Connecting The Dots A Real Challenge

As I sit down to draft this article, the State of Oregon is experiencing more than 15 forest fires – one consuming more than 100,000 acres with no end in sight. Houses have burned.  I think I heard one report that maybe by Halloween the fires would be under control. A number of camping grounds were closed to the solar eclipse.   All these forest fires are due to lack of proper forest management by U.S. governmental agencies which includes minimum timber harvesting.

OREGON SOLAR ECLIPE UPDATE

The big promotion for the eclipse at the Oregon coast left grocery store owners getting the shaft when they ordered extra mounts of produce and only regular tourists turned out and many cancellations at hotels, motels, etc.  But while some cloud covering at the coast was a disappointment, thousands headed for Madras, Oregon miles from the coast where they experienced three and four hours of bumper to bumper traffic and more than 400 planes flew into this city of 6,000+ who did a great job of accommodating all the visitors who came from a number of different countries and tears were seen rolling down the cheeks of some who were witnessing this alleged historical event. One single engine plane went down in a nearby canyon killing both on board. And the Portland airport had heavy arrivals flying in from all around the world experiencing long security lines and looking to rent cars to drive to their GPS location to watch the eclipse.  In my mixed up mind I wonder over what state the sun that began in the West in Oregon met the sun that normally rises in the East.  Go Figure!

HURRICANE HARVEY HEADS TO TEXAS

Also being reported on the news is Hurricane Harvey being foretold near Corpus
Christi and Houston , Texas  by Sunday involving perhaps 4.6 million people with powerful category 4 winds and lots of rain. The National Hurricane Center indicates weather conditions are deteriorating and water levels rising. There is no doubt about it, without question, the extremes of weather in the U.S. are breaking all records too numerous to mention and  what about all those sink holes that just open up and swallow cars?  More and more people are investigating the treaties signed by the U.S. and Russia on weather modification, noting the disruption, death and chaos brought about in the wake of volatile weather. But I guess I’d be remiss if I didn’t remind readers about Nikola Tesla’s High Frequency Active Research Program called HAARP in Alaska and remind you about Hurricane Mathew in Florida in 2016.

FEDERAL JURY IN LAS VEGAS REFUSED TO CONVICT

But perhaps the best news is that the federal grand jury in Las Vegas refused to convict in the Bundy ranch standoff between the Bureau of Land Management and supporters of ranchers Cliven Bundy near Bunkerville in April 2014. Most of you reading this won’t have a clue how this all developed and how it has unfolded through the years but former prosecuting attorney Judge Jeanine Pirro currently on FOX with her weekly show tells the whole story how then Senator Harry Reid attempted to sell publicly-owned open range to CHINA for untold pounds of gold into is graft holdings. Dirty Harry, as Judge Jeanine calls him, had a great-great uncle Remus Reid, a horse thief, who was sent to Montana Territorial prison in 1885, escaped in 1887, later convicted and hanged in 1889. Senator Reid’s office says Remus Reid was a famous cowboy in the Montana Territory, with a business empire, valuable equestrian assets and much more.

Decades of persecution by the federal government led Western farmers and ranchers to a breaking point and Obama administration’s aggressive use of executive orders to bypass Congress and enacting its own “environmental” regulations indicated we could expect an intensification of the adversarial attitude by federal agencies towards ranchers, farmers and rural property owners unless President Trump intervenes.

PRESIDENT TRUMP SHOULD PARDON THE HAMMONS AND JAIL DIRTY HARRY

On January 4, 2016 Oregon rancher Dwight Hammond and his son Steven began their second prison sentence, entering the Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island, a low-security prison in Los Angeles Harbor.  They were prosecuted as “terrorists” under the federal Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 for controlled burns on their own property in 2001 and 2006 that got out of control and spread to around 150 acres of federal Bureau of Land Management lands (on which the Hammonds own/have grazing rights). The fires caused no real damage and no threat to lives, homes, or property of other citizens. In fact, the BLM acknowledged that the 2001 fire for which the Hammonds were prosecuted had actually “improved range conditions” on public lands. (1)

