George Floyd, age 46, went to his usual store in the Powderhorn neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, 25 May, to purchase a pack of cigarettes. He used a twenty dollar bill, which the teen cashier who did not recognize him thought was counterfeit.
The boy called the police, who managed to arrive on the scene while Mr. Floyd was still in his parked car around the corner from the store. Several officers dragged him from the vehicle, cuffed him, claimed he was resisting arrest (in the US, resisting tends to be added to most arrest charges, to help stack the deck in conviction, and to add to longer sentences upon conviction).
Though handcuffed and surrounded by several policemen, Officer David Chauvin found it necessary to further restrain Mr. Floyd with a knee to his neck, impeding the blood flow via the carotid artery, and with a knee on his back, impeding the ability of the lungs to expand and contract (this is called “Burking” named for the grave robber who ran out of corpses to sell to anatomy schools and started murdering people by sitting on their chests and covering their airways).
Screaming onlookers begging Chauvin to release Floyd so that he might breathe, were prevented from rescuing him by the other armed policemen, hands on their guns.
Chauvin has been arrested and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter. The three ‘brave’ officers who kept the crowd from intervening have been fired, yet no charges have been filed against them at this writing.
In the US of A, it is the rare occasion when cops are indicted for the killings of African-Americans. In the case of Baltimore’s Freddie Gray, it appeared that a fix was in, to indict the wrong cops on the wrong charges, so that most of them would be found not guilty, or guilty of lesser charges. Anyone with a basic background in anatomy and physiology should have noticed that Gray had to be dragged into the police van, that his legs could not function, and that the flailing of his arms was the result of misfiring of a likely ripped cervical spinal cord.
His crime was running from the biker cops..
Aiyana Jones was 7 years old when police illegally entered her home and ‘accidentally’ shot her to death on 16 May 2016, in Detroit, Michigan.
As he lay dying from mechanical asphyxiation, George Floyd called out to his deceased mother, and whispered, I can’t breathe.
Mr. Floyd’s words, I can’t breathe have resonated around the world, his killing has resonated unlike any other criminal killing of a black man, a black woman, a black child. One might wonder that his chilling words have become a metaphor of the persons around the world under police state lockdown against COVID-19, persons feeling suffocated from the stale air of their homes, the forced rebreathing of their expelled carbon dioxide, into their masks or bandanas, on the occasions they are permitted outside, to engage in that which the politicians deem ‘essential.’
The call for 300,000 COVID hunters (”trackers”) will not be enough to track the seas of humanity, pouring into every neighborhood, demanding the right of humanity to breathe, as they repeat, over and over, Floyd’s final words, I can’t breathe.
Photo courtesy of Imam Isa Mateen, foreground.
Various local law enforcement throughout the US have used Floyd’s murder as a cynical opportunity to market themselves, giving out pizzas to protesters, being photographed holding banners of Floyd’s final words.
Possibly the most rancid of such advertising comes from the NYPD, shamelessly taking the knee to show some Orwellian condemnation of the murder of a black man in Minneapolis. NYC was the home of the notoriously unconstitutional stop and frisk, a fraudulent way to prevent crime by targeting mostly black men who somehow looked ‘suspicious.’
Ramarley Graham was 19 years old when the NYPD tried to stop him and frisk him. He ran to the safety of his home. The police who had no cause, and no warrant, broke down the door and then shot him to death in his bathroom.
A recent record of Mayor de Blasio’s NYPD arrests for not distancing showed that 35 of 40 arrested for such dastardly crimes were black persons, mostly young black men. It might be noteworthy that last month, during a live press briefing on COVID, de Blasio whined about the recidivism of criminals released from jail because coronavirus, while continuing to arrest persons who dared to stand to near to each other, when out it public (the mayor of the great city also threatened to pluck anyone from the ocean, who dared to enter it on Memorial Day weekend).
The black/white double standards of arrests and deaths during ‘pursuit’ has been massively documented.
What is ignored, in the studies and documentation, is that the domestic racism leading to police killings of black people — most of which do not result in arrests, as cops use the standard self defense because it looked like suspect was reaching for something which might have been a gun (the story line for the cop shooting Donta Dawson in the head, while he sat in his car, in the early morning of 1 October 1999, in Philadelphia.) — is that it is a continuation of America’s carnage against brown-skinned peoples around the world.
For more than one year, Macron’s police enucleated and otherwise permanently maimed dozens of Gilets Jaunes demonstrators. Why did the US never bomb France, for brutalizing his people?
As the west is suddenly awakened to the US racism regarding law enforcement ‘techniques,’ might we find some genuine piety, and make note of the bipartisan, multi-coloration alliance in mass carnage against brown/Arab/Muslim majority countries around the world?
The white Democrat Hillary Clinton cackled about her part in the kidnap, rape, and murder of Libyan leader, Gaddafi. She also bragged that it was she who convinced Barack Obama, the first ‘biracial’ POTUS, to bomb the country into the stone age.
Black Susan Rice helped to set the stage by lying about Gaddafi giving Libyan soldiers Viagra for the purpose of raping Libyan women.
While the white Republican Bush led the destruction of Iraq, it was the black Democrat Obama who murdered two brown US citizens in Yemen, with drones, and without that due process to which our citizenry is entitled, according to the US Constitution. Not to be outdone by white Bush’s sadistic jokes about looking for Iraqi’s non-existent WMDs under the desk of the Oval Office, black Obama joked about droning the Jonas Brothers.
In both instances, the vile media doubled over in fits of laughter.
Keith Ellison, the black Attorney General of Minnesota has announced there will be “accountability” for the police brutality in the murder of George Floyd.
Mr. Ellison was the first member of Congress to be sworn in with his hand on the Quran. Let us remember that as congressman he applauded the African Gaddafi’s murder as a good job, and sounded as white as Clinton and the white man’s burden in his claim of aiding “freedom in the Arab world.”
We shall likely continue to hear the echo of George Floyd’s final words, I can’t breathe, in the future. Let us honor those words in acknowledgement that racism in the US will not be ended until our colonial carnage is permanently halted.
ADDENDA:
Shall we be surprised in imagining that any time there are massive gatherings of people, the criminal element will be among them? Shall we be shocked that there is looting going on across the United States of America? Have our bipartisan and various skin-toned leaders not shown US how to loot?
How many times has Trump bragged about stealing Syria’s oil? Are not the US coup attempts against Venezuela for the purpose of stealing the country’s crude?
Related readings on US’ colonial invasions, carnage, and looting:
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Syria news lost some credibility for virtue signalling about this bullshit. Funny how you don’t mention the violent riots and looting is happening right now.
Greetings, Dan. Thank you for being a reader of Syria News.
The ‘virtue signaling’ comes from our bipartisan leaders, who brag about looting other countries, cheer when our tax dollars are used to obliterate other countries that we deem to be not ‘free’ enough. Given that AG Ellison thought the brutal rape & murder of Gaddafi was evidence of a ‘good day,’ & Sen. Cotton is enraged over looting within the US but was fine with the US stealing Iraq’s gold reserves & who has been silent over an Arkansas-based ‘charity’ (our taxes at work, yet again) overseeing something quite disturbing with little girls in Idlib.
Obama oversaw the obliteration of al Raqqa, Syria, & Trump has continued and accelerated Obama’s war crimes is evidence of the fake ‘virtue’ of both our political parties.
From 2014, on the public execution of Eric Garner, for the alleged crime of selling loosies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8KqDIPdCOg