Showing posts with label riots. Show all posts
Showing posts with label riots. Show all posts

Friday, June 05, 2020

Amerika, a pictorial study









Here's a scene from Saturday's protest in Salt Lake City.

If this is how Amerika's storm-trooper cops treat a 67-year-old leukemia patient who walks with a cane, how the hell do you think your average able-bodied black man gets treated by police in the 'hood?

The old guy's crime? He was taking pictures when the cops swooped in to "dominate the battlespace."

“I thought they were just coming down the street and all of a sudden they came charging at me,” he told KTVX television. “Ten minutes before the armored vehicles showed up that’s when I got there,” said Tobin. “When I went down there to take pictures there was no mob scene. It was just a bunch of people standing around taking pictures. I was at the end.”

Afterwards, Tobin says a group of people then came to his aid trying to call an ambulance, but one couldn’t get through.

“They stayed with me,” he said. “Bandaged up some of my cuts on my arms.”

Frustrated, Tobin went home. The next morning, he says he received a call from Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown.

“He said that’s not the way the police are supposed to act, and he was going to look into it with internal affairs and the review board, and take action,” said Tobin. “I told him whatever you’re going to do is fine with me.”

Tobin, who has Leukemia, has a visible scratch on his head from his fall.

“My shoulder still hurts a little bit,” he said. “My rib on the back is still sore, but the main problem is my knee.”

If given the chance, Tobin shares what he would tell the officer who knocked him down.

“I’d just say, I hope you don’t do it again.”
I DON'T KNOW exactly at what point your average cop in the United States became your average Nazi storm trooper, but here we are. In the last 10 days, we have heard -- and seen -- story after story after story after story of ordinary, peaceful folk being brutalized by "(fill in the blank's) finest" while "boogaloo bois," vandals, looters and arsonists run amok as America recoils in civil-disobedient horror at . . . well . . . the kind of crap you see here. And a lot worse.

Repeatedly, murderously worse.

But it's OK. The police chief is going to look into it. The trouble is, America's police chiefs have been "looking into it" for the last 55 goddamn years. Maybe the mayor will appoint a commission.

Or maybe not. President Caligula probably would fire off some mean tweets calling him a pussy.





IT SEEMS we live in a land where "pro-life" politicians -- like Donald Trump, "the most pro-life president ever" -- just can't satiate their blood lust, and now your average, unarmed African-American just doesn't hit the spot anymore. Now we have cops pointing weapons at the heads of toddlers.

In that case, the Long Beach, Calif., police have promised to launch a "review." Don't hold your breath.

Meantime, maybe some cops will take a knee or do a silly dance with the early shift of protesters. Hell of a great way of getting limbered up for the main event.


* * *

P.S.: Judging by his apparel, it seems that the Utah victim of wanton police brutality is a Nebraska fan. Haven't Nebraska fans suffered enough?

Friday, May 29, 2020

The crooked, white heart of a dying land

You need to watch this. You need to hear what CNN's Don Lemon has to say.

You do that -- I'll wait. Then I have something I need to say. In advance, I ask that you pardon my French.

Have you finished with that Don Lemon video? Good.

Now, you know what the problem is here, right? It's this: Way too many white folk are just like Donald Trump -- narcissists who lack empathy, only in their case that deficit only applies to those whom they've been raised to disdain.

Guess what, people. Those who raised you in such a manner were just as fucked up as you are. They taught you wrong, and you just aren't introspective enough to question your assumptions and conditioning.



LISTEN,
the bad news is we're all fucked up. The good news is you're not alone. The better news is you have the power to fix your fucked-upitude. You have an imagination -- use it. Put yourself in the other guy's shoes for just a minute.


Until I got to Baton Rouge Magnet High, due to life in the public schools of Redneckistan and thanks to my own family dynamics . . . well, let's just say it's easy for me to understand the sort of rage we're seeing tonight. At age 59, I consider it, as Bobby Kennedy related in 1968 after Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, "the awful grace of God."

It's not terribly difficult for me to imagine just wanting to "burn the motherfucker down." It's not terribly difficult for me to understand internalized rage and humiliation.

Of course, it's not right to just "burn the motherfucker down," but it's certainly understandable as hell. At least if you get a hold of your self-absorbed self and imagine what it's like to have a cop with his knee on your neck . . . just because he can, figuring the consequences for that will be minimal.

WELL, we're seeing the consequences now, ain't we, Cap?

