You’ve heard about them, I’m sure. A cop put his knee on a black man’s neck and choked him to death. Took his sweet time about it.
On video.
So, this is clearly murder. There isn’t any question about it. People who understand violence are saying that this is a slow blood choke, which is apparently really painful, so it’s also torture. Floyd wasn’t resisting, and even if he had been you don’t deal with a handcuffed man’s resistance by choking him out. (If you were actually scared, you wouldn’t do it slowly, over six minutes, either.)
As usual, the protest started peaceful, but unlike when white men with assault rifles enter the state capitol, the cops escalated things and pretty soon there was violence and rioting. An entire police station has been burned down (reasonable), a Target looted, etc… (Aside: According to a local, that Target was the store used by the corporation to test all new security measures, and was widely hated.)
The cop who killed George Floyd, Derek Chauvin, and the three cops who sat there doing nothing, have been fired, but not arrested or charged for murder. No one but a cop wouldn’t be charged for murder when there’s a tape of the act, no resistance, witnesses, etc.
The riots are a result of the murder, police provocation, and the lack of an arrest. If the police didn’t want riots they could have arrested Chauvin. If they want them to end, they need to arrest Chauvin. It’s that simple.
Well, and stop the constant beatings and murders of blacks by police; that’s the background of this situation.
Trump, never seeing a situation he couldn’t make worse, has threatened to send in the National Guard and shoot looters.
Alright, enough “background.”
Here’s the simple truth: Academic research shows that riots are actually an effective way to protest. They get results pretty often. The riot was justified and the looting is part of what happens in riots. As long as the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, an oppressed minority kept down with violence and in poverty, and locks up black men at a ferocious rate, riots will happen because people hate being treated like shit.
My sympathies here are with the protesters primarily, though small shop owners who are looted are also victims. This mess can be stopped any time by arresting Chauvin, so the fact that it is happening is a choice. No justice, no peace.
Note: If you’re protesting in Minneapolis, remember to wear a mask so you don’t get killed afterwards like the Ferguson protestors AND don’t carry your goddamn phone. Don’t take pics of each other either, nor wear real distinctive clothes. It’s AFTER that matters. The cops will hunt you down if they can figure out who you are.
The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
anon
This was my comment to the last post on armed right-wing protestors. See the link to the photo in my comment: https://www.ianwelsh.net/why-armed-right-wingers-were-able-to-shut-down-michigans-legislature/#comment-114155
The police officers were getting chummy with the right-wing protestors and handled them with kid gloves. I wondered at the time how different things would have been had Antifa, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and Muslims done the same. There is no doubt in my mind that the police would have used deadly force.
I’ve been proven correct with the Minneapolis riots. From what I’ve seen on social media, the protests started off peaceful. I saw two videos showing either police or police sympathizers inciting violence and destruction early on.
Here is a police vehicle in downtown Minneapolis spraying mace indiscriminately: https://www.reddit.com/r/Minneapolis/comments/gsk41x/pigs_in_downtown_spray_mace_for_no_reason/
And another video of a lone white man wearing a $300 gas mask breaking the windows of the Autozone that was eventually burned to the ground. Most people assumed he was police or a right winger who supports the police. He was definitely not with any of the protestors: https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/who-is-the-umbrella-man-who-started-damage-at-autozone
I’ve always thought that the police incite riots and looting in inner city neighborhoods as a way to prove to the average white American that people of color and the white liberals who support them are wild animals who need strict policing to be controlled. At the same time, it’s the neighborhoods of the protestors being destroyed, not the suburban neighborhoods where most of the police and their families live. Win-win for the police.
You only need to look at the police’s treatment of the right-wing protestors several weeks ago and compare that to the tear gas, mace, and rubber bullets being used now on peaceful protestors. There is a major difference in the way the police treat white right-wingers compared to white leftists and people of color.
I feel very badly for the small businesses whose livelihoods have been destroyed. Things were bad enough with the pandemic but most of these business owners are done for good now. I have no problems with protestors destroying the police department or other government offices as well as large corporately owned businesses, but the small business owners and/or homeowners did not deserve this.
