Responding to Arizona

The shooting that happened in Arizona last weekend was appalling. Anyone who would wantonly spray a crowd of people with bullets is not worth much consideration as a human. Jared Loughner’s actions are indefensible. He could have perhaps staked a very weak claim to the morality of using force against agents of the state that imposes force against us all every day. It would have been a weak and tenuous claim, a claim that I have rejected from others whenever they have advocated it in my presence. Instead, what he did was turn his gun on a crowd of innocent people. He was just a murderer. I feel deeply sorry for the families of the dead and I hope just as much for the recovery of the injured. For Loughner, I hope he is locked away forever. Executing him would just drag society down to his level.

I was in Canada when the shooting happened, so I was able to avoid the sketchy early reporting. I did get back just in time to catch a lot of leftists (H/T: Andrew) making an  unseemly spectacle out of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party’s supposed culpability in Loughner’s crime. It made me sad to see a respectable blogger like Andrew Sullivan, one of my all-time favorites, jump so quickly to this conclusion. The reality of the matter is that Loughner is an incoherent fool. He is mad as a march hare. What he did was horrible and I hope he is punished severely, but he did not do this as some sort of foot soldier of the Tea Party or because Sarah Palin put a target on a map. He did this because in his crazy mind, government is assaulting language or something like that.

And I can understand why so many leftists leapt to this conclusion. Sarah Palin is a HORRIBLE human being. She has aroused new levels of contempt in me, something that is remarkable given my inborn antipathy for statists. I dislike all of the presidents, but I am confident that were Palin elected, she would quickly find herself battling with FDR and Woodrow Wilson for the title of worst of all-time.

So yes, let us defeat Palin the lying, ignorant, Bible-thumping barbarian. But not in this way. Not in a way that manipulates the deaths of innocent people to reach a political end. If you really think some map graphic on a Sarah Palin website made this nutter kill those people, you have a serious correlation vs. causation problem you need worked out.

As for the overreactions from the agents of Leviathan, join me in vomiting on them all. First there was Rep. Bob Brady D-PA (H/T: Andrew), presumably some sort of vulgar mouth-breather who would just feel more important if he had a taxpayer-funded security detail behind him. Guess what, Bob? No one made you become one of the chief agents of the criminal gang running this country. You had a choice. You chose to become a slave overseer. If you don’t like the risks inherent in the job, then get the hell out. Just now, I saw some dumb shmuck calling for bipartisan seating at the State of the Union address. Good God. The only thing I would like about that sort of useless maneuver is that it might cause some more people to realize that this country is really a one-party (War Party) state. And then there are the worst of the worst, the people calling for limits on speech, the people calling for the Fred Phelps church to be banned from funerals, the people calling for the Fairness Doctrine to return, etc. Just shut up, all of you. I think about half of those people are really just sand-headed kneejerkers of the lowest sort, whilst the other half are hardcore statists who wanted those policies all along and are just using the current tragedy as an excuse.

Best pundit reaction? I’d have to say Radley Balko. He was one of the few people to not let the government off the hook here and remind people that the state initiates force against each of us every day. That was a hard thing for a national pundit to say after this sort of event, so good for him. From my perspective, it’s important to say that Loughner is crazy as a loon and guilty as hell. But don’t let the deranged actions of one murderer become for America what the Port Arthur massacre was/is for Australia–a blank check for kneejerkers and statists to achieve long-held goals in an emotional moment.

Read Full Post »

Visiting the Border–Where Freedom Goes to Die

I cross the U.S.-Canada border on I-5 or SR-543 in Blaine, WA at least once every two weeks. When I first started crossing in September, I was not used to the border guards’ interrogations and allowed them to intimidate me into nervous responses that led to two full searches going into Canada. But soon I figured out what they wanted to hear (yes/no answers, no headshakes, no mmmhmms, no long stories) and how they wanted me to act (calm as if I just downed a tranquilizer) and they stopped searching me. On the U.S. side, it was even less of an issue–they opened my trunk once or twice, but that was it.

