Last year, an Oakland transit police officer, Johannes Mehserle, killed Oscar Grant, in a BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station.  Grant was being, to put it mildly, obstreperous.  Mehserle’s defense is that he meant to taser Grant but, instead, shot him.  Video footage made at the time indicates that Mehserle did indeed make a terrible mistake, and never intended to shoot Grant.  For that reason, trial watchers assume that the jury, if honest, will acquit Mehserle.

Oakland’s Communists and, therefore, Oakland’s merchants are making the same supposition.  To that end, the Communists are working hard to foment riots and the merchants, aware of that fact, are working hard to protect themselves in advance.

Zombie has a photo-rich post documenting precisely what is going on in Oakland:  both the Communist efforts to ensure a riot, and the merchants’ hard work, both physical and psychological, to protect their property and their employees.

I have to admit to being a bit nervous about the whole thing.  I’m fairly far away from Oakland, but quite near Richmond, which nestles immediately on the east side of the Richmond/San Rafael Bridge.  Marin, of course, is on the west side of that same span.  Richmond is a pure Democratic city, with a desperately high crime rate.  A significant part of Marin’s crime, especially shop lifting and car theft, originates in Richmond.

If Richmond explodes along with Oakland, who knows what will travel across the bridge?  I’m hoping that our Marin police are paying attention and not just assuming “it can’t happen here.”

And a little bleg:

UPDATE: Mehserle convicted of involuntary manslaughter.

If you want to be sickened by the nature of Hamas’ fellow travelers in the U.S., check out Zombie’s photographs from the rally in San Francisco to protest Israel’s war against Hamas.  One photo, combined with Zombie’s comment, struck me with particular force:

Globalize the Intifadah

“Globalize the Intifada.” This is the fundamental message underlying all of these anti-Israel rallies organized by far-left radical groups: They see the Palestinian Intifada as the first wave of attack in a global revolution. Which, in their delusional fantasies, will usher in a secular communist utopia. This goes a long way toward explaining how left-wing groups can possibly give their support to Hamas, which is after all a repressive theocratic regime.

If that theme doesn’t strike you as familiar, you’re either fairly young, or you’re not thinking about it hard enough.  It is, in fact, Charles Manson’s Helter Skelter theory, played out on a global scale.  As you may recall, there  was a method behind the Manson murders.  Manson had convinced his followers that it was their mission to instigate a race war between blacks and whites in America, not because he had a dog in either fight, but because he believed that, once the combatants had destroyed each other, his little group would emerge triumphant from the chaos and take over the world.

We all freely acknowledge that Manson was insane, and that his followers were too (or, at least, they were in the grip of a temporary insanity while under his sway).  It was this insanity that led them to commit murders of unspeakable brutality, and to do so with unbridled glee.  Their craziness, aside from firing their blood lust, left them incapable of grasping that, when countries or cultures self-immolate, very little emerges from the ashes but further chaos and death.  (I give you large parts of Africa as Exhibit A to support that statement.)

It’s sadly obvious that those Communists who waltz with the Islamists in their hope to see a world engulfed in flames are subject to precisely the same delusion that drove Manson and his followers.  Despite the manifest insanity of their view, they’re vocal in their belief that they’re the Phoenix, and it’s up to them to stoke to fire to create the ashes.  One wonders were it will end.  Manson’s mania-driven murders numbered in the double-digits.  If these fellow-travelers have their way, mere millions of deaths may ultimately seem like small numbers.