Muhammed Ali, 74; Chicago Cop Video
Saturday, June 4, 2016
Vol. 5, No. 156
The Greatest: Muhammed Ali, the three-time heavyweight boxing champion who bragged that he could “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee,” has died in Arizona at age 74. Ali, nicknamed “The Greatest,” was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1984, the result of taking too many punches.
Ali had both an agile body and mind. In the ring his feet barely appeared to touch the canvas. In public he was smart, funny, stinging, and political. He used to predict the outcome of fights in rhyme: “This is no jive, Cooper will go in five.” And, “This might shock and amaze ya, but I’m gonna destroy Joe Frazier.”
Named Cassius Clay at birth, Ali won the light-heavyweight title at the Rome Olympics in 1960. In 1964 he stunned the boxing writers, upsetting Sonny Liston to win his first heavyweight title at age 22. From the ropes he shouted at the press, “Eat your words! I shook up the world! I’m king of the world!”
Shortly after, he converted to Islam and changed his name. Three years later, at the height of the Vietnam War, he refused to be drafted into the army and was stripped of his titles. He said, “I ain’t got nothing against them Vietcong.” In his athletic prime, he was banned from boxing for more than three years.
Ali came back to win the title twice more, but by then he was a symbol of the anti-war movement, black pride, and standing to confront the powers in white America. In his later years Ali was a shuffling and mumbling victim of Parkinson’s, but he was always one of the lions of the turbulent 1960s, and one of the most recognizable people in the world.
PoliceTube: In an effort to come clean about the image of its police department, the city of Chicago has released 101 videos and audio recordings of its cops firing their weapons at suspects and engaging in other uses of force. The police have been under scrutiny since the release of a video showing an officer shooting an unarmed 17-year-old 16 times and killing him.
Most of the videos taken with police dashboard cameras, security cameras, and cellphones don’t reveal very much. Many appear to be appropriate uses of force, but some are clearly not. Another shows an off- duty officer working as security in a restaurant, beating a customer who complained about his meal and refused to leave.
Labor Report: Job growth last month was the weakest it’s been in five years, according to the Labor Department, making it pretty unlikely the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates later this month, or possibly even in July. Employers added only 38,000 workers in May.
The unemployment rate fell to 4.7 percent, from 5, which sounds like it ought to be a good thing, but that is in large part because workers have dropped out of the market. In particular, older white males have stopped looking for work … that’s a chunk of the Donald Trump voter demographic.
Art News: With the Seine River running at its highest levels since 1982, the streets of Paris are flooded and the Louvre has had to move 160,000 works of art to higher floors. The Seine overflowed Wednesday and was expected to crest this morning.
Red Card: The top three executives of the international soccer body, FIFA, including the disgraced and deposed Sepp Blatter, paid themselves $80 million in their last five years in office, according to a lawyer investigating for the current FIFA management. “The evidence appears to reveal a coordinated effort by three former top officials of FIFA to enrich themselves through annual salary increases, World Cup bonuses and other incentives totaling more than 79 million Swiss francs – in just the last five years,” according to Bill Burck of Quinn Emanuel, an American law firm retained by FIFA.
Blatter’s base salary was $3 million, but he arranged to pay himself a $12 million bonus for the 2014 World Cup.
Nation: The bodies of four missing soldiers swept away in floodwaters at Ft. Hood, Tex., have been recovered. In all, nine soldiers died when their truck was knocked over by water in a flooded drainage.
My African American: Speaking in Redding, Calif., yesterday Donald Trump related an incident in which one of his supporters, who was black, was arrested after punching a protester. Then Trump’s eyes wandered over the crowd and he pointed out a man saying, “Oh look at my African American over here,” Mr. Trump said. “Are you the greatest? Do you know what I’m talking about?”
Actually, no idea whatsoever.
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