I listened to an interview with some connected folks to this situation a few days ago, and there's a bit more to it.

(I don't remember any detail, but the gist was ...)

The ranch is directly adjacent to the refuge, and the government has been trying to grow the refuge.

The government has been trying to get the particular rancher's land for a while, offering to buy it, and generally making living there inconvenient, to encourage him/them to leave.

There was some funny business with the arson charge, like there being some hunters on the land that had a different account of the events, and their account was at odds with what the government asserted happened.

Folks have the opinion that the arson charge was a convenient way of dialing up the 'get out of town' message - and so this occupy whatever response is some sorta backlash. Something like : "You want us to leave so you can have our stuff? Oh yeah? Well why don't YOU leave and we'll take YOUR stuff?! Take that!"

Also, the group has not been isolated. People and media come and do all the time, and the group makes daily statements to the media. One reporter noted that he has only seen one person carrying a firearm the entire time (a single man with a pistol in a holster), and everyone else has no firearms on their person (regardless if they have any in general, they aren't walking around armed).

-scheherazade

So...the feds holding property they've held at least since 1907 as a wildlife refuge, or surroundings they've purchased since then, and leasing it to people like these at ridiculously low prices is 'creeping into our lives' and 'overgrowth of government'?
Um...yeah...how does that work?
These people committed arson on federal land DURING A WILDFIRE and were found guilty, and are sentenced under federal MINIMUM guidelines, not given the max, and these Bundy people are finding that an overreach of government...how?
The cognitive dissonance in their last statement would be hilarious if it wasn't an actual mindset so many people AGREE with when talking about white groups, but scoff at as self serving drivel when applied to black groups.
THESE people think the law is rigged against them? What should the Black Lives Matter people think when it's PROVEN the law is rigged against them, and it's their LIFE at stake, not their right to do whatever they want on other people's property, including arson, without consequence.
And can you imagine the terrified outrage on Fox if a group of armed BLM (Black Lives Matter) people took over a BLM (Bureau of Land Management) office, like these nutjobs did? Now consider the ridicule if they did it to 'protest' the mandatory sentencing of a convicted arsonist....who's black.

Oh...interesting to find out this as well....
-Many of the tactics and talking points being used were popularized in the 1970s by the white supremacist group Posse Comitatus. This group promoted the “Christian Patriot” movement, advocated the formation of “Citizens Militias,” helped forge an idiosyncratic reading of the Constitution, said the county sheriff was the highest elected official that should be obeyed, and opposed federal environmental restrictions.

Sweet Zombie Jesus!

You wouldn't like my resolution.

Course main reason majority of Americans are against it is our culture and heritage. Americans have never ran. During British rule we didn't run to Louisiana territory begging Spain or France to accept refuges. We took up arms and bled for our land. Patriotism is not bad as political correctness morons try to push.

That's why for us, or many of us, refugee makes no sense. And our forefathers even exclaimed if any Americans became refugees they deserved no country, our creed "give me liberty or give me death!" The 2nd amendment left behind by our founders to ensure a free society.

"We need a revolution every 200 years, because all governments become stale and corrupt after 200 years. " - Benjamin Franklin

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson

The word refugee makes absolutely zero sense to Americans. At least me being Generation X and all my generation and older. You do not run you die fighting. The beginning of the Revolution Americans didn't have hardly any weapons, it was sabotage and terrorism and the capture of gun stockpiles by militias the armed the beginning, then France helped supply us.

They should right, but the proof is they are not refugees! That's media political correctness lies. Just as said in that video
Quote by Muslim - "this isn't refugees, this is invasion"
They use political correctness as a shield to get in.

There's something wrong with all those pictures...all of those camps are almost completely empty. What's the story with that? There must be a reason...such as those staying there are not allowed to work, but must still pay for food and services, or something else untenable. People would not be paying thousands of dollars for a chance to take their familys on an overloaded rubber raft across dangerous waters and continuing on a dangerous voyage through hostile countries to unknown possible places of refuge if there was a reasonable, safe place for them on the border of Syria.
Also, to be sure, tent cities are less than ideal in Southern Turkey where the temperature is often deadly....but they are better than nothing.
I'm not sure, beyond the smugglers getting them to Greece and food on the trail, what the Syrians might pay for that helps them reach Europe. The train tickets they're buying don't cost much, do they? Certainly not the thousands they pay the smugglers....but perhaps paying the smugglers is what you mean.

I just lost all respect I had for archers... For a while there I almost thought of archery as a serious and professional sport, not just a refuge for ren faire LARPers.

