Why, yes, as a matter of fact – I have seen this sh*t before; several times, as a matter of fact. The first go round of racial/political rioting, looting, arson and general mayhem that I took notice of was that long hot summer of ’68, interspersed with political assassinations and anti-Vietnam War protests, although the Watts riot had taken place three years before. I was fourteen in the year of ’68 mayhem, and already well-aware of current events, through reading the Los Angeles Times when it was still a great and meaningful newspaper. Mom also had subscriptions to Harpers’ and Atlantic Monthly, when they also were still solid and more or less centrist publications, and although Mom and Dad didn’t watch TV news regularly, Granny Jessie did. I believe that it was sometime during that late summer, watching coverage of the riot attendant on the Democrat Party national convention, that I remarked to Granny Jessie that it seemed as if the world were all seriously going to Hell. Recall that I was only fourteen, and had led a comfortable, fairly sheltered middle-class life. Violence was something only seen t a distant remove as part of the plot in movies and TV adventure shows (and pretty anodyne, considering what I would have seen in them back then) and the real-life violence played out on the TV news was shocking. Granny Jessie replied, “It always seems that way, I guess.” Her tone was so jaded, and world-weary, I found it actually rather comforting.
Granny Jessie had seen two world wars and a world-wide depression in her time, plus Prohibition, the Korean War, and the early civil rights campaigns. Perhaps a sense of proportion was called for.
She was right, pretty much. Life went on from then after the summer of ‘68, in the way that it usually has, from day to day in the Shire, in spite of temporary hiccups. For the great number of us, life is that way, in spite of wars’ alarms and natural disasters.
The understanding that I am getting around to is that urban riots are not a good thing, long-term, especially not for the residents of those neighborhoods where said riots take place. Detroit was wracked by race riots two years running in 1967 and ’68; together with the collapse of the auto industry (and a simply awesome degree of civic mismanagement) this killed a once-prosperous city as an industrial powerhouse. As hard as local efforts to rebuild and reconstruct try … once a city or a neighborhood has been blasted by a destructive race riot, the earth has been salted. Especially if the city authorities keep giving way to anger-motivated activists. And if those activists keep doing the same destructive thing, over and over again, without care for long-term consequences.
The current civic riots – can I call them the Floyd Riots? Following pretty much the same pattern that I recollect. A righteous cause, local indignation … and a soupcon of professional traveling activists putting in their two cents worth of bricks and destruction … and there you have civic ruin on the installment plan. Deliberate? As a commenter at Sarah Hoyt’s place posted:
“Mayhap I’ve got my tinfoil hat wrapped a weeeeeee bit too tight, but … Is it just me, or is the timing of each of these crises just a tad convenient? As in the moment one crisis finally begins losing steam and people start moving on with their lives and things begin returning to normal, BOOM! New crisis! They’re able to drag out the Mueller Report and Impeachment for almost four months, and then as soon as they can’t pretend that they have a case anymore, BOOM! WUHAN KUNG-FLU GONNA KILL US ALL! And then as soon as the WHO and CDC can no longer convincingly fudge the numbers and states start reopening (whether their petty tyrant governors want them to or not), BOOM! Race riots that are somehow being instigated by white supremacists in predominantly black neighborhoods in every major city, all at once. And pallets of loose bricks just randomly happen to appear *poof!* out of thin air in the exact spots where rioters just randomly happen to decide to congregate? Yeah, why am I not buying that any of this shit is spontaneous and “organic?”
So … Antifa organized, lefty-symp organized, with the willing cooperation of the local racial agitator crowd? It seems that the more observant of those are realizing that they’re being used like a rented mule, with their own neighborhoods, stores and small enterprises being trashed in service to the larger narrative, and meanwhile, the celebrity crowd falls all over themselves, nobly kicking in bail for the arrested. Interesting times, no? Comment and testify as you wish.
Not quite “all over again”, as that ‘tin foil antennae’ tells us this go-round might have aspects of management.
Watts in ’65 brought sobering lessons. In the midst of the events, I kept on with school and with work. Motorcycling home from machine shop work supporting my college studies, I realized Pacific Coast Highway traffic was very light. Made all the lights. With police apparently absent and occupied elsewhere, traffic flowed at speed limit plus. I concluded people were afraid. After getting into Long Beach, very impressed to glance down Atlantic Blvd as I crossed it and see troops unloading from Deuce and Halfs onto the street in front of Poly High, my alma mater’s arch rival. The troops had fixed bayonets. I could also see a machine gun nest in the middle of the street, its gun commanding the situation.
