Chicago overtaken by looters
There’s only a slight and completely unconvincing pretense of protest this time. This was about opportunistic criminality [emphasis mine]:
Hundreds of looters and vandals descended on downtown Chicago early Monday following a police shooting on the city’s South Side, smashing the windows of dozens of businesses and making off with merchandise, cash machines and anything else they could carry, police said.
Hours earlier, police shot a man after he opened fire on officers Sunday afternoon — an incident that apparently prompted a social media post urging looters to converge on the business district, Police Superintendent David Brown told a news conference.
Some 400 additional officers were dispatched to the area after the department spotted the post…13 officers were injured, including one who was struck in the head with a bottle…
Notice that there isn’t even a hint that this was an innocent man shot by the police. It doesn’t matter to the rioters/looters/anarchists anymore – as if it ever did. Note also that social media is an effective way to quickly organize looting as a group activity. In addition, note that the looters assembled not in their own neighborhoods, but where the pickings were best. And additionally, note that the same social media that allowed the looters to organize also gave warning to police (those who are still funded, anyway) on where to go to arrest the looters.
Oh, and ABC – whose article that is – actually straight up calls the looters and vandals “looters and vandals.” Why? Well, because the Democrat/leftist powers-that-be in the city of Chicago were unequivocally saying pretty much the same thing, so ABC had permission:
Mayor Lori Lightfoot agreed that the melee had nothing to do with a protest. “This was straight-up felony criminal conduct,” she said. “This was an assault on our city.”
Social media was also used to fake an additional motive, making it up out of the whole cloth:
Further ratcheting up the tensions in the city was a video that circulated on Facebook hours before the looting that falsely claimed that Chicago police had shot and killed a 15-year-old boy. Posted at 6:30 p.m. Sunday, the video shows upset residents confronting officers near the scene where officers shot and wounded an adult suspect who they said had fired at them that day. By Monday morning, it had been watched nearly 100,000 times.
I thought Facebook was suppressing fake claims – or is that just for doctors opining about the advantages of hydroxychloroquine?
The ABC article also quotes David Brown, Chicago’s police superintendent, as saying this:
Witnesses to the looting described a scene that bore a striking resemblance to the unrest that unfolded when protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis devolved into chaos. Brown suggested that the lenient treatment of people arrested then played a role in what happened Monday.
“Not many of those cases were prosecuted to the full extent,” he said. “These looters, these thieves, these criminals being emboldened by (the lack of) consequences … emboldened to do more.”
At the same news conference, Lightfoot addressed the looters directly, telling them that police had collected a lot of surveillance video and other evidence that will be used to arrest and prosecute as many as possible.
“We saw you, and we will come after you,” she warned.
I haven’t followed Chicago quite as closely as other cities, but my impression is that authorities there haven’t been quite as lenient on rioters as in places like Portland and Seattle, even prior to this. Still, this seems like a shift to even more of a focus on law-on-order – not just on Lightfoot’s part, but in terms of media coverage.
Has the left finally gotten word that anarchy and lawlessness, plus calls to defund police, don’t make a great combination as far as the majority of the American people are concerned? So, time to change tune?
U-haul trucks imply some pre planning?
One wag guessed that one or more stores set this up themselves. Perhaps on the edge of bankruptcy they can now retrieve insurance payments and a cut of the street sales.
The other stores? “It makes good cover!” I don’t buy this conspiracy theory.
We do seem to have ratcheted up a level though.
The deal in Chicago since the first Daley administration is that so long as the trouble stayed in South Chicago it was no big deal. Local gangs owned the South side aldermen so any political change was moot. But in the past couple of years the deal has frayed. Mayor lightfoot finally has to give in and let the cops go at it.
They know if they let this continue the city will be like Detroit 10 years ago, a burnt out shell.
That’s good, not bad, and reason to be optimistic. The left-right, totalitarian-anarchist nexus is leftist.
Wow, the method in the madness had been REVEALED.
They want some Louis Vuitton “merch” to re-sell on the street.
Methodically livestreaming themselves engaging in felonies.
This is what happens when you have a one party dictatorship in a city (or state). Chicago has not seen a Republican mayor since the 1930’s.
I suspect that this morning’s DNC quick polling showed that looting is not polling well, so now all Dems will start parroting the same lines as ABC and Lightfoot.
And what great footage for more Trump/RNC campaign ads!
