Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by takyon on Friday July 08 2016, @03:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the "All-lives-matter."-President-Obama dept.

Snipers in Dallas: [5] Cops Dead; [6] More Cops Wounded

The Atlantic reports:

Two gunmen shot eleven police officers in Dallas, Texas [at 8:58 PM July 7], killing at least four of them.

[...] At a Thursday night press conference, Dallas Police Department Chief David Brown said [...] officers had one of the suspects "cornered", but did not offer further details.

"Tonight, it appears that two snipers shot ten police officers from elevated positions during the protest/rally", Brown said in an initial statement. "Three officers are deceased, two are in surgery, and three are in critical condition. An intensive search for suspect is currently underway." The police department later said an eleventh officer had also been injured and a fourth officer had been killed.

[...] The shootings occurred during a protest against police killings earlier this week in Louisiana and Minnesota. Hundreds rallied in downtown Dallas, near the corner of Main Street and Lamar Street. Local news footage captured what sounds like several gunshots being fired, and the crowd scattering.

[...] No motive has yet been established and it's unclear whether the shooting was related to the protest.

The New York Times just broke the story about the latest in the police killings of black men. It seems the tide has been turned. [Five] Dallas police officers were killed tonight at a protest in that city over these shootings.

I am not surprised, nor am I particularly shocked. No doubt there will be more to come on this topic as the evening progresses. Hopefully something good comes out of this, but I am inclined to doubt it.

takyon: Some more details: One suspect was killed by an explosion intentionally caused by a police robot. He reportedly told a negotiator that he was upset about Black Lives Matter, the recent police shootings, and wanted to kill white people, especially police officers. He said he was not affiliated with any groups and acted alone. Other suspects have been arrested, and a "person of interest" (often identified as a suspect by the news media) was arrested early in the night after he was photographed with his unloaded AR-15. He handed his weapon to an officer shortly after the shootings, and later turned himself into the police for questioning.

President Obama spoke about the shootings shortly after arriving in Poland for a NATO conference. In part, he mentioned that, "When people say 'black lives matter,' that doesn't mean blue lives don't matter, it just means all lives matter — but right now the big concern is the fact that the data shows black folks are more vulnerable to these kinds of incidents [...] This isn't a matter of us comparing the value of lives. This is recognizing that there is a particular burden that is being placed on a group of our fellow citizens. And we should care about that. And we can't dismiss it. We can't dismiss it."


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by RedBear on Friday July 08 2016, @05:47PM

    by RedBear (1734) on Friday July 08 2016, @05:47PM (#371937)

    False flag?

    Call me paranoid, but this smells like agents provocateurs to me. Gangbangers are not known for sniping, or, for that matter, being able to hit jack shit with any accuracy to speak of. The "suspect" saying "I wanna kill white people and especially cops" sounds phony as fuck. And why is no one mentioning the robot thing? Yeah, this smells like another good crisis not allowed to go to waste, if you take my meaning...

    OK. You're paranoid. Anyone who starts talking about false flags without some darn good direct evidence of such is already going down the path of crackpot conspiracy theorist. That way lies madness and a complete disconnection from reality if you're not careful.

    You're also racist. Maybe they released that info by now, but last I heard we have no idea of who the shooter is, much less whether he's black. But even though it's a fairly obvious assumption, jumping from "black man" to "gangbanger" is quite racially biased. Who knows, he might be a college professor, or maybe a trained former Marine sharpshooter, just like good old Lee Harvey Oswald. He can't be a complete amateur, he somehow managed to get 5 kills out of 11 targets hit in what must have been a chaotic situation.

    I also have no problem believing that a single black person out of several million finally got pushed over the edge after living in a country plagued with systemic racism his whole life. Do you really have trouble believing that? And since we have police robots now, how does it not make sense that they used one to end the armed standoff with the shooter, rather than risking any other officers' lives? How does wisely using a robot translate to conspiracy?

    Yeah, in short, nothing you said really made any sense to me. But that's just me.

    --
    ¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
    ... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=2, Interesting=1, Total=3
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JNCF on Friday July 08 2016, @07:29PM

    by JNCF (4317) on Friday July 08 2016, @07:29PM (#371991) Journal

    I totally agree that some of OP's statements were racist, but the rest of my comment will ignore this. I'm more interested in the paranoia angle.

