Like every other crisis in the NeoLibCon Era, the Grenfell Tower Fire crisis is devolving before our eyes into an "opportunity" for neoLibCons to consolidate their power and profit at the expense of the victims.
It's quite something to observe from afar, but we saw something similar happen with Fukushima and Acheh, and just about every other recent calamity, with the standard of inaction/action set by the Katrina Catastrophe, though the BP Horizon explosion and oil release comes in a close second.
(I'm putting 9/11 to the side for the purposes of this discussion, but it was a masterful example in its own right, though based on a somewhat different set of circumstances.)
The first principle, of course, in handling crises of this sort is to make the victims believe they are helpless and powerless; demonstrate to them that the government will say lots of "helpful" words but will do the least possible --or less -- to ameliorate their condition; and show them that the helping professionals (such as police) will kill them if they get out of line.
Works like a charm. Every time.
The second principle -- once the Rabble are in their place -- is to ensure abundant profits flow to the top of the heap where they belong. Nothing is to be done at all on behalf of the survivors unless and until those profits are guaranteed to the top, and even then, the best procedure is to do nothing AND profit anyway. Genius.
Third is to ensure that any action or lack of action consolidates power in the Ruling Class, and specifically among those approved neoLibCons who take charge of matters. There can be no serious action -- in many cases, no action at all -- which does not directly enhance neoLibCon power.
Of course, lies and deception are fundamental to the process. Delay, obfuscate, claim not to understand the problem, announce studies, inquiries, and various forms of doing nothing, endlessly examine the Big Picture, make offers of money -- always less than needed -- rather than provide adequate relief, and whenever and however possible, get resistant Rabble and designated Others out of the subject area, in a form of cleansing, never to return.
And so it goes.
I've been watching it happen in the case of the Grenfell thing (courtesy of BBC and the Guardian) but we've seen the process again and again. It is the neoLibCon standard of handling crises.
Jeremy Corbyn is bucking the trend. ("Oh Jeremy Corbyn!") and he can snipe from the sidelines or from the opposition bench in Parliament, but the key is he has no power. Even the hundreds of thousands chanting his name at Glastonbury have no power. He can rage all he wants, they can chant all they want, but they will get nowhere. Without power, they can do nothing. Or so they are meant to believe.
Grenfell Tower will be torn down and disposed of (along with the ashes of those consumed in the fire) but it will be several years on. The torch-tower will be left standing until then as a reminder to the Rabble of what can so very easily happen to them if they get out of line, or even if they don't. Just because.
Thousands of residents of council tower blocks have been displaced so far, and many more will be. Safety comes first, doesn't it?
What a world, what a world.
Showing posts with label end the madness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label end the madness. Show all posts
Thursday, June 29, 2017
Monday, November 21, 2016
#NoDAPL Update of Sorts
Native American friends of ours left from Santa Fe on Saturday with a truckload of supplies and some money for Standing Rock in solidarity with the Water Protectors who have been trying to halt construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline on Lakota Sioux Treaty Lands and under the Missouri River for months.
One of the drivers was there last month, but the other two hadn't been able to go previously. Ms Ché helped fund the trip by purchasing a wonderful sculpture from one of the artists heading toward the unknown in North Dakota. It's about an 18 hour drive from Santa Fe, so we expected them to reach Standing Rock sometime yesterday afternoon. But we haven't heard. They were planning to spend the week.
Then this happened last night.
The sheriff of Morton County, responsible for the use of water cannon against the Water Protectors, of course lied and said there was no water cannon use against people last night, they were only used to put out fires started by the "rioters". He lies because it is who he is and what he does.
The temperature was in the twenties; many Water Protectors suffered from hypothermia. There were reports of an elder and possibly others suffering cardiac arrest.
Not only were water cannons used, so were rubber bullets, tear gas, flash bangs and pepper spray. More than 160 were reported injured and 7 have been hospitalized with severe headwounds caused by whatever it was police and sheriffs were firing at the unarmed crowd. [Update: Injured were later reported to number over 200, 2 elders went into cardiac arrest, revived with CPR, 17 were hospitalized, several with serious head and body wounds from police munitions. Hypothermia was common.]
The Water Protectors were trying to remove military vehicles barricading a bridge so that emergency vehicles could pass. That's when Authorities attacked. The attack continued for hours. That's how so many were injured. I checked Unicorn Riot this morning and was shocked at what happened overnight.
The authorities in North Dakota have been out of control for a long time as they protect the pipeline, not the people or the water, but this is a significant escalation. Things are getting nastier as more and more force is utilized against the unarmed Water Protectors.
We're worried about the safety of our friends, but we also know they are very strong and resolute members of Indian Nations who will not succumb to fear of what might happen to them during their time at Standing Rock.
They are on a supply run, yes, but also on a spiritual mission. Not just for themselves but for the tribes they represent and for other Americans who listen and learn.
This is as deep running a struggle as we have jointly faced in many years, and I give all due credit to the people of Standing Rock and their millions of allies around the world who have brought the issue of Water Protection and all its ramifications into sharp focus.
More news at Unicorn Riot
And the Guardian is at least covering it.
Strength and solidarity.
Witness testimony:
More:
Testimony from one of Ms Ché's friends who is up there:
And still more:
Note the ordnance fired at the Water Protectors, the same sort of ordnance the Sheriff said wasn't used. The same sort of ordnance that caused one Water Protector to lose her arm.
These officers of the :law: are nothing but freaks.
More:
One of the drivers was there last month, but the other two hadn't been able to go previously. Ms Ché helped fund the trip by purchasing a wonderful sculpture from one of the artists heading toward the unknown in North Dakota. It's about an 18 hour drive from Santa Fe, so we expected them to reach Standing Rock sometime yesterday afternoon. But we haven't heard. They were planning to spend the week.
Then this happened last night.
Drone footage showing water cannons being used on water protectors— Carlton Banksy (@rtyson82) November 21, 2016
At the end of the clip, they try to shoot drone w/ water cannon#NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/N0S1Sic2TQ
The sheriff of Morton County, responsible for the use of water cannon against the Water Protectors, of course lied and said there was no water cannon use against people last night, they were only used to put out fires started by the "rioters". He lies because it is who he is and what he does.
The temperature was in the twenties; many Water Protectors suffered from hypothermia. There were reports of an elder and possibly others suffering cardiac arrest.
Not only were water cannons used, so were rubber bullets, tear gas, flash bangs and pepper spray. More than 160 were reported injured and 7 have been hospitalized with severe headwounds caused by whatever it was police and sheriffs were firing at the unarmed crowd. [Update: Injured were later reported to number over 200, 2 elders went into cardiac arrest, revived with CPR, 17 were hospitalized, several with serious head and body wounds from police munitions. Hypothermia was common.]
The Water Protectors were trying to remove military vehicles barricading a bridge so that emergency vehicles could pass. That's when Authorities attacked. The attack continued for hours. That's how so many were injured. I checked Unicorn Riot this morning and was shocked at what happened overnight.
The authorities in North Dakota have been out of control for a long time as they protect the pipeline, not the people or the water, but this is a significant escalation. Things are getting nastier as more and more force is utilized against the unarmed Water Protectors.
We're worried about the safety of our friends, but we also know they are very strong and resolute members of Indian Nations who will not succumb to fear of what might happen to them during their time at Standing Rock.
They are on a supply run, yes, but also on a spiritual mission. Not just for themselves but for the tribes they represent and for other Americans who listen and learn.
This is as deep running a struggle as we have jointly faced in many years, and I give all due credit to the people of Standing Rock and their millions of allies around the world who have brought the issue of Water Protection and all its ramifications into sharp focus.
More news at Unicorn Riot
And the Guardian is at least covering it.
Strength and solidarity.
Witness testimony:
More:
Testimony from one of Ms Ché's friends who is up there:
And still more:
Note the ordnance fired at the Water Protectors, the same sort of ordnance the Sheriff said wasn't used. The same sort of ordnance that caused one Water Protector to lose her arm.
These officers of the :law: are nothing but freaks.
More:
Sunday, November 13, 2016
Ugly and getting uglier
Kind of interesting from the view at 30,000 feet, but I don't know how much longer I'll bebe able to maintain my distance from the roiling unrest in the streets, nor do I have any real insight into how far it's going to spread.
There were said to be 100,000 in the streets of LA yesterday protesting the elevation of Trump to the Presidency. If it was reported that way, the number was probably quite a bit more given the media tendency to low-ball "leftist" crowd estimates.
Gee.
The protests in Portland have been called "riots" and the police have responded by firing into the crowds with "rubber projectiles," gas and smoke grenades and flash-bangs after assuring us that the protesters threw "objects" at them. A sniper apparently fired live ammunition at a protester, wounding him.
And so it goes.
On the other side, Trump partisans are either claiming the protests don't matter -- after all, the protesters are so few and they're just losers, whiners, and no accounts -- or they are Soros-funded attempts at a domestic "Color Revolution" -- and they don't matter, because Soros, and who cares, anyway?
Well, I'm not aware of any Color Revolution aspects -- yet. But the protests have been growing and spreading, and they are destabilizing wherever they pop up. There was a demonstration in Albuquerque the other day (I think it was Wednesday, I forget!) in which about 600 participated. A handful of what I assume were anarchists targeted a restaurant along the route for vandalism, and sure enough, that's what caught the local media eye (they are always on the lookout for protester "violence.") Another protest was apparently announced for Thursday night and all the mechanisms for suppression were marshaled by the authorities, but whoopsy! The protest didn't happen.
I have to say Albuquerque's local protest community is well experienced in psyching out authority, and apparently they've been doing that. Bless their hearts.
But what I'm seeing reported in the media about protests around the country should be starting to alarm Our Rulers. It's not a Color Revolution yet, but it could become one -- or something like one -- very quickly.
Personally, I wouldn't want that to happen, partly because the results where they have happened have not necessarily been what their participants intended -- sometimes they've been closer to the opposite. They tend to cause the institutionalization of a neo-liberal, exploitative and extractive power structure that acts against the interests of the People. We already have that, duh. But if a Color Revolution type general protest occurs in this country, Trump will be toast. I don't know of any target of a Color Revolution who has managed to survive the... um, process. I could be wrong, but it wouldn't look good for the survival of the current wildly corrupt and purposefully contrary power structure.
While that might be desirable in the abstract, what would take its place?
That's the problem. While there are many, many reasons to take to the streets over this appalling and outrageous (s)election, no one I know of is able to articulate an alternative. What are we supposed to do, and what sort of difference is supposed to be made?
Are we supposed to install Hillary instead of Trump? I don't see that as viable. First of all, she is saying -- along with the entire political class and the media -- to "accept" the results essentially without question and get used to Trump-the-President. The people in the streets refuse.
While Hillary has a widening popular vote lead, now estimated to top out at 2 million, but it might go to three or even four million by the time all the votes are counted, and if that happened, that would give her a clear majority in the popular vote, no one has yet looked closely at the "battleground" state totals that so surprisingly "flipped" from Clinton to Trump by a very narrow margin at the last minute -- giving him an Electoral College victory without the need for a popular vote plurality or majority.
Given all the talk about rigged elections and Putin's interference (OMG! Putin!) it's remarkable that after Trump's "shocking" "historic" "upset" no one said a word about rigging or interference again.
The Memory Hole sucked it right down.
How... interesting.
Clinton, for her part, is telling donors she "lost" because of Comey's interference. Wait. What about PUTIN????!!!!! No word.
Of course because Trump "won" he no longer has anything to say about "rigged elections," does he?
Jeebus.
They must think the Rabble are complete idiots. Well...
All right, I don't know what happened in the "battleground" states. The excuses I've heard for the "surprising" flip Clinton to Trump in those states -- and those states alone -- are that white women broke for Trump at the very last minute (because Comey -- that was Hillary's excuse) and there were all these hidden white rural voters who came out of the woods to vote for Trump, and what could you do, it was just enough to give him an EC victory, and that's it. Just accept it.
The people in the streets are saying, "No! Fuck No! Not. This. Time!"
We were told the same thing when Bush2 was handed the Presidency by a lawless Supreme Court. "Just accept it." And many did. A lot said "No," but that time, they were ignored. 60,000 or more protested Bush's inauguration in DC on the day, and there was almost no mention of it in the media. It went right down the Memory Hole too, and today hardly anybody knows it happened. "Get over it" was the constant refrain of the Busheviks, but many never did, and the outrages that Busheviks committed were so appalling and so destructive that today it's almost impossible to believe such a damaging regime was allowed to do what it did by the entire political class cheered on by a captive media. What were they thinking?
Millions took to the streets to protest the Iraq War, and they were ignored. But many, many others protested practically every aspect of the Bush Regime, and except for Cindy Sheehan sitting in her ditch in Crawford shaming Bush the Lesser, you practically wouldn't know there were any protests at all these days, because most of them were ignored at the time, and forgotten.
But they happened nonetheless and had the cumulative effect of destabilizing the regime. Not that it did any good, but it happened.
The horrors of the Bush2 Regime are not forgotten, despite the fact that the protests largely were, and I think part of the motivation of the current protests is a recognition that Trump is like Bush2 on steroids, raging and champing at the bit to commit even more mayhem to more people, faster and harder than the Busheviks did.
We will not willingly repeat that horror show.
Trump and his gang of thieves, mountebanks, torturers and warmongers have done nothing to assure us they won't engage in the kind of monstrousness the Busheviks did. In fact, they've been pretty clear they'd "finish the job" the Busheviks left undone by dismantling Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and any other remnants of a social safety net they can find, by deporting every brown person they can round up, building a higher wall to keep them Messicans out, by suppressing every aspect of dissent they can, by restricting the voting franchise to only People Who Matter, by dispensing favors to loyalists, denying them to everyone else, by going hog-wild with extraction and transport of fossil fuels (damn the Indians acting against the Dakota Access Pipeline, Trump himself stands to profit from it, get outta the way, ya damn savages!), restoring official torture programs, glassing any opposition to hegemony in the Middle East, by re-engaging in acts of war against Iran, by allying the United States with every rightwing/fascist regime on earth and on and on and on. That's the program Trump and his R cronies in Congress have been laying out, essentially daring anyone to do anything about it.
His defenders insist we must give him the benefit of the doubt because of all the Good Things he's going to do. Never mind the Bad. He's promising to increase infrastructure spending to create "jobs" -- for whom, doing what? Well, we don't know, do we? But not to worry, it will be Wonderful, and long overdue! He'll get rid of that Obamacare abomination, leaving -- perhaps -- the "prior conditions" denial of coverage provisions and offspring coverage on parents' policies until age 26 as remnant sops to the takers, losers, and whiners. But that's it. Nothing else. 20 some odd million to lose coverage, and wonder of wonders, to lose any ability to get coverage. Tough luck, suckers!
He won't start WWIII with Putin, so that's good, no? He will start a war with Iran and China and whoever else gets in his way or defies him, but they deserve it, right?
Gah. On and on.
"Give him a chance!" And more and more of the People say, "No. Not this time."
I don't know what will happen. I don't want to think the worst, but it's hard not to under the circumstances. This man and his cronies must not take office. Period.
God save us.