The problem here is that this sort of riotous anarchy has to be quelled, but the ones whose job that is have zero moral standing to do it. Not anymore. That doesn't make a violent mob any less a violent mob; it just makes us well and truly fucked right now.

Really, we're in an awful place when the tripolar dynamic in any society is, first, the lawless, enraged mob. Then, second, there are the jackbooted thugs, as embodied by Donald Trump and his cultists.
Finally, third, there is what appears to be the feckless liberal authorities -- in this case in Minneapolis -- who believe in relevance and self-abasement (self-abasement which isn't unmerited, I hasten to add), but are powerless to do much else but validate the feelings of the unthinking, enraged Id indiscriminately destroying everything in its path.

Welcome to the Revolution, folks. Chances are, it won't end well.

Minnesota copbots' algorithm needs tweaking


Let me get this straight: A mob burns down half a Minneapolis city block, including a police station, and . . . nothing. 

But a CNN crew, standing where the cops said it could do a live shot, gets arrested while on the air.


This after the reporter told the state police copbots they'd move wherever the cops wished. Handcuffs. No explanations for the arrests.

PERHAPS THE crew's mistake was that it didn't burn shit down. Then the CNN journalists would be golden.

Welcome to Amerika. Now, why are mobs smashing in storefronts and burning down police precincts again?

Obviously, there are many paths to mindless thugishness. Indiscriminately burning down your city as part of a mob is only one of them.

Monday, August 14, 2017

Land of the sucker, home of the coward


You know about Charlottesville. You know what President Trump said (or, rather, didn't say) about Charlottesville.

You probably have heard some Trump-addled right-wing ditwad blame the neo-Nazi riot in the Virginia college town on former President Barack Obama, or Black Lives Matter . . . or on any damned thing apart from the neo-Nazis and their chief enabler and encourager, Donald Trump.


You even might have heard some Trump-loving American fascists -- and make no mistake, to love Donald Trump and his agenda is to be an American fascist -- blame Heather Heyer, 32, for her own death in an act of neo-Nazi domestic terrorism. I have heard just that. Then again, I am originally from the fascist stronghold of Baton Rouge, La., and sometimes read the comments on local news stories there.  (I need to quit doing that.)

Heather Heyer
As the demented Nazi-apologist argument (such as it is) goes, Heyer is to blame for her own demise . . . because she was there. And for being a hateful "libtard" who had the gall to protest against white-supremacists who, after all, were exercising their First Amendment rights.

In the words of the American troll's favorite American antihero, "BAD!" Or was it "SAD!" ? I forget.


THIS BRINGS me to something Al Jazeera English dug from the depths of YouTube. I hesitate to bring Al Jazeera into this, because someone sees "Al Jazeera," thinks "MUSLIN TERRORISS!!!" and what's left of their brain freezes up. Anyway. . . .

What the cable-news outlet found and posted to social media was a clip from the 1947 reissue of Don't Be a Sucker, a 1943 anti-fascist propaganda film produced by the U.S. War Department. Cliff's Notes version: The film opens with a montage of all the ways one can be suckered, segues into a fascist stump speaker on the courthouse square in Anytown, U.S.A., then outlines the rise and fall (and toll) of Nazi rule in Germany.

The clip going around Facebook, et al, was supposed to be a history-based argument on the evils of fascism and white supremacy. And that it indeed is. But if you hunt down Don't Be a Sucker on the Internet -- a high-quality version is downloadable from the Internet Archive -- and watch the whole thing, much more becomes clear. Clear as someone caught in the high-wattage beam of a concentration-camp spotlight.


Cleaned-up a bit for 21st-century consumption, the fascist agitator's spiel in the public square is a remarkable facsimile of a Donald Trump campaign speech. The National Socialists' tactics to divide and conquer German society resemble something as contemporary, and Trumpian, as today's headlines. And our divided, faltering American society today is ripe for the conquering.



DONALD TRUMP knew that two years ago. American Nazis and other assorted white supremacists know it today. It is no accident that many of the racist rabble on parade in Virginia were chanting "Heil, Trump!" as they gave their stiff-armed Nazi salutes.

What the government of the United States warned its citizens about more than 70 years ago now is running the United States government. American voters who damn well ought to have known better -- been better -- put fascism in that high position.


Think about that, if you can stomach it.

Then think about what the hell you're going to do about it.

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

'We must be strategic in how we riot'


When a major cable network lets fools like Marc Lamont Hill on its air to say things like "We must be strategic in how we riot," you know with absolute certainty that the last grown-up in television news has died or retired.

