#Oregonstandoff militants share video of romantic possible last dance, await FBI call/raid: image via Jennifer Hayden @Scout_Finch, 28 January 2016
Definition of a three percenter: someone who only uses 3% of his brain. #Oregonstandoff: image via Cornelia @PaladinCornelia, 28 January 2016
I couldn't get any good shots of the militants as they were leaving, but here's one anyways. #oregonstandoff: image via Gordon Friedman @gordonfriedman, 28 January 2016
@VoodooDoughnut welcomes Ammon Bundy to Portland: image via KGW News @KGWNews, 28 January 2016
Blood in the snow
I Know a Man
As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking -- John, I
sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what
can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,
drive, he sd, for
christ’s sake, look
out where yr going.
Robert Creeley (1926-2005), I Know a Man, from For Love, 1962
Bundy and four other militia leaders arrested, another killed in violent encounter w/police: image via Talking Points Memo @TPM, 27 January 2017
@Henry McRandall1 All respect to Lavern Finestra! We will NEVER forget you, #Tarpman @Anomaly100 #SnackLivesMatter: image via Jon Hutson @JonHutson, 28 January 2016
Only by blood and suffering and little snacks
Only by Blood and Suffering: Regaining Lost Freedom: A Novel by Lavoy Finicum, 2015 (cover): image via Talking Points Memo, 11 January 2016
"My AR was cradled in my left arm. The chamber was charged and I clicked off the safety. Ann Rafferty [a mayor] was still talking as I walked out onto the floor. I walked towards the table and Ann started stumbling over her train of speech as she as she watched me come. Zackary Williams [a DHS officer] was at the end of the table and I passed to the right side. I did not stop until I had circled behind Zackary. This way my rifle barrel was always pointed in his general direction."
-- from LaVoy Finicum: Only by Blood and Suffering: Freedom Regained (2015)
Lavoy Finicum with long gun and tarp, settling in at the Refuge: image via Talking Points Memo, 11 January 2016
The forlorn hope
WATCH: Live feed from inside the standoff at Oregon wildlife refuge: image via Talking Points Memo @TPM, 27 January 2017
I'm
cold, tired, and ready to go home. I can't act tough any longer. This
isn't for me. Thanks for all that supported us. #Oregonstandoff: tweet by David Fry @RealDavidFry, 27 January 2015
Meet the new leader of the Oregon standoff: image via Talking Points Memo @TPM, 27 January 2017
Oregon occupiers put out call to arms after arrests of militia leaders: image via Talking Points Memo @TPM, 27 January 2016
Oregon #Malheur wildlife refuge holdouts told to go home after one killed: image via AFP news agency @AFP, 27 January 2016
Sun sets on a tense day in #HarneyCounty. Little movement from law enforcement or occupiers. #Oregonstandoff: image via Amanda Peacher @amandapeacher, 27 January 2016
Also FYI Harney County remains beautiful as ever #Oregonstandoff: image via Beth Nakamura @bethnakamura, 27 January 2016
FAA declares no-fly zone over #Oregon bird sanctuary. Military op in works? #Oregonstandoff: image via Kurt Nimmo @kurt_nimmo, 27 January 2016
The End of the Line by Tom Clark, 1980: cover by TC
When an idiot has a say
Democratic presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton greets supporters during a “get out the caucus” event at the Adel Family Fun Center in Adel, Iowa. With less than a week to go before the Iowa caucuses, Hillary Clinton is campaigning throughout Iowa: photo by Justin Sullivan via FT Photo Diary, 28 January 2016
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An Afghan woman walks past a mural that also reads “seeking knowledge is obligatory on every Muslim man and woman” in Herat: photo by Aref Karimi/AFP, 28 January 2016
x An Afghan woman walks past a mural that also reads “seeking knowledge is obligatory on every Muslim man and woman” in Herat: photo by Aref Karimi/AFP, 28 January 2016
GAZA - The shadows of Bedouin children are sen behind a fence at their encampment in Khan Yunis By MahmudHams #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardafp, 20 January 2016
“Pepper”, humanoid robots from Japan’s telecommunication giant Softbank, dance to attract customers at the Pepper World exhibition: photo by Yoshikazu Tsuno, AFP, 28 January 2016
Models of First Order's Stormtrooper Battle Buddy from Star Wars: The Force Awakens are displayed in a shop in in Shanghai, China: photo by Reuters, 19 January 2016
A monkey holds a dice during a performance ahead of the Chinese New Year of the Monkey which falls on February 8, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province: photo by China Daily/Reuters, 28 January 2016
