Context .......
http://www.infowars.com/unedited-video-shows-bundy-making-pro-black-pro-mexican-comments/
Unedited Video Shows Bundy Making Pro-Black, Pro-Mexican Comments
Media censors footage to spin remarks as racist
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
April 25, 2014
Infowars.com
April 25, 2014
The controversy over Cliven Bundy’s “racist” remarks has taken a new turn after longer unedited footage emerged showing the Nevada cattle rancher making pro-black and pro-Mexican comments that were excised out of media reports.
The full clip illustrates how the original New York Times report edited out statements made by Bundy both before and after his supposedly “racist” remarks, which when taken in their full context actually constitute a pro-minority position. Media Matters also cut out these crucial comments from their YouTube upload of Bundy’s remarks.
Bundy’s full comments are reprinted below, with the parts not printed by the New York Times and other media outlets highlighted in bold.
…” and so what I’ve testified to ya’, I was in the WATTS riot, I seen the beginning fire and I seen the last fire. What I seen is civil disturbance. People are not happy, people is thinking they did not have their freedom; they didn’t have these things, and they didn’t have them.We’ve progressed quite a bit from that day until now, and sure don’t want to go back; we sure don’t want the colored people to go back to that point; we sure don’t want the Mexican people to go back to that point; and we can make a difference right now by taking care of some of these bureaucracies, and do it in a peaceful way.Let me tell.. talk to you about the Mexicans, and these are just things I know about the negroes. I want to tell you one more thing I know about the negro.When I go, went, go to Las Vegas, North Las Vegas; and I would see these little government houses, and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids…. and there was always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch. They didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for the kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for the young girls to do.And because they were basically on government subsidy – so now what do they do? They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never, they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered are they were better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things? Or are they better off under government subsidy?You know they didn’t get more freedom, uh they got less freedom – they got less family life, and their happiness -you could see it in their faces- they were not happy sitting on that concrete sidewalk. Down there they was probably growing their turnips – so that’s all government, that’s not freedom.Now, let me talk about the Spanish people. You know I understand that they come over here against our constitution and cross our borders. But they’re here and they’re people – and I’ve worked side-by-side a lot of them.Don’t tell me they don’t work, and don’t tell me they don’t pay taxes. And don’t tell me they don’t have better family structure than most of us white people. When you see those Mexican families, they’re together, they picnic together, they’re spending their time together, and I’ll tell you in my way of thinking they’re awful nice people.And we need to have those people join us and be with us…. not, not come to our party.
While Bundy’s use of terms such as “negro,” “colored people” and references to picking cotton are undoubtedly politically incorrect (though not unsurprising for an 80-year-old farmer), when taken in its full context, his argument is actually anti-racist in that it laments the plight of black families who have been caught in the trap of dependency on government.
The comments that were also vehemently pro-Mexican were not included in any of the mainstream reports which smeared Bundy as a racist.
“What’s more sad than the refusal to openly discuss the issues – is how quickly the conservative right is willing to throw Bundy to the wolves based solely on the New York Times and Media Matters opinion,” writes the Conservative Treehouse blog, noting that Bundy’s comments are no more controversial than those made by Shirley Sherrod, who was staunchly defended by leftists.
While Bundy’s remarks have been spun as a racist call for a return to slavery, he is clearly using references to slavery only to make a point that blacks are no better off living under the economic slavery of the welfare state.
Furthermore, Bundy’s argument that, “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail,” is clearly directed at the government’s treatment of black people and is therefore a defense of and not an attack on black Americans.
“It is 100% clear that Cliven Bundy is not saying that blacks should be slaves picking cotton, but that the federal government has created conditions for them so terrible, that their current situation may actually be worse,” writes Jack Flash. “And he’s not blaming blacks for the issues of abortions, and crime and broken families, he’s blaming the Feds. This is the exact opposite of a racist, this is an advocate for the welfare and best interests of blacks. Racist? Why is he praising Mexicans as better than whites, if he’s some sort of white supremacist racist?”
http://www.infowars.com/texas-ag-abbott-to-blm-come-and-take-it/
Texas AG Abbott to BLM ‘Come and Take It’
After Breitbart Texas reported on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) intent to seize 90,000 acres belonging to Texas landholders along the Texas/Oklahoma line, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott questioned the BLM’s authority to take such action.
Image: Greg Abbott (YouTube).
“I am about ready,” General Abbott told Breitbart Texas, “to go to the Red River and raise a ‘Come and Take It’ flag to tell the feds to stay out of Texas.”
Gen. Abbott sent a strongly-worded letter to BLM Director Neil Kornze, asking for answers to a series of questions related to the potential land grab.
