Tag Archives | Murder

On August 26, a lone white gunman, 21-year-old Ryan Christopher Palmeter, fired 11 rounds from his semi-automatic weapon into the windshield of a car parked outside a Jacksonville Dollar General, killing the African American driver. Then he walked into the discount store, and fatally shot two other African Americans before turning the gun on himself.

CNN has joined the media chorus decrying the death of San Francisco with a one-hour special.

According to the Institute of Development and Peace Studies (INDEPAZ), 20 citizens were murdered in six massacres in the past 10 days. Five social leaders and five ex-combatants were also assassinated in the same period.

Two mass shootings in quick succession brought out the worst in Americans. The anger and grief were followed by the usual lies and pretense that violence here is somehow mysterious. Political leaders advocate state violence all the time, calling for new victims to be created here and around the world.

On Wednesday afternoon, Israeli forces shot and killed 11-year-old Mohammed al-Alami in his father’s car, as the family were on their way home from grocery shopping. The next day at Mohammed’s funeral, Israeli soldiers attacked the procession, killing 20-year-old Shawkat Awad.

2021 as the city, and nation, begin to climb out of a pandemic that saw mass economic and social fallout—to say nothing of the lives lost. A historic, once-in-a-lifetime worldwide event destabilized the lives of countless people, and also led to an undeniable rise in shootings and homicide across the country.

For the very first time in United States history, therefore, a jury composed of people of whom half identify as white convicted a white cop for the second-degree murder of a Black person, the most serious charge to date. If there is an exception, it certainly is not as visible as this instance. Thus, a historic milestone—a victory to be celebrated, a victory, more importantly, that points the way forward.

March 2, 2021 was the five year anniversary of the murder of Berta Cáceres, who opposed the Agua Zarca dam in Honduras. That date was less than one month after the deaths of dozens of people from Tehri Dam disaster in Uttarakhand, India. The two stories together tell us far more about consequences of the insatiable greed of capitalism for more energy than either narrative does by itself.

Breonna Taylor was murdered by Louisville, KY, police while asleep in her home in March of this year. Today, the three officers responsible for her death–Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove–were not held responsible for her death.

An eyewitness has come forward to contradict official claims that Michael Reinoehl, a left-wing opponent of police violence who was killed in Lacey, Washington on September 3, died in a shootout with police.

“This is not the first time a black man has been killed for sleeping,” said Rev. James Woodall, state president of the Georgia NAACP.

As protests rage across America against police brutality and systemic racism, Akunna Eneh, an activist from Boston, argues that the movement sparked by the murder of George Floyd has exposed the true face of American society.

This weekend, hundreds of thousands of workers and youth will protest the police murder of George Floyd, not only in the United States, but in Australia, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, Hungary, Brazil, South Korea and many other countries.

To lose your job when someone has died at your hands is a small price to pay.

More than 50 years ago (on 14 April 1967), Martin Luther King Jr. delivered one of his famous speeches, on “The Other America,” at Stanford University.* King patiently explained to the audience of students and faculty members that, while in his view “riots are socially destructive and self-defeating,” they are “in the final analysis. . .the language of the unheard.”

There is no need to wonder why George Floyd (age 46) was murdered in broad daylight in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2020. The script of his death is written deep in the ugly drama of U.S. history.

Once again, Black America has surged to the front lines of the global struggle. This year, the United States has stood out primarily as a leading centre of right-wing lunacy, political breakdown and murderous incompetence in the pandemic. Now, it is showing the world something else: the potential for sudden eruptions of mass resistance that can change everything.

While some in media have condemned the protests as violent “looters” imposing “tyranny” upon the country, much of the violence is being deliberately instigated and propagated by an out of control police force that appears to have gone berserk over the widespread public challenge to their authority and their impunity to act as they wish.

West explained the current anger over Floyd’s murder by police—one of whom, officer Derek Chauvin, was arrested Friday and charged with 3rd-degree murder and manslaughter—adds to a “perfect storm” of multiple failures and inequities that pre-exist under an American imperial system that people like Martin Luther King, Jr. and others have been warning about since the middle of last century.

From The Grayzone vault: The record of a pro-Trump Minneapolis police leader defending the killers of George Floyd reveals a past marred in accusations of racist violence, including charges from fellow police officers that he once wore a “white power” badge on his motorcycle jacket.