Z
What the f*ck do they expect?
Maybe now, maybe maybe maybe, our political rulers will begin coming to terms with the danger of having tens of millions of masked unemployed people with plenty of time on their hands who are without a legal means to survive in a system that has sentenced them to destitution instead of wringing their greedy f*ing hands about the necessity of “balancing the budget” shortly after they’ve taken care of the only people that they’ve decided matter: themselves and their sponsors.
The freedom fighters burnt down a police station in Minneapolis. Love it! Glad too that it puts the spotlight on out-of-touch Amy K and her record right after the clueless fool was so proud to co-sponsor a $4000 tax credit bill to train people for job openings that don’t exist as a partial remedy for this economic calamity that was worth the time and ink spent on writing it. What an idiot!
Riots in KY too. Good! Nice to see some local heat on that “let them eat shit” snapping turtle from Kentucky McConnell who has basically been daring the working class to stick up for themselves.
Hopefully it will be New York City next. The subjects of that city have more reason to revolt than anywhere else in the U.S..
I believe that we’re also seeing protestors getting involved in these riots partially to be able to get in on the loot booty. Why not? The system isn’t taking care of them so they have to take from it in order to survive.
This is just the opening act to this urban wildfire. The cops are on the front line of enforcing our rulers’ diktats and they are continually going to be bumping heads with a public that is desperate, distrustful, and angry. Expect more sparks to fly from that and there’s plenty of tinder to light.
Z
Z
It’s been building for a long, long time and now it’s all packed into a tight pile.
Z
Joe
What\’s happening in Minneapolis has been brewing for many years. While former presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar was Hennepin County Attorney, zero police were prosecuted in more than two dozen cases where people were killed, including the cop who kneeled on George Floyd\’s neck. After Klobuchar left office, the only police killing in Minneapolis that was prosecuted was a black officer who killed a white woman.
A 2015 report by the U.S. Dept. of Justice noted that even as Minneapolis Police made attempts at reform, law enforcement agencies lacked either the authority or will to discipline and remove bad officers from patrol. Law enforcement failed to adopt many of the changes recommended. In particular, the police didn\’t update their policies on the use of neck restraints. In 2016 the department adopted a rule that officers intervene when another officer becomes abusive. The video shows that rule was clearly ignored.
The protests, or riots if you prefer, seem to have some elements of organization that remind me of a 1973 movie \”The Spook Who Sat By the Door.\” The movie was directed by Ivan Dixon, who played Kinchloe on Hogan\’s Heroes. From Wikipedia: \”Soon after its release, with the facilitation of FBI suppression, as author Sam Greenlee believed, the film was removed from theaters as a result of its politically controversial message. Nina Metz wrote in the Chicago Tribune: \”For years it was only available on bootleg video. In 2004, the actor Tim Reid tracked down a remaining negative stored in a vault under a different name…\” The film is powerful and sadly, once again relevant.
As for the looting and destruction, which is clearly not a good thing, I\’m reminded of a quote by Molly Ivins, \”When the rich loot, there\’s no heavy lifting.\”
Z
This is going to be a long hot summer, often in full riot gear, for the U.S. police.
Z
Ché Pasa
The act of the officer in causing the death of George Floyd was arguably murder one. Premeditated. The officer knew what he was doing, knew what could and likely would happen, that Floyd would die, and he apparently was fine with that. Three other officers on scene saw what was happening, knew what would happen if pressure on Floyd’s neck wasn’t relieved, and they did not intervene. They are arguably as guilty of murder. Certainly they are accessories. Firing them without arresting and charging them is absurd. The fact that they are still free is the proximate cause of the riots. The fact is that the Minneapolis police department is unable to perform its task lawfully and should be disbanded. There have been too many police murders of civilians in Minneapolis, and nothing so far tried seems to correct this problem. The murder in question took place among multiple witnesses over many minutes of outright torture of Mr. Floyd. The officer meant his actions to be seen and appreciated — and feared.
The officer’s actions triggered so much pent up rage. Outwardly at yet another incident of police murder of an African American. But the rage is deep seated and at this point, even if the offending officers were arrested and charged, it probably wouldn’t stop the riots.
