Top-of-the-week links

• MacLean’s: Shocking article about NATO compensation schemes for civilian deaths in Afghanistan. It’s a business. Compensation for one tragedy was $20,000 and a new car, whereas for another death, it was just $210. That NATO forces are able to put a dollar value on human life through bargaining is proof of the devastating and dehumanizing effects this war is having. End it now before any more blood ends up on our hands.
• Via Andrew Sullivan, HuffPo: Visualizing what America’s armies hath wrought in Iraq: 100-150k dead civilians, 2 million refugees abroad, 2 million displaced persons domestically.  If you had any illusions about this empire being a liberal or ennobling one (contradiction in terms), they must be shredded by now.
• The Globe & Mail: In news that should shock no one, a Kelowna (B.C.) Mountie kicked the hell out of a suspect. You can watch the video yourself. Eyewitnesses report that the suspect, Buddy Tavares, was complying with the officer. Cops are not your friend.
• Juan Cole: We already knew about Jawaher Abu Rahmah, the Palestinian woman killed by Israeli tear gas recently. Add to the list of Israel’s victims the names of Anas Salih (died in Gaza after being denied the exit visa he needed to get medical treatment) and Omar al-Qawasmeh (innocent man murdered in his home in a case of mistaken identity). The occupation must end.
• Glenn Greenwald: Writing about the “climate of fear” the American government has created in the minds of its citizens. I used to study totalitarian regimes. Many scholars agreed that the worst kind of censorship they exercised was the self-censorship that went on in the fear-wracked minds of their citizens. This self-censorship is now here in America. Progress!
• Radley Balko at Reason: Guess what–stupid anti-meth laws had the unintended consequences of making the meth trade far more profitable and seeing a boost in meth use. But hey, at least those kneejerk laws that make you feel like a criminal when you go to buy cough medicine kept some old lady without an ID from getting the Nyquil she wanted.
• NYT: Do not forget the name “Nasrin Sotoudeh.” She is a human rights lawyer in Iran who has been sentenced to 11 years in jail, disbarred, and (my favorite) banned from leaving Iran for 20 years. “You are such an awful criminal that…we cannot bear to have you leave us!” What a vile place. Sotoudeh’s “crime” was talking to the foreign media.
• National Post: In this time of governmental austerity, the Canadian government has somehow found additional money to expand their prison capacity. To be fair, Canada’s incarceration rate is much lower than America’s. This move still repulses me. At best, it is a cynical way to “create jobs,” never mind the fact that building more jail cells creates a powerful incentive to fill them. At worst, it is a declaration of faith in the untruth that locking more people in cages makes a better society. It doesn’t.
• Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy: Post on the Illinois budget crisis, where income taxes may be jacked up to cover a deficit. I don’t have a strong position on the budget crisis. What I do have a strong position on is oft-quoted beltway “libertarian” Megan McArdle, who wrote, “Whether or not you think these programs should exist, they do now, and you can’t simply throw people off who planned their lives around them.” Time to write that loser out of the libertarian movement.
• Via Thomas DiLorenzo, Anne Applebaum: It’s not often a mag like Foreign Policy prints an article titled “Homeland Security Hasn’t Made Us Safer,” so relish it for now. After unmasking the fact that DHS is a porkbarrel subsidy program, Applebaum writes, “As for the TSA, I am not aware of a single bomber or bomb plot stopped by its time-wasting procedures.” Amen.
• Via Liberale et Libertaire: “Serious” and “respected” pundit Matt Yglesias recently called for the U.S. to institute a gendarmerie system (as he put it, “a quasi-military federal organization specialized in police/security functions rather than finding and killing bad guys per se.”) Sweet Jesus! As if the thing that this horrid little police state needs to get it going again is more cops with more power.
• MacLean’s: This article about drunk driving nearly made me cry. In each case discussed, a drunk driver killed a beloved passenger. In each case, the family of the dead victim asked for clemency for the drunk driver, a friend of their lost loved one. In each case, Leviathan said, “Down, slave! I know what is best for this society,” and promptly threw the book at the offenders. No respect for the dead.
• Cienna Madrid at The Stranger: Blogging from day two of the inquest into the murder death of half-deaf woodcarver John T. Williams at the hands of SPD Ofc. Ian Birk. A homicide investigator apparently tried to claim that the legal-sized whittling knife Birk claimed Williams had open but was found closed at the crime scene somehow magically closed itself when Williams dropped it. Mmmm-hmm. Then Birk took the stand to admit that he never called for back-up in 10-second confrontation that ended with Williams dead on the pavement. Birk has the gall to claim Williams looked at him threateningly, even though dashcam footage shows the perpetually drunk Williams shuffling across the street in a pitiful and harmless enough way that other pedestrians continued to walk towards him. It can’t happen in this inquest, but I look forward to the day Birk faces murder charges.
• NYT: Israeli bloggers question their government’s use of tear gas following the tragic death of Jawaher Abu Rahmah. Awesome work, bloggers. It is a powerful and important thing for the world to understand that not all Israelis support the brutal thuggery and murder carried out in their name.
• NYT: The Russian opposition thought they had a way around the country’s absurd permit process for protests–sending out protesters willing to stand an approved distance away from each other. Now pro-Kremlin groups are counter-picketing the solo protesters by standing near them, just to get them arrested. Of course, the cops are not arresting the pro-Kremlin folks. Vile.
• Katherine Mangu-Ward at Reason: In case you still thought NAFTA was really a free trade agreement, did you know Mexican truckers have been banned from driving in the U.S. since 2009? This then led to punitive tariffs from Mexico. Sounding like free trade, right? Well, Obama might be about to address the situation, but not without the noxious Teamsters warning us how awful that would be for America.
• NYT: My, my, the Israelis are bloodthirsty lately–the latest allegation is that they killed a 65-year-old Gazan man on his farm…for getting too close to the security fence. Of course, Palestinians responded with violence of their own.
• NYT: The post-election crackdown in Belarus is getting worse. Lukashenko’s rotten state is now trying to place Danil Sannikov, the 3-year-old son of (arrested) opposition leader Andrei Sannikov and his (arrested) journalist wife Irina Khalip, in an orphanage. Never mind that his grandmother has been appointed to care for him! How dare Lukashenko bring innocent children into his bloodsport.
• Daily Anarchist: Another “ugh” moment from this (formerly good) blog–author Seth King says that it is right to milk the state for benefits. Why? “Only then will the productive class begin to realize that paying taxes is for chumps.” Also, “you are not responsible for its theft because you never condone forced wealth redistribution.” Whatever helps you sleep at night after you’ve spent your ill-gained food stamps, Seth. Shameful.
• Brendan Kiley at The Stranger: The fourth (and last) installment in an awesome investigative series on the drug war. Kiley comes to the conclusion that the best thing to do is legalize all drugs. This is very good. The only problem is this statement: “The only way out is to legalize—and regulate—everything.” Regulate it? Why? Just let people put what they want into their bodies and face the consequences. If they don’t like the risk, then don’t ingest the drug or create a private testing organization to give them the safety they want. Even if I disagree with regulating, it’s a great and invaluable piece of writing.