Armed local vigilantes took up positions near where I lived. Very soon thereafter, National Guard jeeps visited the positions. The Guard told the men to go home, that they were not needed. The vigilantes apparently believed the Guard presence proved that, as they quietly did as requested.
We talked at home. My dad had casual friends of several different races. He despised use of skin pigmentation as a means of evaluating people. His teaching augmented by my convictions about God creating all people made me despise racism more, if that were possible. In that context I can still hear my dad’s incisive comment. “The trouble with race wars is that they put children in uniform.” That comment had a nail-cinching background story. He had told me earlier some of his WWII experience in the Army. He had described discussion in the barracks where the issue focused on why the fellows would go to war. He related that too often the answer hinged on “because they are Jerries” or “they are Japs”, and they wear a different uniform.
It’ll bee six months before it’s clear whether or not Minneapolis is on the terminal trajectory of Detroit or Baltimore. Any of the burned/trashed buildings that aren’t being rebuilt by then will still be there in ten years or at best be parking lots. There are lots of other places to put a business somewhere else and now a real good reason to do it.
A lot of media attention to the difference in the two autopsies. They look to me like two sides of the same coin. The county M.E. says his heart stopped beating and he died. The “independent” examination says he stopped breathing and his heart stopped. If there was clear evidence of something like a bruised or torn artery, it would have come out in the initial autopsy or we’d hear about it now as clear incompetence. Both find it to be homicide but the matter of culpability is ultimately up to the trial.
That trial is probably a year away if it happens at all. I would bet on some sort of deal for manslaughter instead. The defense should probably be keeping that fingers crossed that Ellison will stay as prosecutor, it would be a gift they probably don’t deserve.
The clearest case is for someone that shouldn’t have been a cop in any police department let alone an incompetent one, but we knew that already.
“That trial is probably a year away if it happens at all.”
It is sickening to think about how much time $900/hour attorneys will spend second-guessing what a $20/hour police officer — the man in the arena — did in a few minutes under severe stress.
The real guilty parties here are the politicians, judges, lawyers, bureaucrats, media types who created the environment in which this kind of event would happen. Yet they will face no punishment and carry on living in their comfortable gated communities while the peon at the bottom of the pyramid gets slapped around. It really is time for another Revolution!
}}} “Mayhap I’ve got my tinfoil hat wrapped a weeeeeee bit too tight, but … Is it just me, or is the timing of each of these crises just a tad convenient? As in the moment one crisis finally begins losing steam and people start moving on with their lives and things begin returning to normal, BOOM! New crisis! They’re able to drag out the Mueller Report and Impeachment for almost four months, and then as soon as they can’t pretend that they have a case anymore, BOOM! WUHAN KUNG-FLU GONNA KILL US ALL! And then as soon as the WHO and CDC can no longer convincingly fudge the numbers and states start reopening (whether their petty tyrant governors want them to or not), BOOM! Race riots that are somehow being instigated by white supremacists in predominantly black neighborhoods in every major city, all at once. And pallets of loose bricks just randomly happen to appear *poof!* out of thin air in the exact spots where rioters just randomly happen to decide to congregate? Yeah, why am I not buying that any of this shit is spontaneous and “organic?”
The merdia lies to us all, pure and simple.
They stopped being a responsible source decades ago, if they ever were.
IT SHOULD BE NOTED that the MN PD handbook authorizes the “neck in the back” as a legitimate means to deal with resistance.
I gather it is also common military training.