A television truck and a reporter in a car sit along Highway 78 located approximately 4 miles from the Malheur Wildlife Refuge Headquarters near Burns, Oregon on January 27, 2016. The leaders of the Bundy Militia occupation were arrested, one of them shot dead, during a traffic stop. There are still many occupants digging in at the federal wildlife refuge despite the heavy police presence surrounding them. All roads surrounding the facility have been closed and heavily armed by Law Enforcement Agencies: photo by Rob Kerr / AFP, 27 January 2016
Law enforcement personnel block an access road to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuges: photo by Thomas Boyd/ Associated Press, 27 January 2016
All your base are belong to us
A model for the fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier at the Paris Haute Couture Week Spring/Summer 2016: photo by Landon Nordeman for The New York Times, 27 January 2016
Children of migrants waiting in frigid weather near the Serbian-Croatian border, hoping to cross with their parents into Croatia: photo by Milos Bicanski / The New York Times, 26 January 2016
A
Greek man grabbed a bag of tangerines as farmers handed out free
produce in Athens to protest government plans to overhaul the pension
system: photo by Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters, 27 January 2016
Ultra-Orthodox
Jews from the Belz Hasidic dynasty grabbed oranges as they celebrated
the feast of Tu Bishvat, or New Year for Trees, in Jerusalem: photo by Abir Sultan/European Pressphoto Agency, 25 January 2016
Common buzzards (Buteo buteo) fighting over food in Pacsmagi-tavak Nature Reserve near Tamasi, Hungary: photo by Attila Kovacs/EPA, 27 January 2016
Devotees offer prayers as they stand on the bank of the Hanumante River during a month-long Swasthani Brata Katha festival in Bhaktapur, Nepal: photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters, 27 January 2016
Donald Trump, president and chief executive of Trump Organization Inc. and 2016 Republican presidential candidate, reacts to a protester during an event in Iowa City, Iowa: photo by Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg, 27 January 2016
The End of the Line
Blood on the Moon (1948): photo by hytam2, 1 April 2014
My prime of youth is but a froste of cares:
My feaste of joy, is but a dishe of payne:
My cropp of corne, is but a field of tares:
And all my good is but vaine hope of gaine:
The daye is gone, and yet I sawe no sonn:
And nowe I live, and nowe my life is donn.
The springe is paste, and yet it hath not sprong,
The fruite is deade, and yet the leaves are greene
My youth is gone, and yet I am but yonge
I sawe the woorld, and yet I was not seene
My threed is cutt, and yet it is not sponn,
And nowe I lyve, and nowe my life is donn.
I saught my death, and founde it in my womb,
I lookt for life, and sawe it was a shade.
I trode the earth, and knewe it was my Tombe
And nowe I die, and nowe I am but made
The glasse is full, and nowe the glass is rune
And nowe I live, and nowe my life is donn.
Chidiock Tichborne (c. 1558-20 September 1586): Tychbornes Elegie, written with his owne hand in the Tower before his Execution (1586)
Véronique et son Cancre (1958): photo by Aka Vetala (omoplata 1), 8 February 2014
Mahanagar (1963): photo by Aka Vetala (omoplata 1), 10 September 2013
Mercy (1970): photo by Aka Vetala (omoplata 1), 22 October 2013
Un Nommé La Rocca (1961): photo by Aka Vetala (omoplata 1), 23 November 2013
Gideon of Scotland Yard (1958): photo by Aka Vetala (omoplata 1), 20 April 2014
The Horror of It All (1964): photo by Aka Vetala (omoplata 1), 13 April 2014
Chikaketsu renzoko reipu (1985): photo by Aka Vetala (omoplata 1), 21 October 2013
Warning Shot (1966): photo by Leo Garcia (LenhillAdvanced), 10 January 2014
El Pico (1983): photo by Aka Vetala (omoplata 1), 1 February 2014
The Sandpiper (1965): photo by Leo Garcia (LenhillAdvanced), 28 January 2014
Dentist on the Job (1961): photo by hytam2, 13 March 2014
Defend Your Base: Update: Husband and Wife: Maybe Last Dance? (28 January 2015)
ReplyDeleteComplete, unedited video of joint FBI/OSP operation, 01/26/2016
A Greek man grabbed a bag of tangerines (μανταρίνια-mandarines/french) as farmers handed out free produce in Athens to protest government plans to overhaul the pension system: photo by Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters, 27 January 2016
ReplyDeletehttp://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/01/27/blogs/20160127POD-slide-6Q7E/20160127POD-slide-6Q7E-superJumbo.jpg
“Tychbornes Elegie” and “I Know a Man”---two amazing poems. The Tichborne poem has always moved me. That he could write such a little masterpiece under those conditions is extraordinary. As for Laverne or LaVoy: he can now join those ghost riders in the sky.