There were said to be 100,000 in the streets of LA yesterday protesting the elevation of Trump to the Presidency. If it was reported that way, the number was probably quite a bit more given the media tendency to low-ball "leftist" crowd estimates.
Gee.
The protests in Portland have been called "riots" and the police have responded by firing into the crowds with "rubber projectiles," gas and smoke grenades and flash-bangs after assuring us that the protesters threw "objects" at them. A sniper apparently fired live ammunition at a protester, wounding him.
And so it goes.
On the other side, Trump partisans are either claiming the protests don't matter -- after all, the protesters are so few and they're just losers, whiners, and no accounts -- or they are Soros-funded attempts at a domestic "Color Revolution" -- and they don't matter, because Soros, and who cares, anyway?
Well, I'm not aware of any Color Revolution aspects -- yet. But the protests have been growing and spreading, and they are destabilizing wherever they pop up. There was a demonstration in Albuquerque the other day (I think it was Wednesday, I forget!) in which about 600 participated. A handful of what I assume were anarchists targeted a restaurant along the route for vandalism, and sure enough, that's what caught the local media eye (they are always on the lookout for protester "violence.") Another protest was apparently announced for Thursday night and all the mechanisms for suppression were marshaled by the authorities, but whoopsy! The protest didn't happen.
I have to say Albuquerque's local protest community is well experienced in psyching out authority, and apparently they've been doing that. Bless their hearts.
But what I'm seeing reported in the media about protests around the country should be starting to alarm Our Rulers. It's not a Color Revolution yet, but it could become one -- or something like one -- very quickly.
Personally, I wouldn't want that to happen, partly because the results where they have happened have not necessarily been what their participants intended -- sometimes they've been closer to the opposite. They tend to cause the institutionalization of a neo-liberal, exploitative and extractive power structure that acts against the interests of the People. We already have that, duh. But if a Color Revolution type general protest occurs in this country, Trump will be toast. I don't know of any target of a Color Revolution who has managed to survive the... um, process. I could be wrong, but it wouldn't look good for the survival of the current wildly corrupt and purposefully contrary power structure.
While that might be desirable in the abstract, what would take its place?
That's the problem. While there are many, many reasons to take to the streets over this appalling and outrageous (s)election, no one I know of is able to articulate an alternative. What are we supposed to do, and what sort of difference is supposed to be made?
Are we supposed to install Hillary instead of Trump? I don't see that as viable. First of all, she is saying -- along with the entire political class and the media -- to "accept" the results essentially without question and get used to Trump-the-President. The people in the streets refuse.
While Hillary has a widening popular vote lead, now estimated to top out at 2 million, but it might go to three or even four million by the time all the votes are counted, and if that happened, that would give her a clear majority in the popular vote, no one has yet looked closely at the "battleground" state totals that so surprisingly "flipped" from Clinton to Trump by a very narrow margin at the last minute -- giving him an Electoral College victory without the need for a popular vote plurality or majority.
Given all the talk about rigged elections and Putin's interference (OMG! Putin!) it's remarkable that after Trump's "shocking" "historic" "upset" no one said a word about rigging or interference again.
The Memory Hole sucked it right down.
How... interesting.
Clinton, for her part, is telling donors she "lost" because of Comey's interference. Wait. What about PUTIN????!!!!! No word.
Of course because Trump "won" he no longer has anything to say about "rigged elections," does he?
Jeebus.
They must think the Rabble are complete idiots. Well...
All right, I don't know what happened in the "battleground" states. The excuses I've heard for the "surprising" flip Clinton to Trump in those states -- and those states alone -- are that white women broke for Trump at the very last minute (because Comey -- that was Hillary's excuse) and there were all these hidden white rural voters who came out of the woods to vote for Trump, and what could you do, it was just enough to give him an EC victory, and that's it. Just accept it.
The people in the streets are saying, "No! Fuck No! Not. This. Time!"
We were told the same thing when Bush2 was handed the Presidency by a lawless Supreme Court. "Just accept it." And many did. A lot said "No," but that time, they were ignored. 60,000 or more protested Bush's inauguration in DC on the day, and there was almost no mention of it in the media. It went right down the Memory Hole too, and today hardly anybody knows it happened. "Get over it" was the constant refrain of the Busheviks, but many never did, and the outrages that Busheviks committed were so appalling and so destructive that today it's almost impossible to believe such a damaging regime was allowed to do what it did by the entire political class cheered on by a captive media. What were they thinking?
Millions took to the streets to protest the Iraq War, and they were ignored. But many, many others protested practically every aspect of the Bush Regime, and except for Cindy Sheehan sitting in her ditch in Crawford shaming Bush the Lesser, you practically wouldn't know there were any protests at all these days, because most of them were ignored at the time, and forgotten.
But they happened nonetheless and had the cumulative effect of destabilizing the regime. Not that it did any good, but it happened.
The horrors of the Bush2 Regime are not forgotten, despite the fact that the protests largely were, and I think part of the motivation of the current protests is a recognition that Trump is like Bush2 on steroids, raging and champing at the bit to commit even more mayhem to more people, faster and harder than the Busheviks did.
We will not willingly repeat that horror show.
Trump and his gang of thieves, mountebanks, torturers and warmongers have done nothing to assure us they won't engage in the kind of monstrousness the Busheviks did. In fact, they've been pretty clear they'd "finish the job" the Busheviks left undone by dismantling Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and any other remnants of a social safety net they can find, by deporting every brown person they can round up, building a higher wall to keep them Messicans out, by suppressing every aspect of dissent they can, by restricting the voting franchise to only People Who Matter, by dispensing favors to loyalists, denying them to everyone else, by going hog-wild with extraction and transport of fossil fuels (damn the Indians acting against the Dakota Access Pipeline, Trump himself stands to profit from it, get outta the way, ya damn savages!), restoring official torture programs, glassing any opposition to hegemony in the Middle East, by re-engaging in acts of war against Iran, by allying the United States with every rightwing/fascist regime on earth and on and on and on. That's the program Trump and his R cronies in Congress have been laying out, essentially daring anyone to do anything about it.
His defenders insist we must give him the benefit of the doubt because of all the Good Things he's going to do. Never mind the Bad. He's promising to increase infrastructure spending to create "jobs" -- for whom, doing what? Well, we don't know, do we? But not to worry, it will be Wonderful, and long overdue! He'll get rid of that Obamacare abomination, leaving -- perhaps -- the "prior conditions" denial of coverage provisions and offspring coverage on parents' policies until age 26 as remnant sops to the takers, losers, and whiners. But that's it. Nothing else. 20 some odd million to lose coverage, and wonder of wonders, to lose any ability to get coverage. Tough luck, suckers!
He won't start WWIII with Putin, so that's good, no? He will start a war with Iran and China and whoever else gets in his way or defies him, but they deserve it, right?
Gah. On and on.
"Give him a chance!" And more and more of the People say, "No. Not this time."
I don't know what will happen. I don't want to think the worst, but it's hard not to under the circumstances. This man and his cronies must not take office. Period.
God save us.
Monday, November 7, 2016
So. What If It's a Tie?
This came up last week. I was running some numbers in my head and said, "Wait. This (s)election could turn into an Electoral College tie. What do we do then?"
Heh. Heh. Heh. I posted the question at NC, little knowing that the media, or at least parts of it, were running the same numbers and asking the same question. What do we do if it's an EC tie?
Nobody really knows as it hasn't happened since 1800. The process was different then than it is now, so precedent and parallels cannot really be drawn.
According to an analysis of the issue at 270towin.com the election would go to the House of Representatives where under arcane and never-used rules, each state delegation would have one vote. It would take the votes of 26 state delegations, choosing among the top three presidential candidates, to elect a president. The Senate would vote for vice president among the top two candidates, with each senator getting one vote, meaning that 51 votes would be needed to elect a vice president.
Well. Isn't that interesting.
The House that would become electors in case of an EC tie is the incoming House of Representatives, not the currently sitting one. According to polls (who knows?) the Rs are likely to maintain a majority in the House, albeit a reduced one. One vote for each state delegation, however, could become quite complicated, especially if the R and D representatives are close in numbers. There could be a whole lot of horse trading going on. In addition, while the majority of states might have majority R delegations, the question will be one of whether the Rs in the House would vote for Trump or would they vote for Clinton? Clinton's main policies (as opposed to her Identity Politics) are far more closely aligned with standard R policies than are Trump's lawnsprinkler "Policies." Clinton has been actively soliciting R support during this election pageant, and she's bagged more than a few high ranking R leaders. She's been running essentially as a "moderate Republican" -- make of that what you will -- and has been fairly successful in bringing in bi-partisan support, at least among People Who Matter.
Trump on the other hand has been alienating the High and the Mighty of both major parties, as well as plenty of the Rabble, while being seen as a loose cannon, so-called Populist. Well, he's a Populist for some of his class but not for the People. He's basically just conning them, something both parties higher echelons can appreciate, but to them he's doing it wrong.
His basic problem -- apart from being Trump -- is that the faction of the Upper Crust he represents is the wrong one. These are gangsters, conmen, disreputable and socially unacceptable members of the Overclass, and barring something truly outrageous, they cannot be allowed to take power. Period. At least they cannot be seen to take power. How much power they already have is another question altogether.
So my question is whether the R majority in the House would go along with electing Trump despite their misgivings, or would they instead elect Hillary, who -- despite her many flaws -- is at least a known quantity to them. Besides, they'd be able to impeach her right quick -- and they would -- and wouldn't that be a hoot and a half?
They would be able to exploit Hillary to the hilt, and their calculus might well be to go that direction rather than go with the Unpredictable Lawnsprinkler.
Meanwhile, that leaves the Senate to choose between Kaine and Pence. Oh my. Both have been Senators, and apparently both are chummy with the rest of the Senate Club. Whom, then, would they choose? If Dems take the Senate majority -- which is still up in the air, but looks likely, either 50-50 or 51-49 -- then I'd say Kaine would be the Gracious Winner. But you never know. Even with a Dem majority, some renegade D Senator may vote for Pence for any number of reasons, and then... Well, you might have a Hillary presidency with a radical reactionary Pence VP.
Wouldn't that be fun?
In other words, no matter what it looks like a day out, the results could be surprising to everyone, and I have no doubt Our Rulers are juggling the numbers as we speak.
What I heard on the Sabbath Gasbag shows gave me a clue to what they're thinking at the moment: no matter who "wins" the vote (even if it's jiggered to produce the desired outcome), there will be hell to pay. The polarization of the nation is out of control, and neither Trump nor Clinton can or will produce a "Unity Government." (They used Bush 2 as an example of how a highly polarized outcome could be turned into a Unity Government -- without explaining just how that happened... oh well...)
The public opposition to either one will, they said, be fierce, and it could "turn violent." Nothing like this election has happened since 1860, and we know how that turned out.
The People Who Matter are... scared. So what they would want to do, more than anything, is tamp down insurrection and uprisings before they even take place. The role of the President, as we've seen throughout the Obama Presidency especially, is to mollify the masses -- keep them tame while they are thoroughly exploited for the pleasure and profit of the Overclass.
Apparently neither Clinton nor Trump have shown they can do that.
Oops.
So, perhaps by combining the tickets.... Well, who knows?
The aftermath of Tuesday may only be the start of what's to come. Whoever thought the "status quo" would be preserved (or overthrown) by this election is in for a rude awakening, methinks.
Something else again, something unanticipated, is likely to occur.
Heh. Heh. Heh. I posted the question at NC, little knowing that the media, or at least parts of it, were running the same numbers and asking the same question. What do we do if it's an EC tie?
Nobody really knows as it hasn't happened since 1800. The process was different then than it is now, so precedent and parallels cannot really be drawn.
According to an analysis of the issue at 270towin.com the election would go to the House of Representatives where under arcane and never-used rules, each state delegation would have one vote. It would take the votes of 26 state delegations, choosing among the top three presidential candidates, to elect a president. The Senate would vote for vice president among the top two candidates, with each senator getting one vote, meaning that 51 votes would be needed to elect a vice president.
Well. Isn't that interesting.
The House that would become electors in case of an EC tie is the incoming House of Representatives, not the currently sitting one. According to polls (who knows?) the Rs are likely to maintain a majority in the House, albeit a reduced one. One vote for each state delegation, however, could become quite complicated, especially if the R and D representatives are close in numbers. There could be a whole lot of horse trading going on. In addition, while the majority of states might have majority R delegations, the question will be one of whether the Rs in the House would vote for Trump or would they vote for Clinton? Clinton's main policies (as opposed to her Identity Politics) are far more closely aligned with standard R policies than are Trump's lawnsprinkler "Policies." Clinton has been actively soliciting R support during this election pageant, and she's bagged more than a few high ranking R leaders. She's been running essentially as a "moderate Republican" -- make of that what you will -- and has been fairly successful in bringing in bi-partisan support, at least among People Who Matter.
Trump on the other hand has been alienating the High and the Mighty of both major parties, as well as plenty of the Rabble, while being seen as a loose cannon, so-called Populist. Well, he's a Populist for some of his class but not for the People. He's basically just conning them, something both parties higher echelons can appreciate, but to them he's doing it wrong.
His basic problem -- apart from being Trump -- is that the faction of the Upper Crust he represents is the wrong one. These are gangsters, conmen, disreputable and socially unacceptable members of the Overclass, and barring something truly outrageous, they cannot be allowed to take power. Period. At least they cannot be seen to take power. How much power they already have is another question altogether.
So my question is whether the R majority in the House would go along with electing Trump despite their misgivings, or would they instead elect Hillary, who -- despite her many flaws -- is at least a known quantity to them. Besides, they'd be able to impeach her right quick -- and they would -- and wouldn't that be a hoot and a half?
They would be able to exploit Hillary to the hilt, and their calculus might well be to go that direction rather than go with the Unpredictable Lawnsprinkler.
Meanwhile, that leaves the Senate to choose between Kaine and Pence. Oh my. Both have been Senators, and apparently both are chummy with the rest of the Senate Club. Whom, then, would they choose? If Dems take the Senate majority -- which is still up in the air, but looks likely, either 50-50 or 51-49 -- then I'd say Kaine would be the Gracious Winner. But you never know. Even with a Dem majority, some renegade D Senator may vote for Pence for any number of reasons, and then... Well, you might have a Hillary presidency with a radical reactionary Pence VP.
Wouldn't that be fun?
In other words, no matter what it looks like a day out, the results could be surprising to everyone, and I have no doubt Our Rulers are juggling the numbers as we speak.
What I heard on the Sabbath Gasbag shows gave me a clue to what they're thinking at the moment: no matter who "wins" the vote (even if it's jiggered to produce the desired outcome), there will be hell to pay. The polarization of the nation is out of control, and neither Trump nor Clinton can or will produce a "Unity Government." (They used Bush 2 as an example of how a highly polarized outcome could be turned into a Unity Government -- without explaining just how that happened... oh well...)
The public opposition to either one will, they said, be fierce, and it could "turn violent." Nothing like this election has happened since 1860, and we know how that turned out.
