Compliance

Of course I've been following the counts of the Dead by Police that have been highlighted since the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, following them with some interest.

My interest is spurred in part by the simple call to justice. But there's more. My sister died as a result of injuries she sustained in the take down of a mentally ill prisoner she was working with at a California state prison (euphemistically called a "State Hospital.") She'd called for back up by the guards when the prisoner became agitated. All she  said she wanted was for the guards to stand by as the prisoner wasn't threatening her, but they decided on a take down then and there. She was caught in the middle, shattering both of her knees against a table, and she died from a blood clot the day after surgery to repair the damage.

Her son, my nephew, was held in solitary in a Marine brig for four years for a crime he didn't commit, or at least did not knowingly commit. He was asked to pick up a package off base by his commanding officer. When he returned to the base, the package was inspected and he was arrested for transport and possession of marijuana. He was court-martialed, convicted and sentenced. He believed he was set up due to base politics, a belief I tend to share. At any rate, he spent his sentence in solitary confinement except for the few times he was taken to the hospital to treat the broken bones he sustained from guards beating the shit out of him -- because they could. I believe he was hospitalized twice.

Brutality, violence, stupidity, and political jockeying seemed to be the hallmarks of policing -- even in, or perhaps especially in, the military -- in those days as they are today. My nephew was in the brig in the '70s and my sister died in 1994.

In 1996, I became involved with the Sacramento NAACP branches efforts to curb police brutality in that city, and I spent a good deal of time compiling information and writing the report which became the basis for reforms to the Sacramento Police Department, including an accountability monitor (not the civilian review board we were advocating, but it was something.) The report and other documentation is available online. (PDF from Google-search, may not open properly.)

When I look back on that effort especially, it seems that the police/public situation, bad as it seemed to be at the time, was far milder than it is today. Killings by police were rare, at least they were in Sacramento, and the issues we were dealing with were primarily ones of harrassment, disrespect, and physical coercion.

Yesterday, I opened one of the cases listed by "Killed by Police" at random and was shocked and horrified all over again. The case was that of Keith Koster, 54, of Indianapolis who was shot and killed by police in January in response to an emergency services (911) call for medical attention. Koster was having difficulty breathing, and family called for assistance.

When EMTs arrived, they saw a gun and withdrew. Police were summoned to "secure" the situation. Koster was incoherent by this time, clearly quite ill, and he was unable to follow police "commands". He apparently picked up the gun, and as he did, officers said he "waved it" at them. They opened fire and shot him dead in the hallway of his apartment house.

So it goes. His family, some of whom were witness, were appalled.

The story is actually somewhat confused, as the claim is made that the police "negotiated" with Koster "for an hour," though the report of the killing seems to indicate it happened within minutes of the arrival of police when Koster did not follow "commands." The police claim to have fired bean bag rounds at Koster before using lethal force, but they were not effective.

What was wrong with Koster is not specified, but it may have been that he was having a heart attack, had advanced pneumonia or was in a state of diabetic ketosis or something else. At any rate, his family was quite sure that he was not a threat to anyone, as he was very ill on the one hand, and he was not a violent person in any way. This is the confused story as it was relayed to the Indianapolis Star:

Tuesday’s incident began when paramedics responding to a call of a person having trouble breathing noticed a firearm in the apartment and left the building, police said.

An officer who had accompanied the medics approached the apartment and talked to Koster through the door. The officer called for backup when the man exhibited “strange” behavior, police said. Koster picked up the handgun paramedics had seen in his apartment and waved it toward officers, police said.

Police at least once tried to bring him down by firing bean bag rounds at him, but Koster continued to ignore officers’ commands to drop his weapon, said Officer Christopher Wilburn, spokesman for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.

The shooting occurred in a narrow hallway in the apartment building where SWAT officers had been negotiating with Koster for an hour. Koster was not holding a hostage, and there was no indication that Koster fired his gun, police said.

Police reports on Tuesday indicated that Koster stepped into the hallway outside his apartment several times before the shooting. Today, however, an Bailey said that was not the case. Koster stayed inside his apartment.

