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"I hate my life" he says, before getting shot to death by the cops.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIdAgftgP5Q
Wonder why...this is your America. Hopefully they are laying plans for their revenge. They are owed this. He didn't even remotely fit the profile of the suspect, but was black (and unarmed), pulled over, and that was reason enough. ?
Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer:
"I know that in cases like this, no matter what the decision is, there will be people that question it, people that will not support it. And I always know in decisions that are this critical, you're not going to have everybody that supports it, not the officers, not the union. Perhaps not the family and maybe not even the community. But I promise I will do the right thing in this investigation and I'm asking people to trust me to do that,"
Just kill the police and start again. Really.
Meanwhile, in New York a police Captain argues the merits of profiling: http://gawker.com/heres-audio-of-what-sounds-like-an-nypd-captain-pressur-1783544682
And a worthy on how police made the Tamir Rice case just disappear. Without consequences for themselves or the involved officers. http://www.gq.com/story/tamir-rice-story?mbid=digg
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And I watched the Dallas shooting with some interest. It was to be expected, really, the knee-jerk reaction to the polices ongoing extra-judicial mass executions of blacks. The reaction, predictable, blaming the Sniper, the lone gunman, yes, this time, maybe, but I expect even as you lick your wounds from this there will be more and better planned, this policing of the United States, the empire of fear, well, your approach, your methods, your lack of accountability, while not addressed by the courts will be addressed by the people. This is fair, this is their right, they owe themselves their safety, security, their freedom. This is why there is a Second Amendment:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
I read the statements - from Obama, the biggest political disappointment of the last 2 centuries:
'Vicious, calculated, despicable attack on law enforcement'
From Hillary:
''We’ve got to do everything possible to support our police and to support innocent Americans who have encounters with police,'
and
"I mourn for the officers shot while doing their sacred duty to protect peaceful protesters, for their families and all who serve with them"
I was looking for Trump's answer to that, he has that affable half-wits charm about him, that shoot-from-the foot-in-the-mouth attitude, but clearly his handlers have got a firm grip on him:
'...an attack on our country...'
Addressing Obama's rhetoric first, there is no law enforcement in the USA. For there to be law enforcement you need laws, and laws that are applied equally to all people regardless of race, religion or wealth. That has clearly not been the case. What you have in the USA at the moment is a loose set of guidelines, rules, clearly set up to favor privileged white folks. Your very currency, the dollar bill, is hypocrisy: ornamented by George Washington, founding father and slave owner who despite the best of professed intentions profited from slavery his entire life. You've in your time in office overseen the extrajudicial murders of Anwar al-
Respectfully, I must apologize. Law and Order that exclusively favors corporations and rich white folk is not law and order. It's oppression. Expect resistance. Your reaction suggests that a great deal more resistance must be made before you will open your eyes.
Hillary's response was politic and considered, and as much as I hate to say it the most reasoned. It's inclusive, as she acknowledges the reason for the shootings in her "support for the innocent Americans who have encounters with the police.", but she doesn't go far enough, she's a politician and is protecting her political interests. Acknowledge that "Innocent Black Americans are being MURDERED BY THE POLICE" and acknowledging that if there were fair and competent policing in the States this would NOT HAVE HAPPENED (retaliation demands a reason, after all) would have been strong and accurate statements, but the truth is too uncomfortable for white people to hear.
And the Donald. Sorry, Donald, it wasn't an attack on your country. It was a defense of the values you all profess to hold dear:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
You have denied these people their unalienable rights. Jeronimo is on paid administrative leave, while his crime (homicide is sill a crime, isn't it?) is "investigated" and likely - as in too many other cases like this - will go unpunished. The closing of ranks - the solidarity of all police forces, the lack of comment or criticism on what clearly was murder, twice in a week captured on video (and how many weren't I wonder? Those we won't be hearing about). The fact that after the shooting the fellow officers went up to "console" the murderer speaks worlds of the divide between the people and those they are paying to protect them. They are not their protectors, they're the jailers, the guards, the wardens.
The Emperor has no clothes. The Emperor has no clothes. The Emperor has no clothes. The Emperor has no clothes.
The Police, they would have us believe they are heroes, that they are risking their lives for us, that they are there to "Serve and Protect".
(Link - Via BBC - http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36759711 image credit Jonathan Bachman)
I see only one hero here, and an army of scared, frightened, well armored and armed stormtroopers. Cowards.
The police are complicit in their closing of ranks and solidarity. This makes them culpable, this makes them targets. There are no innocent police. Distrust everything that they tell you.