Until this weekend.

Going to Canada was the same old thing. The border guard even recognized me and was friendly. But coming back to the U.S. just after midnight on Monday morning, the border crossing at I-5 Peace Arch was extremely dead. There was only one car in front of me. He got through quickly and I pulled up to the guard shack. The guard started into his usual questions, I started into my usual answers…and then he informed me that I’d been selected for a random screening. I stopped talking entirely and stared straight ahead. He gave me instructions for where to pull up and wait for a guard. Then he randomly said “You’re welcome,” either out of conditioning or because he wanted to piss on me a little bit more.

I pulled my car off to the left and parked. I waited. Five minutes passed. No guard emerged from the building. I looked around, wondering if maybe I was not in the right place. I turned the car on and began to inch it forward. Suddenly, two guards came out of the building and told me to stop and back up. They then instructed me to come inside.

The customs building is massive and sparkling. Ah, the wonderful things that 9/11 did for America’s police state bureaucrats! And on this night, it was also completely empty, save for three thugs at keyboards and one thug walking around behind them. I walked to the front of the “line” and then a surly red-haired thug who looked like he hadn’t seen a smile since the first Bush administration told me to come forward. Yes, told. He did not ask. I complied.

He started into the usual questions, too: “Why were you in Canada?” “How long were you there?” “Are you bringing anything back?” “What do you do for work?”

To this, I replied that I was a writer. He then followed up and said, “What kind of writing?” At last I had had enough. I said flatly, “I’m not going to answer that.”

“Why not,” he asked.

“It’s not relevant to my visit to Canada and I’m not going to answer it.”

“You are either going to answer it or you can go sit in the corner over there until you feel like answering it.”

I reemphasized that this question was not relevant and I would not answer it. Another guard yelled at me to go sit down. I continued to defend myself as a third guard then entered the fray. I asked him if he was familiar with “some guy v. Puerto Rico from the 1960s” (I could not remember the name of the decision, which is apparently U.S. v. Valentine), a ruling that stated that one of an American citizen’s rights is reentry into his own country. The guard said that he was aware of this right, but that I would need to answer some questions first.

With three of them telling me to sit down, I went and sat in “time out.” I haven’t felt more like a child since I was taking naps on towels and playing Transformers in kindergarten. I sat there and fumed, refusing to even look at them, planning what my next step would be, how long I would be willing to tolerate time out.

After five minutes, the red-haired thug told me to come back over. Again, told–he did not ask. So I complied.

“I need your keys so I can search your car.”

Now, first, let me point out that he did NOT re-ask me the same question about what kind of writing I do. That he did not re-ask this question necessarily proves my point that the question was irrelevant. Back to the dialogue.

“Ok, but I would like to be present for any search,” I said.

“That’s now allowed. Why do you care? Is there something I should know about?”

“No, I just want to see how my property is treated and would also like to make sure you do not plant anything.”

This suggestion made Mr. Thug angry, almost as if I had hurt him.

“Why would I plant something?”

“I have no reason to trust you,” I replied. Looking back on it, I should have said, “I am on this side of the desk and you are on that side. That’s reason enough.” But I was flustered.

So the dialogue continued. I offered to watch them search my car through a window, which, I pointed out, I have been allowed to do in Canada. No. I asked them if they had a warrant. Oh, ho-ho–the Supreme Court has ruled that the 4th Amendment does not apply at borders! So I continued to refuse the search and was ready to either ask for my passport back so I could just return to Canada (though I suspect this would not be allowed) or just go back to the corner.

Before I could act, the pacing thug walked over and asked what was going on. They explained the situation. He then looked at me and said, “Ok, so here is how this is going to work. You can either give them the keys and let them search your car, or I will put you in handcuffs, lock you in a cell, take your keys, and then search the car. Which one is it going to be?”