Note all the times that "police said" this or that?  Well, later in the story we read:

Initial reports came amid the frenzy following Tuesday’s police-action shooting, Bailey said, and investigators more carefully pieced together details in the following hours.

“There were officers on each side of his door, and negotiators were across the hall in another apartment speaking to him,” Bailey said. “It was close quarters.”

The SWAT team member who shot Koster is on administrative leave while simultaneous investigations are being conducted into the shooting, police said. They did not identify the SWAT officer.

Yes, well. Clearly this was a case of compliance overriding common sense.  The need for compliance was the ultimate cause of my sister's death. Demands for compliance were the ostensible cause of my nephew's injuries in custody.

The Cult of Compliance, above every other concern, has led to innumerable deaths and injuries by police, and the Cult of Compliance is the chief cause of much of the police slaughter now being compiled by various sites on the internet if not by officials and authorities themselves. The record is clear and appalling.

There's also the issue of "force protection." In this case, the EMTs who arrived to treat Koster saw a gun and withdrew, as they are instructed to do whenever they perceive a threat or see a gun. Police are then dispatched (unless they are dispatched first, which has been the source of many deaths after calling 911) to "secure" the situation before EMTs return. Force protection -- as in the military in Iraq and Afghanistan -- is the primary objective, not protection or service to the public. In the case of Keith Koster, not only were police dispatched, but so was a SWAT team, and the SWAT team is said to have "negotiated" with the man.

If those "negotiations" were anything like reports of the SWAT "negotiations" with Armand Martin in Albuquerque the term is meaningless. There were no "negotiations." There were repeated commands, demands, and use of munitions including flash-bang grenades until such time as Martin came out of his house, at which point he was shot dead by a sniper. Claims were made that Martin fired at police, but witnesses dispute that. As is so often the case, whether the dead man did what the police say he did is a matter of dispute. So often the police claims are false.

Keith Koster didn't have to die, nor did Armand Martin (one day the full story of what was going on during that "standoff" will be known...)  But the twin evils of the Cult of Compliance and Force Protection protocols ensured they would die, no matter.

This is the problem Americans face in attempting to deal with the apparent epidemic of police violence and killings. I say "apparent" because it's not entirely clear that the death and injury rate from police violence is worse now than in the past. What is clear is that since Ferguson, especially, many Americans are no longer willing to remain passive in the face of this violence.

What will have to be done to change the policing culture in this country still needs to be worked out, but many more are committed to seeing that change take place than there once were. And that's a good thing.
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Keith Koster's Obituary, for reference.

WSWS account of the Armand Martin and other police shootings in Albuquerque.

Money graf:

The US ruling class is well aware of the seething anger among the working class population over its policies of austerity, inequality and imperialist war and is prepared for inevitable resistance. It has given the green light—as well as increased funding and equipment—to police departments nationwide to escalate their attacks on the working class to preemptively instill fear of retaliation for that resistance.

Precisely.

Deep Into Tolstoy

Count Lev Nicolayevich Tolstoy in Peasant Garb, by Ilya Repin, c. 1901

I've been quite deep into Tolstoy lately -- carry me back in time and memory! -- and so have not really been keeping up with either posting here or the Events of the World Today. It's too much. One can do one's Tolstoy or one can do the other, and I've chosen, for what it's worth, to stick with my Tolstoy for the time being, in part because it seems to me he was seriously on to something back when time was, and that even now, much of his thinking -- as traditionalist and backward looking as it sometimes seems to be -- was remarkably advanced when he wrote, and much of it still is.

Times have changed, but they haven't changed that much.

The work I've been reading and writing a long commentary on (much in the manner of Tolstoy himself, come to think of it) is "What Then Must We Do?" (173pg pdf, be warned) a polemical essay on the vexing Problem of the Poor which was very much on his mind when he was at his Moscow townhouse but rather less so when he was at his country estates near Tula, a couple of hundred kilometers south of Moscow.

Of course being Tolstoy he goes much further than merely fretting over the condition of Moscow's multitudes of poor people. Much of the polemic is about himself, and what he must do to change himself if he truly wants to aid the poor. His anecdotes about what he finds as he attempts to be a philanthropist and fails are instructive, for very much the same problems and failures afflict much of the philanthropic community in our own time. Today, we've figured out how to make nice little careers out of being philanthropic. Progress!

