Back in the day, Ms Ché and I bought a travel trailer on the premise that since we were moving around so much for work in theater, it would make sense to take our housing with us rather than have to rent apartments or houses for a few months before moving on. It didn't quite work out the way we thought, though, because almost as soon as we got the trailer I started working at a place where I stayed for several years, so we weren't traveling like we had been at all any more. The trailer was parked next to the house where Ms Ché's mother lived, and we used it for guests and whatnot. Then I sold it for essentially what I'd paid for it. So all in all, it worked out fine.
The trailer was a Kit Road Ranger, 8' X 20' or 22' feet, surprisingly complete, with a kitchen and full bathroom (tub and shower), and sleeping room for 5 or 6, depending on how big or small they were. We slept in it and had guests who slept in it, and we thought it was remarkably comfortable, and so did our guests, but it always seemed cramped to me, I think because the ceilings were low and everything was fit in so tightly. Travel trailers tend to have a lot of stuff fit into them, and I'm not sure all of it is necessary.
When we moved to our place in New Mexico, there were two outbuildings on the property, a garage and a shed.
The shed was probably built when the house was, or soon after, around 1900, and it seems to be falling apart, but actually it's holding up pretty well. It's about 12' X 12' and we store random stuff in it "temporarily." It was used as a horse stall for a while and feral cats have had a few litters in it, I'm sure. I've been periodically cleaning out stuff we can do without, so it's becoming a pretty decent storage space or workshop. It had electricity and a wood stove at one time, years ago, but the electric line was cut and the stove taken out before we moved here. I'm assuming they can be replaced eventually.
The garage, probably built in the 1920s -- it looks to be from scrap lumber -- is about 10' X 20'. The main door is broken and doesn't raise or lower. The side door is working but not very well. There is no window. The exterior is covered with stucco that is falling off the scraps of lumber that serve as sheathing, and the interior is mostly filled with stuff we hold onto because "we might need it sometime." Lots of tools and things, lawn mower, garden chipper, tiller, yadda yadda, but there are also some book boxes and miscellaneous household stuff that I was going to move to the attic of the house -- but never did. Well, that's a whole other story.
When we moved here, we got two other outbuildings from Weather King, an 8' X12' studio, very cute, and an 8' X 16' metal storage building that was supposed to be temporary, but has turned into something more permanent. Both the studio and the storage building are filled with stuff we brought from California. Too much stuff...
So we now have four outbuildings, and I'm thinking of turning them into tiny houses and making a village of them. What fun. The house we live in, this rambling old pioneer adobe, is actually just about the largest house we've ever had, close to it anyway. It's not really a big house as those things go, but it feels like it. If there are rooms we can close off and not even heat in the winter because we don't use them or use them so rarely, then the house seems pretty large.
The tiny house movement (so the advocates and enthusiasts call it) is quite a phenomenon. Much more so than the RV/trailering movement I recall from when I was much younger than I am now. I think it is because they appeal to different sorts of people.
Tiny houses, let's be blunt, cost a veritable fortune, even if you build it yourself, whereas a travel trailer can be bought complete for relatively little. $5,000 vs $50,000 or more for the same or a similar sized structure is quite a difference. Ours cost less than $4,000 back when; a similar model might cost $10,000 now, but still, it's much, much less than a tiny house.
A tiny house can easily cost you $50,000 or more (Tumbleweed tiny houses cost $60,000 or more, well more). Travel trailers -- new or used -- can cost dramatically less, and because they are complete when delivered, they generally provide shelter with little fuss or muss. And they're legal. You just move in. There you are. You are usually without your stuff, too, which can be a liberating thing it seems to me. Well, you have just enough stuff for necessities and nothing more.
A tiny house on the other hand is meant to be a very small version of a site-built house or a cabin, both inside and out. It's heavy and solid, whereas a travel trailer is light and flexible. A travel trailer has a lightweight metal skin whereas a tiny house is generally clad with wood siding. Solid wood, too. One could go on describing the differences, but the point is that a tiny house is usually a miniature imitation of a permanent structure whereas a travel trailer is what it is, a portable (temporary) shelter.
So when I look around our place here and see four outbuildings, mostly full of random stuff, I'm thinking, "What would happen if we got rid of (most of) the stuff, and turned each of these buildings into a (sort of) tiny house?"
Each could be adapted in its own way... And actually all of them are more than ample size for a tiny house experiment... I'm intrigued with the possibilities.
The shed, the original shed that came with the property, would probably not be turned into a tiny house. Instead, I think it would do nicely for storage and for a workshop. The garage, on the other hand, could be quite a nice little abode, and at 10' X 20' (or 22', I'm not sure), it's likely to be quite luxe. I'll have to think about how to plan it...
The studio, interestingly, could become a teeny little guest suite, or even what it was intended to be, a garden retreat for Ms Ché to write in. It could have a bathroom (of sorts) and a tiny-little kitchen. It has two lofts as it happens, and either of them (or both, I suppose) could be used for sleeping.
The metal storage building is actually big enough to become a tight but adequate guest suite with a kitchenette and bath, but it's not tall enough for lofts, so sleeping arrangements would be tight and would have to be on the main and only floor.
Of course we have a guest room in the house as well, and I've thought of finishing the attic one day. If that ever happened, we'd have two or three more rooms upstairs and another bathroom. Possibly even a balcony from which to watch the mountains and the sparkling night sky.
One of our neighbors has two Airstreams beside their house, and their house is a large 5th wheel travel trailer that has been expanded with a site-built room or rooms. It's actually very nice. They've taken one of the Airstreams on trips. The other, they said, was intended for guests, but they've never used it because of some problems with it. There's a broken window, and the interior is kind of rough. They say they'll fix it up one day, though.
So far as I know, no one around here has a tiny house, though quite a few have travel trailers. One neighbor recently acquired a vintage model, probably from the 1950s. It's in fairly rough shape now but they intend to restore it.
Ah but sometimes the best laid plans...
Heh.
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Friday, November 6, 2015
Betrayal -- the Gliniewicz Thing and So On and So Forth
So he killed himself for fear of being exposed as an embezzler and worse, and he staged it to blame the fictive "War on Cops" for his death. I see. Thousands poured out for his funeral wherein he was hailed a Hero, yadda yadda, and media police departments and media fell all over themselves to laud the man and his sacrifice to serve and protect the rest of us.
Only none of it was true. It was all false.
It was all false. The man was a veritable demon, an example of the kind of monstrosity police departments are infested with, often led by as was the case here, and the kind of things the police have been allowed to get away with for generations. Literally, they can do just about anything they want so long as what they do does not inconvenience or discommode the powerful.
Anything.
Murder most foul, so far as we know now, was not one of Gliniewicz's specialties, but as more information comes out, we may learn of this or that murder at his hand.
We do know that a police officer who shot an unarmed man in the back twice, killing him, after tasing the shit out of him was acquitted of all charges the other day -- because, according to her lawyer, "she feared for her safety."
Yes, well, obviously the officer is out of her fricking mind as she repeatedly fires off her high voltage taser while screaming incomprehensibly at the man she kills -- who is writhing in pain on the ground. Whenever he does or doesn't do something, she screams some more, and then after firing off her taser again, inexplicably she shoots him with her firearm twice in the back and then she continues to scream at him.
This is insane behavior of a roided up madwoman who should never, ever be allowed near a firearm again and should not, under any circumstances be employed as police officer. By rights, she should be in custody and in rehab.
But no. Her statement is "I shall return to police work." Which is the utter last thing she should be doing. She is unfit in every imaginable way.
No doubt she justified her actions in her own mind, much as Gliniewicz must have justified his somewhat less lethal (so far as we know) but outrageous actions in his mind, because they are possessed of god-like powers that society (or the law at any rate) has granted police officers -- so long as they don't interfere with the High and the Mighty, the Powerful. After all, Mearkle only killed another druggie on the run. What's to worry? One more piece of human trash to dispose of, no?
Gliniewicz on the other hand was stealing from a program that was funded by some of those High and Mighty, and he was using the money for surprisingly selfish and apparently absurd ends. And in his god-like sense of self, he was commanding and threatening to protect himself. Ultimately, it came to an end when he killed himself, but even then, he produced a scenario to blame others -- the so called "anti-police warriors" -- a blame which was picked up and widely spread by FOX "news" and other media, and by police departments and even the FBI and DEA chiefs, as part of their ongoing wagon-circling and protective hunkering down in the face of mounting public criticism of police violence.
For criticizing violent policing is "War on Police." That's how it's been characterized by many of those who should know better. There is no "War on Police." There is a police war on the public, however, and they're pulling out all the stops -- to ensure their invulnerability. Their tactics utilize the same sort of falsehoods and rationalizations that went into Mearkle's and Gliniewicz's self-justifications for outrageous conduct.
One of the tactics long used by our military in the seemingly endless overseas imperial adventures is to draw out the opposition, making them visible and thus making them vulnerable to extermination. At one time, this was done by troops jeopardizing their own safety, by showing apparent vulnerability, but no longer. Now it is generally a case of "Death from Above" based on "intelligence."
Drones or AC-130s or what have you are sent on extermination missions based on "intelligence" that says suspected militants are or will be visible at thus and so location and must be terminated with extreme prejudice.
That's how the MSF hospital in Kunduz was targeted. Of course the military knew what the target was. Let's not fool ourselves, please. The US military has repeatedly targeted hospitals, clinics, ambulances, etc, just like the Israeli military does, and it's no accident, no "mistake." It is deliberate. According to reports, medical personnel running from the bombed out hospital were also targeted individually, and some were killed as they ran.
If you've ever seen a video of an attack by an AC-130 you know it can be horrifying and immensely destructive. You also know that the attackers know what they are attacking -- whether it be a school, a community center, a mosque or a residential compound, they know.
So the idea that they somehow didn't know the MSF hospital was what it was is false on its face. Of course they knew. They knew that attacking it could be considered a war crime, too, and they didn't care.
Not a bit. Why should they? Nobody can hold them to account. Nobody.
MSF tries but they don't seem to be getting anywhere. The powers that unleashed the attack refuse to allow an independent investigation, and so that's where things will lie for the foreseeable future, in limbo, with everyone knowing what happened, but no one held culpable for it.
This attitude has been transferred to policing wholesale. It is almost impossible to hold officers legally liable for anything they do while on duty -- so long as what they do does not impinge on the prerogatives of the Important People.
Police have been granted almost complete legal impunity to kill at will, and to do just about any other kind of violence against the public so long as it doesn't interfere with the comfort and convenience of Their Betters, and the officer(s) can rationalize their actions as reaction to "fearing for their lives and the safety of others."
Gliniewicz apparently interfered with his Betters interests whereas Mearkle did not.
Such a long row to hoe...
Only none of it was true. It was all false.
It was all false. The man was a veritable demon, an example of the kind of monstrosity police departments are infested with, often led by as was the case here, and the kind of things the police have been allowed to get away with for generations. Literally, they can do just about anything they want so long as what they do does not inconvenience or discommode the powerful.
Anything.
Murder most foul, so far as we know now, was not one of Gliniewicz's specialties, but as more information comes out, we may learn of this or that murder at his hand.
We do know that a police officer who shot an unarmed man in the back twice, killing him, after tasing the shit out of him was acquitted of all charges the other day -- because, according to her lawyer, "she feared for her safety."
Yes, well, obviously the officer is out of her fricking mind as she repeatedly fires off her high voltage taser while screaming incomprehensibly at the man she kills -- who is writhing in pain on the ground. Whenever he does or doesn't do something, she screams some more, and then after firing off her taser again, inexplicably she shoots him with her firearm twice in the back and then she continues to scream at him.
This is insane behavior of a roided up madwoman who should never, ever be allowed near a firearm again and should not, under any circumstances be employed as police officer. By rights, she should be in custody and in rehab.
But no. Her statement is "I shall return to police work." Which is the utter last thing she should be doing. She is unfit in every imaginable way.
No doubt she justified her actions in her own mind, much as Gliniewicz must have justified his somewhat less lethal (so far as we know) but outrageous actions in his mind, because they are possessed of god-like powers that society (or the law at any rate) has granted police officers -- so long as they don't interfere with the High and the Mighty, the Powerful. After all, Mearkle only killed another druggie on the run. What's to worry? One more piece of human trash to dispose of, no?
Gliniewicz on the other hand was stealing from a program that was funded by some of those High and Mighty, and he was using the money for surprisingly selfish and apparently absurd ends. And in his god-like sense of self, he was commanding and threatening to protect himself. Ultimately, it came to an end when he killed himself, but even then, he produced a scenario to blame others -- the so called "anti-police warriors" -- a blame which was picked up and widely spread by FOX "news" and other media, and by police departments and even the FBI and DEA chiefs, as part of their ongoing wagon-circling and protective hunkering down in the face of mounting public criticism of police violence.
For criticizing violent policing is "War on Police." That's how it's been characterized by many of those who should know better. There is no "War on Police." There is a police war on the public, however, and they're pulling out all the stops -- to ensure their invulnerability. Their tactics utilize the same sort of falsehoods and rationalizations that went into Mearkle's and Gliniewicz's self-justifications for outrageous conduct.
One of the tactics long used by our military in the seemingly endless overseas imperial adventures is to draw out the opposition, making them visible and thus making them vulnerable to extermination. At one time, this was done by troops jeopardizing their own safety, by showing apparent vulnerability, but no longer. Now it is generally a case of "Death from Above" based on "intelligence."
Drones or AC-130s or what have you are sent on extermination missions based on "intelligence" that says suspected militants are or will be visible at thus and so location and must be terminated with extreme prejudice.
That's how the MSF hospital in Kunduz was targeted. Of course the military knew what the target was. Let's not fool ourselves, please. The US military has repeatedly targeted hospitals, clinics, ambulances, etc, just like the Israeli military does, and it's no accident, no "mistake." It is deliberate. According to reports, medical personnel running from the bombed out hospital were also targeted individually, and some were killed as they ran.
If you've ever seen a video of an attack by an AC-130 you know it can be horrifying and immensely destructive. You also know that the attackers know what they are attacking -- whether it be a school, a community center, a mosque or a residential compound, they know.
So the idea that they somehow didn't know the MSF hospital was what it was is false on its face. Of course they knew. They knew that attacking it could be considered a war crime, too, and they didn't care.
Not a bit. Why should they? Nobody can hold them to account. Nobody.
MSF tries but they don't seem to be getting anywhere. The powers that unleashed the attack refuse to allow an independent investigation, and so that's where things will lie for the foreseeable future, in limbo, with everyone knowing what happened, but no one held culpable for it.
This attitude has been transferred to policing wholesale. It is almost impossible to hold officers legally liable for anything they do while on duty -- so long as what they do does not impinge on the prerogatives of the Important People.
Police have been granted almost complete legal impunity to kill at will, and to do just about any other kind of violence against the public so long as it doesn't interfere with the comfort and convenience of Their Betters, and the officer(s) can rationalize their actions as reaction to "fearing for their lives and the safety of others."
Gliniewicz apparently interfered with his Betters interests whereas Mearkle did not.
Such a long row to hoe...
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Numbers Game
The number of people killed by police in the United States this year has now surpassed 1000 according to the "Killed by Police" website, the most comprehensive and up to date listing of police kill statistics available.
Because there are two months left in the year and historically, police killings tend to average about 100 a month -- three or more a day -- the total dead due to police violence this year will no doubt be considerably higher than last year. The number reported by "Killed by Police" last year was 1108.The total will likely be above 1200 this year.
Dead.
This should not be happening. Period. There is no necessity for the majority of police killings. The number of dead at the hands of police could be cut by 90% or more -- if there were policies in place to generally forbid the use of deadly force (or any force, for that matter) and which specified consequences for officers' use of force/deadly force no matter what the ostensible justification. Of course, policies only matter to the extent they are enforced. Unfortunately, where policies restricting the use of deadly force exist, they seem to be only haphazardly enforced.
