Category Archives: Crime

Heroic Homeowner Shot By His ‘Protectors’

Crime, Criminal Injustice, GUNS, Individual Rights, Private Property

Not once, but six times. “Police tried to ‘cover up’ last year’s mistaken shooting of a homeowner who’d been holding an intruder at gunpoint, a lawsuit against the city claims.” (Via The Phoenix New Times.)

“Tony Arambula, 35, was shot six times by Officer Brian Lilly — including twice after he fell to the ground — on September 17, 2008, just moments after Arambula rescued his family from a berserk man wielding a 9-millimeter handgun. Amazingly, Arambula survived, though doctors believe he’ll suffer pain and problems with his nearly amputated wrist for the rest of his life. … In the claim, Arambula demands at least $5.75 million to right the wrong.”

And my question to you is this: does being armed increase the likelihood that the police will take you out?

Updated: The Gormless Judge Goldstone

Crime, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Justice, South-Africa, Terrorism

The supremely smug Richard Goldstone began his career by helping to demote a lesser evil (the National Party) and promote the quintessential evil (Mandela’s African National Congress). “We now have, I’m proud to say, a working, wonderful democracy in South Africa,” boasted the venerated singularly charmless gentleman to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.

The South African justice, who presided over “the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda from 15 August 1994 to September 1996,” continues his celebrity career with a report about Israel’s alleged war crimes in Gaza. “The report,” writes Ha’aretz, “which accuses both Israel and Hamas of war crimes, was formally presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday.”

I suggest Goldstone might want to look in his own plate before he goes passing judgment on (an admittedly imperfect) Israel. Since he helped usher in this “wonderful democracy,” upward of 300,000 innocents have been murdered. The New savage South Africa is now the most violent country in the world.

Here is the CNN interview the singularity boring Zakaria conducted with the singularly smug justice:

ZAKARIA: South African Justice Richard Goldstone made his name with legal cases of world importance but also of great delicacy and sensitivity. First in his home country of South Africa, pursuing an end to the political violence that came with apartheid, then on to the international stage as Chief Prosecutor of the UN Tribunals for War Crimes in Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

But his latest job is more controversial. In April, the UN Human Rights Council appointed Goldstone to head a mission to investigate allegations of human rights violations in the 22-day conflict between Israel and Gaza that began last December. From the start, some on both sides questioned whether a fair inquiry could be made, and in the end Israel, which took much of the blame in the final, almost 600-page report, though not exclusive blame, has reacted angrily.

Listen to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressing the UN General Assembly last week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered and given an unfair trial to boot. By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals.

What a perfect version of truth. What a perversion of justice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Netanyahu said that the report threatens to derail the peace process. Now listen to my conversation with the man at the center of this storm, Justice Goldstone.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Judge Goldstone, thank you for doing this.

JUDGE RICHARD GOLDSTONE, HEAD OF UN GAZA INVESTIGATION: It’s a pleasure.

ZAKARIA: The Prime Minister of Israel, as you know, denounced your report effectively on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly, and his basic argument is that the report is morally obtuse because it does not just distinguish between a democratic state that is being threatened by this hail of rockets and a terrorist organization, in his words, that is trying to inflict disproportionate and random violence on civilians.

GOLDSTONE: I think – I think, with respect, Prime Minister Netanyahu, misunderstands the basis on which we investigated. We – we didn’t question the right of Israel to defend itself or to defend its citizens. It clearly has that right. What we looked was the methods used in doing that. So we didn’t – we didn’t question Israel’s right of self-defense. We, in effect, in a way, took it as a given. It was, as I say, the – the – whether it was a proportionate response or a disproportionate response that we looked at.

And the other way, too, we – we didn’t look at whether Hamas is entitled to use military force to – to gain independence for the Palestinian people. We – we looked at what – what methods Hamas used, and we found those to be unlawful.

ZAKARIA: The Israelis claim that Hamas put themselves in hospitals, forced the Israelis to attack – to strike there, and that would produce an international public outrage. What did you find?

GOLDSTONE: Well, we didn’t exclude all of those allegations. We couldn’t. We – we had a short-time line (ph), we had a very, very scarce resources. We investigated specific incidents and we didn’t find, in respect of those incidents, that the Israeli claims had – had been – been justified. But certainly we can’t exclude it across the board.

