The pandemic has not been the CDC’s finest hour

One of the things that this pandemic has revealed is how diminished the Centers of Disease Control (CDC) has become. This organization was once highly respected around the world and should have been front and center during the crisis because it has the expertise and resources to marshal all the information and provide guidance to the public. The experts from the CDC should have been the people holding daily press conferences, calling upon other experts in the field of infectious disease like Anthony Fauci who heads the Infectious Diseases division of the National Institutes of Health.
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Why there is so much police brutality in the US

In discussing with my relatives (almost all of whom live outside the US) about the current unrest in the US following the murder of George Floyd, I realized that many of them did not quite understand how deeply warped the US criminal (in)justice system is from the top to the bottom and so I thought I would try and explain how it got to be that way for the benefit of this blog’s readers who also live outside the US.

One question that was raised is why the people who recorded Floyd’s murder did not step in and try to stop it, when so many people are willing to confront police by taking part in demonstrations against the death. There is a world of difference between taking part in a large demonstration protesting police brutality and challenging, on your own, four American police officers during the course of that brutality. With demonstrations there is some safety in numbers. When large numbers of people protest, the chance that the police will shoot YOU is small.
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George Floyd’s last words

I could not watch the entire video of George Floyd being slowly killed by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. I had to stop it after a very short time because it was so disturbing. I had not realized that Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, an incredibly long time. Floyd became non-responsive after about six minutes and at that point, at the urging of the crowd that was at the scene, another police officer checked for, but could not find, a pulse but Chauvin continued to keep his knee on his neck. The BBC has published a time line of the 30 minutes before George Floyd’s murder.
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Trying to understand the riots

Over the weekend, I had a Zoom conference call with relatives from across the world, nearly all of them living in countries other than the US, and the topic naturally turned to the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent nationwide unrest. They were naturally disturbed by the reports they heard and wanted to understand what was going on. One of my relatives said that she could not understand why people were rioting and asked what purposes were served by them since they were counter-productive and often inflicted economic harm on the black community itself. What follows was my attempt at an answer.
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How to properly destroy businesses

In the wake of the widespread unrest across the nation following the murder of George Floyd that has resulted in businesses being destroyed and other property damage, the Onion had this piece of advice from private equity specialists.

MINNEAPOLIS—Calling for a more measured way to express opposition to police brutality, critics slammed demonstrators Thursday for recklessly looting businesses without forming a private equity firm first. “Look, we all have the right to protest, but that doesn’t mean you can just rush in and destroy any business without gathering a group of clandestine investors to purchase it at a severely reduced price and slowly bleed it to death,” said Facebook commenter Amy Mulrain, echoing the sentiments of detractors nationwide who blasted the demonstrators for not hiring a consultant group to take stock of a struggling company’s assets before plundering. “I understand that people are angry, but they shouldn’t just endanger businesses without even a thought to enriching themselves through leveraged buyouts and across-the-board terminations. It’s disgusting to put workers at risk by looting. You do it by chipping away at their health benefits and eventually laying them off. There’s a right way and wrong way to do this.” At press time, critics recommended that protestors hold law enforcement accountable by simply purchasing the Minneapolis police department from taxpayers.

Also from the Onion, we have this video of a police officer describing the fear he feels every day that someone might record him brutalizing a civilian.

Biff loses his office lease

In a post a couple of days ago, I wrote about a Minneapolis venture capitalist Tom Austin who challenged a group of black men when they entered the gym in his office building because he felt that they had no right to be there. He told them that he was going to call the police because they were behaving in a threatening manner. It turned out that the men also had an office in the same building and thus they were perfectly entitled to use the gym. (I am calling Austin ‘Biff’ for acting like the male equivalent of a ‘Karen’, which is “a mocking slang term for an entitled, obnoxious, middle-aged white woman.”)
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What the hell?

How can people behave like this?

A woman who drove through a protest in Denver on Thursday appeared to deliberately try to run over a young black man, swerving directly at him and knocking him to the ground, according to a video of the incident.

The protest was one of many that have broken out nationwide over the death of George Floyd, a black man who was killed by police in Minneapolis after an officer pushed a knee into his neck as he repeatedly said, “I can’t breathe.”

Video of the incident shows a car driving through the crowd, with the young man clutching onto the hood. He falls off the hood, landing on his feet.

The car then sharply turns, knocking him to the ground, before speeding away in the other direction.
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A spokesperson for the Denver Police Department told BuzzFeed News it is “aware of the incident” and is “looking for the victim as well as the driver.”

She could have easily driven off after the man fell off her hood. I hope someone had the presence of mind to get her license plate number.

Minneapolis police and Trump make a bad situation worse

This morning, authorities announced that Derek Chauvin, who was the Minneapolis police officer whose knee on George Floyd resulted in his death, has been arrested and charged with third-degree murder.

Last night, protests continued in Minneapolis by people demanding that justice be done and some of those protests turned violent with buildings being set on fire.. As is often the case, the police in the US make bad situations worse by using excessive force against people who are protesting or just covering the protests even when it is clear that they could have de-escalated the situation. Last night a black CNN reporter and his producer and camera operator were arrested while covering the ongoing protests even as they politely asked the police where they should move to avoid interfering with whatever the police were doing.
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