ReplyDeleteamen to your post Tom and to what tpw said
ReplyDeleteTom,
ReplyDeleteAn orchestral suite of photos together with poems -- Creeley's following the "shooting death of militant LaVoy Finicum" ("for / Christ's sake, look / out where yr going") Tichborne's Elegy in front of "FIN" . . . "FINE" . . . "THE END" ("And nowe I live, and nowe my life is donn.") . . .
The late Finicum/Finestra's post-apocalyptic cowboy thriller, pitting an embattled lone patriot against a collapsing infrastructure in a desolate postnuclear landscape, really does exist, and has 241 pages plus an actual cover blurb ("a book you do not want to read, but should" -- Ammon Bundy). It entered the world early last year, doubtless timed to get a lift from the mild injection of murican celebrityhood sensed by "Tarpman" upon his return to the Arizona foster child farm after squeezing his nose in under the tent of the "successful" prototype 2014 standoff campaign vs the BLM at the vast ranch of the Bundy patriarch in Montana.
ReplyDeleteIf you haven't experienced the half-hour FBI eye-in-the-sky video of the stop-and-capture sequence, you might want to carve out a bit of time to do so, if only for the enlightenment provided on the issue of the F/F walmartyrdom iconography. (There's currently a tepid wave of that washing up upon the alien corn of Iowa, the steep canyons of Utah, the craggy shores of Uranus, and just about every other place a murican has ever breathed in or thought about... thus etching itself into patriotic "history"... for about the next five nanoseconds.)
F/F had sure enough been declaring all along, whenever in presence of a microphone connected to a reporter, that he intended to die for this "cause"... and he proved true to his word. It's clear from the govt video that while all the Bundys and Major League Snipers with their enormous guns were bravely doing the tuna on the floorboards of their massive gunboat-size murican shitmobiles, our Stetson-topped lunatic hero-of-his-own-fantasy-novel was doing his own not very good best to take out a fed or two in his closing reel.
Ill-advised. He was in the crosshairs of maybe twenty sniperscopes at every moment.
From the point at which, shortly after the nine minute mark (really the chase, seen from above without sound to distract or "explain", casts a mesmeric thrall upon the viewer in a true-doom way that hollywood could never match), he runs into that second roadblock, everything he does is pure showmanship, much as everything these dudes have done since the minute they walked into the Refuge with the big guns and first started throwing their dirty socks around the bird exhibits. First he tries to run over a state cop in the snow, and only narrowly misses. Then, he pops out of the truck, hands waving... and reaches into that vest pocket where he has the .9 mm semi-automatic. Meanwhile everyone in the surveillance universe of course knows everything, including what's in that pocket.
End of saga.
Looking back, one sees that the government did indeed proceed with more than all due caution in shutting down these brokeback Isis wannabes.
ReplyDeleteMilitary tactics finally, old as war, seem to have done them in, in the end.
A month of incredible indulgence had convinced the pocket constitutionalists that they could enjoy free lunch in perpetuity on a federal wildlife refuge meanwhile using the place as a recruiting center for gun nuts everywhere.
The fatal bit of hubris that allowed their adversary to cut off the head of the bumbling dumbo was encapsulated in the tactical decision to expand the annoyance by running up to John Day for a recruiting show, to make the show a private event, press not invited, and to give a lot of advance notice.
For once, when they headed out on the one and only road to John Day, in the two-vehicle armed convoy, there was no obediently following press convoy.
There they were, out on that lonely road, in the middle of the emptiest patch of the continental United States, with all the mechanized eyes of the First Order trained hard upon them.
All through this bathetic murican comedy it has been difficult to every day witness these swaggy freeloaders enjoying free food, housing, electricity, water, heat and the rest, all at the expense of an adversary they claimed to be opposing, while elsewhere in the world...