His rants against the parasitical classes into which he dumps everyone who does not work themselves but who force the Lower Orders to support them instead -- including scientists and artists -- became tedious and annoying. By work Tolstoy means the work the peasants do on his estates and in the villages nearby. Plowing, planting, tool-making, weaving, harvesting, animal husbandry, preserving, storing. That sort of thing. No other work at all seems worthwhile to him -- except now and then at the margins. His existence as a Russian nobleman is worthless on its face, and his "work" as a world-renown author of novels and essays has not much more value as long as Petya and Ludmilla and all the rest of his peasants and the poor in general are forced to carry the burden of his upkeep and the upkeep of so many other drones and parasites on their backs.

If he were writing on behalf of his peasants and the poor, that might be another question, but so long as he writes for his own pleasure and that of his class he is a drone and a parasite and a burden. Though he doesn't mention it, I can imagine his angst is over his masterwork novels such as War and Peace, and perhaps especially Anna Karenina, novels which one can argue have no value at all to the peasantry but which can easily capture the imaginations of his peers and those who seek to emulate them -- as they still do.

The only work Tolstoy seems to value implicitly is that at the base -- agricultural labor and that which supports agriculture. Nothing else at all that men and women do to make a living is of intrinsic worth in his mind.

This perspective is interesting and a little difficult to deal with in contemporary terms, given the fact that the agricultural sectors in most of the developed and developing world are largely mechanized and depopulated. Whereas in Tolstoy's time, 90% of labor was in the fields, now the percentage of agricultural labor is in the single digits, edging ever closer to zero. What then?

Almost everyone lives in towns and cities now, and those who work in them are all by Tolstoy's definition, parasites and drones. Agriculture is conducted by laboratories, patent attorneys, bank spreadsheets, machines and computers, and to the extent that there are people in the fields in this country any more, they are mostly migrants, many from Mexico and Central America, who work hard but generally in brief spurts to weed, cultivate and/or harvest and then move on.

There are few or no settled peasants any more -- not in the developed and/or developing world at any rate.

And yet the poor are still with us in their multitudes...

Tolstoy celebrates a peasantry that no longer exists and human labor that is no longer necessary in modern agriculture. Machines do the heavy labor, machines built on assembly lines in distant factories, transported to the fields by other machines, all intricately webbed together. Banks determine the need for machinery and loan certain farmers money to buy the machines and thereby keep these particular individuals in perpetual debt -- which often enough is not so bad, because even though they must pay the banks their due, there is generally enough profit from the farm (if you want to call it a farm) to provide the farmer and his/her family with a very comfortable living. They may always carry a heavy debt to the banks, but they can also have a very pleasant and abundant lifestyle at the same time. Nothing at all like the situation of Tsarist Russia's peasants who were forced into debt.

A way was found to deal with the rural peasantry -- get rid of them! Clear the land of people. Consolidate small holdings into ever larger ones. Mechanize every conceivable aspect of agriculture. Hire day labor as needed. Voilá! No peasants, no peasant problem, no rural uprisings! Yay! Progress!

The last wave of rural clearance and dispossession took place in this country about 30 years ago when numerous small farmers were foreclosed upon when they were not able to refinance their debts as they had long been doing. It was of course a calculated and deliberate move on the part of the financiers who held the farmers' debts, the obvious point being land clearance and agricultural consolidation.

So today, there is no viable peasantry to celebrate, and such manual labor as there still is in agriculture is done by hired hands, most of them Spanish speaking "foreigners" on temporary contract.

The dispossessed are forced into towns where those who can get ahead -- as most at one time could, and some still can -- do so, and the rest are left to fend for themselves as best they might.

While some of the uber-wealthy consider everyone who is not of their own class to be a "parasite", neither town-dwellers nor the highest of the mighty today are being carried on the backs of the rural peasantry any more. No such peasantry exists.