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End-of-the-week links

• LewRockwell.com: Three videos of police brutality. Take your pick, they are all horrible: an elderly disabled woman thrown to the ground, a cop pointing a gun at a woman’s head for getting in a car accident, a girl tased through her skull. Never forget: these thugs are not your friends.
• National Post: Two Canadians are facing charges for desecrating an American flag as part of a bet over last year’s gold medal hockey game in Vancouver. The flag is just a stupid piece of fabric. It is only the false religion of nationalism that makes it anything more. I would encourage everyone to go out and burn five flags tomorrow just to knock the nationalists down.
• Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com: Best and worst of 2010. I am obviously going to love that Glenn Greenwald is one of his best, but I’m really more excited about seeing the repulsive Michael C. Moynihan of Reason as one of his worst. That a hateful little statist apologist like Moynihan works at Reason is appalling. The rot he has been churning out against WikiLeaks is awful, thus making me quite glad to see LRN.fm drop Reason.tv from their lineup.
• Radley Balko at Reason: The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the decision to list a teen on the sex offender registry for forcing another teen to accompany him in collecting a debt. Wh-what? How is that a sex crime? Quiet, slave–do not question the wisdom of Leviathan!
• Glenn Greenwald: What Glenn learned from his campaign of pro-WikiLeaks media appearances. Money quote: “From the start of the WikiLeaks controversy, the most striking aspect for me has been that the ones who are leading the crusade against the transparency brought about by WikiLeaks — the ones most enraged about the leaks and the subversion of government secrecy — have been . . . America’s intrepid Watchdog journalists.”
• Via Conor Friedersdorf at Sullivan, USA Today: Railways are apparently the next target for the DHS/TSA fascists. The airport racket wasn’t a big enough employment program for fat skinhead knuckle-draggers, so they are going to need to start up unconstitutional and utterly pointless searches at subway stations to create some more jobs for their brethren.
• NYT: Have you heard of Jamie and Gladys Scott? They had spent 16 years behind bars for an $11 armed robbery. Well, luckily for them, Miss. Governor (and GOP presidential hopeful) Haley Barbour went and said some vaguely racist crap a few weeks ago. Looking to prove he didn’t hate blacks after all, Barbour suspended their sentences, contingent upon one sister giving the other a kidney. I am glad these women have been released from their ridiculous sentences, but that Barbour did this for opportunistic reasons and that there is some sort of caveat attached pisses me off.
• Western Standard: Highlighting the inspiring story of an incidence of de facto jury nullification in a Montana marijuana possession case. During jury selection, the drug warriors couldn’t find enough potential jurors in the pool willing to even consider locking someone up for having a sixteenth of an ounce. Not like the quantity should really matter, but still awesome.
• Eugene Volokh: Phillip Greaves, the sick dude who wrote the infamously-banned-on-Amazon book The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure, was recently extradited to Florida to face felony obscenity charges. Undercover cops baited him into sending them a copy of the book. Is Greaves  a sick puppy who should be ostracized by other adults? Probably. But is writing a book reason enough to entrap someone and then lock them up? Hell no.
• Via Jacob Sullum at Reason, Michael Siegel: the top 10 anti-tobacco lies of the year. Why just talk about the realities of lung cancer when you can make up much worse lies? That seems to be the motto of the anti-smoking zealots. It’s mostly BS about secondhand smoke.
• The American Conservative: A great parody poster, ridiculing America’s support of all manner of reprehensible regimes.
• The Cincinnati Enquirer: Meet John Harmon, a diabetic who was repeatedly tased and beaten by Hamilton County cops during a groundless DUI stop. Cops suspected Harmon was drunk when really his blood sugar was low. It probably didn’t help that Harmon is black. Now he is suing. Good–punch the cop-bullies in the nose.
• NYT: Headline: “Abuses Cited in Enforcing China Policy of One Child.” Oh gee whiz, do you think? I don’t really know how you differentiate when the one-child policy is itself just one great instance of abuse. There is a story in this report about a woman carried off to a hospital and sterilized against her will. To the criminals perpetrating these crimes–I don’t often wish violence upon people, but may you end up first against the wall come the revolution.