Knowing well the indefinite detention record of U.S. border guards, I decided the cell would not be in my best interest. Instead, I said, “I will give you the keys, but I want everyone’s name here so I can be sure to complain about you all.”

“Fine, I am the supervisor,” the pacing thug said.

So I gave them the keys. Two of them practically sprinted out of the building. They returned within a few minutes, much faster than the searches have taken in Canada. The reason, after all, is that they cared very little about searching my car but very much about making me kneel down and kiss Leviathan’s ring and acknowledge my own enslavement. They called me back over to the desk. The pacing thug returned and, wordlessly, wrote down his name (Rick Gattis, 360-332-5771) on a piece of paper and gave it to me.

The red-haired thug then started into some spiel about “thanking me for my cooperation.” I took the keys and didn’t even look at him, let alone respond. I couldn’t get away from those vile fascists fast enough.

Allow me to quickly say that it is incidents such at this one, an incident that proves that supposed Constitutionally-guaranteed “rights” we have are a sham, that make me look forward evermore to the day when I can walk into a U.S. embassy abroad and throw my passport in some shocked bureaucrat’s face. This country is a fraud. The only existential danger America faces is not some religious idiots hiding in a cave in Pakistan, but the ever-greater demands of empire. Terrorists cannot destroy this country. What can destroy it is the incredibly successful alliance of a credulous, stupid, and scared citizenry, ever happier to allow themselves to be enslaved by an army of bureaucrats, eager to get fat paychecks and pensions whilst searching the slaves and reading their emails.

And you know what? I look forward to the end of it all. Once America’s empire is gone (Ed. note: I am not advocating for America’s enemies, either, since they are mainly medieval religious fanatics), maybe it can be a decent country again or, better yet, many separate decent countries. I am not one to like the idea of a state at all, but several smaller, humbler Americas would be infinitely preferable to the present imperialistic behemoth that blows up Afghan weddings, holds people in cages indefinitely and without charge, and supports all manner of evil men, whether it be Somalis employing child soldiers or Netanyahu plowing under Palestinian homes, all in the name of freedom and democracy. Would that it could all be ended tomorrow. Would that the American people, no better or worse than any others, could be allowed to live peacefully and freely in small and humble communities, without the threat of coercion.

Whatever America’s future may be, I do not expect to be part of it. I would rather live in exile than continue to support this stupid empire any longer.

Read Full Post »

The Tragedy of Bradley Manning

Pfc. Bradley Manning is believed to be the man responsible for leaking most of the Iraq, Afghanistan, and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks. Thanks to an entrapping series of online chats with ex-hacker and likely government agent Adrian Lamo, Manning was arrested last spring. Since then, he has been held in solitary confinement  for seven months. Mind you, Manning has never been charged with a crime and likely will not be in the near future.

Glenn Greenwald was the first person I saw really address this topic. He hit all of the most horrifying points: that Manning is kept in his cell for 23 hours a day, that he is denied even sheets and a pillow, that he may not exercise in his cell, that he is forbidden from any access to the news, etc. Most importantly, Greenwald pointed out that solitary confinement, especially for this length of time, has a demonstrable effect on mental health and could likely be considered torture.

More details were added by Manning’s lawyer, David Coombs (H/T: Lew Rockwell). Coombs revealed that Manning is kept awake from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. by guards walking past his cell and asking him to verify his status every five minutes. Can you imagine how horrible this must be? To be kept awake in a cell with nothing to do for 15 hours straight? It is amazing that Manning is not already insane, though if Manning visitor David House’s report that Manning wants to some day use the GI Bill to get a B.A. in PoliSci and a grad degree in Physics is true, maybe insanity has already arrived. There are draconian restrictions on his access to reading materials. His clothes are taken away from him each night.

And yet somehow the U.S. government that treats a man, let alone a man convicted of no charges, in this manner has the gall to criticize other countries for torture. There was a time when those criticisms might have rung true. That time is long since past with this country’s shameful collapse into a police state.