What to do? Disband the police force — because the people have no confidence in them. Quarantine or otherwise detain the police so they don’t go wilding in the face of their humiliation. Call in the National Guard (I read that’s been done), and declare a state of emergency (also already done, I expect) which could lead to martial law. Regain control of the city carefully without resort to even more violence.
Then fix what’s wrong.
Ian is right, riots can produce positive and lasting change when societies reach a tipping point. They can also produce very negative and lasting changes, as riots have done in the US many times.
Right now, it’s a toss up between positive and negative changes, but change will come no matter.
If positive change in the police culture is to come, the shock to the police in Minneapolis and elsewhere must be intense and sustained. Task forces jiggering around the edges as we’ve seen over and over again won’t do it.
Z
I think this time is different. Even if the cops are charged it will be something else somewhere else. The cops are going to increasingly come into contact with the public with tens of millions recently unemployed and landlords trying to evict or foreclose on people as well.
What happened in Minneapolis very likely would not have gone this far … with a police precinct burnt down! … if there weren’t so many people unemployed right now.
If our rulers don’t alleviate the economic stress on their subjects with some sort of UBI or jobs program it’s going to be a long, hot summer, often in full riot gear, for the police.
Z
someofparts
In Berkeley in the 60s police had to cope with protestors who were being coached by students from area law schools. They responded by changing hiring practices for the police, so that new hires were required to have undergraduate degrees. I don’t think it solved all of their problems, but it did seem to improve the overall quality of local policing significantly. It reminds me of something I heard on a podcast yesterday pointing out that in China teaching gets great respect and is very well paid.
Seems to me that a certain amount of our problem with policing, as with teaching, could be solved by treating those professions to good pay and real respect. When the best and brightest young workers want to be police or want to teach and get good pay and community respect for doing so, that could be a decent first step toward fixing the mess in our communities.
Mallam
//If our rulers don’t alleviate the economic stress on their subjects with some sort of UBI or jobs program it’s going to be a long, hot summer, often in full riot gear, for the police.//
If you checked the economic data released today, you’d see that the unemployment benefits with the extra $600/week has been an amazing success and people’s economic distress isn’t actually what’s the problem at the moment. By all means, extend these benefits and make them permanent, but you’re transplanting your own grievances/politics onto the protestors.
Z
Mallam,
“Amazing success”.
You believe everything you’re fed because you’re probably fed quite well.
Z
Z
Wonder how long it will be before Robber Rubin grabs Obama by the collar and makes him do his blackface PR act and lecture African-Americans about not being socially responsible?
Z
js
It’s quite possible that some of the people protesting have done better under unemployment, we don’t know. Increased unemployment payments won’t last, but that’s neither here nor there.
Of course it’s projecting one’s own grievances on to the protestors, whose grievances have a pretty specific focus.
Z
JS,
If you believe there is no relation between one’s economic position and how one is treated by the police I believe you are very naive.
And if you don’t think economic insecurity … waiting for the government to provide more money so you can pay your bills or for the economy to produce work for you … doesn’t effect people’s behavior and create a sense of powerlessness and rage at a system that one can easily see rewards the large crooks in the financial world while ruthlessly punishing the poor for much less, then I think you’re doubly naive.
Z
Z
Mallam and JS,
You guys act like there is no relation between police brutality and the U.S. economic system.
Z
DMC
It seems the cop knew Floyd and that they were in fact co-workers at the same restruant/club, where they were bouncers, and had been for some years, which makes one suspect that there might have had motivations for the murder beyond the usual brutality/neglect. Like Floyd had something on the cop and this was a convenient way to ensure that “dead men tell no tales”. More about this angle is bound to turn up as people comee forward.
krake
One hopes the comrades who burned the 3rd precinct did a little battlefield recovery.
krake
“Seems to me that a certain amount of our problem with policing, as with teaching, could be solved by treating those professions to good pay and real respect. When the best and brightest young workers want to be police or want to teach and get good pay and community respect for doing so, that could be a decent first step toward fixing the mess in our communities.”