And of course courts have long looked the other way in cases of police violence. Too often they've been encouraging ever greater levels of police violence -- in order that the officers involved may "go home to their families" each and every night. Force protection appears to be the prime directive therefore. Force protection means that hundreds of innocent people will die at the hands of police each and every year. Force protection is killing Americans who shouldn't die.
Because there are no official statistics on police killings and/or violent policing in general, and there are competing and conflicting numbers available in the press, those in charge of police and policing in this country get to play a numbers game wherein the current fashion is to claim that there has been a significant rise in violent crime in this country due to the fact that there is so much scrutiny of police and police behavior. Statistics are touted which show this or that city -- where protests against violent policing have had an effect -- has experienced a "spike" in murders or other violent crime. The protests and protesters are blamed. The "anti-police" public attitude is blamed. A "War on Police" is blamed. Albuquerque media, for example, has gone into full-meltdown mode over the mortal wounding of a police officer at a traffic stop. This is supposed to represent a front on the so-called "war" on police, even though statistically it's never been safer to be a police officer in this country. There is no "war on police". If anything, there is a war on the public by police.
In some respects, the police have been engaging in a relatively low-key civil war against segments of the public for decades; some would say it's gone on since the establishment of police forces as slave catching and Indian-killing militias, and policing was transformed into a permanent state of civil war against the public with the establishment of independent civic police forces in the 19th century.
Police for their part see it as their bounden duty to protect the High and Mighty whom they serve against the Lower Orders who run wild without the corrective measures imposed upon them by police violence.
It has ever been thus, no?
No.
It has not ever been thus, and it need not be so in the future.
But changing the dynamic of policing toward something more just and less violent is proving much more difficult than I think many of us may have thought. I've been involved in the effort of transformation for decades, for example, and though I have seen and reported some success in changing the dynamic of policing under pressure, the tendency of police forces is to backslide, revert, to become again what they once were or to become even worse -- once the pressure is off.
It's frustrating as hell. It may be, as I've said from time to time, that it's impossible to reform police forces as they are currently constituted because of Original Sin -- the fact that they originated as slave-catching and Indian-killing militias, going right back to the twin original sins of the nation, Black chattel slavery and Indian genocide.
If that's the case, then what do you do? I'm an abolitionist, preferring to abolish the police -- and indeed the entire so-called (In)Justice System in this country and starting over. But that can't happen in isolation. It would mean a wholesale revolution -- something I don't see coming any time soon, if ever. Instead, we get piecemeal, occasional, partial "reforms." Reforms that often lead to greater injustice and violence which then trigger more studies, protests and reforms in an endless cycle.
World without end, amen, amirite?
We can look back on what happened to mental health care in this country for examples of how that process works, sadly.
But there are many more examples if we care to look.
The current system supports many millions of people who are invested in preserving it as it is or only changing it to be harsher, not to mitigate its abuses.
Police are terrified of abuse mitigation efforts -- because they're afraid they'll be held criminally liable for past abuses, and they might be subjected to revenge by those who have been most abused.
The thinking seems to be that reducing the level of police violence will result in massive increases in violence by the public. It's marketed as "Violent Policing is the Only Thing that Stands Between Us and Chaos."
Yes, well. It's not true.
Current models of policing have precipitated chaos more than preventing it.
The situation has to change.
It is changing, slowly, slowly, slowly. Much of the change seems to be based on theories of public relations, the Edward Bernays approach to problem solving, convincing the public they never had it so good -- and it will be so much better when this or that "something" is added to their lives.
On the other hand, the problem of violent policing and unnecessary death and destruction that results is widely recognized within the policing culture itself as a real thing that must be addressed. Part of addressing it means "finding ways" to "work collaboratively with the community" to "reduce the use of force" and violence within the communities "served" by police.
The point of many of the consent decrees which the DoJ has entered into with police departments around the country is not to directly reduce or stop the use of violence and killing by police but to make it meet "best practice" standards and to rationalize the use of force and violence -- make it be "constitutional."
Since the Supreme Court has essentially provided carte blanche legal protection of police for their use of violence and deadly force, the so-called "constitutional" standard for use of force is easy to meet from a legal standpoint. All they have to do is state that they "feared for their lives and the safety of others" to protect themselves legally from consequences of their violence. But there are numerous department policy issues that can restrict and in many cases eliminate the use of force and deadly force on a "constitutional" basis, and that, I think, is what the DoJ is looking for -- changes in policies which effectively bring the department's use of force into line with the constitution on the one hand and eventually reduce the use of force and deadly force on the other.
But the necessary changes are not happening fast enough or fully enough to seriously impact or limit the destruction wrought on the social fabric by violent policing. The lesson of violent policing is that violence is worthy and the appropriate way to rule. That lesson starts in schools where the presence of police officers (called "resource officers" for some arcane reason) leads to authoritarian violence and worse, resulting in generations of children indoctrinated into a culture of violence and retribution that continues on no matter what.
The numbers suggest that violent policing cannot be ended any time soon. Even if it is reformed, the culture of fear and violence that is fundamentally a part of the police framework will go on.
Because there are two months left in the year and historically, police killings tend to average about 100 a month -- three or more a day -- the total dead due to police violence this year will no doubt be considerably higher than last year. The number reported by "Killed by Police" last year was 1108.The total will likely be above 1200 this year.
Dead.
This should not be happening. Period. There is no necessity for the majority of police killings. The number of dead at the hands of police could be cut by 90% or more -- if there were policies in place to generally forbid the use of deadly force (or any force, for that matter) and which specified consequences for officers' use of force/deadly force no matter what the ostensible justification. Of course, policies only matter to the extent they are enforced. Unfortunately, where policies restricting the use of deadly force exist, they seem to be only haphazardly enforced.
And of course courts have long looked the other way in cases of police violence. Too often they've been encouraging ever greater levels of police violence -- in order that the officers involved may "go home to their families" each and every night. Force protection appears to be the prime directive therefore. Force protection means that hundreds of innocent people will die at the hands of police each and every year. Force protection is killing Americans who shouldn't die.
Because there are no official statistics on police killings and/or violent policing in general, and there are competing and conflicting numbers available in the press, those in charge of police and policing in this country get to play a numbers game wherein the current fashion is to claim that there has been a significant rise in violent crime in this country due to the fact that there is so much scrutiny of police and police behavior. Statistics are touted which show this or that city -- where protests against violent policing have had an effect -- has experienced a "spike" in murders or other violent crime. The protests and protesters are blamed. The "anti-police" public attitude is blamed. A "War on Police" is blamed. Albuquerque media, for example, has gone into full-meltdown mode over the mortal wounding of a police officer at a traffic stop. This is supposed to represent a front on the so-called "war" on police, even though statistically it's never been safer to be a police officer in this country. There is no "war on police". If anything, there is a war on the public by police.
In some respects, the police have been engaging in a relatively low-key civil war against segments of the public for decades; some would say it's gone on since the establishment of police forces as slave catching and Indian-killing militias, and policing was transformed into a permanent state of civil war against the public with the establishment of independent civic police forces in the 19th century.
Police for their part see it as their bounden duty to protect the High and Mighty whom they serve against the Lower Orders who run wild without the corrective measures imposed upon them by police violence.
It has ever been thus, no?
No.
It has not ever been thus, and it need not be so in the future.
But changing the dynamic of policing toward something more just and less violent is proving much more difficult than I think many of us may have thought. I've been involved in the effort of transformation for decades, for example, and though I have seen and reported some success in changing the dynamic of policing under pressure, the tendency of police forces is to backslide, revert, to become again what they once were or to become even worse -- once the pressure is off.
It's frustrating as hell. It may be, as I've said from time to time, that it's impossible to reform police forces as they are currently constituted because of Original Sin -- the fact that they originated as slave-catching and Indian-killing militias, going right back to the twin original sins of the nation, Black chattel slavery and Indian genocide.
If that's the case, then what do you do? I'm an abolitionist, preferring to abolish the police -- and indeed the entire so-called (In)Justice System in this country and starting over. But that can't happen in isolation. It would mean a wholesale revolution -- something I don't see coming any time soon, if ever. Instead, we get piecemeal, occasional, partial "reforms." Reforms that often lead to greater injustice and violence which then trigger more studies, protests and reforms in an endless cycle.
World without end, amen, amirite?
We can look back on what happened to mental health care in this country for examples of how that process works, sadly.
But there are many more examples if we care to look.
The current system supports many millions of people who are invested in preserving it as it is or only changing it to be harsher, not to mitigate its abuses.
Police are terrified of abuse mitigation efforts -- because they're afraid they'll be held criminally liable for past abuses, and they might be subjected to revenge by those who have been most abused.
The thinking seems to be that reducing the level of police violence will result in massive increases in violence by the public. It's marketed as "Violent Policing is the Only Thing that Stands Between Us and Chaos."
Yes, well. It's not true.
Current models of policing have precipitated chaos more than preventing it.
The situation has to change.
It is changing, slowly, slowly, slowly. Much of the change seems to be based on theories of public relations, the Edward Bernays approach to problem solving, convincing the public they never had it so good -- and it will be so much better when this or that "something" is added to their lives.
On the other hand, the problem of violent policing and unnecessary death and destruction that results is widely recognized within the policing culture itself as a real thing that must be addressed. Part of addressing it means "finding ways" to "work collaboratively with the community" to "reduce the use of force" and violence within the communities "served" by police.
The point of many of the consent decrees which the DoJ has entered into with police departments around the country is not to directly reduce or stop the use of violence and killing by police but to make it meet "best practice" standards and to rationalize the use of force and violence -- make it be "constitutional."
Since the Supreme Court has essentially provided carte blanche legal protection of police for their use of violence and deadly force, the so-called "constitutional" standard for use of force is easy to meet from a legal standpoint. All they have to do is state that they "feared for their lives and the safety of others" to protect themselves legally from consequences of their violence. But there are numerous department policy issues that can restrict and in many cases eliminate the use of force and deadly force on a "constitutional" basis, and that, I think, is what the DoJ is looking for -- changes in policies which effectively bring the department's use of force into line with the constitution on the one hand and eventually reduce the use of force and deadly force on the other.
But the necessary changes are not happening fast enough or fully enough to seriously impact or limit the destruction wrought on the social fabric by violent policing. The lesson of violent policing is that violence is worthy and the appropriate way to rule. That lesson starts in schools where the presence of police officers (called "resource officers" for some arcane reason) leads to authoritarian violence and worse, resulting in generations of children indoctrinated into a culture of violence and retribution that continues on no matter what.
The numbers suggest that violent policing cannot be ended any time soon. Even if it is reformed, the culture of fear and violence that is fundamentally a part of the police framework will go on.
Monday, November 2, 2015
Incidents in Albuquerque
Not sure where this is going to lead, but I have a feeling it's not going to end well.
There was a road rage incident a little while ago. A four year old girl was killed by a gun-wielding driver who believed he was disrespected by another driver on the interstate. They got into it, apparently, and the girl was shot. This incident made national news -- yet another example of the Wild-West, Albuquerque style.
Not long afterwards, I think it was the next day, an APD officer who was engaged in a "routine traffic stop" was shot by the suspect and a week later he died of his wounds.
In both incidents suspects were quickly apprehended and now await trial for murder most foul.
Both the media and the police department have gone into full-meltdown mode over these incidents, the media practically demanding that "the gloves come off" and a return to the practices of the past be authorized. You know, shoot first and never face consequences. Those practices that got APD into a consent decree with the DoJ.
Shoot and shoot again and keep on shooting.
The local media has been in hysterics over the deaths of the little girl and the police officer. They've been whipping up hysteria among the public, too. It's shameful. Disgusting. And apparently out of control.
The police department and the police union, for the most part, has been relatively sane about it all -- at least compared to the media. And they seem to be doing their part to engage in public diplomacy. It's interesting to see the contrast. Yet the end point seems to be to get back to the way things used to be.
Kill, kill and kill some more.
The police department claims that violent crime in Albuquerque went up 14% in 2014, but whether it's true or not, who knows? Police have a tendency to lie in pursuit of their objectives, and statistics used by police are constantly being massaged to "prove" whatever police believe needs proving. The public has few resources with which to compare and contrast police perspectives on crime or anything else.
We have witnessed a steep decline in police killing of civilians in Albuquerque, a decline that really hasn't been highlighted by media or anyone else (partly because it is masked by killings by other law enforcement agencies) but I can easily imagine that it will be cited as a primary cause of the supposed increase in violent crime since (say) the consent decree was agreed to last fall.
There is some sign of a community peace movement, however, one that may be able to counter the violence by police and some members of the public.
I'm always an optimist, but sometimes I wonder if my optimism is really justified.
There was a road rage incident a little while ago. A four year old girl was killed by a gun-wielding driver who believed he was disrespected by another driver on the interstate. They got into it, apparently, and the girl was shot. This incident made national news -- yet another example of the Wild-West, Albuquerque style.
Not long afterwards, I think it was the next day, an APD officer who was engaged in a "routine traffic stop" was shot by the suspect and a week later he died of his wounds.
In both incidents suspects were quickly apprehended and now await trial for murder most foul.
Both the media and the police department have gone into full-meltdown mode over these incidents, the media practically demanding that "the gloves come off" and a return to the practices of the past be authorized. You know, shoot first and never face consequences. Those practices that got APD into a consent decree with the DoJ.
Shoot and shoot again and keep on shooting.
The local media has been in hysterics over the deaths of the little girl and the police officer. They've been whipping up hysteria among the public, too. It's shameful. Disgusting. And apparently out of control.
The police department and the police union, for the most part, has been relatively sane about it all -- at least compared to the media. And they seem to be doing their part to engage in public diplomacy. It's interesting to see the contrast. Yet the end point seems to be to get back to the way things used to be.
Kill, kill and kill some more.
The police department claims that violent crime in Albuquerque went up 14% in 2014, but whether it's true or not, who knows? Police have a tendency to lie in pursuit of their objectives, and statistics used by police are constantly being massaged to "prove" whatever police believe needs proving. The public has few resources with which to compare and contrast police perspectives on crime or anything else.
We have witnessed a steep decline in police killing of civilians in Albuquerque, a decline that really hasn't been highlighted by media or anyone else (partly because it is masked by killings by other law enforcement agencies) but I can easily imagine that it will be cited as a primary cause of the supposed increase in violent crime since (say) the consent decree was agreed to last fall.
There is some sign of a community peace movement, however, one that may be able to counter the violence by police and some members of the public.
I'm always an optimist, but sometimes I wonder if my optimism is really justified.
DIGNITY, JUSTICE, COMMUNITY, PEACE
Sunday, October 25, 2015
Blame Game
It's become a trope within the policing industry and community: that public questioning and challenging of violent policing has led to an increase in violent crime -- because the police are less aggressive against criminals -- for fear of being held up to scrutiny and ridicule.
In other words, video-ing the police has made them cower in fear. It's the "Ferguson Effect".
They are afraid of their violence being seen and criticized.
They are cowards.
Of course we've known that for I don't know how long, and videos help to confirm that assessment.
But is it true that there is an overall increase in violent crime? And if so, is there a correlation between said increase and "less aggressive" behavior by police?
The trope is a truism being marketed by police and their media confederates nation-wide, including by the FBI director -- I'm sure with the approval of the Attorney General and the White House. On the other hand, police chiefs and law enforcement honchos, as well as the Attorney General and the White House have gone to some lengths to examine and self-criticize the current deplorable state of criminal justice -- and by extension violent policing that feeds the system.
In some cities, there seems to be an increase (media would call it an "uptick") in violent crime, but there is no lack of violent and "aggressive" policing, as statistics on police kills and other police violence and aggression shows.
