Thanks as always to Pirate’s Cove and The Other McCain and (new this week) Bacon Time, for the Rule Five links! This week finds Mrs. Animal and yr. obdt. in the less-than-welcoming environs of Chicago, although we are ensconced in a reasonably peaceful northern suburb. We’re here until Friday, when we fly back to our temporary lodgings in (ugh) New Jersey. Observations from this location may follow as events warrant.
We speculated about this several times recently, but now here we are; a Profa radical has attacked an ICE facility, and paid the price for it. Excerpt:
William van Spronsen, a 69-year-old Antifa radical who was arrested for assaulting a police officer at a protest last year, was shot dead Saturday after he attacked an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Tacoma, Washington, with molotov cocktails. New York Times:
The police fatally shot a man who was attacking an immigration detention center in Tacoma, Wash., on Saturday morning, the authorities said.
The man, who was armed with a rifle, was throwing unspecified “incendiary devices” at the Northwest Detention Center, according to a police statement. The man, identified by officials on Saturday afternoon as Willem Van Spronsen, 69, of Vashon Island, Wash., continued throwing lit objects at buildings and cars, the statement said.
“One car was fully engulfed in flames,” said Officer Loretta Cool, a spokeswoman for the Tacoma Police Department. “He was also trying to ignite a big propane tank but he was not successful.”
Deb Bartley, a friend of Van Spronsen’s for about 20 years, described him as an anarchist and antifascist, and believes his attack on the detention center intending to provoke a fatal conflict.
That last sentence may well be correct; this looks an awful lot like suicide-by-cop. But, here we are, what we’ve been anticipating has just happened. What’s next? A group of Profa assholes with rifles and improvised explosives?
Van Spronsen may well be a martyr for the Profa crowd now. Granted, there’s one thing all martyrs have in common – they’re dead – but an important line has been crossed here.
Granted that most of these goons are not, collectively, the sharpest knives in the drawer. All you have to do is read the Twitter conversations about this incident to see that. But it doesn’t take a mental giant to take the next logical step, from one nut with a rifle and incendiaries to a bunch of nuts with rifles and incendiaries. But the thing is this; we can’t count on them being stupid enough to attack an ICE facility staffed by armed officers. They might attack a protest or rally by some group they don’t agree with.
And right now, the Presidential campaign season is ramping up, with President Trump presiding over yuge rallies all over the country.
What happens next?
