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Paul Craig Roberts Decries Guilt by Media in the Case of George Floyd

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by Paul Craig Roberts

Editor’s note: This article first appeared at PaulCraigRoberts.org on July 6, 2020

As readers know, I am a long-time critic of gratuitous police violence. My many columns on the subject have cost me readers who saw my columns as undermining the police and thereby law and order.  I agree with readers that crime is real and that there is a danger that punishing the police for abusing their power can reduce their zealousness in enforcing laws.  On the other hand, refusing to hold police accountable allows misbehavior to continue that eventually undermines their reputation as has now occurred.

As readers know, I am also a critic of authorities, including those in Minnesota, for having our police given Israeli police training. Israelis use police to suppress the Palestinian population. In my opinion this kind of aggressive training is risky when some members of the force are attracted by power and authority instead of public service.

Having this track record, some readers are now confused that I seem to be taking the side of the police in the George Floyd case.

My concern is not with one side or the other. It is with truth. The medical examiner’s report—completely ignored by the media and public authorities—indicates that Floyd died of a fatal dose of the opioid fentanyl and not from strangulation by officer Chauvin.  If this is the case, then officer Chauvin, who has been convicted in the media prior to trial, has had his rights violated and has been, in effect, lynched by the media serving as a black KKK.

The American people should know by now that the media gets things wrong far more often than it gets them right.  Take your pick and add to the list: Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nukes, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russiagate, Impeachgate, Hillary’s emails.  It is supposed to be a principle of US justice that a defendant is innocent until found guilty by a jury in a trial.

It is easy to see why officer Chauvin was not given the benefit of the doubt. The video and the photo of officer Chauvin with his knee on Floyd’s neck, with Floyd reported as complaining that he can’t breathe and Chauvin appearing indifferent to Floyd’s complaint, is all it takes for an anatomically ignorant population to see what they take to be an act of homicide.

Certainly the media did not investigate or wait for the medical report or even look at the medical report when it became available.  Chauvin was pronounced guilty in advance.  Now with the entire world convinced of his guilt, with so many political reputations staked on his guilt, and with more than 500,000 people contributing more than $14,500,000 to the official George Floyd Memorial Fund — https://www.gofundme.com/f/georgefloyd — it is impossible to correct what might be a rush to a false judgment.

I can do myself no good by raising questions about a conclusion that seems to be set in stone.  It will cost me readers, donations, and bring me death threats.  But I cannot be indifferent when it is possible that truth has been murdered and an innocent police office has been publicly lynched. I am defending truth, not Chauvin. Without truth, everyone of us can be pronounced guilty by accusation alone.  This is especially the case in America where denunciation has displaced civilized debate.

As a former Wall Street Journal editor, columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, Creators Syndicate, and major French and Italian newspapers, I am familiar with how the press works.  The media creates lies, sometimes on purpose, sometimes inadvertently,  and sometimes by rushing to judgment.  Americans, bless their gullible hearts, assume the press has investigated when so often the press is merely publishing a planted story or a press release or boosting readership with extravagant headlines that become the story in place of the facts.

The question before us is:  In the case of George Floyd’s death, has the media turned a lie into truth?

Everywhere in the world the story has been told of “the Memorial Day Killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis,” to use the words from the UK Telegraph on July 4.  The Foreign Staff of the Telegraph cannot even report on President Trump’s Mount Rushmore Speech without repeating again that Floyd was killed by police. We have all heard it countless times.

But is this what happened?  No one has investigated except John-Paul Leonard — https://www.unz.com/article/or-did-george-floyd-die-of-a-drug-overdose/ .  If the media account, which is based on nothing but an emotional reaction to a video, is incorrect, Chauvin, the accused police officer, has been wrongly convicted in the media and has no chance of a fair trial.

When I was growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, if media presented a defendant as guilty before a court trial concluded that fact, it endangered the ability to prosecute the defendant as it prevented a fair trial.  If the media was national that declared guilt prematurely, the case would be dismissed.  If it was a local newspaper, the trial would have to be moved to another city or state. It simply was impermissible for media to convict a defendant in the media prior to a jury’s determination. Innocent until proven guilty was the rule.  I don’t remember when this protection of the defendant was cast aside.

