Who are you and how did you get in here?
I'm a locksmith. And . . . I'm a locksmith.
A good one from Natasha Lennard: The Only Kind of “Political Violence” All U.S. Politicians Oppose
“The idea that there’s political violence … in America like this, is just unheard of, it’s just not appropriate,” said President Joe Biden, the backer of Israel’s genocidal war against Palestine, with a death toll that researchers believe could reach 186,000 Palestinians. Biden’s narrower point was correct, though: Deadly attacks on the American ruling class are vanishingly rare these days. Political violence that is not “like this” — the political violence of organized abandonment, poverty, militarized borders, police brutality, incarceration, and deportation — is commonplace.
That's an Ed Dorn poem:
a bullet
is worth
a thousand bulletins
Remember when Trump assassinated Soleimani and everyone in the U.S.ian political class kept solemnly repeating that Soleimani "had blood on his hands"? No thoughts or prayers or hopes or wishing that we weren't so violent as a society . . .
The latent bird flu within us all activates, and the mortality rate really is 56%
Crooks? Not long ago we had a mass shooter named Crimo. Have FBI profilers been neglecting nominative determinism?
Spiderman and Spongebob
Hell yeah.
Best ever 1-2-3 album combo to start a career? Gotta be in the running.
The New Yorker agrees with you:
But what makes the image is Trump. In its surface details, it carries echoes of the marines at Iwo Jima. In the former President’s bloody defiance, it even evokes Rocky Balboa. On that stage, Trump seemed well aware of the image he was creating. It is an image that captures him as he would like to be seen, so perfectly, in fact, that it may outlast all the rest.
Alas, since 1965, presidential assassinations have been considered federal crimes.
Passersby were amazed at the unusually large amounts of blood.
Full article
The San Francisco Sheriff’s Office acknowledged Friday that the canisters of tear gas used in a training exercise that sickened nearby children on May 21 were “old,” raising questions about health concerns and safety protocols in a facility less than a half a mile from an elementary school.
In a seven-page statement, released 10 days after the ill-fated training session at the San Bruno jail property, sheriff’s officials provided the most comprehensive picture of the incident yet, after days of piecemeal information and mounting frustration from parents of Portola Elementary School students.
The report was the first time sheriff’s officials noted — though not in detail — the age of the chemicals, after the Chronicle reported Wednesday that some of the tear gas expended may have been manufactured decades ago, brought in by UC Berkeley police officers involved in the training activities.
“The SFSO confirmed with the UC Berkeley Police Department officers that took part in the training that the CS canisters used were old, and did not have expiration dates,” the Friday statement said. “We are reviewing the training plan submitted and will receive a completed Training Activity Report from the training participants next week.”
Parents who spoke to the Chronicle this past week said several children at the school became violently ill in the days after the exposure, with reactions including projectile vomiting, severe rashes and lung inflammation. Several parents also shared these accounts in a Tuesday evening town hall with school and sheriff’s officials, which the sheriff’s office summarized in its Friday statement.
While it’s unclear whether these symptoms were tied to the exposure to tear gas, parents said the timing and consistency of the accounts felt too coincidental to be unrelated.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists potential symptoms of exposure to riot control agents, including burning or irritation to the eyes, nose and throat, chest tightness, skin rashes, and nausea or vomiting. The agency’s website describes all of these as immediate symptoms, but does not note whether they may also arise days later.
Experts say research is scarce on how children react to riot control agents and that it’s unclear how chemical weapons change over time because the full set of ingredients for them are known only by the manufacturers.
The parents also said they felt abandoned by school and sheriff’s office officials in the days after the incident and were left to navigate complex questions of health and chemistry largely on their own. Until this past week, parents said officials never asked follow-up questions about their children’s health, and families had to advocate for basic actions including decontaminating Portola Elementary’s outdoor surfaces before the school took action.
In a statement to the Chronicle, San Bruno Park School District officials said they were “deeply disturbed by the recent gas testing event at the SF county jail located at 1 Moreland Drive in San Bruno.”
“At the time of the incident, nearly 30 students reported significant symptoms such as coughing, watery eyes, wheezing and trouble breathing. More students developed symptoms once at home including vomiting and rashes,” the statement said. “More than a week later, we still have some students who are suffering adverse effects from the exposure to the tear gas and pepper spray dispersed into the air that day. It is now well documented that some families needed to get emergency medical assistance to support their children who were suffering from the effects of the gas in the air.”
In response to parents’ concerns raised at the town hall, San Bruno Park School District Superintendent Matthew Duffy said he will send out a survey for them to record their children’s symptoms. Duffy added that school officials will formally ask that the sheriff’s office permanently discontinue training involving chemical agents at the San Bruno jail site.
Parents at the town hall were additionally troubled when they learned that the sheriff’s office conducts chemical weapons training exercises several times a year at the facility.