The People Who Matter are... scared. So what they would want to do, more than anything, is tamp down insurrection and uprisings before they even take place. The role of the President, as we've seen throughout the Obama Presidency especially, is to mollify the masses -- keep them tame while they are thoroughly exploited for the pleasure and profit of the Overclass.
Apparently neither Clinton nor Trump have shown they can do that.
Oops.
So, perhaps by combining the tickets.... Well, who knows?
The aftermath of Tuesday may only be the start of what's to come. Whoever thought the "status quo" would be preserved (or overthrown) by this election is in for a rude awakening, methinks.
Something else again, something unanticipated, is likely to occur.
Thursday, November 3, 2016
"Cowards and Bullies the Lot of Them"
I haven't written much about the Standing Rock actions against the Dakota Access Pipe Line lately. It's a very emotional story in the Ché household, for it shows something about the strength of Indian peoples that we haven't really seen since the AIM uprisings all those many years ago.
Some of those AIM activists are now teaching classes on Native American topics in colleges and universities all over the country, and that's one way activism is co-opted. It usually works. This time, however, the authorities appear to be intent on crushing the Indian rebellion with massive force.
In some ways it's a replay of the First Nations uprising in Canada over pipelines and oil extraction and terrible environmental consequences that affected Native Peoples primarily. We didn't hear a lot about it south of the border, but the protests and other actions (some still ongoing) were constant, widespread, and widely supported in Canada and around the world. They were partially effective, but not without cost to individuals and the tribes. Many were arrested and brutalized by the RCMP, and many still face abuse by authorities for daring to stand up to the power of oil interests.
The First Nations of Canada have been partially successful in forcing governments and private interests to pay attention to the interests and needs of the Native Peoples, and to curb their appetites for unfettered resource extraction above all other considerations. I understand some projects have been canceled, pipelines shut down or rerouted, environmental cleanup begun, water contamination halted here and there, and even some compensation provided to tribes.
It's not enough, but it is something. And it took months and months of constant protest and nonviolent resistance to get even that.
Actions against the Keystone XL pipeline were highlighted in this country, and they also involved a lot of Indian/First Nations activists. Ultimately, those actions were successful in stopping that project -- at least for the time being. The Dakota Access Pipeline seemed to come out of nowhere, and apparently it was fast-tracked by the Corps of Engineers and regulators in order to get done before anybody noticed.
Or something.
The pipeline was originally routed just to the north of Bismark (90% Anglo). The people of Bismark rose up in righteous indignation and insisted the pipeline be re-routed south of their source of drinking water, the Missouri River. So it was done. The pipeline is now routed to cross the Missouri just north of the current boundary of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation near Cannonball, ND. The Standing Rock tribe claims the land on which the pipeline is being built as Treaty Land, part of the original much larger Reservation that was negotiated in the Treaty of Laramie in 1851, lands that were never ceded by the tribe but were essentially confiscated by the US government in periodic seizures in order to give the land to Anglo squatters -- and the Corps of Engineers among other agencies.
The tribe and their allies claim the pipeline is inherently unsafe, and if it breaks under or near the River, it will contaminate drinking water not only for the tribe but for millions of Americans living downstream. They would prefer that the pipeline not be built at all because it is just too dangerous, but they recognize the counter argument that the way the oil from the Bakken Field is being transported now -- by truck and rail -- is even more dangerous; oil transport trains are called "Bomb Trains" for a reason, after all. Pipelines, while marginally safer than rail or road transport of petroleum, are also vulnerable -- as the recent explosion of a gasoline pipeline in Alabama demonstrates.
The obvious answer is to leave the oil in the ground. Given the way oil prices have collapsed, that may be the ultimate resolution to the issue, but we're not there yet.
The tribe and its allies have formed a number of camps on the Reservation and near it, full of Native and allied activists from the Standing Rock Reservation and from Native communities throughout North and South America. It's a wonder to behold. Thousands have gathered periodically and many hundreds have stayed on. There are actions almost every day.
These are genuine Native American encampments that evoke many of the Natives' prior ways. They are highly spiritualized assemblies of peoples, extraordinary in their discipline and determination. They are called together to pray and to protect the water under the banner, "Water is Life."
They are acting in accordance with Native spiritual principles and under a code of non-violence.
Somehow over the years non-violence has been re-defined as "peaceful," but it's not. "Peaceful" implies passive and obedient. Non-violent activism is deliberately disruptive, often loud, and is almost always met with official violence. A non-violent demonstration -- such as the ones taking place almost daily in North Dakota -- will nearly always be met with increasing levels of state violence, including violent arrests and dispersal tactics, and with false accusations of violence by the demonstrators. (Cf: Occupy; BLM)
The militarization of the reaction by North Dakota -- and other -- law enforcement agencies is spectacular overkill, but much the same reaction happened in Canada when the First Nations activists got in the way of private oil interests. We've seen this script play out before, many times.
North Dakota has been bringing in police from as far away as Minnesota and Ohio under "mutual aid" agreements to "help" with controlling the Wild Indians and their allies. They have engaged in extraordinary levels of violence against non-violent activist, with hundreds arrested and many injured by rubber bullets, dog bites, tear gas, pepper spray, truncheons, and other weapons. At least one horse has been killed by police, and others injured by police or dogs (the police call the horses "weapons.") Drones sent up by the Indians to document the atrocities have been shot at by police. Many of those who have been arrested have been brutalized in custody, kept in kennel-like cages, denied medical attention for injuries or chronic conditions, forced to submit to humiliating searches, and had their property confiscated. They've been charged with "riot" when no such thing has taken place -- though police on some of their rampages can be characterized as rioting against the calm determination of the Water Protectors.
Elders and children have been particularly targeted for brutalization, pour encourager les autres.
The militarized response by police would be startling if we hadn't seen it before, particularly in Ferguson, where police behavior and use of military equipment and tactics against non-violent protest was seen by Americans on that scale for perhaps the first time. It was shocking then.
What also characterized the Ferguson response were constant and blatant lies from the authorities about the "violence" of the protesters. It was fairly obvious that in some cases, provocateurs had been seeded in the crowds, and some of the so-called "violence" was perpetrated by those provocateurs (mainly rock and bottle throwing). But in other cases, the police simply lied about being "fired upon" by members of the crowds of demonstrators or about being "assaulted" by them. They lied about "riots" too. In fact there was vandalism and arson and some instances of looting, but what they had to do with the protests, if anything, remains a mystery. This was also true in Baltimore, and more recently in Charlotte.
As some observers have pointed out, at least to some extent these unfortunate actions appear to have been provoked by police. It appears that law enforcement is trying mightily to provoke a violent response by the Water Protectors in North Dakota as well.
This is apparently counter-insurgency doctrine used nearly universally in this country in response to civil unrest, particularly against "peaceful" protest (ie: non-violent, not necessarily "peaceful" at all).
Get them to do something not "peaceful" and almost any level of crackdown violence is justified, no?
And if the activists won't cooperate, lie about them. Provoke, precipitate, seed with provocateurs. Do anything to shut down the activists and interfere with their efforts.
From outside looking in, that appears to be what's been going on as the militarized response to the Water Protectors intensifies.
And the police over and over again are showing themselves to be cowards and bullies, scared to death of these Indians and their allies, and becoming more and more violent and brutal as a result of their fear.
Cowards and bullies, the lot of them.
Yes, well. That's pretty much how America's Imperial Storm Troopers behave around the world. They are so jacked up and fearful of their adversaries and enemies that they routinely slaughter innocents, non-combatants, anyone and everyone who gets in their way or who might do so, and this behavior inevitably leads to blowback and even fiercer resistance by the target population. Inevitably.
Even the British back in the hey-day of their brief Empire knew that such behavior by their own conquering armies and mercenaries and police would inevitably produce the kind of blowback that they ultimately could not resist. Nevertheless, they routinely employed extraordinarily brutal and bloody tactics against their restive colonial subjects -- with inevitable results. The Empire self-immolated and collapsed.
On the other hand, their American descendants seem to have no self-awareness about these things and their inevitable consequences, even when they encounter them at home and abroad. It doesn't seem to occur to them that their cowardly, violent, and bloody behavior toward their "subjects" precipitates the blowback they experience and leads to their defeat due to the resistance and refusal to comply by their targets.
The police in this country seem to have adopted this failed military counter-insurgency doctrine in their repeated efforts to deal with nonviolent civil unrest, activism and protest. It is failing just as the military is failing world wide, and for much the same reason. This cowardly violence against nonviolence driven by irrational fear -- which is induced by training and commanders -- has an inevitable consequence. And it isn't victory for the cowards. Just the opposite.
The Water Protectors in North Dakota have developed a world-wide support network. While there isn't a lot of coverage of what's going on in this country (and much of the coverage there is merely parrots official lies), notice has been taken outside the country and support has been growing exponentially. The Water Protectors have been able to raise millions of dollars through online donations, money that's being used to support the camps and provide legal defense for those who have been arrested. Thousands have assembled in the camps from time to time to engage in both community building and activism against the pipeline and to protect the water for themselves and millions of others. The permanent camps host at least 600 and often more activists, even as North Dakota's fierce winter begins.
A campaign to use Facebook to emphasize support for the Water Protectors led to more a million people signing in to FB with their stated location "Standing Rock" no matter where they were in the world. Go Fund Me efforts have raised millions of dollars to support the Water Protectors.
And now word is circulating that the pipeline may be rerouted away from the Standing Rock Reservation or... maybe... it could be canceled altogether.
That remains to be seen, but at least there is "talk."
Part of the frustration of all this is that the Bundy led armed insurrectionists in Nevada and Oregon seem to be able to get away with their actions against the Big Bad Gubmint, whereas unarmed Native or black protests are met with some of the most ridiculous threats and militarized police responses imaginable -- to protect a corporate owned pipeline. This is an almost perfect example of what cowards and bullies our police have been allowed to become. If their targets are unarmed they feel they can use any level of force they want, and the more intimidating they appear to be (with their MRAPS and LRADS and assault rifles and riot gear and whatnot) and the more violently they suppress the protest the better. Whereas if they are confronting an armed insurrection, they stand back, adopt a modest and nonthreatening posture, they negotiate, they blandish, persuade, take their time, and avoid confrontation at all costs -- at least until they are literally shamed into taking some kind of action to end the standoff. They allow the Bundys to run essentially roughshod over the very concept of law, the very idea of order.
It's been said that the Bundys and other militia types are allowed to get away with their insurrections because they are White. That may be true. I tend to think it's more because they represent a real -- armed -- threat to the authorities, whose prime directive is Force Protection. In other words, as long as the authorities believe they are under no particular threat, they can and will behave as violently as they want against protest and civil unrest. If they detect a real threat, they will back down, retreat, negotiate. Their primary interest is to protect themselves first, after all.
Standing Rock Water Protectors say they need firewood for the impending winter. Send it if you can, but they will accept money in lieu of goods and services. Log into Facebook, if you use it, stating your location as Standing Rock. A delegation from IAIA in Santa Fe went to North Dakota about a month ago, and another one may be organized shortly. Individuals from New Mexico are frequently going to ND to stand with Standing Rock. They may not be able to stay more than a few days, but it is important to demonstrate solidarity.
And so it goes.
This is an important struggle for all of us. While Ms Ché and I cannot be there physically, we have been there in spirit. We support the activists and the camps.
[I'll add some links in due time, but for now, just Google Standing Rock and see what's going on, both from the Native perspective and from the point of view of the cowards and bullies trying -- and failing -- to suppress the Water Protectors.]
Linkies: Please watch the embedded videos. You will see just what sort of cowards and bullies the brave warriors are up against.
http://sacredstonecamp.org/blog/2016/10/23/141-water-protectors-arrested-as-police-escalate-violent-militarized-response
https://www.laprogressive.com/standing-rock-protesters-attacked
http://sacredstonecamp.org/blog/2016/10/28/police-from-5-states-escalate-violence-shoot-horses-to-clear-1851-treaty-camp
Unicorn Riot has been covering the actions at Standing Rock and elsewhere for many months. Check it out:
http://www.unicornriot.ninja/?p=10600
Cowards:
Police & Military Attack Oceti Sakowin Treaty Camp from Unicorn Riot on Vimeo.
Some of those AIM activists are now teaching classes on Native American topics in colleges and universities all over the country, and that's one way activism is co-opted. It usually works. This time, however, the authorities appear to be intent on crushing the Indian rebellion with massive force.
In some ways it's a replay of the First Nations uprising in Canada over pipelines and oil extraction and terrible environmental consequences that affected Native Peoples primarily. We didn't hear a lot about it south of the border, but the protests and other actions (some still ongoing) were constant, widespread, and widely supported in Canada and around the world. They were partially effective, but not without cost to individuals and the tribes. Many were arrested and brutalized by the RCMP, and many still face abuse by authorities for daring to stand up to the power of oil interests.
The First Nations of Canada have been partially successful in forcing governments and private interests to pay attention to the interests and needs of the Native Peoples, and to curb their appetites for unfettered resource extraction above all other considerations. I understand some projects have been canceled, pipelines shut down or rerouted, environmental cleanup begun, water contamination halted here and there, and even some compensation provided to tribes.
It's not enough, but it is something. And it took months and months of constant protest and nonviolent resistance to get even that.
Actions against the Keystone XL pipeline were highlighted in this country, and they also involved a lot of Indian/First Nations activists. Ultimately, those actions were successful in stopping that project -- at least for the time being. The Dakota Access Pipeline seemed to come out of nowhere, and apparently it was fast-tracked by the Corps of Engineers and regulators in order to get done before anybody noticed.
Or something.
The pipeline was originally routed just to the north of Bismark (90% Anglo). The people of Bismark rose up in righteous indignation and insisted the pipeline be re-routed south of their source of drinking water, the Missouri River. So it was done. The pipeline is now routed to cross the Missouri just north of the current boundary of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation near Cannonball, ND. The Standing Rock tribe claims the land on which the pipeline is being built as Treaty Land, part of the original much larger Reservation that was negotiated in the Treaty of Laramie in 1851, lands that were never ceded by the tribe but were essentially confiscated by the US government in periodic seizures in order to give the land to Anglo squatters -- and the Corps of Engineers among other agencies.
The tribe and their allies claim the pipeline is inherently unsafe, and if it breaks under or near the River, it will contaminate drinking water not only for the tribe but for millions of Americans living downstream. They would prefer that the pipeline not be built at all because it is just too dangerous, but they recognize the counter argument that the way the oil from the Bakken Field is being transported now -- by truck and rail -- is even more dangerous; oil transport trains are called "Bomb Trains" for a reason, after all. Pipelines, while marginally safer than rail or road transport of petroleum, are also vulnerable -- as the recent explosion of a gasoline pipeline in Alabama demonstrates.
The obvious answer is to leave the oil in the ground. Given the way oil prices have collapsed, that may be the ultimate resolution to the issue, but we're not there yet.
The tribe and its allies have formed a number of camps on the Reservation and near it, full of Native and allied activists from the Standing Rock Reservation and from Native communities throughout North and South America. It's a wonder to behold. Thousands have gathered periodically and many hundreds have stayed on. There are actions almost every day.