The good news, if there is any, is that the efforts of people like Greenwald and Coombs have led the UN to investigate Manning’s treatment. There is little reason to expect any sort of fast action from such a bureaucratic organization, and even less reason to suspect any sort of satisfactory action from an organization run by imperialists, but at least maybe it will shame the U.S. government into doing something to ameliorate Manning’s condition.

We must not forget Bradley Manning, as I am afraid some of us, myself included, did in the excitement of the diplomatic cables being released. That this man remains imprisoned without charge in such shameful conditions is a moral outrage. Together maybe we can do something to rescue him.

In the meantime, I love what Kevin Carson at Center for a Stateless Society wrote: “If there’s a soldier anywhere in the world who’s fought and suffered for my freedom, it’s Pfc. Bradley Manning.”

Read Full Post »

National Opt-Out Day: Spitting on Our Overseers, the TSA

Let’s get some things straight.

1. If you go to an airport, there is a good chance you will be asked to told to go through a new full body scanner. There is an equally good chance that you will not be told the machine you are being asked to enter is a full body scanner.

2. The new full body scanners shoot a somewhat-obscured vision of your nude body, which is then transmitted to a TSA goon in a remote room who determines if you are a terrorist or not.

3. The radiation load these scanners hit your body with is a subject of discussion, but some respected scientists are saying it simply isn’t safe (PDF).

4. You always have the right to opt of a scan. Just say that you want to opt out. Presumably the TSA will try to embarrass you by screaming “Opt out!” and then subjecting you to a public patdown.

5. The patdown will be disgusting. They have been instructed to grope your body up to and including your groin. But this momentary humiliation and violation of your rights is far preferable to taking a shot of radiation and/or giving them a naked shot of your body that may not be deleted, as they claim.

Tl;dr–ALWAYS opt out of the scanner and take the patdown.

Ok, now let’s elaborate the case a bit. The first incident to really gain infamy under the new regime involved Free Stater Meg McLain, who was allegedly handcuffed and had her ticket destroyed at a Florida airport just for asking questions about the process. Though some details of her story were later discovered to be less serious than they first appeared, her case is illustrative of one potential danger of the system. McLain is an attractive woman who was in part upset because she thought she was singled out for scanning because of her attractiveness. Even if she was not, it is easy to see how, in the airports still selecting passengers randomly for backscatter screening, the TSA could “randomly” select attractive people for their own perverse thrills.

Then there was the sad, sad, sad case of a 3-year-old girl reduced to screaming and tears by one of the new-style patdowns. Yes, a 3-year-old potential “terrorist.” I have seen a bunch of people on a bunch of blogs say it, but imagine how hard it must be for a parent to explain to their kids that it is never ok for a stranger to touch you, unless they are a costume-wearing bully with a badge at an airport. Then they can touch your private parts all they want, kids! Just sickening.

Now, one of the most famous claims made by the naked scanner advocates is that the nude images are immediately deleted upon the TSA screener deciding you are not a terrorist. As with so many government claims, Gizmodo discovered this is just not true (H/T: LewRockwell.com). It seems that the thugs operating the millimeter wave naked scanners at a federal courthouse in Orlando managed to save 35,000 images. If they were doing it there, they will do it elsewhere if they haven’t already. And once they start saving the images, it doesn’t really matter whether some pervy TSA goon is adding them to his porn collection or the government is constructing a database of biometric images, the reality is that your rights will be violated.

But people are already fighting back. Ron Paul has introduced the American Traveler Dignity Act to Congress (H/T: Jesse Walker at Reason). This bill would basically classify the new TSA screenings as sexual misconduct. I normally have no use for Congress,  but this sort of defensive legislation is potentially nice, though it surely won’t pass. Matt Kernan, an average guy from my hometown of Cincinnati, refused to submit to the completely ludicrous idea of a backscatter scanning on his way out of the airport after an international flight and, after 2.5 hours, beat the TSA and got to leave without one.