ZAKARIA: You spoke of the Israeli behavior during Gaza as being part of a pattern that you described as, the Israeli term, ‘dahia’ (ph). What does that mean?

GOLDSTONE: Well, the – the – the attitude of Israel and the policy of Israel, especially since the Hamas victory a few years ago, has been really to turn the screws on – on Gaza. We felt that one of the purposes was to make life so difficult for the people of Gaza that they would turn their back on Hamas and it would lose support. In fact, if anything, it was my personal impression that it’s had the opposite effect.

ZAKARIA: What was the infrastructure damage like? Describe so that people can get a sense of what – what you regard as excessive.

GOLDSTONE: Well, the – the infrastructure damage, first of all, that had no military justification at all, was the bulldozing of agricultural fields. Huge tracks of land were just bulldozed by – by tank bulldozers. The only operating flour factory in Gaza. Obviously, flour is terribly important to feed – for making bread, a staple part of their diet. The only flour factory was – was effectively destroyed. They destroyed most of the egg production. They – they killed tens of thousands of chickens. You know, and this has got nothing to do with firing of rockets and mortars. It was the destruction of infrastructure — of part of the infrastructure of Gaza.

ZAKARIA: How will you describe Hamas’ responsibility here? You dealt with that in the report as well. Would you describe Hamas as guilty of war crimes?

GOLDSTONE: Oh yes, absolutely, of serious war crimes, which do amount crimes against humanity, and that’s the firing of thousands of rockets that have no precision at all into civilian areas. That’s a very serious crime.

But we also criticized its use of civilians and not protecting civilians sufficiently in its launching of rockets. And they put civilians in harm’s way.

ZAKARIA: And you found that both Israel and Hamas in a sense did not take enough precaution about the potential for civilian casualties?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely.

ZAKARIA: Judge Goldstone, you’re Jewish.

GOLDSTONE: Right.

ZAKARIA: How do you react when you hear Israelis accusing you of anti-Israeli bias, anti-Zionism, some have used the phrase “self- hating Jew”?

GOLDSTONE: First, there’s obviously no truth in it. I’ve got a great love for Israel. It’s a country that, as I said, I’ve been to many times, and I’ve worked for many Israeli causes and continue to do so. So it’s factually incorrect.

But what saddens me is the fact that Jews, whether in Israel or outside Israel, feel that because I’m Jewish I shouldn’t investigate Israel.

If anything, I think I have a greater obligation to do that. If I’ve investigated war crimes in other countries, why should Israel be different? And it seems to me that that should be welcomed and recognized.

ZAKARIA: When you look at these crimes against humanity, these war crimes, how do they compare? You have a long career. You’ve seen many of these kinds of things, investigated some. Where does this stand? How should we think of it?

GOLDSTONE: Well, you know, I don’t like making comparisons because each situation is so different. But certainly one can compare what has happened here to situations that I’ve investigated in the former Yugoslavian genocide. One doesn’t here in respect of Gaza get anywhere in my view anywhere near that sort of situation.

It’s very different. Many people are comparing what’s happening in the occupied territories to apartheid South Africa. I don’t like that comparison. There’s some similarities, but there are more differences.

ZAKARIA: Do you see this as the end of the report and your role?

GOLDSTONE: Absolutely. It’s now in the political arena. I hope that we have provided a road map for both sides to investigate themselves and to come to their own conclusions, their own investigations, and where relevant their own prosecutions.

ZAKARIA: Spending time dealing with this, do you have any thoughts or insights into the Israeli-Palestinian divide? Do you think there will be peace? How do you look at this?

GOLDSTONE: No South African can be pessimistic about the prospects of for peace. We had an impossible situation and a certainty that we were going to have bloodbath, and because we had good leadership it was averted, and we now have, I’m proud to say, a working, wonderful democracy in South Africa. We’ve got problems but we’re moving in a good direction.

ZAKARIA: You will be back in Israel anytime soon?

GOLDSTONE: No plans at the moment, but I certainly expect to. I don’t have close family, but I have many, many friends there. I’d love to see them.

ZAKARIA: Judge Goldstone, thank you for doing this.

GOLDSTONE: Thank you very much.