I suspect the protection was lost with the rise of plea bargaining. I don’t think plea bargaining existed in the 40s and 50s. With the rise of plea bargaining, evidence of innocence or guilt became irrelevant. Trials ceased to take place. Today 97% of felonies are resolved with plea bargains. In exchange for a guilty plea, the defendant is punished for a lesser offense that did not occur and avoids the risk of being convicted on more serious charges. The defendant’s lawyer and the prosecutor negotiate a lesser offence in exchange for a guilty plea that avoids the cost in time and money of a trial.  The “justice system” moved from finding truth to clearing dockets and maximizing the conviction rate. Trials take time and can result in an innocent verdict. Plea bargains are quickly arranged and all who plea are guilty.

The police officer, Chauvin, has already been convicted by the media everywhere in the world. He cannot possibly get a fair trial. Even if the jurors are convinced he is innocent by the medical evidence and by Floyd’s complaints of his breathing problem prior to being restrained, they won’t dare say so. Jurors who found Chauvin innocent would be shunned by neighbors and face death threats from Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Despite the fact that no fair trial is possible for Chauvin, his case will not be dismissed. A prosecutor who dropped charges and a judge who dismissed the case on the grounds that a fair trial is impossible would be demonized and placed in danger of their lives and careers.

The medical examiner’s report finds no sign of damage to Floyd’s neck from being restrained, and it reports a fatal level of opioid in Floyd’s blood. The opioid, Fentanyl, when overdosed stops breathing and causes death.  Floyd is heard on the recording to be complaining of his breathing problem prior to being restrained. You can get the facts of the effects of Fentanyl from this official source: https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/fentanyl 

The medical examiner’s report is HERE:

It seems that the police sensed that Floyd was in a life-threatened situation when they put him in the police car to take to the police station. They called for medics, removed him from the car, and held him on his stomach, which their training may have taught them is the safest position, while waiting for the medics, who arrived too late.

As a person familiar with martial arts, I know that blows to the side of the neck do not affect breathing.  It is blows to the throat that do that.  Put pressure on the sides of your neck, and you will see that it does not affect your breathing. Now try that on your throat.

No media has looked at the autopsy report or interviewed objective experts.  What we have is a picture of a cop restraining Floyd with a knee restraint taught in police training and Floyd saying he can’t breathe.  The anatomically ignorant public unaware that Floyd is overdosed on an opioid that stops breathing, sees this and concludes, with media instruction, that the policeman mercilessly killed Floyd.

On the basis of what might be a false conclusion, a man will be denied a fair trial, and numerous businesses and public monuments have been destroyed. Race relations in the United States have been set back, and white Americans are moving out of multiracial cities.  Antifa and Black Lives Matter have the liberal elites on the run, and this implies more breakdowns in civil order. On July 4 a large contingent of armed black militia marched pass the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial outside Atlanta and challenged white militias to battle:  “We are in your house, let’s go!” https://www.zerohedge.com/political/were-your-house-lets-go-black-militia-challenges-white-militia-confederate-monument 

It is entirely possible that race relations in the United States have been unravelled by a media lie.

I have no objection to my reading of the evidence being proven incorrect.  But until it is, I very much object to the media murdering police officer Chauvin along with race relations in the United States.

 

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43 COMMENTS

  1. “The medical examiner’s report—completely ignored by the media and public authorities—indicates that Floyd died of a fatal dose of the opioid fentanyl and not from strangulation by officer Chauvin”

    NOTHING makes sense in this saga. I am no medico, but I would have thought that fentanyl would sedate you and slowly — over some time — shut your systems down. Wasn’t he walking off in one of the videos — just before being forced to the ground (if one believes the time line)? Was he injected after he was in handcuffs? (murder?) It seems strange that a person now overdosing with lethal amounts in his system would keep talking. Then the ambulance arrived. No medics. As I said nothing adds up.

  2. I can’t see the police giving him a shot of Fentanyl, that seems a very long bow. He also had ‘crack’ in his system, perhaps that helped to keep him awake. The store keeper commented that he was acting strangely.

    “armed black militia marched pass the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial outside Atlanta and challenged white militias to battle: “We are in your house, let’s go!” – LOL, people that live in the area dispute that ‘in your house’, Stone Mountain is 73% black.

    I agree with Roberts about the media. I took someone to task on another forum for saying the Floyd was ‘murdered’.

