieronymous Alloy posted:Just so I'm clear, the relative violence or non-violence of the Bundy militia seems almost irrelevant to me given the delusional nature of their "issues" and the incoherence of their goals. It's not just that they aren't MLK; they aren't even Malcolm X. They're a bunch of stolen-valor rejects playing tactilol dress-up in a white privilege rage spasm. So let's stop pretending that they're worthy of respect because they're protesting actual issues that actually matter. They aren't and they don't. (Yes, you can make an argument that land rights are a real issue, but that has about as much to do with these people as Eric Hoffer did with the Unabomber; such justifications are pretexts, nothing more). I don't think that either I or anyone else has argued that they or their stupid idiot cause deserves respect. However, no matter what their cause is, how valid their arguments are, or how much "respect" we think they deserve, they still have the right to make those arguments. I don't have one iota of respect for the loving KKK or their views, but that doesn't make it legal to declare a Klan march inherently violent based on their political views and indiscriminately shoot it up. RandomPauI posted:I've pretty much kept out of posting in this thread but I wanted to elaborate on a point someone made earlier. Sure, but that doesn't mean it isn't civil disobedience - it just means it's lovely, incompetent, ineffective civil disobedience. They have no idea what they're doing, and it shows. Turtle Sandbox posted:They promised to leave earlier if the people of Burns wanted them gone, then the people wanted them gone, then they stayed because they found a reason. Oh, they're absolutely going to leave at some point - they're probably starting to look for an excuse to ditch the place by now. For all their bluster about a "permanent occupation", it was pretty clear from the very beginning that they never expected to be there more than a couple of days (which is why they were so poorly stocked on food and other essentials). I doubt they're seriously under the impression that the federal government is going to surrender all federally-owned land if they just occupy that wildlife sanctuary long enough, and they're running out of antics to engage in way sooner than I expected them to. I doubt this'll even last till spring before they declare victory and go home, just like the Occupy camps that were left alone eventually did. Cantorsdust posted:There's also a fundamental difference between an oppressed minority using guns to establish some sort of parity during a protest against their oppressors and a right-wing majority group using guns to terrorize local townsfolk. Punching up vs punching down kind of thing. Morally, maybe, but legally, not really. I know arguing legality rather than morality is often frowned upon, but when it comes to asking why federal law enforcement isn't doing anything, legality matters! The cops didn't shoot the Black Panthers for bringing guns to a protest, and they're not going to shoot these assholes for bringing guns to a protest.
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Jan 19, 2016 15:48
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Mormon Star Wars posted:A honeypot would require them to eventually do something with all the evidence they collected. This never happened with Cliven Bundy, it won't happen with his sons. It's too politically controversial to go after the Bundy family. The Hutaree investigation, which was an investigation of a centrally-organized militia group which was infiltrated by an undercover agent, took two years and change. It's only been, what, a year and a half since the Bundy Ranch standoff? And I'm not sure why you'd expect an investigation of a decentralized, unorganized, spontaneous one-time group to take less time, especially in the post-Hutaree legal universe where far more evidence is needed to convict a militia group on anything meaningful. Modern federal law enforcement, as a general rule of thumb, prefers to take it slow and thorough and not jump the gun - someone might run around unpunished for a few years, but the federal government always wins in the end.
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Jan 19, 2016 18:19
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Evil Fluffy posted:For someone who keeps bringing up the Hutaree militia do you actually know anything beyond the wikipedia page? Because the fact you keep comparing it to incidents caught on video and open confessions by Bundy Ranch/Oregon militia members implies you have no idea what you're talking about as you're comparing conspiracy and planning with actual things happening live and on video. Do you? The Hutaree case had people caught on video openly declaring their desire to go kill cops, which is way worse than the Bundy protesters' "self-defense" rhetoric. And yes, the fact that they're talking about "self-defense" against cops rather than openly going to war against them does matter in the courtroom. We all know what it means and what they want it to mean, but there is a difference and it does matter. And Cliven Bundy's issues going back decades simply aren't relevant to this conversation; the FBI isn't going to arrest him over unpaid fines or anonymous angry phone calls. The FBI didn't get involved until the actual armed standoff itself (which they have started an investigation into, according to leaky witnesses who were interviewed during the course of the investigation), and they're going to keep the investigation going for a good long while, because I can't imagine they're confident in their ability to convince a judge that refusing to pay a permitting fee equates to conspiracy to overthrow the US government. theflyingorc posted:I'm sorry Gary, but I live in your house now, and we need to respect the current culture It worked for Texas, Israel, and the US itself, so I'm not really surprised he's trying a "gently caress you, your poo poo's mine now and I'm keeping it" tactic with such a long history of success.
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Jan 19, 2016 20:19
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DrNutt posted:Sounds like the judge in the Hutaree case was a real loving dipshit then, creating precedence like this. These people are dangerous. Oh, absolutely. The judge in the Hutaree case was a tremendous rear end in a top hat, who threw out a perfectly good militia prosecution on idiotic grounds like "you can't assume the individual militia members share the militia leader's openly stated desire to kill cops and overthrow the government" and "if they don't have a specific concrete plan that all of them have openly agreed with then it's just political speech". Just look at these loving quotes: quote:“The government’s case is built largely of circumstantial evidence,” U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts said in a 28-page order dismissing the charges before the case was sent to a jury. Problem is, the FBI doesn't get to say "well, that judge was an rear end in a top hat", ignore it, and soldier on. Letting a militia prosecution end in failure, not even through acquittal but through the judge openly calling bullshit on the case and kicking it right out of the courtroom, emboldens anti-government types way more than being slow in the investigation. That means they have to live with those precedents, and try their best to adapt to them so that they won't get screwed by them again. I think it was a horrible ruling, but if you want to know why the FBI is being so utterly passive here and letting the protesters get away with so much (to the point where they only arrested the one guy for the vehicle theft), it's because last time they tried to prosecute a militia group a federal judge told them it was ridiculous to infer things from what the militia members were saying and doing. The FBI absolutely wants to prosecute here, but they're going to be meticulous to the point of near-absurdity first, and that means it's going to be slow and quiet. There's no way they haven't infiltrated the poo poo out of this occupation, and agents are going to be poring over every second of video for months after this thing ends, but the decentralized and semi-spontaneous nature of this thing means that the scale of this thing is going to be way beyond the usual militia investigation - and I won't be surprised if it takes much longer. And there's no way the FBI is going to break it up before summer, as the chances of organized violence just get lower every day. If this was going to erupt, it was going to erupt in the first few days when law enforcement was caught by surprise and the only people there were diehards expecting immediate confrontation. Now that a bunch of hangers-on have showed up, law enforcement has settled in for the long haul, and Ammon is savoring his fifteen minutes of fame, there's no way they're going to escalate if left to their own devices.
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Jan 19, 2016 20:44
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