On the other hand, in some cities, like Albuquerque, where police violence has been reduced, it appears in the absence of complete statistics that crime rates are about the same -- despite growing media hysteria in the local market over an apparent "explosion" in violent crime, a "wave" as it were, as police back off their use of force, particularly lethal force. Reforms required by the DoJ consent decree actually don't affect the overall use of force or use of lethal force, they simply require that any such use of force be recorded and reported -- and that it fall within particular constitutional guidelines. Consent decrees are never about reducing or eliminating the use of force/use of lethal force; they are about rationalizing and standardizing it according to "best practice" guidelines.
That police violence has been reduced in Albuquerque is a result of decisions made at the top of the command chain, not because of the DoJ, but because the killing spree the police had been on for years was costing the city a huge amount of money in payouts to victims and their loved ones, and in lost business because the city's reputation for violence by the police (as well as by the alleged criminal classes) was in the toilet. Something had to be done and fast.
The order went out to stop the killings.
So let it be written, so let it be done.
Now police and media are trying to whip up public hysteria over particularly egregious or bloody incidents -- including the recent shooting of a police officer (who survived...)
Well, no. My advice to them is: "Stop it."
Basically what they want is to return to their Wild West days when they were killing at will with no consequences, something that some other police departments in New Mexico (and elsewhere) still do and feel is their right. They designate themselves to be judge, jury and executioner -- some are specifically executioners (ie: snipers) -- without hindrance of any kind.
They see the challenges they face from the public and politicians as interference and they want it to stop.
It's become a widespread ploy used by police departments and their media champions more and more frequently, and I see less and less potential for a genuine end to violent policing because of it.
The police do not want it to end, and they are terribly fearful that they might be in some kind of danger if it does end and pretty much the worst thing they can imagine is danger to themselves.
Statistics show that it has hardly ever been safer to be a police officer, however. What danger there is is less than that of many other professions, and they know it. But they want you and me to think that there is an ongoing "war" against police which they are valiantly fighting in order to make "us" safe. No such thing is the case. It's false.
And that basic falsehood must be pointed out as often as necessary by as many as can do so.
Otherwise the return to and reinforcement of the status quo of violent policing will be solidified, and there may be no way to undo it for generations to come.
DeRay's mantra of "We Will Win" will become a hope never realized. Or -- just as likely -- the definition of "win" will be massaged and refined to such a point that it's meaningless.
The nationwide effort to overcome police violence has been going on for well over a year (of course it's been ongoing for decades on a local level) and there is really very, very little concrete to show for it. The demonstrations highlight the problem, but solutions are absent. There's a considerable amount of talk but a paucity of action. Nothing changes. The number of those killed by police continues to rise. The rates of incarceration are stable. The System continues grinding on with no let up.
In some few cities like Albuquerque -- and until recently Oakland -- there has been a significant reduction in police violence. But that is being greeted with dismay by the PTB on the presumption that only violent policing against the lower orders keeps them in line enough to maintain the safety and security of the Overclass. They sincerely believe that only violence will do it.
It's a false belief.
But convincing the Overclass of that seems as far out of reach as ever.
--------------------------------
So there.
In other words, video-ing the police has made them cower in fear. It's the "Ferguson Effect".
They are afraid of their violence being seen and criticized.
They are cowards.
Of course we've known that for I don't know how long, and videos help to confirm that assessment.
But is it true that there is an overall increase in violent crime? And if so, is there a correlation between said increase and "less aggressive" behavior by police?
The trope is a truism being marketed by police and their media confederates nation-wide, including by the FBI director -- I'm sure with the approval of the Attorney General and the White House. On the other hand, police chiefs and law enforcement honchos, as well as the Attorney General and the White House have gone to some lengths to examine and self-criticize the current deplorable state of criminal justice -- and by extension violent policing that feeds the system.
In some cities, there seems to be an increase (media would call it an "uptick") in violent crime, but there is no lack of violent and "aggressive" policing, as statistics on police kills and other police violence and aggression shows.
On the other hand, in some cities, like Albuquerque, where police violence has been reduced, it appears in the absence of complete statistics that crime rates are about the same -- despite growing media hysteria in the local market over an apparent "explosion" in violent crime, a "wave" as it were, as police back off their use of force, particularly lethal force. Reforms required by the DoJ consent decree actually don't affect the overall use of force or use of lethal force, they simply require that any such use of force be recorded and reported -- and that it fall within particular constitutional guidelines. Consent decrees are never about reducing or eliminating the use of force/use of lethal force; they are about rationalizing and standardizing it according to "best practice" guidelines.
That police violence has been reduced in Albuquerque is a result of decisions made at the top of the command chain, not because of the DoJ, but because the killing spree the police had been on for years was costing the city a huge amount of money in payouts to victims and their loved ones, and in lost business because the city's reputation for violence by the police (as well as by the alleged criminal classes) was in the toilet. Something had to be done and fast.
The order went out to stop the killings.
So let it be written, so let it be done.
Now police and media are trying to whip up public hysteria over particularly egregious or bloody incidents -- including the recent shooting of a police officer (who survived...)
Well, no. My advice to them is: "Stop it."
Basically what they want is to return to their Wild West days when they were killing at will with no consequences, something that some other police departments in New Mexico (and elsewhere) still do and feel is their right. They designate themselves to be judge, jury and executioner -- some are specifically executioners (ie: snipers) -- without hindrance of any kind.
They see the challenges they face from the public and politicians as interference and they want it to stop.
It's become a widespread ploy used by police departments and their media champions more and more frequently, and I see less and less potential for a genuine end to violent policing because of it.
The police do not want it to end, and they are terribly fearful that they might be in some kind of danger if it does end and pretty much the worst thing they can imagine is danger to themselves.
Statistics show that it has hardly ever been safer to be a police officer, however. What danger there is is less than that of many other professions, and they know it. But they want you and me to think that there is an ongoing "war" against police which they are valiantly fighting in order to make "us" safe. No such thing is the case. It's false.
And that basic falsehood must be pointed out as often as necessary by as many as can do so.
Otherwise the return to and reinforcement of the status quo of violent policing will be solidified, and there may be no way to undo it for generations to come.
DeRay's mantra of "We Will Win" will become a hope never realized. Or -- just as likely -- the definition of "win" will be massaged and refined to such a point that it's meaningless.
The nationwide effort to overcome police violence has been going on for well over a year (of course it's been ongoing for decades on a local level) and there is really very, very little concrete to show for it. The demonstrations highlight the problem, but solutions are absent. There's a considerable amount of talk but a paucity of action. Nothing changes. The number of those killed by police continues to rise. The rates of incarceration are stable. The System continues grinding on with no let up.
In some few cities like Albuquerque -- and until recently Oakland -- there has been a significant reduction in police violence. But that is being greeted with dismay by the PTB on the presumption that only violent policing against the lower orders keeps them in line enough to maintain the safety and security of the Overclass. They sincerely believe that only violence will do it.
It's a false belief.
But convincing the Overclass of that seems as far out of reach as ever.
--------------------------------
So there.
Friday, October 23, 2015
Random Notes
A lot of the commentary over the remarkable statements by Israeli PM Netanyahu that suggested that Hitler got the idea for the Final Solution from "a Palestinian" -- ie: the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem -- focused on the idea that "he's delusional," and/or "he's insane."
To the contrary, I think he knows exactly what he is doing, and it's not delusional or insane at all. He's making a spectacle of himself in order to draw attention away from the disaster of his rule on the one hand -- the rash of stabbings by Palestinians in Israel has apparently deeply unnerved the population, and the response by Israeli civilians and security forces is way over the to as demonstrated by numerous viral videos of Israelis committing acts of summary execution in the streets, sometimes of "their own people."
It's yet another domestic catastrophe brought on by a man who apparently lacks any conscience whatever. This is not insanity. This is not delusion. It is pathological in my view, but it isn't an "illness." It is character. Or lack thereof.
It's pathological because a lack of conscience is destructive in the character of anyone who is in a position to wield power over others or to utilize the power of a nation state to accomplish political objectives.
We see this in the political class all the time, this utter lack of conscience, empathy, or even interest in the well-being of anyone outside their own circle, or even beyond themselves. It's not limited to politics, either. We see it in business and finance (especially finance), in the administrative realm generally, in policing theory and practice, and on and on, and I wonder...
Do people in these and so many other fields learn these traits or are they born that way? Is there some kind of eugenic experiment under way that is breeding out the genes for compassion, conscience, and empathy? Truly, I wouldn't be surprised.
In Netanyahu's case, it's been clear for decades that the man sees himself as a Warrior-King on a mission. That mission will not be thwarted by lowly Palestinians (I doubt he considers them to be human) or by anyone else -- who he also seems to doubt are truly human. His mission appears to be the reconstitution of Eretz Israel or its modern equivalent for his own Power and Glory.
If anyone gets crushed in his pursuit of this project, it's their own fault.
And Israelis love him for it.
It's not insanity or delusion. It's purpose and will -- ultimately antithetical to humanity.
It is commonplace in the his realm. While it seems to make no sense to those on the outside, most of those on the inside share his perspective more or less fully. It's dangerous and destructive and deeply immoral,
One of the aspects of its immorality in the Israeli case is that their argument regarding the Nazis seems to accept everything they did -- up to the Final Solution itself. Israelis can therefore justify what they have long been doing to the Palestinians -- which is very closely patterned on Nazi practice toward Jews and other minorities in Germany. That means that the camps were OK, the roundups, deportations, the ghettoization, the prohibitions on actions, employment, travel, etc., the restrictions and/or elimination of civil rights, the confiscations and demolitions, the summary executions, the lynchings, the lootings, the general destruction levied against Jews and other minorities were all perhaps unpleasant, but they were not the Final Solution and therefore were "OK."
Well, no. They weren't "OK." Or justified. Nor has Israel any right to impose similar conditions on Palestinians. But they do it just the same.
They criticize the Nazis for the mass executions, the gas chambers, and the ovens. Not really for anything else. All the rest of it up to that point was... OK.
Jeeze.
Netanyahu is flailing for attention, and he's getting it.
-----------------------------------------
The Clinton Drama continues, and if Hillary is elected, we'll have no end of drama in the nation's capital. What did I see the other day? The radicals will be offering articles of impeachment the day she's sworn in to the presidency? Well, yes. Of course they will. It's what they do. And she'll happily do battle against them. And the attempts to impeach her will be a spectacle to feed the ravenous maw of the media -- which will love it -- for (probably) her entire term in office.
Meanwhile, of course, the nefarious and conscience-free policies of Our Betters will have free rein.
Isn't that the point, after all? Positioning Paul Ryan in the #3 slot -- ie: Speaker of the House -- is a kind of preparatory master-stroke, on the thought that however the drama plays out (she could be assassinated, after all...) there will be a dynamic conscience-free back up at the ready.
Jeebus, no matter how cynical you become, it's really impossible to keep up these days.
--------------------------
Sanders has yet to impress me. He seems to be a sacrificial shepherd leading his devoted flock into a cul-de-sac. No, he will not be allowed to become the president, not on a bet, and if somehow he manages to become the Democratic Party nominee (he won't) he will be left to flounder and fade away. With him go the remnants of a "progressive" Democratic Party. That seems to be the point in any case.
The Democratic Party isn't the same as the Tories of Anglo politics, but it is in many respects the rightful conservative party of the United States. It has always been conservative whereas the Republicans are rightist radicals.
There is no political left in this country with any pretense to power -- perhaps there never has been one. (FDR was not an exception). Without a functioning "left" in this country, it's impossible to move the governing apparatus away from or beyond its nearly exclusive devotion to the interests and demands of the Oligarchy.
The answer is withdrawal of presence and attention and consent. It happens organically, but it takes a long-long time to come to fruition. It doesn't happen in the political realm, it happens in the social realm, and eventually, the established political elements become irrelevant. "All of that" happens almost in another universe, affecting "real life" less and less, until nobody cares.
It's been happening in this country, this withdrawal, for several decades, but it's been fairly marginal in most respects. "Hippies" and such have been doing it since the 1960s, but there are many-many more elements than merely the unreconstructed hippies in the current withdrawals. "Alternatives" are everywhere, and those who pursue them find it's quite possible -- and sometimes a great deal more rewarding -- to simply let go of the necessity to serve the system as it is.
Thus I can't get too excited about the current political hoo-hah.
------------------------------
Police whining has reached a crescendo. The recent incident of road rage in Albuquerque leading to the death of a 4 year old girl seems to have triggered a reaction in the media. That reaction is apparently focused on a restoration of the status quo ante -- prior to the consent decree and all the police reforms that went with it, including a steep reduction in police killings of civilians. The local media seems to want to restore previous police practices -- and the death rates that went with them -- as a means of curbing the "current crime wave."
Well, I call bullshit. There is no "current crime wave." Crime in general, and violent crime in particular, is at or below previous levels, prior to the consent decree and police "reforms." Restoration merely means adding more violence to the mix, not curbing it at all. But Warrior Cops can't help themselves, can they? They want to mix it up, they have to, it's an identity thing. If they aren't out there killing and brutalizing with impunity, what it the point of having police, right?
So they whine and whine and whine, like dogs chained up in the back yard, wanting to kill, kill, and kill some more, to be who they are.
And the media in Albuquerque is clamoring to unchain them. To root out all those criminals running wild.
Bleah.
-------------------
Enough.
To the contrary, I think he knows exactly what he is doing, and it's not delusional or insane at all. He's making a spectacle of himself in order to draw attention away from the disaster of his rule on the one hand -- the rash of stabbings by Palestinians in Israel has apparently deeply unnerved the population, and the response by Israeli civilians and security forces is way over the to as demonstrated by numerous viral videos of Israelis committing acts of summary execution in the streets, sometimes of "their own people."
It's yet another domestic catastrophe brought on by a man who apparently lacks any conscience whatever. This is not insanity. This is not delusion. It is pathological in my view, but it isn't an "illness." It is character. Or lack thereof.
It's pathological because a lack of conscience is destructive in the character of anyone who is in a position to wield power over others or to utilize the power of a nation state to accomplish political objectives.
We see this in the political class all the time, this utter lack of conscience, empathy, or even interest in the well-being of anyone outside their own circle, or even beyond themselves. It's not limited to politics, either. We see it in business and finance (especially finance), in the administrative realm generally, in policing theory and practice, and on and on, and I wonder...
Do people in these and so many other fields learn these traits or are they born that way? Is there some kind of eugenic experiment under way that is breeding out the genes for compassion, conscience, and empathy? Truly, I wouldn't be surprised.
In Netanyahu's case, it's been clear for decades that the man sees himself as a Warrior-King on a mission. That mission will not be thwarted by lowly Palestinians (I doubt he considers them to be human) or by anyone else -- who he also seems to doubt are truly human. His mission appears to be the reconstitution of Eretz Israel or its modern equivalent for his own Power and Glory.
If anyone gets crushed in his pursuit of this project, it's their own fault.
And Israelis love him for it.
It's not insanity or delusion. It's purpose and will -- ultimately antithetical to humanity.
It is commonplace in the his realm. While it seems to make no sense to those on the outside, most of those on the inside share his perspective more or less fully. It's dangerous and destructive and deeply immoral,
One of the aspects of its immorality in the Israeli case is that their argument regarding the Nazis seems to accept everything they did -- up to the Final Solution itself. Israelis can therefore justify what they have long been doing to the Palestinians -- which is very closely patterned on Nazi practice toward Jews and other minorities in Germany. That means that the camps were OK, the roundups, deportations, the ghettoization, the prohibitions on actions, employment, travel, etc., the restrictions and/or elimination of civil rights, the confiscations and demolitions, the summary executions, the lynchings, the lootings, the general destruction levied against Jews and other minorities were all perhaps unpleasant, but they were not the Final Solution and therefore were "OK."