• Radley Balko at Reason: A how-to on recording the cops. Not exactly a thriller, but excellent for logistics. The recording front is one of the primary ones on which we are fighting right now.
• Kevin Carson at Center for a Stateless Society: Headline: “Statism: An Unfalsifiable Religion.” Pointing out the endlessly self-perpetuating loop of statism. I liked this quote: “Market failures are taken as evidence that we need a regulatory state, but regulatory failures are used as a pretext for even more government.”
• William Grigg at LewRockwell.com: Pausing to remember the horrific story of Derek Hale, executed by cops in 2006. Hale’s widow recently received a settlement from the City of Wilmington, Delaware, but that can scarcely bring back her tased-into-a-stupor, then-shot husband Derek.
• Daily Anarchist: Ugh…a guy writes about how he no longer hangs out with his non-anarchist friends. I hate this crap. Saying that you don’t want to hang out with non-anarchists is just as collectivist as being a collectivist. People must be treated as individuals.
• Juan Cole: Top ten myths about Afghanistan. Must-read. Cole just demolishes every one of the plot lines you hear articulated in White House briefings and mainstream reporting. It is an unwinnable war.
• NYT: Remember the name Qian Yunhui. He began as no hero–a Communist Party apparatchik. But he later fought for his neighbors’ property rights, and this is why he may well have been killed by the regime.
• NYT: Estonia joins the Euro. Poor Estonians. We’ve covered this story before. At a time when the euro is facing an existential crisis, let there be no doubt that this decision had nothing to do with the good of average Estonians and everything to do with bureaucrats and politicians seeking more goodies from the European Union.
• Jacob Sullum at Reason: Covering the federal court ruling that NYC can’t force cigarette merchants to put up anti-smoking posters. This is one small victory for private business, but it comes in the midst of a losing war.
• Via Conor Friedersdorf at Sullivan, The Washington Examiner: When it comes to for-profit colleges, no one wins. You have the colleges themselves fighting to keep their meal-ticket, the 87% of revenue they get from taxpayers. Then you have guys shorting the stocks of for-profit colleges fighting for more onerous regulation of them in Congress, just to make sure they make money on their short. Yuck.
• The War Nerd Gary Brecher at The eXile: Lessons from the Pashtun. I don’t always love Brecher’s column, but this one was hilarious. Good example: “They still remember Timur in Herat, but they won’t remember us. Not even all the money we spent, because Afghans are not future software billionaires. They’ll spend it on guns or pretty little dancing boys, and it’ll all end up in the form of Muhajir merchant families, or the 32-foot Bayliners sitting in the driveway of some merc’s house in Tracy.”
• NYT: Those who petition the Russian Orthodox Church to rescind Tolstoy’s excommunication either totally misunderstand his philosophy or just want to make a name for themselves. My guess is the latter. If Tolstoy knew that his great-grandson was campaigning for Putin and begging for the Patriarch to restore Tolstoy to good graces, he would implode.
• John McWhorter at The New Republic: Fantastic essay on how ending the drug war–and not just on marijuana–would be a tremendous thing for black America. My only concern with McWhorter’s essay is that it’s a bit too pragmatic. The war on drugs should be ended because it is morally wrong, not because it leads to a lot of innocent black men going to jail. If fewer black men go to jail once this great wrong is eliminated from our society, then so much the better.
• Daniel Larison: Pointing out the uncomfortable truth that Liu Xiaobo is a pretty lame stooge of Western imperialism (read: supported the war in Iraq). This news disappoints me, but like Larison, it does not diminish my belief that Liu Xiaobo should be freed immediately.
• Radley Balko at Reason: Cornelius Dupree Jr. became the 21st man to be exonerated by DNA evidence…in just one county. He had been in prison since 1980. What a tragedy, 30 years stolen.

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Top-of-the-Week Links

Welcome new readers from Slog! Thanks for following me over here. Please keep coming back or just subscribe via RSS.

To the old guard, the last few weeks have been hectic with me facing the end of my internship. Apologies for the long layoff. But I’ve accumulated a good batch of links for you in the meantime. Note: I am saving the majority of my links about WikiLeaks for a separate, dedicated post.

