It’s too early to know exactly what happened in Baton Rouge, but it appears that more police officers have been shot and that there are some fatalities.
The world refuses to calm down.
It’s one thing after another after another.
I’ll wait to learn more before I offer any opinions on our latest tragedy.
If Trump wins, this will be why.
No, this kind of incident will be only one of the reasons.
Not so sure.
Trump is running a campaign that is perfectly suited to the politics of 1968. That is what has been working for the GOP for 40 years.
But the world is shifting under the GOP. I just don’t know if calling yourself the “law and order” candidate will cut it this time around.
What does that even mean any more? That everyone should walk around carrying a personal assault weapon? The GOP can’t even agree to disallow gun purchases by people on the (stupid) no fly list.
It means everyone should walk around with eyebrows like Sam Waterson’s
Indeed. LOL
Expect BIG push to criminalize video taping police interactions with the public. Could see a squishy SC on this one.
Wow, Mino, I had not even though of that, but as soon as I read your post I thought “of course.” It is always easiest to blame the messenger.
It is too bad that it has come down to this but it was expected. It appears that for too many years now numerous police Departments have hired people that never should of qualified to be police officer. A large amount of police officers are former military as such their mind set is not “Protect and serve”. They go out on the streets and are in survival mode anyone not in uniform could be a threat and as such they treat the public as enemies.
This has been allowed to happen for Police Forces have not adequately educated and screened those applying for the position. The educational system for Police Officers is broken and has produced this problem. Sad to say but numerous police forces have allowed this broken system to continue unopposed and instead of bringing out in the open its numerous failings. They have chosen to support Police Officers that should never of been hired in the first place.They are protected by the Police Departments that should of called them out as examples of failure of the training programs.
This process has been allowed to perpetuate for years even with numerous public outcry. The public has lost trust in the Justice system after being ignored for years. Unless a radical change is made to the current Police Organizations and the way they train and deal with Police Officers that should not be in uniform. The odds are there will be a higher escalation of public violence against Police Departments that have demonstrated for years their prejudices and biases against the communities that they were suppose to “Protect and Serve”.
your points.
Yet another example of how exposing a problem appears to the ignorant as if a problem is being created.
American race relations are overwhelmed with this phenomenon. Reagan made that speech wherein he referred to his own past (in the 1930s?) nostalgically and said it was “before this country knew it had a race problem.” Of course, the people getting lynched fucking knew about it, but they aren’t “this country”; they’re just some subordinate visitors who tend our lawns, right?
Anyway, the people who say Obama is “racially divisive” and people like Sarah Palin who say Obama “plays the race card” are more of the same.
Guardian’s live coverage has been fairly useful. Like any other situation of this sort, assume the early reporting is likely to be a mess, and that it will take a while to sort out what happened, who’s responsible, and a motive (if possible to sort out). As of this writing, there appear to be multiple possible suspects (one down, two others at large) and was either a shooting in progress or an ambush, but that seems unclear at the moment.
Some interesting analysis on how impunity is organized and sold… It’s rough. (http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/15/the-fundamentalism-in-police-operations/)
“…police departments across the nation are insular. A Patrolman’s Bill of Rights exists in state law in most states. It holds that investigations of police malfeasance shall be reserved for the police. To investigate Castile’s killing, the mayor has to call in the Justice Department (FBI) in order to upstage all that state-level insulation. City government is not powerful enough to break through the structure of police impunity. Yet even the feds can’t touch the “accessory” factor. In state law, if an organization protects a member who commits a crime, all members become “accessory after the fact.””
[…]
“If civil society stands in potential opposition to the culture of policing, it is because it is thrust into opposition by that impunity. To walk away, to say no, to question, to argue with what a cop has ordered one to do is to become a criminal, to be handcuffed and arrested if not shot. This happens most often to people of color, but not always. The social doctrine by which the police promulgate this cultural difference, this identification of enemies within society, is by proclaiming that all enemies of the police are also enemies of civil society.”
Why not just disband the police and let everyone buy machine guns? It wouldn’t be any worse than the ’30s.
Interestingly the Ohio law enforcement community is asking Kasich to suspend the ‘open carry’ in Ohio during the Rep Convention.
Ironically brings out the illogic of the NRA argument that open carry promotes safety with their meme of ‘the only thing that stops a bad buy with a gun is a good guy with a gun’.
