A Spate of Police Killings Hits the News

[Note: as this hiatus continues, I've been going to physical therapy to try to deal with my increasing left-side lameness. Mixed results: able to walk a bit better most of the time, but various hip and back pains following treatments suggest the onset of sciatica -- which the therapist acknowledged might be triggered. What a drag it is getting older...]


There's been a fairly regular spate of police killings in the news lately, reminding me a bit of the coverage uptick after Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, MO, all those years ago. (Can it be almost four years now?) Of course, it was the shooting of James Boyd in Albuquerque in March of 2014 that set off numerous protests, not just of his killing by police, but of dozens of killings over the previous few years. I was involved in some of those protests though not as much as I might have wanted to be -- thanks to my lameness even then.

The killing of Stephon Clark in his grandmother's Sacramento backyard was very disturbing. I didn't know him, but I know the Meadowview neighborhood where it happened, and it's easy to imagine how terrifying the whole thing has been. Meadowview is not an easy place to live, but many people who live there have no choice. They have been pushed out of other neighborhoods, either through gentrification or because of some stain on their records.

I understand Stephon's grandmother had lived in the neighborhood for decades, and for all the trouble with the law Stephon had been in, he was a potential community leader with a magnetic personality and a vibrant presence who was "turning his life around."

This is a common enough story in many communities of color throughout the nation. What's also common is that up and coming black male community leaders are intentionally or accidentally targeted for elimination.

This seems to be an "accidental" elimination perpetrated by a couple of panicked cops on the hunt for someone who was reported to be breaking car, truck and house windows. They found a Negro who they thought had a gun and blasted away at him until he was a riddled mess of bullet holes and then let him bleed out until he was dead, dead, dead.

In New York, Saheed Vassell, well-know to be a harmless kook in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, was shot down pretty much on sight by specialist crew of killer cops deployed because of reports of a Negro with a gun threatening people on the streets.

In American society, cops consider an armed Negro or the report of an armed Negro -- doesn't have to be with a gun -- to be an existential threat to be neutralized promptly. Saheed was reported to have a gun. He didn't, but it didn't matter. The reports were sufficient, and apparently cops are not trained or required to ascertain the truth of the matter; in the case of Saheed, they were deployed to kill, which is what they did, BAM, BAM, BAM. Dead.

There was a recent incident in Portland, OR, in which a deranged white man, said to be armed with a knife, was being hunted by police based on accusations of a carjacking earlier in the day and a wreck of said car on the poor side of town. Man enters homeless shelter, shirtless and acting bizarre. He has a knife and (apparently) is threatening to kill himself with said knife. Police converge, man is cornered and (according to reports) man starts stabbing himself in the neck. Police "deploy lethal force." Man is "deceased."

And so it goes. It should be stated this goes on all the time. More than a thousand times a year, every year (looks to be even more this year) are killed by police, and some of these killings become news items that garner a lot of attention nationally and internationally. The US has a widely recognized problem with gun violence, police killings and mass shootings, a problem that seems completely intractable on some levels, is rather easily dealt with on others.

Police killings are an issue because the officers involved are almost never held to criminal account, are rarely even reprimanded by their departments. Many times, officers who kill -- regardless of circumstances -- are rewarded and hailed as heroes, in part because police consultants like David Grossman and William Lewinsky have been going around the country for decades telling police that killing the Bad Guy is their highest accomplishment, and they'll have the "best sex of their lives" afterwards. No lie.

Many of these killings are nothing but summary executions disproportionately afflicting black,  brown, and poor white subjects, many suffering mental health crises for which no treatment or services are available. Obviously something is wrong but supposedly nothing can be done about it.

Much like periodic episodes of mass shooting, it's just something Americans have to live with as "the price of freedom." Or something.

It's happened so much for so long, I believe we're dealing with deliberate, cynical and cruel policies of murder/mayhem that are intended to keep the Rabble in fear and helplessness... Over and over again, the Rabble are shown that they cannot rely on police or officials to protect them; over and over again, they are shown that they are helpless in the face of American Gunners. Over and over again, they are shown that they are targets of whoever wants to target them, and there is nothing they can do about it.

So here we are, again.

And what do we do about it? Ideally we change it, but our policy makers don't seem to be interested. They're satisfied with things as they are (except for the movements and demonstrations that arise). A relatively steady number of police killings, infrequent but increasingly deadly mass murders, constant low-level gang and other murders, constant suicide by gun, all of it just fine with our Overclass -- because it never (or very rarely) affects them. It is always something for the Lower Orders to deal with. Too bad if they can't.

I'm too old and infirm to have much of an effect on these things anymore, but I hope and pray the young folks will make the changes necessary. As many people have testified in the recent cases, "We know what's wrong and we know what to do about it."

Yep.

Mass Murder is More American Than Apple Pie

As we once again slouch toward Columbus Day/Indigenous People's Day against the background of mass murder in Las Vegas, it's easy to see that the perpetual "gun debate" is stalled where it has been for decades: "Nothing can be done, nothing should be done, occasional mass murder is the 'price of liberty,' now is not the time to discuss these issues."

Yes, well. We've been round and round this mulberry bush so many times. More than 1,500 incidents of mass murder since Sandy Hook, and to the extent there's been any legislative action at all, it has been to loosen restrictions on access to firearms. Something is haywire.

I'm watching a "debate" right now between two congressmen (both military vets, 38 years old)  on the issue of "gun control" and it is the same sterile garbage we've been hearing for years -- "can't" "should", "conversation," "emotion," "automatic weapons," "confiscation," "reasonable," "common sense," on and on, round and round, "tyranny!"

Nonsense.

Here's (part of) the problem: The American experience is founded on repeated episodes of mass murder, beginning with Columbus and continuing to this day. There has never been an end to it.

The "well-regulated militia" referenced in the Sacred Second is about having the ability to threaten and commit mass murder to supposedly protect the nascent "free state." From what?

Slave rebellions, worker strikes and rebellions, Indian uprisings, etc. That's what the militia was for and to an extent still is. The National Guard is the current iteration of the militia of the post-revolution era. The National Guard is a largely reactive and protective force that tends to serve the interests of the political and financial elites -- which can but don't necessarily involve putting down slave revolts and Indian uprisings. The ad-hoc militias -- mostly white males, mostly right-wing -- on the other hand, are much more zealous about who is in charge and why, and who will be targeted by said militias.

Black people, brown people, poor people, homeless people. You know the kind. "Threats" to the "free state." Of white men doing what they want.

That's the foundation of all of this, and until Americans clarify that in their own minds, nothing can be or will be done about mass murder and gun violence in this country.

I mentioned on another site that a possible way to break the log jam over "gun rights" is to engage in a persistent campaign to end the acceptance of and glamorization of gun violence and mass murder in this country.

The idea is to use some of the tactics successfully employed by anti-tobacco and anti-drunk driving activists not so very long ago.

Very powerful and wealthy interests opposed both campaigns, but their opposition ultimately failed. Indeed, many opponents ultimately joined the campaigns to reduce drunk driving and tobacco use.

It can be done.

These were largely social campaigns -- though legislation was part of it. Acceptance of drunk driving deaths and injuries and deaths and injuries from tobacco use was specifically targeted for social (and political) opprobrium. It took some time and quite a bit of money and grassroots activism, but... It worked.

Using similar (Bernaysian, public relations) tactics against gun violence and mass murder could have a similar effect.

I was surprised and pleased to see Mark Shields make the same point on NewsHour last night. There isn't a movement yet, but there could be.

A key is to fear not.

The Wild West and Police Abuse

There was something of an unexpected dust up at the Albuquerque City Hall yesterday when a good sized group of protesters against police abuse made their way up to the eleventh floor mayor's office and walked right in to a "secure" area where they demanded to see the mayor, demanded the resignation of the police chief, and sat down to read aloud from the DoJ report on APD misconduct.