5-311 USE OF NECK RESTRAINTS AND CHOKE HOLDS (10/16/02) (08/17/07) (10/01/10) (04/16/12)
I. DEFINITIONS
Choke Hold: Deadly force option. Defined as applying direct pressure on a person’s trachea or airway (front of the neck), blocking or obstructing the airway (04/16/12)
Neck Restraint: Non-deadly force option. Defined as compressing one or both sides of a person’s neck with an arm or leg, without applying direct pressure to the trachea or airway (front of the neck). Only sworn employees who have received training from the MPD Training Unit are authorized to use neck restraints. The MPD authorizes two types of neck restraints: Conscious Neck Restraint and Unconscious Neck Restraint. (04/16/12)
Conscious Neck Restraint: The subject is placed in a neck restraint with intent to control, and not to render the subject unconscious, by only applying light to moderate pressure. (04/16/12)
Unconscious Neck Restraint: The subject is placed in a neck restraint with the intention of rendering the person unconscious by applying adequate pressure. (04/16/12)
II. PROCEDURES/REGULATIONS
A. The Conscious Neck Restraint may be used against a subject who is actively resisting. (04/16/12)
B. The Unconscious Neck Restraint shall only be applied in the following circumstances: (04/16/12)
On a subject who is exhibiting active aggression, or;
For life saving purposes, or;
On a subject who is exhibiting active resistance in order to gain control of the subject; and if lesser attempts at control have been or would likely be ineffective.
C. Neck restraints shall not be used against subjects who are passively resisting as defined by policy. (04/16/12)
D. After Care Guidelines (04/16/12)
After a neck restraint or choke hold has been used on a subject, sworn MPD employees shall keep them under close observation until they are released to medical or other law enforcement personnel.
An officer who has used a neck restraint or choke hold shall inform individuals accepting custody of the subject, that the technique was used on the subject.
==============
This part is where the officer clearly failed:
D. After Care Guidelines (04/16/12)
After a neck restraint or choke hold has been used on a subject, sworn MPD employees shall keep them under close observation until they are released to medical or other law enforcement personnel.
And almost certainly makes his crime, lacking any other evidence to the contrary, as manslaughter.
“But he wasn’t resisting…!”
Actually footage has been released which shows SOME kind of physical activity going on before the triggering footage occurred:
https://www.nbcnews.com/video/new-video-appears-to-show-struggle-between-george-floyd-and-police-officers-inside-vehicle-84174917868
It is possible they were just beating him inside the vehicle, mind you… Or they were trying to get him out of the car, and he was resisting.
The simple fact is, this needs to go to trial, as was obvious two weeks ago, and it was going to, as was obvious, two weeks ago…
I wonder how they escaped tom perez (that ones) consent decrees.
https://lawofselfdefense.com/did-baden-autopsy-find-clinical-evidence-floyd-killed-by-asphyxia-no/
I could also see a machine gun nest in the middle of the street, its gun commanding the situation.
One of the few deaths at County Hospital during that riot was a woman who tried to run a NG roadblock with a trunk full of Molotov cocktails. She was machine gunned and came in alive but refused treatment. The hospital called in all voluntary faculty (I was a medical student) and they cared for 450 gunshot wounds of the trunk with one death. Lots of those surgeons had been in WWII. GSWs of the extremities went to Ortho.
The Baden autopsy did NOT find any evidence of strangulation or asphyxia. Asphyxia may cause hemorrhages in the brain. Compressing the jugular vein, as some have been describing, could do that. No hyoid bone fracture. They will try to railroad the cop but, if he gets a decent jury, he might be acquitted. The cop that shot the white guy in CA was acquitted.
The Floyd family pleading for calm is probably coached by Crump, a professional race hustler, to avoid diminishing the civil judgement. He is all about the money and, by now, they are too. Rodney King got $5 million and wasn’t even injured. The wheelchair was for TV.
450 gunshot wounds of the trunk with one death
How many of these wounds were caused by centerfire rifles?
One other memory stands out re Watts: a full page photo in Life magazine of a machine gun peering over sandbags. Near it a large sign with hand painted words: TURN LEFT OR GET SHOT.
Meanwhile, rather than half a century ago, in the present Tulsa joins other cities wrestling with the difference between peaceful protests and riots. Below I’ve linked the blogpost of a close personal friend. His eloquence and analytical process surpasses what I can write. I concur with his understanding and recommendation.
http://www.batesline.com/archives/2020/06/tulsa-protests-vandalism.html
450 gunshot wounds of the trunk with one death
How many of these wounds were caused by centerfire rifles?
Probably the majority were pistols. The high velocity rifles like the AR 15 were still not invented.
Black males comprise 6.5% of our population.
They commit more than half of all murders and damn near half of every other category of violent crime.
Fractionally over 90% of all black murder victims are shot by other black men. I don’t know the nationwide statistics — the ones I am quoting come from the FBI web site — but in Chicago 80% of all murders go unsolved.
