We witnessed "law enforcement officers", in this and other press conferences and interviews, flatly denying they started the extravagant, floor-melting fire in the San Bernardino cabin Tuesday night--the fire that either burned Dorner alive or occasioned his suicide by gunshot.
Yet actual evidence strongly suggests the opposite is true: officers with one or more departments on the scene did indeed deliberately start the fire that completely destroyed the 80-year-old structure and everything inside it. And I can confirm, as journalist Max Blumenthal also confirms, in detail, that the PD scanner conversations were exactly as recorded in this YouTube video compiling them--and as heard in this raw footage shot inside one of the news helicopters hovering above the scene ("Burn that fucking house down" and then, repeatedly, "Burn that motherfucker out, burn that motherfucker out")--because along with numerous other bloggers and independent journalists that night who communicated with one another on Twitter, I was listening to the police/fire scanner feed, live and in real-time.
At least, I was until the feed abruptly stopped--either because the site crashed due to the number of people accessing it, or because everything was simply cut off. Reporters on the scene and in the sky happily allowed themselves to be cut off, too; that is, they meekly complied--without question or pause--when asked to back off with their helicopters and cameras. To take their scrutiny, such as it was, far from the blazing cabin, and to cease tweeting about the siege, even though authorities already knew Dorner couldn't possibly have been following any media coverage because the cabin was unoccupied and had no cable or Internet services (indeed, it may not even have had its electricity turned on).
Even so, what we had already heard was sufficiently damning. (You can read Max's comprehensive Twitter timeline on Storify.)
At least, I was until the feed abruptly stopped--either because the site crashed due to the number of people accessing it, or because everything was simply cut off. Reporters on the scene and in the sky happily allowed themselves to be cut off, too; that is, they meekly complied--without question or pause--when asked to back off with their helicopters and cameras. To take their scrutiny, such as it was, far from the blazing cabin, and to cease tweeting about the siege, even though authorities already knew Dorner couldn't possibly have been following any media coverage because the cabin was unoccupied and had no cable or Internet services (indeed, it may not even have had its electricity turned on).
Even so, what we had already heard was sufficiently damning. (You can read Max's comprehensive Twitter timeline on Storify.)
And now we have another curious item to ponder: Christopher Dorner's Amazing Self-Teleporting Wallet.
The wallet, containing Dorner's identification, that authorities claimed showed up near the US/Mexican border last Thursday, February 7, as reported on Monday, February 11, in the L.A. Times:
The wallet, containing Dorner's identification, that authorities claimed showed up near the US/Mexican border last Thursday, February 7, as reported on Monday, February 11, in the L.A. Times:
After authorities interviewed the boat captain early Thursday, they found Dorner's wallet and identification cards "at the San Ysidro Point of Entry" near the U.S.-Mexico border. That same day, a guard at the Point Loma Naval Base told authorities he had spotted a man matching Dorner's description trying sneak onto the base, according to the court records.
Which is also the wallet, likewise containing Dorner's identification, that authorities claim was found in the burned-out cabin some five+ days later and 100 miles away, as reported on Wednesday, February 13, in USA Today:
Report: Dorner's wallet found in burned-out cabin
[...] The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office said charred human remains were found in the rubble where Christopher Dorner is said to have been cornered Tuesday. "We have reason to believe that it is him," sheriff's spokeswoman Cynthia Bachman said.
A wallet with a California driver's license bearing the name Christopher Dorner also was found, the Associated Press reported, citing a law enforcement official who was briefed on the investigation but declined to be named because of the ongoing probe.
Is there a cobwebby ghost of a chance that anyone working within what Charlie Pierce calls The Courtier Press is paying attention and doing his or her job?
Anyone?
I hate to have to say this -- it's not what I wish for, it's just an observation, and people will misconstrue it anyway -- but these are our chickens coming home to roost. We (meaning the U.S.) have visited death and destruction on so many people in so many nations for so long, it was only a matter of time before we visited that same death and destruction on ourselves.
ReplyDeleteNot that police brutality and corruption haven't been going on since there've been police. Of course they have. But it used to be that extra-judicial killing was considered something shameful, something to cover up. Now it's the law of the land. And it's bragged about.
We have a president, a Congress, and most of a population who think that killing people by edict is A-OK. So why should the police worry about niggling little things like facts? Like evidence? Why bother? Especially when a credulous, craptastic press is just going along for the ride?
Kill, kill, kill -- that's been U.S. policy in so many ways for a long time. It's poetic justice that we're now seeing it writ large on our home turf.
While we watched the initial broadcast showing the po-po surrounding the cabin in Big Bear, my first comment was 'They are gonna lob an incendiary in there and burn him up, he ain't coming out alive.' Natch, that's exactly what happened, SLA-stylie. Having begun reading his so-called 'manifesto', I am struck at how his words resonate to the tune we've heard far too many times: corruption slams the ones who try to do right, and it eventually drives one mad.
ReplyDeleteI can only imagine the mental hellscape that inhabited Dorner's head, trained as a killing machine and then cast aside for not being brutal enough. It just didn't compute, and, as Kurt Vonnegut liked to opine, his bad wiring began to short out and make him do bad things. Too bad, so sad... for everyone involved.
Lisa: we are a killing and death-obssessed society, it is our hallmark, our stock-in-trade, and it will also be our undoing. We glorify killing in the name of our nation, and we gloss over the killing that we do to each other. I think of that every time I look at the business next door to my work, a vile place that sells matte black longarms to the miscreants that line up every morning to buy more penis extenders.
We may never learn, but I, being a weirdo Virgo male, am incessantly optimistic.
Deb, I did not follow this story as closely as did you, obviously. But I thought you might find this commentary worthy of your engagement.
ReplyDelete