Update (Oct. 7): My father, who was steeped in the anti-apartheid movement and ostracized for his convictions, informs me that Goldstone had no such history of protest. The judge attached himself to this fashionable cause once it became safe and politically prudent. Goldstone’s bio corroborates my father’s assessment, noting only that he joined the cause du jour in “the latter years of Apartheid in South Africa,” when,

Goldstone served as chairperson of the South African Standing Commission of Inquiry Regarding Public Violence and Intimidation, later known as the Goldstone Commission.[1] The Commission played a critical role in uncovering and publicizing allegations of grave wrongdoing by the Apartheid-era South African security forces and bringing home to “White” South Africans the extensive violence that was being done in their name. The Commission concluded that most of the violence of those years was being orchestrated by shadowy figures within the Apartheid regime, often through the use of a so-called “third force.” The Commission thus provided a first road map for the investigations into security force wrongdoing that, after democratization, were taken up by the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Update III: Tossed and Gored By Gore Vidal

Constitution, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Democrats, Homosexuality, Intellectualism, Liberty, Literature, Military, Propaganda, Reason, Terrorism, The State, The Zeitgeist, War

Despite his surprisingly mundane and misguided ideas on politics and economics, brilliant belletrist Gore Vidal, at 83, still manages to dazzle with his original insights. In a country in which homegrown retardation is more pressing a problem than homegrown terrorism, that’s quite something.

Vidal recently gave an interview to the British Times from which it was clear that he no longer sees signs of the divine in Obama. Nevertheless, absent from the dismal score card he gave the president was a realistic appraisal of the putative gifts of Obama, a charmer who was elected based on his ability to sweetly say nothing much at all.

To his credit, Vidal is scathing about Obama’s talismanic, “solve that [war] and you solve terrorism” treatment of the Afghanistan war. At the same time he wants to see Obama, Lincoln-like, lord it over the people (especially with respect to health care). But those kinds of images go with the homoerotic territory.

In any event, his weak protestations over Obama are the least interesting of Vidal’s comments, the ones about Timothy McVeigh and the love that dare not speak its name the most interesting.

Read the interview.

Update I (Oct. 1): Some respect for Gore Vidal, please. He belongs to a generation of intellectuals who SERVED. Bravely. As a matter of interest, “Some 450 out of 750 Princeton graduates in the class of 1956 served in the military.” Samuel Huntington, one of America’s greatest scholars, served in the army. “All four of the Kennedy brothers served in the military; not one of the thirty Kennedy cousins has.” [Excerpted from Are We Rome?The Fall of An Empire And The State of America by Cullen Murphy, 2007, p. 82.]

Most of the neocon-minded war mongers have not served.

Of course, “our freedoms,” such as they are, do not come courtesy of our armed forces leveling this or the other far-flung protectorate abroad. That’s yet more neocon nonsense on stilts. Cheap sloganeering.

Update II: The proverbial Orwellian Ministry of Truth decrees how the peons think about the issues of the day. When it comes to Timothy McVeigh they’ve had the same degree of success as in ensconcing Rosa Parks as the new Founding Mother of America.

Vidal is rare and courageous in recognizing the legitimate effrontery against life and liberty that motivated McVeigh to commit his crime. He is also unique in acknowledging that McVeigh was not a rube, but a thoughtful man who had fought for his country and was familiar with its foundational principles and documents. Here is McVeigh on the American experiment gone wrong (haven’t you read the interview?):

I think it all has to do with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and the misconception that the government is obliged to provide those things or has the jurisdiction to deny them. We’ve gotten away from the principle that they were only created to secure those rights. And that’s where, I believe, much of the trouble has surfaced.

The characters involved in the Waco massacre—our “brave” law and order officers and their puppet masters—deserved to be put to death too, but were not. Vidal has my respect for recognizing what the decidedly mediocre mind of a Rich Lowry has been incapable of. If Vidal were of a younger generation (like myself), his iconoclasm would have consigned him in mindless America to obscurity.

Update III: MORAL/INTELLECTUAL EQUIVALENCE. Conflating the causes for which McVeigh committed his cruel crime against agents and family of an oppressive government is akin to conflating MY causes with those of, in Myron’s taxonomy of the evil, the “Unabomber, Hitler, Stalin,” and I would add Al Gore (to round off the profile, and to poke at the humorless).

