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© Wichita Police Department / Facebook
In an effort to open lines of communication between the community and the police force, organizers of a Black Lives Matter protest met with Wichita Police Chief Gordon Ramsay to try something different. Instead of marching in the streets with police standing to the side, the two groups came together for the barbecue at McAdams Park in Wichita, Kansas.
The picnic drew a crowd of whites, blacks and Hispanics, spanning a wide age range, the Wichita Eagle reported. At one table, Jarvis Scott, a black man, sat down with Lt. Travis Rakestraw to eat hamburgers, marking the first time that he had sat with a police officer in 24 years. There were two others seated at that same table who had never done so: Ivan Ray, a Hispanic student at the University of Kansas, and a white man.
© Jonathan Bachman / ReutersA Louisiana law enforcement officer places flowers on a makeshift memorial at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S., July 18, 2016
In what Louisiana State Police Superintendent Col. Mike Edmonson described as a "calculated act," Gavin Long, a 29-year-old former Marine, shot and killed three police officers and left three others injured.
"There is no doubt whatsoever that these officers were intentionally targeted and assassinated," Edmonson said in a news conference on Monday.
Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie defended the city's police department, saying, "Our 'militarized tactics,' as they're being called, saved lives here. That shot, that our SWAT team made, was a hell of a shot. But it had to be made."
Comment: So there you go. Militarized police tactics are a good thing and should be practiced by law enforcement around the country so they can be prepared against supposed "lone wolf" killers.
It's not very effective.
There have been numerous reports of angry homeowners in Vancouver telling Pokémon players to get off their lawns.
But the most infamous was a man who posted a notice outside private grassy terrain, which begins with "GET A LIFE AND STAY OUT OF MY YARD."
"This whole Pokémon hunt is by far the stupidest thing I have ever seen," says the note, which was first tweeted by local radio station 102.7 The PEAK, and has since gone viral.
The man then lists other things he has lived through, including Hammer Pants, Crystal Pepsi, "people taking Jean Chretien seriously," and the entire 10-season duration of CSI: Miami.
© Brendan McDermid / ReutersTexas governor Greg Abbott
The proposed law would make it a hate crime if someone acts criminally against a cop out of bias against police. It would also increase penalties for all crimes against law enforcement regardless of whether it falls under the label of hate crime.
An assault on an officer, which is currently a third degree felony, in line with assaults on other public servants, would be bunked up to a second degree felony under the proposed legislation.
Republican Governor Abbott's bill comes in the wake of the fatal shootings of five police officers in Dallas, Texas earlier this month and a surge, generally, in violence against police.
© Pascal Rossignol / ReutersFlowers for victims on the Promenade des Anglais
The first responsibility of any government is to protect its country's citizens. To keep them safe from attack. For a prime minister of a country to say that his people must learn to "live with terrorism" is tantamount to saying, "Look, guys - we can't protect you anymore. Keep paying your taxes, keep voting for us and keep supporting our 'interventions' in other people's countries - but we really can't do much if terrorists want to slaughter you in Paris cafes or when you're celebrating Bastille Day on the Riviera."
© Ariana Cubillos/Associated PressRamiro Ramirez pushes a shopping cart as he shops for food with his wife Tebie Gonzalez in Cucuta, Colombia, Sunday, July 17, 2016, during the temporary opening of the long-closed border with Colombia. "This is money we had been saving for an emergency, and this is an emergency," Ramirez said. "It's scary to spend it, but we're finding less food each day and we need to prepare for what's coming."
So when the Venezuelan government opened the long-closed border with Colombia this weekend, the couple decided to drain what remained of the savings they put away before the country spun into economic crisis and stocked up on food. They left their two young sons with relatives and joined more than 100,000 other Venezuelans trudging across what Colombian officials are calling a "humanitarian corridor" to buy as many basic goods as possible.
"This is money we had been saving for an emergency, and this is an emergency," Ramirez said. "It's scary to spend it, but we're finding less food each day and we need to prepare for what's coming."
Gonzalez, 36, earns several times the minimum wage with her job as a sales manager for a chain of furniture stores in the western mountain town of San Cristobal. But lately, her salary is no match for Venezuela's 700-percent inflation. Ramirez's auto parts shop went bust after President Nicolas Maduro closed the border with Colombia a year ago, citing uncontrolled smuggling, and cut off the region's best avenue for imported goods.