Elevators were disabled so as to prevent any more of the rabble from coming upstairs to the mayor's office. The City Administrator apparently tried to bully them out of this outer office, but they refused to leave. The police then "escorted" them out of the building. Much later, it was revealed that the mayor wasn't in town, he was in New York, meeting with "Wall Street" on the topic of "best practices." That's hopeful, no?

Thirteen were arrested, including David Correia -- who was charge with felony battery on a police officer, apparently for pushing on a door behind which a police officer was standing. Ergo, "battery" upon the poor po-po. Felony battery at that. Shades of Cecily McMillan.

Clearly they're afraid of David, an articulate and outspoken advocate for police accountability and reform. But more to the point, The Powers That Be in Albuquerque are having a collective melt down. Once again, for example, the City Council cancelled its Monday meeting over "security" concerns. The mayor has never met with those who have been protesting police abuse. They've been protesting for years. The mayor does not attend city council meetings and he has never heard the anguish of those who have lost loved ones to police misconduct and murder. Some of those on the council dismiss the concerns of the public regarding police abuse, claiming that none of their constituents have complained about police abuse, so those who do complain about it are not representative of their communities.

The police themselves have been reluctant to acknowledge any misconduct on their part, despite the abundance of evidence in the DoJ report that concluded that the department as a whole has for long engaged in "unconstitutional policing" and "unjustified uses of force, including lethal force." This has long been known in the community, long been protested against, long been ignored or dismissed by the powers that be (never, ever, has the District Attorney or the Police Department found any shooting by police to be "unjustified.")

When the autopsy results of the James Boyd killing were released last week, I read the report with a heavy heart. The man was shot in the back in a way that would lead to his death. His vital organs were ruptured and there was little chance he could have survived despite the fact that when he was taken to the hospital, he received extensive emergency treatment. He was also shot in both arms, one of which was shattered by the bullet so badly it had to be amputated at the hospital. His legs were savagely bitten by the dog that was loosed on him, and he was badly bruised by beanbag rounds which were fired from close range after he fell to the ground from being hit by bullets.

All for what? Why did this happen to this man at all?

That's the question more and more residents and activists have been asking themselves and The Albuquerque Powers That Be since James Boyd's killing, and many survivors and loved ones have been asking the city authorities for years-and-years. Why? Why is this happening.

James Boyd's killing is emblematic of a kind of killer police culture that is found more and more frequently in the United States, leading to more and more involvement by the Department of Justice in reforming and sometimes running police forces, but the question remains, "Does it do any good?"

There have been three killings by APD since the DoJ report was released, four (or is it five, I lose track) since James Boyd's killing. Only one might be considered a 'good shoot' -- in the sense that there might have been a clear and imminent threat to the police or others from the man who was shot, though he was armed only with a box cutter. The others are dubious at best. Video evidence from police is lacking in three of the four cases. Video evidence in the fourth case has not been released. Witness testimony and citizen-taken video evidence in some of these cases does not support police accounts of what happened, in fact, it contradicts police accounts.

The fact that police say something happened does not mean it did; the fact that police file reports does not mean they are true. This is the case in Albuquerque as it is and has been nearly everywhere for a very long time. False reports and fabricated evidence have a long and storied history throughout American police culture. It's by no means unique to Albuquerque.

But the rate of killing by police in Albuquerque is unique. Deaths occur at the hands of Albuquerque police at a greater rate per-capita than in any other city in the country. As the DoJ report makes clear, over and over, many of those who die are not threatening anyone but themselves, and even then, the threat is often exaggerated or exacerbated by police. In other words, the police themselves are the ones who jeopardize public safety by their violent actions.

Why?

For quite a while, I've attributed much of the trigger-happiness of APD to the survival of a Wild West ethos, something that may not always be obvious or recognized. Albuquerque is a large and in many ways sophisticated city, the largest city in New Mexico, the only city of any size in New Mexico. But it grew relatively recently from a tiny and ancient nucleus near the Rio Grande, and I suspect its growth has overwhelmed civic institutions -- such as the police. That's quite a different situation, I think, than that faced by residents and police in places like Oakland, Seattle, Cincinnati, Chicago and New Orleans, among many others where police misconduct has been reported and investigated and reforms demanded or required.

What it most closely resembles, to my mind, is the police vs resident situation in Los Angeles, a constantly tense and too often bloody confrontational situation that has led to extreme consequences for the city and county of Los Angeles more than once.

Why?

Or maybe the right question is "Who?" For not everyone in Los Angeles or Albuquerque is subjected to routine police abuse and misconduct, not everyone is necessarily in the gunsights of the police, even when they are acting out.

Certain areas of Los Angeles and Albuquerque are policed intensively, and certain types of people are subjected to police abuse at a far, far greater rate than others in both cities.

Who and why?

A lot of it goes back to the original impetus behind civic police forces as a replacement for military and militia occupation forces. This is especially true in the West.

The West, the Southwest especially, became part of the United States as occupied territory seized from Mexico in the War of 1846-48, a war of aggression against the Republic of Mexico initiated in order to acquire territory for westward expansion, the vaunted "Manifest Destiny" of Anglo-American lore and legend.

Los Angeles is a much bigger city than Albuquerque, and LA grew somewhat sooner and faster than Albuquerque, but their histories parallel one another fairly closely.  The railroad was crucial to the growth of both, as were the military and defense industry installations of World War II. The railroad overlaid an Anglo-American town and soon a city over a Spanish-Mexican-Indian village-rural settlement that had operated on very different social and political principles.

In order for the Anglo-Americans to feel secure enough to assert their own power in these lands they'd seized, they had to suppress the earlier occupants, restrict and confine them, and when it suited their purposes, they had to kill them -- or have someone in their employ, such as the military or militias, and later the police, do it for them.

This is a factor of the Wild West that's long been hidden in plain sight. The Wild West was wild partly because of the Anglo-American social/cultural (even spiritual?) necessity to exploit, control, tame or eliminate the original inhabitants of the land they seized. These were the non-Anglos, the Indians, the Spanish, the Mexicans. And later, they would include the blacks and the Asians.

In other words, the Wild West was wild in part to enable the exploitation, control, confinement, and elimination of those who were not Anglo-Americans.

Urban police forces were only necessary once there was an urban agglomeration to police. Prior to that advent, control and exploitation of non-Anglos was the work of sheriffs, posses, militias, military forces, and sometimes private forces (such as Pinkertons). When that failed, as it sometimes did, individuals would deputize themselves to "enforce the law" or lynch mobs would be organized to go wilding against those who were designated enemies and troublemakers.

This included attacks on Indian encampments and villages, both for sport and for cause, that continued well into the 20th century. It included the segregation of and exploitation of and frequently the murder of Spanish-speaking residents to "teach them a lesson" about who was boss. Very simple, very primitive expressions of power were routine and were widely considered to be socially acceptable and necessary for the Progress of Civilization. In order for Anglo-Americans to rise, it was believed by many, and is still believed by many, that the Other -- particularly those who were considered to be racially inferior -- had to be suppressed by any and all means including murder with impunity.

In some areas of the (Wild) West, the murder of Indians still isn't a routine subject for official investigation. It never was.

We hear of and sometimes celebrate the exploits of certain Outlaws of the Wild West, typically Anglo-American outlaws, rather than the more typical Hispanic and Indian "Outlaws," but from the perspective of the original residents of the West -- the Indians and Hispanics who were being turned into Outlaws by the advent of Anglo-American "civilization" in the West -- the Anglo-American newcomers and interlopers were the real Outlaws, stealing everything they could get their hands on and despoiling or destroying what they couldn't, leaving a bloody trail behind them.

That determination of who is "trouble" and what to do about it is still very much a part of the culture of the West, particularly among urban police forces such as those of Los Angeles and Albuquerque. Phoenix is notorious, of course, as is Arizona in general, for its somewhat overenthusiastic policing of the browner tinged residents of the area. But it happens in many other areas of the West as well, pretty much wherever there are significant numbers of darker-hued and/or impoverished residents, urban or rural, it doesn't really matter.

