Only from a certain point-of-view (that of not shedding blood over a relatively innocuous transgression). From the point-of-view that LAWBREAKERS should not be allowed to get away with BREAKING THE LAW in the hope of maintaining SOME semblance of civility within our society I would say that I’m not so sure that you’re right on that count. I am certain that that story’s ending hasn’t yet been written.
Your lack of surety is not my concern, but I will help you along. Breaking the law should be dealt with appropriately. Western grazing rights on government land, the issue of people who live on government land, etc. is far more complicated than “he stole a million dollars from the people.”
I live on leased land in my primary residence, and I own land adjacent to national forest for my vacation residence. Through my secondary property, I am very aware of when you can, and can not, count on the continuation of government support in the country. Through my primary property, I deal with valuation of improvements to this land and how that might be dealt with by the land owners. Its complicated, as the Facebook status might state.
Entire Western states economies are often built around use of government land. The government sells mineral rights, and takes them away. They allow logging, and then disallow it. Grazing is allowed, and then there is concern. If you shut down the grazing, then you have killed a business that generates tax revenue and jobs in the area. There might be long-term, historical uses of the property that the government has ignored. You can run into homesteading laws, Native American treaties, the concept of wetlands, etc.
Bundy has been fighting the Feds it appears for a decade or more on the issue of his grazing. It will head back to the courts, and I agree that liens, etc. are the best way to deal with this. When he sells his herd, you put a hold on the money. Maybe he will go a step further and only sell for gold coins or something - but sooner or later he has to exist in the modern world - and there the government has better power than the gun.
Good job to administration for not going off half-cocked and turning this into another Waco or Ruby Ridge where jumping the gun created more death and pain than was ever prevented.
So it looks like you and I can agree on ONE thing, at least: that it’s good that this didn’t (or at least hasn’t, yet) degrade into another Ruby Ridge or Waco situation. But those people cannot be allowed to flout the law the way they have. I understand that the law can be somewhat confusing at times (to say the least) but lawbreakers should be punished and there should be no exceptions to that. I, too, hope that the federal government finds ways to get what they want out of Cliven Bundy without having to resort to violence. That still doesn’t change my view that the people coming to his defense escalated matters in a way that they didn’t have to and I have a feeling that people like that will meet their end in a way that they wish they wouldn’t all because of their love of modern day weaponry and their desire to display theirs. It’s a shame, but when people like that meet a violent end all I can say is: “One can only figure that he had it comin’ to him.”
Since J. Edgar passed, at any rate . . .
Flashing on the PBS documentary Making Sense of the Sixties scene with a formation of Black Panthers chanting:
Revolution is come!
Off the pigs!
Time to take up the gun!
Off the pigs!
[repeats]
But they never did really off the pigs, though some got offed by them . . .
Actually, there were several cases of Black Panthers ambushing police officers, mostly in Oakland, but for the most part they were a bunch of clowns who fell apart really quickly who were popular amongst a lot of spoiled white leftists but despised by most of the people they supposedly represented.
For anyone interested a book I highly recommend is Hugh Pearson’s autobiography of Huey Newton.
Biography, I should think.
I never saw them in a room together…
Never heard that; from what I’ve heard, their tactic for preventing police brutality against blacks (a serious problem in those days, and for many days after, remember Rodney King) was to follow the police cars around Oakland in their own cars, armed, and, whenever the cops made a stop or an arrest, the Panthers would stop and get out, holding their rifles and glaring meaningfully, sending the unspoken message, “You’d damned well better play this by the book, pigs!” but never (that I heard of) actually interfering.
So, if it was all right for Bundy’s supporters to do what they did, then it was all right for the Panthers to do that – right?
D’oh! Thanks for the correction.
Romanticized bullshit.
That’s not by the way meant as an attack you, but yeah that was the kind of crap they liked to pretend, though the cops were vastly worse back then than they are now.
In fact Eldridge Cleaver, one of their leaders has since freely admitted to deliberately ambushing cops.
http://colemantruth.net/kate1.pdf(warning PDF).
For those who haven’t heard of him, Eldridge Cleaver was the author of Soul On Ice.
A brilliant, well-written book by a man put in prison for deliberately raping a number of white women to protest racism after initially practicing on a number of black women.
He never in the book showed any guilt or remorse or even a trace of empathy for the women he raped and to give people an idea how different the 60s were, lots of my teachers were actually required to read him in college.
As long as we live in a functional democracy, this sort of shit is not acceptable.
Which sort of shit? We’ve covered a great many in the thread so far.
This is kind of funny – I guess because it is from disinfowars. Apparently, there is a solar project not far from Bunkerville. The CT goes on.
Of course, I am the only person who sees any irony in the story. Cliven Bumdy says he has claim to the public land because of tradition: his ancestors ran cattle there, so he is just continuing in their footsteps. Yet, here he is being threatened by this First Solar Inc project, being pushed by that dastard Harry Reid. And a bunch of Paiutes. But, fuck them, Bumdy has ancestral rights to the land, who the hell do they think they are, anyway?
You would be poor in your posting, then, because that is indeed the impression you are giving. If you do not intend that, you should prolly start working hard on your writing and communication skills.
I’m not sure if this post is sarcasm or parody or something else, but the notion that the Moapa Southern Paiute Solar Project is somehow nefarious or even tangentially involved in the Bundy situation is wrong. It is factually incorrect.
Perhaps, rather than relying on what you’ve “heard,” you should research the issue? From Eldridge Cleaver’s interview with Reason magazine:
It’s not clear what he means by “ambush.” Were shots fired?
I’m not seeing how you could read it as anything other than sarcastic. It’s not even a whoosh; it hit you right in the forehead and you still couldn’t tell. :dubious: