From what I am reading, he does have that authority.
Not with the military, but with a militarized police department/agency.
What makes anyone think that this administration wouldn't do just that on Americans? The CIA and NSA already spy on American citizens. The IRS has tried to squelch any opposition to Obama and the Liberals. Harry Reid is out there sticking up Americans and stealing cows and land like an old western Land robber baron. They are arming the Department of Education, EPA, BLM, good grief every other agency out there.
There is nothing stopping Obama from giving Holder the Go-Ahead for pretty much anything he wants to do at this point. Holder is a lying sack of shit who lies for his boss, cheats America of Justice by denying going after voting fraudsters.
An EO (which Obama seems to consider rather Kingly for himself to do) is all that is required to give the Justice Department authority over military equipment if deemed required. If you imagine for one second that he won't do it, look at the fact we have armed Americans standing up to a US government "force" of militarized people and backing them down. SOMEONE on the ground got smart and said, "We're not playing this game, it's not worth starting a war." and backed off.
My bet is, the lead agent figured out he was on the wrong side when those cowboys and their flags rode up, over-watched by snipers - regular Americans who've had their fill of bullshit.
The CIA is up to their assholes in this... read below.
US senators remove requirement for disclosure over drone strike victims
US Senate intelligence committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein shakes hands with director of national intelligence James Clapper. Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters
At the behest of the director of national intelligence, US senators have removed a provision from a major intelligence bill that would require the president to publicly disclose information about drone strikes and their victims.
The bill authorizing intelligence operations in fiscal 2014 passed out of the Senate intelligence committee in November, and it originally required the president to issue an annual public report clarifying the total number of “combatants” and “noncombatant civilians” killed or injured by drone strikes in the previous year. It did not require the White House to disclose the total number of strikes worldwide.
But the Guardian has confirmed that Senate leaders have removed the language as they prepare to bring the bill to the floor for a vote, after the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, assured them in a recent letter that the Obama administration was looking for its own ways to disclose more about its highly controversial drone strikes.
“The executive branch is currently exploring ways in which it can provide the American people more information about the United States’ use of force outside areas of active hostilities,” Clapper wrote to the leaders of the Senate committee, Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California and Republican Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, on 18 April.
“To be meaningful to the public, any report including the information described above would require context and be drafted carefully so as to protect against the disclosure of intelligence sources and methods or other classified information. … We are confident we can find a reporting structure that provides the American people additional information to inform their understanding of important government operations to protect our nation, while preserving the ability to continue those operations,” Clapper continued.
Another provision, which would require alternative intelligence analysis, as well as commensurate congressional notification should an intelligence agency consider legal action against a US citizen, has been moved to a classified annex of the bill.
Lawmakers were said to remove the provision in hopes of passing the full bill in the coming weeks.
The removal of the drone transparency requirement is the latest in a pattern by legislators to preserve the status quo surrounding the strikes.
In January, the Senate obstructed an effort by the Obama administration that would have removed the CIA from drone operations and given responsibility for them to the Defense Department, which conducts parallel and occasionally complementary drone strikes.
Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, has recently been locked in a different sort of declassification battle: an effort to compel the Obama administration to declassify aspects of a major report into the CIA’s post-9/11 torture of terrorism detainees, completed by her committee.
Senate intelligence committee chair Senator Dianne Feinstein. Photograph: Molly Riley/AP But Feinstein has long been a defender of the CIA’s drone strikes. During a February 2013 confirmation hearing for CIA Director John Brennan, Feinstein stated that the CIA’s targeting procedures kills only “single digits” of civilians annually, an assertion that cannot be independently confirmed because of the official secrecy surrounding the strikes.
The sharing of even basic information about drone strikes has run into a wall of official secrecy. Several independent groups attempt to track the numbers of people killed in the strikes, but no official US confirmation has been possible. Word of the strikes usually arises from news accounts in their places of occurrence, such as Yemen or Pakistan. The aftermath of an alleged US drone attack in Yemen's al-Bayda province. Photograph: Stringer/EPA Independent observers, including the United Nations special rapporteur on counterterrorism, have repeatedly called on Washington to increase transparency around the lethal operations. An April paper by Larry Lewis of the CNA Corporation, who has close ties with the US military, urged the administration to conduct and appropriately disclose assessments of civilian casualties from drone strikes, to help “ensure that official US statements reflect operational realities, helping to guard the credibility and reputation of the US”.
Thus far those efforts have largely floundered. In May 2013, Obama announced that he wanted to restrict but not eliminate drone strikes, whose use he defended as a necessary component of counterterrorism. Obama confirmed that civilians have died from drone strikes, an effect that he said “will haunt us as long as we live”, but he did not disclose how many cases of errant missile or mistaken targeting strikes have occurred.
In public testimony, leaders of the intelligence agencies have not rejected the transparency provisions. During a February House hearing, Brennan called a proposal from congressman Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, to disclose the annual numbers of fighters and civilians killed by drones “certainly a worthwhile recommendation”.
Schiff and a North Carolina Republican, Walter Jones, introduced a bill this month to compel the drone casualty totals and combatant breakdowns, which Schiff termed a “modest, but important, measure of transparency and oversight regarding the use of drones”.