What matters is that Anglo-American rule is enforced with as much force as is deemed "necessary" for the security and comfort of the Powerful. The poor and the marginalized populations must be suppressed.

Just as it was when the Anglo-Americans came thundering into the region back in the day.

The irony in Albuquerque as well as other parts of New Mexico (and California, Arizona and elsewhere) is that many of those who exercise "Anglo-American" power against marginalized and impoverished populations are themselves of the browner tinge.

They have been acculturated to suppress/oppress their brothers and sisters, at times fatally. Frequently, the rationalization is that whoever gets killed by police "needed killing," because of their drug use, their tattoos, their odd behavior, their defiant attitude, or what have you. Victim blaming is routine. The victims always bring it on themselves and they always are deemed to deserve whatever happens to them, even when, as in the case of James Boyd (and Alfred Redwine and others) they were surrendering. Rather than accept such a surrender, it has been customary for police to summarily execute suspects. It's acceptable when the suspect is deemed to "need killing."

In the Wild West, such killings may not have been all that frequent, but when they happened, they were widely accepted as the appropriate consequence for (particularly) brown folks who out of line or for annoying someone of higher status. It was also acceptable to kill Anglo-American folks of lower status who acted "funny" or who were perceived to pose a threat of any kind to those of higher status.

Of course, killings that took place in the heat of passion or as a consequence of liquor were widely deemed to be acceptable as well -- unless someone of higher status were murdered by someone of lower status, in which case, frequently, the full force of ad hoc "justice" -- via lynch mob or other improvised means -- was often applied.

Murders among the poor and marginalized populations were "their problem," rarely troubling officials and The Powers That Be.

So long as these ideals of public order are maintained among those who hold the reins of power, so long will the killing and maiming by police continue. It is what they believe they are supposed to be doing. "Reform" really isn't the issue -- if the ideal stays the same. At this point, there is no sign that reform of the APD will even proceed, for APD is resisting even modest efforts to change the practices of the force, let alone reform the entire policing culture.

Yesterday, there was a protest at the Albuquerque mayor's office. Thirteen people were arrested, some of whom believe they have been stalked by Albuquerque police in the past for speaking out against the culture of impunity behind so much of the killing that's gone on. David Correia, one of the most outspoken members of the protest group, was charged with a felony, likely in order to shut him up.

The civic authorities are running scared. But so far, neither they nor the APD are willing to accept the inevitability of change.

Liberty For Whom? To Do What?

Over the years, I've asked that question of libertarians and constitutionalists and gun rights purists and other types of gung-ho Freedom Lovers many times. I've never received an answer of any kind, from anyone.

Given history, however, I proposed the following motto for those self-same Freedom Lovers: "I demand the Liberty to impose my Authority on you."

Yes, well. That's basically what it is all about, which we can see quite clearly in the whole gun rights debate these days.

To many of these rightists, the Second Amendment is not only sacred, it is the only part of the Bill of Rights, and almost the only part of the Constitution itself that matters. The rest being dross in their eyes, the long-winded scribblings of dead white men...

After all, wasn't it Mao who said, "power grows out of the barrel of a gun"? Thus the primacy of the Sacred Second: it is the ability to impose one's authority on others ("power") that is the chief rationale behind the fervent desire of gun rightists to maintain their nearly unfettered access to firearms.

We see it a lot in New Mexico, though I'm sure it's worse in neighboring Texas and Arizona.

Just the other day, there was announced another Coyote Shooting Contest by yet another New Mexico firearms dealer. The Grand Prize for the most coyote heads brought in by the deadline (so to speak) being one of those AR-15s that are so popular for mass murder these days. I have no illusions that these "hunts" are anything more than modern-day posse/vigilante excursions. They used to be focused on Indians and Negroes and various designated Outlaws, but now, of course, the hunters include plenty of the formerly hunted castes, so it's (once again) the turn of the various wild animals to be slaughtered for prizes -- or just because.

Why did Americans slaughter the buffalo in such gargantuan numbers in the 19th Century? Because they could. It felt good to have such power over Nature. I can't find it now, but I saw a magazine article from about 1915, in which "sportsmen" in California showed off their one day's bag of geese shot along the Pacific Flyway. There were hundreds and hundreds of dead geese piled up around them as they posed with their dogs and their guns in the marshes of the San Joaquin Delta, and this one team of hunters said they averaged some 300-500 kills a day. Even then, conservationists and others were questioning such immense slaughter, and the excuse was the same as you hear now: the animals were feeding on or spoiling crops, and we can't have that! Civilization! What's so obviously idiotic about these claims is that there are far more people living in the area today, and there is far more intense farming going on -- and there are far more birds roosting along the flyway because after being mindlessly slaughtered to near extinction, they are now protected in most places and are thriving. And hardly anybody objects to them, not even farmers and ranchers.

Coyote kills (and wolf kills and mountain lion kills and buffalo hunts and so on) these days are said to be justified because of all the damage these animals cause to livestock and crops. "Everyone knows..." Except they don't. And the farmers and ranchers often wildly exaggerate their losses. The real point of these killings is not to protect livestock and crops, it is to assert life and death power over the Other, in this case, the Natural World.

Gun rightists don't care a whit about preventing "tyranny" in any rational sense. By and large they were either silent or actively cheering on the gutting of the rest of the Bill of Rights by Congress and the Executive during recent times, most being "patriots" and all who don't believe in such luxuries as "rights" when it comes to other citizens and terrorists -- who are often one and the same in their view. While a modern form of tyranny was being imposed and consolidated even before the advent of the Glorious Global (and Forever) War on Terror. In other words, throughout the abrogation of what remained of the Bill of Rights, Sacred Second believers either paid no attention (as long as no one tried to grab their guns!) or they were in the vanguard of the cheerleaders, where most of them still are.

They don't want to prevent tyranny, oh no. They just want to be sure they're the ones to impose it.

"I demand the Liberty to impose my Authority on you."

That is the whole of the Law and the Prophets.

In gun rightist cant and rhetoric, it doesn't matter how many people are killed every year by firearms -- never mind all the animals. According to statistics, most of the firearms deaths are suicides  anyway, and who are we to stand in the way of such Liberty? As for the rest, well, too bad for them; most of them probably "needed killing" or just had bad luck, and who are we to stand in the way of such Liberty?

As for all those other abrogated "rights" Americans once had, or thought they had, so?

Most of them were interferences with the public or private and personal imposition of tyranny in any case, annoying restrictions on what could be done to impose public or private authority on others at will.

I've repeatedly pointed out that the Sacred Second is ultimately derived from the gun rights provision of the English Bill of Rights of 1689, the point of which was to ensure that one British faction was armed while another was disarmed (in the case of the Glorious Revolution, the objective was the disarmament and political neutering of British Catholics). So it has been throughout the history of gun rights advocacy. In America, of course, the objective of the Sacred Second was the private arming of the (white, male) militias, and the disarming of Negroes, Indians, and whatever designated Outlaws were being persecuted at the moment.

It is ever thus.

Liberty for whom? To do what?

As it is, the American firearms casualty numbers are close to those one would expect from an ongoing civil war, and in some sense, that is what has been taking place in this country for many a long year, with periodic spikes and lulls to be sure, but more or less constant over the long term. Arms merchants profit from it, of course, and they are eager to keep it going by any means necessary. It is the nature of their business. They need and want the public fear and suffering, the drama of the many gun incidents, the clamor both for control and unfettered access to firearms. All of it leads to more sales, more profits, more death and destruction. It's a vicious cycle.

Government is right on board with it, too.

Bringing an end to the ongoing civil war Americans are immersed in will be the key to curbing or ending the gun culture. But in order to do that, power will have to be re-distributed from a tiny minority of killers and exploiters to the rest of us. That can be done once the rest of us refuse to be cowed by the handful of killers and exploiters who rule.

So far, there is no common understanding of how to do it, and it may be generations before anyone figures out how. But history shows it can be done.

Liberty for whom? To do what?

Disarming

The other day, the gunners descended on the New Mexico Capitol, the Roundhouse, and demanded that the legislature enact no more gun restrictions, no matter what. They pretty much got their way, too, as the committee considering a bill that would require background checks for all gun sales and transfers, including private ones between individuals, tabled the measure as it could not pass out of committee. The committee vote was tied, and at least for now, the measure is dead.

Meanwhile, the measure by secessionist Republican Nora Espinoza to make a felony of enforcement of Federal gun law in New Mexico doesn't seem to be going anywhere, although it is widely supported by gunners and it mirrors similar legislation introduced in Wyoming, Tennessee, Texas and so on.

The hot button notion of civil disarmament is hardly considered at all in New Mexico as the gunners really have the upper hand, and no one wants to cross them for fear of triggering something unpleasant. The implicit threat of mayhem from the gunners is, I believe, what has long prevented any sort of civil disarmament movement or legislation, and not just in New Mexico. It's nationwide.

When a member of Congress is shot down, as Gabby Giffords was in Arizona two years ago, and Congress fails to act at all on the matter of excessive gun violence in this country, you pretty much know they are in fear for their lives should they do anything to cross the gun fanatic community. The fact that a few are only now raising their voices and proposing legislative responses to the violence is hardly a badge of courage.

The idea that the excess of gun violence in this country is somehow protection from tyranny is one of the most absurd arguments there is, especially given the nearly complete abrogation of the other provisions of the Bill of Rights since the advent of the so-called Glorious Global War on (or of) Terror.

Tyranny in America -- though it may be "soft" at this point (well, depending) -- is a fact, and the gunners, for the most part eagerly support it now as they have from the outset. They aren't worried about preventing tyranny at all, they just want to be sure they are the ones to impose it.

And they're getting their way.

The excess of gun violence, in the United States which I have characterized as equivalent to that of a nation experiencing a civil war, is part of the process of tyrannizing the population: it's the tyranny of fear, fear of mayhem, chaos, random massacre and slaughter, fear of your neighbor, fear of strangers, fear of authority, fear piled upon fear. It is quite deliberate in my view.

More guns and more gunners simply leads to more fear and more violence. Guns pervade poor neighborhoods where often gun violence seems to be out of control -- and fear is rampant. Is it unintentional? I think not. The more fearful the downtrodden are, the easier they are to control. Yes?

The fact is, the High and the Mighty among us live in fear of gun violence just as everyone else does, but they believe they have the means to protect themselves from the random mayhem that afflicts everyone else. Barricades and armed guards and gate keepers and law usually keeps the gunners away from the rich and the powerful, but there have been exceptions. Oh, the assassination record shows there have been many enough exceptions, but the exceptions have typically been due to... strategic and ideological issues shall we say. Stray from the path of Righteousness and watch out...

Civil disarmament is another kettle of fish, to be sure, and it can't realistically take place until the civil war is ended. That may not happen in our lifetimes.

To end the civil war, either the combatants have to tire of the conflict or a faction has to declare or believe its victory.

The United States is the victim of an ongoing class war with many, many aspects, including the drug war. All of these aspects of the class war/civil war are meant to ensure that the People stay divided and thus more easily exploited and controlled. Random acts of murder, mayhem, and massacre certainly haven't hindered division and control of the masses, have they?

Consequently, though there will be continual hearings and debate over "gun rights" and "gun issues," I don't expect anything significant to be done. We are likely to stay on this path for another generation or two, simply because doing anything about gun violence can be destabilizing to those who benefit and profit from it...

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing is about to begin... Gabby Giffords vs Wayne LaPierre. Fireworks are guaranteed, eh?

Pondering the Local Mass Murder and What It's Done to the Gunners

Mug Shot of Nehemiah Griego, alleged local mass murderer

Let's be clear, New Mexico's culture is still very much linked to Times Gone By, including the romance of the Wild West period. People have guns, they shoot guns, and there are far too many shoot outs and shoot-em-ups in New Mexico for a sense of relaxation and ease. There is an edginess pretty much all the time. To put it mildly.

But the Griego Thing was and is something else again. It's partly because Greg Griego was so well known in town. This was not some random gang-banger nor was this an isolated incident of gun mayhem brought on by drugs or alcohol, longstanding feud -- or so far as anyone knows, abuse.

No, this was a very well-known and well-respected high profile Christian -- Born Again Christian -- household, the father a pastor, the mother a stay-at-home-homeschool-mom, the children (there were ten of them, I didn't realize, but most did not live at home) little angels. Angels, I tell you. Including Young Nehemiah, the confessed murderer.

Angels, the lot of them.

People have glommed on to violent video games as the possible culprit, the trigger shall we say, and apparently the uncle has been going around to the teevee shows blaming Young Nehemiah's 12 year old girlfriend for egging him on. Of course, the obvious issue was that there were accessible guns in the house.

Hello?

Sure, if he was intent on murder, he might have taken a hammer or an axe -- or tied everybody up and burned the compound down around them for that matter. Those who insist that guns are not the issue will perform any acrobatic exercise necessary to divert attention from the proximate source or tool for the bloodshed.

There are plenty of curiosities and issues that may have been contributing factors, for example, Greg Griego's resignation/leave of absence from his position at the Calvary Church last year (for personal reasons...? What might they have been? Was it a resignation or a leave or something else?) His inability to find another job until he landed the overnight caretaker position at the homeless shelter... eh? "Find another job" when he was on leave? Financial problems ensued that left the family on edge and barely getting by so they say.

Wait. From appearances, this was not a poor family by any stretch of the imagination, and the whole issue of his leaving the Calvary pastor-ship might be worth exploring in a bit more depth. Nobody's talking. And appearances can be deceiving.

Why would the boy go to the church (with his girlfriend) after murdering his entire household and spend the day there while a workshop was underway about the topic of mass murder (oh my) and then attend services that evening as if nothing were wrong at all... and then rather casually mention to the security guard (or someone, accounts differ) at the church that his whole family was dead... well, that part of the family that lived at the Griego compound in the South Valley was dead at any rate.

The notion that the boy is not a Monster -- while he's behaving like an archetypical Teenaged Monster -- is peculiar. The girlfriend is being posited as if she were some sort of demon, in fact. She made him do it, don't you know. And she-the-demon would have led him to many more murders at the WalMart down the road (oh really?) if something hadn't intervened... the Hand of Divine Mercy, perhaps? Charge the Girl, for she is in league with the Devil. 12 years old. Demon spawn.

How is it that none of the rest of the family in or out of town was contacted by the boy?

On and on. This is a very strange story, but then what mass murder in recent times hasn't been?

According to sheriff's investigators, Young Nehemiah loved to play "Modern Warfare" and "Grand Theft Auto," both of which are considered to be desensitizing and conditioning games, ones that have been implicated in numerous killings, including some in New Mexico.

In fact, there is an eerie parallel between the Griego Murders and the Cody Posey Murders that took place at Sam Donaldson's ranch out of Roswell some years ago. In some ways they're practically identical. Cody Posey was 14 when he slaughtered his entire household with a gun back in 2004. Cody was released a couple of years ago, so I'm led to understand, after spending a relatively brief time in juvenile custody. He was said to be obsessed with playing "Grand Theft Auto." Police indicate that Young Nehemiah likewise enjoyed the bloody game which is said to give players higher points for head shots. All the Griego family members were said to have been shot in the head.