And most importantly, tomorrow–or what may already  be “today” for some of you–will be Wednesday, November 24: National Opt-Out Day. Fliers and non-fliers alike will congregate at airports to protest against the new measures by opting out of the scans en masse and taking patdowns. Hopefully it will both snarl the TSA apparatus and show to the uninformed members of the public that you actually do have a right to opt out. I’m going to be part of the protest here in Seattle. Both tomorrow and beyond, be sure to check out WeWontFly.com, a clearinghouse for information about the scanners and how to resist.

So, whatever you do, do not go through the scanners. Take your patdown for the moment, ask the screener how it feels to be a fascist who sexually assaults children, and then continue to speak out against the TSA every chance you get. They may have pushed too far on this one. We won’t be able to get the feds to unspend the billions they spent on former DHS secretary Michael Chertoff’s nude scanners, but at least we can get them out of our airports and away from our bodies.

Read Full Post »

Glenn Greenwald on WikiLeaks

I wonder what Glenn Greenwald would have turned out like in a different era. In this present era of surveillance, secrecy, war, and trampled civil rights, it’s like he is pathologically incapable of doing anything but speaking truth to power. He is one of the few people on the left to keep up the anti-torture, anti-war, anti-Patriot Act drumbeat that was so intense under Bush but immediately was silenced under Obama. He routinely spits in the eye of some of the most august publications we have, like The NYT. I. Love. Glenn. Greenwald.

Last week, he had three great columns in a row on the shambolic coverage that the American media gave to the WikiLeaks Iraq release. The Afghanistan one didn’t go so hot for the propagandists at the Pentagon. This time around, they had plenty of time to lean on their sycophants at the NYT and elsewhere. They got more subservient coverage and even an assault on Julian Assange in return.

When the documents dropped in the NYT and got pretty crappy coverage, they also included a hit piece on Julian Assange. Greenwald lost it. At first, I wasn’t inclined to agree with him. Assange is a public figure. If a paper wants to run a hit piece on him, fine, let them.

But Greenwald won me over. The thing is, this media, our media, doesn’t do hit pieces anymore. Look at this NYT piece and how they smeared Assange with unsubstantiated crap from unreliable sources. Look at how his character is impugned. They don’t do this to establishment hacks. Oh, and it’s worth mentioning that the slimeball John Burns who wrote it criticized Rolling Stone freelancer Michael Hastings for his brave takedown of Stan McChrystal.

The next day, Greenwald did an unfortunately hilarious headline comparison for the WikiLeaks story from major news outlets. Nearly everyone emphasized Iraqi abuses we ignored. It was only the NYT that licked the regime’s boots and wrote “Detainees Fared Worse in Iraqi Hands.” Spinelessness. Wretch.

The third piece is a bit too long to be as interesting, but it’s another takedown of John Burns for his supposed fair story on Assange. I did find this line worth just about memorizing and repeating:

Of course, another major reason why these media figures are so eager to parrot the Government line — to try to destroy Assange and insist that there’s “nothing new” in these horrifying documents — is because they cheered for these wars in the first place.

Amen! I don’t think there’s a liberal bias in the American media. Sure, they might favor Democrats over Republicans, but what does that really matter when both parties love war and death? They just want a bigger helping of welfare state with their fat slice of imperialism and war.

Viva Greenwald.

Read Full Post »

New House Armed Services Chair is a bloodthirsty fool

With the Republicans winning control of the House last week, Rep. Buck McKeon R-CA stands to become chair of the powerful Armed Services Committee. I had not heard of Bucky before, but immediately upon reading his flagrantly retarded imperialist paeans to death, I wanted to tell this man to do something to himself that rhymes with his name. It did not rhyme with McKeon.

First there was LewRockwell.com tipping me to an Antiwar.com article that revealed Bucky has already said his top priority for his chairmanship will be continuing the vile festival of death war in Afghanistan. Isn’t it refreshing when someone’s declared top priority is continuing to see American teenagers come home in bodybags and Afghan kids get blown up by drones? I am so proud to be a patriot and wring my flag out in the  blood of innocent people!