The previous February, Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and member of the armed services committee, was quoted tallying the deaths caused by drone strikes over the past decade at 4,700 people. Graham did not disclose either the basis for his estimate or a breakdown of how many civilians the total includes.
US drones strikes are declining worldwide, according to statistics gathered and analyzed by the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2013, there were approximately 55 strikes in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, killing as many as 271 people, down from the 92 strikes that killed up to 532 people in 2012. While drone strikes in Pakistan are sharply down in 2014, a recent offensive aimed at Yemen’s al-Qaida affiliate and including US drone strikes left about 55 people dead last week.
Human rights activists reacted with disappointment to the removal of the transparency requirement.
“How many people have to die for Congress to take even a small step toward transparency? It's stunning that after all these years we still don't know how many people the Obama administration has killed with drones,” said Zeke Johnson, the director of Amnesty International’s security and human rights program.
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` CIA-led Killer Drones Kill Women and Children and James Clapper wants to Remove Publishing Information of Victims '
#AceGuestNews – WASHINGTON – May 01 – (PressTV) – In the midst of a crisis which has in recent weeks created a political chasm between Russia and the United States, there is an ongoing carnage in the name of combating terrorism against Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia.
The story of the CIA-led killer drones which are killing women and children on a daily basis is a tale accorded inexcusably scant attention in media. Indeed it is being ignored.
Just recently, the US director of national intelligence James Clapper ordered US senators to remove a provision from a major intelligence bill that would require the president to publicize information about drone strikes and their victims.
The bill originally required the president to release a yearly report clarifying the total number of “combatants” and “non-combatant civilians” killed or injured by drone strikes in the previous year.
Reports clearly indicate the number of drone attacks on Muslim countries has increased tremendously since Barack Obama took office in 2009. Quite ironically, the man who was initially compared to Martin Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize nine months later.
I for one always presumed that George W. Bush was a political retard who thought he was burdened with a messianic mission and that he felt he had to save the world.
Quite naturally, the election of a coloured president in the US engendered some false hope that there might appear tangible political upheavals in the country in its approach towards the world in general and toward the Muslim world in particular.
To the dismay of many, this dream was however shattered altogether to be ensued by an era of apocalyptic darkness and escalating mass murders in the international arena.
According to the New America Foundation, a Washington-based public-policy institute, Obama authorized 193 drone strikes in Pakistan alone from 2009 to 2011, that is, over four times the number of attacks that President George W. Bush authorized during his two terms.
To date, the liar-in-chief has only acknowledged that the United States has killed four Americans in drone strikes. According to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Obama has launched over 390 covert drone strikes in his first five years in office and thousands of civilians have been killed in the strikes.
The drone warfare is indeed a war in disguise, a form of war meant to lull American public who are manifestly fed up with their government’s military interventions on the one hand and to vindicate their gory policies through a mechanism of invisibility on the other.
Contrary to their claims that the drones are only used to wipe out the al-Qaida elements in different parts of the Muslim world, their strikes have however proven to kill civilians. Women and children are unfortunately among the routine victims of their ‘targeted’ assassinations.
For the US government, war has taken a new shape, ranging from cyberwar to drone strikes, from assassinations to other forms of covert operations.
It is agonizingly sad to see that certain governments including Pakistan and Yemen have been even collaborating with the CIA, providing them with the space for their inhumane intrusion.
A known victim of the assassination drones attacks is Pakistan which had long declined to admit to the truth that it has long been aware of the attacks and that it has even helped the US government. In 2011, ex-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf acknowledged that his government clandestinely signed off on US drone attacks. It was actually part of a deal by Washington to help retain the Pakistani strongman in power.
A cable sent in August 2008 and later posted on-line by Wikileaks, then-US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson mentioned a discussion about drones during a meeting that also involved Malik and then-Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.
“Malik suggested we hold off alleged Predator attacks until after the Bajaur operation,” Patterson wrote. “The PM brushed aside Rehman’s remarks and said, ‘I don’t care if they do it as long as they get the right people. We’ll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it.’ “
Yemen’s president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has also confessed that he “personally approves every US drone strike in his country and described the remotely piloted aircraft as a technical marvel that has helped reverse al-Qaeda’s gains.”
Further to that, there are third-party governments which are aiding and abetting Washington in carrying out its massacre of the civilians in Africa by allowing them to use their military sites in the country. According to a report by the German Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, the Stuttgart-based supreme command of the United States Africa Command (US Africom) and the Air Operations Center (AOC) at the US air force base in Ramstein, in the state of Rhineland Palatinate, are directly involved in the drone attacks.
With a morbid mind, former US president George W. Bush, who was incapable of truth, commenced a series of invasions and military expeditions in the Muslim countries, caused inconceivable human losses and left a legacy of horror and bloodshed which came to be followed by his successor Barrack Obama. Then in order to keep up appearances and beguile the American public, Obama who was essentially expected to behave differently took the wars from the battlefields to the towns and exacted an irretrievable toll on the civilians under the banner of fighting terrorism.
By all standards, Obama is a brazen criminal and those who collude with him in perpetrating these acts of atrocity are no better. All of them are indeed under the watchful eyes of God and they shall meet their dismal reckoning.
As Noam Chomsky once said, “Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.”
Dr Ismail Salami is an internationally published author, university professor, Shakespearean scholar, Quranologist, political commentator, and lexicographer. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues and his writings have been translated into a number of languages. A professor at the University of Tehran, Salami has written dozens of scholarly articles on Shakespeare, comparative literature and cultural issues in international journals. His recent book Shakespeare and the Reader (Illinois, 2013) reflects his passion for the Bard. Some of his works include A Dictionary of Journalism (2006; II vols.), A Dictionary of Security and Intelligence Terms, Persian Fairy Tales (1999), and Iran Cradle of Civilization. His conceptual translation of the Holy Quran in English will be published by Mehrandish Books in the near future. Salami is a former editor-in-chief of the Tehran Times International Daily. More articles by Dr. Salami.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of Press TV.
PressTV – IS/AB – http://tinyurl.com/qydqvlc
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(Before It’s News Exclusive) Public land records obtained by Before It’s News show a corporate entity partially owned by Senator Harry Reid is the owner of over 93 acres of undeveloped land within several miles of the Clliven Bundy ranch. Reid Bunkerville, LLC is listed as the current owner of four parcels of land on the west side of Bunkerville are within several miles of the Bundy ranch. This area appears to be slated for development in the future.
While this will be explained, parcels numbers provided along with ownership proof, it is encouraged for everyone reading to go through the information, the documents provided, visit the links and come to their own conclusions, because this is just the data from public records.
It tells a story of a man, Cliven Bundy, seemingly in the way of some lucrative business deals.
Below are the parcel numbers of land which the Clark County Assessors Office lists as owned by Reid Bunkerville, LLC, who coincidentally updated their company records on April 17, 2014. The parcel map with ownership data will be shown for the three parcels Reid Bunkerville, LLC owns, will be shown below parcel numbers.
To put some of this into context and to provide readers a starting point on why parcels and ownership listings are not only important but should be researched extensively, please note that three of those four parcel numbers above are listed as Bunkerville jurisdiction, where Mr. Cliven Bundy’s ranch is located.
Parcels above and below are listed as owned by USA, jurisdiction listed as Mesquite, two examples of that shown below.
The last one listed above for Reid Bunkerville, LLC, (REID BUNKERVILLE L L C DST-800 #002-26-701-001) directly borders another parcel in Bunkerville, and shows the “owner” as Bureau of Land Management (BLM), not the USA as the examples above are.
According to descriptions of the BLM, their job is to “administer” or “manage” public lands, yet they are listed as “owners” of the parcel directly connected to the Reid Bunkerville parcel.
It is also noteworthy that a Google map from Mesquite Nevada, through Bunkerville, down to Riverside, goes up to a fully functional and built intersection that loops back around to Mesquite, shown in the image below.
Zoning and development are driven by “business loops”, which use high speed intersections from freeways that cost taxpayers millions of dollars. These can instantly raise property values for landowners in the right place who know where the development is going to happen. Decisions for the infrastructure are controlled by state and local and generally involve money from the federal government.
Below is a comprehensive report of properties owned by Reid Bunkerville, LLC, showing over 30 properties in the Bunkerville and Mesquite area.
In the video below a Bundy neighbor claims he was threatened, then the BLM carried out those threats to force him off his land, exactly what BLM and Harry Reid are being accused of doing to Cliven Bundy.
I have kept quiet about the evolving Bundy situation because, simply, everything that has been needed to be said about this evolution has already been well said by others. I choose to not comment about who should do or should have done what and when.
Instead, I want to discuss the paradox faced by the federal government in this, the latest SWAT-style kabuki of their own creation, and what their alternatives are, now that it has grown out of control of the original simple-minded script: "Hey, fellas, let's gear up and put that hayseed rancher in his place." Oops.
Before getting to the meat of the Bundy Paradox, I do want to say one thing about everyone involved in the FreeFor side of that situation, and that is to speak of their courage. Understanding this courage is central to understanding the paradox faced by the government.
Often, people think that the highest courage is required in combat. That misunderstanding of the nature of courage is absolute horseshit. While I haven't had the bang-bang shoot-em-up kind of combat as many of my readers have, I have lived under the shadow of potentially-chemical Scuds and have been lit up by SAM sites whilst ordering the killing of people so some evil shits could get richer, so I kind of have the right idea.
Combat courage boils down to this: you accept that you will/can/might die, and you put that aside and move forward. Should that day arrive, there is the possibility that you might at least die a hero, your family gets survivor benefits, and they get to put some flag on the wall in a nice box and think about you for a few minutes each year between chowing down on hotdogs. Or, if you get all messed up but don't actually die, you get to soak in some sympathetic admiration for life, while getting some checks along the way. Happy, fuzzy, flag-waving thoughts to get you through your day (or years), or next mission.
In other words, combat courage, when performed with a little stripey flag on your shoulder, is a relatively consequence-free kind of fantasy courage, where even if you lose, in a twisted kind of way, you still win.
Contrast this to the kind of courage required to even show up at the Bundy ranch in support, knowing full well that one could die, or at the very least, be tracked down later for arrest, and with all the life-altering consequences such as forever being marked as a radical by our Human Resourced corporate society. Imagine trying to face your kids because you lost your job, and all future jobs, over an idea that most suburban slobs cannot even articulate. Or facing the prospect of your children being orphaned because you went to the aid of some guy you don't even know, over that same idea. Now that, my friends, is courage. The real, nut-crunching kind of courage, which wouldn't even be recognized by the soft and sallow suburbanite which is the current American electorate, including the combat veterans among them.
