Upcoming Events

International | Anti-Capitalism

no events match your query!

New Events

International

no events posted in last week

Blog Feeds

Anti-Empire

Anti-Empire

offsite link The Wholesome Photo of the Month Thu May 09, 2024 11:01 | Anti-Empire

offsite link In 3 War Years Russia Will Have Spent $3... Thu May 09, 2024 02:17 | Anti-Empire

offsite link UK Sending Missiles to Be Fired Into Rus... Tue May 07, 2024 14:17 | Marko Marjanović

offsite link US Gives Weapons to Taiwan for Free, The... Fri May 03, 2024 03:55 | Anti-Empire

offsite link Russia Has 17 Percent More Defense Jobs ... Tue Apr 30, 2024 11:56 | Marko Marjanović

Anti-Empire >>

Human Rights in Ireland
Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.

offsite link Julian Assange is finally free ! Tue Jun 25, 2024 21:11 | indy

offsite link Stand With Palestine: Workplace Day of Action on Naksa Day Thu May 30, 2024 21:55 | indy

offsite link It is Chemtrails Month and Time to Visit this Topic Thu May 30, 2024 00:01 | indy

offsite link Hamburg 14.05. "Rote" Flora Reoccupied By Internationalists Wed May 15, 2024 15:49 | Internationalist left

offsite link Eddie Hobbs Breaks the Silence Exposing the Hidden Agenda Behind the WHO Treaty Sat May 11, 2024 22:41 | indy

Human Rights in Ireland >>

Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

offsite link Biden Delayed Stepping Down as He ?Doubts Kamala? as Senior Democrats Fail to Back Her Mon Jul 22, 2024 13:19 | Will Jones
President Biden delayed stepping down in part because he doubted Kamala Harris was up to the challenge of an election battle with Donald Trump, sources have said.
The post Biden Delayed Stepping Down as He “Doubts Kamala” as Senior Democrats Fail to Back Her appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link The Office of Budget Intractability  Mon Jul 22, 2024 11:00 | Andrew Colllingwood
Labour has brought forward a Bill giving the Office of Budget Responsibility a "fiscal lock" over future economic policy. This is one more step in the erosion of parliamentary democracy, says Andrew Collingwood.
The post The Office of Budget Intractability  appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link No, the CrowdStrike Debacle is Not a Warning of What Could Happen if we Introduce CBDCs Mon Jul 22, 2024 09:00 | Anonymous IT Reporter
The CrowdStrike debacle was not a harbinger of things to come if we introduce CBDCs, argues the Daily Sceptic's IT expert. A U.K. CBDC would be designated as Critical National Infrastructure and hence not be vulnerable.
The post No, the CrowdStrike Debacle is Not a Warning of What Could Happen if we Introduce CBDCs appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link News Round-Up Mon Jul 22, 2024 00:39 | Richard Eldred
A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Joe Biden Drops Out of 2024 Presidential Race Sun Jul 21, 2024 20:00 | Richard Eldred
Joe Biden has withdrawn from the 2024 Presidential race against Donald Trump ? and has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.
The post Joe Biden Drops Out of 2024 Presidential Race appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Lockdown Skeptics >>

Voltaire Network
Voltaire, international edition

offsite link Netanyahu soon to appear before the US Congress? It will be decisive for the suc... Thu Jul 04, 2024 04:44 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N°93 Fri Jun 28, 2024 14:49 | en

offsite link Will Israel succeed in attacking Lebanon and pushing the United States to nuke I... Fri Jun 28, 2024 14:40 | en

offsite link Will Netanyahu launch tactical nuclear bombs (sic) against Hezbollah, with US su... Thu Jun 27, 2024 12:09 | en

offsite link Will Israel provoke a cataclysm?, by Thierry Meyssan Tue Jun 25, 2024 06:59 | en

Voltaire Network >>

George Floyd: one death too many in the “land of the free”

category international | anti-capitalism | other press author Tuesday June 23, 2020 23:58author by 1 of indy Report this post to the editors

The murder of Floyd is not a once-off incident. Last year 1,099 people were killed by the US police, of which a sizeable proportion are black. 99% of these murders remain in absolute impunity –an alarming impunity rate only rivalled by the likes of Colombia in the continent, which goes to demonstrate how police violence, far from an anomaly, is condoned by the US establishment. By all of it, whether Republican or Democrat.
cartoonstatueoflibertyamended2.jpg

George Floyd: one death too many in the “land of the free”

At last people had enough in the self-proclaimed ‘land of the free’. The brutal murder of George Floyd, who was tortured to death by asphyxiation for 10 minutes in broad daylight, turned to be the spark that started the prairie fire. Floyd’s life was certainly cheaper in the eyes of the police than a fake, lousy U$20, he was accused of possessing. Protests have erupted all over the country, facing unspeakable government violence and threats from the president Donald Trump, who has threatened with weapons, shootings and vicious dogs. Let us think for a second what would happen if, let’s say, Maduro in Venezuela or Rouhani in Iran resorted to this blatantly threatening language and to these repressive actions –surely by now, there would be economic sanctions in place, extraordinary meetings in the UN Security Council, talk of military intervention, or “smart” bombardments of police stations to protect “poor citizens” from the butchers in the institutions. Maybe even a bogus interim president à la Guaidó would have already been recognised by the G-7.