In their first trial, the federal judge ruled that sentencing the Hammonds as terrorists to the five-year sentence demanded by federal prosecutors would “shock the conscience” of the court. It shocked the conscience of many other observers as well. But the Federal Department of Justice was relentless in this case, appealing the Federal District court’s more lenient sentences. It demanded that those dangerous “terrorists” serve the full five-year prison term.[1]

PRESCRIBED BURNS BY FEDERAL AGENCIES

In stark contrast, the BLM, U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, and other federal agencies are notorious for starting “prescribed burns” that regularly rage out of control over many THOUSANDS of acres, often destroying public buildings and facilities, as well as private homes, ranches, and livestock – not to mention forests, grasslands and wildlife habitat – and gravely endangering human life.  In fact, in December, shortly before the Hammons reported to prison, the federal government reversed itself on compensating farmers and ranchers in North and South Dakota who lost tens of millions of dollars in property and livestock destroyed by the 2013 Pautre Fire, a “controlled burn” started by the Forest Service. After initially promising to expedite remuneration to the struggling farmers and ranchers victimized by the federal arsons, the federal government first delayed all recompense procedures, and then, ultimately, refused compensation altogether, forcing their victims to spend their own money on lawyers to sue in court for redress and compensation  (1).

WIDESPREAD RESENTMENT BY RANCHERS GROWS

The Pautre Fire is but one of many flagrant abuses that are fueling the widespread smoldering resentment against federal agencies in the Western states. That smoldering resentment erupted into white-hot flashpoints, such as the armed Bundy Ranch standoff in Nevada in 2014 and later the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon near the Hammonds’ ranch which ultimately ended  with Robert  LaVoy Finicum being shot dead at a roadblock by troopers of the Oregon State Police on his 55^th birthday on January 26, 2016.  The Arizona rancher had become a spokesman for the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon when Ammon and Ryan Bundy, sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy came to Oregon to join in the protest takeover of the federal wildlife refuge (which was closed for the winter). It all began on January 2 as a protest against the prosecution of the Hammonds, as well as a protest against the federal government’s oppressive control over such an enormous swath of “public lands” in the Western states.

Finicum was driving a pickup truck with four passengers, including two women, all of whom were arrested and taken into custody. One of Finicum’s passengers, Ryan Bundy was wounded, reportedly in the shoulder, during the arrest. Ammon Bundy and leader of the occupation, was arrested, along with an additional passenger and the driver of a second vehicle. They were traveling with Finicum from the Wildlife Refuge to the town of John Day, Oregon, where the occupiers intended to meet with the Grant county sheriff for protection and local ranchers.[2]

Various news accounts referred to the shooting as a “gunfight.”   The eyewitness testimony of Victoria Sharp, an 18-year-old-woman who was in the back seat of Finicum’s truck when the shooting occurred, said no occupants of the vehicles fired any weapons; the only shooting that occurred was on the part of the police and FBI. Sharp’s  account of the shooting has been posted on a number of websites and social media.   After being arrested with the other survivors of the shooting and taken to Burns, Oregon, for questioning, she was released. The other female passenger, Shawna Cox 59, mother of 12 children and a Tea Party member, was released three days later, on January 29. Her testimony was similar to Sharp’s.

I tried to listen to the 1- 1/2 hour You Tube and took a few notes which included the statement by Cox about resources under the ground in the Western states being the problem not the ranching. And then it got interesting as I think I heard her mention Oregon’s Democrat Senator Ron Wyden, uranium and Russia and a Three Quarter billion dollar Congressional bill and Oregon Democrat Senator Jeff Merkley and Oregon’s Legislative Investment fund all tied to the underground minerals (Hedge funds),  and something about Clinton Uranium to China in 2000 and then uranium to Russia.    At the 33:52 minute on the YouTube shots are fired by the Oregon State Police killing Finicum but it was a set up by the FBI.  At 42:00 minutes I heard the names of James Comey, Mueller, Loretta Lynch, Kate Brown (Oregon’s governor), Harry Reid, the Pantsuit Mafia aka Clinton Foundation and something about an assassination. Unfortunately this UTube is hard to find. If we can get this information to Judge Jeanine, after some investigating, maybe she can fill in the blanks.