    I also mentioned the Ferguson riots over Michael Brown, you remember “Hands up, don’t shoot” BS that was promulgated in the media. Forget that Brown had just robbed a store, had assaulted a police officer and then was stupidly going to attack the same officer when he got shot – and NO he did not have his hands up.

    Then there was Armaud Arberry, you remember “Jogging while Black”. He was caught on video several times in the house that was being burgled. When he was told to stop, he attacked the young fellow and tried to take the shotgun away from him. That didn’t turn out very well.

    Then there was Travon Martin who attacked the Hispanic bloke and got shot in self defense.

    It appears the media is promoting false narratives to create racial divide. They did that back during the Rodney King riots years ago. They only played a short clip on TV of him being beaten into submission. They did not play the entire tape that showed his resisting after the long police chase. However, the jury got to see the full tape, that’s why the police were acquitted.

    The media is totally unreliable. In Australia, one only has to remember the media storm on Martin Bryant.

  3. “When I was growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, if media presented a defendant as guilty before a court trial concluded that fact, it endangered the ability to prosecute the defendant as it prevented a fair trial. If the media was national that declared guilt prematurely, the case would be dismissed. If it was a local newspaper, the trial would have to be moved to another city or state. It simply was impermissible for media to convict a defendant in the media prior to a jury’s determination. Innocent until proven guilty was the rule. I don’t remember when this protection of the defendant was cast aside.

    I suspect the protection was lost with the rise of plea bargaining. I don’t think plea bargaining existed in the 40s and 50s. With the rise of plea bargaining, evidence of innocence or guilt became irrelevant. Trials ceased to take place. Today 97% of felonies are resolved with plea bargains. In exchange for a guilty plea, the defendant is punished for a lesser offense that did not occur and avoids the risk of being convicted on more serious charges. The defendant’s lawyer and the prosecutor negotiate a lesser offence in exchange for a guilty plea that avoids the cost in time and money of a trial. The “justice system” moved from finding truth to clearing dockets and maximizing the conviction rate. Trials take time and can result in an innocent verdict. Plea bargains are quickly arranged and all who plea are guilty.”

    It appears what is done in US is done in 51st state (Australia). As Terry points to Martin Bryant’s fate in 1996.

    The media today rules sovereign countries, not so the politicians. Just look at the outright hysterical lies told by media to push the recent “lockdown” and other restrictions.

  4. “the media gets things wrong far more often than it gets them right. Take your pick and add to the list: Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nukes, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Russian invasion of Ukraine [sic – Crimea], Russiagate, Impeachgate, Hillary’s emails.”

    Further to Terry’s comment, actually they don’t get these things wrong – these are very deliberate narratives/psyops – just as with the COVID ’situation’. The ‘media’ does not just observe an event such as this and get it wrong – the narrative is a carefully crafted, pre-planned psyop – just as Daniel Andrews only thinks that “The Germ” observes state borders only on specific dates – and that people in Mildura cannot cross the street as of midnight tonight (it was okay yesterday and will be safe for the few hours leading up to the ‘restrictions’). And still no one knows a COVID victim – I know a couple of people who have been “told” that a relative has suffered (even died) from COVID but they are now questioning the ‘diagnosis’, especially in the light of the fact that, for example, Victoria has had no (ZERO) flu-related deaths this winter.

    Speaking of diagnoses …

    Let’s add to the confusion by first acknowledging that it is often very difficult to discern which headlines and articles are deliberately put out to achieve precisely that – add confusion and obfuscation:

    • that one attorney who claims to have represented George Floyd as a homeless man declares in an affidavit that the real George Floyd died three years ago

    • that the Obama Foundation was tweeting about George Floyd on May 17th, one week before the ’event’

    • that the very high profile Dr Michael Barden was in charge of the autopsy– so could this fentanyl story itself just be another ‘furphy’ [a rumour or story, especially one that is untrue or absurd). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Baden

    • that the video from behind the vehicle suggests that the whole event may have been staged to last exactly 8:46.

    • that the mug shot of Police Officer ‘Chauvin’ was looks nothing like the guy in the death video, who in turn looks more like a crisis actor named Benjamin Ray Bailey

    https://beforeitsnews.com/strange/2020/06/actor-ben-bailey-played-derek-chauvin-in-arrest-2475861.html

    Still unravelling … imagine the fun of being in a think tank making all this stuff up!