It is one thing to face death knowing that at least a fake kind of honor awaits. It is entirely different knowing that your entire character will be later impugned by the elite press, a la Waco et al, who will also try their damnedest to shame your families into self-destruction. My black hat is off to each of you out there, including those horseback cowboys waving the flag, not realizing that this time around, you are the Indians. God bless each of you for what you are doing and have done for the rest of us. Including us ribbon-wearing combat veterans.
What you are doing, no matter what the outcome, will not be in vain.
So now, my having paid the most minimal honor which is due from each of us, back to our story.
Paradox.
As in "each option sucks" for the federal government, having now raised the ire of people to the point that the real kind of nut-crunching courage seems like the best course of action versus letting things drift along as before. Which is why I say paradox instead of dilemma, because the halfwits who plan this kind of crap never thought this particular outcome could happen by gearing up and intimidating people. Unpossible, as they say. Plus paradox sounds cooler.
Long ago, I was invited to a Restore the Constitution rally in North Carolina as a contrary voice to the usual flag waving. At that rally, I presented the controversial idea that those who attend that kind of rally (or who come to the aid of a Bundy in distress), are the white hats, or the really good guys. The good guys who believe in the system and think that it can still be fixed if we all care enough and try real, real hard.
Bless their hearts. Fedgov (and its malevolent, sociopathic international finance masters) should really pay attention to these people when they get upset.
Because these white hats are the good guys. Even if they show up with their rifles. Especially if they show up with their rifles.
Black hats, on the other hand, are like the good guys, only worse. They have given up on stripey flags, and fancy papers and pretty ribbons, or high ideals that cripple good and decent people against pure, historically proven evil. Black hats, having often been taught by bitter experience to darken their own previous white hats, now only care about pragmatism, and what will work, and what has been proven to work throughout history. And what opposing cultures in the petri dish of ideas have been proven, time and time again, to be destructive to civilization and all decent people.
So black hats don't often show up to that kind of thing and wave flags around and try real hard to be the good guys, although the white hats you see there are the brothers of those you don't. No, the black hats know that all they have to do to increase their number toward the tipping point is to wait, and whisper here and there as the kabuki reveal unintended truths of the elites holding the scripts. If a black hat shows up at all, it is to watch, and listen, and learn.
Often what the black hats learn is an understanding of how events unfold in the real world, unfettered by high ideals. And what we can all learn from this Bundy situation, is that this fedgov kabuki has taken a few slips to the side. We can see this slip because the built-in gambit of declaiming Bundy as a racist, truth notwithstanding, didn't really turn out the way it was scripted.
This is MAJOR progress, my friends, because only a couple of years ago, hell, even a few months ago, many of the most die-hard liberty geeks would have cut and run should their compatriots be accused of even knowing a racist. The easiest play in the book to discredit someone had been to say they were somehow involved in racist shenanigans.
Today? Well, I am proud to say that our friends in all meaningful directions are maturing beyond that pupal stage.
As I have said many times, one day we will all be accused as racists, or anti-semites, or domestic terrorists or whatever fashionably repulsive thing can be made to stick long enough to abandon the target to the wolves.
We can also see the kabuki faltering by the growing movement among western states to ask why the BLM controls these states' land in the first place. This question, now seriously posed, is a small, definitive step toward the mass inoculation of the idea of secession, an idea which also was only recently similarly tarnished.
The confluence of these two ideas, resistance to charges of racism by individuals, and growing acceptance of the prerequisites to secession by the various states, frightens the hell out of the Eastern bankster elites (and their overseas masters), as these two taboo ideas had been the gargoyles perched atop the gate to their seat of power.
This is not power these self-chosen elites will willingly cede. The elites in charge of our society today will kill and maim and defame anyone, even their own high-level defectors, whom they see as a threat to their collective power. They have grown out of control, and are showing less and less restraint toward those who oppose them, repeating their classic mistake throughout history. And with each turn of the screw, the veil of federal legitimacy thins, revealing the rotten innards within.
And from this comes the fedgov paradox, as they choose from two previously impossible, and currently unsavory, outcomes:
a. Defy their masters and treat the Bundys and their white hat supporters decently, address their grievances (including the unconstitutional land grab by the Lincoln administration which led to the BLM in the first place) in a rational way founded on long-standing legal principles, and thus invite more and more opposition to the policy of unrestrained federal power.
or
b. Obey their masters and brutally exterminate the Bundys and their white hat supporters to put the plebes back in their place, and thus teach all of us the true nature of federal power. Such an extermination will likely not net many black hats in the process (remember, they don't typically go to such things in signficant numbers), but instead will recruit more white hats into the black hat camp with each such sociopathic theatrical outcome. And recruit more states to the idea of secession.
In other words, this (and all future) kabuki must either prove the white hats right, or prove the black hats right.
Or, stated differently, the kabuki artists must either cut the hand off federal power today, thus saving the rest of the corpus, or offer its head to be cut off tomorrow by the several states, after which decapitation the black hats will then pull the rotten entrails out by the roots.
Once any such theater starts, there is no other choice.
The black hats will be waiting while you decide, kabuki.
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Reality is outrageous enough, I guess I don't understand why people need to try and take it to outlandish levels.