I suppose it’s too alt-right, but why not use social media, BLM, and Antifa rioters to destroy Leftist assets?
For example, I heard that Jeff Bezos is using all his Amazon money to drive up the price of gold. Where is he storing all the bullion he’s bought? Why, of course, it’s in a bunker under a Starbucks in Portland, and they just refused to serve coffee to a black lesbian. I don’t know which Starbucks has the gold. Here’s a list of all their locations …
Maybe you can make up even better examples. All you need is a Twitter account.
O/T; did you hear that Trump has narrowed the sites of his convention speech to the WH and Gettysburg. The latter is following in the footsteps of the Gettysburg Address. I wonder who is working on his speech.
OK. I’m through.
Reading the WSJ today, couldn’t make it past two paragraphs on any story.
Don’t care about the people in these cities any more. Not on any human level. They built it, let ’em enjoy it, but don’t come to me for anything.
Family included.
This was organized looting and smashing. Reports from witnesses indicate car caravans disgorged hundreds onto the primo shopping areas in Chicago, like the so-called Golden Mile, at about midnight. Videos show thugs pouring out of an Apple store, 5 or 6 jumping into a waiting car. The Tesla dealership’s windows were smashed. Police were literally overwhelmed by the number of hostiles, and the looting was still going strong at 4:30AM. The city raised its drawbridges to reduce access (symbolically resembling a besieged antique city).
There will be no change unless some of these thugs are put down by bullets. Pacifism is a losing strategy.
Chicago
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
…
–Carl Sandburg
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/12840/chicago
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The most perfect poem in the key of Walt Whitman ever written after Walt himself.
If things continue those umbrellas (fashion accessories of the urbane urban terrorist) aren’t going to stop a rain of lead. It would seem that there is an unserved market for polycarbonate (aka Lexan) glazing for street level doors and windows in Seattle as well as gait-recognition software applications by local and federal law enforcement agencies. But then if you have a Soros-DA what crime is ever charged and what level of bail is demanded?
Which is to say, there may be more life to the Hog Butcher of the World, than we conservatives give credit.
By Robert Conquest’s “First Law of Politics”:
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Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/conquests-laws-john-derbyshire/
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I’ve noticed that Rahm Emmanuel and Lori Lightfoot are more conservative than the Dem party line when it comes to Chicago itself. Both came down hard against the Jussie Smollett fake hate crime. While Kim Foxx, with her not-so-secret line to Michelle Obama, let Smollett off.
With regard to current Chicago riots, Lightfoot and Foxx are again at loggerheads:
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The scene was reminiscent of the looting that occurred earlier this summer amid the response to the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. Both Lightfoot and Brown implicitly criticized Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, saying there weren’t consequences for looters earlier this summer.
Lightfoot, who endorsed Foxx for reelection, became angry when asked follow-up questions about Foxx’s handling of cases and told a reporter not to bait her.
“What we’re saying is, as a result of what happened last night, there have to be consequences,” Lightfoot said. “We’ve got teams of people that are aggressively out there identifying the people responsible, looking at the plates, and we’re going to bring them to justice.
“But when we do make those arrests, our expectation is that this is going to be treated with the level of seriousness it should be. Period,” she said. “Don’t try to bait us, mischaracterize, pit one against the other, we’re not playing that. We’re in a serious situation here and we need a serious response. That’s what we’re saying.”
Foxx pushed back with her own news conference a few hours later, denouncing any finger pointing in her direction blaming Monday night’s looting on her response to Floyd unrest. Her office dismissed all misdemeanor charges related to the protests, but approved the vast majority of felony arrests brought by the Chicago Police Department, she said.
–https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-chicago-downtown-looting-20200810-3zwa3b7zzrc5vdyb4qjqywrjvu-story.html
When the Great and Good make a show of worrying out loud about an imaginary looming Boogaloo, you can be sure that there’s a Chimp Out happening somewhere.
“Looters”
Carl Sandburg was a socialist.
He would be happy with Pelosi and Schumer.
His Chicago poem, posted by huxley, shows exactly that. Look at all the sh*t he relates therein, excused by the “poem’s” last two lines, “lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.” Those words sound like a BLM thug, celebrating looting and raping his way through life. Or maybe an NBA or NFL player taking a knee and refusing the Pledge of Allegiance.
Sandburg was foisted upon America, absolutely shoved down our throats. Pulitzers were political even back then. LBJ loved him.
Meanwhile ….