As long as the job is property protection and its comcommitant repression of the impoverished, all this will achieve is a better trained caste of heavily armed liars.
And as long as higher education’s purpose is to filter the mostly affluent into corporate, academic and military middle management, what a degree will continue to signify is a willingness to serve an oppressive order. A small percentage of family groups get to stage their children ahead of the median, while the rest are (grudgingly, poorly and with malice) prepared to be their cattle.
College doesn’t get the best and the brightest. It gets the offspring of the already-compromised.
Ef that.
Joan
@Mallam, this is true, and why there is currently a bandaid on many millions more people descending into economic misery. But that time is coming in July unless unemployment is extended, and unless the unemployment offices hire more people and start picking up the phone.
I’ll share my friend’s story as an example. She worked as a part-time nanny for a couple different families through some kind of nanny-matching app. She lost all of her income with covid and got on unemployment. For two months, she made more than she ever had, and thankfully she is smart and shoveled it into her bank account instead of paying off any debt. But a month ago she got an email that her documents were insufficient and now unemployment won’t pick up the phone. She sits with her phone calling them all day. Now she has no income and no clue what she will do if she doesn’t get it back.
js
Cops ultimate goal is to enforce property rights and in a capitalist system capitalism.
That can be true and the issue being protested in most ways tangential to the strictly economic issues the white left focuses on. I’m not saying there is not economic suffering, widespread and in minority communities even more, but it seems a type of co-opting to make it all about that.
Z
JS,
-For f*ck sake what was Floyd suspected of? What drove the interaction between him and the police? Forgery. What was Garner apprehended for? Selling cigarettes. Why did Rodney King run? Because he didn’t want to go to jail for violating his parole for a robbery conviction.
What drives an interaction is not tangential to it IMO.
-No one said that a mass protest involving thousands of people was solely about one issue. That’s your framing. As is you declaring that the “white left” focuses on “strictly economic issues”.
In case you didn’t see any footage, there were a lot of white people involved in the protests in Minneapolis. I’d guess the majority from what I saw.
Z
someofparts
“As long as the job is property protection and its comcommitant repression of the impoverished, all this will achieve is a better trained caste of heavily armed liars.”
Probably true. Earlier this month I watched a long interview with Chris Hedges about the work he has done teaching in prisons. Hedges made it clear that prisons don’t exist to protect us, they exist to imprison colonized domestic populations.
Chipper
Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder among other things. There’s still all kinds of opportunities for him to get off, but it’s a start.
John
Ian, I saw one hopeful comment on Zerohedge from a well masked and therefore unidentifiable protestor. He said if demands aren’t met, they are headed for the suburbs and the down town business district. I think I saw a picture of protestors at the cop’s suburban house which appeared to be ringed by a wall of police. Bring the pain to the source. Don’t burn your own community. Strategic abd popup protests on various sides of the city and shutting down the transportation corridors would probably be effective.
Based on this book reviewhttps://aeon.co/ideas/how-did-slaveholders-in-the-caribbean-maintain-control
I have come to realize that the US is one vast neoliberal plantation slave economy. The owners are the oligarchs and corporate overlords. The overseers are the duopoly political class. The slave patrols and enforcers are police and military. The monetization of human bodies proved to be unsatisfactory as too much capital rested in a fragile resource as in pre 1862 chattel slavery in the US. Better was to rent the resource and discard it when damaged as in the wage slave and share cropping system post 1865. This is what the industrialists already understood.
So today, the US is the perfect neoliberal plantation slave economy…with politicians enjoying the status of the overseers doing the bidding of the corporate owners, the military and police enforcing and maintaining the order along with the other administrators in the top 20% and the bottom distracted and divided 80% wage slaves. The job of the overseers and administrators is to nurture those distractions and divisions to keep the system in place. Perfect and effective exploitation. It won’t last forever but the crash is not gonna be pretty.
Z
I think one of the most uplifting aspects of the Minneapolis riots is that it was a good mixture of whites and blacks involved in it, as well as Hispanics, I’d imagine, but in the footage I saw it seemed to be primarily white and black protesters. They united against police brutality and protested a black person being murdered by the police.
