Category Archives: Criminal Injustice

When An Exceptionally ‘Good Country’ Downs A Plane

America, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Ethics, Iran, Reason, Russia

To extrapolate from Dinesh D’Souza’s illogic (explained nicely by Jack Kerwick), when an exceptionally ‘Good Country,’ as the US surely is, downs a plane, that country deserves mitigation, for it is good. In other words, the properties of the crime, which are the same whoever commits it, somehow change, depending on the identity of the perpetrator.

Thus, because he belongs to a good collective, D’Souza, presumably, would diminish the culpability of the “U.S. Navy captain” who shot “Iran Air Flight 655” out of the sky, on July 3, 1988.

“A quarter-century later,” writes Fred Kaplan of Slate, “the Vincennes is almost completely forgotten, but it still ranks as the world’s seventh deadliest air disaster (Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is the sixth) and one of the Pentagon’s most inexcusable disgraces.”

Kaplan compares the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 to “The time the United States blew up a passenger plane—and tried to cover it up.”

… In several ways, the two calamities are similar. The Malaysian Boeing 777 wandered into a messy civil war in eastern Ukraine, near the Russian border; the Iranian Airbus A300 wandered into a naval skirmish—one of many clashes in the ongoing “Tanker War” (another forgotten conflict)—in the Strait of Hormuz. The likely pro-Russia rebel thought that he was shooting at a Ukrainian military-transport plane; the U.S. Navy captain, Will Rogers III, mistook the Airbus for an F-14 fighter jet. The Russian SA-11 surface-to-air missile that downed the Malaysian plane killed 298 passengers, including 80 children; the American SM-2 surface-to-air missile that downed the Iranian plane killed 290 passengers, including 66 children. After last week’s incident, Russian officials told various lies to cover up their culpability and blamed the Ukrainian government; after the 1988 incident, American officials told various lies and blamed the Iranian pilot. Not until eight years later did the U.S. government compensate the victims’ families, and even then expressed “deep regret,” not an apology. …

Read “America’s Flight 17.”

Again: ‘Thank You For Your Service, Mr. Snowden’

Constitution, Criminal Injustice, Homeland Security, Technology, Terrorism

“I think patriot is a word that’s — that’s thrown around so much that it can be devalued nowadays. But being a patriot doesn’t mean prioritizing service to government above all else. Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country, knowing when to protect your Constitution, knowing when to protect your countrymen from the — the violations of an — and encroachments of adversaries.” So said Edward Snowden to “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams, to whom he spoke in a hotel in Moscow.

And:

“… there have been times throughout history where what is right is not the same as what is legal. Sometimes to do the right thing, you have to break a law.”

The guy is the real deal. Again: “‘Thank You For Your Service, Mr. Snowden'”

Differentiating A ‘Racist’ From A Non-Racist Beating

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Race, Racism

In Steven Utash’s battered body and comatose brain, courtesy of a mob of black youths, Detroit law enforcement has discerned different kinds of beatings: Some of the deadly blows are said to be based in racial hatred; other, equally brutal beatings are, apparently, bereft of racial overtones. That’s how ridiculous is the legal species of hate-crimes.

Background Via Fox News:

Two more men, ages 30 and 24, have reportedly been arrested in the brutal beating of Steve Utash, who remains in a coma Tuesday morning. Police are still looking for more suspects, believing 10-12 people attacked Utash. …
A brutal beating on the streets of Detroit has left a 54-year-old father of three fighting for his life. The shocking incident happened last week when Steve Utash, a tree trimmer from Roseville, Mich., struck a 10-year-old boy with his pickup truck.

The scene was captured from a distance on surveillance video, and it appears that a group of youngsters were playing a game of chicken with passing cars, darting into the street and sticking their legs out. When Utash struck one of the children accidentally, he stopped and got out to check on the boy.

A group of older teens, however, attacked Utash, beating him nearly to death. Two teens, ages 16 and 17, have been arrested, but authorities are still looking for more of the attackers.

The 10-year-old boy suffered a broken foot. …

Utash remains hospitalized in a medically-induced coma. Joe Utash described the gut-wrenching scene that the family has had to endure each time doctors try to bring Steve out of the coma.

If you’re a white supremacist caught in the act—no “alleged” or “buts” for you. On the other hand, if you’re a swarthy supremacist, driven by hate for honky or by devotion to a vampiric prophet and his deity—then mitigating circumstances will be cobbled up for you or your gang.

In fact, after learning (via CBS) of the ages of the accomplices of the 16-year-old charged in the beating—30, 24, 19, and 17—I wonder whether the prosecutor is charging only the youngest of them with a hate crime because, as a juvenile, his punishment is guaranteed to be negligible.

Cynical but quite possible.

Via CBS:

The teenager facing the hate crime charge is accused of beating Utash with his fists and feet. The teen’s name is not being released because of his age and the fact that he is being charged as a juvenile. Prosecutors say the teen will remain in custody and appear at the Wayne County Juvenile Detention Center on April 12.

Mass Murderer Exhibits Barren Art

Aesthetics, Art, Bush, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Media, Republicans, War

1 Reply

Not quite murderabilia, but certainly the “artwork” of a mass murderer. George Bush is exhibiting his hideous, Socialist-realism style art. Dana Perino waxed orgasmic about the Bush art on that vapid program called “The Five.” From where Dana Ditz is perched, it’s fine to worship Bush and his puke paintings, but not Obama.

Bush’s art has a “Pogo the Clown” quality to it. The allusion is to the art of another mass murderer, John Wayne Gacy Jr. The boxy lines and the dead quality of the art of both men makes it difficult to tell the difference; the art of Bush Jr. has the same turgid quality as that of John Wayne Gacy Jr.

See if you can differentiate:

Bush even had the audacity to paint the faces of men he sent into an unethical, unconstitutional war, in violation of Just War Theory.

Bush and Gacy are not the first butchers to paint, if you can call it that. Ulysses S. Grant smeared paint around too. Grant’s muse was murder:

Sherman wrote to Ulysses S. Grant (commanding general of the federal army) in 1866, “even to their extermination, men, women and children.” The Sioux must “feel the superior power of the Government.” Sherman vowed to remain in the West” till the Indians are all killed or taken to a country where they can be watched.”

“During an assault,” he instructed his troops, “the soldiers cannot pause to distinguish between male and female, or even discriminate as to age.” He chillingly referred to this policy in an 1867 letter to Grant as “the final solution to the Indian problem,” a phrase Hitler invoked some 70 years later.

I must concede that Ulysses S. Grant was a lot more talented than the two other mass murderers. This poor horse, snout buried in a nose bag, has a long-suffering quality to it, almost like its illustrator had feelings for his subject.

*Bloodbath image here