These are genuine Native American encampments that evoke many of the Natives' prior ways. They are highly spiritualized assemblies of peoples, extraordinary in their discipline and determination. They are called together to pray and to protect the water under the banner, "Water is Life."
They are acting in accordance with Native spiritual principles and under a code of non-violence.
Somehow over the years non-violence has been re-defined as "peaceful," but it's not. "Peaceful" implies passive and obedient. Non-violent activism is deliberately disruptive, often loud, and is almost always met with official violence. A non-violent demonstration -- such as the ones taking place almost daily in North Dakota -- will nearly always be met with increasing levels of state violence, including violent arrests and dispersal tactics, and with false accusations of violence by the demonstrators. (Cf: Occupy; BLM)
The militarization of the reaction by North Dakota -- and other -- law enforcement agencies is spectacular overkill, but much the same reaction happened in Canada when the First Nations activists got in the way of private oil interests. We've seen this script play out before, many times.
North Dakota has been bringing in police from as far away as Minnesota and Ohio under "mutual aid" agreements to "help" with controlling the Wild Indians and their allies. They have engaged in extraordinary levels of violence against non-violent activist, with hundreds arrested and many injured by rubber bullets, dog bites, tear gas, pepper spray, truncheons, and other weapons. At least one horse has been killed by police, and others injured by police or dogs (the police call the horses "weapons.") Drones sent up by the Indians to document the atrocities have been shot at by police. Many of those who have been arrested have been brutalized in custody, kept in kennel-like cages, denied medical attention for injuries or chronic conditions, forced to submit to humiliating searches, and had their property confiscated. They've been charged with "riot" when no such thing has taken place -- though police on some of their rampages can be characterized as rioting against the calm determination of the Water Protectors.
Elders and children have been particularly targeted for brutalization, pour encourager les autres.
The militarized response by police would be startling if we hadn't seen it before, particularly in Ferguson, where police behavior and use of military equipment and tactics against non-violent protest was seen by Americans on that scale for perhaps the first time. It was shocking then.
What also characterized the Ferguson response were constant and blatant lies from the authorities about the "violence" of the protesters. It was fairly obvious that in some cases, provocateurs had been seeded in the crowds, and some of the so-called "violence" was perpetrated by those provocateurs (mainly rock and bottle throwing). But in other cases, the police simply lied about being "fired upon" by members of the crowds of demonstrators or about being "assaulted" by them. They lied about "riots" too. In fact there was vandalism and arson and some instances of looting, but what they had to do with the protests, if anything, remains a mystery. This was also true in Baltimore, and more recently in Charlotte.
As some observers have pointed out, at least to some extent these unfortunate actions appear to have been provoked by police. It appears that law enforcement is trying mightily to provoke a violent response by the Water Protectors in North Dakota as well.
This is apparently counter-insurgency doctrine used nearly universally in this country in response to civil unrest, particularly against "peaceful" protest (ie: non-violent, not necessarily "peaceful" at all).
Get them to do something not "peaceful" and almost any level of crackdown violence is justified, no?
And if the activists won't cooperate, lie about them. Provoke, precipitate, seed with provocateurs. Do anything to shut down the activists and interfere with their efforts.
From outside looking in, that appears to be what's been going on as the militarized response to the Water Protectors intensifies.
And the police over and over again are showing themselves to be cowards and bullies, scared to death of these Indians and their allies, and becoming more and more violent and brutal as a result of their fear.
Cowards and bullies, the lot of them.
Yes, well. That's pretty much how America's Imperial Storm Troopers behave around the world. They are so jacked up and fearful of their adversaries and enemies that they routinely slaughter innocents, non-combatants, anyone and everyone who gets in their way or who might do so, and this behavior inevitably leads to blowback and even fiercer resistance by the target population. Inevitably.
Even the British back in the hey-day of their brief Empire knew that such behavior by their own conquering armies and mercenaries and police would inevitably produce the kind of blowback that they ultimately could not resist. Nevertheless, they routinely employed extraordinarily brutal and bloody tactics against their restive colonial subjects -- with inevitable results. The Empire self-immolated and collapsed.
On the other hand, their American descendants seem to have no self-awareness about these things and their inevitable consequences, even when they encounter them at home and abroad. It doesn't seem to occur to them that their cowardly, violent, and bloody behavior toward their "subjects" precipitates the blowback they experience and leads to their defeat due to the resistance and refusal to comply by their targets.
The police in this country seem to have adopted this failed military counter-insurgency doctrine in their repeated efforts to deal with nonviolent civil unrest, activism and protest. It is failing just as the military is failing world wide, and for much the same reason. This cowardly violence against nonviolence driven by irrational fear -- which is induced by training and commanders -- has an inevitable consequence. And it isn't victory for the cowards. Just the opposite.
The Water Protectors in North Dakota have developed a world-wide support network. While there isn't a lot of coverage of what's going on in this country (and much of the coverage there is merely parrots official lies), notice has been taken outside the country and support has been growing exponentially. The Water Protectors have been able to raise millions of dollars through online donations, money that's being used to support the camps and provide legal defense for those who have been arrested. Thousands have assembled in the camps from time to time to engage in both community building and activism against the pipeline and to protect the water for themselves and millions of others. The permanent camps host at least 600 and often more activists, even as North Dakota's fierce winter begins.
A campaign to use Facebook to emphasize support for the Water Protectors led to more a million people signing in to FB with their stated location "Standing Rock" no matter where they were in the world. Go Fund Me efforts have raised millions of dollars to support the Water Protectors.
And now word is circulating that the pipeline may be rerouted away from the Standing Rock Reservation or... maybe... it could be canceled altogether.
That remains to be seen, but at least there is "talk."
Part of the frustration of all this is that the Bundy led armed insurrectionists in Nevada and Oregon seem to be able to get away with their actions against the Big Bad Gubmint, whereas unarmed Native or black protests are met with some of the most ridiculous threats and militarized police responses imaginable -- to protect a corporate owned pipeline. This is an almost perfect example of what cowards and bullies our police have been allowed to become. If their targets are unarmed they feel they can use any level of force they want, and the more intimidating they appear to be (with their MRAPS and LRADS and assault rifles and riot gear and whatnot) and the more violently they suppress the protest the better. Whereas if they are confronting an armed insurrection, they stand back, adopt a modest and nonthreatening posture, they negotiate, they blandish, persuade, take their time, and avoid confrontation at all costs -- at least until they are literally shamed into taking some kind of action to end the standoff. They allow the Bundys to run essentially roughshod over the very concept of law, the very idea of order.
It's been said that the Bundys and other militia types are allowed to get away with their insurrections because they are White. That may be true. I tend to think it's more because they represent a real -- armed -- threat to the authorities, whose prime directive is Force Protection. In other words, as long as the authorities believe they are under no particular threat, they can and will behave as violently as they want against protest and civil unrest. If they detect a real threat, they will back down, retreat, negotiate. Their primary interest is to protect themselves first, after all.
Standing Rock Water Protectors say they need firewood for the impending winter. Send it if you can, but they will accept money in lieu of goods and services. Log into Facebook, if you use it, stating your location as Standing Rock. A delegation from IAIA in Santa Fe went to North Dakota about a month ago, and another one may be organized shortly. Individuals from New Mexico are frequently going to ND to stand with Standing Rock. They may not be able to stay more than a few days, but it is important to demonstrate solidarity.
And so it goes.
This is an important struggle for all of us. While Ms Ché and I cannot be there physically, we have been there in spirit. We support the activists and the camps.
[I'll add some links in due time, but for now, just Google Standing Rock and see what's going on, both from the Native perspective and from the point of view of the cowards and bullies trying -- and failing -- to suppress the Water Protectors.]
Linkies: Please watch the embedded videos. You will see just what sort of cowards and bullies the brave warriors are up against.
http://sacredstonecamp.org/blog/2016/10/23/141-water-protectors-arrested-as-police-escalate-violent-militarized-response
https://www.laprogressive.com/standing-rock-protesters-attacked
http://sacredstonecamp.org/blog/2016/10/28/police-from-5-states-escalate-violence-shoot-horses-to-clear-1851-treaty-camp
Unicorn Riot has been covering the actions at Standing Rock and elsewhere for many months. Check it out:
http://www.unicornriot.ninja/?p=10600
Cowards:
Police & Military Attack Oceti Sakowin Treaty Camp from Unicorn Riot on Vimeo.
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
It's not about victory, it's about justice...
The trial of Dominique Perez and Keith Sandy, acknowledged killers of homeless, schizophrenic camper James Boyd in the Sandia Mountain Foothills of Albuquerque, ended in a hung jury yesterday. Whether they will be retried depends on the wishes and interests of the incoming DA who won't be installed until January.
 |
| Their mug shots -- Keith Sandy, L, Dominique Perez, R |
Charming duo, aren't they? Actually they were, I won't lie about it. When they took the stand in their own defense, they came across as a couple of choirboys, no pun intended, who would never hurt a fly in anger or intentional malice. They were (wait for it)
JUST DOING THEIR JOBS
when they shot and killed James Boyd that chilly afternoon March 16, 2014, setting off a roiling series of protests and demands for police reform in Albuquerque, including an end to the killing spree APD had been on for years. I played a very minor supporting role in the efforts to bring some kind of accountability to the police department and an end to the killing, and I reported some of it here. My involvement in these efforts over the years, in both Albuquerque and Sacramento has caused some strain in my household because Ms Ché, a retired court official and the granddaughter of a sheriff's deputy, strongly supports the police; I, on the other hand, am the son and grandson of attorneys, and my uncle was charged with murder in the death of his wife -- in a highly political trial that ended first in a hung jury, then in acquittal.
So we have a disagreement about these things, Ms. Ché and I. While she respects my point of view and has actually been very supportive in my efforts, she rather vehemently disagrees with me. To her credit, she does not denounce those I've worked with to bring accountability and an end to police violence. But she does see these incidents through the prism of her own experience in court, and through the eyes of the police officers she's worked with and come to know very well. I've known some of her police pals, and for the most part have found them to be fine, upstanding gentlemen -- who wouldn't hurt a fly out of anger or intentional malice. If they ever engaged in violent policing or use of lethal force (so far as I know, none of them did), they would only be doing their jobs.
And this is the problem of violent policing in a nutshell. When it happens -- and statistics suggest it happens much less often than it once did -- it is almost always regarded by departments, officials, and the public as "just doing their jobs." In other words, it is what officers are expected and required to do under the circumstances.
Prosecutor Randi McGinn asked after the mistrial was declared yesterday whether this was the kind of policing the people of Albuquerque wanted, whether "shoot first" anticipating that someone might be a threat was the right and proper way to approach people like Boyd who was clearly in another world but who was not objectively a threat to officers, or should there be another way for police as representatives of the community, to approach people like Boyd.
In a way, she's back in the past, because the APD policies in these matters have changed radically since the Boyd shooting. In fact, the whole approach to his minor offense of camping in the mountains and his insistence on self defense with folding knives would be significantly different by APD and support staff than it was on the day he was killed.
Crisis intervention would be allowed to continue until there was a successful resolution. The ROP (Repeat Offender Project) team that Keith Sandy was part of has been disbanded. If SWAT (Perez was a SWAT officer) had been called at all (not necessarily) they would not have been obvious nor would they necessarily have been setting snipers ready to kill at a moment's notice. The K-9 officer whose actions helped precipitate the killing might not have been there at all.
And so on. Rather than setting up to kill this man, APD would be doing everything possible to preserve his life. That would be their jobs.
That is a radical change, and that is part of the change we were after.
Three of the jurors believed Sandy and Perez were guilty of 2nd degree murder, 9 voted to acquit.
The jury told the judge that they were hopelessly deadlocked, and the judge declared a mistrial.
The matter goes back to the DA's office. Randi McGinn, the prosecutor, was a special appointee, not the DA. The DA, Kari Brandenburg, recused herself when she was accused of conflicts in this case, and she appointed McGinn to conduct the prosecution. Brandenburg chose not to run again for DA this year so she will be replaced by Raul Torrez in January. Whether he will attempt to retry these ex-officers is anyone's guess, but I suspect he won't, partly based on the fact that APD has undertaken significant reforms since Boyd's killing, and they are currently under a DoJ consent decree to address their issues of unconstitutional policing and other failings -- including one of the worst killing sprees of any police department in the country (based on population.)
McGinn said it's up to the community to decide whether they want police training to emphasize "anticipatory" killing (ie: neutralizing a potential threat) or focus more on preserving the life of even a suspect like Boyd. I think that conversation has already been had. It's not subject to a vote. The community came out strongly in favor of doing everything possible to preserve a life, including that of Mr. Boyd. Thus policies that led to Boyd's death -- and the deaths of many others prior to and briefly after Boyd's killing -- have been changed significantly. Albuquerque Police Department now kills very few individuals -- three this year so far, compared to more than a dozen per year in the past -- and they deploy crisis intervention much more often than in the past.
The problem of police killing in Albuquerque and the rest of New Mexico has not gone away, however. While APD doesn't kill the way it used to, other agencies, particularly US Marshal, Bernalillo County Sheriffs, and New Mexico State Police continue to kill in a pattern that follows prior "force protection" models rather than "sanctity of life" models. They never had as high a rate of killing as APD, so it didn't seem like they were as trigger happy as they are. But now that APD has taken a very different approach to these matters, the other law enforcement agencies with jurisdiction in Albuquerque who haven't changed their approach seem to be much more violent and lethal -- though their actual rate of killing is probably not any higher than it was before APD changed its ways.
It's a never ending challenge to maintain both accountability by police forces and to reduce their use of violence and lethal force. Police unions resist strenuously any effort that would interfere with officers' use of force or require accountability by police. In some cases -- Seattle and Oakland come to mind -- they refuse to abide by rules of conduct they don't agree with. This is in effect a mutinous action that should lead to discipline or dismissal, but until recently, it hasn't. APD vocally resisted reforms, but in the end accommodated them fairly well for which they are to be congratulated.
I've pointed out the drop in killing by APD in several internet fora, only to be met by skepticism because it hasn't been reported in major online media. True enough. It hasn't even been reported locally. But it's true, as any review of the data (as collated by Killed by Police and the Guardian) will demonstrate. But that's work, and few want to bother with it if they don't have to.
Meanwhile, the trial of Sandy and Perez did not end with an acquittal, which is what I thought it would. There may or may not be a new trial, but if there isn't one, it will not mean that these men were acquitted of murder, only that the charges were dismissed.
I can only hope that the reforms instituted by APD will continue in force and that violent policing will be curbed nationwide.
But it's a long and exhausting struggle. I'm old and ill, and I'm not at all sure how much more I can do. Time for the young to step up...
Wednesday, October 5, 2016
Doing What Needs to Be Done to Reduce Violent Policing
Americans have become accustomed to the rat-a-tat-tat of police shootings and to the stories of other means police use to "control" suspects -- sometimes unto death. Americans are also accustomed to the protest that frequently arises from this or that act of violent policing.
Efforts to control or reduce violent policing have been under way for many years in many communities, and they've been met with resistance from line officers and their unions, from police chiefs and sheriffs, and often from the justice system itself (DAs and courts) which will typically defend and exonerate officers no matter what they do or how egregious their violence toward the public.
