Baton Rouge Again

Things are going South.

Baton Rouge staggered into a new week of violence as a black separatist killed three police officers, including a black officer who recently pleaded with friends online: “Don’t let hate infect your heart.”

[...]

By Monday, key details started to emerge about both the shooter, 29-year-old Gavin Long of Missouri, and his victims.

He grew up in Kansas City and served as a US marine from 2005 to 2010, including about seven months in Iraq. More recently he spent time in Africa, traveling throughout the east of the continent.

[...]

Long’s personal history is marked by radical twists: he was a military veteran who took a series of ideological turns, and eventually joined a fringe group called the Washitaw Nation of Mu’urs.

  Guardian

Or, as the Native American name is actually spelled in Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma: Ouachita.

And the Guardian has the wrong link in this article, because their Washitaw Nation of Mu’urs link goes to the "Official Empire Washitaw de Dugdahmoundyah" which has the tag line "Our Emperial Law is Love, Truth, Peace, Freedom, Justice". Oops. Well they're Brits. What do they know? Anyway, I suspect they will get some letters.

This is perhaps the link they should have provided:

Long’s final word was a YouTube video, since taken down, that served as something of a suicide manifesto. He referred to himself in past tense and said: “I thought my own thoughts, I made my own decisions.”

But we can still blame Black Lives Matter, I bet.

There's a witness mentioned who seems to be testifying that the police shot first.  But you know how first reports are. Another report says Long ambushed police who arrived to check out a phone call reporting "a suspicious person walking down Airline Highway with an assault rifle."

Wait for the videos.

A video posted two days earlier is a bit more cryptic, but makes more sense in the aftermath of his shooting rampage.

"I just wanted to let y'all know, don't affiliate me with nothing," he says. He says he wanted people to know that his actions were his alone.

He then goes on to list organizations he may be affiliated with -- including the Nation of Islam (which he says he was a member of), Floyd Mayweather's The Money Team (he's wearing their hat) and terror groups like ISIS.

"I thought my own stuff; I made my own decisions; I'm the one who gotta listen to the judgment," Long added.

  CNN

We have a choice now. We can say he was radicalized by ISIS (a terrorist) or Black Lives Matter. And when right wing politicians have their way and BLM gets listed on the US terror watch list, we can choose both.

An official said the belief is that Long identified as being associated with the black separatist movement in some capacity but there is no indication he was directed by it. The law enforcement official said the FBI has no indication any black separatist or other domestic terrorist groups are supporting or sending people to kill cops.

That can be fixed.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.