But IMO they also united behind something else that was largely unspoken of: their mutual frustration and hate of an economic system that is inequitable and immoral. The rioters were probably a lot of college students and service workers I’d imagine who are experiencing economic precarity and facing an uncertain future laden with debt.
I doubt many financially comfortable folks from the suburbs drove in to get involved. They had a lot more to lose.
Z
Plowhard
Oops.
As usual, the Fake News lies to you. Mr George did not die from choking.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/medical-examiner-concludes-george-floyd-didnt-die-of-asphyxia?_amp=true&__twitter_impression=true
As usual, the leftists on here fell for the narrative, hook, line and sinker.
Will you reactionaries ever learn?
Hugh
Third degree murder is a legal category that exists in only 3 states. It is defined, as per wiki, as “the unlawful killing of a human being, when perpetrated without any design to effect death, by a person engaged in the perpetration of, or in the attempt to perpetrate, any felony” other than those enumerated.
“Without any design to effect death” is the kicker here because Chauvin was a trained police officer surrounded by other trained police officers. All of them, including Chauvin, knew the reckless and unlawful nature of Chauvin’s actions, and that there was a high likelihood these would end in the death of George Floyd.
Contrast third degree murder to second degree murder as given at findlaw: “Second degree murder is generally defined as intentional murder that lacks premeditation, is intended to only cause bodily harm, and demonstrates an extreme indifference to human life.”
Third degree murder is a BS charge thrown together by a county prosecutor Michael Freeman who is clearly signaling that he will be pulling his punches in both the charging and prosecution of this case.
krake
‘Third degree murder is a BS charge thrown together by a county prosecutor Michael Freeman who is clearly signaling that he will be pulling his punches in both the charging and prosecution of this case.’
And with a manslaughter charge thrown in, to confuse the jury, or to give them an out.
Z
Plowhard,
Read much?
I believe the main thing the rioters believed, not that I believe the medical examiner by any means, was that Chauvin’s actions killed Floyd. The precise cause of death really isn’t that important to them.
Z
Plowhard
Hugh and krake are bots, as best I can tell. How else to explain their posts, in light of the autopsy report.
Plowhard
Z you are very obviously a radical that just wants to watch the world burn.
Z
Plowhard,
You very obviously don’t care if the world burns down as long as you end up above others on the ash heap.
Z
Plowhard
Z,
That is such a ridiculous thing to say (projecting much?) that it is sad that was your best attempt at a retort. Your mind has been kludged by years of propaganda lad. Be better.
Z
Plowhard,
… says the person who says Hugh and Krake are bots and that I want to watch the world burn down and I’m brainwashed by propaganda.
If you want to dish out ridiculousness then plan on getting some back.
Or be better …
Z
Plowhard
Bears repeating – mr george most likely died from drugs:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/medical-examiner-concludes-george-floyd-didnt-die-of-asphyxia?_amp=true&__twitter_impression=true
Not from “choking”
krake
Plowhard,
Are you suggesting that Mr Floyd would have died of coronary disease that day had four police officers not knelt on his back, legs and neck? Are you suggesting that his declarations of pain, torment and inability to breathe were unrelated to having his neck knelt upon while handcuffed and prone? That it was all merely a tragic coincidence?
Plowhard
A rational person – a non-reactionary – would realize we’ve been through this before, and that the initial narrative never matches the eventual facts.
Let’s wait and see if it was entirely a cardiac event, which means drugs.
Let’s keep in mind also that you’re being manipulate to incite particular emotions. I wonder why? And why haven’t you caught on to this game yet?
Ché Pasa
Underlying health conditions, intoxicants or what have you shouldn’t matter. The question is would George Floyd be dead if the officer had not held his knee on Floyd’s neck for as long and hard as he did. I submit that Floyd would be very much alive under any reasonable form of restraint. What the officer did was in my view premeditated and depraved murder.
Zachary Smith
Something I haven’t seen posted yet – the killer and the victim knew each other.