And yet progress has been made, slow and painful as it may be.
Ways to reduce police violence and use of lethal force are well-known and understood. Some of those ways and means have been widely adopted, but we still see almost daily examples of men and women in crisis, particularly if they are black or brown, violently abused by police or summarily executed by officers who ritualistically cite "fearing for my life and the safety of others" to justify and excuse what they have done.
Simply being in psychological or emotional crisis and being black or brown can be sufficient to trigger the deadly fear response in officers, and almost always that fear is sufficient to officially justify use of whatever force the officer deems necessary.
There can be no second guessing of the officer's split-second decision to use lethal force or any other force necessary to control the subject.
We see it over and over again, practically daily, and many Americans are fine with it. Since they believe that police violence would never be directed at them why should they worry or be concerned about police violence directed at others?
Often this means that white-folks don't care if police are violent or deadly toward disobedient or otherwise recalcitrant black and brown individuals. It's what they deserve. If only they would obey, nothing bad would happen to them. And yet we see over and over again, that's not necessarily true at all. Obedience will not necessarily protect an individual who's been targeted by police for execution. People are shot and killed or tasered and killed while in the process of obeying police commands. It's simply a fact. There are too many examples documented to continue to believe that "obedience = safety."
It doesn't.
The problem is not so much the disobedience of individuals as it is that police officers are trained and conditioned to experience the disobedience of some individuals (particularly black and brown men) as existential threats to their lives and others' safety. Obedience can be interpreted by officers in exactly the same way because of their training and conditioning. When they determine that an individual is a subject or suspect, everything that individual does or doesn't do is subject to being interpreted as a threat.
Police are trained and conditioned to neutralize threats when they perceive them, and the only standard is the officer's perception at the moment he or she chooses to use force, lethal or otherwise. There is a "reasonable" standard, but it is limited to what another officer in the same situation would perceive and do. When they are all trained and conditioned in the same way, they are likely to perceive threats and act on them in the same way. Consequently the reasonableness standard for use of force based on officer perception is no protection for individuals subjected to use of force.
This is due largely to court decisions and police department policies which deny civilians ('subjects') the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or indeed any rights at all that an officer is bound to respect, when the officer perceives a threat from the individual.
How do we get past that? In so many cases recently -- but we can cite similar cases going back many years -- the use of lethal force against individuals who do not present an objective threat is practically routine.
One case I've featured is that of Joseph Mann in Sacramento. He was shot and killed in July by two jacked up officers who raced to the scene apparently specifically to "neutralize" the subject. The problem with their action -- which included trying to run him over with their vehicle and then gunning him down when that proved unsuccessful -- was that Mann was not an objective threat to anyone, not the officers on scene, certainly not to the officers who killed him, and not to bystanders or pedestrians in the vicinity. He was not perceived to be a threat by other officers on the scene, at least not to the extent that he needed to be "neutralized" -- euphemism for killing.
His threat matrix was that he was armed with a small knife, he was disobedient, and attempted to elude police. He was falsely accused of many overt threats toward police during the five minutes or so he was being pursued by them, but apart from tossing a mug or thermos at a pursuing police car, he never demonstrated an actual threat toward police or anyone else.
And until the two officers who killed him arrived on the scene, the other officers were trying to defuse the situation, de-escalate the confrontation, and bring Mr. Mann into custody non-violently.
They had really only begun their efforts when the two killers arrived.
De-escalation in cases of mental or emotional crisis includes such things as:
Calm the situation, by using the following tactics:
Request backup.
Move slowly.
When possible, eliminate emergency lights and sirens and disperse any
crowd that may have gathered.
Assume a quiet nonthreatening manner when approaching and conversing with the
individual.
If possible, avoid physical contact if no violence or destructive acts have taken place.
If possible, explain intended actions before taking action.
Take time to assess the situation.
Provide reassurance that officers are there to help.
Give the person time to calm down.
Communicate with the person:
Keep sentences short.
Talk with the individual in an attempt to determine what is bothering that person.
Acknowledge the person's feelings
Ask if the person is hearing voices and, if so, what they are saying.
Avoid topics that may agitate the person.
Allow time for the person to consider questions and be prepared to repeat them.
Additionally, POST trains police officers to “not threaten the individual with arrest or in
any other manner,” explaining that “threats may create additional fright, stress, or potential
aggression.”
This is all well-known and understood and is standard training for officers in their interaction with individuals showing signs of crisis or mental illness. There is no mystery about it. And yet over and over again, police use lethal force rather than these de-escalation tactics. They do so because they know they can -- and can get away with it -- on the one hand, and because they are conditioned to see the subject (no longer a human being) as an existential threat, no matter the objective reality.
On the other hand, officers who are allowed to use crisis intervention and de-escalation techniques, as well as mental health professionals who use these techniques, are almost always able to defuse situations involving mentally ill or in-crisis individuals without resort to violence.
What I want to know is whether someone in the department ordered the killers to do their job and kill Joseph Mann.
Given the way they raced to the scene with the intent to administer great bodily harm to him and when they were unsuccessful, they killed him, I have a strong suspicion that they were ordered to do what they did, regardless of anything else.
It happens more often than we know, and there are very few mitigations to protect the public.
There are other means to reduce violence and death by police apart from simply abiding by policies already in place. I'll try to get to some of those in another post.
Efforts to control or reduce violent policing have been under way for many years in many communities, and they've been met with resistance from line officers and their unions, from police chiefs and sheriffs, and often from the justice system itself (DAs and courts) which will typically defend and exonerate officers no matter what they do or how egregious their violence toward the public.
And yet progress has been made, slow and painful as it may be.
Ways to reduce police violence and use of lethal force are well-known and understood. Some of those ways and means have been widely adopted, but we still see almost daily examples of men and women in crisis, particularly if they are black or brown, violently abused by police or summarily executed by officers who ritualistically cite "fearing for my life and the safety of others" to justify and excuse what they have done.
Simply being in psychological or emotional crisis and being black or brown can be sufficient to trigger the deadly fear response in officers, and almost always that fear is sufficient to officially justify use of whatever force the officer deems necessary.
There can be no second guessing of the officer's split-second decision to use lethal force or any other force necessary to control the subject.
We see it over and over again, practically daily, and many Americans are fine with it. Since they believe that police violence would never be directed at them why should they worry or be concerned about police violence directed at others?
Often this means that white-folks don't care if police are violent or deadly toward disobedient or otherwise recalcitrant black and brown individuals. It's what they deserve. If only they would obey, nothing bad would happen to them. And yet we see over and over again, that's not necessarily true at all. Obedience will not necessarily protect an individual who's been targeted by police for execution. People are shot and killed or tasered and killed while in the process of obeying police commands. It's simply a fact. There are too many examples documented to continue to believe that "obedience = safety."
It doesn't.
The problem is not so much the disobedience of individuals as it is that police officers are trained and conditioned to experience the disobedience of some individuals (particularly black and brown men) as existential threats to their lives and others' safety. Obedience can be interpreted by officers in exactly the same way because of their training and conditioning. When they determine that an individual is a subject or suspect, everything that individual does or doesn't do is subject to being interpreted as a threat.
Police are trained and conditioned to neutralize threats when they perceive them, and the only standard is the officer's perception at the moment he or she chooses to use force, lethal or otherwise. There is a "reasonable" standard, but it is limited to what another officer in the same situation would perceive and do. When they are all trained and conditioned in the same way, they are likely to perceive threats and act on them in the same way. Consequently the reasonableness standard for use of force based on officer perception is no protection for individuals subjected to use of force.
This is due largely to court decisions and police department policies which deny civilians ('subjects') the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or indeed any rights at all that an officer is bound to respect, when the officer perceives a threat from the individual.
How do we get past that? In so many cases recently -- but we can cite similar cases going back many years -- the use of lethal force against individuals who do not present an objective threat is practically routine.
One case I've featured is that of Joseph Mann in Sacramento. He was shot and killed in July by two jacked up officers who raced to the scene apparently specifically to "neutralize" the subject. The problem with their action -- which included trying to run him over with their vehicle and then gunning him down when that proved unsuccessful -- was that Mann was not an objective threat to anyone, not the officers on scene, certainly not to the officers who killed him, and not to bystanders or pedestrians in the vicinity. He was not perceived to be a threat by other officers on the scene, at least not to the extent that he needed to be "neutralized" -- euphemism for killing.
His threat matrix was that he was armed with a small knife, he was disobedient, and attempted to elude police. He was falsely accused of many overt threats toward police during the five minutes or so he was being pursued by them, but apart from tossing a mug or thermos at a pursuing police car, he never demonstrated an actual threat toward police or anyone else.
And until the two officers who killed him arrived on the scene, the other officers were trying to defuse the situation, de-escalate the confrontation, and bring Mr. Mann into custody non-violently.
They had really only begun their efforts when the two killers arrived.
De-escalation in cases of mental or emotional crisis includes such things as:
Calm the situation, by using the following tactics:
In other words, fear, conditioning, and the expectations of threat -- not the actuality of it -- drive most officers' inappropriate use of force.
It's an induced form of cowardice that's masquerading as courage.
Other officers on the scene of Mann's killing were frustrated by Mann's failure to obey and his attempts to elude them, but they did not appear to be in fear. They were protected by their vehicles, for one thing, and they were always at a safe distance from Mr. Mann. They had no cause to fear for their lives, and as for the safety of others the situation appeared to be non-threatening as well. There were a few other people on the street, some of whom got quite close to Mr. Mann, and he is not seen to threaten them in any way. He may not even have been aware of them.
911 reports, while apparently false about his possession of a gun, and they did not claim that Mann was threatening anyone with his knife. They said he was tossing it in the air and catching it, and the only claim was that he was acting strangely, was probably mentally ill, and callers said they were concerned because of the presence of children in the area.
They also reported that Joseph Mann was black.
Which may have been the determining factor in his death.
Tuesday, October 4, 2016
So the Question is Why? Why Does This Keep Happening?
Victim blamers are a significant portion of those who post on the intertubes, as are compliance fetishists. I noticed this many years ago, somewhat to my shock, since supposedly the intertubes were a bastion for free-thinkers, liberationists and outright libertarians, generally "left-leaning" whatever that meant.
But so many of those who posted on message boards and internet fora were deeply imbued with an authoritarian spirit, no matter what they professed to be their politics, and they practically worshipped at the feet of police and military (thus the pejorative, "bootlicker.") We've all heard of "Comply or Die" as the underground motto of the police. It was clear that many of those who posted to the internet were dedicated followers of just that belief.
Of course these things are skewed because the internet is attractive to certain kinds of people, not so much to others. How representative the internet is of the general population is hard to know. It seems to be quite a cesspool at times and I'd rather not believe that it is representative of much more than a tiny segment of the population. But what do I know?
Meanwhile the killing by police continues seemingly unabated. WTF? Other murders also continue seemingly without let up, no matter the violence of the police -- or perhaps partly because of it. That's a separate but related topic. It's related in part because police are modeling violent reaction to disrespect and disobedience which has a ripple-effect in society, particularly in affected communities. But it is a separate topic I might be able to get to in another post.
Scholars have pointed out that the number and rate of police killings (and killings of police) is WAY down compared to earlier times, as are murders in general. Despite appearances, this is actually a far less violent era all around than -- say -- the idyllic '50s I grew up in. I'm aware of that from personal experience. I was shot twice when I was a kid, and many other kids I knew went through worse. My mother was practically raped by a neighbor. There was much more general violence of all kinds in society and in US enterprises overseas -- where wars, overt and covert, were a constant. While I use the '50s as a nostalgic touchstone, I don't romanticize the era. It could be and often was rough. Just to note, we lived in relatively quiet, in some cases new suburban neighborhoods that were considered then and are considered now to be typical lower-middle class to middle-middle class, not in poor or notorious neighborhoods at all.
Crime was not so much an issue in part because not so many acts and activities were criminalized, and there wasn't such an intense need to punish rather than rehabilitate those who violated the law. Filling the prisons was not considered necessary or wise. On the other hand, mental health facilities were prevalent and often full to bursting. While we decry the absence of mental health care facilities in today's society -- and the substitution of punishment and imprisonment and summary execution for what's missing -- we may not understand how the mental health care system was formerly used -- abused? -- as a kind of warehouse for those who didn't "fit in" to society, as well as warehousing all kinds of genuinely mentally ill and mentally challenged individuals. The system was not exactly a prison system, but very often the inmates could not leave the asylum. Many were there for life. And in the '50s that meant that millions were being held indefinitely or for life, many more millions were cycling in and out of the system.
That system held about twice the number of today's vast prison system, 4 million as opposed to 2 million. It is often claimed that half or more of those in prison today are mentally ill, and that American prisons and jails are used as substitutes for mental health facilities (absent "care") far more than they are used to house criminals.
That's one reason why I think we see so much violence in policing -- even though it's less objectively violent than it once was, just as society as a whole is less violent. The problem is that the typical police -- and "corrections" -- response to disobedience, misbehavior, and signs of mental illness is punishment/violence. There is no alternative except death.
They'll either beat you bloody, electrocute you, or they'll kill you. They have no other viable options for control. They do not have or use de-escalation tactics, they do not know any way except through dominance to approach someone in the midst of a mental/emotional crisis, and they are conditioned not to have empathy or compassion for those in crisis -- particularly if they disobey "lawful orders."
Lack of obedience together with "furtive movements" -- the infamous "reaching for his waistband" -- is interpreted as an existential threat to be neutralized, and that generally means killing the subject (not at that point a human being, only a subject.)
Police are trained and conditioned to react to visual/verbal cues, react almost robotically, no matter the objective reality of the situation. When they detect particular cues, they will kill. If they don't they might be fired from their jobs or otherwise disciplined. That's the reality of the field of policing. Let's not fool ourselves.
Internet apologists will say that all the individual has to do is "obey" and nothing bad will happen to them, forgetting (conveniently) that people in crisis or otherwise disabled cannot necessarily obey promptly or at all, and that even people with their wits about them cannot promptly or properly obey contradictory shouted "commands."
If police are determined to kill you, they will, no matter what you do or don't do, and they will generally get away with it.
Disobedience is a cue to take more domineering or violent action, but obedience will not necessarily save you, as so many individuals find out.
But why do police so often only have domineering or violent -- or deadly -- options, when there are so many more effective an positive alternatives available, alternatives that are based on a respect for the sanctity of human life.
It has to do with how they are expected to see their role in civic life post-Columbine and post-9/11.
This is due essentially to the ravings of two consultants and their teams who go around to police departments all over the country lecturing and training on concepts of use of force and killing.
These men, (Dr.) Bill Lewinski, and (Lt. Col.) Dave Grossman, are probably more responsible for the current state of violent policing than any other two individuals in the country. And they're proud of it.