Hi Ravioli,

I guess that's a fair question. For starters, that would be a contradiction to what God has said about Himself:

Isaiah 45:5-6

I am the LORD, and there is no other, besides me there is no God; I equip you, though you do not know me, that people may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides me; I am the LORD, and there is no other.

If God was not who He claimed to be, I could no longer worship Him according to His desire because we are told He is seeking those who will worship Him in Spirit and in truth:

John 4:23-24

But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.

God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

If the truth was different than what God claimed, it would be inconsistent with His desire to be worshiped in spirit and truth.

What the bible says about Gods truthfulness is that it is impossible for Him to lie:

Hebrews 6:18 so that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us,

I trust that He is telling the truth, and that He is in a better position to know that than I am. The resurrection of His Son gives me ample reason to put my hope and trust in Him for my eternity. Thanks and God bless!

That's right. These guys got the ash, but the hikers closer to the peak weren't so lucky. In the description, Kuroda Terutoshi writes

避難小屋が近くて助かった

I love Miachael Che's final words, "I guess we're just waiting on the love part to kick in." Would have been great to show all those people shouting at the children how they are unwanted here. Nothing is a better example of the love of Jesus than telling a child seeking refuge, fleeing a bad situation created by US policy, than to say how unwanted they are. I mean sure Jesus said the greatest commandment is love, but clearly He didn't mean if they come from another country or sin differently than you do. I mean that has to be the Republican justification for their actions that ignore that commandment.

Blasphemy! You dare defile the sacred refuge of men worldwide?!

The Grand Poobah of Penis commands you to put an end to this travesty!

You should read my complete post before posting reactionary statements. I never said current prison conditions are ideal. I said prison isn't working as a deterrent to criminals. As I said before, there are three potential ways of fixing that: make the punishment more severe, increase surveillance and enforcement or make prison safer and more comfortable in an attempt to rehabilitate criminals. The first two options are practically guaranteed to produce results. People litter, jaywalk, pirate and break traffic laws all the time because they know they can get away with it and even if they get caught, the punishment will be relatively minor. Conversely, it's much harder to get away with major crimes and the punishments are far more severe, which is why major crimes are committed far less often than minor ones. History has proven that fear is a very effective deterrent. Convince people that there are significant consequences for their actions and they'll think twice before doing something stupid.

Rehabilitation is less proven. If prison were comfortable, safe and enlightening, it could reduce crime rates as criminals are taught the error of their ways and spread their new-found wisdom amongst other potential criminals. Or it could increase crime rates as prisons become a refuge where the desperate get free food, shelter, healthcare and other conveniences.

The ideal solution would be to ensure that only qualified parents are allowed to reproduce. The majority of criminals are the result of poor upbringings, with negligent, ignorant and/or abusive parents unwilling or unable to train their children to become productive members of society. In an ideal world, there would actually be prerequisites to parenthood. Aspiring parents would need to meet certain criteria like minimum income, education and a clean record. If these requirements were somehow enforceable, crime rates would drop drastically.

...as I rightly predicted, you missed or overlooked the posts @ http://videosift.com/talk/this-site-is-being-removed, RIGHT, you don't get email notifications nor do you follow comment streams, RIGHT, AND the overlap of pertinence conveniently saves some typing, so....

"...pathetic self-deluded "little...thing" unsuccessfully, incessantly peddling his self-promoting, illusory, persecution complex effused, over compensatory inflated self-worth dribbling in a never-ending vain campaign of misrepresentation and deceit to unsuccessfully justify his existence to himself and to whomever else he deludedly believes hasn't the experience, acumen or awareness to know or see otherwise."

...AND...

"...self described "little...thing" whom with its adoption of this well earned moniker belies the slightest claim to any semblance of real self-respect or self-worth and further demonstrates Its inability to not only represent any idea he may borrow or steal but in the most banal, basest manner with no apparent capacity for self-awareness or objective perspective much less the truth. The question begs as to whether this incapacity is deliberate or if it is born of another pathology of which a number are glaringly obvious to many here and which is the subject of many frequent conversations here some of which I have copied and if the slightest ember of yearning to real self-awarenes exists in It I would be amenable to provide them...PUBLICLY ONLY,,, with the speakers names redacted of course. I WILL FURTHER PROVIDE THAT I WILL NOT BE A PARTICIPANT IN ANY PROVIDED CONVERSATION. As a further albeit futile stipulation I will only provide Lounge conversation as a anticipation of the pitifully predictable refuge to Its ascribing any such conversations to private conversations on profile pages that It prefers to paint in his persecution complex's inimitable fashion. OF COURSE, THIS WILL NOT BE ENTERTAINED."