People really are this stupid to believe that kind of story, although given the 'Kerensky-Obama/Lenin-?' scenario I have personally, I wonder if there isn't some disinfo agents out there with a Marxist-Leninist pedigree stoking the fires on this Bundy Ranch problem. And some of these Militia types are Neo-Confederates, and although i'm a proud White Southerner, I'm loyal to the Union and resented the comments that one Militia guy made about the Civil War and Lincoln. I don't like traitors who want to break the United States up, anymore than I like traitors who want to turn It into a Totalitarian Dictatorship.
"God's an old hand at miracles, he brings us from nonexistence to life. And surely he will resurrect all human flesh on the last day in the twinkling of an eye. But who can comprehend this? For God is this: he creates the new and renews the old. Glory be to him in all things!" Archpriest Avvakum
Lincoln wasn't a bad guy. Then again, neither were the guys from the south. Slavery isn't "racism" and racism isn't slavery.
Slavery is taking humans and forcing them to do your bidding and will, against their own will. In war, to the victor go the spoils - and it seems in humanity, the slaves. Humans have been doing it all the time they've been on the planet and it won't change in 3rd world nations. America doesn't have slavery, but it does have racism.
Today however, racism is geared at making white people appear "racist". It's a load of crap.\
I don't doubt for a minute, either, Avvakum that there are fakes out there - we call them "agents provocateur" attempting to throw a monkey wrench into the works when it comes to the militias.
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LAS VEGAS -- Tensions have subsided and the crowds of armed militia around rancher Cliven Bundy have largely dispersed, but the situation is far from resolved.
Federal officials are exploring their legal options, and Metro Police confirm that an investigation is ongoing. What has not been made public is just how close things came to an all-out gun battle. Some of those who were on the front lines spoke exclusively to the I-Team's George Knapp.
When the Bureau of Land Management mobilized to go after Bundy's cattle two years ago, they did so under an administrative order. This time, it was considered a criminal matter, and the I-Team has learned that order went all the way to the White House for approval.
When it became apparent that things were not going well in Bunkerville and hundreds of armed Bundy supporters were on the scene, Metro found itself right in the middle, a very dangerous place to be.
"We didn't show any fear that day, but I can tell you, we all thought in the back of our minds, we all thought it was going to be our last day on earth, if it went bad," said Sgt. Tom Jenkins of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
He is more familiar with the craziness of the Las Vegas Strip, which is where he and his squad usually work to keep the peace. But when things began to turn ugly in Bunkerville earlier this month, two squads of patrol officers, along with a SWAT unit, were dispatched to the scene.
"We were told, we're going to go down there and we're going to get between the BLM and the protesters. We were going, okay, we've been there before, but as we were driving up, it was like a movie set. It didn't look real; people in the back of pickup trucks with rifles and shotguns," Jenkins said. "It was hard to grasp that at the beginning."
Approximately 30 Metro officers stood between a crowd of 400 heavily armed, self- described militia and the federal employees who had gathered a few hundred head of Bundy's cattle. As the crowd swelled and tempers flared, many in the crowd tried to goad the police, hurling taunts and insults.
"They had no respect for authority. Everything that you can think of to call a human being, animals, everything," Jenkins said.
One person in the crowd even asked Jenkins if he was ready to die.
"I don't know his name. He was wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey. I'll never forget that," he said.
Shuttling back and forth between the Bundy forces and BLM was Assistant Sheriff Joe Lombardo, who'd been left in charge by Sheriff Doug Gillespie. He was trying to keep everyone calm.
"The bottom line is, bloodshed over cattle, unacceptable. Nobody wanted to go in that direction," Lombardo said.
But the police were to learn, some in the crowd did want to go in that direction. Even Lombardo was on the receiving end.
"It was a scary point in itself. They were in my face yelling profanities and pointing weapons. The Bundy son himself, that I was negotiating with, Dave, he did not do that, but all the associated people around him did do that," Lombardo said.
Metro officers deal with large crowds all the time, but nothing like this. The crowd included former military men and ex-cops, people with various motives, their fingers poised just above the triggers of powerful weapons. With so much firepower in so many hands, a small incident could have set off a bloodbath and left nearly two dozen officers dead.
Assist. Sheriff Joe Lombardo:"We were outgunned, outmanned and there would not have been a good result from it." I-Team reporter George Knapp: "A lot of scenarios could have played out that would have left a lot of dead officers." Assist. Sheriff Joe Lombardo: "If you just have a backfire, somebody pops a firecracker, then it's over. We're done. We are going to lose that battle that day."
Metro pointedly did not allow officers to put on helmets or protective gear for fear it might be seen as a provocation. At the urging of Cliven Bundy, the crowd moved toward the BLM compound. Rhetoric grew more heated, and guns were pointed at officers.
One Bundy supporter summed it up, "Had to happen sometime, might as well happen now, right?"
"Some of them, there's no doubt from talking to me, want it, to get a chance that day to fire upon a police officer or authority period. I don't think it mattered if it was BLM or us," Jenkins said.
As the crowd closed in on the BLM compound, and tensions approached critical mass, Lombardo made the call to release the cattle and diffuse the situation.