Well, no. They weren't "OK." Or justified. Nor has Israel any right to impose similar conditions on Palestinians. But they do it just the same.
They criticize the Nazis for the mass executions, the gas chambers, and the ovens. Not really for anything else. All the rest of it up to that point was... OK.
Jeeze.
Netanyahu is flailing for attention, and he's getting it.
-----------------------------------------
The Clinton Drama continues, and if Hillary is elected, we'll have no end of drama in the nation's capital. What did I see the other day? The radicals will be offering articles of impeachment the day she's sworn in to the presidency? Well, yes. Of course they will. It's what they do. And she'll happily do battle against them. And the attempts to impeach her will be a spectacle to feed the ravenous maw of the media -- which will love it -- for (probably) her entire term in office.
Meanwhile, of course, the nefarious and conscience-free policies of Our Betters will have free rein.
Isn't that the point, after all? Positioning Paul Ryan in the #3 slot -- ie: Speaker of the House -- is a kind of preparatory master-stroke, on the thought that however the drama plays out (she could be assassinated, after all...) there will be a dynamic conscience-free back up at the ready.
Jeebus, no matter how cynical you become, it's really impossible to keep up these days.
--------------------------
Sanders has yet to impress me. He seems to be a sacrificial shepherd leading his devoted flock into a cul-de-sac. No, he will not be allowed to become the president, not on a bet, and if somehow he manages to become the Democratic Party nominee (he won't) he will be left to flounder and fade away. With him go the remnants of a "progressive" Democratic Party. That seems to be the point in any case.
The Democratic Party isn't the same as the Tories of Anglo politics, but it is in many respects the rightful conservative party of the United States. It has always been conservative whereas the Republicans are rightist radicals.
There is no political left in this country with any pretense to power -- perhaps there never has been one. (FDR was not an exception). Without a functioning "left" in this country, it's impossible to move the governing apparatus away from or beyond its nearly exclusive devotion to the interests and demands of the Oligarchy.
The answer is withdrawal of presence and attention and consent. It happens organically, but it takes a long-long time to come to fruition. It doesn't happen in the political realm, it happens in the social realm, and eventually, the established political elements become irrelevant. "All of that" happens almost in another universe, affecting "real life" less and less, until nobody cares.
It's been happening in this country, this withdrawal, for several decades, but it's been fairly marginal in most respects. "Hippies" and such have been doing it since the 1960s, but there are many-many more elements than merely the unreconstructed hippies in the current withdrawals. "Alternatives" are everywhere, and those who pursue them find it's quite possible -- and sometimes a great deal more rewarding -- to simply let go of the necessity to serve the system as it is.
Thus I can't get too excited about the current political hoo-hah.
------------------------------
Police whining has reached a crescendo. The recent incident of road rage in Albuquerque leading to the death of a 4 year old girl seems to have triggered a reaction in the media. That reaction is apparently focused on a restoration of the status quo ante -- prior to the consent decree and all the police reforms that went with it, including a steep reduction in police killings of civilians. The local media seems to want to restore previous police practices -- and the death rates that went with them -- as a means of curbing the "current crime wave."
Well, I call bullshit. There is no "current crime wave." Crime in general, and violent crime in particular, is at or below previous levels, prior to the consent decree and police "reforms." Restoration merely means adding more violence to the mix, not curbing it at all. But Warrior Cops can't help themselves, can they? They want to mix it up, they have to, it's an identity thing. If they aren't out there killing and brutalizing with impunity, what it the point of having police, right?
So they whine and whine and whine, like dogs chained up in the back yard, wanting to kill, kill, and kill some more, to be who they are.
And the media in Albuquerque is clamoring to unchain them. To root out all those criminals running wild.
Bleah.
-------------------
Enough.
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
OT: Domestic Affairs
Well, the charger came from Los Angeles -- still waiting on the one from China, and figure it's best to have two anyway since the one that died was destroyed by my heavy foot getting caught in the cord over and over again... so I have my computer back and can start to get caught up, but at the same time, I have so many more domestic chores to take care of since Ms Ché started back to school, and there are routine fall things to do -- bulb planting, garden clearing, etc -- and (or maybe that's AND) I'm still doing a lot of sketching, etc. Days are more than full. Nearly forgot, the skunk man is coming tomorrow. Have to get ready for him, too. Ah, the skunks. So beautiful they are, but so stinky!
Domestically, well.
It's 2-2 1/2 miles to the post office; we don't get mail delivery out here, have to pick it up at the PO. Some of our neighbors walk, which is fine if you're up for it or into it, but I can't -- still struggling with aftermath of sciatic lameness from a couple of years ago, and now the onset of arthritis (boo!) has given me additional joint issues to deal with. Actually, when I joined the march against the Killer Kop Kompetition in Albuquerque last month, it was the first time I'd attempted that kind of extended hike since before my left side gave out and laid me up a couple of Januaries ago. Didn't quite make it -- many thanks to the kind soul who picked me up and drove the last few hundred yards -- but almost did. That was about 2 1/2 - 3 miles round trip. Good gauge of what I can/can't do.
It's about the same distance to the nearest grocery store. Maybe a little farther. It's a nice little independent store, though selection is somewhat limited. It's not fancy or high-end-foodie, not at all, but they have a real butcher, decent prices -- though much higher than we were used to in California -- friendly staff, and are open early and late. Since I have to get the groceries these days, it's nice to know there's someplace that close.
There's a Smith's and a WalMart the next town over, and I sometimes go to one or the other if there's something the local market doesn't have. I boycotted the WalMart for years until the local Pick-n-Choose closed (it was called Alco). Then, certain gardening, household items, clothing, and such like were simply not available locally. Actually, quite a lot of things weren't available locally any more. Some we could do without, but others....
So, it was off to WalMart now and then. Gaa. Not only is the store far larger than is necessary in this area (fewer than 5,000 people live in the store's shopping area -- say within 15 miles or so) but it's got some really... interesting... ways of doing business. For example, items are frequently (routinely?) shelved in the wrong slots so that it appears from the shelf price that such-and-such will cost X-amount, but no. Get to the check out and it's -- whoops! Oh, but it's worse than mere mis-shelving. In too many cases to count now, the items are shelved correctly, but the item rings up at a different -- sometimes much higher -- price than the shelf price, and unless you're eagle-eyed you're probably not going to know. In fact, it's pretty much impossible to keep track of the prices being scanned and rung up because you're still unloading your cart as the checker does his/her job. So the only way to know whether you've been overcharged is to scrutinize your receipt after the fact. And have a sharp memory for the shelf-price.
Alco used to do it too, but they closed. Smith's has taken to doing the same thing. They take it a step further, not pricing certain items on the shelf at all. One doesn't know until one gets to the checkout what the price is. Sometimes the surprise is a shock.
WalMart also has these bagging carousels, and by golly, how often is one (or more) of the customer's bags conveniently left behind? Oh, if my own experience is any guide, fairly often. One is not likely to notice one is missing a bag or two until one is home and unpacking one's things and notices that something one thought one bought is not there. Hm. Wha? In my dottage, it's not unusual for me to forget this or that, so I'm likely to be puzzled about missing items rather than certain that I left them behind. Maybe I didn't pick them up to begin with? But one time, I was sure, and I went back (another 10 miles from home, 20 round trip) and found the items had been re-shelved already. They gave them to me without objection, but still...
I figure these fairly common merchant practices can easily add 15%-20% to a customer's charges every time they shop. Quite lucrative, so lucrative merchants can happily refund overcharges brought to their attention and replace missing items the customer complains about because so often overcharges aren't noticed and missing items are "just forgotten" especially by the elderly... clever.
I wonder just how common this practice really is? I hadn't noticed it before, but it seems to be widespread in these parts nowadays. Initially, I thought I was imagining things but not any more. Now I think it really is a commonplace merchant policy.
I would have had no idea were it not for the fact that I have to take care of a lot more domestic chores now that Ms Ché has gone back to school. Oh, by the way, she got her midterm grades the other day. All "A" -- except for the two "A+". My my!
There is still much fall planting and year-end outside clean up to do. I managed to clear out the gutters and get those on the front of the house to work for the first time (they were installed wrong to begin with but I hadn't been able to tackle the project to fix...) I'm trying to clear out one of the sheds so I can bring the stuff we still have in storage in California. BUT as I was doing that chore, I saw the news about the mudslides closing highways in Southern CA. Thought little of it until I saw that one of the highways was Highway 58 that I take from Bakersfield to I15-I40 in Barstow. 6 feet of mud for a mile or more outside of Tehachapi(e). Oh. Brother. I would have taken the plane in November, then rented a truck to bring the stuff in California back to New Mexico, but Highway 58 is my route to get from there to there (the alternatives are much longer) so... maybe not. Better wait till spring.
They say this El Nino is shaping up to be the most intense since 1988. There have been certain signs of course. Our local drought is broken (thankfully. It went on way too long...) We've had plenty of rain and they say there will be pretty heavy snow this winter, but so far temps have been mild, balmy, even warm. No frost at all. May not be any till mid-November... wow.
Of course the situation in California becomes more and more Apocalyptic, seemingly by the day. Our friends who still live there insist things are not really as bad as the news is making it out to be, but I'm somewhat less Panglossian about it. The fires were terrible and raged through areas we're pretty familiar with around Clear Lake and in the Gold Country. No one we know was directly harmed, but still... Floods and mudslides of course will be more widespread than ever. The persistence of drought in the midst of these catastrophes compounds the misery. After a while, it becomes too much to bear...
Though I will probably always be a Californian deep-down, I realized I had become a "real" New Mexican the other day when it occurred to me that I routinely get offended by the most unlikely or innocent things that people say or do. This is a very New Mexican trait I've discovered, taking offense being something of a core value it would seem. It doesn't usually last more than a little while, but it's pretty frequent, and sometimes it makes me laugh at the pettiness and silliness of it.
Now to get back to getting stuff done...
Domestically, well.
It's 2-2 1/2 miles to the post office; we don't get mail delivery out here, have to pick it up at the PO. Some of our neighbors walk, which is fine if you're up for it or into it, but I can't -- still struggling with aftermath of sciatic lameness from a couple of years ago, and now the onset of arthritis (boo!) has given me additional joint issues to deal with. Actually, when I joined the march against the Killer Kop Kompetition in Albuquerque last month, it was the first time I'd attempted that kind of extended hike since before my left side gave out and laid me up a couple of Januaries ago. Didn't quite make it -- many thanks to the kind soul who picked me up and drove the last few hundred yards -- but almost did. That was about 2 1/2 - 3 miles round trip. Good gauge of what I can/can't do.
It's about the same distance to the nearest grocery store. Maybe a little farther. It's a nice little independent store, though selection is somewhat limited. It's not fancy or high-end-foodie, not at all, but they have a real butcher, decent prices -- though much higher than we were used to in California -- friendly staff, and are open early and late. Since I have to get the groceries these days, it's nice to know there's someplace that close.
There's a Smith's and a WalMart the next town over, and I sometimes go to one or the other if there's something the local market doesn't have. I boycotted the WalMart for years until the local Pick-n-Choose closed (it was called Alco). Then, certain gardening, household items, clothing, and such like were simply not available locally. Actually, quite a lot of things weren't available locally any more. Some we could do without, but others....
So, it was off to WalMart now and then. Gaa. Not only is the store far larger than is necessary in this area (fewer than 5,000 people live in the store's shopping area -- say within 15 miles or so) but it's got some really... interesting... ways of doing business. For example, items are frequently (routinely?) shelved in the wrong slots so that it appears from the shelf price that such-and-such will cost X-amount, but no. Get to the check out and it's -- whoops! Oh, but it's worse than mere mis-shelving. In too many cases to count now, the items are shelved correctly, but the item rings up at a different -- sometimes much higher -- price than the shelf price, and unless you're eagle-eyed you're probably not going to know. In fact, it's pretty much impossible to keep track of the prices being scanned and rung up because you're still unloading your cart as the checker does his/her job. So the only way to know whether you've been overcharged is to scrutinize your receipt after the fact. And have a sharp memory for the shelf-price.
Alco used to do it too, but they closed. Smith's has taken to doing the same thing. They take it a step further, not pricing certain items on the shelf at all. One doesn't know until one gets to the checkout what the price is. Sometimes the surprise is a shock.
WalMart also has these bagging carousels, and by golly, how often is one (or more) of the customer's bags conveniently left behind? Oh, if my own experience is any guide, fairly often. One is not likely to notice one is missing a bag or two until one is home and unpacking one's things and notices that something one thought one bought is not there. Hm. Wha? In my dottage, it's not unusual for me to forget this or that, so I'm likely to be puzzled about missing items rather than certain that I left them behind. Maybe I didn't pick them up to begin with? But one time, I was sure, and I went back (another 10 miles from home, 20 round trip) and found the items had been re-shelved already. They gave them to me without objection, but still...
I figure these fairly common merchant practices can easily add 15%-20% to a customer's charges every time they shop. Quite lucrative, so lucrative merchants can happily refund overcharges brought to their attention and replace missing items the customer complains about because so often overcharges aren't noticed and missing items are "just forgotten" especially by the elderly... clever.
I wonder just how common this practice really is? I hadn't noticed it before, but it seems to be widespread in these parts nowadays. Initially, I thought I was imagining things but not any more. Now I think it really is a commonplace merchant policy.
I would have had no idea were it not for the fact that I have to take care of a lot more domestic chores now that Ms Ché has gone back to school. Oh, by the way, she got her midterm grades the other day. All "A" -- except for the two "A+". My my!
There is still much fall planting and year-end outside clean up to do. I managed to clear out the gutters and get those on the front of the house to work for the first time (they were installed wrong to begin with but I hadn't been able to tackle the project to fix...) I'm trying to clear out one of the sheds so I can bring the stuff we still have in storage in California. BUT as I was doing that chore, I saw the news about the mudslides closing highways in Southern CA. Thought little of it until I saw that one of the highways was Highway 58 that I take from Bakersfield to I15-I40 in Barstow. 6 feet of mud for a mile or more outside of Tehachapi(e). Oh. Brother. I would have taken the plane in November, then rented a truck to bring the stuff in California back to New Mexico, but Highway 58 is my route to get from there to there (the alternatives are much longer) so... maybe not. Better wait till spring.
They say this El Nino is shaping up to be the most intense since 1988. There have been certain signs of course. Our local drought is broken (thankfully. It went on way too long...) We've had plenty of rain and they say there will be pretty heavy snow this winter, but so far temps have been mild, balmy, even warm. No frost at all. May not be any till mid-November... wow.
Of course the situation in California becomes more and more Apocalyptic, seemingly by the day. Our friends who still live there insist things are not really as bad as the news is making it out to be, but I'm somewhat less Panglossian about it. The fires were terrible and raged through areas we're pretty familiar with around Clear Lake and in the Gold Country. No one we know was directly harmed, but still... Floods and mudslides of course will be more widespread than ever. The persistence of drought in the midst of these catastrophes compounds the misery. After a while, it becomes too much to bear...
Though I will probably always be a Californian deep-down, I realized I had become a "real" New Mexican the other day when it occurred to me that I routinely get offended by the most unlikely or innocent things that people say or do. This is a very New Mexican trait I've discovered, taking offense being something of a core value it would seem. It doesn't usually last more than a little while, but it's pretty frequent, and sometimes it makes me laugh at the pettiness and silliness of it.
Now to get back to getting stuff done...
Monday, October 19, 2015
Hiatus Due to Hardware Issues
It's not that there aren't matters for me to comment on. Oh, there are so many.
The problem is that the other day my laptop's battery charger bit the dust. In fact, it came apart and is no longer functional. There were about two or three hours of charge left on the battery, and once that was used up, that laptop was kaput. I ordered another charger before the battery died, but found out afterwards it would be shipped from China and would take who-knew-how-long to get here. So I ordered a backup from Los Angeles.
