riots

American Conservative, June 3, 2020

Civil Liberties
Trump’s Finger on the Martial Law Trigger
by James Bovard

Giving the military total power would be a political nuclear bomb, provoking more unrest than we have now.

The news coming from the US about the riots “based” on the killing of George Floyd, a black man, at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, continues to be disturbing, to say the least.

After a week of civil unrest and random violence, residents across America have woken up to more neighborhoods in shambles, stores looted and set on fire – all as political leaders continue to dither, with some simply denying anything serious has been happening. The civil vacuum that is now forming is truly breathtaking.

The corporate media and corporate politicians are paralyzed with indecision.  Which fake myth do we adhere to?  “Black people burning down their own neighborhoods” or “outside agitators”?  What if it’s both, and more…?

Well, it looks like the Resistance’s long-anticipated “Second Civil War” has finally begun … more or less exactly on cue. Rioting has broken out across the nation. People are looting and burning stores and attacking each other in the streets. Robocops are beating, tear-gassing, and shooting people with non-lethal projectiles.

By now, there are thousands of media images and scenes from protests and mob lootings across the US following the in-custody death of 46 year-old George Floyd last Monday. Here is one video scene captured by an Australian news channel on assignment in Minneapolis on Friday which shows the crowd dynamics and interactions between police and protesters – and also just how easily tensions can accelerate once a relatively minor incident begins to escalate.

NOTE: AIER website is currently down so I am redirecting traffic to my posting of this article I did for them today.

American Institute for Economic Research, June 1, 2020

The Real Looters are the Politicians

James Bovard

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The Hong Kong rioters and other violent so-called opposition figures are up for a big surprise soon: their actions may simply not be tolerated anymore. In fact, they might become illegal. But not because, as the White House and the Western mass media are continuously trumpeting, “China is governed by the Communist Party”, but simply because such activities are illegal in China as well as in most parts of the world, including the United States and Europe.

The nationwide uprising sparked by the murder of George Floyd and other recent racially-motivated events is a response to the bi-partisan failed state in which we live. It comes in the midst of the COVID19 pandemic and the largest economic collapse in the US in more than a century. These three crises have disproportionately impacted people of color and added to longterm racial inequality and injustice.

Mobs are unruly, headless things. The message is the action. The platform is often violence.  But what is happening across the United States cannot simply be labelled as a looting-leads-to-shooting episode. It ranks as another chapter of enraged despair and untidy opportunism.