“I am deeply concerned about the notion that the Bureau of Land Management believes the federal government has the authority to swoop in and take land that has been owned and cultivated by Texas landowners for generations,” General Abbott wrote. “The BLM’s newly asserted claims to land along the Red River threaten to upset long-settled private property rights and undermine fundamental principles—including the rule of law—that form the foundation of our democracy. Yet, the BLM has failed to disclose either its full intentions or the legal justification for its proposed actions. Decisions of this magnitude must not be made inside a bureaucratic black box.”
and....
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/04/22/republicans-warn-blm-eyeing-land-grab-along-texas-oklahoma-border/
Texas officials are raising alarm that the Bureau of Land Management, on the heels of its dust-up with Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, might be eyeing a massive land grab in northern Texas.
The under-the-radar issue has caught the attention of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who fired off a letter on Tuesday to BLM Director Neil Kornze saying the agency “appears to be threatening” the private property rights of “hard-working Texans.”
“Decisions of this magnitude must not be made inside a bureaucratic black box,” wrote Abbott, also a Republican gubernatorial candidate.
At issue are thousands of acres of land on the Texas side of the Red River, along the border between Texas and Oklahoma. Officials recently have raised concern that the BLM might be looking at claiming 90,000 acres of land as part of the public domain.
The agency, though, argues that any land in question was long ago determined to be public property.
“The BLM is categorically not expanding Federal holdings along the Red River,” a BLM spokeswoman said in a written statement late Tuesday afternoon.
The spokeswoman referred to a 140-acre plot “determined to be public land in 1986” – an apparent reference to a 1986 federal court case. Breitbart.com,which reported Monday on the Texas land dispute, reported that a Texas landowner lost 140 acres to BLM in that case, and the agency is now using that decision as precedent to pursue more property.
According to background materials put out by Texas Republican Rep. Mac Thornberry’s office, the BLM is revisiting its management plan for lands including those along a 116-mile stretch of the Red River. His office said the possibility has been discussed of opening that land up for “hunting, recreation and management.”
Abbott, in his letter to the agency, said “it is not at all clear what legal basis supports the BLM’s claim of federal ownership over private property.” He said private landowners have cultivated the property “for generations.”
The debate comes on the heels of a tense standoff earlier this month in Nevada, after BLM tried to round up cattle owned by rancher Cliven Bundy – the product of a long-running dispute over unpaid grazing fees. Hundreds of states’ rights supporters, some of them armed, showed up to protest, and BLM back off citing safety concerns.
In the Texas matter, the Supreme Court incorporated the Red River as part of the border with Oklahoma nearly a century ago.
Congress further clarified the boundaries of the two states in 2000.
It’s unclear how seriously BLM might be looking at laying claim to additional boundary land.
BLM said it is merely in the “initial stages of developing options for management of public lands,” as part of a “transparent process with several opportunities for public input.”
BLM Field Manager Stephen Tryon, in a March 17 letter to Thornberry, said officials would eventually look to “ascertain the boundary” between federal and private land and acknowledged residents’ concerns that new surveys could “create cloud to their private property title.”
But he said no new surveys are currently planned, and reiterated that there are no federal claims to Texas land “as defined by multiple rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Harry Reid still threatening Bundy and he dares to play the race card ......
Sen. Reid Responds to Bundy Racism Claims, Forgets His Own Racist Remarks
Infowars.com
April 24, 2014
April 24, 2014
On Thursday, Sen. Harry Reid, who has been at the center of the Nevada rancher standoff controversy, responded to a New York Times propaganda report that Cliven Bundy is a racist.
“I used to live in North Las Vegas and it is home to some of the hardest-working people I have ever met – men and women who embody the American dream by working hard every day to build a better life for themselves and their families. By contrast, Cliven Bundy has spent decades profiting off government land while refusing to pay the same fair use fees as his fellow ranchers. Today, Bundy revealed himself to be a hateful racist. But by denigrating people who work hard and play by the rules while he mooches off public land he also revealed himself to be a hypocrite.“To advance his extreme, hateful views, Bundy has endangered the lives of innocent women and children. This is not a game. It is the height of irresponsibility for any individual or entity in a position of power or influence to glorify or romanticize such a dangerous individual, and anyone who has done so should come to their senses and immediately condemn Bundy. For their part, national Republican leaders could help show a united front against this kind of hateful, dangerous extremism by publicly condemning Bundy.“The bottom line is that elected officials and those in positions of power or influence have a responsibility to unite behind the basic principle that we are a country of laws, and that whatever our differences, it is unacceptable for individuals to use violence or the threat of violence to advance their radical views.”
Reid has apparently put up a mental block on racist remarks he himself has made in the past. In the 2010 book “Game Change,” Reid was quoted as calling President Obama a “light-skinned” African American who had “no negro dialect..”