They make no apologies whatever for the death dealing and violence that goes on every day in police work. They celebrate it, and they defend and celebrate the killers. No matter who they kill or under what circumstances. They are reaching their highest level of accomplishment when they kill -- according to Grossman. And they are serving the public by killing according to Lewinski. Every killing by police is defensible, necessary and ultimately for the good of all. They are removing threats, wolves as Grossman calls them, who would otherwise be preying on the sheep (ie: you 'n' me) . Every kill is a good kill, without exception. After all, a sheepdog would never kill without reason or necessity, no? Even when, sometimes, a sheep is caught up in the crossfire or targeted. No one who is killed by police is truly innocent in any case. All are worthy of death for one reason or other, without exception. They are criminals and threats, now or in the past, and society has no place for the likes of them. None.
This is what Grossman and Lewinski teach. It's what they believe. And it is a belief shared by enormous numbers of cops and chiefs of police and sheriffs and public officials throughout the land. It is the interior culture of policing, indeed, the interior culture of rule. More importantly, it is a belief shared by elites, Our Betters as it were, almost universally.
You and I, the Rabble, have no right to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness, no rights at all that police are bound to respect, once you or I are targeted for liquidation. And when they decide to kill, there is essentially nothing we can do to stop them from carrying out their bounden duty.
Many of the examples of police killings we've seen recently demonstrate that belief as clearly as possible. Some are outright murder/summary executions, others are a little more complex, involving stages of force but inevitably leading straight to the morgue. "There is no alternative" once police have decided to kill their quarry. And that's a truism. Once the decision is made, they will kill, guaranteed.
We hear a lot about "split second decisions" but it is rarely that way at all. Police will go into a contact/confrontation having already decided to kill, or sometimes they are designated to do just that. Police departments all over the country employ snipers and shooters whose job it is to kill. When they are deployed, that's what they do. It is not a "split-second" thing at all; their deployment is itself the "decision" to use lethal force.
In other cases, beat cops or special purpose cops -- who are not necessarily or ordinarily assigned to kill -- take it upon themselves to "neutralize the threat" (ie: kill) based on what they are told via dispatch or their supervisors. That is not a "split-second" decision at all; it is a built in requirement of their dispatch to the scene. (Cf: John Crawford III, Tamir Rice and others, killed on sight without the least consideration of the facts but based solely on reports which are often inaccurate or downright false, sometimes purposely so.)
We could go on and on listing other incidents -- recent and historic -- where police kill and get away with it when there is no objective threat to them or anyone else. That's not the point of this post, however. Instead I'm not looking so much at what happens as why it happens, and why it is so difficult to change the pattern of police killings.
Inherent bias and racism is a fundamental and apparently intractable part of the problem of policing in general as well as police killings. The proportion of black and brown men killed by police is way out of proportion to their population, and it is due largely to training and conditioning which assumes a threat from these populations -- and to inherent cultural bias and racism that is fostered in society and particularly within police culture. There is no greater threat to police and society in general than raging and armed white men, but police typically approach them with deference. Black and brown men on the other hand are seen a inherent and existential threats by their nature. They are approached aggressively and often lethally with no recourse for the victim at all. This is racism and cultural bias, but it is also something else: it is a demonstration of Othering, something that is very deep seated in American culture and society.
Black and brown men, especially, are not seen by police as full "members" of society, and they are typically seen as inherently threatening to the "good order" of that society, no matter what they do or don't do.
There are other categories of the population who are "Othered" in the same way, and they are often treated as badly or worse by police, but it is the constant killing of black and brown men by police that gets the majority of the attention. That's not inappropriate at all, though I sometimes see complaints that this or that white victim of police is not being highlighted or featured by the media, and it's so "unfair!!!!" No it isn't, and no these incidents are not ignored. The problem is the proportion of police killings is vastly greater among black and brown victims, and no, it is not because they are all criminals nor does it have anything directly to do with crime in their communities. It generally has absolutely nothing to do with previous accusations or convictions -- often cited in excusing the killing of a black or brown victim -- because police typically don't know anything about that when they kill, and even if they did, it should have no bearing on their current encounter.
I was going to post some videos of Lewinski and Grossman raving about the "science" of their kill--think, but it's really sickening to me. But if you're interested just google up Dave Grossman and Bill Lewinski and you'll find plenty of information and probably hundreds of videos between them. Their poison theories and "science" is a major driving factor in police killings. Changing the situation requires discrediting their bizarre and crazy theories and beliefs, but it also requires putting in place viable alternatives.
That's a subject for another post.
But so many of those who posted on message boards and internet fora were deeply imbued with an authoritarian spirit, no matter what they professed to be their politics, and they practically worshipped at the feet of police and military (thus the pejorative, "bootlicker.") We've all heard of "Comply or Die" as the underground motto of the police. It was clear that many of those who posted to the internet were dedicated followers of just that belief.
Of course these things are skewed because the internet is attractive to certain kinds of people, not so much to others. How representative the internet is of the general population is hard to know. It seems to be quite a cesspool at times and I'd rather not believe that it is representative of much more than a tiny segment of the population. But what do I know?
Meanwhile the killing by police continues seemingly unabated. WTF? Other murders also continue seemingly without let up, no matter the violence of the police -- or perhaps partly because of it. That's a separate but related topic. It's related in part because police are modeling violent reaction to disrespect and disobedience which has a ripple-effect in society, particularly in affected communities. But it is a separate topic I might be able to get to in another post.
Scholars have pointed out that the number and rate of police killings (and killings of police) is WAY down compared to earlier times, as are murders in general. Despite appearances, this is actually a far less violent era all around than -- say -- the idyllic '50s I grew up in. I'm aware of that from personal experience. I was shot twice when I was a kid, and many other kids I knew went through worse. My mother was practically raped by a neighbor. There was much more general violence of all kinds in society and in US enterprises overseas -- where wars, overt and covert, were a constant. While I use the '50s as a nostalgic touchstone, I don't romanticize the era. It could be and often was rough. Just to note, we lived in relatively quiet, in some cases new suburban neighborhoods that were considered then and are considered now to be typical lower-middle class to middle-middle class, not in poor or notorious neighborhoods at all.
Crime was not so much an issue in part because not so many acts and activities were criminalized, and there wasn't such an intense need to punish rather than rehabilitate those who violated the law. Filling the prisons was not considered necessary or wise. On the other hand, mental health facilities were prevalent and often full to bursting. While we decry the absence of mental health care facilities in today's society -- and the substitution of punishment and imprisonment and summary execution for what's missing -- we may not understand how the mental health care system was formerly used -- abused? -- as a kind of warehouse for those who didn't "fit in" to society, as well as warehousing all kinds of genuinely mentally ill and mentally challenged individuals. The system was not exactly a prison system, but very often the inmates could not leave the asylum. Many were there for life. And in the '50s that meant that millions were being held indefinitely or for life, many more millions were cycling in and out of the system.
That system held about twice the number of today's vast prison system, 4 million as opposed to 2 million. It is often claimed that half or more of those in prison today are mentally ill, and that American prisons and jails are used as substitutes for mental health facilities (absent "care") far more than they are used to house criminals.
That's one reason why I think we see so much violence in policing -- even though it's less objectively violent than it once was, just as society as a whole is less violent. The problem is that the typical police -- and "corrections" -- response to disobedience, misbehavior, and signs of mental illness is punishment/violence. There is no alternative except death.
They'll either beat you bloody, electrocute you, or they'll kill you. They have no other viable options for control. They do not have or use de-escalation tactics, they do not know any way except through dominance to approach someone in the midst of a mental/emotional crisis, and they are conditioned not to have empathy or compassion for those in crisis -- particularly if they disobey "lawful orders."
Lack of obedience together with "furtive movements" -- the infamous "reaching for his waistband" -- is interpreted as an existential threat to be neutralized, and that generally means killing the subject (not at that point a human being, only a subject.)
Police are trained and conditioned to react to visual/verbal cues, react almost robotically, no matter the objective reality of the situation. When they detect particular cues, they will kill. If they don't they might be fired from their jobs or otherwise disciplined. That's the reality of the field of policing. Let's not fool ourselves.
Internet apologists will say that all the individual has to do is "obey" and nothing bad will happen to them, forgetting (conveniently) that people in crisis or otherwise disabled cannot necessarily obey promptly or at all, and that even people with their wits about them cannot promptly or properly obey contradictory shouted "commands."
If police are determined to kill you, they will, no matter what you do or don't do, and they will generally get away with it.
Disobedience is a cue to take more domineering or violent action, but obedience will not necessarily save you, as so many individuals find out.
But why do police so often only have domineering or violent -- or deadly -- options, when there are so many more effective an positive alternatives available, alternatives that are based on a respect for the sanctity of human life.
It has to do with how they are expected to see their role in civic life post-Columbine and post-9/11.
This is due essentially to the ravings of two consultants and their teams who go around to police departments all over the country lecturing and training on concepts of use of force and killing.
These men, (Dr.) Bill Lewinski, and (Lt. Col.) Dave Grossman, are probably more responsible for the current state of violent policing than any other two individuals in the country. And they're proud of it.
They make no apologies whatever for the death dealing and violence that goes on every day in police work. They celebrate it, and they defend and celebrate the killers. No matter who they kill or under what circumstances. They are reaching their highest level of accomplishment when they kill -- according to Grossman. And they are serving the public by killing according to Lewinski. Every killing by police is defensible, necessary and ultimately for the good of all. They are removing threats, wolves as Grossman calls them, who would otherwise be preying on the sheep (ie: you 'n' me) . Every kill is a good kill, without exception. After all, a sheepdog would never kill without reason or necessity, no? Even when, sometimes, a sheep is caught up in the crossfire or targeted. No one who is killed by police is truly innocent in any case. All are worthy of death for one reason or other, without exception. They are criminals and threats, now or in the past, and society has no place for the likes of them. None.
This is what Grossman and Lewinski teach. It's what they believe. And it is a belief shared by enormous numbers of cops and chiefs of police and sheriffs and public officials throughout the land. It is the interior culture of policing, indeed, the interior culture of rule. More importantly, it is a belief shared by elites, Our Betters as it were, almost universally.
You and I, the Rabble, have no right to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness, no rights at all that police are bound to respect, once you or I are targeted for liquidation. And when they decide to kill, there is essentially nothing we can do to stop them from carrying out their bounden duty.
Many of the examples of police killings we've seen recently demonstrate that belief as clearly as possible. Some are outright murder/summary executions, others are a little more complex, involving stages of force but inevitably leading straight to the morgue. "There is no alternative" once police have decided to kill their quarry. And that's a truism. Once the decision is made, they will kill, guaranteed.
We hear a lot about "split second decisions" but it is rarely that way at all. Police will go into a contact/confrontation having already decided to kill, or sometimes they are designated to do just that. Police departments all over the country employ snipers and shooters whose job it is to kill. When they are deployed, that's what they do. It is not a "split-second" thing at all; their deployment is itself the "decision" to use lethal force.
In other cases, beat cops or special purpose cops -- who are not necessarily or ordinarily assigned to kill -- take it upon themselves to "neutralize the threat" (ie: kill) based on what they are told via dispatch or their supervisors. That is not a "split-second" decision at all; it is a built in requirement of their dispatch to the scene. (Cf: John Crawford III, Tamir Rice and others, killed on sight without the least consideration of the facts but based solely on reports which are often inaccurate or downright false, sometimes purposely so.)
We could go on and on listing other incidents -- recent and historic -- where police kill and get away with it when there is no objective threat to them or anyone else. That's not the point of this post, however. Instead I'm not looking so much at what happens as why it happens, and why it is so difficult to change the pattern of police killings.
Inherent bias and racism is a fundamental and apparently intractable part of the problem of policing in general as well as police killings. The proportion of black and brown men killed by police is way out of proportion to their population, and it is due largely to training and conditioning which assumes a threat from these populations -- and to inherent cultural bias and racism that is fostered in society and particularly within police culture. There is no greater threat to police and society in general than raging and armed white men, but police typically approach them with deference. Black and brown men on the other hand are seen a inherent and existential threats by their nature. They are approached aggressively and often lethally with no recourse for the victim at all. This is racism and cultural bias, but it is also something else: it is a demonstration of Othering, something that is very deep seated in American culture and society.
Black and brown men, especially, are not seen by police as full "members" of society, and they are typically seen as inherently threatening to the "good order" of that society, no matter what they do or don't do.
There are other categories of the population who are "Othered" in the same way, and they are often treated as badly or worse by police, but it is the constant killing of black and brown men by police that gets the majority of the attention. That's not inappropriate at all, though I sometimes see complaints that this or that white victim of police is not being highlighted or featured by the media, and it's so "unfair!!!!" No it isn't, and no these incidents are not ignored. The problem is the proportion of police killings is vastly greater among black and brown victims, and no, it is not because they are all criminals nor does it have anything directly to do with crime in their communities. It generally has absolutely nothing to do with previous accusations or convictions -- often cited in excusing the killing of a black or brown victim -- because police typically don't know anything about that when they kill, and even if they did, it should have no bearing on their current encounter.
I was going to post some videos of Lewinski and Grossman raving about the "science" of their kill--think, but it's really sickening to me. But if you're interested just google up Dave Grossman and Bill Lewinski and you'll find plenty of information and probably hundreds of videos between them. Their poison theories and "science" is a major driving factor in police killings. Changing the situation requires discrediting their bizarre and crazy theories and beliefs, but it also requires putting in place viable alternatives.
That's a subject for another post.
Friday, September 30, 2016
They Tell The Same Story Over and Over and Over Again
From the Los Angeles Times, re El Cajon.
And the National Conversation about "race and policing" spins its wheels. Nothing really changes overall, though city by city small, incremental changes sometimes do take place, sometimes there are big changes, but often they don't last.
Police departments tend to resist any change that doesn't enhance their power and authority. That's their hard-wired system. Protest and uproar doesn't change that; in fact, it can often enhance a police department's demands for more power, more authority -- and of course more money.
El Cajon is repeating the same mistakes as Charlotte in refusing to release the available video of the shooting of Alfred Olango -- citing the "ongoing investigation" -- while having no problem spinning what happened through the selective release of one frame of the video which seems to validate the police department's narrative. In addition, El Cajon is providing a rather abundant set of narrative points -- from the "vape" Olango was allegedly holding when he was shot, to his rather baroque history with ICE and the criminal justice system. Little of which has anything at all to do with what happened in that parking lot in El Cajon, but certainly does fill out the narrative that Olango was a bad dude who needed killing.
Why we put up with this constant noise and nonsense in our National Conversation is something I have never understood, but it has been going on as long as I have been active against police violence -- a couple of decades now.
El Cajon is repeating the mistakes of Charlotte, and Charlotte repeated the mistakes of Sacramento, by spinning a narrative that protects police not the public. Their narratives include falsehoods and lies. It's the way these things are done, and seemingly police departments in these and many other cities are incapable of seeing or anticipating the consequences. Or perhaps they can see them and they use them to further enhance their power and authority -- and their budgets.
There are reports that the demonstrations in El Cajon overnight "turned violent." I will take those reports under advisement. I haven't read the reports, but in most cases I'm familiar with, the "violence" is frequently initiated by police and consists of resistance to their power and authority -- such as defying orders, throwing back tear gas cannisters, overturning newspaper boxes and trash containers, breaking windows, throwing rocks and/or bottles at the police, and sometimes -- actually very rarely -- looting and arson.