    The US government has a history of false flags. One great example is Operation Northwoods [wikipedia.org], which proposed various plans to start a war with Cuba. The documents that have been released only mention an attack on Washington, DC, in passing. They spend much more time going over the details of how to make it appear that the Cuban government had attacked a civilian aircraft, when in fact the aircraft would have been replaced with a self-destructing drone mid-flight and the "civilians" would have been CIA agents using fake identities. JFK vetoed Northwoods. We (The People) didn't discover any of this during the first investigation of the Kennedy assassination, it didn't become public knowledge until 1997 (through another investigation of the assassination). So if the government is currently planning false flags, it wouldn't seem unreasonable to assume an ~35-year-if-ever delay betweening planning and disclosure. Nobody plans on disclosing a false flag attack.

    Given that our government has a track record of planning false flags, just like other governments do, it seems reasonable to question whether or not politically advantageous violence is a false flag. We've established that our government is willing to make up civilian deaths. Of course, it also appears that real attacks are happening. The question is how likely a given attack is to be government planned. Even if you think it ridiculously unlikely, it's almost bound to happen sometimes. With Northwoods, we should be able to agree that at least once the US government planned a false flag attack. It's an example that never came to fruition, but that may be why they were willing to eventually tell us about it decades later. The second Gulf of Tonkin incidnt is another great example of a faked attack, albeit one in which no casualties were claimed. We have greater evidence for these being government lies than we do the infamous example of the Reichstag fire, which we only have the usefullness and one Nuremberg testimony to go on (the propagandist accused of setting the fire denied the claim until the end, and was apparently forthcoming on other matters).

    I don't model this attack as being >50% likely of being a false flag. I'd probably put it somewhere <5%, and <0.5% doesn't seem unreasonable. But it is a divisive attack in an election year, and I think it is reasonable to question who benefits even though we have no evidence of it being false flag (there shouldn't be easy evidence, if the supposed conspirators did their jobs correctly). I'm not even sure who benefits. Does the CIA have an interest in who wins this election cycle? Could this be an attempt to use racial violence to get conservatives on the same page as liberals with regards to rolling back the 2nd amendment? I don't have answers, only questions. Probably, this was a lone wolf. Maybe, the government is lying again. I've noticed they have a habit of that, and it makes it very difficult for me to determine which parts of their naratives are real. I feel no obligation to take their press releases at face value. If they wanted trust, they should never have planned false flags. It's too late to go back now, even decades later. State level actors are hard to model, and damn tricky. I feel like we should have the false flag conversation every time something potentially useful to government interests happens, even if we generally conclude "probably wasn't."

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 09 2016, @01:42AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 09 2016, @01:42AM (#372165)

      > The US government has a history of false flags,

      Any organization big enough will eventually have members who do stupid, nefarious shit.
      The question is not whether or not some of them have tried it. What matters is how common is it for them to try it.
      The answer seems to be that it is pretty damn rare.

      • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Saturday July 09 2016, @02:46AM

        by JNCF (4317) on Saturday July 09 2016, @02:46AM (#372185) Journal

        Or perhaps finding out they were false flags is pretty damn rare. If we agree that groups within the government sometimes perpetrate false flag attacks, and it is downright circular to say that perpetrators of false flag attacks do not want the false-flaggedness of those attacks to be known, it would seem to follow that they probably get some through on us sometimes (unless you consider the CIA to be incredibly inept). False flag attacks could seem pretty damn rare while really being a once-every-couple-decades sort of phenomenon, or even something far worse. Or maybe you're right, and they really are scant. I'm not doubting that as a serious possibility, but I don't see it as the only one.

        I will say this: either the Kremlin does more sketchy shit than Washington, or Washington is better at hiding their shit.

      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 09 2016, @02:07PM

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 09 2016, @02:07PM (#372356) Journal

        The Spanish American war was predicated on an attack on a United States ship that didn't happen. That may or may not qualify as a "false flag attack", because it seems the ship was blown up accidentally. Or, was it? Whatever, our government KNEW that the Spanish didn't sink our ship, but they used it as propaganda all the same.

    • (Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Saturday July 09 2016, @03:54AM

      by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 09 2016, @03:54AM (#372213) Journal

      If one wants the word racist to have some actual meaning one shouldn't use it for petty stuff that could easily be imaginary offenses caused by the reader rather than the speaker. Reserve allegations of racism for use against people who kill or seriously harm people due to their skin color and racial group, or who seriously advocate the same (not satire, "trolling", or devil's advocates).