  5. Paul Craig Roberts says : ” in the 1940’s and 1950’s ……. if media presented a defendant as guilty before a court trial concluded that fact, it endangered the ability to prosecute the defendant as it prevented a fair trial. If the media was national that declared guilt prematurely, the case would be dismissed “.

    That sure sounds like the circumstances surrounding a case in Tasmania that occurred in late April 1996 where said defendant’s case would certainly have been dismissed had there been justice in the Australian judicial system.

    • If the term “plea bargain” conjures up a bunch of gangsters doing deals over the heads of their hapless minions you sure are on the right track:
      https://thefreethoughtproject.com/due-process-dead-staggering-95-inmates-america-received-trial/
      And from what I’ve seen the Aussie scenario is pretty much identical to what goes down in the U. S.

      But I’m still convinced that in the long run it’s worth standing up for yourself.

      Some time ago there was a news-flash to the effect that some ludicrous charge against Dr. Pridgeon had been withdrawn. I could be wrong, but that kinda suggests that he’s determined to go to trial(why else would it have been ditched?).
      As the record of such a procedure would be more precious than gold here’s hoping

      • Interesting to note that there don’t appear to be any on-line success stories re self-representation – which is what the vast majority of defendants are faced with if they refuse a so-called “bargain” (just try putting in a counter-offer; you soon find out that the term is a complete misnomer)

        What tends to get overlooked is that, as the whole thrust of the legal profession is towards doing a minimum amount of work for the maximum amount of pay most lawyers are:
        a) grievously lacking in intelligence & skill( if you don’t use it your bound to lose it – assuming that you ever had it in the 1st place)
        and
        b) not committed to working in your interests in any case.

        That, in turn, means that most judges have virtually no practice in dealing with rational argument let alone the embarrassment of being caught out by a commoner and having the event set in stone

        • I really wish that trials were televised like many are in the U.S. Then the Australian citizen would realize the corruption and/or stupidity that is regularly on display in the Australian judiciary. I doubt the Australian people would put up with the irrational farce after the first week of televised horrors.

  6. Thank you Paul. The question before us is: In the case of George Floyd’s death, has the media turned a lie into truth?

  7. Roberts does a good follow-up to this article at unz.com, explains morbidity dangers of even miniscule amounts of Fentanyl.

  8. Just in reference to the idea that Floyd George is a big ploy by some think tank, and the idea that Sleepy Joe will go for a rest at a nursing home for his alzheimers and be swapped out at the last minute and replaced by, maybe, AOC, here’s a video about AOC that had a run in Gumshoe a few weeks ago under another subject (probably mind control or grooming etc). These think tanks are ten moves ahead of all of us. We’ll all be filing (safely of course) into the abattoirs before we know it.

    • bg, the US Constuttion says “No person…shall be eligible to the Office of President who shall not have attained to the age of 35 years. ..”

      AOC was born in October 1989.

      • Yeah I heard about that(Max Keiser was raving about it 6 months ago) but AOC is the best example via this video. I think we have to look at Rockerfellas as the guiding hand behind basically everything, from the building of the WTC to the Clinton dynasty to some of the “7 wars in 5 years” to Obamacare to this current rolling recession thing they have going, through JP Morgan Chase bank etc. Various decoy ducks try to say it is Rotschilds but I think outside of Zion they don’t have as much influence. Cui bono.
        Now, if Rotschilds control the Reserve Banks of the world and Trump is dumping junk onto the Fed (latest is Deutsch Bank) in order to crash it, Rotschilds would presumably be disadvantaged. I think Rotschilds may be locked out of power by virtue of their Jewishness, and they have no army in their background. You really need to control the army, In this way Mein Trumpf seems to have undermined Rockerfellas ambitions. Or on the other hand, we hear, the army is using Mein Trumpf to head off what is basically a communist disaster heading straight for the US via Rockerfellas.
        Maybe they all live on private cruise ships by now and maybe that is why the cruise ships were infected, maybe they were taking all the parking. Who knows. They seem to have things worked out decades in advance, while the public can only focus on last week’s football. The TV shows the public all the same rubbish news with file photos flicking every 3 seconds, probably they have worked out that this will increase Alzheimers.