George Floyd and cop who knelt on his neck before his death worked TOGETHER at the same Minneapolis club just months earlier
Chauvin certainly went out of his way to do great harm to Floyd. Perhaps some interaction(s) with Floyd at the bar caused him to want to punish a person he had come to dislike for some reason.
The Elites seem to have adopted a policy of making a dramatic firing or even an arrest to quiet things down. Hope some local Klobuchar-type prosecutor doesn’t wait till things cool down and charge Chauvin with the equivalent of jaywalking.
Hugh
I guess Ian should feel good that his blog is considered important enough to be trolled by right wing nutters.
I am surprised that the medical examiner did not add that another contributing factor in George Floyd’s death was the color of his skin. Almost anyone in their 40s will exhibit some signs of coronary artery disease. Many African-American males in this age group may also have some degree of hypertension. His hypertension, which given his age and active lifestyle, would not have been evident from his autopsy but rather his previous medical history. (It’s hard to get a blood pressure from someone who is dead.)
As for lack of signs of traumatic asphyxia, it is hard to find something you have decided not to look for. There had to have been abrasions and bruising on Floyd’s face, neck, abdomen, and legs both from Chauvin and the other two officers restraining him. Bruising might be harder to see in an African-American but still discernible. The abrasions would have been visible regardless. And of course, the medical examiner also had six minutes of video showing Chauvin and the other two officers restraining Floyd’s breathing until he became unresponsive. Apparently, having the life slowly squeezed out of you over a period of agonizing minutes does not constitute trauma for this medical examiner. I mean what’s the standard? no broken hyoid, no strangulation? Would George Floyd still be dead even if he had no “underlying” conditions? Absolutely.
One of the things bloggers like me learned years ago was not just to read reports but to look at the people and institutions who wrote them and the constraints on and connections between them and what they were reporting. Both medical examiners and county prosecutors work with police all the time. They will work with them in the future. There are personal and institutional allegiances. They are on the same side. If forced a prosecutor can bring charges, but he/she can still choose to undercharge and underprosecute them. And a medical examiner can write his/her preliminary report to make it sound as if some unremarkable, incidental findings (some signs of CAD, a history of HTN, maybe throw in some drug use) were as responsible for Floyd’s death as the actions of the police.
How do I know this? Because the medical examiner never spelled out, at least in his conclusion which I have read (could not find the whole report online) which physical signs of Floyd’s “being restrained by the police” contributed to his death. The only physical finding is that George Floyd like many, many people in his age range had a little CAD. As I said before, the HTN almost certainly came from a previous medical record, not a physical finding. And some unsubstantiated drug use, which even if true, would hardly be unusual among Americans.
Zachary Smith
Hugh, the object here is to start throwing handfuls of dirt into the mechanism of the clock. Make people begin to doubt their own lying eyes. Likely some really convincing statistics can be found (or created) which demonstrate people with a Dark Skin are more likely to die from knees is on their neck than White Skinned folks. The poor black guy had multiple ‘heart issues’, and we’ll unlikely to ever know for sure which of the many problems he had which caused his death. When I saw the troll’s stuff and looked up the Medical Examiner’s report, I immediately thought of the ancient Heinlein juvenile novel “Between Planets”.
The cop’s knee on Floyd’s neck “may” have contributed to his death, but that could easily have been a minor factor. The arteries! The blood pressure! The drugs! The stress Floyd felt about his potential conviction for passing a fake $20! We’ll never know for sure!
—
I ‘believe’ I finally found the name of the Medical Examiner who wrote that report, and things got a little weird when I tried to learn more about that person. (assuming of course Andrew M. Baker is the guy.)
The quote above came from a site which is far beyond insane, and I’m not going to link it. But a quick search found the fentanyl article really exists.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1556-4029.2007.00481.x
For all I know, that area is littered with Andrew M. Bakers. and this isn’t really the Medical Examiner who wrote the report. But if it is, WTH does it all mean?
NR
If someone can say “I can’t breathe,” they don’t mean that they can’t breathe at all. If they couldn’t breathe at all, they couldn’t speak. What they mean is that they are having great difficulty breathing. If they die shortly afterward, it is often due to cardiac failure, not asphyxiation. And cardiac distress can be caused by prolonged pressure to the vital arteries and veins in the neck, as happened here.
