protests

It is hard to ignore the striking parallels between the recent scenes of police brutality in cities across the United States and decades of violence from Israel’s security forces against Palestinians.
A video that went viral late last month of a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, killing a black man, George Floyd, by pressing a knee into his neck for nearly nine minutes has triggered a fortnight of mass protests across the US – and beyond.

The United States is again engulfed in protests/riots regarding the treatment of Blacks in the nation by authorities. We have seen this many times before, just a few years ago in Ferguson, before that in LA in the 90s, etc. In a previous piece I wrote that the best strategy for Trump would be to just ride out the storm, and I stand by that, but that is the best strategy for his own immediate survival in the short term.

New York City (BAR) — The awesome power of massed, militant people in motion has been manifest since the Memorial Day murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The marriage of post-Lockdown and George Floyd protests has nurtured a rough beast that is still immune to any form of civilized debate in the U.S.: the Seattle Commune.
So what really is the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone cum People’s Republic all about?
Are the communards mere useful idiots? Is this a refined Occupy Wall Street experiment? Could it survive, logistically, and be replicated in NYC, L.A. and D.C.?

If I’m gonna die I’ll die now, right here, fighting you.
— Muhammad Ali to a white college student who challenged his opposition to the Vietnam War

While I am following closely various discussions on Western mass media and social media, simultaneously engaging in several direct exchanges, one overwhelming leitmotif that I see is clearly emerging: “What is happening in the United States (and the UK, France and other parts of Western Empire) is not really about the race. Let us protest peacefully, let us not allow ‘rioting’ to continue, and above all, please let us not single out the white race, Western culture as a sole villain.

If one ventures into the vast wasteland of American television it is possible to miss the truly ridiculous content that is promoted as news by the major networks. One particular feature of media-speak in the United States is the tendency of the professional reporting punditry to go seeking for someone to blame every time some development rattles the National Security plus Wall Street bubble that we all unfortunately live in.

A 32-year-old man with the mental age of an 8-year-old child was executed by Israeli soldiers on May 30, while crouching behind his teacher near his special needs school in the Old City of Jerusalem.
The cold-blooded murder of Iyad al-Hallaq might not have received much attention if it were not for the fact that it took place five days following the similarly heartbreaking murder of a 46-year-old black man, George Floyd, in Minneapolis, at the hands of American police.

Not the only “finest” but the ones with the biggest TV and movie coverage

Demonstrators on Wednesday, June 3, 2020 in downtown Los Angeles (AP Photo:  Ringo H.W. Chiu)