• Globe & Mail: Saeed Malekpour, a Canadian resident, has been sentenced to death in Iran for running a porn site. That is it–running a porn site. This case is just as bad as the wife-stoning last summer, but getting nowhere near the attention. Don’t forget this guy’s name, don’t let him die.
• Via Brian Doherty, Chicago Breaking News: Aurora (Ill.) police have yet to return $190k confiscated from two drug suspects in a traffic stop. A judge has even ordered the money returned, only to have the city refuse. This is nothing new–the cops routinely confiscate money from suspects and then make it so hard to get back a lot of people just give up.
• Via Andrew Sullivan, The Telegraph: Switzerland considers overturning their ban on incest between consenting adults. Do I think incest is disgusting and unfathomable? Yes. But could I agree more with this statement? “Incest is a difficult moral question, but not one that is answered by penal law.” No, I couldn’t. Freedom means defending even the rights of people with whom we do not agree.
• Kevin Carson at Center for a Stateless Society: Covering every angle of the UK student riots in a way no other outlet has. Such a well-considered piece. Carson points out that it’s easy to blame the protesters for being thugs, but harder to see them as victims of a government education system that perversely subsidizes education and creates infinite new credentialing standards.
• National Post: Oh my God–a woman is filing a lawsuit against McDonald’s for marketing food to her children and making it hard to say no. Oh my God. I am about to explode in flames just reading about this vile human trying to use force against a business for more or less existing. Burn in hell, Monet Parham.
• Globe & Mail: This story fails in every way possible. What was once a private project to build a Canadian Museum of Human Rights is now a government-funded boondoggle (funded by the supposedly conservative Harper government, btw). Now, Ukrainian-Canadian groups are whining that the museum doesn’t do enough to cover the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s. There’s almost nothing more unseemly than this sort of genocide porn.
• The Volokh Conspiracy: Dinging Drudge for linking to PrisonPlanet.com, the main Alex Jones site. Alex is too far out there, way too wrapped up in conspiracy theories for me to like him. But just because he is a conspiracy theorist doesn’t mean his (very popular) site is incapable of breaking stories.
• Via Tyler Cowen, Bruce Schneier: Interesting argument that rather than arguing about security for the Washington Monument, it should be closed as a “monument to our fears.” I don’t think Schneier really wants to close it and neither do I, but his “this is why we can’t have nice things” point about America’s love of fear is pretty awesome.
• Tim Cavanaugh at Reason: Did you know Wesley Snipes is sitting in jail now, even though he beat his tax charges, just because the judge brought him up on another misdemeanor? And that the sentence he got for the misdemeanor is longer than a lot of sentences issued to felons? The statists don’t like it when you mess with their revenue stream.
• Der Spiegel: In a super-minor WikiLeak, American authorities got butthurt over Austria’s “limited” worldview. In this case, “limited” means “not interested in pursuing imperialism and global war.” Yet another reason for me to love Austria.
• National Post: A trade war may be brewing in my native Ohio, where a Canadian contractor made the cheapest bid to provide chairs to a courthouse, only to be told the contract needed to be awarded to an American firm. First of all, color me disgusted that Franklin County (home to Columbus) “needs” a $100 million, 7-story courthouse. Sounds like too many laws. Second of all, the idea that this will “create” jobs when it just means government will have to spend more money stolen from working people on the stupid chairs is ludicrous.
• NYT: Old news, but the judge tossed out the case against extrajudicial murders targeted killings filed by Anwar al-Awlaki’s dad. Apparently, this issue should be left up to the executive branch…because they are transparent, fair, and moral. God, this is sickening.
• Globe & Mail: Ted Turner urged leaders at the Cancun conference to institute a worldwide one-child policy. Bye bye, Ted. Go back to your ranch and STFU. You are insane and you hate humans. Guess what? We hate you back, you old loon.
• NYT: Telling the chilling story of Danroy Henry, another unarmed black man killed by a white cop in shady circumstances. It happened in October and we still haven’t heard much about the evidence. People need to stop trusting the police and start realizing they are bullies who kill people.
• Matt Welch at Reason: L.A. extended a moratorium on fast food restaurants in low-income neighborhoods to become a full-on ban. I understand fast food is horrible for health and encourages bad decisions. But this isn’t the way to solve the problem, by denying people their access to it and telling companies where they can and can’t operate.
• LewRockwell.com blog: Using Foreign Policy‘s list of the world’s top 15 imprisoned dissidents to ask when Julian Assange and the tortured Bradley Manning will make the list. These dissidents are worth learning and remembering, for sure. But the point about Assange and Manning is incredibly valid–we are doing things we associate with dictators.
• NYT: The WTO ruled in favor of a U.S. tariff against Chinese tires. This is what passes for pro-trade in our world. No more WTO, no more NAFTA-style free trade agreements, no more tariffs. Just free people in different places trading freely with each other, please.
• Globe & Mail: The idiotic son of Canada’s third-party leader, who is unfortunately on the Toronto council, is calling on the council to condemn MacLean’s for their now-infamous “Too Asian?” article. And just like all of the other kneejerkers complaining about this article, little Mike Layton seems to have failed to read past the title. Or maybe he did and he is just a cynical opportunist pol gunning for more votes. Whatever it is, shut up.
• Globe & Mail: One of the articles in a series about religion in Canada was about unused church infrastructure closing down and falling into disrepair, especially in Quebec. I just really loved this quote: “It’s not because you stop believing in Amon-Ra that you destroy the Pyramids.” So well said!
• NYT: Three New Orleans cops have been convicted in the post-Katrina murder of Henry Glover. Amen. Have fun in jail, you thugs. Would that more murderer cops were getting acquainted with the general population right alongside you.
• Justin Raimondo: Remember all the big media fawning over Richard Holbrooke’s death last week? How the power-loving, arrogant old fool had said we should end the war in Afghanistan as his last words, even though he was too much of a coward to do it whilst he lived? Raimondo points out that that was only the tip of the crappy iceberg with Holbrooke.
• The Economist: The judge hearing Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s case suddenly and inexplicably decided to postpone his ruling. In fact, just long enough for Vladimir Putin to make a tamper-tastic, completely unfair statement condemning Khodorkovsky on national tv. Khodorkovsky is no saint, but his punishment has already far exceeded his crimes.

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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.

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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.