Here’s the passage Sen. Reid would prefer we forget:
“He (Reid) was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama – a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,’ as he later put it privately.”
Later, Reid told The Atlantic he regretted “using such a poor choice of words,” stating, “I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African-Americans for my improper comments.”
http://lasvegas.cbslocal.com/2014/04/22/reid-something-will-happen-to-stop-nevada-rancher-cliven-bundy/
Bundy not even the first family accosted by BLM !
Bunkerville Was Not the BLM’s First Rustler’s Roundup
William Norman Grigg
Pro Libertate BlogApril 23, 2014
Pro Libertate BlogApril 23, 2014
Cattle Roundup, Great Falls, MT, album by Geo B Bonnell, circa 1890 via Wikimedia Commons.
The raiders arrived at dawn. Contract cowboys backed by BLM rangers and other heavily armed law enforcement personnel fanned out across the desolate but alluring Nevada countryside to confiscate livestock owned by a family who – under a controversial claim of sovereignty — had allowed them to graze on public lands without paying fees to the federal government.
“They have been overgrazing and damaging the land for years,” asserted BLM spokesman Mike Brown, who also pointed out that the family – the last holdouts in the region – had been fined millions of dollars for trespassing on public land. In defiance of federal judicial rulings and the “consensus” of their representatives, the family persisted in claiming that they had a right to graze cattle on land their ancestors had settled many decades ago. The dispute had been going on for decades, and the institutional patience of the federal government had been exhausted.
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.
Like the Cliven Bundy family, their distant Nevada neighbors, 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.
When the United States assimilated northern Mexico following the aggressive war of 1846-1848, it exacerbated the regional tensions that would lead to the War Between the States. Nevada’s continuing status as a quasi-colony, rather than fully realized state, is a lingering echo of that conflict.
Such statehood as Nevada enjoys resulted from partisan machinations by Republicans who wanted additional congressional seats in the event that the election of 1864 was thrown into the House of Representatives.
Statehood was rushed along with the help of an enabling act promising that Washington would sell off surplus lands beyond what would be necessary for the construction of military bases and similar facilities.
The promises made to statehood advocates proved to be as ephemeral as assurances of marriage and strict fidelity offered to a reluctant young woman confronted by an irrepressibly libidinous suitor. Washington’s treatment of the Western Shoshone was immeasurably worse.
Although the territory that would become Nevada was included in the cession made through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico never had a permanent presence there, and the Shoshone, quite understandably, ever considered themselves to be Mexican subjects. The territory acquired huge strategic significance after the war began, owing to its abundance of silver and its location astride transportation and communication routes from California to the East. This is why Article 2 of the Ruby Valley Treaty specified that in exchange for leaving travel routes “forever free, and unobstructed,” and for allowing stage and telegraph routes to continue “without hindrance, molestation, or injury,” the US Government promised that the then-extant boundaries of the Shoshone bands would remain inviolate.
The Ruby Valley Treaty, like all such measures, acknowledged the supposed authority of the US President to consign the Indians to reservations when he considered it “expedient for them to abandon the roaming life, which they now lead, and become herdsmen or agriculturalists….” Those reservations were to exist within the boundaries of their ancestral lands, which once again were promised to them in perpetuity. The Shoshone were likewise promised annuities from the United States, and “compensation and equivalent for the loss of game and the rights and privileges hereby conceded.”
Those promises, like all others extended to American Indians, may as well have been written on the wind in disappearing ink.
“The Shoshone kept their end of the bargain,”recalled Western Shoshone National Council Chairman Raymond Yowell. “The United States did not. As more and more emigrants settled on ourlandsd, he promise of peace wasn’t enough for the United States. Instead of dealing with us as a sovereign nation, the United States implemented a scheme to acquire title unlawfully.”
In 1946, the Regime in Washington created a pseudo-judicial body called the Indian Claims Commission (ICC), the purpose of which was to dispose of outstanding land claims. The 1946 act permitted that Commission (it is axiomatic that any body called a “Commission” was created to facilitate fraud) to recognize as authoritative tribal spokesman any “identifiable group” within a given tribe, no matter how unrepresentative it might be.
In 1951, one tiny Shoshone band, the Te-Moaks (descended from a signatory of the 1863 treaty) filed an ICC claim on behalf of the entire nation. Eleven years later the ICC settled that claim by ruling that the Shoshone claims had been extinguished through “gradual encroachment” of American settlers. Furthermore, the Commission ruled that the “taking” had occurred on July 1, 1872 – a date used to establish the value of the land, long before discovery of gold and other valuable minerals had occurred. In 1979, the Commission offered the Shoshone a $26 million settlement – an amount equivalent to about fifteen cents an acre for the same land commanding $2.50 an acre when purchased by gold mining interests.