And it’s happening right at the doorstep of the NRA’s Rep Convention.
And Kasich is refusing to suspend Ohio’s open carry law:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/17/politics/cleveland-police-baton-rouge-security-open-carry/
“We are sending a letter to Gov. Kasich requesting assistance from him. He could very easily do some kind of executive order or something — I don’t care if it’s constitutional or not at this point,” Stephen Loomis, president of Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, told CNN. “They can fight about it after the RNC or they can lift it after the RNC, but I want him to absolutely outlaw open-carry in Cuyahoga County until this RNC is over.”
I hope the conservative movement can begin casting aside its thrall to the NRA and gun manufacurers; this week’s GOP Convention would be a good time to start. However, people in their movement are accustomed to walking around in a constant state of fear- and anger-based cognitive dissonance (Loomis’ statement provides a tasty sample), so I’d welcome an epiphany from them now but I’m certainly not counting on it.
Of course. General Honoree (from New Orleans fame) was on denouncing the NRA stance of open carry and how it made the work of law enforcement all the harder. The police chief in Baton Rouge echoed same message. A chink in the NRA armor?
Not really. Most police organizations do not like open carry. Would appreciate reinstatement of the assault weapons ban.
Good to know, hopefully they’ll clear their throats and talk a little louder. Rep would have a hard time in open debate talking about supporting both officers’ safety and rights alongside open carry.
It was an idiotic request.
The Governor of Ohio does not have the power to suspend law.
“I don’t care if its constitutional or not”
What a idiot.
Well, the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association is accustomed to getting anything they want from State and County government, even when the asks are absurd and politically hurtful:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/01/us/cleveland-responds-lawsuit-police-shooting-tamir-rice/
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/23/us/cleveland-police-verdict/
Not only have these and other asks been politically hurtful to the City, they’ve also been morally and financially hurtful as well:
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2014/12/04/cleveland_divi
sion_of_police_findings_letter.pdf?wpisrc=nl-wonkbk&wpmm=1
So yes, this ask is idiotic, but not beyond what a movement conservative State Executive might do. I hope Governor Kasich continues to resist enormous political pressure to establish this limited form of martial law.
MSMBC reports
Shooter Gavin Long
sovereign citizen not BLM
If true, that will silence the terrorism meme. Republicans don’t believe in right wing terrorism.
.
OTOH, if CNN’s right that this guy is a black male, expect lots and lots of racial dogwhistling and law-and-oder posturing — hell, Trump responded to Obama’s statement with a nastygram tweet using that phrase.
Really? Looking at MSNBC now, and there’s nothing like this….
CNN’s reporting black male from Missouri. Could still be a sovereign citizen type, but….
Considering that the sovereign citizens movement was originally from the international jew school of paranoia, which dovetails nicely with Nazism, it is initially more than curious that a young black man was the shooter, although, according to the southern poverty law center, the sovereign citizens movement has made inroads among conservative blacks.
Again, like many of these instances, one guy is caught, several people run away from the scene, are identified as coconspirators, and then are let go and disappear.
The girl in the polka-dot dress on the stairs. The additional shooters in San Bernadino, the additional shooters in Dallas…
The population is being pushed. The Reichstag is on fire. Polish soldiers are invading Nazi Germany, the Russians shot down MH 17.
A lot of shite to shovel through.
Saw that.
Lone wolf attacks, false flag events all over the world.
Oh, and those 28 pages? The US government covering up Saudi participation in 9/11.
These events push people to the right. The shooter in Baton Rouge seems to have done it to shift blame to blacks and BLM.
Cui bono?
Which brings to mind false flags from the past. For example:
http://www.ep.tc/realist/98/
“False flag”? That conspiracy newsletter would have it that every bit of nastiness in the US in the late 60s/early 70s was the product of governmental conspiracy. Perhaps just a wee bit of over-reach?
You appear to be a “blinder”, Joel.
What is interesting about that newsletter is how many of the players in the SLA saga turn up in other dark actions. A lot of the cast ended up in the OJ Simpson case. It’s like a repeating troupe of actors, going from one false flag to another.
It seems that your job on the internet is to not entertain any conspiracy theory unless it is verified and certified by the government.