We have to be careful, though, in thinking that way. It may be accurate in the case of rural North America and Europe and more and more accurate with regard to most of the developing world, but there are still many hundreds of millions of rural peasants in the whole wide world, and many of them are still working as hard as any Russian peasant ever did in Tolstoy's time to feed and clothe and house Their Betters, the parasitical classes who burden them.

Today we may never see or be aware of this still extant -- but distant -- peasantry. It may be far away, but it's there.

Yet much closer to home, the poor are still with us in their multitudes and their numbers keep growing.

Many millions of Americans are forced into poverty in this country every year, and the current poverty rate among Americans is higher than it has been in decades. There is no public policy effort to reduce it. In fact, public policies act to increase poverty.

One might ask to what object is this so? Of course, it's obvious what the object is: to force down and keep down wages and benefits for those who can obtain and keep jobs. The more unemployment and poverty there is, the lower the wage and benefit base for workers. Very simple. It is government and industry policy  that makes it so, and no amount of agitation by the impoverished masses has any affect on the situation.

Oh, but what about all the efforts -- some of them successful -- to "raise the minimum wage?" All well and good, but they don't raise anyone out of poverty even when they are successful. The efforts to raise the minimum wage from (say) seven-and-a-quarter to ten dollars and change, for example, barely touches the poverty equation faced by so many millions of Americans, and merely demonstrates how very low the wage and benefit base has been allowed to fall over the years. Whereas at a time I can still remember, one modest income was sufficient for a household to get by on decently if not necessarily abundantly, now two or three incomes per household are necessary for subsistence. And still, even with everyone in the household who can work being employed, the household may remain in poverty. At ten dollars an hour, a household may still be in poverty, but at fifteen an hour, it may be possible to break through the poverty line, so long, that is, as there is more than one income earner.

Why should this situation be allowed, let alone be considered normal and natural as it is?

These are the kinds of questions Tolstoy asked about his own country in his own day, and one of the answers he came up with was the gross inequality of power between a toiling, or in many cases idle, impoverished multitude and a parasitical overclass who ruled and exploited the multitude -- ruling with fear and brutality and starvation and death.

Their cruelty, he said, was justified by tradition and by "science"  -- particularly the bogus "science" of economics.

Oh, how I laughed! Because it is so true. Just as in Tolstoy's own time, the contemporary "science" of economics is used to justify any kind of exploitation on behalf of capitalists and their power and their greed. The lot of the workers and the poor may be difficult, but -- according to think tanks peopled with economists -- it's not nearly as bad as it could be, not even close, so the toiling and/or idle masses should just take it with a smile and a grateful tug on their forelock, for, yes, if they don't, it could get very much worse for them, very quickly. You see? Good. Now that we understand how the world works...

I'm reminded of Frau Merkel and her buddy Sr. Draghi and his buddy Mme Legarde, chortling in the background as the remnants of the Old Soviet Empire are sliced and diced for the benefit of the European bankers and the Global Overclass even as we speak. I've actually heard of some of the chattering classes opining on the necessity of imposing "Greek Style Austerity" on the Ukrainians to get them into shape to participate in the European Periphery as it were. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. These people know no bounds to their cruelty, do they? No, actually they don't. They are so certain of their right and their righteousness that any level of cruelty they care to impose is justified in their own minds.

As some wag proposed, Frau Merkel is the daughter Adolph and Eva would have had...

May we theorize that unrestrained power -- by any faction -- inevitably leads to cruelty? And such cruelty leads to impoverishment?

Tolstoy, late in his life, set himself on a path of redemption by -- he said -- relieving his peasants of the burden of supporting him and carrying him on their backs. That, he believed, was what everyone of his position and class must do. He -- and they -- must learn to live in a manner which does not require the Lower Orders to carry them. They must learn to do whatever they can for themselves. They must work.

Tolstoy did this by working side by side with his peasants, learning their ways and crafts, taking care of his own needs rather than relying on corps of servants, and using whatever surplus he earned to enhance the lives of those Below rather than to add to his already overabundant luxuries.

Our own Neo-Aristos are nowhere near that self-aware, though. To the extent that philanthropy -- as opposed to cruelty -- enters their minds at all, they have no interest in relieving the burdens of the poor and of those being forced into poverty, they want to select winners and losers among them, and to increase, not reduce, the burdens they are forced to carry. To that extent they are innately evil.