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Top-of-the-week links

• Via Andrew Sullivan, n+1: a useful idiot freelancer writes humorously of her time as a paid hack of the Chinese regime. Read this bit and cry: “Some might have considered it ethically fraught to shill for an organization best known for driving tanks over students. I thought it was wonderful. I felt like I was at the center of the world, the spot where all eyes were turning. Though a humble conduit for bureaucratic cant, I embraced what seemed like proximity to power.” You rotten waste of space. This is not a laughing matter.
• NYT: Guess what, the State Department’s travel alert for Europe is getting panned for being too vague. American tourists are being warned that “tourist infrastructure” and transport throughout the whole of Europe could be at risk. That narrows it down. Stop listening to these State Department hacks, people. They’re just like the rest of the U.S. government–they are deeply invested in making sure you live your life in fear and seek their “protection.”
• New Humanist: ooooh, it’s the Muhammad cartoon preemptively spiked by 20+ U.S. newspapers last week. Spoiler: it’s boring and not controversial at all. Still worth clicking through just to make a jihadist cry.
• William Grigg at LewRockwell.com: telling the story of an 11-year-old Brooklyn girl who may in part have died because an NYPD officer blocked in her mom’s car to write a parking ticket as the asthmatic girl fought for life in the back seat. I hope you never sleep a decent night again, Ofc. Alfonso Mendez.
• NYT: meet the families of the innocent Afghans killed by the 5-man murder squad in U.S. Army employ. If we weren’t in Afghanistan, this wouldn’t have happened. No matter how rogue these men were, the blood is still on our hands.
• NYT: putting the 5-man murder squad case in the context of recent U.S. abuse cases in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why does there need to be a context? They are all evil and despicable.
• Free Keene: a guy in Keene gets police to accept his privately-issued ID as valid. Also worth looking at is the comments thread, where one guy mentions the World Passport. I’d never heard of it before, but if you really want to chuck your present passport and jump through a lot of visa hoops every time you go abroad, it’s worth checking out.
• South China  Morning Post: a profile of Liu Xiaobo, Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize contender. I’ll quote my remarks on him from last week: “The Peace Prize should be reserved for heroes like this guy, not spineless, war-perpetuating cowards like Obama.”
• NYT: NYPD pump a knife-wielding man full of lead, seven times over. He was tased, he wouldn’t drop the knife and he was advancing towards them, but isn’t there something else you could do? Pepper spray him? Shoot him in the leg? Did you have to kill the guy? I don’t know what it is about being a cop that requires you to turn your humanity off.
• NYT: headline–“More States Allowing Guns in Bars.” They sort of discussed this issue on Thinking Liberty last week. I’m not a gun owner and I don’t particularly like the idea of getting drunk in a room full of people carrying, but that doesn’t mean others shouldn’t have that right.
• The Globe & Mail: If you thought underwater McMansion mortgages were bad, how about an entire underwater Olympic Village? Welcome to Vancouver, where a private developer financed by city authorities is underwater to the tune of $150-200 million. At least it probably won’t be as costly as Canada’s last great Olympic blunder, Olympic Stadium in Montreal.
• National Post: a bill is introduced to the Canadian parliament that would make public the salaries and expenses for top First Nations (Native American) authorities. Oh, and what do you know, top First Nations authorities don’t like the idea. It’s good to be king.
• Liberale et Libertaire: debunking the statist Left’s grasping-at-straws attempt to conflate the South Fulton Fire Department incident last week with life in a libertarian state.
• The Independent: a British man goes to jail for four months for refusing to give police his encrypted, 50-character computer password. It looks like he might have been under suspicion for “child sexual exploitation,” but this remains a bizarre and upsetting case.
• Moscow Times: “Advertising by psychics, fortunetellers and others who promise medical cures and to bring back loved ones from the dead will be banned under legislation approved by the State Duma in a first reading Tuesday.” Ugh. And the Russian Orthodox Church is totally on board with it. This sort of manipulation of statism is a perfect example of why Tolstoy the Christian dissociated himself from the ROC.
• NYT: profiling the Karzais and their private fiefdom that is the Afghan government. You already know about Hamid the Mayor of Kabul, Ahmed Wali the dope baron of Kandahar and Mahmoud the banker, but how about Taj Ayubi, a cousin of the Karzais and former American thrift shop owner who is now the “senior foreign affairs adviser” to the president. Our soldiers are fighting, dying and killing for scum like this. Bring them home.
• Daily Anarchist: envisioning how a society with privatized roads would work.

