aNewDomain.net — The power of social media and the Internet are the driving forces behind a new American revolution, one that has been desperately needed for a goodly number of years (arguably decades) now. The proof of a revolution? Look no further than the situation surrounding the recent U.S. Bureau of Land Management attempt at a land grab in Nevada.
The Internet news story about the U.S. BLM went viral on the Web. And the BLM stood down after launching an armed invasion against a peaceable lawful private citizen and his family in the state of Nevada.
The BLM has since deleted its BLM documents backing the grab, which lots of people saw before the BLM took them off the Web. The social presence of this story squashed the BLM’s chances of pretending this never happened. But it still has to answer to the American people.
Image courtesy: Cliven and Carol Bundy
How the BLM Raid Fell Apart
During the first week of April 2014, armed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents and surveillance vehicles, FBI agents, military snipers, soldiers, encircling military helicopters and even armed federal park rangers swarmed onto the private property and cattle ranch of Cliven Bundy.
Bundy’s family has owned the land in question since 1877.
It’s worth noting that the BLM was first created in 1946, almost 70 years after Bundy’s family purchased rights to the land from the Nevada state government. Says Cliven Bundy:
My forefathers have been up and down the Virgin Valley ever since 1877. All these rights I claim have been created through pre-emptive rights and beneficial use of the forage and water. I have been here longer (than the BLM and my rights stem from) before the BLM even existed.”
Yet staunch and unwavering supporters of Big Government — in the media and elsewhere — assert that Bundy is just some criminal who hasn’t paid his land-grazing-rights fees for more than 20 years.
Big G supporters suggest that justifies what the feds and armed park rangers tried to do to Cliven and his family.
To counter that, Bundy — who is not a separatist and who isn’t part of the sovereign states movement — said the following in an interview with The Blaze:
Let’s make sure we get this straight. I would pay my grazing fees to the proper government and I did try to pay my grazing fees to the proper government. I do not have a contract with the United States because I will not sign that contract with the United States. I have no contract. I did not graze my cattle on the United States property. And I would pay my grazing fees to the proper government … It’s not BLM land. It’s Nevada land.”
Cliven Bundy is the last rancher still doing business in Clark County, Nevada. He made his first stand against paying “tribute” to the federal government for the right to run cattle on his own land in 1993.
Image courtesy: Cliven and Carol Bundy
Animal Rights and Political Land
And what was the premise leading to this apparently blatant violation of Constitutional rights that I mentioned above?
Animal rights. In particular, the rights of a certain species of desert tortoise, which some believe are “threatened” with extinction by certain private property owners like Bundy. But the BLM is uneven on this. Prior to its invasion of Bundy’s private property, the BLM reportedly had been euthanizing these same desert tortoises by the hundreds.
The dark reality that surfaced, thanks to the Net and social media, is that this government invasion has nothing to do with desert tortoises whatsoever. Even if it had that would be evil enough. Instead, it had to do with a big land deal between the Chinese government and Democrat Senator Harry Reid. This from Reuters journalist Marcus Stern in 2012:
(Reid) and his oldest son, Rory, are both involved in an effort by a Chinese energy giant, ENN Energy Group, to build a $5 billion solar farm and panel manufacturing plant in the southern Nevada desert. Reid has been one of the project’s most prominent advocates, helping recruit the company during a 2011 trip to China and applying his political muscle on behalf of the project in Nevada. His son, a lawyer with a prominent Las Vegas firm that is representing ENN, helped it locate a 9,000-acre (3,600-hectare) desert site that it is buying well below appraised value from Clark County, where Rory Reid formerly chaired the county commission … ”
Big Government apologists will tell you that the project fell through in 2013.
Yet it did not fall through. All evidence tells me that it was put off because Cliven Bundy’s ranch is standing in the way of progress.
Government progress.
The feds sought to annex the Bundy ranch in the name of its being “federal land” already — and then add that land to those lands that were set aside for the solar array deal with China’s ENN.
There’s nothing in this horrendous chapter of American history about protecting tortoises.
All signs and evidence show that the U.S. federal government actually wanted to confiscate Bundy’s lands in order to erect solar panel arrays, all while engaging in cronyism at an upper-echelon level.
For this blatant land-grab, federal agents and snipers targeted lawful private citizens of the United States.
This included Bundy, his family and other concerned citizens including military veterans and members of the Nevada state militia, who came to stand in solidarity with the family.
One of Bundy’s sons got tasered for taking photographs along State Road 170.
An unarmed 57-year-old woman was thrown to the ground.
Snipers were poised to kill law-abiding citizens at the will of their commanders. And approximately 300 of Bundy’s animals were rounded up by “contractors.”
The feds even set up a “First Amendment zone” so any journalists could be corralled and contained. Why set up such areas if the flow of information available to journalists wasn’t going to be directly controlled by the government agents?
Where is the power to do that written or implied in our Constitution? Or anywhere?
Courtesy of Carol and Cliven Bundy
Social media and the Internet allow citizens to mentally or spiritually stand beside the patriotic heroes and heroines who inspire them. For me, that means those who stood up to the snipers and the DHS.
In any event, the land grab incident showed us how social media lets people utilize these powerful tools to help spread the word about what’s happening to them in any part of the world, even remote Nevada.
on’t stop following this story. It’s far from over. For aNewDomain.net, this is Brant David.
Based in New Jersey, Brant David is a senior writer for aNewDomain.net. Follow him at +Brant David on Google+ and Brant@aNewDomain.net.
I appreciate Gina Smith’s fine editing help on this great story!