        • We hear Trump is getting in on the biggest ripoff in history via Black Rock, well you need some real clout to knock the Rockerfellas off their perch I guess there is no other way apart from targeted assassinations or army coup. Wait and see.

    • “A people unable to catch on to their constant manipulation has no future.” –

      Yep, dumb as dirt. – The most unbiased IQ tests are those that use ‘pattern recognition’. There is no issue about culture or language skills, it just uses pattern recognition – which is very important as a survival skill. – ‘Been here before, done this, shouldn’t do it again’.

  10. “Americans, [et al] bless their gullible hearts …“

    And speaking of think tanks …

    This was posted as a comment on Caitlin Johnstone – it is superb.
    The first 3 minutes should get you interested – re manufacturing consent

    At 2:35:
    “nearly half of what people in the West hear, see or read is written by professional liars”
    … Yup!

      • I had only got half way through and had to retire – I would dispute a few of the’facts’ but I dare anyone to argue with the overall context and message. They even quote Seneca for goodness’ sake – PERFECT!

        Anyone who does dispute this had better convince me that my life would be enriched by watching Oprah and Netflix …

        • It’s an excellent example of why you always have to hear both sides of any story. Too bad I will probably never get to North Korea to check it out. I have been to North Vietnam and understand the underlying hostility they have there, it’s probably a lot more intense in NK. I wonder how they would be if they didn’t have sanctions (the current sticking point with Trump). Well we’re all getting sanctions now by being locked up in our country thanks to Rockerfellas lockstep program.
          Anyone reading this I just wrote above would think the video is about North Korea, I hasten to add, it is not, it is BY North Korea

  13. “Even if you hate us, you must give us credit.
    Chinese communism will win because decades ago the Alpha Lodge decided the future of the planet is Chinese.

    The World Economic Forum has a plan that will be followed. It’s essentially a massive redistribution of wealth to get societies stratified and controlled within a prison grid planet.”

    Aloysius Fozdyke

    • Alpha Lodge is in Arkansaw too ? Along with the Clintons and the Rockerfellas and the distribution centre connected to Florida, where Jeb is.
      It is so tough to get Bill (& Hill) on TV about their very many visits to Epsteins islands.
      Mein Trumpf got him on though, during the last election, well done.

  16. More old people like Paul Craig Roberts should speak to the young people who are going to have their entire inheritance stolen, not by baby-boomers as they think but by super-fascists, most notably Rockefellas and their gang.
    PCR isn’t always perfect but near enough and he sticks his neck out and doesn’t seem to fear he might get it chopped off.
    The stuff about autopsies, autopsies are like anything, they write what you pay them to write. You can die of two different things at the same time, or in combination, the autopsy writer knows who he is working for, and will write accordingly.
    Young people, will you wake up like the baby-boomers partially did, or are you totally mind-controlled already.
    The parties in Florida were good but the stuff in Hong Kong was better, and that wasn’t enough.

  17. This is topic related , seeing as Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan and there’s no way he would’ve tolerated this degree of fiscal profligacy on his watch.

    This commentary comes courtesy of the great sage Bill Bonner :

    ” Let’s see…in June, the feds spent nearly FIVE TIMES as much as they received in revenues — $242 billion in tax receipts versus $1,105 billion in outlays.

    In other words, the deficit for a SINGLE MONTH under the ‘conservative’ Trump was greater than the deficit for the entire last year of the ‘liberal’ Obama “.

    Gumshoe readers, do we need any further proof that Trump’s administration is following the time honoured Socialist formula of irresponsible spending and unparalleled growth of big government – only his tenure differs in that his Spending-on-Steroids is far in excess of what any left of centre administration ever dreamed of, let alone actually put into practice.

    Future history books will record Trump’s tenure as the standout contributor for having left future generations of Americans with the legacy of debt and despair.

    • Tragic Untruth Veggie,
      If Paul Craig Roberts wanted to write this nonsense he would have put it on his webpage instead of waiting for you to be his spokesman

  18. Great minds think alike. Bill Bonner and PCR are almost always on the same page.

    In any event, the figures above are the actual stats – so not subject to the whims of personal biases.
    Clearly ‘bg’ , it pains you to see the facts that prove Trump is a Socialist fraud.

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