Sheriff’s officials said they have temporarily halted similar training exercises and will continue to update the public as their investigation continues.
The report additionally included health information and the characteristics of one of the two types of gas used in the exercise, CS (2-chlorobenzylidene malononitrile), a summary of the training exercises and the day’s weather conditions, and aerial photos showing the training facility and the school.
Officials said that while OC gas, or pepper spray, was also expended at the training, it is believed that the children were exposed only to CS gas, based on how far CS gas can travel.
Both CS and OC gas are commonly used by law enforcement agencies as a nonlethal means to subdue violent suspects or control crowds at riots.
According to the sheriff’s office statement, CS gas is “an aerosol of a solvent (a substance that dissolves other active substances and that easily evaporates) and 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile, which is a solid compound at room temperature.”
”We want to assure San Bruno residents that we are committed to thoroughly reviewing our training protocols to prevent any future incidents that could compromise the well-being of our community members, especially our children,” the Friday statement said.
The incident is being investigated by multiple agencies, including the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and San Mateo County Environmental Health Services’ Certified Uniform Program Agency — Hazardous Materials. The latter, sheriff’s officials said, will be sending a notice of violation and additional records requests.
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The Only Kind of “Political Violence” All U.S. Politicians Oppose
The Trump rally shooting reveals a bipartisan consensus about what constitutes political violence — and who should wield it.
Full text
A bipartisan sampling of the world’s greatest perpetrators and enablers of political violence has rushed to condemn political violence following the shooting attempt on former President Donald Trump on Saturday.Politicians swiftly coalesced around the language of “political violence,” rather than terrorism, to describe the assassination attempt, carried out by Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was shot dead at the Western Pennsylvania rally. Taken together, the outpourings of condemnations betray a clear agreement on what constitutes political violence, and in whose hands the monopoly on violence should remain.
“The idea that there’s political violence … in America like this, is just unheard of, it’s just not appropriate,” said President Joe Biden, the backer of Israel’s genocidal war against Palestine, with a death toll that researchers believe could reach 186,000 Palestinians. Biden’s narrower point was correct, though: Deadly attacks on the American ruling class are vanishingly rare these days. Political violence that is not “like this” — the political violence of organized abandonment, poverty, militarized borders, police brutality, incarceration, and deportation — is commonplace.
“Everybody must condemn it,” Biden said of the assassination attempt.
And condemn it, most everyone in the Democratic political establishment has: “Political violence is absolutely unacceptable,” wrote Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on X. “There is absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy,” tweeted former President Barack Obama, who oversaw war efforts and military strikes against Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan with massive civilian death tolls; Obama added that we should “use this moment to recommit ourselves to civility and respect in our politics.” “There is no place for political violence, including the horrific incident we just witnessed in Pennsylvania,” wrote Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
The chorus of condemnation was predictable and not in itself a problem: There’s nothing wrong with desiring a world without stochastic assassination attempts, even against political opponents. But when you have Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, Israel Katz of the fascistic ruling Likud Party, tweeting, “Violence can never ever be part of politics,” the very concept of “political violence” is evacuated of meaning.
The problem is not so much one of hypocrisy or insincerity — vices so common in politics that they hardly merit mention. The issue, rather, is what picture of “political violence” this messaging serves: To say that “political violence” has “no place” in a society organized by political violence at home and abroad is to acquiesce to the normalization of that violence, so long as it is state and capitalist monopolized.
As author Ben Ehrenreich noted on X, “There is no place for political violence against rich, white men. It is antithetical to everything America stands for.”
Trump and his Republican Party will no doubt remain committed to a political imaginary of apocalyptic race war and paranoid tribalism, which the assassination attempt will likely only feed. Democrats are welcome to perform civility toward the man who has consistently called for their violent overthrow, but they cannot help themselves to the pretense that their well wishes to Trump actually constitute calls for an end to political violence.
Democratic leaders will call for civility and continue to fill the coffers of police departments nationwide, while sending billions of condition-free dollars and bombs to Israel. Within the U.S., these condemnations of political violence now set the scene for even greater violent repression and policing of protest movements and dissent.
“We will not tolerate this attack from the left,” said Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., who was present at the rally. Little is known about the suspected gunman’s ideology; he was reportedly a registered Republican who once donated to a Democratic PAC on Biden’s inauguration day.
Other Republicans meanwhile blamed Democrats for simply telling the truth about Trump’s far-right extremism. “Today is not just some isolated incident,” Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance wrote on X. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
If centrist Democrats stating the obvious about Trump can be slammed by Republicans as irresponsible, it bodes ill for any actual leftists organizing against fascist forces going forward — especially at a time when left-wing and pro-Palestinian protest movements are readily criminalized by both Democratic and Republican leaders. This is what peace means in a world where the only event to invoke a bipartisan chorus decrying “violence” is an attack on a fascistic former (and potentially future) world leader.