25,000+ felony cases dropped, not prosecuted. ‘Cos we need more felons on the streets.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/08/10/paper-chicago-prosecutor-kim-foxx-has-dropped-25183-felony-cases/
Unfortunately, the Magnificent Mile isn’t really that easy to protect physically by raising the river bridges, as it’s north of the Loop. That being said, supposing for the moment that a large proportion of the invasion force is coming directly from the South Side and not the West Side, raising the bridges along North Wacker might help cut that route, at least. Then the invaders would have to go around the whole Loop to the west out of their way.
That being said, I’m looking at a map and thinking to myself that if, say, the invaders originate (just for the sake of discussion) from Englewood, they really don’t have to transit the Loop at all, just go straight north via the railyards and skirt the west side of downtown completely. On the other hand, maybe friendlies could set up blockades at the canal crossings and just need a strong enough force to cut the Dan Ryan bridge off. But again, that all supposes that only the South Side is the source of the invading forces.
Even though I’m originally from west suburbs, my knowledge of the geography of the West Side proper never developed. Now here I am looking at a map of the metropolis in whose shadow I grew up and having to think about armchair military tactics in that context.
They just hop the red line up. If they get arrested, they will be out with the cases dropped.
A friend of mine is a Sargent with the CPD. She is utterly demoralized. All internal standards have gone out the window, and the PTB are considering allowing citizens on the review boards. Not sure if the review board is tied in with IAD, but they’re quite upset.
Cicero: I don’t know much about Sandburg as a person. However, he has written poems sufficiently vivid that I remembered them from the first moment I read them. Not many poets have had that effect upon me.
No one had to shovel Sandburg down my throat. Nor do I find your negative characterizations persuasive. They smell of the “Genetic Fallacy”:
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The genetic fallacy (also known as the fallacy of origins or fallacy of virtue)[1] is a fallacy of irrelevance that is based solely on someone’s or something’s history, origin, or source rather than its current meaning or context. This overlooks any difference to be found in the present situation, typically transferring the positive or negative esteem from the earlier context.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy
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I don’t find it useful to rank poets by their politics. Pablo Neruda was a communist, period. I’d rather he weren’t, but he was still one of the great poets of the 20th century.
One other thing – I’m looking at the subway maps and am noticing, in addition to the overnight shutdown imposed on all subway traffic in and around downtown, there’s a number of other service interruptions on various lines due to “debris on the tracks”. I wonder what that means, though I suspect nothing good.
At least the river gives Chicago some means to make a fortress-like defense, unavailable to most other American cities.
Here’s a personal, indelible poem Sandburg wrote about the travails of young love:
_______________________
Offering and Rebuff
I could love you
as dry roots love rain.
I could hold you
as branches in the wind
brandish petals.
Forgive me for speaking so soon.
. Let your heart look
. on white sea spray
. and be lonely.
. Love is a fool star.
. You and a ring of stars
. may mention my name
. and then forget me.
. Love is a fool star.
–Carl Sandburg
__________________________
(Excuse the periods. I used them to preserve the indenting of the second section.)
“I don’t find it useful to rank poets by their politics” – huxley
Just as one cannot rank music by its creators’ politics or personal lives.
However, when text is involved, knowing what ideological POV it’s coming from is a legitimate part of the analysis.
I like the way Sandburg writes, even if I don’t agree on his politics.
Lots of people in his day were FDR Socialists, but would probably not approve of the Democrats’ evolution into supporters of the Antifa Brigades.
Also by Sandburg:
‘I see America not in the setting sun of a black night of despair … I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God.’
More “quotable quotes” here:
https://newsmaven.io/americanminute/american-history/carl-sandburg-pulitzer-prize-winning-poet-x-3AK5Ao3E2o-8DB2DL11w
On his ideological biography (I didn’t read the article, but the summary is on point):
http://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/4167
“We saw you, and we will come after you,” [Mayor Lori Lightfoot] warned.
Could you do me a small favor?? — hold my Dr. Pepper while I laugh uproariously and uncontrollably?
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Those redistributors of property in Chicago, they were just thinking of Nancy Pelosi and moved on from statues:
“The people are going to do what they will.”
Nancy may have meant criminals or mobs when she said “people,” I’m not one of the elite after all.
MJR:
She must have been speaking about some violators of her various mask dictates. But it was a step up for Mayor Lightweight, she didn’t cuss anyone out.