"Sometimes in public safety, it is hard to back down. We are not trained to operate that way, but they took the better route, and it was the right way to go," Lombardo said. "It's all about lives. I mean, what is the better route to go? To be right or to be effective? "
If one tiny mistake had been made, the community might be attending funerals for slain police officers, law enforcement officials said. Dozens of people could have been killed if shooting had broken out.
The I-Team has learned that those who were involved in threatening the lives of officers are not off the hook, even if it takes a year or more to resolve.
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Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah, concerned about the armed agents that surrounded Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s property, is mulling a measure to cut funding for any “paramilitary units” that work for the Bureau of Land Management, the Internal Revenue Service and other federal regulatory agencies.
“There are lots of people who are really concerned when the BLM shows up with its own SWAT team,” he said, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. “They’re regulatory agencies. They’re not paramilitary units, and I think that concerns a lot of us.”
His mulled amendment to an appropriations bill comes in context of recent BLM actions against Mr. Bundy: The federal agents armed themselves and surrounded his property, tasered his son, closed down road access to the ranch and even shot a couple of his prize bulls. The reasons? Mr. Bundy hadn’t paid his grazing fees to the federal government, but rather fought the matter in court.
Militia from all over the nation came to the ranch to support Mr. Bundy in his standoff with the BLM — and for that, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid labeled them “domestic terrorists,” various media reported.
The BLM finally backed off and left — but not before a shocked nation expressed outrage at the government’s armed stance against a man who, at the root, was guilty of not paying a bill.
Mr. Stewart said it’s high time the government end its practice of arming its own special units for various agencies, like the BLM and the IRS. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...o-disarm-blm-/
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LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Nevada congressman is calling on elected officials in the state to rid a town in his district of militia members who have rallied around rancher Cliven Bundy in his battle with federal land managers.
Rep. Steven Horsford, in an address to the Clark County Democratic Convention in Las Vegas on Saturday, said he's making the request after hearing more complaints from constituents about the presence of Bundy supporters near Bunkerville, 75 miles northeast of Las Vegas.
In encampments around the Bundy ranch, self-described militia members from around the country continue to camp with handguns on their hips and heavier weaponry within reach in a show of support for Bundy.
Bundy, a states' rights advocate who refuses to acknowledge the authority of the federal government, owes more than $1 million in fees and penalties for letting his cattle use government land over the past 20 years. Last month, the Bureau of Land Management stopped trying to round up his cattle after a showdown with hundreds of Bundy supporters, some of them armed.
Horsford, who attended a public event in nearby Mesquite earlier Saturday, said he was approached by residents there wanting to know about his plans to get militia members out of the area.
He said a fifth-grade girl told him that Bundy has a "sense of entitlement" and should pay grazing fees like other ranchers who use public land in the West. A man told him that Bundy is a "welfare rancher" living off taxpayer subsidies, Horsford said.
"And that is why I am calling on (Gov.) Brian Sandoval, Sen. Dean Heller, the (Clark County) sheriff (Doug Gillespie) and any other elected official in Nevada to do their part to get rid of these armed separatists," Horsford said to loud cheers from about 200 delegates.
Sandoval and Heller are Republicans, while Gillespie holds a nonpartisan position.
Sandoval spokesman Mac Bybee referred The Associated Press on Sunday to an interview on the "Nevada Newsmakers" television show taped Friday in which the governor acknowledged people have a right to feel safe in their homes.
Asked if Gillespie plans to move militia groups from the Bunkerville area, Sandoval replied, "No, and even if he had said that, I wouldn't share that with you, because certainly that's a conversation between the two of us."
"I just know that he is monitoring the situation and he's very aware of what's going on out there," the governor added, according to KRNV-TV.
Heller, who has labeled Bundy's supporters as "patriots," and Gillespie did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Horsford also has called for federal authorities and Gillespie to investigate the gun-toting force that Horsford said was frightening for residents.
Openly carrying a pistol or rifle is legal in Nevada, and permit holders can carry concealed weapons.
Libertatem Prius!
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in which the governor acknowledged people have a right to feel safe in their homes.
Which is why the BLM shows up in full battle rattle and executes a hostile farm takeover.
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
Which is why the BLM shows up in full battle rattle and executes a hostile farm takeover.
Ah.... Ukraine and the Bundy Ranch fiasco, two battles in the same war against Communism. These Leftist Federales and their allies HATE Bundy and others like him because he is a 'Kulak', a 'bourgeosie', a common Nevada Rancher, the very image of the the successful individual American. He is a Class enemy.
I think that this Bundy Ranch incident was intended to become a firefight, and still is. They will try to attack, the Communists will, and if resisted will blame the victims just like they've done in Waco, Ruby Ridge, with the Zimmerman trial, and are doing in Odessa Ukraine and Bundy Ranch in Nevada.
"God's an old hand at miracles, he brings us from nonexistence to life. And surely he will resurrect all human flesh on the last day in the twinkling of an eye. But who can comprehend this? For God is this: he creates the new and renews the old. Glory be to him in all things!" Archpriest Avvakum
A dramatic development in the saga surrounding rancher Cliven Bundy, the FBI has entered the case.
The 8 News NOW I-Team has learned that FBI agents have started an investigation into the events surrounding a potentially deadly showdown one month ago.
It is one thing for Cliven Bundy and his supporters to square off against an assortment of Bureau of Land Management employees. It is quite another when the FBI enters the picture, and that is exactly what has happened.