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End-of-the-week links

• Glenn Greenwald: doing vital reporting on an issue entirely neglected by the U.S. media–the release of findings from the UN’s inquiry into Israel’s raid on the Mavi Marmara. Included in the findings: 19-year-old U.S. citizen Furkan Dogan was shot execution-style as he lay on the deck in a semi-conscious state. The only UN Human Rights Council member to vote against endorsing the report was the U.S. American-Israeli relations: where you execute an innocent citizen of ours and we help you cover it up!
• NYT: Norway says that three terrorist plotters arrested in July were planning an attack on the Danish hero-newspaper Jyllands-Posten–the paper that published the Muhammad cartoons. The best part is that all three plotters were permanent residents who arrived as asylum seekers. You came to the West seeking so asylum…so that you could violate the rights of others and make them seek asylum? Here’s hoping these three rot for a very, very long time.
• New Humanist: around 20 U.S. newspaper spike a cartoon for a perceived slight to Muhammad. This is when they’ve won, when we start self-censoring. Ugh.
• Carlos Miller: Michigan authorities bully a man and threaten to refer him to the Department of Homeland Security…for taking pictures of the town water tower. Similar photos are displayed on the town’s own website. Snap those shutters, people. We have to keep shaming these jerks into respecting our rights.
• Reason: their entire October issue is available for free online now!
• Free Keene: video of Pete and Adam from Liberty on Tour having a very well-handled, funny encounter with U.S. Border Patrol. Best part: the checkpoint is comfortably inside U.S. territory. And I used to think it was odd that Russians had to carry their papers everywhere.
• National Post: updating information on the conscientious objector safehaven bill being walked through the Canadian parliament by Liberal MP Gerard Kennedy. It’s too bad they are trying to make him limit it to U.S. objectors only, but at least this would be an improvement over the current system.
• Radley Balko at Reason: updating a police brutality case. The DEA gave a big, fat settlement to the innocent man who was brutalized. But now the only disciplinary action taken has been against the Kansas City (KS)  cop who blew the whistle. It’s their country, we just live in it.
• Katherine Mangu-Ward at Reason: LA teachers union sickos blame the suicide of an LA teacher on the LA Times teacher effectiveness rankings. Vile. What other profession gets away with this sort of evidence-averse bullying yet still gets sympathy from the public?
• Armin Rosen at Reason: highlighting the stomach-churning hypocrisy of Obama on DC schools. First Obama listened to the evidence-averse, child-hating crazies teachers there and helped kill the popular voucher program. Now he stood by and let the pro-school reform mayor lose his reelection race. In the meantime, his kids attend the super-elite Sidwell Friends. Do you think of the lives you’ve ruined before you go to bed at night, Barack? What are a few schoolkids condemned to failing schools when you run Guantanamo Bay and oversee two bloody wars, I guess.
• The Globe & Mail: U.S. prepares to lock up a Canadian pot smuggler. 8 months for harming no one, for initiating no force, for respecting consent. Proud to be an American!
• Pat Buchanan: making the case that China overplayed its hand in the recent fishing boat face-off with Japan. By Buchanan’s logic, China has now proven itself a ruthless foe willing to use economic warfare to achieve its goals. I don’t see this as a revelation.
• The Globe & Mail: British Columbia’s political-administrative classes gang up on anti-harmonized sales tax (HST) leader Bill Vander Zalm because there happen to be some crazy people in his movement. What a load of spew. This is like that insane Google v. Viacom lawsuit, where Viacom tried to hold Google liable for individual users uploading licensed content, even if Google removed it. Vander Zalm is not responsible for the actions of individuals who support his cause. You’re getting desperate, guys.
• The Globe & Mail: French prosecutors were nice and helpful, gladly turning over information on 1,800 secret Swiss accounts held by Canadians to the Canadian Revenue Agency. How dare you hide your wealth from Leviathan! Leviathan is hungry!
• NYT: an Israeli publishes the country’s first pork cookbook. It doesn’t sound like a big deal until you read this part: “Pork sellers routinely face protesters, and in recent years, arsonists have attacked shops in cities like Netanya and Safed, where Orthodox Jews live near secular immigrant communities.” Yes, burn down a store because someone inside is selling a product you don’t have to use.
• Glenn Greenwald: ridiculing Obama for his hypocrisy in talking tough on Iranian torturers whilst filing state secrecy claims to dismiss investigation of torture at home. It feels so refreshing to lose our moral credibility, doesn’t it?
• The Globe & Mail: Vancouver politicos can’t understand why food carts aren’t taking off there like they have in Portland. Well, they have some inkling that it was because they limited the number of licenses. But hey, let’s just set a new, arbitrarily-low number of licenses and tell people to put their carts in clusters and it will be ok! You’re doing it wrong, you imbeciles. Get rid of the licenses. Let people do what they want. Then the trucks will come.

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Top-of-the-week links

• Radley Balko at Reason: covering the dismissal of felony charges against Anthony Graber, the Maryland motorcyclist who recorded a cop on his helmet cam. It’s tremendous news for people who love freedom. Balko poses a great question, though: “Instead, we have public officials who violated the law, who should have known they were violating the law, and who caused significant harm to someone else in the process. So what will be their punishment?”
• Via Radley Balko at Reason, The Spokesman-Review: Washington State Patrol shoots an unarmed, pregnant woman in a drug raid. At least she is alive. I hope we can find out the shooter’s name and get the bully fired. I don’t care if you think you are following orders. Orders didn’t make you pull the trigger as you aimed a gun at an unarmed, nonviolent, pregnant fellow human being who at worst was engaged in the drug trade.
• Via Damon Root at Reason, WSJ: previewing two big free speech cases about to come before the Supreme Court. The one that interests me is the case of a dead soldier’s dad who is seeking “emotional distress” damages from the Fred Phelps-Westboro Baptist Church scumbags for picketing his son’s funeral. Fred Phelps is a horrible human, but this response is entirely the wrong one. So long as he and his gang of dunces were not violating your private property rights, they were right to exercise their rights. Stop trying to ruin this country because your feelings got hurt.
• NYT: the Venezuelan opposition has a pretty decent showing in parliamentary elections. Much as I love to see the Chavista thugs embarrassed even a little bit, I think the opposition miscalculated here. Chavez will never let himself be unseated through the ballot box. Better to avoid his system altogether, see things get worse in the short term and hope for enough people to get angry enough to put the vile fat man against a wall.
• NYT: Chinese authorities look into a company that collaborates with local governments in putting petitioners in black jails. Color me skeptical on this one. My sense is that the black jail issue got too hot, so the Chinese are now scapegoating this company. Oh, but for the day when Wen Jiabao and his butchers learn what the inside of a cage looks like.
• NYT: South African authorities shut down businesses for not following minimum wage laws…as the workers inside resist them. What a sad story. A crude devotion to ideology trumps the need of poor people to put food on the table. Leave the people alone, you paternalistic thugs.
• NYT: Islamic thugs are restricting women’s rights in Chechnya, with what appears to be the full blessing of the republic’s president. I wish Russia would just cut ties with these people. It’s not worth the terrorist attacks and the budget drain to see women forced to wear the headscarf in a Russian Federation of supposedly equal rights before the law.
• Atlantic Free Press: an inside look at mortar use in Iraq and Afghanistan by the U.S. military. Money quote: “A gunman fired a few cents worth of AK-47 rounds at the U.S. Marines and in response the Marines probably fired $10,000.00 in mortar rounds that all missed their target, yet killed an innocent. This incident could sum up the entire Afghan war and helps explain why American efforts have largely failed.” Our soldiers shouldn’t be put in this position. Bring them home.
• NYT: remember how India tried to bully Research in Motion into giving them access to encrypted BlackBerry messages? Now they are talking about mobilizing against Skype and Google. Western companies are getting cold feet about doing business in India. Maybe the Big Brother squad will learn a valuable lesson, but I doubt it–it’s not like their jobs are at stake.

