On the afternoon of June 8 California Governor Gavin Newsom sent a letter to President Trump requesting that the National Guard units involved in facilitating the immigration crackdown be removed from Los Angeles. According to several news reports, thousands of demonstrators were in the streets at several locations throughout Los Angeles on June 8, protesting this week’s apparent shift in tactics for immigration enforcement by raiding workplaces in the garment district and also at construction supply stores, such as Home Depot, where undocumented workers line up waiting for work.
Trump, for his part this afternoon posted on Truth Social: “We made a great decision in sending the National Guard to deal with the violent, instigated riots in California. If we had not done so, Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated. The very incompetent ‘Governor,’ Gavin Newscum, and ‘Mayor,’ Karen Bass, should be saying, ‘THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP, YOU ARE SO WONDERFUL. WE WOULD BE NOTHING WITHOUT YOU, SIR.’ Instead, they choose to lie to the People of California and America by saying that we weren’t needed, and that these are ‘peaceful protests.’ Just one look at the pictures and videos of the Violence and Destruction tells you all you have to know….”
According to our sources, as of June 9, reporting had greatly exaggerated the violence (as it has been with the anti-genocide rallies), and the thousands of protesters were largely friends and neighbors of people who are being targetted for deportation, and people who oppose the mass deportation policy. (This is not to say that things couldn’t devolve rapidly—it’s now being reported that 700 Marines are being sent in, for what isn’t yet clear.)
However, at a certain point on June 8 the violence escalated, seeming to indicate the introduction of paid provocateurs who were involved in setting multiple fires including torching at least four self-driving Waymo vehicles and threw fireworks and rocks at police. They made a makeshift barrier using chairs from a public park to mark a battlefront. From an overpass protesters threw concrete blocks and electric scooters on the closed southbound 101 Freeway forcing California Highway Patrol officers in the area to seek cover. Several blocks in downtown Los Angeles were closed to all traffic on Sunday evening, June 8, and stun grenades could be heard every few seconds in the downtown area.
LAPD Chief jim McDonnell told reporters Sunday night that, “The people who are out there doing the violence … they have a hoodie on, they have a face mask on … these are people who do this all the time,” indicating that he and his officers have seen many of these people before.
Although President Trump claimed to have sent 2,000 National Guard troops, only 300 have been deployed thus far to guard federal buildings, and not to interact with the population. According to local press about 100 people have been arrested.
While pro-British rags like the {New York Post” try to lump the violent provocateurs in together with the thousands of peaceful protesters, one wonders whether Trump is aware that the mass deportation policy is becoming a source of concern and disagreement, including among people who voted for him, as ICE agents try to fulfill absurd deportation quotas by grabbing people when they are visiting federal offices to get legal aid, or when they are working at menial jobs trying to scratch out a living.
The question here is “cui bono?” LIke the Elon Musk spat, was the ICE escalation, and the ensuing protests timed to occur in the wake of the Trump-Putin, Trump-Xi phone calls—and another call today to Bibi Netanyahu, presumably to preempt a conversation that Netanyahu was going to have with his cabinet about Iran? Is this part of a larger British-run “Strategy of Tension?”
In 1981 at a conference on U.S.- Mexico relations, LaRouche said the following:
“I support entirely the legislation sponsored by Sen. Harrison Schmitt, which would provide a visa to all undocumented workers who wanted to come over and work. I would also support, however, the aspiration of our law enforcement officers [to] increase our border patrol and other authorizations to control the gun-smuggling, the terrorists, and the drug traffic between the two countries. It is a problem for both countries—for the Mexicans, who are just as desirous of controlling these problems as we are, and perhaps more so.
“Therefore, we should increase the intelligence and law enforcement capabilities against categories of criminality at the same time that we open the door.”
That is a sane approach to the immediate issue at hand, which must be complemented by a medium- and long-term program of global economic development as in the Schiller Institute report, “Development Drive Means Billions of New Jobs, No Refugees, No War.”
