This Brave New World, LXVIII
written in response to the released video of vicious Tyre Nichols beating by Memphis police officers
decades-old video
of the Rodney King beating --
now, punch after punch
a black man beaten to death
by five black policemen
a phalanx
of black youth with arms linked --
blood-red paint
on a pair of giant bronze hands
named Serve and Protect
FYI: The New Yorker, Jan. 28: "The Police Folklore That Helped Kill Tyre Nichols": A 1992 study claims that officers who show weakness are more likely to be killed. Law-enforcement culture has never recovered.
Most significant, the study’s core lesson about the imperative to dominate dovetailed with a nineties-era turn in law-enforcement culture toward what was known as a “warrior mind-set,” teaching officers to see almost any civilian as a potentially lethal assassin—an approach that many police trainers still advertise, even as the cops-vs.-citizens mentality has fallen out of favor among many police chiefs.
Added: Three Hundred and Sixtieth Entry, Coronavirus Poetry Diary
written in response to Bloomberg News, Jan. 27: "China Celebrated Lunar New Year Like Covid No Longer Exists" and The Daily Beast, Jan. 28: "How China’s COVID Crisis Could Spawn a Disastrous Virus Leap"
back-to-back waves
of Omicron subvariants . . .
migrant workers
on their New Year's train ride
stare at the rolling dice
FYI: Lunar New Year celebrations, also known as the Spring Festival, in China start on the 23rd day of the 12th lunar month of the Chinese calendar. The festival lasts for about 23 days, ending on the 15th day of the first lunar month in the following year in the Chinese calendar. And the Chinese New Year Migration, Spring Festival Travel Rush, is the largest human migration on earth annually.
Added:
these nail heads
of the new neighbor's fence ....
heat lightning
Added: reading between the lives and writing between the lines, LX
midnight barking ...
one group after another
hastily crowded
into this new VRChat
a men-only echo chamber
The Daily Beast, Jan. 28: How China’s COVID Crisis Could Spawn a Disastrous Virus "Leap," accessed at https://ca.yahoo.com/news/china-covid-crisis-could-spawn-023555424.html
ReplyDeleteChina’s COVID disaster is entering a critical phase. The BA.5.2 subvariant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is spreading essentially unchecked through a population of 1.4 billion people with weak COVID immunity. And as the virus is spreading, it’s mutating—fast...
... a major outbreak in a population of 1.4 billion increases the chance that the virus will make a big evolutionary leap. Similar to the leaps that produced the Delta variant back in late 2020 and Omicron a year later. A new variant could be even more transmissible than the Omicron subvariants—and it might totally evade our antibodies.