Update #V: Beware the Police

Constitution, Criminal Injustice, Fascism, Law, Rights, The State

Evidence is mounting for the increasing brutality of the police, especially your local “friendly” state troopers.

Read and watch how this journalism student is carted away and tasered for the offense of questioning John Kerry persistently. Kerry the coward didn’t intervene. Were a Republican present, I suspect the outcome would have been the same. Worse: the students sat there like golems as Meyer was assaulted. What obedient little lap dogs. Whatever one thinks of the 1960s, that generation would have started a riot, then and there. Here’s the account:

“Videos of the Monday night incident, posted on several Web sites and played repeatedly on television news, show University of Florida police officers pulling Meyer away from the microphone after he asks Kerry about impeaching President George W. Bush and whether he and Bush were both members of the secret society Skull and Bones at Yale University.
… Meyer struggles for several seconds as up to four officers try to remove him from the room. Meyer screams for help and tries to break away from officers with his arms flailing at them, then is forced to the ground and officers order him to stop resisting. As Kerry tells the audience he will answer the student’s ‘very important question,’ Meyer yells at the officers to release him, crying out, ‘Don’t Tase me, bro,’ just before he is shocked by the Taser. He is then led from the room, screaming, ‘What did I do?’”

There have been many other incidents, the last of a young man, Brett Darrow, who had the good sense to mount a dashboard camera in his car and film an officer, Sgt. Kuehnlein, threatening to fabricate charges against him. The poor lad was terrorized, but showed remarkable composure.

Here Radley Balko exposes more of the ubiquitous violations perpetrated by our protectors—and worse: the laws that help police conceal crimes against those they swore to protect.

Update # I: The fascists on cable all, left and right, with no exception, agreed with glee that for the police to assault this manifestly non-violent protestor, sans provocation, was A-Okay. It would be poetic justice if the son or daughter of one of the cable capos was tasered and thrown in jail overnight for speaking loudly and waving his or her arms in the air during a debate. You’re a slave if you rationalize this incident. Even if, as one reader claimed, this was a set up (whatever that means), isn’t it obvious that a non-aggressor, who has hurt nobody should never be assaulted, hurt, and incarcerated, not in a free country. Even if he was being provocative.

Balko makes the same point with respect to Brett Darrow: “I’ve heard people make the argument that this kid’s habit of baiting cops into abuse somehow diminishes the excesses he’s captured on tape. I don’t agree at all. His ‘baiting’ thus far has consisted of asserting his rights. Perhaps not as politely as he should, but being impolite isn’t and shouldn’t be a crime. Neither is parking in a commuter lot, or asking why you’ve been pulled over when you haven’t broken any laws.”
America isn’t free.
I do want to give Dick Morris, of all people, credit for showing the utmost revulsion at the brutality of the cops. I have never seen the smarmy smooth Morris grow as livid as he did earlier today on Hannity and Colmes, who both giggled about the incident. Morris called it fascism. A Taser, moreover, is not without its dangers. It can cause permanent heart-muscle damage and even kill. Tasering Meyer was so clearly sadistic, unnecessary, and reckless. It’s obvious that the cops use the Taser very flippantly.

Update # II: Tasers do kill. Here, the cowards are incapable of controlling a wheelchair-bound woman, so they kill her. Ann Coulter once wrote a fine column about the increased deaths associated with women in the police force. Women, being weaker and generally more fearful than men, tend to use lethal force more frequently. The sadist cop who used her Taser for 160 seconds on the victim was female.

Update # III: Some of the responses to the Comments Section, unpublished, alarmed me, in their inability to grasp that this is not about an annoying kid, who might have been playing to the cameras. Rather, this concerns the proper role of law enforcement in a free society. Free people grasp that assaulting a person who has not aggressed against a soul is unconscionable and authoritarian. As I say, if you can’t recognize that, you are a slave—or perhaps you haven’t internalized the fact that you could just as well be on the receiving side of such brutality.

To those who accused me of generalizing from a few isolated incidents, I suggest you bring yourselves up to speed, fast. Under the auspices of the Drug War, our militarized feds conduct daily “no-knock” raids, barge into homes, confiscate property, and rob people of their liberty—sometimes of their lives.