The I-Team has confirmed that FBI agents have launched a formal investigation into alleged death threats, intimidation and possible weapons violations that culminated with a dangerous showdown on April 12, and the first people to be interviewed by FBI agents are Metro Police, starting with Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillispie.
Federal employees suspended their roundup of Cliven Bundy's cattle, following a confrontation outside the BLM compound near Bunkerville. At the urging of Metro Police, Bundy's cattle were released, but BLM's new director announced the matter wasn't over and would be resolved, one way or another. We now know what that means.
Last week, the I-Team talked with Metro officers who intervened to protect the lives of federal employees from the 400 or so Bundy supporters and armed militia members. Officers told the I-Team they feared for their lives that day because of the assembled firepower, and because many in the crowd had pointed weapons at officers, taunted them, told them they should be ready to die.
Assistant Sheriff Joe Lombardo, who was left in charge of the Metro contingent by Sheriff Doug Gillespie, told the I-Team that such alleged behavior would be the subject of a criminal investigation.
"The federal authorities are conducting an investigation and I am pretty confident it is going to go into the future," Lombardo said.
"(Would there be consequences for somebody there on video tape, on a news camera pointing a gun at a Metro officer, pointing a gun at a federal ranger?) Yes, there is definitely going to be consequences, definitely. That is unacceptable behavior. If we let it go, it would continue into the future," Lombardo said.
The I-Team has learned that Lombardo was interviewed by FBI agents earlier this week. The first person to be questioned by the FBI team was Lombardo's boss, Sheriff Gillespie.
The sheriff confirmed to 8 News NOW that he was asked about what he saw the day of the showdown, whether guns were pointed at metro officers. He declined to say what he said to the agents.
FBI agents also spoke to an entire squad of Metro officers, who were on the scene to act as a buffer between the crowd and the BLM. Bundy supporters have insisted in emails and calls to 8 News NOW that no one in the crowd pointed weapons at BLM or Metro, but officers told the I-Team that is exactly what they saw, that many with guns set up behind women and children.
"It is not a rumor. When we first got out there and made a left to divide I-15, that is all you saw. You saw kids and women and horses in the backdrop and then men with guns, laying on the ground, in the back of pickup trucks. We're going, 'wow, this would never happen in Las Vegas,' But it was there. That is not a rumor. It is reality and I saw it with my own eyes," Metro Police Sgt. Tom Jenkins said.
Sgt. Jenkins has been interviewed by the FBI. A second squad is expected to be interviewed by week's end. The bureau does not confirm or deny the existence of any investigation but the I-Team have confirmed from multiple sources that a criminal investigation is underway.
It is illegal to point loaded weapons at federal agents, and most people know what would happen, if a suspect pointed a gun at a Metro officer in the Las Vegas valley.
Bundy supporters have been adamant in saying no weapons were aimed at the feds or police, that the BLM rangers were the ones pointing guns.
From the sound of things, they will be given the chance to prove those allegations because the FBI is coming their way.
Dozens of people rode their ATVs and motorcycles on an off-limits trail in southern Utah in a protest against what the group calls the federal government's overreaching control of public lands.
San Juan County Sheriff Rick Eldredge said from 40 to 50 people, many of them waving American flags and some carrying weapons, drove about a mile down Recapture Canyon near Blanding Saturday and then turned around. Hundreds attended a rally at a nearby park before the protest.
"It was peaceful, and there were no problems whatsoever," the sheriff told The Associated Press.
About 30 deputies and a handful of U.S. Bureau of Land Management law enforcement personnel watched as protesters drove past a closure sign and down the canyon located about 300 miles southeast of Salt Lake City.
San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman, the protest's organizer, has said it was designed to show that the federal agency isn't the "supreme authority" and local residents have a right to have their opinions heard.
"We're not proponents of breaking the law," Lyman told The Salt Lake Tribune before the ride. "Just because BLM owns the property, that doesn't mean they own the right-of-way that exists." View gallery ATV riders cross into a restricted area of Recapture Canyon, north of Blanding, Utah, on Saturday, M …
Recapture Canyon is home to dwellings, artifacts and burials left behind by Ancestral Puebloans as many as 2,000 years ago before they mysteriously vanished.
The riders may have damaged artifacts and dwellings that "tell the story of the first farmers in the Four Corners region" of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, BLM Utah State Director Juan Palma said in a statement.
"The BLM was in Recapture Canyon today collecting evidence and will continue to investigate," Palma said. "The BLM will pursue all available redress through the legal system to hold the lawbreakers accountable."
The group's act of defiance marks the latest illustration of growing tension between angry rural Western residents and the federal government over management of public lands.
The protest occurred nearly a month after Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his supporters, some of them armed militia members, thwarted a BLM roundup of his cattle near Bunkerville, Nevada, 75 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Bundy, a states' rights advocate who refuses to acknowledge the authority of the federal government, owes more than $1 million in fees and penalties for letting his cattle use government land over the past 20 years. View gallery As a Kane County sheriff's deputy watches from a horse, ATV riders make their way into Recapture …
Some of Bundy's children and militia supporters also took part in the protest in Recapture Canyon.
"This is where it's happening Saturday," Bundy backer Ryan Payne of Montana told the Las Vegas Sun. "This is a continuation of the Bundy affair."