The one from China has been shipped. By air. The one from Los Angeles? No word. Not a peep. So, who knows when or whether either of them will arrive? Mysteries abound.
Meanwhile, Ms. Ché has let me borrow her little notebook for a few minutes or an hour before she has to go to class.
I've even taken to pencil and paper now and again lately. It's quite a feat. Remembering how to write; my penmanship sucks, too (used to be pretty good, but that was years and years ago...) Thinking of unpacking one of the typewriters...;-D
The problem is that the other day my laptop's battery charger bit the dust. In fact, it came apart and is no longer functional. There were about two or three hours of charge left on the battery, and once that was used up, that laptop was kaput. I ordered another charger before the battery died, but found out afterwards it would be shipped from China and would take who-knew-how-long to get here. So I ordered a backup from Los Angeles.
The one from China has been shipped. By air. The one from Los Angeles? No word. Not a peep. So, who knows when or whether either of them will arrive? Mysteries abound.
Meanwhile, Ms. Ché has let me borrow her little notebook for a few minutes or an hour before she has to go to class.
I've even taken to pencil and paper now and again lately. It's quite a feat. Remembering how to write; my penmanship sucks, too (used to be pretty good, but that was years and years ago...) Thinking of unpacking one of the typewriters...;-D
Sunday, October 11, 2015
Legally Right -- Mortally Wrong and Morally Bankrupt. The Injustice Endures
After what seem like endless and quite deliberate delays regarding "investigating" the death of Tamir Rice, Tim McGinty has released two reports which justify the shooting and death of young Tamir on the basis of law and court decisions which essentially protect police officers from criminal liability when they kill ("use deadly force") in performance of their duties.
As long as officers declare themselves to have perceived a threat -- even if there isn't one -- and that perception can be considered "reasonable", they're essentially immune from criminal liability for almost any death or injury they cause in the course of performing their duties.
In the case of Tamir Rice, the reports claim that the officers involved reasonably perceived a mortal threat to themselves when young Rice approached Officer Loemann and reached for his waistband thus justifying the immediate use of lethal force.
The perception of a mortal threat -- even though objectively there wasn't one -- had to do with the dispatch reports of "a black male with a gun" in a park outside a community center.
Here's what's wrong with that analysis:
The perception is based on faulty metrics. The fear the officers felt was due not to any objective threat to themselves or anyone else but due -- entirely in my estimation -- to the fact they were told by dispatch that there was a black male with a gun. A black male with a gun. A BLACK MALE WITH A GUN.
That, all by itself, is considered an existential threat to police and civilians in open carry Ohio.
Not only was Tamir Rice shot and killed -- on sight -- by Ohio police because he was said by a 911 caller to be armed and "brandishing," so was John Crawford III, even though neither of them were actually armed (in the sense of having a weapon with which they could do lethal harm to another) and neither, at the time he was shot and killed, was "brandishing".
All it takes is for someone to say the right words for the executioners to act.
The problem here [8 pg pdf] is police training and Supreme Court rulings that protect the officers who use deadly force even though there may be no objective threat to be neutralized.
Naturally, under the circumstances, many, many innocent people and people in one kind of crisis or another and many people who are only tangentially 'threats' will be injured and killed. And their injuries and killings will be justified by the likes of this person, for the simple reason that the law allows and protects it and the officer's perceptions of a threat -- perceptions which have been drilled in over and over again -- are all that is necessary to justify a killing or injury by police.
I've long held that 90% or more of police homicides are unnecessary. If there were a different standard of police conduct and a different way of seeing situations (ie: not all hands to waistbands are reaching for a gun; indeed very few are. And even if they were, why should that be a death sentence to be performed by summary execution on the spot? Whatever happened to "due process?") there would be little or no necessity to use lethal force in the first place. If police were trained to see each situation independently (ie: a hand to waistband doesn't necessarily mean a gun will be pulled from said waistband) and not react to each situation as if a deadly threat were present, the number of police homicides could be cut immediately and substantially. If police were trained to be skeptical of dispatch reports based on 911 calls, the number of police homicides could be cut substantially and very quickly. If police were trained to actually assess a situation before going into it guns blazing, the number of police homicides could be cut substantially. If police commanders and chiefs said to their officers that inappropriate use of firearms will result in discipline up to and including termination, the number of police homicides could be cut substantially.
I could go on. The issue is that police are not expected to value any lives but their own, and even then, their self-valuation may be very low. They need to learn to value human life in general, and specifically to value the lives of those who have previously been determined to be disposable.
That day seems always to be far off, but somehow I know it is coming.
These reports that are being cited to justify the police murder of Tamir Rice are shameful, but they represent the state of police belief and practice as it is.
We must change it.
As long as officers declare themselves to have perceived a threat -- even if there isn't one -- and that perception can be considered "reasonable", they're essentially immune from criminal liability for almost any death or injury they cause in the course of performing their duties.
In the case of Tamir Rice, the reports claim that the officers involved reasonably perceived a mortal threat to themselves when young Rice approached Officer Loemann and reached for his waistband thus justifying the immediate use of lethal force.
The perception of a mortal threat -- even though objectively there wasn't one -- had to do with the dispatch reports of "a black male with a gun" in a park outside a community center.
Here's what's wrong with that analysis:
The perception is based on faulty metrics. The fear the officers felt was due not to any objective threat to themselves or anyone else but due -- entirely in my estimation -- to the fact they were told by dispatch that there was a black male with a gun. A black male with a gun. A BLACK MALE WITH A GUN.
That, all by itself, is considered an existential threat to police and civilians in open carry Ohio.
Not only was Tamir Rice shot and killed -- on sight -- by Ohio police because he was said by a 911 caller to be armed and "brandishing," so was John Crawford III, even though neither of them were actually armed (in the sense of having a weapon with which they could do lethal harm to another) and neither, at the time he was shot and killed, was "brandishing".
All it takes is for someone to say the right words for the executioners to act.
The problem here [8 pg pdf] is police training and Supreme Court rulings that protect the officers who use deadly force even though there may be no objective threat to be neutralized.
Because officers cannot be expected to read the minds of individuals and determine intent, they are instead trained to scrutinized individuals’ behavior for telltale signs. An individual’s actions are often the only signals of their intent. Obviously, if the individual being confronted is reasonably believed to be armed, the officer’s attention to those actions will be intensified. In such a situation, officers are taught to focus on the hands of the individual.3 If the hands move in the direction of a “high-risk area” – an area where a weapon may be concealed, such as inside a jacket, towards the waistband of pants, or under the seat of a car, well trained officers will immediately identify this as a serious threat.
When threat identification is combined with the concept of action versus reaction, an officer’s need to make split-second judgments with respect to the use of force becomes evident. Action versus reaction is simply the recognition that there is a certain amount of time required for every person to recognize a stimulus, formulate a response to that stimulus, and then carry out that response. When applied to deadly force situations, action versus reaction refers to the time it takes for an officer to observe the actions of an individual, such as the movement of an individual’s hands, perceive those actions as threatening, calculate possible responses to the treat, determine what level of force is necessary, and then complete the reaction. The reactions of a well-trained officer may be quick, but they are not instantaneous. The time differential between a threatening action occurring and the ability to respond to that threat always puts law enforcement officers in the position of having to catch-up. The practical effect of action versus reaction in deadly force situations is that officers cannot wait to react until they are absolutely certain of an individual’s malicious intent. If an officer waits to be certain that the individual reaching into a high-risk area is retrieving a weapon, action versus reaction dictates that the weapon could easily be used against the officer before he or she has an opportunity to respond.This is the root of the problem right here. The passage was written by a former FBI trainer now retired, someone whose wisdom, if you want to call it that, has formed the basis for police training with regard to 'threats' and their 'neutralization' for decades. The principle is that perception rules all, and instant action in the face of a perceived 'threat' -- whether there is really a threat to the officer or someone else -- is drilled into the officer over and over, without regard to either the necessity of using lethal force in the first place or to the consequences of the use of lethal force on the victim.
Naturally, under the circumstances, many, many innocent people and people in one kind of crisis or another and many people who are only tangentially 'threats' will be injured and killed. And their injuries and killings will be justified by the likes of this person, for the simple reason that the law allows and protects it and the officer's perceptions of a threat -- perceptions which have been drilled in over and over again -- are all that is necessary to justify a killing or injury by police.
I've long held that 90% or more of police homicides are unnecessary. If there were a different standard of police conduct and a different way of seeing situations (ie: not all hands to waistbands are reaching for a gun; indeed very few are. And even if they were, why should that be a death sentence to be performed by summary execution on the spot? Whatever happened to "due process?") there would be little or no necessity to use lethal force in the first place. If police were trained to see each situation independently (ie: a hand to waistband doesn't necessarily mean a gun will be pulled from said waistband) and not react to each situation as if a deadly threat were present, the number of police homicides could be cut immediately and substantially. If police were trained to be skeptical of dispatch reports based on 911 calls, the number of police homicides could be cut substantially and very quickly. If police were trained to actually assess a situation before going into it guns blazing, the number of police homicides could be cut substantially. If police commanders and chiefs said to their officers that inappropriate use of firearms will result in discipline up to and including termination, the number of police homicides could be cut substantially.
I could go on. The issue is that police are not expected to value any lives but their own, and even then, their self-valuation may be very low. They need to learn to value human life in general, and specifically to value the lives of those who have previously been determined to be disposable.
That day seems always to be far off, but somehow I know it is coming.
These reports that are being cited to justify the police murder of Tamir Rice are shameful, but they represent the state of police belief and practice as it is.
We must change it.
OT: Houses
Looks like quite an interesting place:
Las Milpas -- "The [Corn]Fields". I've passed by it any number of times without realizing it was there. It's set back quite a ways from the street, and I'm not at all sure you can even see it when passing by. For sale. $12.5 million. A sure thing. This is not the most expensive property I've ever seen listed in Santa Fe, but it's close to it. Some of the swells have that kind of money to be sure, but whether any of them would be willing to part with their lucre for an "authentic-historic" adobe (supposedly the only one on the Eastside) is an open question.
The listing says the house was built in 1886, well into the Territorial period, so I have a difficult time believing it was built the way it appears now -- a rather early colonial casa (c. 1700) that's been added to but only slightly modified over the years by people with plenty of money. Yes, this is a big place, and even in the 1880s a place like this would have cost a good deal to build and even more to maintain.
No, I suspect it was built as a fairly ordinary Victorian house -- modified for adobe construction and local weather conditions -- and then later (probably in the1920s) it was remodeled into the formative Spanish-Pueblo "Santa Fe Style" that nowadays makes Santa Fe into what's been called "Adobe Disneyland."
So I did a little research and discovered that actually, Las Milpas was in fact remodeled in the 1920s and the current compound is a relatively recent renovation, remodel and expansion done by one of Santa Fe's show business elite in authentic early colonial style. Well, well, well. It's more like a setting for a movie that's now passing for a museum.
There are several house museums in the region (Casa San Ysidro, Las Golondrinas) that preserve something of the Spanish colonial era lifestyle for the edification of contemporary schoolchildren, scholars and visitors. I used to be fascinated with these sorts of places in California (where there are quite a few of them) and I enjoy the ones I've found in New Mexico.
We live in something of an Old House ourselves.
As I've mentioned previously, our house is a pioneer adobe, started about 1900 when this area was (finally) opened for settlement by the courts (including the Supreme Court) which extinguished competing land grant claims. Its style is not that of Santa Fe. It's pretty standard late Victorian, and the only way you'd know this is an adobe house is by the thick walls and deep window recesses. The adobe and stucco were covered with aluminum siding in the 1950s when the house was last remodeled. So friends who've come to visit sometimes have a hard time picturing its adobe-ness and antiquity.
Most people don't want to live in places like this because they're really pretty rough and can be hard to heat, cool and maintain. They're drafty, not well insulated (despite the legendary insulation properties of adobe), the floors creak, they're dusty and a home for spiders and other fauna, and in our case, there is no finished floor over most of the house. The subfloor (ancient and refinished) is the finished floor, and it's been that way from the get go.
Our pipes freeze regularly in the winter because of the lack of insulation on the one hand and our tendency to forget to run a stream of water through the pipes during particularly cold weather. Thankfully, the previous owner replaced the galvanized iron pipes with plastic that doesn't burst when the pipes freeze. Good move.
During particularly cold and windy weather, drafts come up through the floor and it can get very chilly at floor level. On the other hand, the heaters can generally defeat the drafts if they're on long enough -- which means that our utility bills can be pretty high, certainly much higher than they were in California. But then the tradeoff is that our basic housing expense is half or less of what it was in California.
We haven't tried to retro-remodel the place into something like it might have appeared when it was first constructed, though we have a lot of old stuff inside the house. I've thought about doing a major remodel retro-remodel, though.
If we did, our place would probably look something like this:
But when I checked on costs to do this kind of remodel some time ago, I found it was well beyond our budget. More than likely, it still is. The cost to do it is probably two or three times the value of the house in any case.
Some people have wondered why we live in this house when there ought to be others which would suit our needs -- possibly better than this house does -- and not cost so much to maintain, heat and cool?
I was attracted to this house from the moment I saw its picture in the listing ten years ago, and when I visited and learned some of its history, I said, "This is the one." From the time I was little, I wanted to live in an adobe house. The idea of living in a house built from the earth itself appealed to me. The fact was that people had been making and living in such houses for thousands of years, and it seemed to me to be a thoroughly natural way to use available resources for shelter.
Indians in New Mexico had long used a form of adobe to build their pueblo communities, but they didn't -- generally -- use adobe bricks. Instead they built with hand-shaped "turtles" -- roundish masses surrounded with adobe mud. They also used puddled adobe and forms of construction which resembled pottery making.
When the Spanish came, brick making was introduced. It was revolutionary in the sense that it was much faster than the Indian way of building with adobe, but it didn't really change the nature of the structures that were built. Spanish colonial structures were generally separated rather than coalesced as was the case with many of the Indian pueblos that functioned as apartment buildings, but the nature of the structures built by the Spanish and those built by the Indians -- multiple rooms for housing and storage typically built around a plaza or courtyard -- were almost identical.
The main difference was the number of people (and animals) housed in any given compound and the finish and decoration of the resulting structures.
Las Milpas is intended to resemble a Spanish colonial compound that would have been built over a couple of centuries (say 1700-1900) by generations of a particular Spanish family. While it claims to be "authentic," it's actually an "authentic re-creation." It's not original, in other words.
However, as a re-creation, it's quite appealing. When I first saw the photos of the place, I was captivated. If only our place looked like that! Well, no. On second thought, no.
I think Las Milpas would be a very difficult place to live in.
It seems to ramble somewhat randomly -- which is (and isn't) "authentic." It doesn't appear to have modern heating (which might be a problem in the cold-cold Santa Fe winters.) I don't see a kitchen among the pictures at all (although there must be one, no? One is mentioned in the story. but maybe the cooking is fired by wood, and water is carried in jars from the acequia out back?) and only one bathroom is pictured. For some reason, I feel something of a shiver when I see it. Brr.
In other words, it seems like the effort to make it authentically historic has made it difficult or impossible to include modern conveniences. That's OK up to a point, but there comes a point where the discomfort level rises so much that almost nothing else matters...
No, let's not be quite so deliberately uncomfortable.
And yet Las Milpas has a very strong appeal -- to me. I think I would really like to imagine myself living there at some point in the long-ago. It reminds me in some ways of Mabel Dodge Luhan's Los Gallos house in Taos. That house was expanded from a core of four rooms to quite a large place in the 1920s, and it has a great deal of appeal to visitors and caretakers alike. It is "authentic" in the sense that it was built by Indian labor according to Indian designs (Tony Luhan was the builder-creator). But there are modern conveniences, and so the discomfort level is lessened.