Of course, they differ, too, in that the Griego family did not experience divorce and remarriage, nor had Young Nehemiah's mother been killed in an auto accident (though supposedly, that's what Nehemiah said happened to her when he texted a picture of her dead body to his girl friend...) Though they lived in a semi-rural compound in Albuquerque's South Valley, they were not way out in the country, as there was a WalMart within easy driving distance -- a WalMart where the authorities say Young Nehemiah intended to kill many more before going out in a blaze of police gunfire... Cody didn't really have that opportunity if he had contemplated such a thing. So far as has been reported, neither Nehemiah nor any of the other children were abused by their parents, unlike Cody's situation -- which according to some reports was really kinky and violent.

Some of those who knew the Griego family said that video games were not allowed in the household, and even television viewing was severely restricted.

Yet apparently he had access according to the police. Was it through the Demon-Girl, perhaps?

(The internet defense of violent video games has reached epic proportions, but that's another issue for another day...)

Of course there have been many calls to curb the easy access to firearms that is so commonplace in the United States. At first, I thought the Griego household, like so many survivalist and apocalyptic households (and there is no indication at this point that the Griegos were survivalists/apocalyptics), had an arsenal that the boy had used for his murderous task, but apparently there were only two guns, a .22 rifle and one of those dandy AR-15's that seem to show up in mass murders so frequently. And of course, there was plenty of ammunition. Neither the weapons nor the ammunition were apparently kept under lock and key.

There has been much push back, however, from the gunner community and their reps in the state-house and congress, including one bill designed to prevent enforcement of any federal gun regulation within the state of New Mexico. Nice. The gunners' fear of losing their guns or easy access to more weaponry and ammunition runs high. In some sense, it's an irrational fear, but very little of the gun debate in this country is rational.

Authorities have been criticized for releasing too much information about the murders and the accused young man who is said to have confessed to the crimes. But what has happened has profoundly affected many thousands of 'Burquenos who knew the Griegos, as well as many thousands of others. These killings went right to the heart of the extended caring community in Albuquerque.

Unfortunately, the caring community is too often caught in the crossfire of the peculiar American obsession with personal firepower.

I've said before that the level of gun violence, murder and mayhem in the United States is equivalent to that of a nation experiencing a civil war, and in a way, that is what has been happening in this country for many years, a low-grade, constant civil war with many factions.

My answer has long been "civil disarmament" -- ie: strictly limiting the personal possession of firearms and ammunition among the civilian population for the duration. As desirable as that might be, however, it's not likely to happen so long as government in practice and in the abstract is so distrusted by such large segments of the population. It's not that many people have firearms to protect themselves from government tyranny, it's that they can't trust the government or the police to protect and defend them, or to act on their behalf in any manner.

There would have to be a real change in the level of trust in authority, and until there is, few of those who have weapons and arsenals would be willing to give them up.

Many people have guns because they feel they have to have them; often gun regulations or bans are seen as forms of punishment for "law abiding citizens." Households with guns are far more likely to experience gun violence, and from time to time, some of them will be victims of mass murder by one of their own members -- guaranteed.

But until it happens, they will be "law abiding..." won't they?

There are ways to change the situation, but it requires changing some of the power relationships that have become institutionalized. Doing that is not easy, especially not when certain powerful interests benefit so much from keeping things the way things are.

So long as they feel protected, murder and mayhem among the rest of us is just fine...

The Local Mass Murder

We were in town (Abq) yesterday to take care of an errand for a friend and to check out an exhibit at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center (Zuni Map Art Project). We watched the films on Maria Martinez and Pablita Velarde after touring the rest of the exhibits, and when they finished we tried to follow the same path back to our starting point -- only to discover that the place was locked up tight and the lights were out. Oh, oh. We're locked in the museum. What shall we do? We took the elevator back downstairs where we thought we might find an available exit only to be confronted by a very nervous young guard.

"The museum is closed," he said grimly.

"Yes, apparently so. We're locked in."

He seemed confused. "The museum closes at 5:00p,"  he said gruffly.

"That's fine," I said. "We're trying to find a way out and we're not getting very far. Maybe you could help. What time is it now?"

"5:25. The museum closed at 5:00pm."

(Sigh.) "We were watching the videos. I thought I saw something that said the place was open till 5:30. Anyway, we still haven't found a way out."

He shook himself out of his befuddlement for a moment. "Oh. See this brown line on the floor?"

"Yes, of course."

"Just follow that till you reach the end of the room beyond which there is a set of stairs and an elevator. Go up to the first floor, then turn left, go through Governor's Hall and the Rotunda, and you'll see the exit doors."

We smiled.

"Here, I'll go with you to the stairs," he said. And he did. At this point, he actually became rather pleasant, though I thought he was still in a kind of daze at encountering us. No doubt he would have to fill out reams of paperwork...

The strangest thing, though. Or it seemed strange at the time. We had passed through this exhibit room originally, following the brown path on the floor, and there was no set of stairs or elevator or exit that we recalled... one went around in a sort of spiral instead, and came out at the point where one entered. There was no "back way." Except then I recalled the encounter we had with the docent before we began this historical exhibit. After explaining what the exhibit was about, he said, "When you get to the end, you'll come to a wall, and you'll think you can't go any farther, but... you'll see. Have a pleasant journey!"

And sure enough. There must have been a wall, but there wasn't one any more... and we climbed the stairs and emerged from the Underworld in a kind of replay of the Sipapu stories we've heard and were told, and we found our way back to the Upper World, and in some ways I'm kind of stunned at the whole experience. Something unusual happened.

We had dinner at Hazel's (El Bruno's) and then headed out of town, back to our place in the country. It was dark and there seemed to be a heightened amount of police action. Some of it seemed quite strange, but then, what do we know. Cruisers patrolling slowly with their flashing lights on -- sometimes sirens too -- drivers stopped (at random?) and so on. Were they looking for someone in particular?

At the time, we hadn't heard the news, so we didn't know about the murder spree in the South Valley the day or night before (I'm still not sure of the timing.) A pastor (who I believe we have met; his name is familiar, and his picture looks familiar, but I couldn't say we knew him), his wife and three of their children were murdered in their home -- by their surviving son, it would appear, using one of those assault rifles that gun nuts insist are benign and anyway they're not "assault rifles" so stop saying that.


Oh. Right here. Well, in the South Valley, which is part of Albuquerque and is considered a rougher part, [said to be] riven by gangs of young toughs and what have you, drugs and so forth, "the mean streets." [Having Goggled up the Griegos compound, however, I would definitely not characterize the area where they lived as anything but deluxe. It's semi-rural, and quite beautiful.] "Barrio" but not exactly "ghetto," but not the North Valley or Los Ranchos or -- damn -- Corrales, either, the areas of and near Abq where we tend to do the majority of our hanging out it would seem.

A mass murder, here, in Abq during the fury of the National Conversation we're having over Gun Violence, on Gun Appreciation Day, no less. People are seemingly getting shot all the time in Albuquerque, and the Po Po are under Justice Department investigation due to all the Police Involved Shootings that have been happening (a lot). But this was something else again.

The story that is emerging of what happened is very troubling, even in the context of American Mass Murder Culture.

It seems that a fifteen year old pastor's son, Nehemiah Griego, had been involved with some sort of paramilitary make believe -- whether derived from video games, who knows, for there are other sources of the paramilitary lifestyle and belief system, some of them closely related to apocalyptic endtimers. His household had collected an arsenal of weapons (here we go again), and something happened which caused young Nehemiah to go on a shooting rampage Saturday night, slaughtering his parents, his brother and his two young sisters, then calling Emergency Services. (One story says he told a friend what he had done, and his friend called Emergency Services, but whatever.)

It appears that the story wasn't known beyond the crime scene until well into Sunday, and it wasn't reported widely until Sunday afternoon when we were in the Underworld at the Pueblo Cultural Center... so we missed it.

The murdered pastor, Greg Griego, was the brother of Eric Griego, who ran against Michelle Lujan Grisham in the Democratic primary for the Congressional seat being vacated by Martin Heinrich who was running for Senate. Griego was actually my choice, but I couldn't vote in New Mexico at that time. Lujan Grisham won, sadly, and is now the Congressmember from my district. Heinrich won the Senate seat easily.