A tangerine is a mandarin is a tangerine. Easily obtained in one place, not so easily in another.
... So... are we having fun yet?
ReplyDeleteJust now the Pacific Patriots Network has issued an urgent call for all good men with 3% brain capacity to show up at the Burns OK Corral, in support of St. WalMartyr "Tarpman" Finestra (or whatever his heroic moniker is/was today), and to get on with the arresting of all FBI and state police personnel, by... well, the state police, I guess... to be followed in short order by the removal of all local authorities, sheriff, judges, county commissioners and so on.
Meanwhile, back at the trash heap that was formerly the wildlife refuge, where by last night it seemed everybody had hightailed it back out and away into the welcoming purple sage shadows, it seems a persistent, annoying presence continues, much as with a problematic fungus.
The weed and beer and soda pop and beans and snacks are holding up pretty well, what with the reduced demand.
The "occupation" now consists of:
-- the pathetically creepy 26 year old hippie video gamer from Cincinnati, David Fry, who periodically gets his live stream back up and running in order to show us the growing midden of trash by which he is surrounded ("the darkness surrounds us...") and to explain to us what's happening and what we should think and do about it (in brief, David contends that all the remaining occupiers should be allowed to walk, on grounds that worse criminals, like the Hildebest, are permitted to roam "scot free").
-- That charming romantic couple Sean and Sandy Anderson, the slow dancers on the trash midden. (You will recall that two days ago this same Sean appeared in another David Fry video creation, with his pudgy face pressed up against the camera, appealing for support: "Don't be afraid of those roadblocks, drive up there and shoot them... If they stop you from getting here, kill them!")
(It seems Sandy has declined the offer of a free pass out of the trash heap in order to stay on and bump camo-bloat with her beloved.)
-- A fourth citizen, who may or may not be the "Jay Banta" who showed up a few nights back with the large bag of weed, bragging about his wealth accrued as a porn star.
As David explains it, the deal now is, the occupiers have very important "demands" (so what else is new?)... at the same time the judge in Portland is saying the Bundys have to stay in the Portland lockup until the occupiers clear out of the refuge... and of course the occupiers can't clear out, because, uh...
Tom,
ReplyDeleteHaving been a huge admirer of yours after discovering you by accident 3 or 4 years ago (where you were for my previous 5 decades or so I have no clue…”it’s not easy being slow” I always say !) I have taken so much inspiration from your incredibly many pieces “Beyond the Pale”…out there where it’s not always deemed civilized or safe ? and I understood you to be courageously on that side of the fence.
Just lately tho, with this Oregon thing, you’ve set me completely adrift.
I understand the environmental viewpoint….ranchers vs earth and its’ sincere people…but I think there are other very large issues here that shouldn’t, maybe can’t afford to be missed…or at least pondered…as much fun as it may be having at the “dumb hick cowboys” incredibly still in our midst here in the enlightened TwentyFirst Century.
I came across today someone much more eloquent about all of this than myself and if I may, ask that you read her bio and give her a listen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXB4BmycPxg&feature=youtu.be.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteThanks for update -- by god, what creeps these mortals be. . . . Yesterday's NYTimes noted that "David Fry, 27, one of the occupiers, said Thursday that just five of them remained at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge [full name for those who haven't been following this saga?], and later said there were four. He said the F.B.I. had told them that there was a warrant for the arrest of one of them, but that the others were free to go.
The protesters replied that they would leave peacefully if charges against one of their group were dropped, 'and if they want to check the guns, if it's stolen guns or what not, we're agreeing to that,' he said in one of many videos he has posted online from the refuge.
'If they're not willing to do that we're all just kind of willing to stay here and see what happens. Are they really going to kill five people for refusing to drop a charge on a man?'"
Meanwhile, guess it's time to check out that video . . .
. . . strange indeed that film, silent overhead view of white truck driving down black line of road through snow white eastern oregon forest, plows off into snowbank next to roadblock of fbi trucks, small figure of man getting out waving his arms, men with guns stepping out from behind trees, man reaching into left side of jacket taking out gun (?), falls to the snow as man on left shoots him . . . so true, Hollywood could never match it (though someone's probably writing the script right now), maybe OJ's white truck freeway ride has now a sequel . . .
