Category Archives: America

The Feds Are Not Through Tormenting Poor Amerindians

America, History, Justice, Law, Private Property, Regulation

Before Cliven Bundy there were the Dunns, whose ordeal with the “BLM Brownshirts” began decades back, and should break even a heart made of flint, such is the destruction to the lives, land and livestock of this family of Amerindians.

As wonderful William N. Grigg tells it, “the Dann family spent two decades fighting in federal courts to defend their property against the depredations of the federal government. As members of the Western Shoshone nation, the Dann family had inherited land that was protected by the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley and the U.S. Constitution – parchment barricades against aggression that were quickly reduced to ashes by the flame of elite ambitions.”

Below is the culmination of one of the Bureau of Land Grabs’ roundups:

A previous roundup nearly resulted in tragedy when a member of the family doused himself in gasoline and threatened to set himself on fire. The 59-year-old man, who had no previous criminal record, was tackled, beaten by law enforcement officers, arrested, and prosecuted on terrorism-related charges.
After spending several years in prison, that supposed terrorist, Clifford Dann, was allowed to return to the tiny, ramshackle homestead he shares with his 82-year-old sister, Carrie, who is the same age their elder sister Mary was when she died in an accident while repairing a fence in 2005. …

… In 1974, the US Government sued the Dann family, claiming that they had committed “trespassing” by grazing their horses and cattle on land that legally belonged to them. Successive rulings by federal judges upheld the Government’s claims.
The Supreme Court declined to hear the Dann family’s appeal, insisting that the matter was closed when the federal government paid itself $26 million to consummate the theft of the Shoshone lands. The Feds would eventually claim that the impoverished Indian family owed nearly $5 million in grazing fees and interest.
The BLM staged its first cattle rustling raid against the Danns in April 1992. At about 4:30 in the morning, the ranch lands were invaded by a column of vehicles that decanted a platoon of BLM Brownshirts. Not intimidated by the bullying display, Carrie plowed through the picket line and cast herself into a cattle chute to prevent hireling cowboys from loading her stolen cattle onto a truck.
“My land has never been for sale,” Carrie told Eureka County Sheriff Ken Jones, who rather than defending his constituent’s rights was aligned with the invaders. “It’s not for sale now, it’s not for sale tomorrow, either. And that’s the way it is, Mr. Jones.” …

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State Theft Of Private Property Sets Legal Precedent For More Of The Same

America, Law, Private Property, South-Africa, Taxation, The State

With its monopoly over both law enforcement and “justice,” the state has seen to it that systematic theft serves as legal precedent.

“Long before Cliven Bundy faced down federal agents,” reports Fox News (who else?), “in his dispute with the Bureau of Land Management over grazing rights, fellow Nevada rancher Raymond Yowell, an 84-year-old former Shoshone chief, watched as the BLM seized his herd.”

Adding to that, since 2008 they’ve taken his money as well — in the form of a piece of his Social Security checks.

Yowell’s 132 head of cattle had grazed for decades on the South Fork Western Shoshone Indian Reservation in northeastern Nevada until 2002, when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) — the same agency at odds with Bundy — seized them. The federal agency sold the cattle at auction and used the proceeds to pay off the portion of back grazing fees it claimed Yowell owed. Once the cattle was sold, the agency sent Yowell a bill for the outstanding balance, some $180,000. They’ve been garnishing his monthly Social Security checks since 2008 to satisfy the debt Yowell says he does not owe.

Tommy Henderson is another victim of state plunder of private property:

The Bureau of Land Management [BLM] took 140 acres of his property and didn’t pay him one cent.
Now, they want to use his case as precedent to seize land along a 116-mile stretch of the river …

In “Into the Cannibal’s Pot,” the issue of land grabs by the ANC, in South Africa, was addressed extensively, down to the heart-breaking mutilation of livestock by state-supported squatters, in the effort to hasten the ethnic cleansing of the Afrikaner farmer. The parallels to what is underway in the USA are greater than even I had foreseen.

Jimmy Fallon’s Tomfoolery

America, Celebrity, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

I don’t follow the late-night show intrigue that grips this deeply silly country of ours. I used to enjoy the ousted Jay Leno’s jokes. He seemed good at political satire. But the tomfoolery that has replaced the Leno schtick is something to behold. What does the popularity of this dancing, prancing, giggling metrosexul clown, Jimmy Fallon, say about the stuff that entertains America?

