So, we don't claim to know what happened last Sunday night in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., where almost 600 people attending a concert were shot with almost 60 of them being killed. What we do know is that Parliament-Funkadelic was correct in 1978 with the refrain in their song "Lunchmeatophobia" of "Think, it ain't illegal yet!" And, to be completely honest, we didn't think much about the details of this massacre until the point that the police agencies began providing their analysis of what happened. Since we know that police agencies - all of them - are there to work against the interests of African people and all of humanity, we are well trained to pick apart, refute, and disbelieve everything these people tell us. Kwame Ture was eternally correct when he taught us that "capitalism doesn't lie some of the time, it lies all the time."
In other words, there has been very little that the so-called authorities have said about this incident that makes very much sense. We cannot understand how we are expected to believe that someone with no documented experience handling any level of firearms is supposed to have transported dozens of guns into a public venue like a hotel without the slightest hint of evidence e.g. video, questions, asked by staff, etc. We have more than enough experience with handling weaponry to recognize just how difficult it is to transport any long weapons, not to mention dozens? And to do so in public without one person noticing something? That's not believable. Then, for the police to suggest that the level of death and destruction meted out could be carried out by a person, or even persons, who have no experience?
None of that makes much sense to us and again, we freely acknowledge that once the police say anything we are going to automatically believe the opposite because we know the police lie as policy. They do this because when something like this happens, there is immediate pressure on them to provide answers. Usually, they don't have any, nor do they have the intelligence and/or capacity to produce any, so they make things up. No different than how you do the same when asked something by your boss at work when you don't know the answer and you know you are expected to know it. Its a self preservation technique and if you want to see examples of it, just look at any number of reasons police give everywhere for why they have shot down unarmed people. Their answers make about as much sense as their responses to this tragedy are making. Zero.
So, we don't pretend to know who did this. The so-called assailant is dead so his side of the story will never be told. Consequently, all you are left with is whatever the police and the capitalist media outlets tell you along with the people who were fired upon (and many of their accounts are conflicting with the so-called "official" version of events).
Whenever we don't have much information to work with, we rely upon our tools of analysis that give us the ability to break down what this system is doing, why its doing it, who its doing it to, and what we need to do to address it. And, here's what those tools are telling us about this incident. Rule number one is whenever something happens, the first question you always need to ask is who benefits? Who is the beneficiary of 600 people at a Country music festival being shot? Certainly, it cannot be argued that the power structure gains significant benefit because whenever things are not going the capitalist system's way, which is happening more and more often these days, anything like this that takes attention away provides the system time to reboot and re-calibrate their mechanisms. There are several critical events happening that the system has every reason to want to distract you from. First, the capitalist system knows its crumbling. One of its primary strategies to fend off its demise is to cripple its adversaries so that there is no opposition to its interests. In a capitalist sense, this means making sure all of the approximately 200 nations of the planet are a part of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank capitalist conglomerate system. If you notice, the only countries that are not a part of that system are the very same countries that this country - the leader of the capitalist world - is always warning you are a threat to you. That would be North Korea, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela. The power structure has every intention of eliminating those countries in their present form because their very existence poses a threat to imperialism's image that there is no viable system on Earth outside of its purview. If you understand this, you can understand how the idiot president of the U.S. empire was very explicit in naming all of the previously mentioned countries as threats during his rambling and incoherent speech at the United Nations a week or so ago. The problem the imperialists have is their agenda for eradicating these countries isn't going as planned. Assume that the United Nations speech was used as a gauge to determine world temperature towards U.S. aggression against North Korea for example. Clearly, the majority of the world is not on board with the U.S. version of the conflict between these two countries. In fact, very few countries agree with the U.S. as it relates to North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, or Iran. And, you have to understand this is a new challenge for imperialism. For many decades, during the heyday of capitalism and imperialism, specifically from the 1940s through the 80s, that cold war period provided imperialism with a strong supply of allies against the "evil empire" of the socialist world led by the former Soviet Union. Of course, the Soviet Union was not the socialism most of us are fighting for (especially those of us who are Pan-Africanist socialists) so the Soviets fell and that changed the balance of the world. With a new world with no enemies on par, imperialism was convinced its path of complete world domination would go unchallenged, but that is not the case. Instead, smaller "rouge" nations everywhere are standing up against empire and now its shaping up that the majority of people everywhere are deciding the empire is the (correctly assumed) source of their problems. As Kwame Ture educated us back in the 80s, if the left is mobilizing against the empire and then the right begins to do the same, despite the fact they are not fighting from the same vantage point, as Kwame Nkrumah taught us; this creates a plenum of forces in tension and this tension is the source that will eventually rupture. In other words, the capitalist system has to desperately figure out a way to keep working people fighting against each other. Keep people focused on fighting for crumbs under the capitalist system. These capitalists are astute enough to realize that all of the strife in the world, whether its the fight over racist immigration with the UK exiting the European Community, racial conflict in the U.S., increased resistance against imperialism's control in Africa, the Philippines, occupied Palestine, etc., could easily change directions and morph into forces that could seriously challenge imperialism. So, to deflect this, the imperialists create distractions. I believe 9/11 was one. And, using the formula of asking who benefits, there is little question about that. Imperialism got everything it wanted in the emotional aftermath of 9/11 from increased abilities to spy on people through the Patriot Act, etc.
Now, after this latest tragedy, the ensuing debate about gun control will ultimately lead to wider discussions of even greater control over people which is what the system wants. There cannot be any serious talk about disarming people without talking about disarming the most violent regime in human history. Look at the hypocrisy? The only country in human history who has used nuclear weapons to kill hundreds of thousands of people is somehow the authorized police officer to determine who can and can't have them? And, since they know they cannot control dissent, no matter how it looks to you today, you better believe they have concerns about doing something to challenge this belief within the U.S. that you can have as many guns as you can get your hands on.
Finally, for those who find it hard to believe the U.S. government on any level would cause harm to its people, remember that this is the same government that dropped napalm on its troops they want to convince you they support so much while those troops were on the ground in Vietnam. And, the effects of the chemical agents they dropped on troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are still being determined today. Again, we come at all of this from the perspective of the African liberation movement so we have no illusions about this government's complete willingness to kill to advance its interests. They have been doing that to us as policy for centuries. So, as they get more and more desperate, we have no question that they will begin carrying out their same destructive tactics against - yes - their most treasured commodity (at least in the eyes of those people) - its white population. That's the only way it would work today anyway. They have completely dehumanized white people against the lives of brown people. So, such a tragedy at a hip/hop concert, for example, would not generate the outpouring of sadness and sympathy. I mean, what better scenario? White working people. America loving white people. Victimized by a brutal sociopath. All the stories of heroism. Not saying there wasn't heroism. I'm sure there certainly was, but again, I know history. There were equal, if not higher level of acts of heroism involving other communities that would never get the same play because it doesn't serve the same purpose. For example, after the Northern California earthquake in 1989, freeway 880 collapsed in West Oakland. An equivalent number of people were killed in that incident as were lives lost in Las Vegas last week. At the time of that earthquake, West Oakland was a poor and African community. And many of those poor and African folks climbed up on the wreckage of that freeway, which was extremely dangerous, and rescued a number of people, but you didn't hear about it because it didn't fit a narrative. So, not taking away anyone's heroism in Vegas. Just pointing out why you know about it. Because it fits for you to know about it. Just like all the information you are getting fits. It fits a certain agenda. For those who benefit from such actions. Not a conspiracy theory. Just an analysis by those who know this vicious system very well.