How the US media covered up the meaning of George Floyd's murder

Middle East Eye

In April 2015, I attended a protest in Baltimore, Maryland, for Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man who died of a severe spinal cord injury mysteriously incurred in the back of a police van, where he had been placed for the apparent crime of running away from the cops.

Given US law enforcement’s homicidal track record vis-à-vis the country’s Black community, running seems like a rather logical reaction.

As I made my way from the subway station to the starting point of the march, I passed an alleyway containing four police cars, lights flashing, and a group of Black residents filming the scene with their mobile phone cameras.

When a fifth car arrived, a few members of the group raised their hands in sarcastic surrender - a testament to the effective criminalisation of Blackness in America, which is itself what enables the cops to kill with such regularity.

The march was entirely peaceful, although at a later point in time some protesters opted to smash up police vehicles and store windows and throw hot dog buns and rocks at the forces of law and order.

The mainstream media naturally jumped at the chance to run riot, as well, exclaiming in horror over the unspeakable “violence” - by which they of course meant the destruction of private property and not, you know, the severing of Black spinal cords.

Now, five years later, the 25 May police killing in Minneapolis of unarmed 46-year-old Black man George Floyd has triggered mass demonstrations across America and given the media another opportunity to decry looting and shore up a brutal status quo.

Granted, some aspects of the narrative have evolved in a more truthful direction - which is apparently what happens when journalists covering protests are themselves assaulted by the police.

Fox News predictably capitalised on events to sound the alarm that "parts of the nation have seen a surge in certain crimes amid protests and riots," including an “uptick in burglaries, shootings and even, in some cases, murders”. Never mind the murder that spawned the protests.

American media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) compiled a list of the "top 16 euphemisms US headline writers used for police beating the shit out of people". 

These ranged from NBC’s “Minneapolis Officers Use More Aggressive Tactics Against Protesters as Rallies Flare Around US” to the New York Times’ “After Curfew, Protesters Are Again Met With Strong Police Response In New York City” to NPR’s "Despite Curfews and Heavy Police Presence, Protests Persist Across the Country".

Then there were all the headlines about "clashes" between protesters and police, as though militarised police and lowly humans are somehow on equal footing in battle. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.

Recuperating Humanity: On John Washington’s “The Dispossessed”

Los Angeles Review of Books

MANY YEARS AGO, following a hitchhiking trip through Syria and Lebanon, I returned to the United States for a visit. Upon arrival to passport control at the Newark airport, I was asked to reveal the nature of my business in Syria in particular. My response — “I have friends there” — was quickly judged to be insufficient and perhaps even blasphemous, and the questioning officer demanded: “Why do you have friends in Syria?”

How to explain to US authorities that, for several months, Syrians and Lebanese had picked my companion and me up on the side of the road, accommodated us in their homes, and fed us relentlessly? And all of this for no other reason than, well, friendliness and hospitality.

The hostility of my reception in Newark pales in comparison to the “welcome” extended many incoming visitors to the United States — such as those fleeing violence, poverty, and other catastrophic situations. In his new book The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum at the US-Mexican Border and Beyond, John Washington masterfully exposes the ruthlessness of US border policy, focusing primarily on the trajectory of a 24-year-old Salvadoran asylum seeker named Arnovis — who, unlike me, has had to deal with a lot more than a few minutes of shaming by immigration officials.

A single father facing death threats from the Barrio 18 gang and recruitment efforts by the rival MS-13, Arnovis undertakes the first of three attempts to reach the United States in 2017, a journey that will variously see him intercepted in Mexico; kidnapped and nearly killed; and detained, duped, and deported by the guardians of the American frontier.

The most traumatic experience occurs during the third attempt, when his young daughter Meybelín is taken from him at the border and the official promise of swift reunification is spontaneously forgotten: “[T]hey took me to another detention center and I asked, Where’s my daughter? And they told me, I didn’t you know had a daughter. Meybelín, I told them. Who’s Meybelín? She’s my daughter.”

Arnovis is deported alone to El Salvador, and his prolonged terror only comes to an end when, thanks in part to a rare onslaught of media coverage, the US government manages to remember who and where Meybelín is and to send her back home, as well — “home” unfortunately being a place of existential peril and other forms of terror. READ MORE AT LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS.

“It Was an Entire System that Killed Berta” — A Review of Nina Lakhani’s New Book, Who Killed Berta Cáceres?

El Faro

Four months after the June 2009 right-wing coup d’état against President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras, I interviewed coup general Romeo Vásquez at his office in the Honduran capital. An alumnus of the notorious U.S.-run School of the Americas—traditionally the go-to institution for Latin American dictators, death squad leaders, and torturers—Vásquez was your typical jovial military lecher, informing me with a wink that he would not at all mind taking a second wife.

On the subject of the coup, he had high praise for his “very democratic soldiers”—since you can’t get much more democratic than overthrowing the democratically elected president of a country and then proceeding to beat up peaceful anti-coup protesters and to shoot them in the head. In the general’s view, it was the protesters who were guilty of unspeakable crimes, such as “insulting people, dirtying walls” with graffiti, and “setting buildings on fire.” 

Indeed, following a month and a half of brutal repression by security forces, flames had briefly engulfed one of the Tegucigalpa branches of the Popeye’s fast food establishment—an event that, unlike the killing of anti-coup Hondurans, was swiftly elevated to the rank of national tragedy. After all, in a country designed to serve as a vehicle for elite enrichment and corporate profit, life is cheap.

his reality is made painfully clear in a new book by journalist Nina Lakhani, focusing on one extraordinary life cut short by the powers that be in Honduras: Who Killed Berta Cáceres? Dams, Death Squads, and an Indigenous Defender’s Battle for the Planet. Murdered in her bedroom in March 2016 at the age of 44, Berta was the cofounder of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) and had spent much of her existence stepping on the toes of power—or, more appropriately, stomping them into the ground. The very act of asserting indigenous humanity and rights was practically seen as a criminal affront to a prevailing system of predatory capitalism predicated on the subjugation of the masses and the usurpation of land and resources. 

The last straw, apparently, was Berta’s leading role in opposing the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam on indigenous Lenca territory—a project undertaken in a context of massive institutionalized corruption and sketchiness and without the required consultation of the local community. As Lakhani details, this community stood to lose the Gualcarque River, which it depended on not only for its critical water and plant and animal life, but for its spiritual importance. The project was backed by the Atala Zablah family, an integral component of Honduras’ ruling class, and evidence uncovered during the murder inquiry suggests it was indirectly “partially funded by the World Bank Group, which has a mandate to give socially responsible development loans to alleviate poverty.” Rarely do U.S.-backed international financial institutions miss a chance to outdo themselves in the realm of irony.

The coup against Zelaya—who despite possessing no real leftist credentials had pledged a smattering of reforms benefiting the environment and the poor—paved the way for wanton extractivism. In the aftermath of the coup, Lakhani writes, the Gualcarque River was “sold off as part of a package of dam concessions involving dozens of waterways across the country,” in a sinister auction that also saw “mines, tourist developments, biofuel projects and logging concessions… rushed through Congress with no consultation, environmental impact studies or oversight, many destined for indigenous lands.” It was not an accident that Porfirio Lobo, who assumed the presidency of Honduras via illegitimate postcoup elections, declared the country “open for business.” READ MORE AT EL FARO.