Then Lewis McCrary at The American Conservative pointed out that McKeon is also on the record as supporting a higher defense budget. This is less offensive to me than the war thing because it doesn’t necessarily have to mean people die. That being said, it’s just about 100 times more retarded and logically unfathomable. We already account for 48% of the world’s military spending. Again, we spend nearly as much on our imperialist killing machine military as every other country on earth combined. And this suntanned little imbecile from California wants to spend more? Our country is going bankrupt. Our military is so big it needs to be fed with wars. And he wants to expand it.

This is why the Republicans winning was really no better than the Democrats keeping it. Sure, maybe they won’t blow quite as much money on stimulus programs and healthcare, but they are a bunch of warmongering psychopaths who are certain to continue the wars we have  now and sure wouldn’t mind starting another one in Iran. Heck, the Democrats probably would have done the same thing. There’s one party in Washington–the War Party.

Read Full Post »

WikiLeaks does Iraq

WikiLeaks has done it again, this time releasing over 400,000 pages of classified documents on the Iraq War. God bless you, Bradley Manning! Before I get into the new information, let me just say that I loved the Yahoo News headline today wondering why the Sunday morning talk shows essentially ignored the WikiLeaks documents. Is it really a mystery? Those spineless “journalists” are all tools of the American imperialist-security complex. Of course they are going to ignore these documents, they’ve got two wars to perpetuate!

The NYT and Der Spiegel both had preferential access to the documents. I liked the presentation employed by the Times more, sort of bundling big clumps of documents together into related portfolios. The two most interesting bundles were about the treatment of detainees and civilian casualty figures.

The documents on detainees are, unfortunately, almost all about their treatment by other Iraqis. The information is horrifying: torture, death, abuse, etc. The U.S. seems to have done a little wink-wink, nod-nod show most of the time and let the Iraqis “investigate” abuses for themselves. Oh, and the U.S. used the threat of Iraqi detention to intimidate detainees in our custody. This stuffy is horrifying, but it’s not surprising at all. It’s basically a carbon copy of the model the CIA has been employing around the world since whenever extraordinary rendition started. We don’t need to torture people ourselves when we can find all manner of thugs from failed authoritarian states who are unemployable in any career except for violence and who would love to torture fellow humans in places beyond U.S. jurisdiction. If the slaves back home get wind of it and try to do anything, just invoke state secrecy against them and let the courts take over!

The civilian casualties in the report add up to an additional 15,000 deaths. That pushes the Iraq Body Count to somewhere between 98-106,000 civilian deaths. That’s blood on our hands, guys. We didn’t have to fight this war. Saddam was no saint, but even his infamous gassing of the Kurds at Halabja amounted to something like 3000-5000 deaths. Keep our crimes in perspective.

Der Spiegel‘s best reporting was on unfair attacks conducted by Apache helicopters, of which the infamous Collateral Murder video was just the tip of the iceberg, it seems. It’s easy to point your joystick at people trying to surrender and click a button that will eliminate them. It feels just like a video game. Maybe you can even compare your kill stats with your buddies back at the base!

Don’t let the war-loving mainstream media fool you: the WikiLeaks Iraq documents reveal new and damning evidence about our awful war in Iraq. Don’t let the government fool you, either: these documents don’t put anyone in any more danger than our continued ignorance would. The Surge is unraveling. Chaos is returning. We broke Iraq, but sticking around indefinitely isn’t going to help anything. Don’t let the military fool you into thinking our conduct there is justified. End the war now, bring the troops home, and don’t forget to Free Bradley Manning and donate to WikiLeaks.