You are incapable, or it is your position that you are incapable, of imagining people working in concert against the public unless you get a nod from authorities.
Do you really think that six thousand judges in Turkey were in on the coup plot, or was it a phony coup so that Erdogan can tighten up his control of power? Do you still believe in the Gulf of Tonkin? How about the independent invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs? How about the WMDs in Iraq? How about the contra freedom fighters? How about the coup in Iran, or the coup in Guatemala? The official stories in all those case were lies. Not mistakes, not misinterpretations. Lies, to push forward an agenda.
Do you know anything about right-wing terrorism? What do you know, and what do you refuse to acknowledge? Dealing with people who refuse to admit what is happening all around them is tiresome.
“…phony coup…”.
So a meaningful portion of the Turkish military willingly participated in a preplanned false flag event which will lead to their own imprisonment and death?
And, once a substantial coup operation starts, individual and group psychologies become very complicated and unpredictable. How could the Turkish government in power know that events would not fly out of control and actually impeach their position? We don’t even know what the fallout will be yet. Will the opposition government parties and other political interests willingly cede ground to Erdogan? Is it possible for the President to overplay his hand?
It’s easy to see this phenomenon in other events you list here. When the Johnson Administration falsified representations of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, was it done to achieve the Vietnam War outcome which happened a decade later? Did Johnson make a choice in 1964 which he knew would lead to massive political strife, poor military outcomes, the extraordinarily painful termination of his political career, and his early death?
You lay this claim about Turkey with no evidence, and you act as if political outcomes which are uncertain are certain. It’s weird. And you demand that we join you in your delusions and chide those who don’t want to take your big ride.
A lot of people around the world are calling it a phony coup. You can believe Erdogan if you want. That’s your choice.
http://matakanfoca.com/fake-news-turkeycoup/
“source”!
You do realize, right, that you just posted a link to a self-identified “list of fake news spreading in social media after the attempt of military coup on 15th July, 2016:list” . . . right?
A list consisting of debunking various “fake news” about the coup attempt.
Yes.
And my initial take was that, since Erdogan said he knew about it beforehand (he has) it was a phony coup.
Of course, we’re sitting on the other side of the world, so we all speculate. Much speculation has been that this was something organized by Erdogan to consolidate power. Now there is much speculation that it was a CIA-backed coup to get rid of a troublesome ally, Gulen being a CIA-backed group. Gulen also was using the Clinton Foundation for moving money, but I have no idea who was paying and who was getting paid.
The fact that “rebel” jets had Erdogan in their sites and didn’t shoot him down is suspicious. One air-to-air missile would have ensured Erdogan’s demise.
As far as the source of the fake news and its content, that DOES strike one as a CIA type propaganda move. So if it is, why would the CIA be creating propaganda to puff up Erdogan’s self-serving propaganda if it was their intention to overthrow Erdogan’s regime?
All very interesting, all suggesting that there is more than is being said on MSM.
Although there is much speculation that this was a Gulen CIA-backed coup. Not sure about the Gulen money that ended up in the Clinton Foundation.
It appears that he had mental health issues. As a former legal aid lawyer who represented the mentally ill I am familiar with the issues they confront and the scale of this issue.
While we have endless discussions of guns, we have little discussion of the mentally ill.
Yet Newton was more about mental illness than about guns.
You may now resume the mostly pointless circle jerk discussion of criminal justice in this country.
I was wondering about the shooter’s mental health as well. From what I could gather from his social media presence, he reminds me of some of the folks I knew who developed visible paranoid schizophrenia symptoms back when I was much younger. Our mental health system is in dire need of reform. And this incident is yet one more reminder that the combination of access to weapons and mental disorders involving some sort of paranoid delusions is a particularly deadly combination.
I am also open to suspected steroid abuse, both were body-builders, no? Dallas too possibly. Would explain LEO aggression also in many cases, I suspect.
. . . illness than about guns.”
That’s not merely arguable, it’s highly contentious.
Certainly, mental illness is implicated in many, if not all such attacks, including Newtown. And obviously, we could and should do much better at addressing it.
But it’s the horrific efficiency of the human-killing machines that are semi-automatic assault weapons and their wide, easy availability (including to mentally ill persons) that’s the decisive factor between dozens dead vs. recovering from stab wounds.