How Cleveland police instigated violence and destruction and lied about it

Even after moving to California, I still get a daily newsletter from Chris Quinn, the editor of Cleveland.com, the online news site affiliated with the Cleveland Plain Dealer. A recent one once again showed why you should never, ever, believe the version of events that are put by the police following some fast-moving events because they will simply lie to deflect blame away from themselves and onto the victims of their violence. In this case, there was violence and property destruction in downtown Cleveland during protests last month following the death of George Floyd and the police were quick to issue a statement that said that it was initiated by the protestors and that was what caused the police to move in with force, using their arsenal of tear gas and so-called non-lethal weaponry which we know can inflict tremendous harm.
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Why the virus is resurging in the US

This article describes how California went from being lauded for the way it controlled the outbreak to now being one of the states where there is a resurgence.

The Newsom administration’s four-phase plan to reopen slowly, while encouraging Californians to remain vigilant about wearing face coverings and maintaining distance to stop the spread of disease seemed “perfectly good and smart”, [Dr Bob Wachter, who chairs the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco] said.

“But what I think we didn’t get right was the national political scene,” he said. California, despite its reputation as a progressive state, wasn’t immune to a growing conservative movement that rejects face masks as muzzles on independence and vilifies public health officials as enemies of the people.
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The emergence of black militias

We are used to seeing heavily armed white militia marching around in public spaces to show their support for white supremacist causes. Those shows of strength were clearly intended to intimidate lawmakers, government officials, and the public. But on Saturday, the tables were turned and there appeared over 1,000 heavily armed members of a black militia who marched through a park in Georgia where there are statues of confederate leaders.
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The deep roots of racism in the US

America was born in racism, starting with the way that the early settlers massacred the indigenous peoples, before moving on to the institution of slavery, and then to the conquest of regions of Mexico that resulted in yet another group to be subordinated. To understand better why it is the way it is now, it helps to understand that history.

Eric Foner is one of the foremost scholars on one aspect of it, that of the aftermath of slavery, especially the post-civil war period in the US known as Reconstruction that is usually given as 1865-1877, and I have already mentioned before (here and here) his excellent book on the subject.
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Even Fox News is having a hard time with nutty Republican congresspersons

Even Fox News host Neil Cavuto is having a hard time dealing with the idiocy of Trump-supporting Republican congresspeople like Andy Biggs of Arizona who are angry that the infectious disease specialists on the Coronavirus Task Force like Anthony Fauci and Dobroah Birx, who are issuing warnings about the need to take measures to combat the resurgence, are contradicting Trump’s relentless and evidence-free upbeat assertions about how well things are going. Biggs says that Fauci and Birx don’t know what they are talking about because they do not deal directly with patients and should be fired and the Task Force dismantled.

He is saying these things just as Arizona is one the states experiencing the worst rise in cases, when it needs all the best expert advice it can get.

And now, the Cleveland Indians think of a name change

After the announcement yesterday that the Washington DC football team (under strong pressure from public opinion and their sponsors and advertisers) is ‘considering’ changing the name of their team, the Cleveland Indians baseball team also reports that it is ‘considering’ a name change, something that has been demanded from them for the longest time but they have refused, insisting in the face of evidence to the contrary that the name and the racist mascot of Chief Wahoo were meant to honor Native Americans. While Wahoo was removed from team uniforms a few years ago, it remained on the merchandise that is sold to baseball fans.

While both teams have only said they are ‘considering’ name changes, that is likely just face-saving language because to later announce they are retaining the names would cause another round of negative publicity. I think the changes are a done deal with the only question being what the new names will be.

I notice that the football team majority Dan Snyder, who liked to play the tough guy and delight in thumbing his nose at those who wanted the change and enjoy the attention it brought him, is still in hiding and has not spoken publicly to the media about this reversal, leaving it to team spokespersons to issues statements about his capitulation. That is always the case with people like that.

A solution to the pandemic?

H. L. Mencken famously wrote that, “there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong”. That serves as a warning to anyone who thinks they have come up with a solution to a problem that has defied the best efforts of experts in the field. I come across such ‘solutions’ all the time from people who think they have solved a complex problem in physics. These are usually those who have done just a smattering of reading in that field,
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How the mighty are fallen

I wrote last week that the walls were closing in on Dan Snyder, the majority owner of the professional football team associated with the city of Washington DC that has a racist name and logo. Snyder is an awful person who had said in 2013 that he would never change the name despite decades of criticism. He seemed to delight in rejecting the calls for changes, even calling the team’s name a ‘badge of honor’, as if he thought that it made him look tough.
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The Ghislaine Maxwell puzzle

There is one thing that puzzles me over the arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s one-time lover and later friend, business associate, and allegedly the chief procurer and groomer of underage girls to have sex with Epstein and his friends, and that why she stayed in the US at all. She was arrested in a secluded mansion that she owns in New Hampshire and is being held without bond in that town pending her transfer to New York City where the charges were brought against her.
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