The resistance occurs because the police have (once again) done something violent and apparently inappropriate or unnecessary, such as shooting and killing a black man in crisis. Alfred Olango for example. And so many others.
The resistance also occurs because this has been going on for years and years and police refuse to change their policies and protocols. They keep right on killing as if it were their highest objective and calling. They do not respect or protect the sanctity of human life, and they have zero empathy for the lives they snuff out so casually.
Protest may highlight the issue, but it cannot and does not affect the cult of death police departments subscribe to.
Police are not doing this in a vacuum. They are reflecting the will of those they truly "serve and protect" -- which is not the Public, certainly not the black and brown portions of the Public. They quite unself-consciously "serve and protect" the elite of their communities, the power structure, the monied interests. Everyone else is subject to whatever police want to do and think is appropriate to control them.
Random acts of violence, arbitrary summary executions, night raids, routine escalations during encounters, inexplicable imposition of authority, lack of accountability, mass incarceration, ever widening criminalization, etc. etc, including the multi-million dollar payouts to survivors and family members of victims of police violence, are all elements of control. Some of it is truly arbitrary and random, but much of it is deliberate, gamed out, and intentionally destructive.
It's a strategy to keep control over a restive, increasingly impoverished, powerless and downtrodden population.
It's not a very good strategy and it will ultimately lead to the kinds of blowback we're already seeing signs of -- including the deliberate killings of police in revenge.
They set the standard of violence and reap the whirlwind.
We might see the pattern but so far we are unable to throw a big enough spanner in the works to halt the repetition.
I don't know what it will take to do that. But we're working on it.
And the National Conversation about "race and policing" spins its wheels. Nothing really changes overall, though city by city small, incremental changes sometimes do take place, sometimes there are big changes, but often they don't last.
Police departments tend to resist any change that doesn't enhance their power and authority. That's their hard-wired system. Protest and uproar doesn't change that; in fact, it can often enhance a police department's demands for more power, more authority -- and of course more money.
El Cajon is repeating the same mistakes as Charlotte in refusing to release the available video of the shooting of Alfred Olango -- citing the "ongoing investigation" -- while having no problem spinning what happened through the selective release of one frame of the video which seems to validate the police department's narrative. In addition, El Cajon is providing a rather abundant set of narrative points -- from the "vape" Olango was allegedly holding when he was shot, to his rather baroque history with ICE and the criminal justice system. Little of which has anything at all to do with what happened in that parking lot in El Cajon, but certainly does fill out the narrative that Olango was a bad dude who needed killing.
Why we put up with this constant noise and nonsense in our National Conversation is something I have never understood, but it has been going on as long as I have been active against police violence -- a couple of decades now.
El Cajon is repeating the mistakes of Charlotte, and Charlotte repeated the mistakes of Sacramento, by spinning a narrative that protects police not the public. Their narratives include falsehoods and lies. It's the way these things are done, and seemingly police departments in these and many other cities are incapable of seeing or anticipating the consequences. Or perhaps they can see them and they use them to further enhance their power and authority -- and their budgets.
There are reports that the demonstrations in El Cajon overnight "turned violent." I will take those reports under advisement. I haven't read the reports, but in most cases I'm familiar with, the "violence" is frequently initiated by police and consists of resistance to their power and authority -- such as defying orders, throwing back tear gas cannisters, overturning newspaper boxes and trash containers, breaking windows, throwing rocks and/or bottles at the police, and sometimes -- actually very rarely -- looting and arson.
The resistance occurs because the police have (once again) done something violent and apparently inappropriate or unnecessary, such as shooting and killing a black man in crisis. Alfred Olango for example. And so many others.
The resistance also occurs because this has been going on for years and years and police refuse to change their policies and protocols. They keep right on killing as if it were their highest objective and calling. They do not respect or protect the sanctity of human life, and they have zero empathy for the lives they snuff out so casually.
Protest may highlight the issue, but it cannot and does not affect the cult of death police departments subscribe to.
Police are not doing this in a vacuum. They are reflecting the will of those they truly "serve and protect" -- which is not the Public, certainly not the black and brown portions of the Public. They quite unself-consciously "serve and protect" the elite of their communities, the power structure, the monied interests. Everyone else is subject to whatever police want to do and think is appropriate to control them.
Random acts of violence, arbitrary summary executions, night raids, routine escalations during encounters, inexplicable imposition of authority, lack of accountability, mass incarceration, ever widening criminalization, etc. etc, including the multi-million dollar payouts to survivors and family members of victims of police violence, are all elements of control. Some of it is truly arbitrary and random, but much of it is deliberate, gamed out, and intentionally destructive.
It's a strategy to keep control over a restive, increasingly impoverished, powerless and downtrodden population.
It's not a very good strategy and it will ultimately lead to the kinds of blowback we're already seeing signs of -- including the deliberate killings of police in revenge.
They set the standard of violence and reap the whirlwind.
We might see the pattern but so far we are unable to throw a big enough spanner in the works to halt the repetition.
I don't know what it will take to do that. But we're working on it.
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
The Bundy Bunch Thing Continues Its Dreary Way...
What these entitled rich white fools are up to is anybody's guess, but they're certainly getting away with it. Wow.
There are elements and echoes of the Occupy movement in their tactics, and I'm sure the Bundy Bunch learned plenty from the failure of Occupy to hold territory they had seized. The lesson the Bundy Bunch learned -- we all did -- was that unarmed protesters cannot ultimately claim territory or hold positions against the state, whereas armed insurgents (sometimes) can.
The Bundy Bunch are being allowed to get away with an insurrection that borders on domestic terrorism, and they've been allowed to get away with it before. They have a lot of sympathy in the media. Much more than Occupy ever did, but then these privileged white fools are much more like the men and women of the media than the anarchists and rebellious youth of the Occupy movement.
The New York Times had an article the other day about the rural poverty that afflicts the West, Harney County in particular, and stated this poverty is the backdrop and implied it is somehow the reason for the Bundy Bunch's seizure of the wildlife refuge.
Utter nonsense.
The insurgents are not poor. Most are very well off, and some like the Bundys are objectively wealthy. Their prosperity and/or wealth is partly the result of federal subsidies for their ranching operations. They have little or no concern for the rural poor who are suffering economic hardship. It's simply not how things are done in the West. The Bundy Bunch is not in Harney County to ameliorate the economic condition of the struggling masses. To suggest that the standoff at Malheur has anything to do with that is deeply dishonest and bizarre.
But it seems to be where the media is headed as they try to "make sense of" the situation.
No.
There is most definitely rural poverty in the West. Ms Ché and I live in a rural county in New Mexico with a high poverty rate. But in addition there are also rich ranchers and farm operators in the county, running cattle and growing crops, making money, often with the assistance of federal and state subsidies. Los Ricos do not much fret over the poor. Most don't give a good gott-damn about "rural poverty." And the other side of that is that most of the rural poor in this area make do as best they can, helped out by relatives, neighbors, and one another and a tenaciousness that is quite remarkable given the harshness of so much of the reality here.
There is also a tendency to skirt -- or flout -- the law.
The idea that the poor of this or any other rural county of the West would be better off if the federal government did not control so much land is nonsense, something the people of Harney County seem to understand quite well. They want the Bundy Bunch gone.
The media has a hard time with that concept, however, thinking the Bundy Bunch are romantic heroes of some Western novelist's dream.
It's sad.
But here we are. The government continues to allow the rich white fools at Malheur to get away with it. The rest of us have to put up with it for the duration.
There are elements and echoes of the Occupy movement in their tactics, and I'm sure the Bundy Bunch learned plenty from the failure of Occupy to hold territory they had seized. The lesson the Bundy Bunch learned -- we all did -- was that unarmed protesters cannot ultimately claim territory or hold positions against the state, whereas armed insurgents (sometimes) can.
The Bundy Bunch are being allowed to get away with an insurrection that borders on domestic terrorism, and they've been allowed to get away with it before. They have a lot of sympathy in the media. Much more than Occupy ever did, but then these privileged white fools are much more like the men and women of the media than the anarchists and rebellious youth of the Occupy movement.
The New York Times had an article the other day about the rural poverty that afflicts the West, Harney County in particular, and stated this poverty is the backdrop and implied it is somehow the reason for the Bundy Bunch's seizure of the wildlife refuge.
Utter nonsense.
The insurgents are not poor. Most are very well off, and some like the Bundys are objectively wealthy. Their prosperity and/or wealth is partly the result of federal subsidies for their ranching operations. They have little or no concern for the rural poor who are suffering economic hardship. It's simply not how things are done in the West. The Bundy Bunch is not in Harney County to ameliorate the economic condition of the struggling masses. To suggest that the standoff at Malheur has anything to do with that is deeply dishonest and bizarre.
But it seems to be where the media is headed as they try to "make sense of" the situation.
No.
There is most definitely rural poverty in the West. Ms Ché and I live in a rural county in New Mexico with a high poverty rate. But in addition there are also rich ranchers and farm operators in the county, running cattle and growing crops, making money, often with the assistance of federal and state subsidies. Los Ricos do not much fret over the poor. Most don't give a good gott-damn about "rural poverty." And the other side of that is that most of the rural poor in this area make do as best they can, helped out by relatives, neighbors, and one another and a tenaciousness that is quite remarkable given the harshness of so much of the reality here.
There is also a tendency to skirt -- or flout -- the law.
The idea that the poor of this or any other rural county of the West would be better off if the federal government did not control so much land is nonsense, something the people of Harney County seem to understand quite well. They want the Bundy Bunch gone.
The media has a hard time with that concept, however, thinking the Bundy Bunch are romantic heroes of some Western novelist's dream.
It's sad.
But here we are. The government continues to allow the rich white fools at Malheur to get away with it. The rest of us have to put up with it for the duration.
Sunday, January 17, 2016
The Flint Water Thing...
What a mess. It's also a primary example of what's wrong with Neo-Liberalism and why the People must take matters into their own hands and reject the outrageous and dangerous ideologies of both Neo-Liberalism and Neo-Conservatism.
They both kill people and lead to immense levels of suffering for the masses while enriching a handful of warmongers, exploiters and plutocrats.
It's insanity. Governing insanity. And it must be brought to an end.
The Flint Water Catastrophe is typical, and it's a marker, one of an increasing number of "chickens coming home to roost" things.
(I don't think I've said previously, but we recently received notice that our tap water here in Central New Mexico is officially contaminated -- you got it, with lead, copper and some chemical related to PCB. Of course we stopped drinking it a long time ago, but this is the first time the tests have said what we've long suspected...)
Several factors enter into what happened in Flint (and I wonder how many other cities are or will be affected in the same or similar ways). One, of course, is the replacement of elected governance with the appointed, dictatorial "emergency managers" whose misrule in Michigan has become one of the lesser-known scandals of the 21st century. I've noticed that most of the mainstream coverage of the Flint water crisis makes no mention the emergency managers that were assigned to Flint and their unilateral decisions in the matter. What the mainstream says instead is that "the city decided" -- but that implies public knowledge/consent to change the source of water, and there was none. The public had no role and no authority and very little knowledge of and in that decision at all. The "city of Flint" did not make a decision regarding the water source, the emergency manager(s) assigned to the city did. And then, because of ideology, they denied there was a problem as the crisis grew worse and worse.
Saying that "the city of Flint" made the decisions that led to the current crisis is a way of blaming the victims, and it needs to stop.
The water crisis is entirely a matter of certain individuals rigid ideology that inevitably produces crisis and death and destruction -- and victims by the millions for the profit of a few.
The Flint Water Thing is one of a myriad monstrous consequences of these death-dealing ideologies, and though I doubt it will cause a necessary ideological shift in our governing classes, it will add to the pressure on them to fix what's wrong and do the right thing for once in their sorry lives.
This -- and so much else that's gone wrong over the last several decades -- must stop.
They both kill people and lead to immense levels of suffering for the masses while enriching a handful of warmongers, exploiters and plutocrats.
It's insanity. Governing insanity. And it must be brought to an end.
The Flint Water Catastrophe is typical, and it's a marker, one of an increasing number of "chickens coming home to roost" things.
(I don't think I've said previously, but we recently received notice that our tap water here in Central New Mexico is officially contaminated -- you got it, with lead, copper and some chemical related to PCB. Of course we stopped drinking it a long time ago, but this is the first time the tests have said what we've long suspected...)
Several factors enter into what happened in Flint (and I wonder how many other cities are or will be affected in the same or similar ways). One, of course, is the replacement of elected governance with the appointed, dictatorial "emergency managers" whose misrule in Michigan has become one of the lesser-known scandals of the 21st century. I've noticed that most of the mainstream coverage of the Flint water crisis makes no mention the emergency managers that were assigned to Flint and their unilateral decisions in the matter. What the mainstream says instead is that "the city decided" -- but that implies public knowledge/consent to change the source of water, and there was none. The public had no role and no authority and very little knowledge of and in that decision at all. The "city of Flint" did not make a decision regarding the water source, the emergency manager(s) assigned to the city did. And then, because of ideology, they denied there was a problem as the crisis grew worse and worse.
Saying that "the city of Flint" made the decisions that led to the current crisis is a way of blaming the victims, and it needs to stop.
The water crisis is entirely a matter of certain individuals rigid ideology that inevitably produces crisis and death and destruction -- and victims by the millions for the profit of a few.
The Flint Water Thing is one of a myriad monstrous consequences of these death-dealing ideologies, and though I doubt it will cause a necessary ideological shift in our governing classes, it will add to the pressure on them to fix what's wrong and do the right thing for once in their sorry lives.
This -- and so much else that's gone wrong over the last several decades -- must stop.
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Year-End Wrap-Up: The Greek Thing and the Ukranian Thing Are Still Things, The Middle East Chaos Spreads, and Police Killings Have Increased, Not Decreased In 2015. What A World.
Greece and Ukraine have fallen off the media radar so that nowadays all you hear about Greece is that it is the arrival/transit point for the Muslim hordes invading Europe, if you hear even that, never mind that many Greeks live like refugees in their own country.
You don't hear about Ukraine at all except in the by now ritualized denigration and denunciations of Russia and especially that New New Hitler, Putin. Then it's only to yammer on about "Putin's Invasion" of Ukraine that never happened and his support of "separatists" and "rebels" that did.
Both Greece and Ukraine are economic disasters of immense proportions, made deliberately worse by the policies and programs of the very Europe that is supposed to be their salvation. Neither was in good economic shape prior to the impositions of the EU and its financiers, and in the case of Ukraine, prior to the Nazi coup -- which was partially enabled and funded by such luminaries as Pierre Omidyar. But what's been done to them over the past several years, as neo-liberal economic theories and policies have been given free rein, is grotesque in the extreme.
While I'm no fan of The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald's and Pierre Omidyar's special-purpose media outlet, I was quite taken with Paul Mason's four part film examination of the Greek tragedy which is still playing out. The trouble with it is that, like almost all media coverage of Greece in the US, it stops with the September elections which confirmed Syriza's parliamentary majority. It wasn't so much that there was nothing more to say about the Greek Thing at that point as it was that the elections were seen as a full capitulation to the Berlin/Brussels axis, and there could only be more misery in store for the Greeks from then on.