President Obama wasn't kidding the other night at the White House Correspondents Dinner when he "joked" that "usually the only people impersonating journalists on CNN are journalists on CNN."

As I watched rioters rule the streets of Baltimore last night on CNN, with police standing by observing as thugs looted liquor stores and set buildings alight not 50 yards away, I thought "This is a civilization refusing to defend itself." It seems to me there is a hierarchy of imperatives, and just above "Police should neither kill nor brutalize ordinary citizens or suspects in custody" is "Society must not be allowed to descend into violent mayhem."

Last night, Baltimore descended into violent mayhem. Last night, its elected leaders fiddled while Baltimore burned. And on a national "news" network, some damn-fool commentator lamented that the oppressed needed to be more "strategic" in their rioting.


Marc Lamont Hill
FORGET "two wrongs don't make a right." Forget that by looting and burning the stores of merchants, burning a church's senior-housing project that was under construction, assaulting bystanders and journalists for the crime of being white and endangering the lives of innocent residents of their own neighborhoods the rioters threw away any claim to the moral high ground. Forget every single thing that should be self-evident in any society not intent on suicide.

Forget all that.

Instead, let's focus on the strategic value of being "strategic" in your rioting.

The moneyed and powerful may no longer possess the will to preserve public order or defend a teetering civilization, but I will guaran-damn-tee you that the moneyed and powerful -- in other words, the ruling class -- does have the will to defend its money and its power. So what then happens when "strategic" rioters head downtown, or to affluent neighborhoods, to strategically riot, burn, kill and loot? What happens when city hall and Camden Yards, home of baseball's Baltimore Orioles, go up in flames?

ME, I'm thinking that when Stuff White People Like start to be consumed by the all-encompassing rage and "strategic" rioting of the underclass, those who might be indifferent to the ongoing immolation of the ghetto suddenly will embrace the tactical efficiency of helicopter gunships and Bradley Fighting Vehicles. If and when that comes to pass, I wonder what academic rabble-rouser Marc Lamont Hill -- more commonly known in the 'hood as "p***y-ass toilet fodder" -- then might think of being "strategic in how we riot."


Ultimately, when a minority suffers injustice and abuse by those in power, moral authority is the only authority it possesses and moral suasion is the only weapon it can count on. When people who are vastly outnumbered and, in Fortress America, vastly outgunned as well start to believe that two wrongs do make a right, at some point they will find the "oppressors" think that three just might.

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Live from the riot

 Not particularly safe for work. It's a riot . . . uncensored.

It's amazing how a situation can go south in an instant. 

Rage is a seductive, untamable beast.

Charlie LeDuff of Fox 2, WJBK in Detroit, documents what's all the rage today in America from news of the non-indictment of the cop who shot Michael Brown to the descent into mayhem on the streets of Ferguson, Mo.


WHAT'S interesting is how LeDuff tries to tell the aggrieved and enraged that, as a Detroiter, he knows a thing or two about riots and how they kill cities dead. What's unsurprising is that rage is deaf . . . when it's not being blinded by tear gas.

Welcome to your future, America. It looks a lot like the 1960s, only with a harder edge and a lot less ingrained hope for the future. Really.

This won't play on the blog. But the video is here.

IT IS at this point that I turn the microphone over to Jeff Daniels, as seen in the opening scene of the HBO series, The Newsroom. Behold some of the most bare-knuckled truth ever in a TV series.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

'We are . . . Penn State!'


Oh, goody.

I think I've just located the one generation s****ier than my own.

That would be my generation's children. As a Baby Boomer, I'm so proud . . . not.

If we had any honesty and shame about us, we'd clothe ourselves in sackcloth and
cover ourselves in ashes at the sight of the Neanderthal darlings we've so carefully taught on the prowl at Penn State, rioting against the reappearance of rectitude in its besoiled halls.

Of course, The New York Times has all the news that's fit to weep over, as America dies a little more every day:
“I think the point people are trying to make is the media is responsible for Joe Pa going down,” said freshman Mike Clark, 18, adding that he believed Mr. Paterno met both his legal and moral responsibility by telling university authorities about Mr. Sandusky’s alleged 2002 assault on a boy in a school shower.

Demonstrators tore down two lampposts, one falling into a crowd of students. They also threw rocks and fireworks at police, who responded with pepper spray. The crowd undulated like an accordion, with the students crowding the police and the officers pushing them back.