I've gone back to Tolstoy in part because so much of the Overclass's recent propaganda barrage has been focused on Russia, Putin, Ukraine and so on, and I've always had a warm regard for the Russian and Soviet efforts to tame some of the worst aspects of their own society. I realized early on that the anti-Soviet propaganda was lies and damned lies and worse. So is the anti-Russian, anti-Putin propaganda today. It's remarkably similar in tone and content as well. To learn, as we did yesterday, that one of the high profile American plutocrats is funding revolt and revolution in Ukraine, in concert with the Government of the United States of America (Inc) and a plethora of American-funded NGOs merely confirms what instinct about these things suggests must be true.

The question remains, "What Then Must We Do?" when faced with such cruelty and such crimes?

So often I ask, "What did the Russians and the Soviets do? How did they cope, and how did they overcome?"

So many lessons yet to be learned.

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Lev Nicolayevich Tolstoy's funeral procession, 1910

Let Us Reason Together -- Year End Edition (1)

This has been quite an exciting year, hasn't it?

Nothing quite like it has come down the pike in quite a long time, and how all the various elements fit together, providing they do, is yet to be seen.

The highest profile "news" story was of course the Summer Splash of the Snowden Thing. Pssst: The NSA is spying on you..." Yes, it is. Well, maybe not on you personally, but then again, maybe yes, on you.  Personally.

We already knew that practically anything we did on the Internet was an open book to spooks and marketers, we've known it for years. Sometimes we've even made use of that knowledge to freak out both the spooks and the marketeers, sometimes with hilarious results. So it was passing strange, in my book, that the Summer Story of the Century became such a cause célèbre throughout the latter half of the year. Of course, the drama of it all, the cat-and-mouse, the jajaja, the personalities of the players, and the government response all made for an excellent narrative, and that's what media sells these days, so it will probably continue for quite a little while to come.

The entry of "Pierre" Omidyar into the fray, by setting up a high profile media shop specifically for Greenwald's continued... erm... pleasure ... added a whole other layer to the frolic and frenzy. (I should note that I use "Pierre" in air quotes because of a wonderful interview (the interview has been reclassified "unlisted," so sharing is discouraged) Alexa O'Brien did with Stanley Cohen regarding the PayPal 14, who plead out on really nasty charges brought by "Pierre's" PayPal against them for interfering with their work product.  Or something. Cohen uses air quotes throughout when mentioning "Pierre" and given the fact that the man himself doesn't have much of a public persona or profile, it seems appropriate to follow in the tradition...)

This media firestorm (which I indelicately called a "Summer Shark and Missing White Boy Story" throughout its summertime incarnation) led to a rather remarkable Study Group and Report by insiders commissioned by the White House and released the day after the President invited the highest ranks of the Silicon Valley nobility to meet with him and reason together on what should be done now with regard to the Surveillance/Security State under which we are all privileged to live. Praise Be and Bow Down.

After reading the Report, I came to the conclusion that much of it had been pre-prepared and that the upshot of it all is to move the discomforting aspects of mass surveillance out of the purview of the NSA and put them into other cubby-holes where they can be better monitored or at least left to fester. Or something . 

Whatever the case, there is no indication whatsoever that any of the powers usurped by the Surveillance/Security State will be curtailed let alone abolished. 

Now it should be noted that in all the firestorm and frenzy over the Snowden Thing, there has never been even a hint of interest by the principals, Snowden, Greenwald, Poitras, et al, of loosening the grip of the Surveillance/Security State on the masses. Hardly. All they EVER wanted, they have said over and over, was an "informed debate" over the issue of mass surveillance, and having now had that debate, Snowden now asserts his goal has been accomplished. 

All righty then.

That was quick and efficient, wasn't it? Don't you feel better? I sure do. /s

Whew!


