If anyone needed another reminder that Black lives simply don’t matter in the United States of America, the police in Minneapolis have clearly demonstrated that fact [...]
If anyone needed another reminder that Black lives simply don’t matter in the United States of America, the police in Minneapolis have clearly demonstrated that fact.
It will be a long time before I will forget the picture of Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck. Even that statement is shocking. I still have not forgotten a very similar picture from 2014: a Black man on the ground being choked by a white policeman. In that earlier time, the victim was Eric Garner. His murderer, Daniel Pantaleo, faced no charges. Chauvin has been charged with third degree murder three days after his crime was committed. The Minnesota attorney who announced those charges commented how quickly they came about: only four days after the crime was committed.
For those four days, Chauvin was a free man. All it took was four days of investigation, coupled with major protests across the country, for the charges to be laid. Why in the ‘enlightened’ United States, is video evidence of a violent murder not sufficient? Why is it necessary for the people to rise up in protest for any semblance of justice to be achieved?
The late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once said that “a riot is the language of the unheard.” If the people of Minneapolis believed that this crime against an unarmed Black man would be treated the same way as the murder of an unarmed white man, the third precinct building might still be standing today. The other stores and buildings that have burned to the ground might still be operating. This destruction is part of the ‘language of the unheard’. People who are ‘unheard’ for generations, and who face the kind of repression, harassment and discrimination that people of color in the United States experience, will, eventually, take their rage to the streets.
Chauvin has been charged; we will see how his trial proceeds. But one of the many meaningless gestures we can now expect from elected and appointed officials is for additional training of the police, so they know how to handle such situation.
After I heard of the tragic death of Mr. Floyd, I picked up a book I had obtained sometime earlier called This Stops Today written by Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner. In the book, she quotes the Rev. Al Sharpton: “You don’t need training to stop choking a man saying ‘I can’t breathe.”
The police in the United States can be trained from now until the end of time, but until the racism that is so inherent in U.S. governance, including within the so-called justice system, ends, there will be more Eric Garners, George Floyds, Michael Browns, Philandro Castiles, etc., etc.
Just a few days prior to Mr. Floyd’s murder, a man in New York City’s Central Park escaped a deadly fate. Christian Cooper, a Black man, was bird watching in a section of the park where dogs are required to be leashed. He encountered Amy Cooper (no relation), a racist, entitled white woman, walking in that section with her dog unleashed. When he asked her to please leash her dog, as required by law, so the many ground-nesting birds and the plants in that particular section would not be disturbed, she refused. She then threatened to call the police and tell them that an African-American man was threatening her in the park. She did so, imbuing her voice with a sufficient amount of alarm to give her lie credence. However, before the police arrived, both she and Christian Cooper left the area. One can only wonder at the outcome if both had been present when the police arrived. Mr. Cooper was indeed fortunate.
And it doesn’t stop with the immediate victim. Ramsey Orta was one of the people who filmed Mr. Garner’s death in 2014. As a result, his name and face became well-known. A year after this murder, his house was raided, and he was arrested on a drug charge and accepted a plea deal that included incarceration. During that time, he was sometimes denied visitors, spent time in solitary confinement, and was moved from facility to facility for no apparent reason other than to make it difficult for anyone to visit him.
Taisha Allen, who also filmed that murder, was continually harassed by the police. In addition to verbal harassment (“Oh, you are that bitch that filmed the Eric Garner video”), on various occasions she was thrown to the ground, dragged by her feet and beaten with a baton. She, like Ramsey Orta, was guilty of attempting to hold criminal police accountable.
None of this should be surprising. The earliest documents establishing the United States as a country stated that governance would be by white, male landowners only. This occurred years after the settlers began sailing to the continent of Africa, kidnapping thousands of people and bringing them to North America as slaves. By the time of the nation’s founding, the Natives who lived in North America were seen as less than human, and their destruction is one of the most horrific genocides the world has ever known. It seems to be a given in the U.S. that to be white is better than to be Black or Brown, and to be white and male is the highest honor with which one can be born.
Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, who sought the Democratic presidential nomination this year and is now hoping to be selected as apparent nominee Joe Biden’s running mate, is under scrutiny for her time as Hennepin County Minnesota’s top prosecutor. It appears that she was, at best, lax in dealing with earlier crimes committed by Chauvin. She referred them to the local Grand Jury, which generally sides with the police over the public. Had Chauvin been prosecuted for some of his earlier crimes, perhaps Mr. Floyd would be alive today. In the long tradition of chameleon-style U.S. politicians, Klobuchar now says this: “I think that was wrong. I think it would have been much better if I took the responsibility and looked at the cases and made the decision myself.” And Biden says he was wrong to vote for the Iraq war. And former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he was wrong to enforce racial profiling in that city. It seems that many politicians do many things wrong until they run for higher office, when they suddenly have an epiphany and realize the errors of their ways.
It seems that the Ku Klux Klan has exchanged the white robes and hoods of the first half of the twentieth century for a new uniform, this one blue and adorned with a badge. The lynchings of an earlier day have been substituted for the shootings and strangulations of today, with the consequences mainly being unchanged. Panteleo was fired from his job five years after he murdered Mr. Garner, but he was never charged with any crime. The Grand Juries in most, if not all, states act as accomplices to the many murders committed by the police.
What is to be done? How will such deeply ingrained racism ever be defeated in the United States? It will never change as long as the special interests are in charge. If only the members of the voting populace realized the power that they have! Electoral choices are not limited to the Republican and Democratic Parties; their continued election only validates their awful policies. It is long past time to vote for third-party candidates. They are there; the two major parties will do all that they can to supress them, but with the Internet, they are not hard to find. This year, let’s let those two parties know that we know we have choices, and that we are going to use them.
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.
Read our Disclaimer/LegalStatement!
DonatetoSupportUs
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics, and international relations.
With the March 24 ICTY decision condemning Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic for war crimes, exactly 17 years after NATO began its bombing spree on Serbia, international criminal justice revealed itself once again as an instrument of US and NATO foreign policy.[They chose that the 24th of March to render judgment regarding Karadzic iquite deliberately with a view to erasing the history of NATO crimes.]If any doubts persist, it is worth remembering how the Former US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, David Scheffer, perceived that tribunal. Writing about it in his memoirs, Scheffer wrote unabashedly:the tribunal was an important judicial tool, and I had enough ...
Bijeljina, Bosnia in 1992: Serb Volunteer Guard (Arkan's Tigers) led by Željko Ražnjatović Arkan after the action of "cleaning the town from the Muslim jihadists" (official Arkan's explanation). The victims are local Muslim family members. The guard was composed by volunteers of all moral kinds being independent on the front line and in fact waging its own private war. Bosnia is a neighbouring republic to Serbia with 1/3 of Serbian population. Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) and (Roman Catholic) Croats committed terrible crimes of genocide against the local (Orthodox) Serb population during the WWII (the so called Magnum Crimen) while during the ...
Members of a notorious Albanian-run cocaine smuggling gang in London have outraged the UK mass media by flaunting their illegally obtained wealth on Instagram.The Daily Mail on Monday accused the Hellbanianz group of “brazenly flaunting their gangster lifestyle” by posting pictures of themselves draped over luxury cars, smoking drugs, sporting Gucci outfits and fielding a kind of cake made up of rolled-up 50 pound notes.A similar note of outrage was struck by the Sun and the Daily Mirror.One picture shows a gang member holding a golden “game-of-thrones” style knuckleduster, encrusted with gems and formed in the shape of the letters ...
I am a Lithuanian, but I leave abroad and I am not going back. At least now, at least until the Government does not pay attention to its people. According to some authoritative research institutes, during 2017 Lithuania population is again projected to decrease (by 45 677 people!) and reach 2 758 290 in the beginning of 2018. (http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/lithuania-population/). As of 1 January 2017, the population of Lithuania was estimated to be 2 803 967 people. This is a decrease of 1.63 % (46 433 people) compared to population of 2 850 400 the year before. In other words, our ...
