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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."


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 12 2016, @06:01AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 12 2016, @06:01AM (#373481)

    No one of consequence.

  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday July 12 2016, @06:09AM

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday July 12 2016, @06:09AM (#373483) Journal

    You're making some good points, but I'm out of patience with these particular people. There is such a thing as wearing out another person's good will. More to the point, when I tried this approach, nothing changed...so why bother? It's like giving medicine to a corpse.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 12 2016, @08:49AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 12 2016, @08:49AM (#373522)

      I deeply empathize with your frustration, as should most people who have interacted with other humans on teh internets. It can be helpful to keep in mind that ideas, like seeds, sometimes take time to show signs of growth. (I'm a living example of someone who had an idea planted in mind a decade before it actually sprouted to the point of changing my worldview.)

      Who is your audience; more to the point: who do you want your audience to be? I'll assume for the moment that your primary audience when dealing with posters you find frustrating are bystanding readers and not particularly the parent poster themselves. (If your audience is the poster, the "corpse", then why bother responding to them at all if they're "dead" unless it's to blow off steam at the expense of bystanders' eyeballs, eyeballs which may have mod points?) We as the bystanders are only likely to have the immediate thread in front of us as context for the entire argument, and if Poster A is calmly and cooly posting assertions that seem reasonable, and Poster B is raging at Poster A by calling them every name in the book without apparent cause and using nothing but insults as a counter to Poster A's assertions, I strongly suspect that most readers not already in solid opposition to Poster A's views will view Poster B as the "bad guy".

      If you can present a clear, concise example of a fatal flaw in the other's post, you not only have a chance of swaying the audience to your view, but for authors who value fact and reason, you also have a chance at changing their viewpoint as well, as in my own example above. (Posters that are blatant trolls or liars I do tend to directly label as such, preferably with one or two links to examples from their own posting history.) Even if you both don't come to an agreement, you at least have a much better shot at coming to an understanding of each other's viewpont, along with a historical thread to reference in the future, where future disagreements on worldviews can be summed up with, for example, "that guy just thinks drug users should be dragged into the street and shot", with a link to the relevant thread containing the poster's own words.

      It also seems critically important to at least consider the possibility that one or more of your positions may be erroneous. If my mace has a big 'ol crack in the handle, I'd prefer to find out about it quickly and get it fixed before I find out in the middle of a fight and am forced to fall back on something like the Private Frost method [youtube.com]. Testing one's ideas in the open marketplace tends to shape them and make them stronger (assuming they don't get killed outright).

      Is it even ultimately desirable to have an audience whose favor was only gained by calling someone else the rough equivalent of a "stinky-face"...?

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 13 2016, @08:28PM

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday July 13 2016, @08:28PM (#374180) Homepage Journal

      When you tried a semi-rational approach in IRC we had a reasonably interesting discussion. Here your words are the verbal equivalent of a monkey flinging its own shit. If you really think anyone is dissuaded by unbacked insults here, you have vastly underestimated this community. We're the pros from Dover when it comes to arguments and know weakass ones when we see them.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday July 13 2016, @08:36PM

        by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday July 13 2016, @08:36PM (#374181) Journal

        Except that the insults, dear Uzzard, are dessert after the meal of the main argument. I know your patterns here: I watch what parts of my posts get quoted and replied to. Lies of omission combined with strawmen and misdirection.

        Sorry, but you're not going to mess with my head so easily. I've spent an unfortunate amount of time dealing with actual psychopaths; someone like you, who is merely evil and willfully uninformed, is small potatoes.

        --
        I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 14 2016, @10:12AM

          Exactly, twit. Except you're all dessert and no argument. You're Soylent's Trump.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday July 14 2016, @04:19PM

            by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Thursday July 14 2016, @04:19PM (#374399) Journal

            Wow. I'm actually impressed with the sheer amount of gall it must have taken to type that. Anyone who decides to research both our post histories will see 1) that isn't even close to true and 2) it would be far better said of you, if Ethanol-Fueled weren't a better candidate for the position on account of actually being funny sometimes.

            No, I'm a bit more like the lovechild of H. L. Mencken and George Carlin with two X chromosomes. As to you...no one comes to mind immediately, but I've got an image of someone with a confederate flag and more toes than teeth.

            You've just insulted every single reader of this site who's smart enough to make even a cursory effort to browse peoples' post histories. Keep digging that hole, Uzzard; the more you run your idiot trap, the worse you make yourself look.

            --
            I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
            • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 14 2016, @09:29PM

              Thank you for making my point for me. If you're just gonna troll, we demand better round these parts. You should take lessons or something.

              --
              My rights don't end where your fear begins.
              • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday July 15 2016, @02:28AM

                by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday July 15 2016, @02:28AM (#374625) Journal

                I am not getting through to you, am I?

                What angle do I need to turn this at to get it through your head, Uzzard? You are fooling no one, except possibly yourself. And you're not being clever by responding to everything with "hurr durr that's a troll." Keep digging...

                --
                I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday July 15 2016, @09:38AM

                  You're not arguing, sweety. You're just flinging shit. Not even skillfully. My 12 year old nephew trolls better and he thinks copy pastaing "kill yourself" thirty times is witty.

                  --
                  My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday July 15 2016, @04:54PM

                    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday July 15 2016, @04:54PM (#375000) Journal

                    You can say this as much as you want, but you may as well try and put out the sun by drawing the shades and scribbling "night" on the walls in your own feces. The record speaks for itself.

                    --
                    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...