Michelle Bachelet, the hypocrite in chief (ie., Human Rights chief) at the UN, deplores the killing of Floyd but has failed to speak in equally strong terms about State violence against protestors. Her words pale in comparison to her vehemence at Venezuela; while Almagro of the OAS –who kicks up a fuss even if Maduro farts- has remained conspicuously silent. Isn’t it obvious that in the World Order there is one rule for the rich club and quite another for the rest of the world?

The murder of Floyd is not a once-off incident. Last year 1,099 people were killed by the US police, of which a sizeable proportion are black. 99% of these murders remain in absolute impunity [1]–an alarming impunity rate only rivalled by the likes of Colombia in the continent, which goes to demonstrate how police violence, far from an anomaly, is condoned by the US establishment. By all of it, whether Republican or Democrat.

As elections approach, the Democrats are smelling votes in the fumes of the riots. But who among the Democrats have any moral authority to complain about racism or violence? Obama, the top one president when it comes to deportations and the man who presided racial repression at Ferguson? The man who shed crocodile tears at the murder of Eric Garner in 2014, in circumstances almost identical to those of Floyd’s, but failed to take any real action? The Clintons, who started building the wall with Mexico, starved and bombed Iraq, and handsomely armed, supported and financed their Al-Qaeda darling jihadists who butchered willy-nilly, left and right, the people of Syria? Sanders, whom, for all his “socialist” talk is unable to confront even the establishment in his own party? It is time to call the Democrat gang for what they are: a fraud. They are part of the problem, not the solution, and all they care about is the next elections. They don’t give a flying toss about structural racism and police violence as they have shown time and again while in power.

Class and racial violence in the US is a structural problem, which requires a radical transformation of the institutions. Nothing short of this can be of any use. The murder of Floyd is tearing apart the farcical myth of the ‘land of the free’, of the land ‘of tolerance’ built supposedly by free, loving and equal migrants –a favourite fabrication of the Democrats during the anti-Trump protests of 2016. The ugly face of structural racism (which precedes Trump by over two centuries) is being revealed, exposing the stench of a country built over the genocide of millions of Natives and chattel slavery. A country built over the mass deportations of those who thought differently during the Red Scare of the 1920. A country which lynched in the thousands blacks and trade unionists. A country where a white supremacist hooligan such as John Wayne is revered as a hero, while proper artists were banned and censored during McCarthyism. A country whose so-called justice system, which executes on a routine basis as many people as any other tyranny, has in its putrid closet the skeletons of the Haymarket affair, of Sacco and Vanzetti, and of the Rosenbergs, among so many others, all murdered in mickey mouse trials that were nothing but legal lynching.

The people are right to be angry. Big time. This is not only about Floyd. It is about over two hundred years of oppression and savagery. Those who demand that protest remains “civic” and harmless, deploring “vandalism” in far more strident terms than they deplore racism, are nothing but hypocritical defenders of the status quo. The real vandals are those who think that carrying a blue uniform gives them a right to maim, torture and kill at will. The focus of what is happening and why people are out there on the streets should not be lost: as Albert Camus remarked, we should despise less acts of violence by the oppressed than the institutions of violence [2]. The time has come to question and change the institutions, the structures of violence, deeply rooted in the State and an economic model which, right now, is condemning millions to death by unemployment induced starvation.

The system is the problem, not this or that police officer, not this or that president, not this or that party. It requires deep transformation of the political institutions which are the product of this legacy of brutality, segregation, exclusion, war, militarism, invasion and imperialism. Trump denounced the presence of “professional anarchists” among the protestors. Fair play to them. They deserve a standing ovation. Hopefully they help the masses in revolt to imagine a different country, built from the bottom up, in peace with the rest of the world and permanently at war with domestic injustice. A country free of racism, sexism, and the exploitation of the working class. A real alternative at a time in which the world is critically endangered to a great degree because of the actions of the US as a world power. The people on the streets today have the answers, while the Republican and Democrat ruling elites don’t even know the questions.

José Antonio Gutiérrez D.
3rd June, 2020

[1] https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/
[2] Quoted in John Foley, “Albert Camus: From the Absurd to Revolt” (London, Rouledge, 2008, p.49)

Related Link: http://www.anarkismo.net/article/31916
© 2001-2024 Independent Media Centre Ireland. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by Independent Media Centre Ireland. Disclaimer | Privacy