The man who murdered police officers in Dallas, Texas, this week had earlier been employed in a massive operation, now in its 15th year, that has killed many thousands of people in Afghanistan. He was trained to kill by the U.S. military using U.S. tax dollars. He was conditioned to believe violence an appropriate response to violence by the examples everywhere to be found in U.S. public policy, history, entertainment, and language.

Murdering police officers because some other police officers committed murder is unfair, unjust, immoral, and certainly counterproductive on its own terms. The Dallas killer managed to get himself killed by means of a bomb delivered by a robot. The police could have waited him out but chose not to, and no one indoctrinated to accept violent revenge will blame them. But that technology will spread among police and non-police killers. The airwaves are reverberating with cries for a race war. Greater militarization of the police, not greater restraint, will follow this incident. More lives will be lost. More screams of agony will be heard over loved ones lost.

For decades, people have tried to fix the Democratic Party. They've imagined that their failings in this regard could be overcome by a greater effort. But it is hard to imagine anyone in the future mounting as significant an effort as did Bernie Sanders and his supporters.

We're cynically told to just wait, because younger people hold better views. But the holding of views, by anyone, has nothing to do with it. And younger people have a pretty consistent record of becoming older people.

Why does the holding of views have nothing to do with it? Because the Democratic Party is bought and paid for and directed from the top down.

Here is a party that pretends to have solved the healthcare crisis with such self-deluding intensity that it refuses to express support for providing universal healthcare.

Here is a party that criminally pushes for more militarism and war including the overthrow of the Syrian government, and that will not admit the existence of occupied Palestine.

In the wake of the police killings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Philando Castile in St Paul, and Henry Green in Columbus, a Black Lives Matter rally was scheduled for Friday, July 8 at the Franklin Park Amphitheater. But it almost didn’t happen.

As news came in Thursday night about the shootings of Dallas police officers, the original organizers of the action postponed it, citing safety concerns. This didn’t sit well with many who planned to be there. By early Friday afternoon new plans were in place for a speak-out in the evening at the same location. About 450 people showed up.

“The allegations are not only categorically false, but disgusting at the highest level and clearly framed to solicit media attention or, more likely, are politically motivated. To be clear, there is absolutely no merit to these claims and, based on our investigation, no evidence that the person who has made these allegations actually exists.” – Alan Garten, corporate attorney for Donald Trump, April 28, 2016

he federal lawsuit, titled Katie Johnson v. Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey E. Epstein, accuses Trump and Epstein of rape and other sexual assaults during the summer of 1994, when plaintiff was 13 years old. Attorney Garten denied the accusations and cast doubt on the existence of the plaintiff.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand's Constitutional Court has upheld a law
that metes out 10 years imprisonment to anyone who voices an opinion
about the junta's favored draft constitution, or campaigns for or
against it before a scheduled nationwide August 7 referendum.
   "If the draft constitution does not pass, a new one has to be
written," coup-installed Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said on June
28, one day before the court ruling.
   The court's decision and Mr. Prayuth's orchestration of a new
constitution contrast sharply with dissidents, politicians, local
media, Thai and international human rights groups and others who have
asked that the draft and referendum be open to public debate,
criticism and changes.
   Voters decide on the junta's draft constitution on August 7 by
casting a "yes" or "no" vote.
   Some see the referendum as a popularity test of the junta as it
enters a third year in power.
   Before retiring as army chief and general, Mr. Prayuth led
Thailand's U.S.-trained military in a bloodless May 2014 coup against