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Open Thread Friday 6-5-2020

A Look at China Part Seven
My intent in the series was to provide basic knowledge to start understanding China and our ongoing relationship with Chinese governments and its people. The story did not begin with the opening of China by Nixon and will not end in our times. Military leaders, policy makers and intelligence services have deep sources of knowledge on China. Most politicians appear to have the same misconceptions as the general public about mysterious China and try to describe China in sound bites.

Maochun Yu, historian teaching at Annapolis provides the best description I have read or heard on Chinese Studies in the United States during a 2015 panel discussion.

(full video 100 min. section on China Studies 38.07 to 40.55)
[video:https://youtu.be/8HA1MPaqPSs?t=2287]

The View From Louisville

Tired of tear gas, the protesters have been coming every day to the intersection of Breckenridge Lane and Shelbyville Road, and they try to get everyone to leave at 8 p.m. each night.

On the night of the first protest in Louisville on May 28, Kayla Meisner and her boyfriend watched everything unfold downtown on the news. She said, for a long time, they talked about taking to the streets to demand change. But it’s also been scary.

“Then we go [to the protests] Friday with the same mentality, this is something we’re fighting for, but we’re scared of this,” said Meisner, who is Black and works at the University of Louisville.

Meisner thought the protests felt peaceful on Friday, but said things had “a totally different energy” when it got dark.

“We ended up getting hurt and tear gassed,” she said. “I had a pepper [ball] blow up on my leg.”

She said that was the impetus for working with some friends to organize protests in St. Matthews, an affluent eastern suburb of Louisville.

So Many People With Nothing Left to Lose

I came across this article that examines the protests and focuses specifically on the media narrative of violence and looting. It gives us a good jumping off point to further discuss points brought up in comments in some of the most recent essays on the protests.

In this article, the writer interviews

Hot Air

[They] gathered to watch live as Trump walked from the White House to St John’s. “My mother just shouted out, ‘God give him strength! He’s doing a Jericho walk!’”

A Jericho walk, in some evangelical circles, refers to the biblical book of Joshua, where God commanded the Israelites to walk seven times around the opposing city of Jericho, whose walls then came crashing down.

~

Eleanor said that no US President could be elected without support from the Bible Belt. That they composed 30% of the vote. About 80% of the 94 million Evangelicals voted for Trump in 2016.

Please pardon my frankness.

Obama can kiss my ass.
I reared a child on my own. I taught him/her that they could make a difference.
I encourage him/her to make a statement that they would be happy to fight for.
Then 2008 happened. Without help from me, they decided that it was a just cause to elect the first Obama.
Then they were informed that we had to look forward and forget the past.

The 3 other cops have been arrested

3 more Minneapolis police officers charged over death of George Floyd as Chauvin’s charge raised to 2nd degree murder

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is charging the three other officers involved in the George Floyd killing, and Derek Chauvin will now face a second degree murder charge, Senator Amy Klobuchar confirmed on Wednesday.

Don’t understand the protests? What you’re seeing is people pushed to the edge

An Op-ed by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, May 30, 2020, LA Times (a few outtakes; my bolds)

“What do you see when you see angry black protesters amassing outside police stations with raised fists? If you’re white, you may be thinking, “They certainly aren’t social distancing.” Then you notice the black faces looting Target and you think, “Well, that just hurts their cause.” Then you see the police station on fire and you wag a finger saying, “That’s putting the cause backward.”

You’re not wrong — but you’re not right, either. The black community is used to the institutional racism inherent in education, the justice system and jobs. And even though we do all the conventional things to raise public and political awareness — write articulate and insightful pieces in the Atlantic, explain the continued devastation on CNN, support candidates who promise change — the needle hardly budges.

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