If we ever do retro-remodel our own house, I suspect the result will be a sort of hybrid between high -- or low -- Victorian and Arts and Crafts. Box beams instead of vigas, for example, touches of stained glass, wood floors instead of ceramic tile, and probably fireplaces with mantles instead of the kiva style so popular in the Santa Fe tradition.
But that may be years away if it ever comes...
(I've been working on another post about houses I've lived in over the years that have been influential in the way I see things... one day I may find time to complete it and post it!)
Las Milpas -- "The [Corn]Fields". I've passed by it any number of times without realizing it was there. It's set back quite a ways from the street, and I'm not at all sure you can even see it when passing by. For sale. $12.5 million. A sure thing. This is not the most expensive property I've ever seen listed in Santa Fe, but it's close to it. Some of the swells have that kind of money to be sure, but whether any of them would be willing to part with their lucre for an "authentic-historic" adobe (supposedly the only one on the Eastside) is an open question.
The listing says the house was built in 1886, well into the Territorial period, so I have a difficult time believing it was built the way it appears now -- a rather early colonial casa (c. 1700) that's been added to but only slightly modified over the years by people with plenty of money. Yes, this is a big place, and even in the 1880s a place like this would have cost a good deal to build and even more to maintain.
No, I suspect it was built as a fairly ordinary Victorian house -- modified for adobe construction and local weather conditions -- and then later (probably in the1920s) it was remodeled into the formative Spanish-Pueblo "Santa Fe Style" that nowadays makes Santa Fe into what's been called "Adobe Disneyland."
So I did a little research and discovered that actually, Las Milpas was in fact remodeled in the 1920s and the current compound is a relatively recent renovation, remodel and expansion done by one of Santa Fe's show business elite in authentic early colonial style. Well, well, well. It's more like a setting for a movie that's now passing for a museum.
There are several house museums in the region (Casa San Ysidro, Las Golondrinas) that preserve something of the Spanish colonial era lifestyle for the edification of contemporary schoolchildren, scholars and visitors. I used to be fascinated with these sorts of places in California (where there are quite a few of them) and I enjoy the ones I've found in New Mexico.
We live in something of an Old House ourselves.
As I've mentioned previously, our house is a pioneer adobe, started about 1900 when this area was (finally) opened for settlement by the courts (including the Supreme Court) which extinguished competing land grant claims. Its style is not that of Santa Fe. It's pretty standard late Victorian, and the only way you'd know this is an adobe house is by the thick walls and deep window recesses. The adobe and stucco were covered with aluminum siding in the 1950s when the house was last remodeled. So friends who've come to visit sometimes have a hard time picturing its adobe-ness and antiquity.
Most people don't want to live in places like this because they're really pretty rough and can be hard to heat, cool and maintain. They're drafty, not well insulated (despite the legendary insulation properties of adobe), the floors creak, they're dusty and a home for spiders and other fauna, and in our case, there is no finished floor over most of the house. The subfloor (ancient and refinished) is the finished floor, and it's been that way from the get go.
Our pipes freeze regularly in the winter because of the lack of insulation on the one hand and our tendency to forget to run a stream of water through the pipes during particularly cold weather. Thankfully, the previous owner replaced the galvanized iron pipes with plastic that doesn't burst when the pipes freeze. Good move.
During particularly cold and windy weather, drafts come up through the floor and it can get very chilly at floor level. On the other hand, the heaters can generally defeat the drafts if they're on long enough -- which means that our utility bills can be pretty high, certainly much higher than they were in California. But then the tradeoff is that our basic housing expense is half or less of what it was in California.
We haven't tried to retro-remodel the place into something like it might have appeared when it was first constructed, though we have a lot of old stuff inside the house. I've thought about doing a major remodel retro-remodel, though.
If we did, our place would probably look something like this:
But when I checked on costs to do this kind of remodel some time ago, I found it was well beyond our budget. More than likely, it still is. The cost to do it is probably two or three times the value of the house in any case.
Some people have wondered why we live in this house when there ought to be others which would suit our needs -- possibly better than this house does -- and not cost so much to maintain, heat and cool?
I was attracted to this house from the moment I saw its picture in the listing ten years ago, and when I visited and learned some of its history, I said, "This is the one." From the time I was little, I wanted to live in an adobe house. The idea of living in a house built from the earth itself appealed to me. The fact was that people had been making and living in such houses for thousands of years, and it seemed to me to be a thoroughly natural way to use available resources for shelter.
Indians in New Mexico had long used a form of adobe to build their pueblo communities, but they didn't -- generally -- use adobe bricks. Instead they built with hand-shaped "turtles" -- roundish masses surrounded with adobe mud. They also used puddled adobe and forms of construction which resembled pottery making.
When the Spanish came, brick making was introduced. It was revolutionary in the sense that it was much faster than the Indian way of building with adobe, but it didn't really change the nature of the structures that were built. Spanish colonial structures were generally separated rather than coalesced as was the case with many of the Indian pueblos that functioned as apartment buildings, but the nature of the structures built by the Spanish and those built by the Indians -- multiple rooms for housing and storage typically built around a plaza or courtyard -- were almost identical.
The main difference was the number of people (and animals) housed in any given compound and the finish and decoration of the resulting structures.
Las Milpas is intended to resemble a Spanish colonial compound that would have been built over a couple of centuries (say 1700-1900) by generations of a particular Spanish family. While it claims to be "authentic," it's actually an "authentic re-creation." It's not original, in other words.
However, as a re-creation, it's quite appealing. When I first saw the photos of the place, I was captivated. If only our place looked like that! Well, no. On second thought, no.
I think Las Milpas would be a very difficult place to live in.
It seems to ramble somewhat randomly -- which is (and isn't) "authentic." It doesn't appear to have modern heating (which might be a problem in the cold-cold Santa Fe winters.) I don't see a kitchen among the pictures at all (although there must be one, no? One is mentioned in the story. but maybe the cooking is fired by wood, and water is carried in jars from the acequia out back?) and only one bathroom is pictured. For some reason, I feel something of a shiver when I see it. Brr.
In other words, it seems like the effort to make it authentically historic has made it difficult or impossible to include modern conveniences. That's OK up to a point, but there comes a point where the discomfort level rises so much that almost nothing else matters...
No, let's not be quite so deliberately uncomfortable.
And yet Las Milpas has a very strong appeal -- to me. I think I would really like to imagine myself living there at some point in the long-ago. It reminds me in some ways of Mabel Dodge Luhan's Los Gallos house in Taos. That house was expanded from a core of four rooms to quite a large place in the 1920s, and it has a great deal of appeal to visitors and caretakers alike. It is "authentic" in the sense that it was built by Indian labor according to Indian designs (Tony Luhan was the builder-creator). But there are modern conveniences, and so the discomfort level is lessened.
If we ever do retro-remodel our own house, I suspect the result will be a sort of hybrid between high -- or low -- Victorian and Arts and Crafts. Box beams instead of vigas, for example, touches of stained glass, wood floors instead of ceramic tile, and probably fireplaces with mantles instead of the kiva style so popular in the Santa Fe tradition.
But that may be years away if it ever comes...
(I've been working on another post about houses I've lived in over the years that have been influential in the way I see things... one day I may find time to complete it and post it!)
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
The Kunduz Hospital Atrocity
The number of killed and wounded at the Kunduz, Afghanistan hospital run by MSF is somewhat uncertain. Dozens are dead or injured, at any rate.
They were killed and wounded during a nighttime attack from above. At least one US AC-130 and possibly one or more helicopter gunships fired on the hospital's main building around 2am, largely destroying the hospital and causing significant death and injury to patients (some of whom are reported to have "burned in their beds") and to staff.
MSF has called the attack a war crime.
The Defense Department has characterized it as an "accident," or perhaps a "tragic" incident justified by reports of Taliban fighters using the site to fire on American and/or Afghan forces operating in the area to retake Kunduz from Taliban insurgents, yadda yadda.
MSF insists that there were no Taliban fighters on the grounds or in the hospital, and there was no firing from the compound before or during the attack.
Of course under the shadowy Rules of Engagement in Afghanistan and other theaters of our many overseas wars, it doesn't matter whether the reports of Taliban fighters using the grounds and hospital as positions from which to fire on American and Afghan forces are true or false. It only matters that there are reports of suspected enemy presence or action from such and such a location to unleash Death From Above. Confirmation is never required as actual confirmation might jeopardize a troop on the ground. Can't have that. Good heavens no.
Force protection is All Important. The deaths of untold numbers of civilians, and the destruction of protected infrastructure such as hospitals, power plants, water treatment and pumping plants, etc, matters far less (actually not at all) compared to the necessity to protect the force.
Such death and destruction is patently a war crime under various treaties, but it's routine in the US pursuit of Empire, and there is no plausible prosecutorial means to hold the Imperial forces liable. Much the same is true of Israel's actions in its attacks on Gaza. Israel routinely attacks and destroys protected sites and infrastructure, killing untold numbers of civilians and other protected individuals, and Israel justifies it through reference to reports of enemy action at or near these sites -- or doesn't bother justifying it at all, it just does it.
"Investigations" by the United States or Israel into these frequently repeated actions are typically farces which exist solely to exonerate those who conducted the operations. In any rational world they would be considered war crimes.
But we are not in a rational world.
We are in a world of illusion and deception, in which literally any presence or action -- or lack of action -- can be interpreted as a "threat" to Imperial forces, and such "threats" can be/will be suppressed with lethal force. There's nothing rational about it. It's all "gut" and "perception," illusion and deception. And above all, it's force protection. From phantoms.
I've compared these incidents with domestic police actions which result in death and destruction. It literally does not matter whether there is an actual threat involved in police use of lethal force. All that matters at law is that there is a perception of a threat -- or simply reports that there is a threat -- for domestic police forces to justify use of lethal force.
False or inaccurate reports are sufficient.
Thus, for example, John Crawford III and Tamir Rice were killed by police on the basis of false/inaccurate reports of 911 callers and dispatchers. It didn't matter what Crawford and Rice were really doing, nor did it matter that they weren't threats of any kind. All that mattered was that they were suspected and reported as potentially threatening.
That is sufficient justification for police use of lethal force in this country, and it is sufficient justification for military action overseas -- such as the constant drone attacks on "suspected militants," the frequent attacks on wedding parties by US forces and their allies, and the recent deadly attack on the Kunduz hospital.
In a rational world, they would be crimes against humanity.
But we are not in a rational world.
[Maybe some links later; busy day today.]
They were killed and wounded during a nighttime attack from above. At least one US AC-130 and possibly one or more helicopter gunships fired on the hospital's main building around 2am, largely destroying the hospital and causing significant death and injury to patients (some of whom are reported to have "burned in their beds") and to staff.
MSF has called the attack a war crime.
The Defense Department has characterized it as an "accident," or perhaps a "tragic" incident justified by reports of Taliban fighters using the site to fire on American and/or Afghan forces operating in the area to retake Kunduz from Taliban insurgents, yadda yadda.
MSF insists that there were no Taliban fighters on the grounds or in the hospital, and there was no firing from the compound before or during the attack.
Of course under the shadowy Rules of Engagement in Afghanistan and other theaters of our many overseas wars, it doesn't matter whether the reports of Taliban fighters using the grounds and hospital as positions from which to fire on American and Afghan forces are true or false. It only matters that there are reports of suspected enemy presence or action from such and such a location to unleash Death From Above. Confirmation is never required as actual confirmation might jeopardize a troop on the ground. Can't have that. Good heavens no.
Force protection is All Important. The deaths of untold numbers of civilians, and the destruction of protected infrastructure such as hospitals, power plants, water treatment and pumping plants, etc, matters far less (actually not at all) compared to the necessity to protect the force.
Such death and destruction is patently a war crime under various treaties, but it's routine in the US pursuit of Empire, and there is no plausible prosecutorial means to hold the Imperial forces liable. Much the same is true of Israel's actions in its attacks on Gaza. Israel routinely attacks and destroys protected sites and infrastructure, killing untold numbers of civilians and other protected individuals, and Israel justifies it through reference to reports of enemy action at or near these sites -- or doesn't bother justifying it at all, it just does it.
"Investigations" by the United States or Israel into these frequently repeated actions are typically farces which exist solely to exonerate those who conducted the operations. In any rational world they would be considered war crimes.
But we are not in a rational world.
We are in a world of illusion and deception, in which literally any presence or action -- or lack of action -- can be interpreted as a "threat" to Imperial forces, and such "threats" can be/will be suppressed with lethal force. There's nothing rational about it. It's all "gut" and "perception," illusion and deception. And above all, it's force protection. From phantoms.
I've compared these incidents with domestic police actions which result in death and destruction. It literally does not matter whether there is an actual threat involved in police use of lethal force. All that matters at law is that there is a perception of a threat -- or simply reports that there is a threat -- for domestic police forces to justify use of lethal force.
False or inaccurate reports are sufficient.
Thus, for example, John Crawford III and Tamir Rice were killed by police on the basis of false/inaccurate reports of 911 callers and dispatchers. It didn't matter what Crawford and Rice were really doing, nor did it matter that they weren't threats of any kind. All that mattered was that they were suspected and reported as potentially threatening.
That is sufficient justification for police use of lethal force in this country, and it is sufficient justification for military action overseas -- such as the constant drone attacks on "suspected militants," the frequent attacks on wedding parties by US forces and their allies, and the recent deadly attack on the Kunduz hospital.
In a rational world, they would be crimes against humanity.
But we are not in a rational world.
[Maybe some links later; busy day today.]
Saturday, October 3, 2015
Oh Now.... Priorities!!!
AG Loretta Lynch has opened her yap and apparently caused something of a stir in the activist community by dismissing the requirement that local police forces maintain and submit records of all the police killings and deaths in custody that happen in their jurisdictions.
No, she proclaims, keeping track of the "minutae" of police-public interactions is less important than "improving" police-community relations...
All righty then.
Statistics on police killings of civilians and civilian deaths in custody have been vastly understated for any number of years. I don't think there's ever been an accurate official count, and the statistics released by FBI are simply ridiculous. That wasn't even noticed beyond a certain community of activists until last year's uproar over the deaths of James Boyd, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and so very many others.
Then a 'national conversation' got underway about the problem of police killings of civilians, and part of that 'conversation' was the lack of accurate and complete official data on the number of civilians killed by police and civilian deaths in custody. Nobody was keeping track because it wasn't required.
Actually it was required. A law was passed in 1996 requiring police departments to report incidents of use of force and deaths in custody, but it was never enforced due to complaints from the field that the costs of reporting were beyond the abilities of many departments to handle. Consequently they couldn't be required to report.
Media stepped into the vacuum, first with a Facebook page called "Killed by Police" begun in May of 2013. This is an effort to track every media report of police killing of civilians and every report of civilian death in custody in almost real time. To date, it is the most comprehensive and up to date listing of civilian deaths at the hands of police in existence. It is not, however, the flashiest, nor is it necessarily the most often cited. That would be the Guardian's "The Counted." In a distant third place would be the Washington Post's data on police shootings of civilians.
I noticed long ago that local media was more than happy to publicize police killings of civilians -- no doubt on the journalistic principle that "if it bleeds it leads". Some of the reports were quite lurid. On the other hand, they almost always stuck with the police version of events, as if there were some Immortal Truth in police statements -- which, of course, always justified their actions in eliminating the threat of yet one more civilian perpetrator.
It became a routine. Someone would be killed by a police officer. Inevitably, their mug shots and criminal history would be promptly released and litany of offenses which led to their death would be read out, almost always including "pointing a gun" or "reaching for waistband" thus causing the officer to "fear for his life and the safety of others" and justifying the discharge of his duty weapon. The suspect/subject subsequently "died" -- exactly how is "under investigation." The officer involved has been put on "standard paid administrative leave."