At this point, it becomes a very small-town kind of story because of all the interrelationships -- everybody knows everybody else, or knows of them, and there is hardly anyone in the region (including our own selves) who isn't touched in some way by this murder spree. It gets worse. Three of the Griego victims were children. One was two years old. Add that to the fact that one of the children killed at Sandy Hook, Emilie Parker,  was a recent Albuquerque resident... the sense of wrenching dislocation is profound.

How much longer can this sort of thing go on?

Too many Americans still see disarming the civilian population as a form of punishment, in part because of the way the right to keep and bear arms has historically been used to arm one segment of the population while disarming another. No matter the firearms bloodshed in this country -- the equivalent of casualties you'd see in a civil war -- we can't even mention civil disarmament because of its punishment factor.

Of course, there's more to it than that, especially since we can't really trust the police or the justice system to operate on behalf of the People.  Relations between the People and the Po Po are not as bad in Albuquerque as they are in Oakland, but I wouldn't say they're good, especially not among communities of color.

The toughs and the gangs and their guns are arrayed against one another for the most part, but then there are the survivalist and apocalyptic believers who've amassed their arsenals to ward off... exactly what? I don't know. If they're raptured, after all, none of it will matter. And if they're not, they're in the same boat with everyone else. They might want to consider cooperation and mutual aid before they turn their weapons on the others who are left behind.

The Griegos may or may not have fit into the "apocalyptic" gun cult, but there are apparently very may more of them than most of us realize. What triggered this mass murder, who can say? We never seem to know enough about them.

And "knowing about them" doesn't seem to stop the bloodshed in any case.

For some reason, all the hundreds of millions of firearms in this country don't seem to be preventing the imposition  of tyranny either. In fact, it sometimes seems as if the guns are the source of tyrannical rule ... how drole.

Homicidal Cruelty

These mass-shooting incidents are so frequent and so similar, is it any wonder some people think they may be... intentional?

Yesterday was a whirlwind of snow and cats and ice and hail and biscohitos and all sorts of peripheral things that had to be done or got through somehow (snowy/icy mountain passes in blizzard-like conditions aren't the most fun to drive, etc.) so we missed yesterday's Big Story of the mass slaughter of school kids in Connecticut until well into the afternoon.

We sat stunned and horrified as the news trickled in through our computers and then came to dominate the television for the rest of the day and into the night.

Once again America is subjected to the bloodfest and slaughter in supposedly safe and sanitized public spaces -- in this case an elementary school in an upscale suburb of New York. Almost 30 are dead now, most of them children in a kindergarten class -- a class that was initially reported to have been taught by the shooter's mother who was reported to have been killed in the massacre.

Some truly idiotic woman was on the NBC news feed that we were watching, counseling America on how to talk to your children about this incident, pointing out how rare they are, how "this has never happened before" and how everyone is doing everything they can to "keep our children safe," and how important it was to make sure children were not exposed to the wall-to-wall coverage of this "very unusual" incident.

It was just bullshit. Even the anchor was dumbfounded by her counseling crap. As if children today don't have access to news.

This is the second mass shooting in a week, in an ostensibly safe place, by a young adult shooter who apparently had mental health problems before he went on his very public rampage using very lethal (and legal) armament. Then killing himself. Conveniently exiting the scene, in a manner of speaking, before the investigation even gets under way.

 The usual suspects are now hammering away at one another on the internet and in the media over the question of when is the "right time" to discuss gun control and the problem of gun violence in this country -- assuming, of course, that you believe that gun violence is a problem. Apparently some Americans don't.

The President's spokesmouth cautioned the assembled media flacks that "now is not the time" to open a discussion about... well... this.

Jeebus.

It is literally never the "right time."

I've been using the term "homicidal cruelty" to describe the attitude of Our Betters toward the rest of us, particularly in the context of the entirely out of touch -- and embarrassing -- Fiscal Cliff arguments going on in DC. The entire political and media class has been obsessed with a singular objective for months now:  how to ensure that social insurance programs and benefits are cut enough that there is significant "pain" among the recipients -- to show the "markets" that the politicians are "serious" about deficit reduction.

People are dying and death rates -- among seniors especially -- will increase as a result. That is supposed to be an "unfortunate but necessary" consequence of "getting serious about the debt." It's shameful, and the spectacle of Our Betters nattering on endlessly about the "necessity" of this "shared sacrifice" is sickening.

But there you are, that's the American ruling class today. They are intent on imposing their homicidal cruelty as extensively as possible on as many people as possible as their bounden right and duty. They are obsessed with doing it. NOW!

So here's another mass slaughter essentially in the backyard of the New York media market (which has helped generate the kind of wall-to-wall coverage of it we've seen) and the upshot has been strange and ugly.

The slaughter itself is horrifying. Here we are -- again -- with another young man who has mental health issues and access to high powered weapons who somehow snaps and goes on a shooting rampage killing however many he can (in this case, including his mother and dozens of elementary school children) before killing himself.

The upshot is not to try to "fix it" -- or even to discuss what happened from the standpoint of "fixing it" -- but to instead celebrate the militarization of the police, the lockdowns of schools (just like they were prisons), and to reassure one another that even though these incidents are inevitable -- due to "freedom" -- we can rest assured that the authorities are doing everything in their power to keep us safe.

Yeah, right.

No, what they have been doing for a long time now is essentially allowing these incidents to occur on a regular basis. They have such a salutary effect on the public, after all. The mass shooting incident, which is practically unique to the United States, has the effect of inspiring ever greater numbers of the People to fear and dread, panic in some cases, and that effect enables their acquiescence and dependency on authority for their "safety." Except they aren't "safe." Anywhere. Ever. For there will be another mass killing soon enough, and another and another. And still more.

Because it is never the right time to discuss or do anything about the orgy of bloodletting in this country. Never.

Bloodlust and bloodletting is the price we pay for "freedom," you see.

Ending the slaughter means the end of "freedom..."

Got it.

No other country has anything close to the American level of constant slaughter and bloodletting -- unless they are engaged in a civil war (or in some cases resistance against invasion, aggression, and occupation.)  Of course the marketing and easy availability of firearms makes the constant killing remarkably simple to accomplish if that's what someone wants to do. There is really nothing standing in the way, certainly not social opprobrium or more than minor legal impediments. Guns and their marketing are among America's major industries, after all. It's considered rude and unpleasant to dispute the value of the personal armament industry, and any attempt to curb the industry and the resulting bloodletting is met with fierce resistance and ever greater levels of financial support for candidates who support the industry.

The tens of thousands killed and injured by gun violence and gun accidents in this country every year are victims of a low-level civil war that seems to be maintained relentlessly... and we might ask why. Who benefits? Apart from the politicians and the gun industry, of course.

Why do the People permit it? Or do they have a voice and a choice?

I'd say no.

Most Americans have nothing to do with guns, but they can't ultimate avoid gun violence -- whether the vicarious sort that comes via the media or for real -- because of the relentless determination on the part of some of Our Betters to ensure and enable it, and to make sure that it is glamorized in entertainment and publicized extravagantly.

"Freedom" you see. But freedom for whom to do what? Freedom for a certain category of predator and/or mentally ill individual to go on a rampage and cause mayhem and misery. How very useful.

It is, isn't it?

And aren't we lucky that it can only be curbed by curbing American "freedom."

Wonderful...

[And in case you didn't notice, everything you know about this incident -- or knew yesterday, anyway -- is wrong. Where does all the early misinformation come from...?]

Killer Kulture

Mars, Bitches!








It was the strangest mash up yesterday, with most of my day taken up in following the Oak Creek Temple Massacre on line and then in the evening staying up late to watch the latest Mars landing, also online. Olympics gymnastics was on the teevee, but I really haven't watched the Olympics since the opening ceremony, and then only to be struck dumb by the... erm... spectacle(?).