I could go on, and on, and on, but we see now on the horizon, in the elections and the policing of the United States, the horsemen of the Apocalypse, namely greed, bribery, corruption, ignorance, fear and prejudice. There are more, I am sure, but these are the first. And Micah Xavier Johnson may be one day regarded as a hero, who knowingly went to to his death going to meet them. The Police don't need to tell us who are the heroes, we can decide for ourselves.
Read More. Educate yourself. And don't take my word for it.
LINKS:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Alton_Sterling
- http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/07/485066807/police-stop-ends-in-black-mans-death-aftermath-is-livestreamed-online-video
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/07/07/minn-cop-fatally-shoots-man-during-traffic-stop-aftermath-broadcast-on-facebook/
- http://www.vox.com/2015/5/28/8661977/race-police-officer
- http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/alton-sterling-philando-castile-2nd-amendment-guns/490301/
- http://thesource.com/2016/07/10/man-who-posted-alton-sterling-shooting-video-has-been-arrested-by-police/
AND MORE GENERALLY:
- http://www.vox.com/2015/5/28/8661977/race-police-officer
- https://nplusonemag.com/issue-22/police/seeing-through-police/
AND FINALLY, SOME GUIDELINES TO HOW POLICING SHOULD BE DONE:
(Note that while I endorse the ideas in the last link, the UK has strayed a long ways from the path.)
**This is exhausting, which is why I try and stay away from current events. I'll try and make the next few posts a little more irrelevant.
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Wealth has pooled like blood around their feet, embarrassing, this, how to explain it away, how it's good for you too (you'll be next),
It's distributed wealth that drives the economy. Wealth pooled in banks and offshore Panama accounts does nothing. It's numbers on paper, it's an even bigger fiction than money, it's a reality beyond the dreams of most Britons and increasingly out of their reach.
Wealthy, Educated experts assuring you that this is going to be a good thing for you because it's been good for them (when over the past few years it's clearly not been good for you...), the Smug and odious faces of privilege and power nightly on your news telling you what's best, discussing things that you don't understand, agreements you didn't make, talking about their imaginary Europe while you are stuck working (if you're lucky) 40 hours a week for an average yearly wage of £27,600, try getting by in London on that, even double that, and the "experts" trying to tell you what's good for you, talking shit about investments and savings and banks and free trade, things that to the average person mean nothing...
The fact that many Britons were googling EU the next day is an indication of how sloppy this power has become, the ignorant are expected to continue supporting a system that clearly exists to make the rich richer, and while it may be better for them than the alternative it is clearly favoring those with money.
"There's a classic behavioral economics experiment called the ultimatum game in which one subject is asked to divide a pool of money, and the other subject can choose to take whatever the first one offers (no matter how little that is), or reject the offer and both of them get none. The "economically rational" approach is to take whatever you're given, even if it's just one penny, because one penny is more than you'd get if you rejected the offer. But in experiments, subjects confronted with "unfair" splits overwhelmingly choose to punish themselves in order to punish the person making the unfair offer.
Neoliberal politics have been a long-term, iterated form of the ultimatum game: the capital class arrogates more wealth to itself while it offers less and less to working people, with fewer prospects for advancement, but points to an opposition that would give workers even less, and expects that they'll go on winning as the lesser of two evils.
Brexit shows that in such a circumstance, table-flipping is a viable alternative to playing the game at all."
Thank Bernie Sanders for that, and he's no longer in the running. Because the US is long past any point of reason. Just. Because.
This referendum, it was the smug, arrogant, offer of corrupt politicians who somehow felt that everyone was sharing in their wealth, their view of Britain, certain that everyone would see it their way, was proof of how disconnected they'd become from their populace. They are clearly unfit to govern.
They are voting themselves out of the entire system that gave them this choice, that kept them ignorant, poor, while others grew fantastically wealthy, who can empathize with a "poor banker" - likely only another banker, these problems of newfound "poverty" - at a level above many citizens wildest dreams of wealth, they don't resonate with your average man, hard to sympathize with an industry that has grown fat off of exploiting you.
Brexit? It's not surprising. The EU exists to make corporate Europe and Bankers wealthy. The lot of the average European has gotten worse, not better. Inequality in pay, income education and opportunity is increasing. Britain, as the second biggest contributor to the EU, clearly pays more in than it gets out. People are fed up with making the rich richer and this shows it.
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Having ignored every outstanding bill as long as I possibly could I set out to empty my bank account and clear my conscience. I'll need this when I move on to greener pastures. First stop, deposit cheque, second stop, Beano for a quick double-espresso, third stop- the courthouse, I've an outstanding traffic ticket and I'm tired of being on the lam, a fugitive from justice, an outlaw, I need to get it off my chest, I plug the meter for an hour, how long can it take?
