This situation seems very strange.
I know that area well, because I lived nearby for many years. In several previous posts, I've referred to Ventura Boulevard, which locals refer to as simply "the Boulevard." It marked a class divide: Affluent folk in "the Industry" lived south of the Boulevard, while working class heroes like Yours Truly lived north of the Boulevard.
(So it was. Nowadays, you have to be doing well to get anywhere near the Boulevard.)
Know this: Until recently, nobody lived on the Boulevard.
It's a purely commercial thoroughfare. Not many years ago, someone finally tore down the saucer-shaped Jehovah's Witness Temple and developed an area called Chalk Hill, which burbled up like a blister in a suburb called Woodland Hills. The apartment buildings erected where the "saucer" once stood are probably the only dwellings to be found anywhere on that boulevard. The embedded image shows these new-ish apartments.
Today, a pro-Trump caravan of cars was shot at while traveling down Ventura Boulevard; the shots were fired from one of the apartment buildings pictured above. The cars were heading toward Studio City, some 11 miles to the east. This is a very liberal area, no question about it. It's also very affluent and -- let's be honest -- very white. Those apartment buildings were built for the reasonably-well-heeled.
I never met anyone in that part of the Valley who would consider opening fire on anyone for any reason. These aren't gun people. These are people who will eat avocado toast and quinoa until the next food fad comes along.
Frankly, this whole thing looks staged. I'm not saying that the Trumpers inside the cars were in on it. But the odor of fish is so powerful I can smell it all the way on the other side of the country. I think that this event was designed to allow Trump supporters to claim "oppressed victim" status.
Also note that Trump immediately offered a tweet free of his usual misspellings.
Remember the "Mexican caravan" stories that kept piling up in the lead-up to the elections of 2018? Remember how the caravan vanished the moment the election was over?
(Please read the two posts below, which are related.)
5 comments:
In Portland an anti-fascist is quoted as saying "I am not sad that a f*cking fascist died tonight". Fine. I'm not sad either. But that doesn't mean the action helped the anti-fascist cause, nor that it didn't hinder it and help the fascists, or help forces in the state who have an influence on both sides to shift the conflict in the direction they want to shift it, a direction not beneficial for the antifascist cause, to put it mildly. Sometimes how you feel doesn't on its own lead to the right conclusion. Often you need a parallelogram of how you feel together with some of the ol' ratiocination. (For this observation, permit me to cite Germaine Greer in "The Female Eunuch".)
Anyone with a bit of nous and some historical knowledge, not necessarily going back to Budapest or Caracas but even if it just goes back to Kiev, will immediately think "sniper?"
The fear is that many in the anti-fascist and BLM scene will not acquire the required nous and knowledge soon enough, although I don't doubt they are requiring a lot of both in (agents provocateurs aside) their generally deeply well-intentioned practice.
If snipers whether working directly for state agencies or teleguided at arm's length are out and about, or there is a strong probability that they are, then that needs to be the top subject for discussion in anti-fascist circles - and the discussion must lead to some more or less immediate decisions which must be acted upon.
That nobody has yet been arrested either for the fatal shooting in Portland or for the shooting in LA may say a lot.
Meanwhile in Trafalgar Square in London some sh*tbag unfurled a British Union of Fascists flag for the cameras - the BUF having been an organisation that changed its name in the second half of the 1930s and folded soon after. I wonder how many genuine demonstrators even knew who the guy was. This was an anti-lockdown and "Stop the New Normal" demo on which QAnon nutters got a lot of publicity but surely they weren't the overwhelming majority of protesters? That might perhaps be wishful thinking on my part.
Portland, ongoing.
Kenosha...
Ventura Blvd. Wow.
This is more very, very bad news.
Thanks for posting.
LA CBS News ran a pretty decent piece about the Trump rally and the gunshots. I would suggest that your claim that all or almost everyone who lived in those apartments are white is erroneous. There are a lot of successful businesses in that area that would create a diverse blend of all races.
An African American woman was interviewed and she stated there was a loud argument among a relatively small group of Trump Supporters and Trump Detractors just before the shots rang out. And before that the Trump Supporters had bottles thrown at them.
All the Major Professional Sports have mobilized an anti Trump stance even though between Clinton and Obama the Democrats have held the White House for 16 of the last 23 years, yet somehow Trump is to blame. lol.
When I grew up in the area, there were almost no black families other than the Jacksons -- yes, THE Jacksons -- who lived four miles to the east. The area became somewhat more diverse over time, but only somewhat. And while it is true that I've been on the other coast for the past ten years, I feel confident in stating that the place is more exclusive than ever before in terms of INCOME. Since housing prices have become so onerous, the operative color in that place is not white or black but green.
We're talking about the latte crowd. They don't let kerfluffles escalate into gunfire.
The L.A. Times spoke of three people, including one shooter, operating out of a specific unit. I don't yet know if that unit was empty or if it was rented. Judging from the Street View photos, there seem to be a number of empty units.
If someone fired out of a empty unit, we have a plausible scenario for a staged event. Since it would have taken the cops a while to show up, the shooters had time to escape. The hill behind those apartments is still rather wild, surprisingly enough, so maybe they went there.
Not that it matters, but when I was fourteen or so, a friend and I were hanging out atop that very same hill, doing nothing. It was quite undeveloped back then. We were buzzed by a police chopper. I wanted to skedaddle but my friend wanted to stay put. After about ten minutes, an out-of-shape cop trudged up the hill, huffing and puffing. He quickly looked us over, then brusquely said "Sorry. Wrong guys." He said something into his radio and the chopper left.
b, the "Britain under seige" narrative is only coming from the streets because of the Tories and the Right wing media. Witness the UK Times' account of how the BBC planned to drop Rule Britannia from the last night of the Proms. The claim. taken up even by the PM, was entirely fictional.
"... culture-war skirmishes are no longer a sideshow to our politics – they are the politics. They are how rightwing electoral prospects are now advanced; not through policies or promises of a better life, but by fostering a sense of threat, a fantasy that something profoundly pure and British is constantly at risk of extinction."
For the Right pushing the fear button is now the only weapon they have.
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