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Weekend links

• Via the Volokh Conspiracy, WaPo: remember that slippery slope about state secrets we recently started down with the dismissal of torture lawsuits against the U.S.? Well, we’re gaining speed down the hill now. The White House is invoking the same state secrets idea in an attempt to dismiss a lawsuit about their planned murder targeted killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki.
• Jacob Sullum at Reason: we covered scumball Connecticut AG/Senate hopeful Dick Blumenthal and his vile demagoguery against Craigslist before, but now he’s targeting other online adult services ads destinations. Sullum runs down the case of Backpage.com, which is so far resisting Blumenthal’s ludicrous rhetoric about “saving the children” and keeping its ads intact. It’s high time for Blumenthal’s opportunistic electioneering to get acquainted with the lower segment of his large intestine.
• Radley Balko at Reason: any Balko post on cops is a must-read. In this one, he runs through a litany of recent cases of police misconduct. Spoiler: they’re egregious!
• NYT: a campaign is launched to give the Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. He is the president of their chapter of PEN and currently rots in jail for his role in drafting Charter 08, a human rights petition. The Peace Prize should be reserved for heroes like this guy, not spineless, war-perpetuating cowards like Obama.
• Via Michael C. Moynihan at Reason, The American Muslim: a whole heap of cool Muslims sign a letter calling for tolerance and repudiating violence from the Muslim community. Sample: “We are even more concerned and saddened by threats that have been made against individual writers, cartoonists, and others by a minority of Muslims.  We see these as a greater offense against Islam than any cartoon, Qur’an burning, or other speech could ever be deemed.” This is exactly the sort of response I’d been hoping for from the Muslim community this past year. Good work, signatories!
• Andrew Sullivan: reacting to an uber-lame LA Times op-ed against Prop 19, the pot legalization measure on California’s ballot. LAT thinks it might set up nasty conflicts with the federal government. Not controversy, no! Andrew: “If we had waited for the feds, we would have no gay marriage rights at all.”
• Der Spiegel: you haven’t seen political fat city until you’ve seen the compensation scheme for top Eurocrats. All for doing jack-all except adding another layer of bureaucracy across Europe, writing more regulations and taking away more rights. Rework the old Churchhill quote a bit: “Never was so much owed by so many to so few for so little.”
• The Globe & Mail: waaah, Quebecers seem to have gotten their feelings hurt by MacLeans ranking it the most corrupt province in Canada. Weenie MPs are predictably making stupid claims of the sort that the article fans “anti-Quebec prejudices.” Don’t want to get your feelings hurt and have the rest of the country resent you? Then stop getting a special settlement from everyone else and whizzing it away on corruption.
• The Economist: if you want to get really depressed, this post comparing media in early Yanukovych Ukraine to media in early Putin Russia should do the trick. You can put me down in the useful idiot camp of people who thought a Yanukovych win would be a healthy thing for Russian-Ukrainian relations.
• Der Spiegel: take a look behind the curtain at one of the West’s greatest stimulus programs of all, the NGO industry in Afghanistan. In some ways, it sounds even worse than the decadence of the Green Zone at the height of things in Iraq. Our troop are fighting, dying and killing for this.
• Andrew Sullivan: reacting (negatively) to the GOP’s Pledge to America. They were supposed to have learned something this time. Instead, they’re pledging to keep entitlements holy and leave the bloated, disgusting defense budget alone. Rag on Obama for his deficits all you want, I don’t see this pledge making things a jot better.
• Photography is Not a Crime: Carlos Miller covers the resolution to the case of George Donnelly, the Pennsylvania photography activist who faced eight years in prison for allegedly hitting a cop. Donnelly plead out for a fine. You might be thinking he sounds like a wing-nut, but cops deleted all of his video evidence of the event…they thought. There’s a video on the other side of the link where you can see that it was actually Donnelly being assaulted.
• South China Morning Post: a nice profile of a Chinese dissident murdered during the Cultural Revolution who does not deserve to be forgotten. His mother later petitioned for and won his rehabilitation, something I’ll never understand. Why legitimize a gang of murderers?