These reports were sometimes accompanied by dash-cam or body-cam views of the incident, but many times, there was no verification of police reports at all. Media accepted whatever the police said about these killings almost always without question. But that started to change when civilian witness videos became more and more available. Many of these videos showed quite clearly that the police version of events were fraudulent and false. Too many unarmed people, too many innocents were being killed, and police routinely felt comfortable lying about what happened.
Oh.
Police departments saw this discrepancy as primarily a public relations problem. They did not, at least at first, see any problem with their actions. Killings by police were always justified, and the lies and falsehoods that wound up in reports were merely the result of the "fog of battle" -- or what have you.
Police only killed out of absolute necessity, and only as the last resort. Always.
Videos showed that in many cases, police killed their victims on sight or within seconds of the encounter, without bothering to find out what was really happening; many victims were unarmed; some were surrendering or attempting to obey commands barked by officers when they were shot. Others were clearly having psychological issues that prevented immediate compliance, and so they were shot. Over and over again, police were shown escalating situations rather than defusing them, these escalations leading too often to use of deadly force by police. Too many times, police were shown using deadly force where none was called for, often in response to a 911 call from a concerned family member requesting medical intervention.
And of course these videos exposed a glaring racial disparity in police use of force and killings. Police abused and killed black people at a rate far greater than that of whites. It was plain to see. Black people were being shot and killed by police as a matter of course, whereas white folks would often be treated with kid gloves -- no matter if they were armed or even shooting at police. The discrepancy was stark and obvious. And it wasn't just black people; Native Americans, Hispanics, and mentally ill people of any race were being subjected to lethal force as a matter of course.
The rate of killing by police was much higher than had been previously believed due to the significant undercount annually reported by the FBI. The actual death rate at the hands of police is still unknown because many deaths in custody aren't reported. But just those police involved homicides reported in the media were three times the number cited by the FBI in its incomplete -- actually false -- reports.
Now Loretta Lynch is saying we don't really need accurate statistics on the number of deaths caused by police -- as gaining those statistics might-could be a burden on already over-stressed and under-funded/staffed police departments, and we really want to improve relationships with the communities police patrol rather than obsessing on numbers anyway, right?
Good God.
Good freaking God. What is the matter with her?
Crime is at a nearly all-time low. There are more people in jail and prison in this country than in any other nation in the world. Well over a thousand people die at the hands of police in this country every year, far more than in any other first world nation, and too often those who die at the hands of police should not have been subjected to lethal force. Yet almost always those homicides are ruled "justified" because police did the killing and there are layers of protections for police when they use lethal force -- whether or not it's objectively justified.
It's a huge problem and it appears to be growing.
Loretta doesn't want statistics, though. She wants "improved relationships." This goes right back to the earlier police departmental idea that the problem of police killings is one of perception -- PR -- not action. In other words, it's about the propaganda, not about the killing.
That Loretta Lynch apparently buys into this bullshit is troubling, yes? Well, it is to me.
On the other hand, I've seen so many consent decrees with various police departments around the country which seem designed to seek better ways to justify the police killings not reduce them.
This convinced me long ago that the DoJ really has no interest in lowering the rate of police homicide. Its primary interest is in coordinating police departments and police conduct to fit a standard of behavior -- and killing -- that will be "more professional" and gain greater public confidence and respect.
Yes. Well...
Community relations under those circumstances really are more important than statistics on police homicides.
I'm also led to believe that the FBI director doesn't want to have to bother with more complete/accurate statistics. There are real crimes to fight, after all.
No. This won't do.
We need an outcry, loud and sustained, against this attitude by the Top Cops. Stop the bullshit. End the deceit.
No, she proclaims, keeping track of the "minutae" of police-public interactions is less important than "improving" police-community relations...
All righty then.
Statistics on police killings of civilians and civilian deaths in custody have been vastly understated for any number of years. I don't think there's ever been an accurate official count, and the statistics released by FBI are simply ridiculous. That wasn't even noticed beyond a certain community of activists until last year's uproar over the deaths of James Boyd, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and so very many others.
Then a 'national conversation' got underway about the problem of police killings of civilians, and part of that 'conversation' was the lack of accurate and complete official data on the number of civilians killed by police and civilian deaths in custody. Nobody was keeping track because it wasn't required.
Actually it was required. A law was passed in 1996 requiring police departments to report incidents of use of force and deaths in custody, but it was never enforced due to complaints from the field that the costs of reporting were beyond the abilities of many departments to handle. Consequently they couldn't be required to report.
Media stepped into the vacuum, first with a Facebook page called "Killed by Police" begun in May of 2013. This is an effort to track every media report of police killing of civilians and every report of civilian death in custody in almost real time. To date, it is the most comprehensive and up to date listing of civilian deaths at the hands of police in existence. It is not, however, the flashiest, nor is it necessarily the most often cited. That would be the Guardian's "The Counted." In a distant third place would be the Washington Post's data on police shootings of civilians.
I noticed long ago that local media was more than happy to publicize police killings of civilians -- no doubt on the journalistic principle that "if it bleeds it leads". Some of the reports were quite lurid. On the other hand, they almost always stuck with the police version of events, as if there were some Immortal Truth in police statements -- which, of course, always justified their actions in eliminating the threat of yet one more civilian perpetrator.
It became a routine. Someone would be killed by a police officer. Inevitably, their mug shots and criminal history would be promptly released and litany of offenses which led to their death would be read out, almost always including "pointing a gun" or "reaching for waistband" thus causing the officer to "fear for his life and the safety of others" and justifying the discharge of his duty weapon. The suspect/subject subsequently "died" -- exactly how is "under investigation." The officer involved has been put on "standard paid administrative leave."
These reports were sometimes accompanied by dash-cam or body-cam views of the incident, but many times, there was no verification of police reports at all. Media accepted whatever the police said about these killings almost always without question. But that started to change when civilian witness videos became more and more available. Many of these videos showed quite clearly that the police version of events were fraudulent and false. Too many unarmed people, too many innocents were being killed, and police routinely felt comfortable lying about what happened.
Oh.
Police departments saw this discrepancy as primarily a public relations problem. They did not, at least at first, see any problem with their actions. Killings by police were always justified, and the lies and falsehoods that wound up in reports were merely the result of the "fog of battle" -- or what have you.
Police only killed out of absolute necessity, and only as the last resort. Always.
Videos showed that in many cases, police killed their victims on sight or within seconds of the encounter, without bothering to find out what was really happening; many victims were unarmed; some were surrendering or attempting to obey commands barked by officers when they were shot. Others were clearly having psychological issues that prevented immediate compliance, and so they were shot. Over and over again, police were shown escalating situations rather than defusing them, these escalations leading too often to use of deadly force by police. Too many times, police were shown using deadly force where none was called for, often in response to a 911 call from a concerned family member requesting medical intervention.
And of course these videos exposed a glaring racial disparity in police use of force and killings. Police abused and killed black people at a rate far greater than that of whites. It was plain to see. Black people were being shot and killed by police as a matter of course, whereas white folks would often be treated with kid gloves -- no matter if they were armed or even shooting at police. The discrepancy was stark and obvious. And it wasn't just black people; Native Americans, Hispanics, and mentally ill people of any race were being subjected to lethal force as a matter of course.
The rate of killing by police was much higher than had been previously believed due to the significant undercount annually reported by the FBI. The actual death rate at the hands of police is still unknown because many deaths in custody aren't reported. But just those police involved homicides reported in the media were three times the number cited by the FBI in its incomplete -- actually false -- reports.
Now Loretta Lynch is saying we don't really need accurate statistics on the number of deaths caused by police -- as gaining those statistics might-could be a burden on already over-stressed and under-funded/staffed police departments, and we really want to improve relationships with the communities police patrol rather than obsessing on numbers anyway, right?
Good God.
Good freaking God. What is the matter with her?
Crime is at a nearly all-time low. There are more people in jail and prison in this country than in any other nation in the world. Well over a thousand people die at the hands of police in this country every year, far more than in any other first world nation, and too often those who die at the hands of police should not have been subjected to lethal force. Yet almost always those homicides are ruled "justified" because police did the killing and there are layers of protections for police when they use lethal force -- whether or not it's objectively justified.
It's a huge problem and it appears to be growing.
Loretta doesn't want statistics, though. She wants "improved relationships." This goes right back to the earlier police departmental idea that the problem of police killings is one of perception -- PR -- not action. In other words, it's about the propaganda, not about the killing.
That Loretta Lynch apparently buys into this bullshit is troubling, yes? Well, it is to me.
On the other hand, I've seen so many consent decrees with various police departments around the country which seem designed to seek better ways to justify the police killings not reduce them.
This convinced me long ago that the DoJ really has no interest in lowering the rate of police homicide. Its primary interest is in coordinating police departments and police conduct to fit a standard of behavior -- and killing -- that will be "more professional" and gain greater public confidence and respect.
Yes. Well...
Community relations under those circumstances really are more important than statistics on police homicides.
I'm also led to believe that the FBI director doesn't want to have to bother with more complete/accurate statistics. There are real crimes to fight, after all.
No. This won't do.
We need an outcry, loud and sustained, against this attitude by the Top Cops. Stop the bullshit. End the deceit.
Thursday, October 1, 2015
Mars Water, Hmph.
I haven't written much about my favorite extraterrestrial planet Mars in quite a while -- primarily because there's not been much to say about it for quite a number of years. The problem -- at least in my estimation -- is the real reluctance of the planetary science community to go against established "knowledge" as promulgated by the Big Men of the Field. This has been true for decades, and one can assume it will be true for the foreseeable future.
But in advance of the release of the new Ridley Scott film, "The Martian," word comes that "flowing water" has been found and confirmed on the surface of Mars. Uhhh. Well....
Sure. Why not?
The streaks that have given rise to the current findings have been known and noted for nearly 20 years, and the "discovery" that they are presently active has been recognized for almost as long. The problem has been that their cause is mystifying. Because of a long-time consensus among researchers that the surface of Mars is too cold and the atmosphere is too thin for liquid water to exist at all, research tended to discount the notion that the streaks (known as linea) were the result of flowing water, or if they were that the water which made them had flowed recently -- which could be any time within the last few million years.
This tendency to discount what seems so obvious has been strong among Mars researchers for many a long year, and it continues today.
The idea that water can -- and does -- currently flow at the surface of Mars, at least intermittently, is still regarded with some suspicion. The idea that other substances may be liquid and flow at current Martian surface temperatures and pressures is generally dismissed entirely.
Myself, I was once a fairly strong advocate of current surface water on Mars as it seemed to me that the visual evidence* of what appeared to be geysers, springs, flows and so on was too strong to be ignored, yet it was ignored. Or the evidence was interpreted so as to preclude water or any other flowing liquid.
(* link is to a site which hosts thousands of images of the Martian surface acquired by the Mars Global Surveyor between 1997 and 2003, images that I and many others scoured intensely as they were posted for various interesting features, including streaks and other signs of current flows.)
After a time, I began to think about other volatiles on the surface that could mimic water -- look just like water but not be water and act almost identically under the current surface conditions.... what substance could do that?
It occurred to me that an aqueous solution of sulfuric acid -- which is stable in liquid form down to around -63C and .05mb atmospheric pressure -- would be an ideal candidate. It would appear to be liquid water, and it would act just like liquid water (apart from its solvent qualities), but it would not be liquid water. It would be battery acid. There would be no easy way to tell from a distance (such as an orbiting satellite or from Earth) just what the substance was. The only chemical difference between sulfuric acid and water is the presence of a sulfur atom and three additional oxygen atoms.
But at the time I was proposing sulfuric acid as a potential surface fluid on Mars, the consensus was that the likeliest fluid -- if there were current fluid flows -- would be water, probably water heavy with salt. Well, it would have to be because only brines can sustain a liquid phase under current Martian surface conditions. Even then, the period of liquid phase would tend to be brief unless the salt content was high.
When the Phoenix Lander exposed a patch of ice directly under the craft, the water scenario brightened considerably. Ice would indicate fresh water (although a brine could freeze at low enough temperatures). But there was a puzzlement: droplets of some fluid appeared -- and stayed -- on the landing struts for quite some time. It was at first assumed that these droplets were water liberated from the ice below by the heat of the retro rockets as the craft landed. But how could it be? The droplets were in shadow, and the temperature in shadow was well below the freezing point of even brines. These droplets appeared to remain liquid for... days, weeks, months. The atmospheric pressure was also low enough that when patches of ice were exposed during digging efforts they sublimated directly into gas once exposed to the air and sunlight. There was no observable liquid phase -- to water ice.
Some other fluid must have been seen on those landing struts, but what? It almost certainly wasn't water.
As analysis continued, salts were observed in the soil, one of the most interesting being perchlorate, used as a cleaning solvent on Earth. It was speculated that perchlorate in solution with water would produce a brine which could withstand surface conditions and remain liquid, and potentially, it could harbor microbial life.
This was actually a quite radical departure from previous "knowledge" about the surface of Mars. After the ambiguous life-detection results of the Viking Landers (c. 1976) a theory got going that suggested that the surface was sterile, and it was sterilized by a combination of some sort of hyper-oxide in the soil (substances which have never been observed) and the ultraviolet flux from the sun which is unimpeded by the Martian atmosphere. This theory was maintained for many years, and proposed that not only was the surface sterile, but it would be lethal to any living thing, including you and me. Simply breathing Mars dust might well be enough to kill you.
I never believed it, but it was the standard model of Mars for many years.
Just as a blood-red surface and brilliant orange-red sky were standard for so long. Though they were false renderings made for publicity, they remained the most frequently seen images of the Martian surface for decades despite repeated calls from the public for more accurate renderings.
The streaks that have caused all the buzz were first seen in the Mars Global Surveyor images in the late 1990s, though there were hints of them long before that. While much of the surface of Mars appears to be static -- except for dust storms and occasional small impacts -- there are areas that demonstrate considerable activity, including dust devils, some features that may be fluid geysers, active sand geysers, snow fall at and near the poles, possible glaciers, apparently explosive deflation of hillsides, land slides, and these streaks. They're found mostly in mid latitudes and equatorial areas mostly along the rims of craters and cliff faces. They tend to be a good deal darker than the surrounding terrain, but in some cases, they are quite a bit lighter. They have been observed to grow quite long and then they stop. Typically they fade away after a few months, and frequently they reappear in the same general areas once the surface temperatures warm up. Usually, they are seen when surface temperatures are between 250K and 300K -- in other words, somewhat cooler than to well above the melting point of pure water ice.
While it seemed possible to those with open minds that these streaks were the result of some kind of water flows, it was very difficult, indeed nearly impossible, to prove. Liquid water could not flow or persist at the Martian surface for any length of time because the temperature and pressure were in most places too low for too long. Thus even if there had been flowing water at the surface in the past, it would have been temporary unless the temperatures and atmospheric pressures were a good deal higher than they are today.
I'm one of those who tends to think that Mars is currently in a warm period, perhaps the warmest it's experienced in the planet's history. I doubt there was ever a warmer and wetter past, and I doubt there was ever an ocean as we would know one. There may have been a relatively heavy ice cover in some -- or many -- areas and there may have been intermittent lakes in many areas. But such water (or other fluid) which appeared at the surface for however long it may have done so came from below in almost every case.
Including those streaks. One of the problems with understanding them is that in most cases they begin at or very near the tops of crater rims and cliff faces. In many cases, their origin is a point source, really undetectable at the resolution of orbiting cameras, so it's impossible to tell just what the source of these streaks is. Somehow the fluid, whatever fluid it is, has to get up to the highest surface level before flowing downslope, sometimes for a kilometer or more.
I've often wondered why the streaks begin at the tops of cliff faces or crater rims rather than taking the easy route and forming at the bottoms where the fluid -- whatever it is -- might pool and be detected as a lake or pond even if ice covered for much of the time.