There are more questions than answers to the Crimean ‘question’.After more than two decades belonging to an independent Ukraine, the Crimean peninsula has become part of Russia, which has thereby gained an extra 27,000 km2 of territory and over two million new citizens. Ukraine and the West see this unprecedented event as annexation and a sign of the Kremlin’s neo-imperial ambitions. To countries not directly involved in the Ukrainian crisis, it is a dangerous violation of the Eurasian status quo that could cause widespread destabilisation in the area, while in Moscow’s eyes it is ‘the return of Crimea and Sevastopol ...
Why the Gap In Military Superiority Is Closing?China and Russia are still behind the U.S. militarily. But they are both showing surprising breakthroughs that – sometime down the road in the future – could threaten U.S. hegemony.The Washington Times reported last month:Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Wednesday warned Russia and China are quickly closing the military technology gap with the U.S. as inconsistent military budgets and slower innovation threaten America’s lead in the military world.***“It’s evident that nations like Russia and China have been pursuing military modernization programs to close the technology gap with the United States,” he continued. “They’re ...
Imagine – the European Union were to collapse tomorrow – or any day soon for that matter. Europeans would dance in the streets. The EU has become a sheer pothole of fear and terror: Economic sanctions – punishment, mounting militarization, the abolition of civil rights for most Europeans. A group of unelected technocrats, representing 28 countries, many of them unfit to serve in their own countries’ political system, but connected well enough to get a plum job in Brussels – are deciding the future of Europe. In small groups and often in secret chambers they decide the future of Europe.Take ...
The Markale false flag as casus beli – On August 30, 1995. NATO began bombing of Republika Srpska (RS); the aggression lasted until 14. September and resulted in killing several hundreds of civilians. During the period the NATO aircrafts dropped 1,026, bombs with a total weight of explosives: 10,000 tons. NATO officials admitted the use of radioactive ammunition, saying that it was done in order to “bring Serbs to the table.” (i.e. negotiation). Casus beli for the NATO aggression was Sarajevo market Markale blast, 28 August 1995 for which they blamed Serbs, although the report of the Independent Commission indicated ...
For the Serbs as Christians, their loss of state independence and fall to the Ottoman Empire’s kind of theocratic state, was a terrible misfortune. With the advent of the Turks and establishment of their rule, the lands of Serbs were forcibly excluded from the circle of progressive European states wherein they occupied a prominent place precisely owing to the Byzantine civilization, which was enhanced by local qualities and strong influences of the neighboring Mediterranean states. Being Christians, the Serbs became second-class citizens in Islamic state. Apart from religious discrimination, which was evident in all spheres of everyday life, this status ...
Media narrative: Hateful protestors stormed the Macedonian parliament after an ethnic Albanian Talat Xhaferi was elected speaker for the first time.Truth: Protestors stormed the parliament because Xhaferi was declared speaker in an illegal, unconstitutional manner as part of an ongoing coup d'état. It had nothing whatsoever to do with his ethnicity.Even though Xhaferi was "elected" in an irregular manner, the US and EU have already stated they recognize his appointment. This now paves the way for ethnic Albanian parties and the smaller of two main Macedonian parties (Social Democrats) to proclaim a government without the constitutionally required go-ahead from the President of the Republic.The latter has defied ...
The superhighway to disaster is already being paved.From Donald Trump’s first days in office, news of the damage to America’s international stature has come hard and fast. As if guided by some malign design, the new president seemed to identify the key pillars that have supported U.S. global power for the past 70 years and set out to topple each of them in turn. By degrading NATO, alienating Asian allies, cancelling trade treaties, and slashing critical scientific research, the Trump White House is already in the process of demolishing the delicately balanced architecture that has sustained Washington’s world leadership since ...
Introduction: The Missing LinkWhy did the US support the separatist and terrorist so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA, or UCK in Shqip), which sought to create an ethnically pure Albanian Kosovo based on ethnicity? Why did the US sponsor a criminal and illegal separatist movement that sought to ethnically cleanse non-Albanians and create an independent state of Kosova? Why was the US supporting and sponsoring the re-establishment of a fascist-Nazi Greater Albania that Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini had initially created?When did the US begin to play a role in Kosovo? Did the US role in Kosovo begin with the arming ...
