black panthers Milwaukee shooting riots
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On Saturday in Milwaukee, WI, a police officer reportedly identified as Dominique Heaggan-Brown, an African American and amateur rapper, shot and killed 23-year-old Sylville Smith after a routine traffic stop. Smith allegedly ran from Heaggan-Brown, proceeded to remove a firearm, and provoked two shots from the police. Of course this is the police's version and without the release of bodycam footage we can't know the truth. It is certainly not uncommon for the police to lie about these events in order to protect themselves from public scrutiny. Just this week two cops in Missouri were caught faking a story about being shot at - and their supervisor helped cover it up. So, at this time, there is no reason to assume the police are telling the truth.

But immediately after the shooting, protesters took to the street and began using social media accounts to spread the news to their friends. The riots raged until shops and police vehicles were destroyed, and the National Guard was called in. On Sunday RT would report sounds of 'automatic fire' in the city as riot police attempted to squash the riots.

On Monday Sylville Smith's sister would state her suspicions in an interview: '"[Heagan] knew my brother personally from high school. They knew each other. You knew exactly how my brother was and you shot and killed him." It is distinctly possible that there is much more to this story than what meets the eye. But, predictably, the details and the context are not the focus of mainstream attention - instead this is fanning the flames of an even more authoritarian and pathological agenda.

Therefore it's no surprise when the Sheriff used the riots to continue to spread tired old lies concerning the roots of the problems at hand. He would state, 'I am furious that the progressive left has put my citizens in harm's way and that I had to send my officers into cauldrons of anarchy and hatred that were created by the left.' He would go on to state that he was disgusted by politicians who offer 'little resistance' and 'total cowardice'.
milwaukee protests
What does the sheriff want - total war on a people who are already segregated and beaten down by a police state? In the world he inhabits, where there's an 'undeclared war on the police,' of course that's what he wants.

But in the real world, homicide rates have dropped to the lowest since the 1960's. The number of police killed by criminals has also dropped in the past 20 years, but many urban areas still resemble miniature police states where cops have unlimited authority to conduct surveillance, searches, and arrests. According to NPR, in Wisconsin "the state budget now allots more funding for corrections than it does for higher education. Wisconsin also incarcerates the most black men in the country, and in Milwaukee County, more than half of all black men in their 30s and 40s have served time. In the 53206 Zip Code alone, 62 percent of all men have spent time in an adult correctional facility by age 34."

In the real America the rich continue to rake in billions of dollars and mega-corporations receive easy loans with which to artificially inflate their stock prices, thus earning even bigger bonuses, while 102.5 million working-age Americans have no job. Hillary Clinton faces scandal after scandal - from corruption to arming al-Qaeda to the outright rigging of the Democratic nomination process - and she receives not even a slap on the wrist. But for the poor and disenfranchised there's an ever-expanding prison-industrial complex that's licking its lips waiting for you to visit. The hypocrisy is clear to everyone with a few working neurons, but it's even clearer for those who bear the immediate brunt of it: those who have lived with a history of poverty, discrimination, segregation, and violence.

So, while individuals are pointing out that Sylville Smith was allegedly armed and had a long 'criminal career,' according to initial reports, what they do not take note of is the fact that the 'innocence' and 'character' of black men killed by police does not matter as much as the hysterical, violent environment in which their deaths occur. In this explosive environment, where everyone from officials to police are out to fight at the drop of a hat, the slightest spark can set off the largest chain reactions. Just as Sheriff Clarke 'knows' he is at war, so does the 'New Black Panther Party' leader Babu Omowale when he retaliates, "Is it a war? Yes, it is. It's a war against black people because we're the ones being murdered."

And, sinister enough, there seem to be individuals within the US power elite who want to ramp up tensions, something Joe Quinn and Beau Christensen described in their SOTT Focus, Dallas police shootings: Social Engineering and the American Police State:
In short, the point seems to be to throw fuel on the 'racial tension' fire in the US, and justify increased authoritarianism, division and control over the domestic population. If we were to go out on a limb and theorize about why this is happening and why it is being done in this manner, we would suggest that the 'powers that be' in the US want to impose an overt dictatorship on the American population, but one that at least a majority of Americans will welcome with open arms to 'protect' them, perhaps against black militancy, perhaps against Muslim terrorism or, more likely, both.
What's at the root of this is a social disease that has been spreading throughout American society for decades and, as MLK Jr. would say, the 'chickens are coming home to roost'. As tensions reach a screaming pitch, and as countries around the world warn their citizens of the dangers posed to them in the United States of America, society is being forced onto a dead-end path of increasing violence and mayhem. There are millions of ways to avoid seeing what will come of this, and of being vectored to support it, but there's only one antidote: knowledge.