Read Full Post »

America the Stupid

Most of the awful things America does at least make sense. I understand why the securicrats make our airports feel like communist border checkpoints, why they want to read our emails, why they love to issue licenses and regulations–they love power. That makes sense, even if it repulses me. But then there are the things the hacks in charge of this country do that just make you scratch your head. Today’s example: our relationship with Pakistan.

The NYT reports that the U.S. is about to give the Pakistani Army an additional $2 billion in aid. This is the same army that was recently implicated in killing civilians and torturing detainees, not that our own forces don’t do those things as well. This is the same army that operates hand in glove with the infamous Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) that fears very deeply the idea of a stable Afghanistan paired with India ganging up on Pakistan and has worked for decades to keep Afghanistan unstable and chaotic. This the same army that seems pretty indifferent to actually catching Taliban and al-Qaeda people in Pakistan. This is the same army that probably helped get pro-negotiation Taliban Mullah Baradar captured last year, lest negotiations between Karzai and the Taliban move too swiftly.

Oh, and maybe best yet: the Guardian has just confirmed (H/T: Michael C. Moynihan) that Pakistan has been directly implicated in helping plan the horrific Mumbai terrorist attacks in 2008. We suspected this all along, but now it’s official.

Now why in God’s name would this country that undermines America at every turn and upholds medievalist laws against its own people be worthy of more aid? Is it some sort of contest to reward the people who screw you over the most? I have heard of currying favor, but currying disfavor?

This is your tax dollars at work, guys. This is what we pay the serious and smart people in Washington good money to come up with. The wages of imperialism. God, I can’t wait to get off this sinking ship.

Read Full Post »

October 22: National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality

By the time you read this post, it will probably already be October 22. I didn’t know it until just a few days ago, but October 22 is a special day–it’s a national day of action and protest against police brutality. Protests and rallies are being staged in almost every major North American city, so you should see if your city is on the list. Mine is, and I will even have the privilege of covering the event for my newspaper.

If you go out for the protest, remember to stay peaceful. Violence is what the police want. They would love nothing more than to wade into a sea of peaceful protesters and crack some skulls open with batons. Don’t give them the excuse. Better yet, attend the protest with a video camera and keep them honest.

Some of you might be on the fence. Let me share two horrible stories of police brutality with you, then.

In the first case (H/T: Radley Balko), Cook County, Ill. sheriff’s deputies burst into an apartment on a no-knock drug raid. They were looking for a mid-twenties Hispanic male. Inside they found an 80+-year-old Ukrainian refugee couple, one of them stricken with Alzheimer’s and cancer. This did not stop the thugs from causing $3000 worth of damage; “Everything was violently opened. Cabinets were ripped open, clothes and sheets were everywhere, and pieces of wood where the doors were rammed were all over the place,” their son testified.

Even if you can get past the extreme irony of police using Soviet-style tactics against completely innocent people who came here to escape the Soviet Union, you should be gobsmacked as soon as you remember that this whole raid was over a drug possession charge. 20 goons with guns knocking down doors to catch consenting adults who put controlled substances in their bodies.

The next case might be even more disturbing simpler because there’s video evidence. Via Lew Rockwell, watch a DC Metro cop beat an innocent girl and hold her, crying, in a very compromising position for no good reason. Seriously, this is a must-watch.

Now imagine that girl is your daughter or your sister or your wife. What would you want to do to this cockroach of a man?

You shouldn’t be on the fence any longer. October 22 is a great chance for you to stand in solidarity with the rest of us slaves as we rebuke our “legitimate,” “they’re-just-doing-their-jobs” overseers. Even if you can’t go to a rally, just bring up police brutality in a conversation. Remind people that these barbarians are not our friends.

Read Full Post »

The Blue Wall of Silence

The Blue Wall of Silence is the fancy name for the code of silence cops employ in protecting their own. It takes all sorts of forms. There’s cops lying under oath and hiding behind the sanctified images of their badges. There’s cops destroying evidence. There’s cops planting illegal items on people to justify absurd behavior. They think they owe it to each other because we are oh-so-tough on them.

