about the storm in the distance

Every act is one of intimidation and threat. If that was all, that would be fine. But it intends to act—to act, then push the limits. Just a matter of how far it will go before it declares victory. 

 

something about “Standoff: Race, Policing, and a Deadly Assault That Gripped a Nation,” a nonfiction book by Jamie Thompson

Standoff counts down the minutes of July 7, 2016, the punishing summer night when a lone gunman waged war on police amid a Black Lives Matter rally in downtown Dallas. That night, protesters, moved by the recent murders by police of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, marched in cities across the nation to demand policing reforms and accountability. Dallas police were monitoring the city’s peaceful protest when a black, young man in a bulletproof vest, armed for battle, murdered five officers and wounded eleven other people.

A chaotic gun battle in the streets moved into a downtown community college, where police cornered the shooter. As a negotiator tried to talk down the gunman, whose cause was sick vengeance for racial injustice in America, the SWAT team armed a robot with a bomb, directed it to the gunman, and blew him to bits.

The author of Standoff, Jamie Thompson, cycles chapters through perspectives—on events and on the issues—from the officers, from family, protesters, a doctor, and the police chief and mayor—people whose lives changed that night.

Aside from the negotiator, who is black, the officers, in Thompson’s telling, all have the colorless view that police decisions should not be questioned—and the officers’ views are the ones most frequently expressed in Standoff. The officers are also portrayed as heroic or tragic. They were.

Note: Jamie Thompson won an Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in writing for her coverage of the gunman’s ambush of Dallas police in July 2016. Thompson originally covered the shooting for The Washington Post and later wrote about it for The Dallas Morning News. She has also contributed to D Magazine, Texas Monthly, and the Tampa Bay Times.

about imagining

I peek outside, then I am drawn through a French door onto the patio. My eyes pull left to the neighbor's house. Through its large bay window I find the eyes of an obese killer, more monster than man. He is a horrifying blob stationed at a breakfast table. He wears women's lingerie—a black teddy. He wants to take my life now.

I briefly lose sight of him as he rushes out the back of his house and exits his garage. But, then, he is all I can see. Because he gushes into my yard and is closing in at a paralyzing speed. The impulse to run takes me.

Roaring nearer, he warns me that he will now begin asking questions, and if I answer correctly, I can live a few seconds more. Here's how it will go. First he will sing, and I must finish the lyrics. So he begins singing "Hallelujah."

I scramble onto a trampoline in the yard, and he corners me there. He is singing, and I think, "She tied you to her kitchen chair, and she broke your throne, and she cut your hair." He is at the edge of the trampoline now. I jump left, he moves left; I jump right, he is there. He is unbelievably fast, and he is singing, and his voice grows incredibly loud. I am in the air, and his singing comes out now in two voices—a high, loud shriek and a low moan. He disappears under the trampoline as I begin coming down, and he is right under me. I try to will my body forward, a lunge unpropelled, an attempt made weak with terror. I wake, bolting upright in bed, hearing my own pitiful, last groan.

about being dull

 
A knifeman forces an 84-year-old priest to his knees at the altar and slits his throat. Why is it that this horrific episode did nothing for the imagination? Is it because it is situated within the shapeless war on terror instead of the short rash of violence wrought during the early Norwegian black metal scene?

but this was the jack-o'-lantern

On the helpfulness of health news

The New York Times article "Journals Asked To Cut Details Of Flu Studies" reports that

a government advisory board is asking scientific journals not to publish details of certain biomedical experiments, for fear that the information could be used by terrorists to create deadly viruses and touch off epidemics.

At first I read this as the story of an unserious government response to a serious problem: the threat of bioterrorism. But more likely it's just bad reporting--unhelpful and uninformative at best, borderline alarmist at worst. The reason is that by emphasizing this one advisory board request, the reporting (similarly appearing in other publications) de-emphasizes other government-coordinated efforts at preventing and monitoring bioterror threats. As a result, the reader comes away thinking that the editors of a few scientific journals play a larger role in the drama of national security than they actually do, and that bioterror is a more imminent threat than it actually is.

More of the same

Last week, the mainstream media put unrelenting focus on the anniversary of 9-11. While appearing sentimental, coverage ultimately served to make a very complex matter meaningless by emphasizing only two aspects: (1) Victimhood and (2) Unity. Even the terrorists and their networks were relegated to the margins.

Lack of opportunity

One oft-used phrase by government administration officials and therefore journalists and pundits is "lack of opportunity". A quick Google search suggests the phrase comes most readily when writing about US domestic issues, but it also comes in handy for international discussions. NPR recorded a prime example last month when quoting a nameless official during coverage of President Obama's latest address to Muslims of the Middle East and North Africa:

It's important to note that the political movements we've seen are rooted in part in a lack of opportunity in the region ... We see this as a critical window of time to take some concrete actions.

A people who lack opportunity to this degree may trend toward revolution. Power voids abound in such an environment, potentially opening the door for enemies of elite US interests to seize control.

Now, less than a month after that speech we discover a rigorous but unofficial US military campaign to squash a popular uprising in Yemen. This episode, for some reason, is different from the war in Libya: It is Rebels who uprise in Libya; only "militants linked to Al Qaeda" uprise in Yemen.

Yemen has been governed by Ali Abdullah Saleh since 1978. That's 32 years of autocratic rule. Earlier this year mass protests began targeting unemployment, poverty, and government corruption. Saleh refused to step down. Embattled now, his regime remains tenuously in power thanks to the State Department, whose spokesman Mark Toner is quoted in The New York Times as saying,

With Saleh’s departure for Saudi Arabia, where he continues to receive medical treatment, this isn’t a time for inaction.  There is a government that remains in place there, and they need to seize the moment and move forward.

So, our government supports an authoritarian regime that presides over poverty, unemployment, and corruption--a lack of opportunity--in turn creating a power vacuum which opens the door for enemies of elite US interests to seize control. If the elite in this country perceive a threat to their interest from abroad, it seems they are creating the bed in which they lie.

To define

The recent NPR report about Wikileaks' Gitmo dump referred to the site as an "anti-secrecy website". The CNN report labeled Wikileaks "an organization that facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information"; I think this is their official stance. The Wikipedia article defines Wikileaks as "an international non-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers".

Why "anti-secrecy" instead of "pro-transparency"? Why highlight anonymity, and not whistleblowing, or exposing, or any other facet of the issue? Because when a label or definition is chosen, the chooser seeks to communicate something about the signified.