      Otherwise the word racism will remain meaningless and continue to cover up and encourage actual racism.

      --
      Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
      • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Saturday July 09 2016, @04:48AM

        by JNCF (4317) on Saturday July 09 2016, @04:48AM (#372225) Journal

        From OP:

        Gangbangers are not known for sniping, or, for that matter, being able to hit jack shit with any accuracy to speak of.

        Note the unfounded assumption that this guy was a gangbanger. Military service points to basic firearms training, as others have pointed out. She was questioning his technical skill with a firearm based on a clearly prejudiced assumption.

        From you:

        Reserve allegations of racism for use against people who kill or seriously harm people due to their skin color and racial group, or who seriously advocate the same (not satire, "trolling", or devil's advocates).

        I'm going to disregard this advice and continue using a dictionary definition of that word. You're conflating violence with racism somehow. Prejudice based on race is enough to qualify you as racist (there are other ways of qualifying, of course).

        • (Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Saturday July 09 2016, @06:14AM

          by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 09 2016, @06:14AM (#372257) Journal

          Thing is though that by using the word for fairly trivial stuff like someone reaching an unfounded conclusion or two or simply venting in a politically incorrect manner one makes it at first into nothing but a petty insult without much substance, then into an annoyance, and further into a badge of pride as people get tired of all the people constantly telling everyone else that they're being racist when at least initially they weren't adherents of racial supremacy. This has already happened as far as many people are concerned and each day both the number and intensity grows, literally driving people into hatred and violence against them.

          As for your quotes what's often referred to as spray & pray isn't racist and the assumption depends on your interpretation; it is you who assume. You might be correct but it's not at all as clear as you think. "Gangbangers" isn't racist either but a colloquialism for gang members (which might be of any race).

          --
          Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
          • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Saturday July 09 2016, @05:56PM

            by JNCF (4317) on Saturday July 09 2016, @05:56PM (#372419) Journal

            I'm not doublespeaking around the fact that assuming a black man is a gang member without any clear evidence is racial prejudice in the context of our culture. When political shooters are white, we don't label them gangbangers. This was clear flamebaitery on the part of OP. I wasn't even trying to discuss the definition of racism, I was just trying to make it clear that I was avoiding the issue because I was more interested in another part of the discussion and that this avoidance shouldn't be taken as tacit agreement with OP on the topic. I'm going to continue using dictionary definitions of the word "racism," but I guess you can keep piling new politically-motivated definitions on top. It would be less ambiguous if you used a new variable, like $RACISM (pronounced "dollar-racism"), so as to avoid confusing it with the already overloaded term "racism," but you can do whatever. I'm definitely going to keep calling racial prejudice racism, even if there is no explicit supremacy or violence involved.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Friday July 08 2016, @07:50PM

    by sjames (2882) on Friday July 08 2016, @07:50PM (#372003) Journal

    The robot thing *IS* a huge deal. Think about it, suspect pinned down nowhere to go and nobody to hurt. Solution? Send in the JudgeJuryExecutioner bot to blow him to bits in place. Correct solution? He'll surrender once he is tired and hungry enough. Risks? He might scuff the robot.

    Since when is an anti-personnel bomb a legitimate police weapon?

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JNCF on Friday July 08 2016, @08:32PM

      by JNCF (4317) on Friday July 08 2016, @08:32PM (#372034) Journal

      And where did they get the bomb from? Did they have an extra bomb sitting around just in case? If so is that normal for them, or was it something that they had because of the demonstrations? Did they have to request a bomb from another agency while the guy was pinned down? Did they get it from the FBI, like that time that cops bombed the MOVE headquarters in 1985? [wikipedia.org]

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 09 2016, @04:59AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 09 2016, @04:59AM (#372229)

        Yeah, this is what worries me, too. See my comments elsewhere, which seem to echo yours. Best case scenario is that the bomb squad has extra test bomb parts lying around for training exercises. But even that raises questions, like how the kersplodey decision was made, and whether it is policy. But even that means that a bomb was brought to a college campus with the express intent to kill people, by people who already have lethal force available to them.

        Seems like a thoughtful exposition of the steps leading to the kill decision, and by what means is warranted.