Philip Sells:
Congratulations on posting the most relevant comments to the subject of Neo’s article.
huxley, thank you very much for posting that.
A line later in the poem, “Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,” reminded me of a description of Enrico Fermi, cutting graphite blocks, in Chicago.
Really, what more needs to be said?
https://babylonbee.com/news/chicago-mayor-protects-citizens-by-arresting-7-year-old-having-a-birthday-party
The police shooting seems to have been manufactured out of whole cloth. There was no such shooting.
Reprising a Daniel Greenfield post to grab a comment.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/high-cost-racializing-crime-daniel-greenfield/#comment-4964695402
ling chow ? •
So you’re hoping for a moral epiphany from a group who regard the Seven Deadly Sins as a to-do checklist? LOL.
* * *
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Attributed to Edmund Burke, quoted by John F Kennedy in a speech in 1961.
Evil triumphs even faster if the bad men (and women and whatever) actively encourage it.
* * *
https://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2020/06/23/americas-jews-and-christians-are-failing-the-test-of-their-lives-n2571122
born and raised in Chicago, live near there now…………..but time for me to fly soon.
All that said, I follow this chicago police blog and I’ll just leave it at that.
http://secondcitycop.blogspot.com/
huxley:
your “genetic fallacy” is irrelevant.
Re-read “Chicago”, the “poem” you yourself posted, and draw your own conclusion from the text, as I have done. Text is text. What say you? A paean to a corrupt, immoral, merciless and vulgar city is how I read it.
I read up on Sandburg’s bio in reaction to the text of that poem.
You think there are nice socialists, like the FDR crowd? Socialism is a slippery slope, and it always leads downhill, always ending with Lenins, Che Guevaras, Pol Pots and Maos. The FDR bunch did one heck of a lot of harm, with which we remain burdened.
Cicero: Way too much mindreading of me by you. Not interested.
I was a grad student at The University of Chicago 50 years ago(it’s really that long ago?). The University is on the south side with its southern boundary at 59th Street. In those days there was a huge black ghetto south of U of C that began at about 61st Street, aka, Woodlawn. It was run by a giant gang, the Blackstone Rangers, and was a very violent dangerous place. White people only went in there at the risk of their life. The police had to go in now and then and went armed to the teeth. A couple of years after I got there, there was a shoot out between the Chicago police and the Rangers. One cop got pinned down in the middle and when they finally were able to pull him out, he had 100 bullets in him. They got him to the U of C hospital, which had the best gunshot trauma unit in the country outside of the US military, but after 10 hours on the operating table they ran out of blood transfusions and he died.
Another time a family of tourists took the wrong turn in the Loop and wound up in the ghetto by accident. The father was shot to death at the wheel because it was gang initiation night and some young punk made his bones with the murder.
Sounds like Chicago has calmed down since then.
This will start to stop when looters start getting shot. Hard to say how many will have to be shot but it will go on until the survivors get the point.
Fail to kill some of these folks as they are rioting and they will kill the cities.
America’s choice.
@ Philip Sells:
Someone on the radio this AM said the rioters came from Englewood [bad ghetto area], don’t know if that’s true.
Mayor Richard J. Daley during 1968 Chicago riots ordered police “Shoot to kill arsonists; shoot to maim looters.”
Neo, with respect to Chicago not being lenient: The State’s Attorney for Cook County (i.e the prosecutor) is Kim Foxx. In addition to her election campaign funding by George Soros ($2 million to a supporting PAC) and the mishandling of the Jussie Smollett fraud, Foxx recently released hundreds of George Floyd rioters / shoppers of opportunity without charging them at all. In fact her record of dropping charges for violent crimes stands in distinct contrast to her predecessor, as has been recently pointed out in Brietbart.
Another site on Chicago’s recent rioting and crime is
https://cwbChicago.com/2020/08/mayor-top-cop-demand-action-from-prosecutors-after-100-arrested-in-overnight-looting-riots.html .
“This will start to stop when looters start getting shot.”
Saw some video yesterday of “Someplace”, CO maybe…white BLMers getting an a$$whupping by the locals. That’s a good start.
But I do wonder how much more Seattle, Portland, Chicago & The Big Apple and the others can absorb in outright property losses & physical carnage before someone starts laying down a hail of gunfire to retake the streets. Might not be local 5-0 who actually does it…but I sense it’s coming. Then we’ll see what we have next.