The couple stopped eating out this year, abandoned plans to buy a house and put a "for sale" sign on their second car. There is no more sugar for coffee, no more butter for bread and no more infant formula for their 1-year-old son.
Comment: There are quite a few indications that this is a manufactured crisis benefiting the elite of the country. The suffering of the citizenry is not a factor in their plans.
- Venezuela fractured: There is a shortage of everything in the country
- Economic war: Venezuela food shortages deliberately created by US-aligned oligarchs
- High-tech rationing: Venezuela to enact mandatory fingerprinting to control grocery sales
- Nicaraguan President: 'US has essentially declared war on Venezuela'
- When disaster strikes are you prepared?
- Talking to family about preparedness: How to get your family to start prepping for disasters.
- Preparedness is the ultimate act of optimism
- Daily habits of prepared people
© Leigh Vogel/Getty ImagesContrary to President Obama's 2008 message, anger and anxiety now runs deep with voters across the country less this election season.
Eight years ago, Barbara Conley was one of the millions of Americans swept up in Barack Obama's promises of hope and change when he accepted the Democratic nomination at a packed football stadium a few miles from her home in the Denver suburbs.
But those optimistic days are almost unrecognizable to Conley now.
With Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton preparing for their own nominating conventions, the 68-year-old independent is filled with so much frustration at the candidates and the political system that propelled them to victory that she can't even imagine voting in November.
"I'm so mad about both of the candidates," said Conley, who finds Clinton too dishonest and Trump too unproven to be president. She paused while loading groceries into her car and declared, "It's depressing."
Less than four months before Election Day, that same sense of anger and anxiety runs deep with voters across the country. Trump and Clinton will each try to paint a rosy picture of life under their leadership during their back-to-back conventions, but it seems unlikely either can quickly shake Americans out of their bad mood.
A stunning 79 percent of Americans now believe the country is heading in the wrong direction, a 15-point spike in the past year, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll. Voters are strikingly unhappy with the candidates who will be on the ballot this fall, with only 22 percent saying they would be proud to see Trump win and 27 percent to see Clinton.
Comment: That presentation of a choice between two bad options one of the PTB's favorite manipulations. There is the third choice: don't vote.
© Eric Gaillard / ReutersPeople walk near a bouquet of flowers placed in tribute to victims of the truck attack along the Promenade des Anglais on Bastille Day killing scores and injuring as many in Nice, France, July 17, 2016.
According to an Ifop (French Institute for Public Opinion) survey conducted for Le Figaro newspaper, while 99 percent of respondents consider the terrorist threat in the country "high" or "very high," only some 33 percent have confidence that President Francois Hollande and his government are equipped to face and fight terrorism effectively, while 67 percent do not trust the authorities in this matter at all.
Compared to the previous survey conducted by the agency in January 2015, when roughly one in two French residents was satisfied with the authorities, the figures have dropped significantly, by some 17 percent.
Comment: This could go one of two ways. First, French citizens could demand even more stringent security measures, which won't work, thus reinforcing the problem. (There is always the opportunity for violent acts such as Nice to occur, no matter how much spy power and boots on the ground.) Second, they could realize their government can't be trusted, demanding one that actually solves the root problems, like involvement in foreign regime change operations, sponsoring terrorism, and inequality on the domestic front. Any bet on what they'll choose?
© Gleb Garanich / Reuters
"[FIG] strongly feels that not all Russian athletes of all sports should be banned and found guilty for actions in other sports and federations," - read a statement on the federation's website.
Comment: That should be common sense. Singling out Russia for this treatment only shows how politically motivated it is. If it wasn't so, they would be subjecting each and every nation involved to the same standards of investigation.
On Saturday several anti-doping agencies, including those of the United States and Canada, said they want the International Olympic Committee to ban all Russian athletes taking part in the Rio Olympics, if WADA's report on state-backed doping at the 2014 Sochi winter Olympics confirms the allegations on Monday.
Comment: Putin has responded to the WADA report here, with the goal of recent trends "to make sport an instrument for geopolitical pressure and use it to form a negative image of countries and peoples ... We have the impression that the USADA experts had access to what is an unpublished report at the very least, and have set its tone and even its content themselves. If this is the case, one country's national organisation is again trying to dictate its will to the entire world sports community." The single individual on whose testimony is based is shady, to say the least. See further analysis from Alexander Mercouris here.
The officials named in the report have been temporarily removed from their positions until the facts are established.
Comment: See also: What if Obama told the truth about violence, poverty, gangs and drugs in the inner cities?