Turns out, a helluva lot longer than an hour. $4.50 for an hours parking, paid to the city so I could pay my traffic ticket, which is no deterrent whatsoever to unsafe or reckless driving and merely another form of taxation for the City of Calgary. I'm in the lineup to talk to a Justice of the Peace, and it snakes about 60 people back around the central elevator. It doesn't look good, but it depends on how fast the line is moving, I've fed the meter, now get in line and wait. There's a line as well to pay the cashiers, the "Plead Guilty" option, quicker by far, and no doubt a lot of innocent people choose to plead guilty, it saves them both time and money.
Waiting. Waiting. The line doesn't move, it shuffles, very slowly forward.
This waiting to see a JP, it's a form of Systematic and Premeditated Incompetence. Despite the entire justice system being predicated on the basic presumption that people are "Innocent until Proven Guilty", the entire system is set up to process you as if you are guilty. Wanna see a Cashier? Lineup is about 10 minutes. Or you can pay your ticket, with additional service charges, at any bank, AMA or vehicle registry. Want to challenge your ticket? In that instance you'll be waiting...and waiting...and waiting...
This having underestimated the time I'll be in line, it's also part of the game. The city, I'm pretty sure they know that most of the people fighting traffic tickets drive cars, although this does sound like one of those opportunities for the government to invest millions in research..."How many drivers that got traffic tickets use their car to get around?..." would be the title of that study...
...and, like me, now almost an hour in line and not even 20 people forward, this line, it's easily 2 1/2 hours long and it's growing longer behind me, if I stay I'll get another ticket, parking this time, another trip to the courthouse to argue that this second ticket was a result of their incompetence, even if I fed the meter to the maximum allowance of 2 hours I'd still be getting a ticket, that's how fucking slow they are, and it's all by design...
I'm a little pissed off by now, abandoning my place in line, I head off and pay the ticket at the AMA. I am now "Guilty" due to civic disinterest and incompetence, and a little like 1984 my guilt should set me free, my guilt - and money - pardon me and my offense. Fuckers.
A Few Observations:
- WHAT'S YOUR SLA? The City imposes an involuntary Service Level Agreement on the recipient of traffic tickets - after 4 or 6 weeks if the ticket is not challenged or paid warrants are put out for your arrest and additional illegal (I'll come back to this) late fees are added to the ticket. What SLA binds the city to it's population, I wonder, by which I mean what does the city consider a reasonable time for a citizen to spend in line to defend themselves against a ticket?
- The Late Fees Constitute Usury - "In October of 1998, the Supreme Court of Canada found that the Late Payment Penalties (LPP) charged by Consumers’ Gas may constitute a criminal interest rate contrary to section 347 of the Criminal Code. The decision, in Garland v. Consumers’ Gas, was unexpected insofar as the LPP had been continuously approved by the Ontario Energy Board since its adoption in 1975.". Perhaps the city should review it's late fee strategies, as in every case where they've been challenged (and some in class action suits. Ahem) exorbitant late fees have been determined to be usurious. A few links that might give you some insight into this:
- Continuing the Above - The late fees described above - as applied by gas, electric, cable, internet and cellphone companies, were all "Voluntarily" entered into by the consumers - meaning the consumers entered into a contract with the service provider in which the late fees were no doubt described in extravagant detail in a highly minute font. Regarding your traffic tickets and the solicitation of involuntary taxes to contribute to city coffers via traffic cams, red light cams, traffic policing, etc. at no point did I (or any other consumer that I'm aware of) agree either to the ticket or to the late fee. My signature or approval does not appear on the ticket.
- Guilt is Not The Only Option: I apologize for this, but last time I checked a cornerstone of the justice system was that you were presumed innocent until proven guilty. The manner in which you have made pleading "guilty" easy and "innocent" nigh impossible (with countless small levies and charges - eg: parking, time, etc). Suggests you need to re familiarize yourself with this. If in any way "Justice" - however trifling - is important to you (!! To US) than EVERY AGENT WHO TAKES PAYMENT - be they banker, clerk, whatever - should be a JUSTICE OF THE PEACE and able to adjust/waive/adjudicate any grievances about the ticket. Guilt is not the only option. This is both intuitive and a fundamental cornerstone of our legal system, and the self-serving bureaucracy you have entangled it with substantially undermines this.
- If you are unable to process/adjudicate/adjust tickets in a timely manner - that meets a reasonable SLA as defined by the citizenry, not yourselves, than you need to restrain the issuing of tickets until you can.
The tickets paid, and my chances of recovering the over-payments are slim, but I think I might just write a letter to the city...
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No, really, what has the world come to that this is a thing?