It’s also worth pointing out that it doesn’t matter, legally speaking, if Floyd had underlying cardiac conditions. If you take an unlawful action that would not cause the death of a young and healthy person, but causes death in your victim due to some underlying health condition, you are still criminally liable, even if you didn’t know about the condition.
So no, the medical examiner’s report does not exonerate the cops in the Floyd case. In fact, it specifically lists the effects of being restrained by police as a likely contributor to his death.
Zachary Smith
A contributing factor in the plague of Police Killings is their training. Or to be more specific, WHERE they trained.
The Apartheid state is heavily involved in training US police
The pissant state is teaching US lawmen to treat the non-whites same way as the Palestinians are handled in the ‘holy land’. Live targets.
http://www.meezaan.org/Public/image/israeli_snipers.jpg
Zachary Smith
I’ve written off the Lang site, but a remark at another blog got me curious enough to follow up with his link.
Murder is murder
“Very Surprised” – that’s all I’ll say about his stance.
Zachary Smith
Some thoughts from the Counterpunch site to chew on…
White Supremacy is the Virus; Police are the Vector
The US police forces do what they’re designed to do. They are ‘enforcers’ for the Power Elites. The lawmen are carefully selected for their jobs – who wants a “squealer” or sissified liberal on the force? Their training might include a trip to the Apartheid state, or it could simply involve supervisors and prosecutors being willfully blind at times. These days they get the best of automatic weapons, body armor, and military equipment. The Supreme Court is extremely “helpful” in allowing them to do whatever those Elites desire.
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2020/05/12/568202.htm
Public opinion is always carefully shaped so the White Citizens are generally pleased. Pre-Civil war times involved making the poor whites in the South greatly fear the enslaved black animals. Slave Patrols were a thing in the South. Real fear was a big reason the dirt-poor white soldiers fought so hard in that war – they honestly believed they were protecting their families from “abolition”. After the South lost, the formerly rich Slavers had lost most everything – except for their skills in manipulating the illiterate whites. They quickly turned the resentment from losing so many friends and relatives (and of course the humiliating loss to Northerners they’d formerly scorned as wusses) into a jihad against the newly freed black slaves. Once the South had cut a deal with the North on throwing the blacks to the wolves, darkness descended for the next 100 years.
I’ve been reading old Reader’s Digests from 90 years ago, and have been shocked at how casually black ‘citizens’ were murdered in the US. But especially in the South. Police forces could have halted all those lynchings and murders, but they didn’t. In modern times lynchings have been discouraged, but since black folk must still be controlled, the job has been handed off to the police. Even in 2020 we’ve seen the white woman in NYC who tried to use the Police to chastise the uppity black man. Chastise him to death, if necessary! So the casual murders continue to this day, and generally with no real consequences to the police. Why should they stop? Be a little more careful – maybe – but keep putting those notches on the pistol grip.
Hugh
The game here is not exoneration. It is mitigation. Under charge, under prosecute, under report. As Zachary notes, death is generally tied to permanent cardiac arrest. That arrest is also usually the result of a lethal cardiac arrhythmia. So what induced the arrhythmia in Floyd’s case? An inadequate oxygen supply to the heart, –asphyxia brought on by three policeman sitting on him and reducing oxygen to the heart muscle. That is 99% of what caused his death. The rest is incidental irrelevancies, bafflegab meant to mitigate and confuse the proximate, determinative reason Floyd died: acute police-induced asphyxia.
Z
More protests last night. Great!
And to folks like Blowhard that assume that people like me are supportive of the rebellious destruction just to watch the fireworks: no, people like me wanted to have Bernie Sanders win the democratic nomination for president so that much needed change that benefited over 90% of the country for a change instead of just the .01% could be attained politically and peacefully. But no that couldn’t be allowed to happen, the voters were largely overrode by the heavy hand of the dnc and we couldn’t even get a fair contest and instead the dnc and their owners cheated and handed the nomination to some evil, self-delusional clown who is sliding into dementia and who has been a vehement enemy of the working class his entire f*ing political career and demand we vote for this jackass to prevent another term of Trump.