Other than Jerry Seinfeld’s brilliant riff on the child-obsessed grownups of his generation—what unfolded was the equivalent of a whiteface minstrel show, if there is such a thing.

“Jerry Seinfeld Analyzes Modern-Day Parenting,” 4:12 minutes into the exchange:

I am not, you know, a great believer in our style of parenting. … Anybody that has kids now, I just think we’re too into it.
When we were kids, our parents didn’t give a damn about us. They didn’t even know our names.
The bedtime routine for my kids is like this Royal Coronation Jubilee Centennial of rinsing and plaque and dental appliances and the stuffed animal semi-circle of emotional support. And I’ve gotta read eight different moron books. You know what my bedtime story was when I was a kid? Darkness!

Fallon giggles non-stop like a star-struck girl.

UPDATE II: Russia And The Pussy Riot Press (Pussy Rioting Again)

America, Feminism, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Russia

“Very little of the US media’s reflexive demonization of Russia and the Sochi games should be trusted,” we cautioned, on Feb. 8. “The trashing began well before the games and came from the usual menagerie of media morons, who, from studios in the US, were able to attest to everything from the availability of toilet paper to the overlapping dangers of terrorism and toothpaste.”

Now the left wing of the “Legacy Media” has awoken to the fact of systematic bias against Russia in US media. The blanks are filled in most ably by Stephen F. Cohen, writing in the February 11, online edition of The Nation:

… a general pattern has developed. Even in the venerable New York Times and Washington Post, news reports, editorials and commentaries no longer adhere rigorously to traditional journalistic standards, often failing to provide essential facts and context; to make a clear distinction between reporting and analysis; to require at least two different political or “expert” views on major developments; or to publish opposing opinions on their op-ed pages. As a result, American media on Russia today are less objective, less balanced, more conformist and scarcely less ideological than when they covered Soviet Russia during the Cold War. …

… Since the early 2000s, the media have followed a different leader-centric narrative, also consistent with US policy, that devalues multifaceted analysis for a relentless demonization of Putin, with little regard for facts. (Was any Soviet Communist leader after Stalin ever so personally villainized?) If Russia under Yeltsin was presented as having legitimate politics and national interests, we are now made to believe that Putin’s Russia has none at all, at home or abroad—even on its own borders, as in Ukraine.

Russia today has serious problems and many repugnant Kremlin policies. But anyone relying on mainstream American media will not find there any of their origins or influences in Yeltsin’s Russia or in provocative US policies since the 1990s—only in the “autocrat” Putin who, however authoritarian, in reality lacks such power. Nor is he credited with stabilizing a disintegrating nuclear-armed country, assisting US security pursuits from Afghanistan and Syria to Iran or even with granting amnesty, in December, to more than 1,000 jailed prisoners, including mothers of young children. …

… Not long ago, committed readers could count on The New York Review of Books for factually trustworthy alternative perspectives on important historical and contemporary subjects. But when it comes to Russia and Ukraine, the NYRB has succumbed to the general media mania. In a January 21 blog post, Amy Knight, a regular contributor and inveterate Putin-basher, warned the US government against cooperating with the Kremlin on Sochi security, even suggesting that Putin’s secret services “might have had an interest in allowing or even facilitating such attacks” as killed or wounded dozens of Russians in Volgograd in December.

Knight’s innuendo prefigured a purported report on Ukraine by Yale professor Timothy Snyder in the February 20 issue. Omissions of facts, by journalists or scholars, are no less an untruth than misstatements of fact. Snyder’s article was full of both, which are widespread in the popular media, but these are in the esteemed NYRB and by an acclaimed academic. Consider a few of Snyder’s assertions: …

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UPDATE I: In “About Russia With Hate,” Eugene Girin exposes a cast of particularly slimy US media characters prating on about Putin.

UPDATE II (2/17): PUSSY RIOTING AGAIN.The Pussy Pukes are at it again, showing the foolish fluff women are made of.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina, along with seven others, were held by police near Sochi’s ferry terminal, a popular area for fans celebrating the Olympics. Police said they were questioned in connection with a theft at the hotel where they were staying. No charges were filed. …

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READ “Will The ‘Pussy Riot’ Sisterhood Storm The Sistine Chapel?”