"One Nation, Under Surveillance...." ♫That's America to Meeeeeee....♬

Surveillance of the whole population is not going away, no matter what; who controls it and what is done with the data will be adjusted to better comport with the interests and desires of the SV nobility. You -- and I -- will have nothing substantive to say about it. Have a nice day. Terms and conditions apply.☺

Assuming for the moment that I am correct and the Surveillance/Security State will not be compromised or go away in our lifetimes, but that it will be reconfigured for the comfort and convenience of Our Betters -- as all things always are -- how would one prefer to be surveilled? Would you prefer surveillance conducted by and for the government or by and for corporate interests?

That's the choice, the only real choice, we're being offered.

Myself, I don't much care for either alternative, but as in the case of elections, we don't really have an option, and unlike elections, we can't really opt out -- without completely altering one's lifestyle and location, and essentially disappearing. Well, that may be the option many choose in the not too distant future, but so far, we're not quite there yet.

The upshot of the Snowden Thing, it seems to me, is that in the near-term surveillance of the Rabble will be undertaken by and on behalf of corporate interests (and let's not forget that "Pierre's" eBay and PayPal are huge and global players in this endeavor) with ever greater restrictions put in place on government access to this data. Basically, the idea will be that the private sector will track and compile data on everyone (as they do now) and that only when the private sector interests suspect evildoing by an individual will their data be turned over to government for pursuit and prosecution. This is pretty much the current eBay/PayPal model as it is, though according to Mark Ames, eBay/PayPal is quite amenable to turning over user data when governments suspect the evildoing by users. It's all very merry. And according to some eBay/PayPal users, part of the business model for these outfits is routine closure of accounts and theft of assets. Oh my! Could it be? Apparently it is, but my accounts with PayPal have long been empty, so I wouldn't exactly know.

Now I say that "no surveillance" is the correct approach, at least as an interim measure, but my Betters tell me that is not on the table for consideration. The only thing we get to choose from is whether the dominant party in the Surveillance/Security State shall be the "government" or corporate interests. With the intent of diminishing "government" participation to the extent possible, to be involved only at the beck and occasional call of the corporate sector.

As handmaidens to corporations, we already know how useless to the People our governments have become. There is no sign at all that this will change, and there is no sign at all that either Snowden, Greenwald, or "Pierre" have any interest in changing it. If anything, the signs are they wish to ensure the continued diminution of "government" in the face of corporate power. 

So.... what do we do about it?

That question will have to wait for the New Year for deeper consideration...

Mark Ames Explains It All For You

"Yeah, but... what do we do about it?"

One of the most often heard complaints about Greenwald's longstanding rage against government -- almost never corporate -- abuses of power is his determined failure to provide any course of action or recommendations for effective remedy.

Which is not to say he hasn't provided any outlets for frustration, far from it. He's been instrumental in setting up or participating in all sorts of supposed political action outfits, and is always encouraging donations to them as a means of Being Effective Against The Man, but exactly what they accomplish is subject to dispute. Certainly the very expensive efforts engaged in to bring down Blanche Lincoln and Joe Lieberman didn't accomplish what was being touted by a long shot. For the most part, Greenwald simply demurred when asked what he thought should be or could be done about all the many things he was OUTRAGED!!!!!™ about.

Mark Ames now at Pando.com has few qualms about either raging at The Man or suggesting remedies for the many OUTRAGES!!!!!™ We, the People endure at the whims of Our Betters.

In his latest, he runs through some of the less-known history of the NSA and previous revelations about its, erm... overreach.

Actually, I knew a bit of it, but he goes into much more detail than I was aware of previously. It's not so much surprising as it is confirmational and disheartening.

These agencies are rotten to the core, steeped in their own Original Sin and so far as can be determined, they cannot be reformed.

The Report I read in the days leading up to Christmas makes many, many recommendations about how to reform the NSA and other agencies that have overreached but it never suggests that the powers which have been assumed by them should be abolished. Instead, the recommendations are to transfer them to more appropriate locations within the surveillance state apparatus or outside it to a private entity.

This, as Ames points out, has been done before, only to later discover that the Hydra has regrown its heads and is more powerful and invasive than ever.

So, what to do about it?

Unfortunately, this time Ames has no solution -- nor much snark about it, either.

He's as stumped as anyone else.

So what happened to the abolitionists?