So, this is how pent-up rage plays out in a system that doesn’t listen to the working class, that treats its citizens as subjects and dismisses the vast majority of the people as a disposable commodity, fuel for their “betters”, and keeps them in economic precarity and then lectures them on personal responsibility while they hand over trillions to criminals on Wall Street that rob us day and night. These scumbags deserve to taste some fear for a change and in fact they deserve a hell of a lot worse and I hope it comes to their neighborhood and to their front door.
But no worries, no worries, I’m sure Amy Kop-enabler will calm the waters by increasing her tax credit, fully refundable!, from $4000 to $5000 for training for jobs that don’t exist, the out-of-touch idiot.
Z
Z
Well, OT but I think we can eliminate Amy Kop-enabler and Kamala the Cop Harris from VP contention at this point.
Centerview business partners Robber “Vito” Rubin and Rahm “Sonny” Emanuel are probably working with lieutenant Larry “Clemenza” Summers on crafting a political platform to meet the moment that they can later congressionally extinguish with their dancing partners across the political aisle once they get into office. The old “bait and extinguish” trick Rahm has mastered from working in Congress, the White House, and team blue’s twin paragons of corruption: the DCCC and DNC
Robber likes to use the black-faced politicians on his chessboard to do his dirty work, he’s shy and likes to hide behind his manners and pay others to do the nastiness of mercilessly clubbing the U.S. working class over the head, that keeps the blood speckles off his suit and his fingerprints off the murder weapon, but I don’t see how they can stand-up Abrams, who is out of her league, and Demings may have the gravitas but she is a former police officer and that won’t sell well.
Maybe they can get their favorite black-faced politician, the Head PR Man for the Point Zero One Percent himself, to lend them his wife, he’s subservient enough and has eaten many a Rubin-on-ryes, but I doubt she’d go for it.
Z
bruce wilder
Analyzing the injustice of this incident in racial terms is a fool’s game.
We are so used to it, and it is wrapped up so tightly and emotionally with the only way left slightly open by the powers-that-be to seek redress of grievance, I do not think people even see anymore how the standard tropes of “racism” as explanator has evolved into a disabling distraction.
“The problem” of murderous police violence is framed always in racial terms, with hardly any testing of the bounds of that hypothesis.
And, what does it accomplish, this cliche of American politics?
It signals to African-Americans that they should be very afraid of the police in all circumstances (which certainly they should be) and, more devisively, it signals to African-Americans that white people do not need to be afraid of the police. (Is that true? Is skin color any kind of immunity?)
Socio-economic class does confer a high degree of presumption if not outright immunity and that leads to some slip-slidin’ into an upper-class African-American grievance that is not pretty: that economic accomplishment ought to confer more presumption than it actually does. Call this the Eric Holder view of the world: progress toward justice calls for immunity for rich people including rich black people.
And, if the public reaction to clear cases of police authoritarianism is only amplified in the Media where there is a racial component and the racial component is emphasized in the analysis, what does that signal to everyone who is not black? That the beating or the murder is not an injustice that anyone really cares about unless the Justice Department can investigate it as a “civil rights case” (as if civil rights wears only the badge of racial discrimination).
It is true that unless you can bring evidence of racial discrimination in the case to bear, you probably cannot get very far in court. The American legal system has been closing every other door, narrowing the practical grounds on which relief and reform can be demanded. Not that much changes, even when the claim of racism is potent enough to call forth an intervention from the Courts or the Executive.
We live in a fantasy world, where the police and law are concerned. In fictional TV drama, the hero cops “who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders” live in fear of the zealous Internal Affairs Department (a watchdog unit I wager does not even exist in most U.S. police departments). On teevee procedurals, the cops are relentlessly nice, and often seemingly all-knowing. Real life is often Ferguson, where the cops are part of a predatory revenue-generating machine designed to save upper middle-class homeowners from having to pay higher property taxes; they hate themselves and the disrespect they are served for the stupid job they do.