The Tyranny of Good Intentions by Paul Craig Roberts is highly recommended as well. As I wrote in “Remember Reno”:

“Back in the day, the law was intended as a bulwark against government abuses. It has now become an implement of government, to be utilized by all-knowing rulers for the ‘greater good’—the founders’ Blackstonian view of the law has been supplanted by a Benthamism that encourages ambitious prosecutors to discard a defendant’s rights.
Add the aggravating circumstances of a highly militarized federal law enforcement that shares the judiciary’s contempt for the Rights of Englishmen, and is abetted by a public dimmed by statist schools and media—and one has a recipe for disaster.”
I’ll leave you with another startling visual from rural America of a man being violated by police for no reason other than that THEY CAN.

Update # IV: More evidence that “‘To Protect and Serve’ often translates into harass and control”:
• Salty Burger Lands McDonald’s Employee in Jail
• The Case of Monica Montoya

Update # V: I confess that I’ve become quite fearful of the liberties these government goons seem to take—the brazen “I’m your boss, you serf, free to do with your body as I please” attitude. When I venture down the road to the gym, for example, I always make sure I don’t forget my driver’s license. It’s hard not to speed in this torqued-up devil, but I do my best.
It’s quite uncanny how, no matter how hard free men and women have illustrated what the issue here is, slaves of the state on this blog have demonstrated an inability to grasp what liberty means. Freedom is the unassailable right to raise your voice, flail your arms—even make a harmless nuisance of yourself during a debate; fascism is when those acts could get you assaulted, injured, even killed. That’s all there is to it! The cops who’ve written in supporting the vile conduct of their colleagues enforce my fears.
Incidentally, when Sean and I went down to our local police station to get our carry-concealed licenses, the cop spat bitterly: “Yes, you ex-South Africans like your guns.” I was naïve then, imagining, somehow, that he’d be happy we were proponents and practitioners of the magnificent 2nd Amendment.

Skank in the Skies

Aesthetics, Etiquette, Private Property, Sex, The Zeitgeist

The moron media is celebrating the saucy skank, who stood up to Southwest Airlines in her skimpy ensemble. Kyla Ebbert is being dragged onto every cable network set to parade the porn get-up in which she boarded the airline, only to be asked to cover up, or purchase more appropriate attire in which to travel.

Ebbert’s offending skirt is so short that hot pans would have been more modest. She sports one of those cropped wrap-around tops on top of a tank top, the purpose of which is to obscenely emphasize her huge bosom, so obviously augmented.

Mother was there to support her vacuous offspring’s “rights” and perfectly appropriate dress code. What amazes is how the tele-twits interviewing this woman (one was Matt Lauer, but women stood up for Ebbert too) kept gushing, “Wow, I can’t believe they did this to you; this outfit is just great.” Had she uncrossed her tightly wound legs, as she sat opposite her interviewers, Ebbert’s undies would be plain for all to see.

One “argument” made in support of the porn apparel (besides the heat) was that all young people Ebbert’s age dress like that. Need I dignify that?

Southwest Airlines personnel are in their right, of course, to enforce minimal dress codes on their airline, if they so wish.

That this has been developed into a news story is more revealing than the outfit.

Update: A comment below indicates how deeply misunderstood property rights are in contemporary America, a country founded on private property rights. Who owns the property onto which the Skank Ebbert set foot? The airline does!! The comment writer below has no right to deliver a speech—i.e., exercise her free-speech rights—in my living room without my permission, because, guess what? My living room is MINE.
Similarly, the airline owns the plane (although, nominally, due to government regulation). On their property, the airline owners have the right to determine how they wish people to behave and dress. I’ve explained this vis-à-vis airline security in “Who’s Property Is It Anyway?” The writer can read this column (and this one) to familiarize herself with what private property rights mean—and this does not pertain to libertarianism only. The definition of property isn’t changeable or negotiable. What’s yours is yours to do with what you may.

The writer also complained about my stooping to dignify the topic. Once again, she evinces yet another misunderstanding as to what my mandate is. In case anyone has failed to notice, I’m a commentator. I comment on the Zeitgeist. This vignette, in particular, is meta-commentary: commentary about commentary. The commentary that cuts it these days as commentary is, in itself, an important area for analysis for what it reveals about the culture we inhabit. I offer insights about the culture.