John Guilfoyle – you may be thinking of this in Ft Collins (not nearly so “blue” a city as Denver):
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/08/antifa-shows-pro-police-rally-ft-collins-huge-mistake-not-end-domestic-terrorists-video/
“This will start to stop when looters start getting shot.”-Vanderleun
Seems to me we heard that before, and leaders in both parties clutched their pearls and fell on the fainting couch.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/05/29/president-trump-looting-leads-to-shooting-msm-go-bananas/
“Seems to me we heard that before, and leaders in both parties clutched their pearls and fell on the fainting couch.”
Because shooting would end real lives, whereas looting is just about mere property. Yes. They really ARE that stupid.
A comment seen at another blog:
“Chicago impromptu sales continuing this evening.”
It’s not over …
JimNorCal-
It’s just ramping up to November and Election Day, when the arson, rioting climax, and populists show up en mass for some whupass payback!
Me to wife unit this morning: “Police Chief Barbie has resigned.”
Wife unit: “I guess that was her Best move.”
The lefties, modernists and political Normies within Chicago are waking up, slightly though. They are sorta use to knowing that crime is usually confined to the troublesome West and South Side neighborhoods. Crime happening in the more safer, more affluent North Side is not unusual, but it’s more so petty crime. In recent years the crime found in the infamous West and South Side has creeped into more white neighborhoods.
People who pay attention and are familiar with the city know that if crime that made the city famous, in the most embarrassing circumstances, is found in the safer parts of Chicago a very serious problem is happening. In this case, criminals openly and confidently expressing their plans to where to loot next in The Loop and River North, arriving in truckloads, is a strong signal of intense negligence of keeping tabs on the probability of such events. It’s a domestic terrorist attack. Of course, in my opinion, if you get rid of the radical leftists and gang members that inhabit Chicago you’re once step closer to a sane, more respectable Chicago.
One aspect of all this that does not really get reported because it’s probably too “inside baseball” is the political dynamic here in Chicago. While the city is clearly in Dem control, don’t assume that means everyone is on the same page. Lightfoot’s win in the Mayoral election screwed up the plans of Tony Preckwinkle and the “Stroger” wing of the party that controls Cook County. Foxx is aligned with that crowd and they will work hard to make Lightfoot look as bad as they can.
Yes, the police are making arrests but, just like in Portland and Seattle, those arrested are on the street the next day with little to no bail and the vast majority will not be prosecuted. The only thing that slowed the gun violence was the agreement by Lightfoot to allow the Feds more freedom to pursue federal gun charges against offenders than relying on Foxx to do so. Potential future offenders got the message very quickly and gun violence seems to have slowed from its earlier pace.
Interesting thought as to the criminals being let go…
I guess they dont want to pay G4S Secure Solutions… This company USED to be referred to as Wackenhut… they run prisons, and build them, etc.
we may not have noticed that Blasio in ny was closing Rikers Island… and in many other areas, they decided to close prison. Its a pretty simple formulea. close the prison, have no place to house them, the law says you have to let them go as you cant keep them in certain conditions… so this is the Dems solution to the disparity in prison as a means of ingratiating themselves to the black community rather than accept that the black community tolerates more criminals, favors them in its music, dresses in clothing designed to confound descriptions, and so on…
but this was a natural outcome of the welfare state… where you can live at the bottom of comfort, and then augment your comfort by selling contraband, or robbery… and of course buying stolen goods at that level is a way to get things on discount… after several generations this has become “a way of life”…
but with the prisons closed, where you going to house the white middle class kids you just arrested? of course whats going to happen in the job market in 5 years when these same people cant work as the employers who require a certain level of commitment need public trust background checks, and checks in general?
i wonder how many of these people realized that they have school loans to pay and that because of their actions and getting caught they will have no way to pay?
In the context of the looting and destruction in Chicago, I just now happened to run across one of Jordon Peterson’s lectures, one on “Psychopathic traits and hedonism,” in which he made the point that in an illustrative scene in “Pinocchio” in which a bunch of children are trashing and destroying a house that represents “culture,” this urge to destroy is because the thing they are destroying is a “judge” against them.
That they cannot stand the comparison of the achievement vs. what they have failed to achieve and, so, they destroy it.
Can’t for some reason arrange to create a link to this particular lecture, but look at Youtube lectures by Peterson, and you should be able to find it–this particular lecture is also associated with the term “Dark Triad.”