And then I receive on August 14, 2017 an e-mail, “Why Did Hillary Send Mueller to Moscow with Uranium in 2009?” when Jerome Corsi on Inforwars (8/1/2017) tells about Mueller’s secret mission to Russian which coincided with Clinton efforts to sell 20% of US uranium to the Kremlin.

CITY FOLKS DON’T HAVE A CLUE

The vast majority of America’s population is now concentrated in urban and suburban areas, and most Americans have probably not set foot on a real working farm or ranch other than on a grade-school field trip. Few have any knowledge of, or appreciation for, the desperation of farmers and ranchers who are being hammered on all sides and driven off their land, oftentimes land that has been cared for by their families for generations. Urban dwellers depend for their “news” on the “prostitutes” in the big-corporate networks, which uniformly dispense a radical “pro-environment” bias that generally characterizes farmers and ranchers (along with loggers, miners, manufacturers, and, in general, all producers) as nasty polluters and exploiters who are despoiling Nature for ugly “Profit.”  President Trump has bravely been calling them “fake” news.

A NATION OF ROBOTS

Ironically, (and in many cases, intentionally) this radical enviro ideology has led to policies that have destroyed hundreds of thousands of family-owned farms, ranches, and properties, making  us all more dependent on the huge, corporate agri-business farms and feedlots that the enviro-activists claim to abhor and oppose. Thousands of farmers and ranchers are facing extinction, and many know that, like the Hammonds and many others. They could also go to prison for an unintentional violation of an arcane, unreasonable, and unconstitutional federal regulation. Like swarms of locusts, federal regulators from the EPA, BLM, USFS, etc. are driving these hardworking producers who feed America into the ground. A relentless bombardment of threats, fines, regulatory takings, lawsuits, and other means of perpetual harassment is killing what remains of our family-owned farms. As a result, America has become a nation of robots  facing the greatest crisis in history which will include rising food prices and shortages.

ENVIRONMENTALISM COVERS FOR REID’S GRAFT

Former Nevada Senator from 1987-2017, ten months ago at age 75 was exercising in his home with an elastic band when it snapped, throwing him into cabinets, causing him to allegedly lose sight of his right eye. He’s now filing a lawsuit against the maker of the elastic hand.  But as a Senator he said the fight between BLM and Bundy was not over. Reid should know. The Director of BLM is none other than then Senator Reid’s former Senior policy adviser on land-use issues (2003 to 2011) Neil Kornze.  Kornze has no prior experience in federal land management but Reid has often described him as “perfect for the job” to cover for Reid’s graft and character assassination.  Nidal Malik Hasan can scream Allahu akbar while killing 13 people at Ft. Hood and Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid called Bundy a Domestic terrorist?

Now here is where we need to begin connecting the dots. The Green Party Environmental movement claims to be based on science but contains all aspects of a religion and has the backing of the United Nations.  Its adherents have stopped the BLM from properly harvesting dead trees and cleaning all the underbrush in these forests that are susceptile to lighting strikes that start the fires and careless campers which we are experiencing right now again in Oregon. If we dig a little deeper, we find the environmental movement is a cover for our vital resources such as uranium that has been found under the ranches in Eastern Oregon.

John T. Flynn in his 1949 book THE ROAD AHEAD said we should not take one more step into socialism and we should hold the line for the American way of life. That is imperative, he wrote. We have been led along step by step and in our ignorance and folly and confusion we have yielded at each step. At some point along this course we will make the final critical surrender which will make reversal of the course impossible.  James Madison warned about gradual and silent encroachment and this, dear readers, is the point at which we have now reached and these ranchers are taking a stand.

© 2017 Betty Freauf – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Betty Freauf: bettyfreauf@gmail.com

Footnotes:

[1] 2/22/2016 New American- Part I

[2] 2/22/2016 New American – Part 2