The biggest problem with the code of silence might just be the moral graying it introduces into police morality. As Radley Balko puts it in an article I’m about to link to, “When we hear stories about police misconduct, the standard response from police groups and their supporters is that such behavior is rare, the fault of ‘a few bad apples.’ While that may be true, the ‘good’ officers tend to cover up for them.”

Don’t think this is about Hollywood. It’s happening across this country, every day. Balko runs down some of the most egregious cases in a great column this week. The thing that’s incredible about Balko’s column is that he doesn’t just pick code of silence cases–there’s too many of those. He picks cases in which the only officers punished were the officers who did the right thing.

Like the infamous DEA case in Kansas City, Kan. DEA thug Timothy McCue beats the piss out of a guy for no reason, cooks up some false charges…only to have good cop Max Seifert tell the truth and see the charges fall apart. Of course, this led to the good cop being forced into retirement with a reduced pension, whilst the DEA goon and nearly all of the cops who helped him cover up the brutality are still in law enforcement. As a little extra eff-you to all of the anti-brutality people out there, one of the conspirators, Steven Culp, is even executive director of the Kansas Commission on Peace Officers’ Standards and Training.

Shoot me now. Actually, don’t ever say that around a cop. Plenty of them would be glad to take you up on the offer, especially if you are a half-deaf whittler walking away from them in Seattle.

New York City comes out looking especially bad. Adrian Schoolcraft, a young cop who tried to be a modern-day Serpico and bust the department for misconduct, was not only brushed off by all manner of “leaders” within the department, but eventually was unfairly sent to the psych ward. In another case, a bunch of rookie cops beat cabbie LeVelle Ming for no reason. Good cop Anthony Acosta broke up the fight…yet it was Acosta who was sentenced to desk duty whilst the leader of the rookies was actually promoted.

It’s this Ming-Acosta case that William Grigg zeroes in on at LewRockwell.com. According to Grigg:

After Ming finally managed to exit the vehicle, the beating began in earnest. More than a dozen of [one of the cops’] comrades swarmed Ming, punching and kicking the outnumbered and helpless cabbie while witnesses looked on in horror.

As the assault grew uglier, a Park Avenue doorman frantically dialed 911. “You got to get the cops over,” he pleaded. “They’re beating the sh*t out of a cab driver. About 15 guys. They’re f*****g jumping him…. They’re getting a two-by-four. I’m witnessing a big two-by-four being picked up.”

Who will guard the guards themselves? Anthony Acosta tried to stop this raging mob of our “guardians” from beating an innocent man. Grigg continues with Acosta’s story:

After uniformed officers arrived on the scene, Acosta identified himself as both a policeman and an eyewitness. He was immediately assaulted and handcuffed, and then put in a police vehicle. He was taken to a nearby station house and detained for most of the night in the roll call room. He was eventually approached by Inspector Michael Harrington, who insisted that Acosta follow a carefully written script: He was to sign a statement claiming that he had broken up the fight but had not identified himself as a police officer when he was arrested.

“Listen, this is an unfortunate incident,” the Inspector told Acosta. “This is what you’re going to say.”

After Acosta refused to perjure himself, he was forced to turn in his badge and gun, and placed on a “modified assignment” for the “good order of the department.” He was eventually hit with five spurious administrative charges: “Conduct unbecoming,” failing to identify himself, interfering with an off-duty police officer, improperly filling out line-of-duty injury paperwork, and improperly preparing witness statements. Predictably, his police union, the Sergeants Benevolent Association, did nothing to help him.

Meanwhile, none of the assailants was punished at all.

I’ve said it many times before: it’s their country, we just live in it. They don’t even make a pretense about this crap. Open your eyes. The cops are not your friends. The majority of them are power-tripping thugs who love to aggress against people. They love the thrill of it–the perverse thrill of being the only guy with a gun in the fight, the only guy with legitimacy behind any and all of his violence. Forgetting this might cost you your life.

Read Full Post »