ReplyDeleteSteve,
ReplyDeleteThanks very much for hanging in there... though the noisome squalor of the revolution, in its extensive throes of expiration, is not easily endured...
After all, the temptation to become a celebrity seems to have trumped even the feeble attempts at self exculpation, on the part of the remaining resident "historian", and I suppose we ought to be thankful (?) for that.
Somebody ought to tell him to not point his camera at all those guns still lying about amidst the garbage, however.
And by the way, though there's been an awful lot of spouting about God, hasn't any of these idiots heard that Cleanliness is next to Godliness?
Barracks Aftermath: in which media personality and humanitarian David Fry shows us the state of chaos in which the freeloaders left the Refuge dormitory
Media personality and humanitarian David Fry conducts a live tour of the Refuge, including a minute of face time with the two miserably unhappy canines confined in a cage approximately the size of a milk crate -- for their own good, as David assures us
DL,
To start with it's difficult to address a phantom who has just addressed you by the name you were born with, yet does not reveal its own, which leaves everything that is said in the region of shadows and phantoms, an obscure region -- but at any rate, whoever you are, and whatever your name may be, that abysmal example of discourse you have inflicted upon my defenseless ancient brain cells, by way of a link, has left me with a headache.
Approximately twelve minutes into her insipid dribble the Florida pinhead characterizes the invasion of the bird refuge by armed redneck thugs as "work of love and reconciliation".
I hit the wall there.
Every one of these morons with their extremely potent weapons is spouting about peace, love and reconciliation.
I grew up around guns. My grandfather was a policeman. When in the home he was extremely careful to keep his gun well up and out of the way. Still, it is no more possible to ignore a gun in the room than to ignore a hippopotamus in the room. The only difference would be that while the sight of hippopotamus might inspire awe and respect for the dignity and majesty of life, the sight of a gun would, and should, inspire only fear and dread.
When those ignorant rednecks barged into that bird refuge, the first thing we saw, and feared, was the weaponry.
Dread is not respect.
All the swaggering and posing and faux ideology was not, is not, nor ever will be anything but window dressing on the American Way of Death.
There has finally been progress in the standoff. The next wave of arrivals is now threatening to spell at least 3% of the words it uses correctly.
ReplyDeleteSpellcheck for Redneck Revolutionaries Urgently Required
But hey, Boy howdy if them funny-spellin', gun-totin', garbage-dumpin' "crisis actors" (!) in military camo don't make up for their lack of wit by their inability to avoid unconscious comedy!
And what's more, under the heading of need-to-know, everybody's slow-dancin' pinup, Sandy Anderson, has related to the universe of You Tube that no, that's not a bun in the oven under the camo, it's just plain old ordinary patriotic murican country lard.
Expectations for the Future of the Movement are to be revised accordingly.
Still, whatever happens, have no fear, for the Army of the Confederacy has now awakened... and will soon be depositing its garbage at a site near you!
ReplyDeleteIn case you missed it (!)... that classic Murican couple the Andersons spent today at the Refuge beside a crackling campfire throwing back Coors Lites and keeping the smartphones warm with rehearsing the pocket Constitution (Mormon-annotated abbreviated version) in a desperate attempt to wheedle and tent-lawyer Sean, the fat slob in the camo who one day threatens to kill us, then next day threatens to smooch us to death, out of the trouble he's finally managed to get himself, and the rest of these dog-torturers, into.
ReplyDeleteTo get to the gist and core of it, skip to the 12 minute mark, and start there. Not that the preliminaries aren't also fascinating... featuring the suddenly much more sensible Jeff the porn star, who's only here because he took a wrong turn at Elko... in fact that last detail makes him almost, dare one say it, sympathetic... but these things are relative... next to those Andersons, the overflowing-into-the-caked-mud-tire-tracks trash bins almost start looking cute, after a too long while...
Odds are these sticklers-in-their-own-mud won't last long on site once the beer runs out, but from the look of the wreckage, it's going to be a hard decision for the birds, when they come back down the flyway in a few months... on the one hand, this is the only properly marshy nesting zone in an area of some thousands of square miles of not very comfortable desert sagebrush and lava beds, and on the other hand, the patriot klan have left the place in such a toxic state of filth and ruin that it's a stretch to imagine any living thing ever giving birth upon it again.
But nature is meant to be resilient... so why not abuse it some more, to make America great, or get Sean the Fatboy off, or something.