...or rather the self described "little...thing" whom with its adoption of this well earned moniker belies the slightest claim to any semblance of real self-respect or self-worth and further demonstrates Its inability to not only represent any idea he may borrow or steal but in the most banal, basest manner with no apparent capacity for self-awareness or objective perspective much less the truth. The question begs as to whether this incapacity is deliberate or if it is born of another pathology of which a number are glaringly obvious to many here and which is the subject of many frequent conversations here some of which I have copied and if the slightest ember of yearning to real self-awarenes exists in It I would be amenable to provide them...PUBLICLY ONLY,,, with the speakers names redacted of course. I WILL FURTHER PROVIDE THAT I WILL NOT BE A PARTICIPANT IN ANY PROVIDED CONVERSATION. As a further albeit futile stipulation I will only provide Lounge conversation as a anticipation of the pitifully predictable refuge to Its ascribing any such conversations to private conversations on profile pages that It prefers to paint in his persecution complex's inimitable fashion. OF COURSE, THIS WILL NOT BE ENTERTAINED.

...AND WHILE I MAY NOT TELL ALL AND EVERYTHING...I DO NOT LIE OR MISREPRESENT...DELINEATE OTHERWISE "LITTLE...THING" AND CHALLENGE ME TO PRODUCE EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY AS HAS BEEN REPEATEDLY OFFERED...BUT YOU WILL NOT AS YOU ARE COWARDLY DISPOSED AND DISPOSED SHOULD YOU BE!

Thanks for the article. It kinda reads like an add for Jennifer Mathers' 'octopuses are smart' book. Her 2008 Consciousness and Cognition paper does a better job at laying out the most cephalopod behaviors impressive behaviors:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810006001504
. Don't get me wrong; I think cephaolopods totally awesome, but I don't see the case for them being cognitive leaps and bounds above other invertebrates. The behaviors that they are capable of are found elsewhere among inverts, yet people (often encouraged by Mathers or her coauthors on that book) seem to imply they are basically eight armed dogs of the sea:

Behavioral conditioning in the lab (which Mathers likes to call "learning") - Bees, butterflies
Moving objects to close off burrows - mantis shrimp
Carrying objects as temporary refuges - crabs
Individual recognition - wasps, lobsters?, mantis shrimp.
Complex spatial navigation - ants, bees.
Learning via observation - I'm not aware of other inverts that do this, but the cephalopod evidence is also pretty weak.

Maybe there are some more recent, and more convincing results?

There is a pretty easy cure for confirmation bias; Skepticism.

"Be your own light, your own refuge. Believe only that which you test for yourself. Do not accept authority merely because it comes from a great man, or is written in a sacred book, for truth is different for each man and woman." ~Siddhartha Gautama

Granted, that quote wasn't really meant with pundits in mind but I think it applies to all aspects of life and information absorption.

Also, kill your heroes.

I second @JustSaying here -- what exactly does it tell you? (Snowden seeking refuge in countries with abysmal human rights records)

What it tells me is that it is pretty pathetic that Snowden's best chances for freedom and a life outside of a concrete cell in Gitmo come from someplace like Venezuela, Ecuador, or Russia as compared to his home, the "land of the free" USA. I think it says much more about the current government and political environment in the US than it does about Snowden.

Given my take on it, I think it is laughable to accuse Snowden of hypocrisy. Aim that word at an entity that deserves it -- the country and government that labels itself:

*the "land of the free" (except for those that we lock up in indefinite detention without trial, those guilty of thoughtcrime, anyone trying to travel freely outside of the country or even from state to state, etc.),

*"home of the brave" (except for any vague threat of 'terrorists', in which case we ask everyone to panic and allow a friendly TSA officer to treat you like a sock puppet, in spite of the fact that you're 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than a terrorist),

*originator of the bill of rights (unless the government has some tenuous and self serving reason to revoke any/all of your rights: Free speech? Hah! Free press? Hah! Unreasonable search and seizure? No such thing! Due process? Hah! Speedy and public trial? Hah! By a jury? Hah! Cruel and unusual punishments? Waterboarding and other 'enhanced interrogation techniques' don't count! The government laughs at the bill of rights and pisses on their grave.),

*bastion of democracy (except I don't remember voting on ANY of the shit that Snowden brought to our attention, and it seems that neither do any/most of our elected 'representatives' -Hah!), and

*home of the American dream (as long as your dream doesn't involve freedom from any of the myriad transgressions listed above).

Oh how my once proud nation has fallen.