We reward this foul statistic with tens of billions in welfare, sympathetic speeches, corporate endorsements, and now crowds of brainwashed white kids weeping and kneeling and flagellating themselves, stoned on the Marxist blood libel of ‘white supremacy.’ Which is a new and revolting thing, at least for me.
You have — probably — another four years to salt away all the guns and ammunition you and your heirs will need for the rest of your life. Make good use of them.
One question is how well organized this is.
There is an argument that this is a serious attempt at a communist revolution.
I’m not sure they are that well organized but Trump is being careful, I think, to let Governors do most of it and they are failing. Note there is no news from red states.
Lots of black politicians.
The Governors are weak because the Democrats are now controlled by their wing of Antifa mobsters. They wouldn’t ever publicly suggest there is a security problem even if they wanted to, which I’m sure they don’t.
The end of the Spanish Flu lockdowns + Bolsheviks + race riots: Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919-20 by Robert K. Murray (1964-01-01). Harding got 404 Electoral College votes out of 531 in November 1920.
The difference between now and riots of the past is that in the 60s the poor inner city neighborhoods were destroyed. Today’s riots are targeted directly at affluent central business and retail districts, aided and abetted by domestic terrorists and city leaders.
It was a perfect ambush. Use skyrocketing middle class tax receipts to lure corporate headquarters, tech startups, and retail outlets downtown. Convince young people to forget about starting families and join urban communal living and dependence on the state. Lock them all down in a quarantine. Then, bam, hit them with a pincer movement while they’re pinned inside the urban canyons.
“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.” — Auric Goldfinger
I’ve always loved that quote. And I think it applies here. I’ve been saying for 4+ years this is an ongoing, 24/7, full spectrum, coup attempt.
Another 60s movement you may remember is the Red Guards. The ritual abasement of those they targeted for impure thoughts. The violence against others. THAT is Antifa: America’s Red Guards, complete with kneeling former authority figures / cops begging forgiveness for their Wrong Think …
The kneeling cops are disgusting and the value of their gesture is shown by this.
In conjunction with other community leaders, Sheriff Mahoney denounced the actions of those four Minneapolis police in the death of George Floyd.
Back in 2011, Dane County’s sheriff objected to acting as Scott Walker’s “palace guard” when tens of thousands of angry protestors stormed the Capitol during the Act 10 intifada. A year ago, Mahoney endorsed Madison Cops Out of School/Derail the Jail candidates.
David Mahoney is a good sheriff but a partisan Democrat who goes along with Dane County’s progressive idiocy in order to get along.
What was Sheriff Mahoney’s reward for being sufficiently “woke”? The social justice warriors stormed his home Tuesday — his private residence, where he lives with his family — to pretty it up with their anti-cop doggerel. Those included demands that all black jail inmates be released forthwith. At least they did not vandalize his house. But it is trespassing.
No amount of groveling
Because no matter how hard Dave Mahoney tries, he remains a cop, the enemy of the Left and their fellow travelers in public office. And white.
It takes a heart of stone not to laugh at their groveling.
Great comment, Grurray.
“Mike K Says:
June 3rd, 2020 at 2:22 pm”
Good ol’ Moscow on the Mendota. I was there when they blew up the Math Lab. (Totally innocent: I was only 8.) Woke the whole house up. I slept through the boom boom. But like I said, Antifa = Red Guards, as the good Sheriff discovered.
For 25 years my office window faced a wall across a courtyard; a wall with a large patch of different-colored bricks. It was a daily reminder of what the leftist rhetoric could lead to.
Believe it or not, when someone wanted to put up a plaque in Fassnacht’s honor, his widow demanded that it not condemn the bombers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterling_Hall_bombing#/media/File:1554_sterlingmarker.jpg
George “Gentle Giant” Floyd took methamphatamine and Fentanyl. High dose Fentanyl can be lethal when it shuts down the automatic respiratory centers. “Meth”, which is fun in itself, keeps the user alert and able to breathe on “manual”, hence the meme, “Stay Awake, Keep Breathing”. George’s friends ran away without telling the cops. George’s meth dose ran out and he suffocated.
Another Darwin Award winner.
Why blame the cops instead of the so-called friends who left the poor dim giant to die? They apparently don’t teach “planning” and “consequences” in those Democratic schools in Minneapolis.
Fentanyl and Crystal Meth! The mind boggles…..
The Fenanyl – Crystal Meth comment was me and a fat finger.