What sort of moral relativism is this? What kind of messy thinking is this? The causes and theories of the Unabomber, Hitler, Stalin (and Al Gore) were wrong on their logic and facts; McVeigh’s causes and motivation, if not his deeds, were right. What’s so hard about that? Kudos to Vidal, however confused he is about all else, for recognizing this.

Update II: The Prejean Of Journalism (& On Entrapment)

Conservatism, Crime, Ethics, Journalism, Law, Republicans, Taxation

“Conservatives” may be adding another Carrie Prejean to their intellectual arsenal. Prejean is a beauty queen, and a ding dong of a girl, who has become the Republican spokesman against gay marraige.

The Breitbart enterprise is behind an ACORN-exposing operation starring the Prejean of journalism. I give you the “gutsy” Hannah Giles. Yes, it helps to be connected, to have a shapely behind, a videographer who is hip to your ass-ets, and who is behind this brand of tease “journalism,” with its pornographic connotation, not unfamiliar to Fox New and its cohorts.

Giles told a praise-oozing Glenn Beck that, “Like, one day I was jogging, and I saw ACORN, and I really didn’t like them,” so she hatched a scheme. She would pose as a hooker at ACORN. Well, read the transcript of the investigation, or watch the video clips to see for yourself how Giles and her accomplice, James O’Keefe, played it out.

ACORN is a contemptible outfit. It speaks to the Third Worldification of the US. ACORN is also obviously accustomed to dealing with crooked politicians, since the journalist in this clip is posing as a politician, I think.

Update II (Sept. 11): politician, pimp or politician-cum-pimp: They’re one and the same, really, except that politicians are way worse, as there is a good degree of choice to the pimping occupation. Politicians live off us and we have no say in the matter whatsoever.

Nevertheless, I’m unexercised about ACORN’s attitude to prostitution or tax fraud. The first is a choice; the second is a mitzvah.

If anything I’m impressed with the help these black mamas are offering a white ho. It’s almost delicious how mama tax lady comes up with a tax code designation—“performing artist”—for our ungrateful entrapment specialist as well as tax write-offs.

As for the alleged importation of underage, illegal girls from El Salvador (“exchange students”): The ACORN tax lady is from The Street. One look at the pretty white ho and her well-spoken white pimp, and she knows that the “girls” are better off with them than in the flesh markets of El Salvador. In fact, the Housing Assistant encourages the white madam to send her “girls” to school.

“ACORN has ascended. They elect our politicians and receive billions in tax money,” writes O’Keefe. That’s right. The government is the syndicate that feeds ACORN and facilitates its criminal activities. Let our intrepid Prejournalist go after politicians for enabling ACORN and, in general, for their everyday pimping.

Finally, I don’t like entrapment, not when citizens or cops use it to flush out potential criminals. The law must concern itself with catching criminals; not creating crime.

Update I (Sept. 11): I’m the first to admit when my readers make good points against mine. Something good has indeed come of this exercise: The Census Bureau has severed its ties with ACORN.

Over the last several months, through ongoing communication with our regional offices, it is clear that ACORN’s affiliation with the 2010 Census promotion has caused sufficient concern in the general public, has indeed become a distraction from our mission, and may even become a discouragement to public cooperation, negatively impacting 2010 Census efforts,” read a letter from Census Director Robert M. Groves to the president of ACORN.

ACORN had previously been tapped to help with low level data gathering for the 2010 census. A copy of the director’s letter has been sent to Congress and relevant committees, as well as ACORN

You could all be right (most of you have disagreed with me). Given the accretion of corruption in the US, perhaps we liberty lovers are in no state to quibble about minutia. Principled-thinking Republicans are few and far between. Therefore, all we can ask is that, while throwing fits about the affiliates of the Democrats (ACORN)—and pretending corruption and socialism began with Obama—Republicans do some good.

As long as you all remember that when their guy or girl ascends to the imperial throne, nary a word will be said about Republican corrupt subsidiaries—there will be no Town-Hall tartlets going undercover, wiggling their tushes to expose wartime socialism and the attendant corporate cronies such as Kellogg Brown & Root, the construction arm of Cheney’s Halliburton, and the Bechtel Corporation, to name a few from the “W” era. Just so you know.