The sniper attack on police in Dallas at a Black Lives Matter Rally yesterday is going to result in revenge attacks against progressive activists, especially BLM activists, as surely as night follows day. There will also be more random police violence as police adopt a "defensive" mode of preemptive violence.
In the preceding two days before the sniper incident in Dallas, two black men were murdered in two U.S. cities. First in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old man whose "crime" was selling CDs on the street to support his five children, was tackled by police, pinned to the ground, and then shot five or six times in the chest. The police cannot lie their way out of this only because a bystander recorded a cellphone video. Of course, they will still get away with it. Sterling allegedly had a pistol in his pocket- perfectly legal in Louisiana, a state that boasts of having the laxest gun laws in the U.S., no permit needed to carry a gun.
The next day, another black man, Philando Castile, was shot dead in his car over a broken taillight. This occurred in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota, named Falcon Heights. (Perhaps the police there see themselves as birds of prey, swooping down on hapless "blacks.") Castile informed the cop that he had a licensed gun, and when the cop asked for his driver's license, Castile reached for it and the cop filled him full of lead. Again, if a passenger in the car, Castile's girlfriend, hadn't been recording on her cellphone, the usual cover-up would have succeeded. As it is, the police seized her cellphone on the spot and treated her as an armed and dangerous criminal, but her phone was live streaming the video to her Facebook account. The police immediately deleted her account (which they have no right to do, but in the U.S., the police do whatever they want to certain categories of people, categories that increasingly include most of the population). However, others had already copied the video feed. [1]
The snipers in Dallas shot 12 cops, killing 5, and two civilians. Two suspects were arrested because they were seen driving rapidly from the scene. The police have refused to identify them, or say whether rifles were recovered in their car. Doubtless they are being brutally tortured right now. A third suspect was cornered, allegedly made incriminating remarks, and while police "negotiated" with him, sent a bomb-carrying robot in his space and blew him up. Apparently their thirst for vengeance was so powerful that they couldn't wait him out and thus have the opportunity to interrogate him.
Initially disinformation was put out that this alleged sniper shot himself to death after being cornered. The first hint that this wasn't so came from Wade Goodwyn, one of the few honest NPR reporters. (NPR being the U.S. government's national radio network, which is partly sponsored by corporations and listener donations.) This morning Goodwyn didn't toe the "suicide" line but said the man died.
The establishment media has been quite mendacious about the murders of Sterling and Castile, including the British government propaganda network, the BBC. I will have some analysis of that forthcoming.
Meanwhile, the police, who are already permitted to continue killing people with impunity, and much more, will now ramp up their brutality and killings, and the general repression of dissent, especially dissent against police violence, will rise to a more intense level.
1] After her escape from the clutches of the police, Castile's girlfriend and witness to his murder, Diamond Reynolds, spoke emotionally to a crowd of sympathizers.
In the preceding two days before the sniper incident in Dallas, two black men were murdered in two U.S. cities. First in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old man whose "crime" was selling CDs on the street to support his five children, was tackled by police, pinned to the ground, and then shot five or six times in the chest. The police cannot lie their way out of this only because a bystander recorded a cellphone video. Of course, they will still get away with it. Sterling allegedly had a pistol in his pocket- perfectly legal in Louisiana, a state that boasts of having the laxest gun laws in the U.S., no permit needed to carry a gun.
The next day, another black man, Philando Castile, was shot dead in his car over a broken taillight. This occurred in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota, named Falcon Heights. (Perhaps the police there see themselves as birds of prey, swooping down on hapless "blacks.") Castile informed the cop that he had a licensed gun, and when the cop asked for his driver's license, Castile reached for it and the cop filled him full of lead. Again, if a passenger in the car, Castile's girlfriend, hadn't been recording on her cellphone, the usual cover-up would have succeeded. As it is, the police seized her cellphone on the spot and treated her as an armed and dangerous criminal, but her phone was live streaming the video to her Facebook account. The police immediately deleted her account (which they have no right to do, but in the U.S., the police do whatever they want to certain categories of people, categories that increasingly include most of the population). However, others had already copied the video feed. [1]
The snipers in Dallas shot 12 cops, killing 5, and two civilians. Two suspects were arrested because they were seen driving rapidly from the scene. The police have refused to identify them, or say whether rifles were recovered in their car. Doubtless they are being brutally tortured right now. A third suspect was cornered, allegedly made incriminating remarks, and while police "negotiated" with him, sent a bomb-carrying robot in his space and blew him up. Apparently their thirst for vengeance was so powerful that they couldn't wait him out and thus have the opportunity to interrogate him.
Initially disinformation was put out that this alleged sniper shot himself to death after being cornered. The first hint that this wasn't so came from Wade Goodwyn, one of the few honest NPR reporters. (NPR being the U.S. government's national radio network, which is partly sponsored by corporations and listener donations.) This morning Goodwyn didn't toe the "suicide" line but said the man died.
The establishment media has been quite mendacious about the murders of Sterling and Castile, including the British government propaganda network, the BBC. I will have some analysis of that forthcoming.
Meanwhile, the police, who are already permitted to continue killing people with impunity, and much more, will now ramp up their brutality and killings, and the general repression of dissent, especially dissent against police violence, will rise to a more intense level.
1] After her escape from the clutches of the police, Castile's girlfriend and witness to his murder, Diamond Reynolds, spoke emotionally to a crowd of sympathizers.
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