Actually, there are indications that that happens in various places at various times, but those who study the streaks don't seem to pay much attention to the indications of current ponds and lakes... ah, the division of labor...
Still, there is no explanation for the origin of the streaks at the tops of crater rims and cliff faces rather than their bottoms. The mechanism is thought to be hydrologic pressure from below which could be due to almost anything, Exactly why it manifests where and how it does remains a mystery.
The notion is that the streaks are underlain with a layer of permanent ice and that the flowing water which makes the streaks visible runs over the ice when temperatures at the surface are high enough. Interestingly, atmospheric pressure doesn't seem to play much of a role in the presence or absence of streaks, it's all about latitude and temperature.
There have been indications for many years that much of the surface of Mars is underlain with ice, not solely near the poles where it was expected but all over the planet. In some areas, this ice is very near the surface, essentially at the surface. In others it may be a few meters below. The indications come from hydrogen detection by orbiting spacecraft and the detection of widespread hydrated minerals. The belief is that only water (and ice) could cause these spectral signatures. And of course ice was found essentially at the surface at the Phoenix landing site.
So, there's no absence of ice on Mars, nor is there an indication that this ice is not water ice. I would imagine that it is water ice, and depending on where it is found, it is probably in a highly pure state. Meltwater from these ice deposits might well be potable. Whoo-hoo! Mission to Mars, here we come!
Well, that is unless it is filled with nasty microbes... Is that possible? Sure. There's no sign -- yet -- that such is the case, but it's worth noting that no orbiter or lander sent to Mars since the Vikings in 1976 have carried biology-detection instruments, not even biology inferring instruments. It's worth asking why not, but answers probably won't be forthcoming. Not only have there been no direct biology detection instruments, there have been no instruments which could analyse the soil for the hypothesized hyper-oxides which supposedly sterilized the soil at the Viking landing sites of any organic matter and thus of any biology. There weren't even instruments to measure the ultraviolet flux that was supposed to be a contributing factor in the complete sterilization of the Martian surface.
It seemed as if the hypotheses advanced to explain the failure of the Vikings to detect biology for certain in 1976 were being accepted on faith without even an attempt at verification. To me, as an interested observer, it was bizarre.
It occurred to me, though, that quite possibly the hypotheses of a sterile Martian surface were never accepted (13 pg pdf), and that was why there was no apparent effort at verification. Why verify something you know isn't true? On the other hand, it might have helped to falsify those sterility hypotheses, no?
What has been learned is a sideways falsification, I guess. There are organic materials in the soil, for example, materials which, for whatever reason, the Viking instruments did not detect. There are no signs of hyper-oxides sterilizing the soil. Instead, there are widespread peroxides and perchlorates and salts and significant regions of near-surface ice, all of which indicate the presence of water both historically and currently. The notion that the surface of Mars is dry and dead and sterile is slowly -- painfully slowly -- yielding to a more complete understanding...
The surface of Mars may somewhat resemble a terrestrial desert, but it's not much like the surface of the Earth at all. It mimics... but it isn't the same.
The surface has many signs of flowing and pooling liquid -- both historic and recent/current -- but just what that liquid is or was isn't certain. It is assumed to be water, probably quite briny, but again, it's not certain. It may have been water in some places, whereas something else -- such as sulfuric acid -- may have been the surface volatile in others. There are indications of sulfates and sulfur in various places on Mars, which in combination with hydrogen and oxygen -- both of which are in fair abundance -- can produce various strengths of sulfuric acid. As an aqueous solution, it would behave almost like water -- except that it would remain liquid at very low temperatures and pressures, though eventually it would sublimate away like water.
So. The breathless announcement last week that "flowing water" had been "discovered" -- or rather confirmed -- on Mars has to come with a caveat or two. Those streaks have long been known and have long been speculated to be caused -- somehow -- by water flowing downhill. But how or why the water involved would be pumped to the tops of cliffs and crater rims in order to be released to flow down the cliffs and into craters is still a mystery. It doesn't really make hydrological sense, but it seems to be what happens.
Hydrated minerals/perchlorate salts have been spectrally found in association with the streaks but only when they are dark, not when they are faded or light. I have a problem with that in that hydrated minerals and perchlorates appear to be commonplace on the surface, found nearly everywhere. If the fading or lightening of these streaks is due to evaporation/sublimation, then the presence of salts should be stronger not weaker when the streaks have faded or lightened. But not what's found.
There has apparently been no spectral signature of water found in association with these streaks, and that's interesting all by itself. Water is simply assumed. Not necessarily wise given the way Mars deceives and mimics.
I suspect that we will not actually know about the surface of Mars until and unless people go there to measure and test and explore, and somehow survive the encounter. That adventure has been long-delayed, but what with all these new findings of "flowing water" -- and the blockbuster movie opening tomorrow -- you never know.
But in advance of the release of the new Ridley Scott film, "The Martian," word comes that "flowing water" has been found and confirmed on the surface of Mars. Uhhh. Well....
Sure. Why not?
The streaks that have given rise to the current findings have been known and noted for nearly 20 years, and the "discovery" that they are presently active has been recognized for almost as long. The problem has been that their cause is mystifying. Because of a long-time consensus among researchers that the surface of Mars is too cold and the atmosphere is too thin for liquid water to exist at all, research tended to discount the notion that the streaks (known as linea) were the result of flowing water, or if they were that the water which made them had flowed recently -- which could be any time within the last few million years.
This tendency to discount what seems so obvious has been strong among Mars researchers for many a long year, and it continues today.
The idea that water can -- and does -- currently flow at the surface of Mars, at least intermittently, is still regarded with some suspicion. The idea that other substances may be liquid and flow at current Martian surface temperatures and pressures is generally dismissed entirely.
Myself, I was once a fairly strong advocate of current surface water on Mars as it seemed to me that the visual evidence* of what appeared to be geysers, springs, flows and so on was too strong to be ignored, yet it was ignored. Or the evidence was interpreted so as to preclude water or any other flowing liquid.
(* link is to a site which hosts thousands of images of the Martian surface acquired by the Mars Global Surveyor between 1997 and 2003, images that I and many others scoured intensely as they were posted for various interesting features, including streaks and other signs of current flows.)
After a time, I began to think about other volatiles on the surface that could mimic water -- look just like water but not be water and act almost identically under the current surface conditions.... what substance could do that?
It occurred to me that an aqueous solution of sulfuric acid -- which is stable in liquid form down to around -63C and .05mb atmospheric pressure -- would be an ideal candidate. It would appear to be liquid water, and it would act just like liquid water (apart from its solvent qualities), but it would not be liquid water. It would be battery acid. There would be no easy way to tell from a distance (such as an orbiting satellite or from Earth) just what the substance was. The only chemical difference between sulfuric acid and water is the presence of a sulfur atom and three additional oxygen atoms.
But at the time I was proposing sulfuric acid as a potential surface fluid on Mars, the consensus was that the likeliest fluid -- if there were current fluid flows -- would be water, probably water heavy with salt. Well, it would have to be because only brines can sustain a liquid phase under current Martian surface conditions. Even then, the period of liquid phase would tend to be brief unless the salt content was high.
When the Phoenix Lander exposed a patch of ice directly under the craft, the water scenario brightened considerably. Ice would indicate fresh water (although a brine could freeze at low enough temperatures). But there was a puzzlement: droplets of some fluid appeared -- and stayed -- on the landing struts for quite some time. It was at first assumed that these droplets were water liberated from the ice below by the heat of the retro rockets as the craft landed. But how could it be? The droplets were in shadow, and the temperature in shadow was well below the freezing point of even brines. These droplets appeared to remain liquid for... days, weeks, months. The atmospheric pressure was also low enough that when patches of ice were exposed during digging efforts they sublimated directly into gas once exposed to the air and sunlight. There was no observable liquid phase -- to water ice.
Some other fluid must have been seen on those landing struts, but what? It almost certainly wasn't water.
As analysis continued, salts were observed in the soil, one of the most interesting being perchlorate, used as a cleaning solvent on Earth. It was speculated that perchlorate in solution with water would produce a brine which could withstand surface conditions and remain liquid, and potentially, it could harbor microbial life.
This was actually a quite radical departure from previous "knowledge" about the surface of Mars. After the ambiguous life-detection results of the Viking Landers (c. 1976) a theory got going that suggested that the surface was sterile, and it was sterilized by a combination of some sort of hyper-oxide in the soil (substances which have never been observed) and the ultraviolet flux from the sun which is unimpeded by the Martian atmosphere. This theory was maintained for many years, and proposed that not only was the surface sterile, but it would be lethal to any living thing, including you and me. Simply breathing Mars dust might well be enough to kill you.
I never believed it, but it was the standard model of Mars for many years.
Just as a blood-red surface and brilliant orange-red sky were standard for so long. Though they were false renderings made for publicity, they remained the most frequently seen images of the Martian surface for decades despite repeated calls from the public for more accurate renderings.
The streaks that have caused all the buzz were first seen in the Mars Global Surveyor images in the late 1990s, though there were hints of them long before that. While much of the surface of Mars appears to be static -- except for dust storms and occasional small impacts -- there are areas that demonstrate considerable activity, including dust devils, some features that may be fluid geysers, active sand geysers, snow fall at and near the poles, possible glaciers, apparently explosive deflation of hillsides, land slides, and these streaks. They're found mostly in mid latitudes and equatorial areas mostly along the rims of craters and cliff faces. They tend to be a good deal darker than the surrounding terrain, but in some cases, they are quite a bit lighter. They have been observed to grow quite long and then they stop. Typically they fade away after a few months, and frequently they reappear in the same general areas once the surface temperatures warm up. Usually, they are seen when surface temperatures are between 250K and 300K -- in other words, somewhat cooler than to well above the melting point of pure water ice.
While it seemed possible to those with open minds that these streaks were the result of some kind of water flows, it was very difficult, indeed nearly impossible, to prove. Liquid water could not flow or persist at the Martian surface for any length of time because the temperature and pressure were in most places too low for too long. Thus even if there had been flowing water at the surface in the past, it would have been temporary unless the temperatures and atmospheric pressures were a good deal higher than they are today.
I'm one of those who tends to think that Mars is currently in a warm period, perhaps the warmest it's experienced in the planet's history. I doubt there was ever a warmer and wetter past, and I doubt there was ever an ocean as we would know one. There may have been a relatively heavy ice cover in some -- or many -- areas and there may have been intermittent lakes in many areas. But such water (or other fluid) which appeared at the surface for however long it may have done so came from below in almost every case.
Including those streaks. One of the problems with understanding them is that in most cases they begin at or very near the tops of crater rims and cliff faces. In many cases, their origin is a point source, really undetectable at the resolution of orbiting cameras, so it's impossible to tell just what the source of these streaks is. Somehow the fluid, whatever fluid it is, has to get up to the highest surface level before flowing downslope, sometimes for a kilometer or more.
I've often wondered why the streaks begin at the tops of cliff faces or crater rims rather than taking the easy route and forming at the bottoms where the fluid -- whatever it is -- might pool and be detected as a lake or pond even if ice covered for much of the time.
Actually, there are indications that that happens in various places at various times, but those who study the streaks don't seem to pay much attention to the indications of current ponds and lakes... ah, the division of labor...
Still, there is no explanation for the origin of the streaks at the tops of crater rims and cliff faces rather than their bottoms. The mechanism is thought to be hydrologic pressure from below which could be due to almost anything, Exactly why it manifests where and how it does remains a mystery.
The notion is that the streaks are underlain with a layer of permanent ice and that the flowing water which makes the streaks visible runs over the ice when temperatures at the surface are high enough. Interestingly, atmospheric pressure doesn't seem to play much of a role in the presence or absence of streaks, it's all about latitude and temperature.
There have been indications for many years that much of the surface of Mars is underlain with ice, not solely near the poles where it was expected but all over the planet. In some areas, this ice is very near the surface, essentially at the surface. In others it may be a few meters below. The indications come from hydrogen detection by orbiting spacecraft and the detection of widespread hydrated minerals. The belief is that only water (and ice) could cause these spectral signatures. And of course ice was found essentially at the surface at the Phoenix landing site.
So, there's no absence of ice on Mars, nor is there an indication that this ice is not water ice. I would imagine that it is water ice, and depending on where it is found, it is probably in a highly pure state. Meltwater from these ice deposits might well be potable. Whoo-hoo! Mission to Mars, here we come!
Well, that is unless it is filled with nasty microbes... Is that possible? Sure. There's no sign -- yet -- that such is the case, but it's worth noting that no orbiter or lander sent to Mars since the Vikings in 1976 have carried biology-detection instruments, not even biology inferring instruments. It's worth asking why not, but answers probably won't be forthcoming. Not only have there been no direct biology detection instruments, there have been no instruments which could analyse the soil for the hypothesized hyper-oxides which supposedly sterilized the soil at the Viking landing sites of any organic matter and thus of any biology. There weren't even instruments to measure the ultraviolet flux that was supposed to be a contributing factor in the complete sterilization of the Martian surface.
It seemed as if the hypotheses advanced to explain the failure of the Vikings to detect biology for certain in 1976 were being accepted on faith without even an attempt at verification. To me, as an interested observer, it was bizarre.
It occurred to me, though, that quite possibly the hypotheses of a sterile Martian surface were never accepted (13 pg pdf), and that was why there was no apparent effort at verification. Why verify something you know isn't true? On the other hand, it might have helped to falsify those sterility hypotheses, no?
What has been learned is a sideways falsification, I guess. There are organic materials in the soil, for example, materials which, for whatever reason, the Viking instruments did not detect. There are no signs of hyper-oxides sterilizing the soil. Instead, there are widespread peroxides and perchlorates and salts and significant regions of near-surface ice, all of which indicate the presence of water both historically and currently. The notion that the surface of Mars is dry and dead and sterile is slowly -- painfully slowly -- yielding to a more complete understanding...
The surface of Mars may somewhat resemble a terrestrial desert, but it's not much like the surface of the Earth at all. It mimics... but it isn't the same.
The surface has many signs of flowing and pooling liquid -- both historic and recent/current -- but just what that liquid is or was isn't certain. It is assumed to be water, probably quite briny, but again, it's not certain. It may have been water in some places, whereas something else -- such as sulfuric acid -- may have been the surface volatile in others. There are indications of sulfates and sulfur in various places on Mars, which in combination with hydrogen and oxygen -- both of which are in fair abundance -- can produce various strengths of sulfuric acid. As an aqueous solution, it would behave almost like water -- except that it would remain liquid at very low temperatures and pressures, though eventually it would sublimate away like water.
So. The breathless announcement last week that "flowing water" had been "discovered" -- or rather confirmed -- on Mars has to come with a caveat or two. Those streaks have long been known and have long been speculated to be caused -- somehow -- by water flowing downhill. But how or why the water involved would be pumped to the tops of cliffs and crater rims in order to be released to flow down the cliffs and into craters is still a mystery. It doesn't really make hydrological sense, but it seems to be what happens.
Hydrated minerals/perchlorate salts have been spectrally found in association with the streaks but only when they are dark, not when they are faded or light. I have a problem with that in that hydrated minerals and perchlorates appear to be commonplace on the surface, found nearly everywhere. If the fading or lightening of these streaks is due to evaporation/sublimation, then the presence of salts should be stronger not weaker when the streaks have faded or lightened. But not what's found.
There has apparently been no spectral signature of water found in association with these streaks, and that's interesting all by itself. Water is simply assumed. Not necessarily wise given the way Mars deceives and mimics.
I suspect that we will not actually know about the surface of Mars until and unless people go there to measure and test and explore, and somehow survive the encounter. That adventure has been long-delayed, but what with all these new findings of "flowing water" -- and the blockbuster movie opening tomorrow -- you never know.
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