THE BULLETIN • SUNDAY, JANUARY 10, 2021 A3
TODAY
It’s Sunday, Jan. 10, the 10th day
of 2021. There are 355 days left
in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
In 1776, Thomas Paine anony-
mously published his influential
pamphlet, “Common Sense,”
which argued for American in-
dependence from British rule.
In 1860, the Pemberton Mill
in Lawrence, Massachusetts,
collapsed and caught fire, killing
up to 145 people, mostly female
workers from Scotland and
Ireland.
In 1861, Florida became the
third state to secede from the
Union.
In 1863, the London Under-
ground had its beginnings as
the Metropolitan, the world’s
first underground passenger
railway, opened to the public
with service between Padding-
ton and Farringdon Street.
In 1901, the Spindletop oil field
in Beaumont, Texas, produced
the Lucas Gusher, heralding the
start of the Texas oil boom.
In 1917, legendary Western fron-
tiersman and showman William
F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody died at his
sister’s home in Denver at 70.
In 1920, the League of Nations
was established as the Treaty of
Versailles went into effect.
In 1984, the United States and
the Vatican established full
diplomatic relations for the first
time in more than a century.
In 2002, Marines began flying
hundreds of al-Qaida prisoners
in Afghanistan to a U.S. base at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In 2007, President George W.
Bush said he took responsibility
for any mistakes in Iraq and
announced an increase in U.S.
troops there to quell violence.
The Democratic-controlled
House voted 315-116 to increase
the federal minimum wage to
$7.25 an hour.
In 2016, David Bowie, the
chameleon-like star who trans-
formed the sound — and the
look — of rock with his auda-
cious creativity and his sexually
ambiguous makeup and cos-
tumes, died in New York.
Ten years ago: The nation got
its first look at Jared Loughner,
the accused assailant of Rep.
Gabrielle Giffords, as a federal
judge in Phoenix ordered the
22-year-old suspect held with-
out bail.
Five years ago: At the Golden
Globes, “The Revenant” won
best motion picture drama
while “The Martian” was recog-
nized as best comedy film.
One year ago: The Trump
administration announced a
new wave of sanctions on Iran
following the missile strikes ear-
lier in the week from Iran against
U.S. bases in Iraq.
Today’s Birthdays: Rock sing-
er-musician Ronnie Hawkins is
86. Movie director Walter Hill
is 81. Singer Rod Stewart is 76.
Boxing Hall of Famer and en-
trepreneur George Foreman is
72. Roots rock singer Alejandro
Escovedo is 70. Rock musician
Scott Thurston (Tom Petty and
the Heartbreakers) is 69. Singer
Pat Benatar is 68. Hall of Fame
race car driver and team owner
Bobby Rahal is 68. Singer Shawn
Colvin is 65. Actor Evan Handler
is 60. Rapper Chris Smith (Kris
Kross) is 42. Presidential adviser
and son-in-law Jared Kushner is
40. American roots singer Valerie
June is 39.
— Associated Press
LOCAL, STATE & REGION
BEFORE THE U.S. CAPITOL RIOT
Extremist watchdogs call occupation
of Malheur refuge a ‘dress rehearsal’
BY MAXINE BERNSTEIN
The Oregonian
Five years ago this month,
Ammon Bundy led an armed
41-day armed occupation of
the Malheur National Wildlife
Refuge after protesting the re-
turn to federal prison of two
Oregon ranchers convicted of
setting fire to public land.
Bundy was acquitted of all
charges after his arrest on al-
legations of conspiracy and
impeding federal employees
through intimidation, threat
or force.
On Wednesday, the extraor-
dinary images of a violent mob
of Trump supporters storming
the nation’s Capitol, incited by
a president who refused to ac-
cept the 2020 election results,
were no surprise to groups that
have tracked extremists in the
West.
Jennifer Rokala, executive
director of the Center for West-
ern Priorities, called the 2016
refuge occupation a “dress re-
hearsal for what we saw at the
Capitol.” The center, based in
Denver, advocates for land and
water conservation in the West.
“The extremist ideologies
and tactics that led to the vio-
lent occupation of public lands
in Oregon are the same ideolo-
gies that President Trump has
stoked among his supporters,”
she said in a statement Thurs-
day.
“You can draw a straight
line from the Bundy Ranch
standoff and Malheur takeover
to the Trump insurrection in
Washington,” she said.
Before Malheur, Ammon
Bundy, father Cliven Bundy
and brother Ryan Bundy were
accused of rallying militia
members and armed support-
ers to stop federal officers in
April 2014 from impounding
Bundy Ranch cattle in Nevada.