ISIS has new turf, this time in Europe. The German magazine Der Spiegel reports that there are now remote villages in the mountains of northern Bosnia where where the ISIS flag flies, and residents live under Sharia law. Roughly half of Bosnians are Muslim, and the radical ultra-devout make up a very small percentage. But it appears that percentage is growing — and growing violent — as extremists are gaining a foothold in rural Bosnian society.There are between 200 and 300 Bosnians fighting with ISIS in Syria and Iraq, more than from any other European nation besides Belgium. The Der ...
PrefaceDue to the current conflict in (East) Ukraine (historically known as Russia Minor), the world is more and more becoming informed about the genocide of the Poles, Jews, and Russians on the territory of West Ukraine during WWII committed by Ukrainian Nazi-nationalists (the Banderists). However, at the same time, in the Balkans, parallelly with the Ukrainian case, the organized (sadistic) genocide of the Jews, Roma, and above all the ethnic Serbs were on agenda but the world audience is still not properly informed about the case – the case occurred in the Nazi-shaped Independent State of Croatia.At the very start, ...
On 10 August 2016, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump accused president Barak Hussein Obama and Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton of co-founding the jihadist rebel organization ISIS (Islamic State) operating mainly in Syria and Iraq but with operative in many Middle Eastern countries and around the world. Trump used Obama’s full name to provoke a racist-xenophobic response from the public about the Arabic-sounding name rooted in East Africa. Immediately, critics insisted that Trump made outrageous and ignorant comments about complex foreign affairs matters he does not fully comprehend.The following day Trump clarified that he meant exactly what he said and ...
Make 4 July Independence from America Day (2014).Originally published in 2014Author: Dr. Gideon PolyaOrigins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics, and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]
It is now clear that on 14 April 2018, the three Governments of U.S., UK, and France, fired over a hundred missiles against Syria, on no more 'justification' than staged videos that had been done by those regimes' own proxy boots-on-the-ground fighters in Syria, who are trying to overthrow Syria's existing, non-sectarian Government and replace it by a Sharia-law regime that would be selected by agents of Saudi Arabia's ruling family. In other words: the fighters whom the U.S., UK, and France, had been arming and training, had themselves created this pretext of a faked 'gas attack' having been perpetrated ...
On November 11, distinguished scholar, political economist, media analyst/critic, peace champion Ed Herman passed away at age 92.It was fittingly on the 99th anniversary of WW I’s end. Endless wars followed “the war to end all wars” – a legacy of mass slaughter and destruction Herman deplored, championing elusive world peace.Along with his friends and family, I mourn his passing, a valued friend and colleague, a contributor to my 2014 book, titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III.”He and other distinguished contributors made the book successful, published in Russia and France.Ed Herman’s writing ...
Several years ago two very distinguished American scholars wrote a book, The Israel Lobby.The book made a very understated case that the Israel Lobby has far more power over the US government and media than is good for America or Israel, as it silences constructive critics who are Israel’s friends. The two scholars were demonized by the Israel Lobby as advocating the return of the Holocaust.The Israel Lobby presented itself as just a poor little weak thing unable to stand up to all the Nazis assailing Israel. Meanwhile the US Congress was unanimously passing outrageous resolutions handed to it by ...
This essay goes to the matter of Kosovo; where the Western states (NATO & the EU) has determined Serbia is not fit to govern a minority (of ethnic Albanians) on their own (Serbian) territory but the now purported (by the West) independent Kosovo is fit to govern a minority (of ethnic Serbs).The EU position seems to embrace an attitude of ‘never mind the inconvenient fact’ that recent Kosovo ‘leaders’ are being arrested and delivered to an international tribunal for crimes against ethnic Serbs (includes organ harvesting), also not to mention what amounts to mere ‘lip service’ (no concrete action or ...