[As as side note, once I learned of the modern Olympics' pretty overtly fascist operations and highly corrupt underpinning, if you will, I began to see the Games more as a mean joke than as a serious competition;  as a rule, I don't see more than a few minutes of a few events, especially since the Games have been on NBC, whose coverage is another mean joke. But I digress.]

Both the Massacre and the Mars Landing were highly evocative of past events, the Landing going back to the very long ago, the Massacre evocative of much more recent events.

I was struck by how antiquated the NASA/JPL procedures were as the Curiosity Mission neared Mars. My doG, they were still using 3 ring binders to read off their sequences, despite the fact that they had the latest computer equipment right in front of them. They were watching the plots of the landing on large screens at the sides of the room, just as they would have done at Houston Mission Control decades ago, and there were rows and rows of Curiosity Mission Control terminals at which rows and rows of Mission Control personnel scanned monitors for data and announced their satisfaction therewith as the Mission Scientist called on them one by one. Their voices were distorted the way space mission voices have been distorted by space mission radio gear for decades. At one point, the Mission Scientist's radio gear failed, the way that such gear seems to fail fairly often at Mission Control, and a colleague handed over his own equipment so that the Mission Scientist could communicate with the rest of the room.

The Curiosity Mission team was a highly individualistic bunch, though, and I would say the "star" of the room -- who never said a word publicly -- was a Latin looking dude with a fancy multi-colored roach haircut with stars shaven spray painted into the side of his head. He didn't say anything and he didn't really seem to have anything to do but nod his head, grin and look decorative. And why not? It's Mars!

Mohawk Guy is an Internet SuperStar:

 

Damb, we're easily amused!

I found I was just as caught up in the Landing as I'd been when Mercury capsules were returning to Earth; and it was a real thrill when the announcement came that the Curiosity craft was on the surface of Mars. Even more of a thrill was the first image from the surface, a thumbnail that had been enormously enlarged so that it was almost impossible to make out what it showed. It didn't matter; it was a picture from the surface, broadcast of millions of miles, after a landing that had taken place moments before, and it was from Mars.

Wow.

And all of it was so evocative of so much space exploration since I was a child. Seriously, nothing has changed. It is the same operating theory and practice now as it was 50 years ago and more. The same procedures, the same hierarchies, the same look, the same sound.

Striking too is the fact that there hasn't been a mission to Mars that could actually look for the "markers" of biology -- not for life itself, of course -- since 1976, when the Viking Landers returned ambiguous data that were officially interpreted as indicating a sterile lifeless surface, without any carbon or carbon compounds at all (not even from meteorites) and literally lethal to living organisms due to deadly ultraviolet light and a surface saturated with peroxides and other substances and compounds which would kill anything and everything on contact.

I've made Mars something of a hobby for many years, even set up a website (which still exists though many of the links no longer work) beginning in 1997 or so to explore some of the controversies and disputes concerning what was really what on Mars. I was an active participant in a few space science boards, and through them became acquainted with quite a number of planetary scientists and interested laymen. Through sometimes heated discussions on those boards, I learned a great deal about what was not known or poorly understood about Mars, and especially how heavily images and information released to the public had been manipulated for many years to further certain standard and accepted theories rather than provide the means to explore and debate.

I learned that it was more than marginally likely that the Vikings had indeed "discovered life on Mars" but that there were political reasons both within the government and within NASA's planetary science community to obscure the data and deny the "discovery" -- if it was a discovery.

I made a "discovery" myself based on Mars Orbital Camera images taken near the south pole -- evidence and images of active geysers. And wouldn't you know, the evidence I produced was fiercely denied, and my interpretation was denounced as "an optical illusion."

My cropped and colorized image of Martian geysers near the South Pole c. 1999

Later, surprisingly -- or not -- the question of geysers at the south pole of Mars became something of a serious study, and surprisingly enough -- or not -- the presence of active geysers at certain seasons of the Mars year was widely accepted within the planetary science community, mechanisms enabling geysering were explained, and essentially everything but the visual evidence I provided has become standard and essentially uncontroversial. There had been scientific speculation about active geysering on Mars for years, but interestingly, the trigger for the acceptance of the notion was Gregg Orme's "Mars Spiders" investigations, the "spiders" being frequently encountered surface features that were otherwise inexplicable.

I also made stabs at discovering currently active glaciers on the surface, some of which have since been confirmed.

I stepped back from more active exploration of the Mars surface data when it became clear to me after the Pathfinder, Opportunity, and Spirit Missions, that the long-time focus on the question of whether there was or ever had been flowing water on Mars was barking up the wrong tree. Whether or not there had ever been "water" on the surface -- which obviously there was both as ice and flowing water -- the far more common liquid at the surface had been and perhaps still is sulfuric acid.

Liquid water and liquid sulfuric acid are chemically similar (H2O vs H2SO4) and -- depending on what you are looking for and how you look -- they may be indistinguishable, but the one can imply the presence of biology while the other will almost certainly imply the absence of biology (at least on Earth.)

When it occurred to me that quite possibly sulfuric acid had been the primary surface liquid throughout the history of Mars, a whole lot of otherwise difficult to understand evidence seemed to make sense.

Sulfuric acid has a much lower freezing temperature than water, and it doesn't require the atmospheric pressure water does in order to remain liquid over time. Under current conditions, in other words, sulfuric acid could remain liquid and flow over much of the Martian surface (assuming it was available at the surface) whereas pure water could not do so for more than a very brief period before freezing or evaporating. But flowing sulfuric acid would have the effect of sterilizing the surface just as surely as any of the hypothesized oxides, peroxides and superoxides that were once alleged to have combined with hyper-ultraviolet flux to sterilize the surface.

The key to understanding presence of biology or the absence of biology on Mars (which would be even more peculiar if there had been a water regime) lay in acceptance of the idea that "water" as we understand it -- whether solid, liquid or gas -- may never have been abundant at the surface of Mars during any period of the planet's history and continued focus on finding such evidence may be a wild goose chase if sulfuric acid was the key surface volatile throughout Mars's history.

There is evidence of at least some water at some time periods -- including now -- on Mars, and that water could have harbored biology, but if it ever did, it seems to me that any potential biology would have been killed if there was contact between water at or below the surface and the abundant sulfuric acid. Mars, therefore, is potentially self-sterilizing, a Killer Planet, but not necessarily the way planetary scientists have long hypothesized.

Needless to say, the appropriate tests to find out are not being done, any more than tests to confirm the presence or absence of the long-hypothesized sterilizing super-oxides have ever been done. (Actually, there's no experimental evidence on Mars that they exist at all.)

Meanwhile, in Oak Creek, a suburb of Milwaukee, an All-American Killer went on a rampage at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, apparently taking out the prominent men of the religious community before apparently being killed himself by police. I say "apparently" because these All-American massacres and slaughters have a way of turning out to be not quite what they are initially reported to be, and especially the killers themselves aren't quite what they were initially made out to be.

I haven't checked news on either Mars or the Massacre this morning so I'm not sure how either story has developed; I'm recording mostly what I saw/heard yesterday.

There were initial reports of up to four shooters in Wisconsin which police assure us was probably really only the one, seen from different angles. According to later reports, the shooter was some sort of skinhead white supremacist who may have been seeking revenge for 9/11, but at the time, there was no way to even begin to confirm such a thing. However, the authorities quickly classified the attack as an act of "domestic terrorism" -- something they have been highly reluctant to do in the case of white men shooting up people and places or making terrorist threats to blow up this or that monument or facility.

Until recently, at any rate, "terrorism" in the popular mind and among our National Security authorities was almost entirely confined to Muslims and brown people. Only since the advent of the Occupy activities which have involved all kinds of anarchists have white men been rounded up and accused of "terrorism."