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Top-of-the-week links

• Via Tyler Cowen, CNBC: British tax authorities would now like to have employers send paychecks to the government, let Caesar take his tribute and then transfer the remaining sum to employees’ bank accounts. It’s just like direct deposit, except with massive concerns about privacy and Big Brother! Yay! And I thought U.S. withholding taxes were a gross violation of my rights…
• The Globe & Mail: fascinating rundown of an American soldier-refugee who has invoked the right of sanctuary and taken up residence in a Canadian church rather than get deported home to a military prison. I know ours is now a volunteer military and the case isn’t as clear-cut as it was in the Vietnam era, but many of the ex-soldiers who have absconded to Canada did it for reasons of conscience or ridiculous policies like stop-loss. It’s sad to see Canada cooperating with the bullies in Washington. If you want to help these refugees out, check out the War Resisters Support Campaign.
• Free Keene: hilarious video that shows exactly how to exercise your rights as a free, law-abiding, camera-bearing citizen in the presence of the police. I haven’t laughed this hard in weeks. It’s amazing to watch just how maddening it is for these cops that people will only answer the questions they are required to answer and want nothing more than to observe them.
• Andrew Sullivan: responding a (not-worth-linking-to) piece from a dead soldier’s sister about how network news coverage of graphic war scenes is insulting and wrong. Andrew hits exactly the right note here–if you really care about our soldiers and their safety, you should hope for graphic war coverage of the sort that will not allow Americans to forget the deaths going on in our name.
• Via Andrew Sullivan, Wired: calling for the U.S. to rub out the Lord’s Resistance Army in the Congo. Wh-what? You want more wars in our name? There’s not enough death and destruction and bills we can’t afford already? Go hug a cactus, you dithering little “humanitarian interventionist,” you.
• LewRockwell.com: covering the inexplicable case of an 84-year-old man slammed headfirst on the ground by a 26-year-old cop. He was drunk and he did raise a hand against the cop, but talk about disproportionate force! Witnesses confirm that he was not a physical threat and now, because of what was originally a towing call, the man clings to life with broken vertebrae.
• National Review: bemoaning the Atlantic Yards development project in New York…not primarily because of their gross use of eminent domain, but because it will be financed largely through investments from foreigners interested in acquiring residency permits under the EB-5 visa program. The EB-5 program lets you get a green card if you agree to invest $500k in the U.S., so it’s basically a cute little way for the government to tell foreigners “Well, we don’t really like you or respect your rights as a free individual, but if you pay us enough money, we’ll look the other way.” And somehow these people coming to the U.S. is a bad thing? People who will pay outrageous sums to help prop up our failing economy? Sweet Jesus, National Review.
• Damon Root at Reason: reporting on WaPo and Institute for Justice coverage of one of the nation’s dumbest licensure laws, the D.C. license for sightseeing tour guides. The usual nonsense line trotted out by happy cartel members is that licenses are needed to protect public safety–“Why, of course we need a barber’s license. There’s scissors involved!” But with tour guides, there’s not even that flimsy argument. Living in Seattle has exposed me to another colossally stupid licensing scheme–the Washington food handlers’ permit. Yes, many restaurants looking for unskilled labor in the kitchen actually want you to have a state permit to do it.
• National Post: fresh off their successful signature drive and the provincial government’s disappointing announcement of a referendum in only a year’s time, the anti-harmonized sales tax (HST) folks in B.C. prepare to initiate recalls against 18 provincial legislators. They’re even making a Survivor-style contest out of who they go after first.  Good for them. They just have to be careful not to forget that all politicians are sick people who love power and force, not just the HST liars.
• Der Spiegel: at least 100,000 Germans have asked Google to blur out their homes on Google StreetView. It’s interesting because I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a building blurred out in an American street search. And they say Americans value privacy!
• The Globe & Mail: the Conservatives spent a record-breaking $130 million on advertising last year. Ugh. You’ve seen the same stuff in the U.S., too–all of those “Paid for with stimulus funds” signs hovering around any highway project. Must they constantly remind us of how much they are doing to for us?
• Via National Review, the (ugh) Weekly Standard: Koch Industries’ legal team wants to know if the White House might have gotten a little bit too excited about killing the Kochtopus and leaked too much tax information to the press. I don’t really like the Kochs’ brand of libertarianism, but this reminds me to mention that Jane Meyer’s anti-Koch hit piece in The New Yorker was a revolting exercise in conflation and deception, and the normally-stellar Terri Gross’s interview of Meyer on Fresh Air was beyond the Fox News-does-Sarah-Palin level of softballing.
• Center for a Stateless Society: holding the state to the same standards to which they hold us. Oh, Bradley Manning is a murderer for leaking documents that include information about informants in Afghanistan? Does that mean that all the war-supporting politicians in Washington are murderers for supporting two endless, bloody wars? Cat got your tongue?
• National Post: people in Nunavut learn how to cope with their territory’s ban on alcohol imports from Europe. The ban was initiated because the EU is boycotting Canadian seal products, upon which the Nunavut economy is heavily dependent. Isn’t it cute how people in the EU and Canada can both lose out on products they want and maybe even need because their governments can’t get along? How delightful!
• NYT: not for the faint of heart–trying to reform India’s rape laws. For a flavor of what you’ll get, Human Rights Watch “called for an end to the [finger] test, which as the name suggests, involves inserting fingers into the woman to measure ‘vaginal laxity’ and thereby ascertain whether she was ‘habituated to sex’ before the alleged assault.” Sweet Jesus. Let’s use a test that has a spurious physiological basis to suggest that sexually active women deserve to be raped. Come on, India.
• The Economist: putting the Afghanistan murder-squad case in the context of a genre of surprisingly similar tales going back to WWII, My Lai, etc. It’s an interesting analysis. And the final commentary is one with which I agree: most Americans would just rather not know this stuff.
• The Globe & Mail: a former Conservative campaign manager calls for both sides in Canada to get consistent on personal freedoms. Liberals, stop trying to restrict gun rights whilst respecting drug rights. Conservatives, stop trying to restrict drug rights whilst respecting gun rights. Amen!

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