BLM officers recorded and documented protesters who traveled into the closure area, Palma added.
The agency warned riders all week to stay out, vowing prosecution against those who ignore a law put in place in 2007 after an illegal trail was found that cuts through the ancestral ruins. The canyon is open to hikers and horseback riders.
Utah Gov. Gary Herbert also urged people to uphold the law.
A 14-mile section of trail in the canyon is closed to motorized vehicles, BLM officials said, but there are more than 2,800 miles of trails open to them on public lands around Blanding.
Environmentalists and Native Americans criticized the protest ride, saying the ban is needed to preserve fragile artifacts. Mark Maryboy, a former Navajo Nation Council delegate, called it disappointing that the group had no respect for Native American culture.
"The American tradition of civil disobedience doesn't change the fact that the rule of law needs to mean something," Josh Ewing of the conservation group Friends of Cedar Mesa told The Tribune. "I'll be very disappointed in my government if it doesn't follow through on upholding the law."
Motorized access to Recapture Canyon and other areas in Utah's wilderness has been a source of tension for decades. ATV riders rode another off-limits trail in 2009 in a protest. The Bureau of Land Management gave information about the riders to federal prosecutors, but no charges were filed.
"God's an old hand at miracles, he brings us from nonexistence to life. And surely he will resurrect all human flesh on the last day in the twinkling of an eye. But who can comprehend this? For God is this: he creates the new and renews the old. Glory be to him in all things!" Archpriest Avvakum
"(Would there be consequences for somebody there on video tape, on a news camera pointing a gun at a Metro officer, pointing a gun at a federal ranger?) Yes, there is definitely going to be consequences, definitely. That is unacceptable behavior. If we let it go, it would continue into the future," Lombardo said.
Doesn't matter what the consequences are dumb ass. If the government "thugs" (and there are thugs) continue taking orders from people like Harry Reid and his son to steal land from the people of this country, it's going to continue into the future with hot lead. Don't be a dumb ass, and don't think you're going to get away with doing this.
Libertatem Prius!
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Facebook0 Twitter0 Gplus0 April 18, 2014: Rancher Cliven Bundy speaks at a protest camp near Bunkerville, Nevada.AP
Clark County sheriff's officials say they've been interviewed by the FBI as part of an investigation into armed supporters of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy.
Assistant Sheriff Joe Lombardo told KLAS-TV that federal agents have opened an investigation into the conduct of supporters of Bundy who reportedly pointed guns at officers during a standoff at his ranch April 12.
Bundy, a states' rights advocate who refuses to acknowledge the authority of the federal government, owes more than $1 million in fees and penalties for letting his cattle use government land over the past 20 years.
Last month, the Bureau of Land Management stopped trying to round up his cattle after a showdown with hundreds of Bundy supporters, some of them armed.
Since the standoff, Bundy went from being proclaimed a patriot by some for his resistance to a racist for comments he made about blacks being better off under slavery.
Bundy supporters have denied pointing weapons at authorities and say that BLM rangers were the ones pointing guns. Lombardo said it's expected the alleged behavior would be the subject of a criminal investigation.
"The federal authorities are conducting an investigation and I am pretty confident it is going to go into the future," Lombardo told KLAS-TV.
Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie confirmed the investigation in an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He said agents will interview every law enforcement officer who was present during the showdown.
"Everyone anticipated that this would occur," said Gillespie, who told the newspaper that he was interviewed by FBI agents on April 28. "I’ve said all along there has to be accountability for what took place on April 12."
Lombardo told the Review-Journal that FBI agents are primarily interested in who allegedly pointed weapons at federal agents. He said he believed agents would be poring over video and photos to identify people making threats.
“They have a certain standard of what they believe is a violation of the law,” he said. “You can’t expect the federal government to walk away.”
A spokeswoman for the FBI in Las Vegas did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Libertatem Prius!
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Brief Update on issues relating to Bundy Ranch, Harry Reid, and China’s conquest of Nevada
Posted on 2014/05/14 by Jim Harwood Posted about 9:15 a.m. CT Wednesday 14 May 2014 at The Lantern Journal by Jim Harwood, Independent voter in Norman Oklahoma USA
BUNDY RANCH, HARRY REID and CHINA
Harry Reid said, “It’s not over.” Of that, I’m sure no one has any doubt.
Now the government will try to get the mainstream news media and Americans to focus on the actions of Bundy supporters – American patriots – perceived to be domestic terrorists by Harry Reid and the Obama Administration. That attack by Reid, and now the FBI getting involved, will try to be worked as a distraction, to prevent the mainstream news media and Americans from focusing on Eminent Domain by the Federal Government against State Governments such as Nevada, and against Private Property Owners like Cliven Bundy, to turn property over to China for building solar energy plants.
Our government is not going to allow a few troublemakers to stand in the way of land deals worth BILLIONS of dollars!
We knew this was going to happen. The feds were taking pictures and will run everyone down and nail them on whatever they can.
If you want to know why feds wear ninja masks when they come storming in, this is why. If no one can figure out who the storm troopers are, they can't possibly do anything against them.
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
Re: Range War: Feds vs The People
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Ryan Ruck
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April 18, 2014: Rancher Cliven Bundy speaks at a protest camp near Bunkerville, Nevada.AP
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