This may be the first time that a "skinhead" or "white supremacist" has been designated a "terrorist." But since he was apparently killed in a gun battle with police, he will not be subject to ... interrogation. We may never know the truth about him.

Unfortunately, the threats to and murder of Sikhs in revenge for 9/11 (which they had nothing to do with) has been fairly common in this country for years. In fact, I think one of the first revenge killings after 9/11 was of a Sikh walking on the street. There have been quite a few more since then, but nothing on the scale of the massacre yesterday.

But the myth-makers were busy yesterday assuring us that there had never been any threats to the Sikh community in Wisconsin, which is just silly. Yes, there have been threats. It's a fact of life for Sikhs in the United States, whether in Wisconsin or anywhere else. The myth of no threats against Sikhs is bogus.

Some Sikhs in America do not wear turbans or beards because of the ignorance of too many Americans regarding the origin and nature of Sikhism, and the fact that Sikhs had nothing to do with 9/11 or any other terrorist attack on Americans. (In India it's a different story, but we'll leave that aside for now.)

This is the second All-American Massacre in America's Heartland in a little over less than a month. Let's hope we're not on yet another cycle of copy-cat massacres, but we may be. American Exceptionalism, eh?

It's simply been a fact that people with the itch to kill in our culture find their impetus more easily available when someone else does it "first."

For a time, I wondered if the All-American Massacre was a result of Manchurianizing or otherwise "triggering" particularly vulnerable individuals to kill, whether or not they were actively recruited or trained. I don't think we can ever know. But G2Geek's exploration of "Stochastic" terrorism is worth some additional contemplation. His hypothesis is basically that the American culture itself provides the triggers for these periodic mass killings, that there is something very deep seated in our collective sub-consciousness that almost requires it.

And when you think about all the mass murders and massacres that have been features, not bugs, of  Euro-American culture from the beginning, starting almost at the moment Europeans first set foot in this New World and continuing relentlessly ever since,  then there may truly be no way out of this Killer Kulture box we're in.

Gun nuts of course reject any controls on their acquisition and use of personal weaponry, which is just absurd. But they may be right that controlling firearms access might not have any effect on the tendency of some Americans to engage in massacre. It may not be due the guns or their availability that enables the routine massacre of Americans by other Americans. It may be the culture itself, going back to the very beginnings of what we now call "America."

Something so deep seated and so out of whack will take more than a superficial approach to change.

---------------------

Now to check the news.

More Shoot'em Ups

 

OLB tribute for victims, Cathedral Square, Milwaukee, WI, 8/5/12

Scene outside Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, Oak Creek, WI, 8/5/2012. Another mass killing in America's Heartland.

A number of people (7 dead, according to current reports) have been killed and wounded at a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, a suburb of Milwaukee, WI.

According to reports, a shooter confronted police upon their arrival. The shooter shot an officer multiple times; officer shot the the shooter. Officer was taken to the hospital and is expected to survive after surgery. Shooter is on the ground at the site outside the temple, presumed deceased.

People inside report as many as four shooters, but police have not seen indications of more than one white male in his 30's and suspect reports of more shooters refer to the same man. There were also reports of a hostage situation, but there is no confirmation.

Investigation is ongoing.

Live streaming coverage:

 http://livewire.wisn.com/Event/Oak_Creek_Temple_Shooting

Twit Feed:

https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23templeshooting?q=%23templeshooting

Monstrous.

And Then I Woke Up

Another American gun massacre. Another American gun massacre in Colorado. Another American gun massacre in Colorado featuring costumed characters, assault weapons, some kind of odd vengeance.

"But he was such a nice boy...."

Yes, well... they all are, aren't they?

Americans have a touching and romantic faith in the gun culture that's been sold to them for ages.

I'm sure everybody is familiar with the Sand Creek Massacre. It took place in 1864 in Colorado Territory when a contingent of the Colorado Militia went on a rampage and exterminated an encampment of Cheynne and Arapaho along the Sand Creek in eastern Colorado. Even for its time, what happened was shocking, though not unprecedented. An unprovoked attack by militia on an encampment housing mostly women and children resulted in perhaps 135 dead and many wounded Indians, and it had the effect of triggering a brutal retaliation by Plains Indians against American settlers that really didn't conclude till the Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota in 1890. Thus was the West... tamed.

Oh, but there were many other massacres before those, dating back almost to the very beginning of European settlement in North America -- regardless of the welcome or the resistance they received from the Native inhabitants. It didn't matter. From time to time there would be massacres.

On the other hand, and perhaps more germane to the Incident in Aurora at hand is that from time to time European-American settlers would go on murderous rampages or would simply murder Indians one by one, and almost always they would be allowed to get away with it. The murder of Indians was not "murder" in the law of the West. It couldn't be. The attitude may not have universally been that the only good Indian was a dead Indian, but there was little or no sense at all that killing Indians for real or imagined crimes against the settlers was in any way unjustified, or that any white killer of Indians could be or would be held to account for their deeds. In fact, many were celebrated. Some still are today.

The notion that it was somehow "wrong" to go about with guns blazing, blasting every living thing in sight, simply didn't occur to a substantial chunk of the American population, and to some extent, it hasn't occurred to enough Americans yet.

Certainly in the American conquest of Mesopotamia -- well, attempted conquest -- the notion that the Valiant Troops were engaged in "Indian Wars" was well understood by many, and massacres were simply part of the process of dealing with the Natives. It was what was done. And there was no accountability, often enough, not even reports of this or that many civilians slaughtered in this or that locale. Who cared? They were "just Iraqis" or Arabs or Muslims, people who were so different from our own sweet selves that they were, well... hardly human.

Of course when you demonize The Other that way, the slaughter of innocents is inevitable, and when such demonization is routinized and almost required throughout the culture, not only in War Zones (which we have learned is the Whole Wide World), then we are going to have killing, gun violence, on a massive scale whether or not there are alien "Natives" to massacre.

This is one reason why I cannot simply let Chris Hedges' demonization and scapegoating of the Black Bloc be a "difference of opinion." No, he crossed over a bright line, into the realms of propaganda and demonization that lead inevitably to slaughter, something he should know better than anyone since as he never tires of telling us, he "covered the wars in the Balkans."

He learned the wrong lesson.

Americans suffered nearly 10,000 deaths last year due to gun violence, not all of them in the form of mass murders, but still way too many dead and wounded via easily accessible and useable firearms. Restricting routine access to firearms would help lower those numbers, presuming Americans really wanted to lower those numbers. But what would help even more is changing the social norms so that gun violence against various Others would no longer be routinized and romanticized.

Starting, perhaps, with entertainment.

I stopped going to movies years ago and I rarely watch television -- even television news any more -- because so much of what is shown in the movie theaters and on television is absolutely drenched in blood; it is a non-stop blood fest of murder and mayhem, and guns firing constantly. Not in any sort of defensive situation, mind you, but in offensive battles or just madness, often of a lone individual "taking matters into his own hands."

Changing the culture of the shoot-em-ups in entertainment won't by itself curb the gun violence. Much more needs to be done. Restricting access to firearms and requiring that they not be deployed at all under most conditions is something else that needs to be done. It's common sense.

The police are far too eager to shoot and kill suspects, especially if they show signs of mental illness, and they always get away with it. This should no longer be tolerated.

Reminding Americans that what's happened in the past -- the almost endless list of massacres and genocides -- is not an example to be emulated now and in the future; nor is the murderous warrior culture that our Valiant Troops practice elsewhere one to be emulated at home.

Some have suggested that powerful psychotropic drugs play a role in the continuing series of gun massacres in this country and that overprescription of mind and mood altering pharmacological substances must stop.

But I'm not at all convinced that Americans by and large want the gun violence to stop. It's part of the American  psyche and American Exceptionalism. It may be outrageous and shocking -- each time it happens -- but like lightning strikes, it's dramatic and energizing.

And of course there are the gun ravers who, if anything, want more, more, more!

Yes, and they may get it, too.