“We got rowdy and we got maced,” Jeff Heim, 19, said rubbing his red, teary eyes. “But make no mistake, the board started this riot by firing our coach. They tarnished a legend.”

An orderly crowd first filled the lawn in front of Old Main when news of Mr. Paterno’s firing came via students’ cell phones. When the crowd took to the downtown streets, it’s anger and intensity swelled. Students shouted “We are Penn State.”

Some blew vuvuzelas, others air horns. One young man sounded reveille on a trumpet. Four girls in heels danced on the roof of a parked SUV and dented it when they fell after a group of men shook the vehicle. A few, like Justin Muir, 20, a junior studying hotel and restaurant management, threw rolls of toilet paper into the trees.

“It’s not fair,” Mr. Muir said hurling a white ribbon. “The board is an embarrassment to our school and a disservice to the student population.”

(snip)

Greg Becker, 19, a freshman studying computer science, said he felt he had to vent his feelings anyway.

“This definitely looks bad for our school,” he said sprinting away from a cloud of spray. “I’m sure Joe Pa wouldn’t want this, but this is just an uproar now, we’re finding a way to express our anger.”

As the crowd got more aggressive, so did police officers. Some rioters fought back. One man in gas mask rushed a half dozen police officers in protective gear, blasted one officer with spray underneath his safety mask and then sprinted away. The officer lay on the ground, rubbing his eyes.

Paul Howard, 24, an aerospace engineering student, jeered the police.

“Of course we’re going to riot,” he said. “What do they expect when they tell us at 10 o’clock that they fired our football coach?”


OF COURSE they're going to riot, for they're a bunch of overindulged, self-centered moral black holes. Just like my generation raised them to be.

Because the board trying to clean up a child-molestation scandal "
is an embarrassment to our school and a disservice to the student population." And because it's important that collegians find "a way to express our anger.”

Not only do we find that in a world without God, "everything is permitted," but that it most certainly will happen if you take away people's false gods as well.
Like Joe Paterno and Nittany Lion football.

The narcissistic little goons of Penn State are the spawn of my narcissistic generation, which majored in idolatry back in the day and called it "the New Morality." We were looking for hope, but settled for peacesexdope, then raised a Millennial tribe poised to settle for even less.

How very devo -- D-E-V-O -- is the over-educated mob that's not only become living proof of de-evolution, but also has made prophets out of a kitschy New Wave aggregation from the late '70s and early '80s. Naturally.

Jocko homo, y'all.

Here's more proof of our present de-evolutionary state. The parents of Penn State's precious little Visigoths used to do this kind of stuff to protest a bloody and unnecessary war in Vietnam. Their children, however, do this kind of stuff to protest trustees firing a football coach who cared more about keeping up appearances than about stopping an alleged child-rapist when he had the chance. A man who loved to talk about "character" but lacked the guts to exhibit even a little of it when it counted.

"We are . . . Penn Rape!"

That would be truth in advertising for the barbarian hordes of Happy Valley.

HOW FITTING that the carefully constructed illusion of Penn State as some sort of honorable, model institution would come crashing down along with the carefully constructed illusion that was the man who built it -- Joe Paterno.

Cry me a river, you little bastards. More tear gas, please!

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

This . . . is London


Somewhere in hell, Adolf Hitler is kicking himself right now for wasting all that time and effort on the Blitz.

This works just about as well and proves to be much more demoralizing for the British public than Luftwaffe air raids.



FOLKS, THIS IS what it looks like when people have no morals, no taboos and no hope for the future. The Brits are no more or no less virtuous than we in the States, and now we're entering the Age of Austerity, too, with fewer jobs, fewer social services, less welfare, less hopefulness, more materialism and more nihilism.

Take a hard look. This is the next new thing, coming soon from Austerity Britain to Tea Party America.


P.S.: I agree with the British public. Mark Stone has two of them.

Sunday, August 07, 2011

The next big thing

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy


When I was young, the wave of the future rolled in from the east across the North Atlantic.

The British Invasion, it was called. First, the Beatles . . . then everybody and everything. That's where we got "mod." That's where we got New Wave, too.

Now, from
NBC News' World Blog is a foreshadowing from Austerity Britain about what may well be coming to Austerity America.

Again.
As political and social protests grip the Middle East, are growing in Europe and a riot exploded in north London this weekend, here's a sad truth, expressed by a Londoner when asked by a television reporter: Is rioting the correct way to express your discontent?

"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?"

The TV reporter from Britain's ITV had no response. So the young man pressed his advantage. "Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."

Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere.

The truth is that discontent has been simmering among Britain's urban poor for years, and few have paid attention. Social activists say one out of two children in Tottenham live in poverty. It's one of the poorest areas of Britain. Britain's worst riots in decades took place here in 1985. A policeman was hacked to death. After these riots, the same young man pointed out, "They built us a swimming pool."

Police and local leaders in Tottenham made real progress in improving community relations in the intervening years and that's true about all of Britain. The best way to prevent crime, the theory goes, is to improve the lot of the people, then they won't need to commit crimes. But caught in a poverty and joblessness cycle, young people in many British urban areas have little hope of a better life.

So when a local 29-year-old father, described by police as a gangster, was shot dead by an officer, the response came quickly.
AS AN ANCIENT GREEK philosopher once wrote, "When the people lose hope, the fit hits the shan . . . but good."

Sadly, causing the people to lose hope is something American government and society have learned to do very, very well.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Apocalypse Night in Canada

O Canada!
Our home and native land!

True patriot rage in all thy sons command.
With flaming cars we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we lose our s*** for thee.
God help our lads burn Vancouver, B.C.!
O Canada, we lose our s*** for thee.
O Canada, we lose our s*** for thee.

Friday, July 30, 2010

They like us! They really like us!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy


Well, I think that Afghanistan venture is going rather swimmingly, don't you?

The news is so encouraging, and the happy natives seem so grateful for our benevolent presence. What?

Uh . . . I suppose you can believe the following report from MSNBC if you like -- and that horrid, horrid video from the "mainstream, lamestream media," but I am obligated to caution you against such anti-American behavior.

WHY WOULD any patriot believe this kind of communistic agitprop, which we absotively must refudiate at every turn?
Six U.S. service members have been killed in Afghanistan, bringing the toll for July to at least 66 and making it the deadliest month for American forces in the near-nine-year war.

A NATO statement Friday said three troops died in two separate blasts in southern Afghanistan Thursday. The statement gave no nationalities, but U.S. officials said all three were Americans. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity pending notification of kin.

Another statement issued later Friday said three more had died, one following an insurgent attack and twin a roadside bombing in southern Afghanistan.

U.S. and NATO commanders had warned that casualties would rise as the international military force ramps up the war against the Taliban, especially in their southern strongholds in Helmand and Kandahar provinces. President Barack Obama ordered 30,000 reinforcements to Afghanistan last December in a bid to turn back a resurgent Taliban.

British and Afghan troops launched a new offensive Friday in the Sayedebad area of Helmand to try to deny insurgents a base from which to launch attacks in Nad Ali and Marjah, the British military announced. Coalition and Afghan troops have sought to solidify control of Marjah after overrunning the poppy-farming community five months ago.

The six deaths raised the U.S. death toll for the month to at least 66, according to an Associated Press count. June had been the deadliest month for the U.S. with 60 deaths. There have been 264 U.S. service members killed in combat and noncombat situations so far this year in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, according to the AP.
DON'T YOU believe all this talk about dead American soldiers -- they're resting. Or maybe they're stunned.

That easily could happen, as wild as those Afghan parties get. Just like the one above, which the lamestream media wants you to believe was a riot.

Libtards.

Sunday, March 07, 2010

Us in 1929


When I arrived in North Platte, Neb., during the last gasps of winter in 1983, something struck me about the place -- especially as a native of the Deep South.

There weren't any black people to speak of. I mean, the place was as white as the snow on the ground.

AS IT turns out, there were reasons for that. I'd wager that something close to being chief among those reasons would be what happened Saturday, July 13, 1929. ("Darkies"? A newspaper in Prescott, Ariz., thought it respectable to use the word "darkies" in a headline -- or anywhere else? Really?)

The North Platte incident was especially eerie in light of what happened here in Omaha a decade earlier, on Sept. 28, 1919.


DON'T THINK we're much more civilized these days, and don't think there aren't groups out there ready and willing to play with fire in these "interesting times."

Friday, February 22, 2008

I don't understand. . . .


I don't understand. This isn't New Orleans, and none of these people are poor and black.

It can't be! I'll bet this was just staged on a Hollywood set by some God-hatin' lib'ruls to perpetuate their politically correct lies.

JUST LIKE the "moon landings" in 1969. And 1970.

And 1971.

And 1972.

I just don't get it. This, they say, is not New Orleans. It's some place called "Serbia."

That must be some foreign-language word for "white n****rs." It's got to be.

Neal Boortz said.