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The George Floyd riots: A closer look (Updated 4 June at end)

On the 25th of May this year in a suburb of Minneapolis, George Perry Floyd was murdered by a policeman during a routine callout. That is the public perception (see update at end for more details). He wasn’t shot trying to flee. He apparently wasn’t even resisting arrest. He was instead pinned to the ground by three police officers because he was afraid and claustrophobic, pinned to the point that he was suffocated and later died of a heart attack, according to the autopsy report. And yes, he was black. It was a strange thing to have happened, though, for several reasons. The arrest and pinning, with his loss of consciousness, was recorded for posterity on two cell phones and a security camera and soon went viral. The police seemed nonchalant. The nation exploded in protests and riots as a result. The world stood in solidarity with the protests. But why has this event caused such an outpouring when people die at the hands of police nearly every day in the United States? We’ll look at why here. Continue reading “The George Floyd riots: A closer look (Updated 4 June at end)”

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Countering the Yellow Peril, Part II: The US

Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade advisor, recently stated, “We are at war with China”. He did not mean a literal shooting war, but his statement carried more meaning than that of a simple trade war. He then went on to accuse China of deliberately putting passengers infected with the coronavirus aboard flights bound for the US in the early days of the epidemic. It was an inflammatory statement. The American economy is perhaps facing shrinkage of its GDP by as much as 10% in 2020 due to its mishandling of the pandemic, while Asian economies are now almost up to full capacity, having clamped down the spread of the virus. So,why the heightened rhetoric? Continue reading “Countering the Yellow Peril, Part II: The US”

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The 2019 Iranian-US drone incident

In the pre-dawn hours of 20 June 2019, the Iranians shot down a US surveillance drone they claimed had violated their airspace. The US made the counter-claim that the drone was in international waters and was a strike against a US asset. This turns out to be a rather interesting story with many implications, at the risk of harping on about the Middle East. However, events there could quickly spiral out of control, into a catastrophic conflict. And we came very close to that very thing in those pre-dawn hours. Continue reading “The 2019 Iranian-US drone incident”