Finally, aesthetics. I understand that what I’ve termed the “porn aesthetic” is appealing to men. I don’t blame them; I blame women, who generally tend to be far more narcissistic and exhibitionist than males. A woman, moreover, can dress both provocatively and attractively. Provocative dress is more appropriate for evening wear than for daytime travel or work. That women constantly ho-up for travel and work gives us a glimpse into the “Silly Sex.”

Furthermore, there is sexy and there is skanky. Ebbert is skanky. With her genitals and mammary glands threatening to pop out of her stretched-to-the-limits garments, Ebbert’s entire demeanor screams, “Do me!”

John Quincy Adams on Islam

America, Feminism, Islam, Terrorism

“John Quincy Adams, founding father, sixth president of the United States, looks over your shoulder at the morning newspaper and contrasts the two opposing spiritual forces between which war must rage for yet another generation. While his language may offend today’s postmodern sensibilities, it is the vernacular of the men who loved Christ and cherished freedom—the mighty men who secured our liberty.”

John Quincy Adams on Islam:

“In the seventh century of the Christian era a wandering Arab, of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius with the preternatural energy of a fanatic and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting, from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God, he connected indissolubly with it the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting, from the new revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war as a part of his religion against all the rest of mankind. The essence of his doctrine was violence and lust; to exalt the brutal over the spiritual part of human nature.
Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of more than twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extincture of that imposture, which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man. While the merciless and dissolute are encouraged to furnish motives to human action, there never can be peace on earth and good will toward men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him.”

As I am praising the prescient and the politically incorrect, here’s a shout out to a group of Muslim apostates, or ex-Muslims, that runs the website Islam Watch, heroes all.

Iraq: The Only Way Forward

Economy, Energy, Iran, Iraq, Middle East, Military, Socialism

Two of the seven soldiers who wrote a controversial New-York Times op-ed, “critical of some elements of the war just last month,” have died in Iraq. “Among the column’s statements: ‘In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear.’”

In an interview with Jim Lehrer yesterday (as the cable cretins were babbling about O. J. Simpson), Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, amidst many obfuscations, brought himself to agree with Lehrer that “the casualty rates among American troops are about now what they were a year ago.”

Readers ask what I think ought to be done about Iraq. If the analysis in the column “The Petraeus-Crocker Crock“ is correct, as many of you have conceded, then the conclusions ought to follow closely.

We are powerless to do a thing about “the religious animus between Shia and Sunni that dates back to AD 680.” If anything, we are solely responsible for inflaming the vendetta by removing Saddam, the strongman that kept the lid on the cauldron of depravity that has now boiled over because of the invasion. Our soldiers can continue to serve as sacrificial lambs, giving their lives futilely in order to separate the warring sides. What on earth for? Cui bono?

As mentioned in the column—a no-brainer really—the American occupation is the other flame accelerator. Our presence there is contributing to the chaos. The Iraqis in all their factions hate our collective guts. Those who know the culture and have lived in the Middle East understand that the exquisite politeness with which Anbaris, for example, are treating their new-found American friends masks a cold hatred. Americans are naïve about the people they keep messing with. Michael Ware, the hardnosed reporter who has lived in the region for years, gets the unromantic, unvarnished picture exactly right:

“[W]e have to be careful about what we hear Iraqis say when we’re surrounded by American soldiers. If we’re on an embed and we’re dealing with these Iraqi forces, they’re going to be very careful in what they say, because their American paymasters essentially are standing around. We need to talk to these groups in their undiluted state. We were with those groups, not with Americans. And, to be honest, I have known many of these organizations for years. They hate al Qaeda, no problem. That’s a shared American agenda. They are vehemently anti-Iranian, which also makes them vehemently anti-Maliki government. They believe this is essentially Iranian influence. So, no, they don’t want to work with this central government. And this central government is working with them under great sufferance, being forced by the U.S.”

In other words, what they say is not what they are thinking and scheming.
As to what will transpire once we withdraw, listen to Ware’s words, when asked for his overall impression of the president’s imbecilic speech:

“Well, … my first impression is, wow. I mean, it’s one thing to return to the status quo, to the situation we had nine months ago, with 130,000 U.S. troops stuck here for the foreseeable future. It’s another thing to perpetuate the myth. I mean, I won’t go into detail, like the president’s characterizations of the Iraqi government as an ally, or that the people of Anbar, who support the Sunni insurgency, asked America for help, or to address this picture of a Baghdad that exists only in the president’s mind.”