Cliven Bundy owed more than
$1 million in grazing fees and
penalties that he refused to pay
for two decades after federal
authorities moved to limit his
cattle’s access to public land.
Their federal prosecution in
Nevada was dismissed due to
prosecutorial misconduct.
On the family’s Bundy
Ranch Facebook page, a post
with Cliven Bundy’s name un-
der it cited support for the in-
surrection at the Capitol.
The post Wednesday read:
“You can’t clean the swamp by
standing off at a distance and
smelling it. At Bundy Ranch
we had a job to do, go get it
done, and We the People went
forward and finished the job.”
It also praised Donald
Trump: “Today President
Trump had hundreds of thou-
Rick Bowmer/AP file photos
Members of the group occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters near Burns stand guard in January 2016.
Burns resident Steve Atkins, left, talks with Ammon Bundy, center, one of
the sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, following a news conference at
the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in January 2016.
sands of people and he pointed
the way — pointed towards
congress and nodded his head
go get the job done. We the
People did clear the cham-
bers of Congress and 100,000
should have spent the night in
the halls and 100,000 should
have protected them.”
What happened in Washing-
ton, D.C., was just the latest in
violent clashes and standoffs by
right-wing extremist groups,
according to watchdog organi-
zations.
Erik Molvar, executive di-
rector of the advocacy group
Western Watersheds Proj-
ect, said the mob mayhem in
Washington was a “direct re-
sult of a growing movement
of domestic terrorists within
the United States, paired with
a systematic failure by law en-
forcement to bring them to
justice.”
The nonprofit conservation
group has sued the U.S. Bureau
of Land Management to chal-
lenge the return of a grazing
permit to the Oregon ranch-
ers whose prison sentences
sparked the refuge occupation.
Trump administration par-
doned father Dwight Ham-
mond Jr. and son Steven Ham-
mond in 2018.
Ammon Bundy, reached
Thursday, said he was in the
mountains and wasn’t tracking
what occurred at the Capitol,
yet Bundy had urged people
to attend Thursday’s rally in
Washington, D.C. and “stand
for a constitutional republic”
through a video posted last
month by a group he’s helped
form called People’s Right.
“Don’t wear a mask and stand
for freedom,” he urged on the
video.
On Thursday, he told The
Oregonian he believes leg-
islators meet behind closed
doors without public oversight,
constituting a “deliberate at-
tack on personal liberty.” He
was arrested twice in two days
in August for protests at the
Idaho Legislature and in Octo-
ber caused the cancellation of
an Idaho high school football
game after he refused to wear a
mask or leave school grounds.
“It’s dangerous to all of us
for officials in a government
capacity to claim rights that be-
long to the individual, whether
it’s travel, what you wear over
your face, or when you can go
to church,” said Bundy, who
has been protesting coronavi-
rus emergency safeguards. “I
also don’t believe a republican
representative form of govern-
ment should make decisions
without public oversight and
without the participation of the
people.”
Greg Magarian, a law
professor at Washington
University Law School in St.
Louis., said there’s a significant
difference between what the
nation witnessed in Washing-
ton this week and racial and
social justice protests in the last
year.
“When a group violently at-
tacks other people or attacks a
public place in a way that puts
other people’s lives or safety in
jeopardy, that’s a severe crime.
It’s a violent riot, an attack,”
he wrote Thursday for an in-
house university publication.
“When a group violently at-
tacks a government institution
in an effort to change the law-
ful governmental order, that’s
insurrection. It’s terrorism.”
As other examples of insur-
rection, he cited the Malheur
“When a group violently
attacks other people or
attacks a public place in a
way that puts other people’s
lives or safety in jeopardy,
that’s a severe crime. It’s a
violent riot, an attack. When
a group violently attacks a
government institution in an
effort to change the lawful
governmental order, that’s
insurrection. It’s terrorism.”
— Greg Magarian, a law
professor at Washington
University Law School in St. Louis
takeover, the militia takeover
of the Michigan state Capitol
in April and the militia-backed
shutdown of Oregon’s Capitol
in June 2019.
“The takeover of the U.S.
Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, incited
by the president of the United
States and his agents, was ter-
rorism, insurrection and an
attempted violent coup,” he
wrote.
In an interview Thursday,
Magarian also discussed sim-
ilarities between the Malheur
refuge occupation and the
siege of the U.S. Capitol.
“These are both instances
where people essentially tres-
passed on federal property,
overwhelmed law enforcement
and seized federal institutions
by force,” he said.