So far as I can tell, more misery is what's happened -- compounded by the flood of refugees from the Middle Eastern Chaos that was triggered by and is maintained at a boil by the United States of America, Inc, LLC. The refugee situation is sometimes blamed on the Greeks -- for not doing enough to stem the tide or something. For cripes sake. As if they could do something about it given the lack of support that Europe has given Greece. It's nonsense, but there you are.
The EU and its financiers make their own reality, it would seem, aided and abetted by the Department of Madmen in the United States of America, Inc. LLC. We live in remarkably Interesting Times, no?
My access to information about what's going on in Ukraine is strictly limited, and so far as I can tell, essentially nothing has changed since the struggle between Kiev and the Donbass was sometimes in the news. The struggle goes on. Kiev's aggression against the people of the Donbass continues, and terms like "genocide" are waved around. The nonexistent invasion by Russia is still bruited as if it were real. The Nazis still control the government in Kiev, and the suffering of the Ukrainian people under their control is profound and increasing. This is all the implementation of policies thought up in Berlin and Brussels and the Department of Madmen in Washington, DC. It's insane on its face, but it is the New Reality being created before our Very Eyes.
The Middle East spirals further and further into utter Mad Max Chaos, as city after city is destroyed and their populations liquidated in pursuit of named and nameless phantoms. The policy is obviously to keep the Chaos in the Middle East boiling and spreading indefinitely, and if there are fleeing refugees, so much the better. Destruction and depopulation seem to be happening for their own sake, and horrors are committed by all sides -- as if there were sides -- with glee and abandon. A charnel house would be less appalling. Meanwhile, our Good Friends the Saudis, ruled by a Madman King, chops off more heads than ISIS (whatever it's called these days) dreams of.
The police in United States have killed more people this year than last year when protests began in earnest and spread nationally against violent and deadly policing. Well. Isn't that something? More killed since the protests began...
As of yesterday, the number of dead at the hands of American police was 1192, a nearly 10% increase over last year. If the protests are intended to reduce the use of lethal force by police, they're not working. In the meantime, the number of police killed by perpetrators in the line of duty has apparently fallen by 14%. These statistics ought to be a clarion call to Americans that something just ain't right, but as I've seen on the internets over and over again, a whole lot of Americans are just fine with more dead at the hands of police. Especially if they're "thugs," black or brown men who have been so demonized for so long it seems that there is now almost no way for rehabilitation in the minds of both the police and the general white population. I knew the situation was dire, but it seems to be worse than I imagined.
There are so many killings by police it's almost impossible to keep up, and the System defends them in an almost comical fashion (though it's not the least bit funny) such as was the case with Cleveland's Own DA McGinty claiming there was no crime, only a sad series of errors, in the shocking summary execution of young Tamir Rice that snowy day last year.
No, there was no crime. There can't be. If police kill be someone in the line of duty, it is by definition "justified," because, as we know, police don't kill without justification. They wouldn't dream of such a thing. Even when they do skirt the rules of engagement or the line between "justified" and "not," they almost always get off because they din't mean to, and besides, they are always, always, always "in fear for their lives and the safety of others", and according to the law, so long as they invoke that phrase, which they are trained to do, there is no criminal intent or act in anything they do. Kill, maim, torture at will. It is not a crime if the police do it.
No one I know of is surprised at McGinty's failure to get a GJ indictment of the officers responsible for Tamir Rice's death. He didn't act at any time as a prosecutor in the case, he acted as their defense attorney. The person indicted would have been Tamir Rice if he had survived his execution. This has happened in so many other instances, in so many other jurisdictions, where prosecutors use the GJ process to essentially defend police and impugn and denigrate their victims that it is obviously a general policy and procedure within the prosecutorial profession to do exactly that. Professional courtesy, I guess. The prosecutor is there not to prosecute cases against police officers but to defend them, no matter what they do.
The law is structured in such a way as to protect the actions of police even in those very rare instances that go to trial. It is so rare that a police officer is convicted of a crime in connection with his/her duties, no matter what s/he does, that it's national news when it happens. This blanket protection is due to court decisions and local and state laws that essentially give police free rein to do anything they think needs doing ("to keep us safe") in the heat of the moment, the legendary "split-second" police and their defenders are always invoking to explain this, that and the next killing or maiming.
The Supreme Court constantly reinforces this near blanket immunity from criminal liability, usually unanimously or on a very lopsided majority. As long as they do, police will be protected whereas civilians are not.
There is no law that protects civilians from police killing them at will -- and getting away with it. None.
Some wag might say it's a wonder then that the police don't kill more than they do. Right.
So what do we do? I've been studying this issue for many a long year, starting with my work against police brutality on behalf of the NAACP in Sacramento in 1996. That effort was a partial success, and the reason why it was even partially successful was that the police chief and the city manager of Sacramento were in agreement with the goals of the project to reduce police brutality. They wanted nearly the same outcome we did.
Police departments are strict hierarchies, and when the top people say "these are the rules," the rank and file either follow them or they are out. In most cities, the police department is under the command of the chief who in turn is accountable to the city manager, not to elected officials. This is something that still mystifies many activists. They think that if they sway elected officials, then the police will follow, and it generally doesn't work that way. Police departments were deliberately insulated from the influence of elected officials in most cities long ago, as part of the Progressive Movement, in order, it was thought, to reduce the level of corruption that police were (and many still are) notorious for.
In theory, the city manager -- a professional, a technocrat -- is accountable to the elected representatives of the people, but city managers are notorious for their defiance and contempt of their supposed bosses. Often, it is almost impossible to fire a city manager, and firing is frequently the only discipline that can be imposed. Because the police chief most often works for the city manager, not the mayor and city council, discipline of the police is just as difficult to accomplish. They too will defy electeds when it suits them, and there is very little the electeds can do about it.
So, what do you do? You convince the people who are actually in charge of the police, the city manager and the police chief, that the rules by which the police operate must change, and this is how the rules must change. This is basically what all those DoJ consent decrees do. They tell the city manager and the police chief that this is how things should be done, and there is a court appointed monitor to ensure compliance.
Had the city manager and police chief not agreed to most of our anti-police brutality reforms in Sacramento, going to the DoJ was the next step. But they did agree and they implemented rule changes which reduced police brutality substantially (police killings had been rare and still are in Sacramento).
In other cities, such as Oakland and Seattle, consent decrees or their equivalent have been defied by police departments, sometimes for many years, and this defiance makes it clear that there is no real enforcement mechanism for these reforms. There's no way the courts can make a defiant department (ie: the police chief and city manager) comply short of taking over the department through receivership. As far as I know, that's never happened.
Thus police reform is a chancy business. It may or may not work. I'm convinced that abolition is the better alternative. Abolish current police forces altogether and start over. They have reached the point where they are beyond reform or salvation.
The whole damn system is guilty as hell, which means the entire criminal justice system needs to be dismantled and reconstructed on a better, more humane, and ultimately more just basis.
I can hardly imagine what it will take to accomplish that, but that's what's necessary.
Maybe next year.
Pray for the victims. And act for a better future.
You don't hear about Ukraine at all except in the by now ritualized denigration and denunciations of Russia and especially that New New Hitler, Putin. Then it's only to yammer on about "Putin's Invasion" of Ukraine that never happened and his support of "separatists" and "rebels" that did.
Both Greece and Ukraine are economic disasters of immense proportions, made deliberately worse by the policies and programs of the very Europe that is supposed to be their salvation. Neither was in good economic shape prior to the impositions of the EU and its financiers, and in the case of Ukraine, prior to the Nazi coup -- which was partially enabled and funded by such luminaries as Pierre Omidyar. But what's been done to them over the past several years, as neo-liberal economic theories and policies have been given free rein, is grotesque in the extreme.
While I'm no fan of The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald's and Pierre Omidyar's special-purpose media outlet, I was quite taken with Paul Mason's four part film examination of the Greek tragedy which is still playing out. The trouble with it is that, like almost all media coverage of Greece in the US, it stops with the September elections which confirmed Syriza's parliamentary majority. It wasn't so much that there was nothing more to say about the Greek Thing at that point as it was that the elections were seen as a full capitulation to the Berlin/Brussels axis, and there could only be more misery in store for the Greeks from then on.
So far as I can tell, more misery is what's happened -- compounded by the flood of refugees from the Middle Eastern Chaos that was triggered by and is maintained at a boil by the United States of America, Inc, LLC. The refugee situation is sometimes blamed on the Greeks -- for not doing enough to stem the tide or something. For cripes sake. As if they could do something about it given the lack of support that Europe has given Greece. It's nonsense, but there you are.
The EU and its financiers make their own reality, it would seem, aided and abetted by the Department of Madmen in the United States of America, Inc. LLC. We live in remarkably Interesting Times, no?
My access to information about what's going on in Ukraine is strictly limited, and so far as I can tell, essentially nothing has changed since the struggle between Kiev and the Donbass was sometimes in the news. The struggle goes on. Kiev's aggression against the people of the Donbass continues, and terms like "genocide" are waved around. The nonexistent invasion by Russia is still bruited as if it were real. The Nazis still control the government in Kiev, and the suffering of the Ukrainian people under their control is profound and increasing. This is all the implementation of policies thought up in Berlin and Brussels and the Department of Madmen in Washington, DC. It's insane on its face, but it is the New Reality being created before our Very Eyes.
The Middle East spirals further and further into utter Mad Max Chaos, as city after city is destroyed and their populations liquidated in pursuit of named and nameless phantoms. The policy is obviously to keep the Chaos in the Middle East boiling and spreading indefinitely, and if there are fleeing refugees, so much the better. Destruction and depopulation seem to be happening for their own sake, and horrors are committed by all sides -- as if there were sides -- with glee and abandon. A charnel house would be less appalling. Meanwhile, our Good Friends the Saudis, ruled by a Madman King, chops off more heads than ISIS (whatever it's called these days) dreams of.
The police in United States have killed more people this year than last year when protests began in earnest and spread nationally against violent and deadly policing. Well. Isn't that something? More killed since the protests began...
As of yesterday, the number of dead at the hands of American police was 1192, a nearly 10% increase over last year. If the protests are intended to reduce the use of lethal force by police, they're not working. In the meantime, the number of police killed by perpetrators in the line of duty has apparently fallen by 14%. These statistics ought to be a clarion call to Americans that something just ain't right, but as I've seen on the internets over and over again, a whole lot of Americans are just fine with more dead at the hands of police. Especially if they're "thugs," black or brown men who have been so demonized for so long it seems that there is now almost no way for rehabilitation in the minds of both the police and the general white population. I knew the situation was dire, but it seems to be worse than I imagined.
There are so many killings by police it's almost impossible to keep up, and the System defends them in an almost comical fashion (though it's not the least bit funny) such as was the case with Cleveland's Own DA McGinty claiming there was no crime, only a sad series of errors, in the shocking summary execution of young Tamir Rice that snowy day last year.
No, there was no crime. There can't be. If police kill be someone in the line of duty, it is by definition "justified," because, as we know, police don't kill without justification. They wouldn't dream of such a thing. Even when they do skirt the rules of engagement or the line between "justified" and "not," they almost always get off because they din't mean to, and besides, they are always, always, always "in fear for their lives and the safety of others", and according to the law, so long as they invoke that phrase, which they are trained to do, there is no criminal intent or act in anything they do. Kill, maim, torture at will. It is not a crime if the police do it.
No one I know of is surprised at McGinty's failure to get a GJ indictment of the officers responsible for Tamir Rice's death. He didn't act at any time as a prosecutor in the case, he acted as their defense attorney. The person indicted would have been Tamir Rice if he had survived his execution. This has happened in so many other instances, in so many other jurisdictions, where prosecutors use the GJ process to essentially defend police and impugn and denigrate their victims that it is obviously a general policy and procedure within the prosecutorial profession to do exactly that. Professional courtesy, I guess. The prosecutor is there not to prosecute cases against police officers but to defend them, no matter what they do.
The law is structured in such a way as to protect the actions of police even in those very rare instances that go to trial. It is so rare that a police officer is convicted of a crime in connection with his/her duties, no matter what s/he does, that it's national news when it happens. This blanket protection is due to court decisions and local and state laws that essentially give police free rein to do anything they think needs doing ("to keep us safe") in the heat of the moment, the legendary "split-second" police and their defenders are always invoking to explain this, that and the next killing or maiming.
The Supreme Court constantly reinforces this near blanket immunity from criminal liability, usually unanimously or on a very lopsided majority. As long as they do, police will be protected whereas civilians are not.
There is no law that protects civilians from police killing them at will -- and getting away with it. None.
Some wag might say it's a wonder then that the police don't kill more than they do. Right.
So what do we do? I've been studying this issue for many a long year, starting with my work against police brutality on behalf of the NAACP in Sacramento in 1996. That effort was a partial success, and the reason why it was even partially successful was that the police chief and the city manager of Sacramento were in agreement with the goals of the project to reduce police brutality. They wanted nearly the same outcome we did.
Police departments are strict hierarchies, and when the top people say "these are the rules," the rank and file either follow them or they are out. In most cities, the police department is under the command of the chief who in turn is accountable to the city manager, not to elected officials. This is something that still mystifies many activists. They think that if they sway elected officials, then the police will follow, and it generally doesn't work that way. Police departments were deliberately insulated from the influence of elected officials in most cities long ago, as part of the Progressive Movement, in order, it was thought, to reduce the level of corruption that police were (and many still are) notorious for.
In theory, the city manager -- a professional, a technocrat -- is accountable to the elected representatives of the people, but city managers are notorious for their defiance and contempt of their supposed bosses. Often, it is almost impossible to fire a city manager, and firing is frequently the only discipline that can be imposed. Because the police chief most often works for the city manager, not the mayor and city council, discipline of the police is just as difficult to accomplish. They too will defy electeds when it suits them, and there is very little the electeds can do about it.
So, what do you do? You convince the people who are actually in charge of the police, the city manager and the police chief, that the rules by which the police operate must change, and this is how the rules must change. This is basically what all those DoJ consent decrees do. They tell the city manager and the police chief that this is how things should be done, and there is a court appointed monitor to ensure compliance.
Had the city manager and police chief not agreed to most of our anti-police brutality reforms in Sacramento, going to the DoJ was the next step. But they did agree and they implemented rule changes which reduced police brutality substantially (police killings had been rare and still are in Sacramento).
In other cities, such as Oakland and Seattle, consent decrees or their equivalent have been defied by police departments, sometimes for many years, and this defiance makes it clear that there is no real enforcement mechanism for these reforms. There's no way the courts can make a defiant department (ie: the police chief and city manager) comply short of taking over the department through receivership. As far as I know, that's never happened.
Thus police reform is a chancy business. It may or may not work. I'm convinced that abolition is the better alternative. Abolish current police forces altogether and start over. They have reached the point where they are beyond reform or salvation.
The whole damn system is guilty as hell, which means the entire criminal justice system needs to be dismantled and reconstructed on a better, more humane, and ultimately more just basis.
I can hardly imagine what it will take to accomplish that, but that's what's necessary.
Maybe next year.
Pray for the victims. And act for a better future.
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