Ware expounds on Bush’s parallel universe:

“Let me just refer to this, what the president said, that, if America were to be driven out of Iraq, extremists of all strains would be emboldened. They are now. Al Qaeda could gain new recruits and new sanctuaries. They have that now. Iran would benefit from the chaos and be encouraged in its efforts to gain nuclear weapons and dominate the region. It is now. Iraq would face a humanitarian crisis. It does now. And that we would leave our children a far more dangerous world. That’s happening now.” (Emphasis added)

It’s done. We broke it. Since the actions taken by Bush to improve Iraq caused it to break, it follows that no amount of further “improvements” will do anything but break the place some more. We are incapable of fixing it because of what we did (The Original Sin of invasion, if you will), who we are (invaders and aggressors), what we wrought (destroy the place), and what we symbolize (invaders who destroyed Iraq).

How difficult is it for readers of this space to follow this simple logic/drift? Expressions such as the road to hell is paved with good intentions, or the idea that you can kill with kindness—these all go to illustrate that it is quite possible to do evil while firmly believing you are doing good. Americans refuse to accept this because they cannot seem to see things from the perspective of the people they insist on “helping.” It’s a pathology–terminally self-righteous–to only see one side, and believe that that is the totality of the reality at hand.

The only way out is to withdraw completely. If readers intend to repeat that Iraq will then fall into chaos, please, at least do me the courtesy of reading (above) Ware again (in my opinion one of the finest reporters in the field). Iraq is in chaos. It may in fact improve once we remove our imperious boots from the Iraqi backs.

After withdrawing, we must work out a system of reparations for individual Iraqis. Of the logistics I’m not clear, but it is the right thing to do for individuals whose country and future we’ve destroyed. Next, instead of threatening Syria, one of two countries that has taken in millions of refugees of our creation, Americans need to assist the refugees in Syria and Jordan with private funds. These nations are housing the millions displaced by our actions. How dumb is it to threaten them? Do we seek to bomb the Iraqi refugees again, now that they’ve fled to Jordan and Syria?

Once we leave, some Saddam-like strongman will fill the power vacuum left. Will there be massacres? Sure; just like there are now. (We should have thought about that before the invasion. Or our revered leaders, and the masses that blindly fell behind them, ought to have read about Tony Blair’s philosophical forerunner, Gertrude Bell, and what happened to the British in Iraq circa 1920. When Americans invaded Iraq, they didn’t know Shiite from Shinola.)

We had it good with Saddam because he was secular, an enemy of fundamentalist Islam. Can we have back what, in our folly, we fouled up? No. The dictator to emerge from the ruins of Iraq will impose Sharia, pray to the hidden Imam, and compel women to walk about in black nose bags.

Let this be a cautionary tale. Hopefully we’ve learned our lesson. But the idea that we can rehabilitate what we ruined is delusional—a function of a collective mindset that rejects reality and its lessons.

I can hear the shrieks, “Iran; Iraq will belong to Iran. The nukes, the oil, omigod, blah, blah, blah.” Oh for heaven’s sake, get a grip. We delivered Iraq to Iran. Live with it or continue to be bled bit-by-bit by an insurgency that is way stronger than we are. We can wipe Iraq and Iran off the map with one of our nukes. The idea that the new Shia axis is a threat to us is not a serious one. Israel has more to fear, of course. Not America. Israel will have to figure out how to neutralize Iran’s arsenal.

Oil independence? I can never understand the protectionist, bellyaching about oil independence. Has anyone heard of trade? Perhaps if we traded more with Iran, instead of boycotting their wares, they’d be less belligerent. Trade is the best antidote to war. Think clearly: Iran has to sell its oil. That’s its livelihood. We need to buy it. Voila! Trade! Oil independence is a foolish leftist notion. Do I grow carrots in my backyard so as to become less dependent on Costco? Why would I? Costco needs to sell its fabulous produce; I want to buy it. Case closed. The idea of oil independence belongs with the global warming wombats.

Over and out.