When the Shoshones refused to accept the settlement – which had been reached ex parte – the Department of the Interior paid that money to itself, absorbing it into an Indian trusteeship bureaucracy that was riddle with corruption and fraud.
About a decade ago, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sponsored a measure that would have “settled” the longstanding dispute with a one-time payment of $26,000 to each member of the Shoshone tribe. That bill was never enacted, and the money remained unpaid – which suited the Dann family just fine. They had never agreed to surrender their land, had never signed any documents, and insisted on exercising their right to raise livestock on land that had been peacefully and productively used by their family for generations.
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.”
As would happen more than twenty years later at Bunkerville, the BLM backed down and withdrew, restoring the stolen cattle to their rightful owners. But this gesture was purely a public relations ploy.
When the raiders returned the following November, Clifford used a vehicle to block a road, cutting off a convoy of BLM trucks carrying the family’s livestock. Sitting down in the bed of his pickup, Clifford immersed himself with gasoline and threatened to set himself on fire unless the federally licensed rustlers relinquished the stolen animals.
Feigning sympathy with the Dann family’s plight, Sheriff Jones told Clifford that the cattle weren’t being confiscated and invited him to see for himself. When Clifford stepped down from his truck, he was surrounded by a thugscrum of BLM Brownshirts, some of him sprayed him with fire extinguishers, others surrounding the 59-year-old man and assaulting him.
“Get him down! Get him down!” exclaimed Sheriff Jones. “Break his f**king arm if you have to!”
Carrie ran to help her brother, only to be seized from behind by a BLM agent.
“You’re hurting me – I’ve got a bad shoulder!” cried Carrie.
“Then be a good old lady and quit struggling,” sneered BLM special agent Terry Somers, his voice dripping scornful condescension.
The stolen livestock escaped – but Clifford did not. Beaten and bloodied, he was taken into custody. Four months later he was sentenced to nine years in prison for “assaulting an officer with gasoline” – that is, for being seized and beaten by BLM agents after he had poured gasoline on his own body. As he pronounced sentence, Federal Judge John McKibben pointedly said that the severity of his ruling was intended “to send a message to journalists, activists, and the Western Shoshone.”
With their brother behind bars, and their supporters understandably intimidated, the Dann sisters weren’t able to resist as several subsequent federal raids systematically deprived them of their stock, much of which was left to die of neglect by the BLM.
For decades the BLM had accused the Danns of damaging the delicate Crescent Valley ecosystem by “overgrazing” their herds – even though BLM commissar Somers admitted in 1994 that there was no evidence to sustain that charge. Once their grazing lands had been denuded of cattle and horses, the BLM leased it to a Canadian conglomerate that gouged huge open-pit mines out of the landscape and left the countryside contaminated with lead, mercury, and cyanide.
It should be recalled that the Department of the Interior placed the value of the Shoshone lands at fifteen cents an acre. It charged gold mining companies up to $2.50 an acre for leasing the lands that had been stolen from the Dann family. Gold mining is a worthy undertaking – when it is carried out through honest, mutually beneficial commerce, rather than government-abetted theft.
The Dann family and the Western Shoshone, acting out of desperation, made a futile effort at redress by filing a grievance with the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination at the United Nations, an organization that is utterly worthless when it isn’t being aggressively harmful. In the meantime, the BLM directed its malevolent attention at non-Indian ranchers in Nevada.
In 2001, BLM hired contractors to steal the cattle of Nevada ranchers Ben Colvin and Jack Vogt, whose argument against paying grazing feeds was similar to that made by the Danns, to wit: The US Government had no legal and constitutional authority to claim ownership of the range land.
The BLM and Forest Service likewise pilfered cows belonging to rancher Wayne Hage, who like the Danns spent decades fighting the Feds in court. Last year, in what must be regarded as little short of an epoch-shattering miracle, a federal judge ruled that those agencies had conducted a criminal conspiracy against Hage and recommended that their administrators face criminal prosecution.
Unlike the Bundys, who are materially comfortable but not opulently wealthy, the Danns — like many American Indians — are desperately poor. Their ancestral claim to the land is stronger than that of the Bundy family, but this didn’t prevent the Feds from stealing their livestock and leaving them destitute.
Despite the significant differences separating the Bundys from the Danns, both families are involved in what can accurately be described – without the unfortunate ideological baggage – as an anti-colonialist struggle. The US Government had no legal right to ratify the theft of Western Shoshone lands, nor does it have the constitutional authority to occupy and claim to own more than eighty percent of Nevada’s territory.
Cliven Bundy and his family were hardly the first Nevada ranchers to confront federally licensed cattle rustlers who operated under the protection of militarized law enforcement agents. They were, however, the first to fight back.
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