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Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Police Unions View the Constitution as Optional.

28 DEC 2016
Prague, CZ

Police union demands Amazon to remove 'Bulletproof Black Lives Matter' shirt

The US's largest police union has urged Amazon to remove a T-shirt from its third-party marketplace that says: “Bulletproof: Black Lives Matter”.

The Fraternal Order of Police has already succeeded in having garment removed from Walmart supermarkets. But as of Sunday morning it was still available on Amazon.    
Union president Chuck Canterbury said he didn't expect that to change anytime soon.
Characterising Amazon as a “pretty liberal marketer", he told The Guardian that the T-shirt's rhetoric had inspired violence against members of law enforcement.
According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, 64 police officers have been fatally shot in the line of duty in 2016.
At least 940 people have been killed by a police office across the country over the same period, according to the Washington Post database that tracks police violence.
The constitution of the US has a fairly clear "free speech" clause and there is no better example of the exercise of that clause than wearing a t-shirt that reads "BulletProof."
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

If the largest police union, and the members they represent, is/are unable to understand this clause, then they also fail to understand that free speech is at the foundation of a functional democracy.

This furthers my belief that the US police forces are a force against democracy (in particular democracy for Blacks and other minorities). They have become a quasi-miliatia that protects the rights of the "Haves" and ignores the rights of the "Have nots."

The continued existence of these types of police departments means that they will continue to transition into forces that will participate in the growth of Totalitarianism in America.

Monday, November 28, 2016

Muslim Registry: Americans Will Draw a Line -- Maybe, Someday

28 Nov 2016
Prague, CZ

I was watching a TYT video in which the panelist were discussing the likelihood of there ever being a Muslim Registry. The discussion centered around a news clip of Reince Priebus saying that while a Muslim Registry was NOT and option, nothing was OFF THE TABLE. An amazing sentence, which in fewer characters than a Tweet displays a level of dishonesty that should instantly qualify him to be a presidential candidate in 2020.

The TYT discussion involved some joking at the lunacy of such a registry and then went on to discuss how likely it was to ever happen. There were references to the Japanese registry of WWII and there were suggestions that the American people would never let that happen again. The panelist, under or around 40 years old, may have forgotten that most Americans were born after the Japanese registry happened or were very, very young when it happened. They may have also forgotten that most American K1-12 history books have purged that event from their pages, because they only want to present the warm-fuzzy side of American history. It's a bit like the Texas Board of Education trying to remove slavery from American history or rewriting the relationship between America and Native Americans. God forbid, we ever teach from a textbook that is not PRO-AMERICAN.

But I digress. The panelists, more or less, concluded that Americans would take to the streets in protest of a Muslim registry. They foresaw street protests and non-Muslims flooding the registry as a form of passive resistance. In the end, they all seemed to feel that it just couldn't happen here, again. The operative word is "again."



In response I wrote:

Yeah, the clever Muslims and non-Muslims will flood the registry. Sort of like how the clever Jews and non-Jews flooded the trains to overwhelm the German railroad system. Come on, get real. It may or may not happen, but history shows us that if it does it will take Americans about 5 years to wake up and give a shit, which is why it took Americans from 1950 to 1956 to decide that maybe McCarthyism wasn't such a great idea. Our why it took a decade for Americans to decide that Vietnam wasn't working out.

Americans have a bad habit of being a day late and a dollar short when it comes to really serious issues like this one. Even when you slap 'em and shake 'em with information, they will still stand ideally by and watch, just as they did when America invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. In general, if an American's stomach is full and the cable is working, they are slow to rouse and even slower to act.

A Muslim registry may never happen, but if the government wants it bad enough, it will happen and it will last for years, just like Guantanamo Bay.

On the bright side, a good registry can be used to register all kinds of things as well as lots of other groups of people, maybe even you.

America is "mowing" the lawn; and the lawn is us.

28 Nov. 2016
Prague, CZ

The North Dakota Pipeline project makes it into the side-stream media every day. For whatever reasons, the story is too insignificant for the main-stream media to touch. Although, for people who think like me, the reason is not so hard to figure out.

However, I was watching a side-stream news outlet that I generally respect only to hear them discuss the story in awkwardly superficial terms. They used the required terms like "water protectors," "Native Americans," and in referring to the goons dressed as police, they were sufficiently disgusted.

Nonetheless, there was something missing. The story was passionless and mechanical, as though, it was just another Goon vs. Protestor story. The kind that have punctuated American history for a hundred years. Most don't recall or have never heard of the GM auto-workers "sit-down" strike in Flint Michigan in 1936. At the time is was GM workers who were protesting and it was GM that called in the thugs, goons and general all-round shitheads to breakup the strike. Like now the police mercenaries were armed with guns and tear gas, but unlike now, when the National Guard was called in by Roosevelt, it was not to shoot the protestors, but to protect them from the police and GM strike busters, or as I call them, blue-collar GM criminals.

It was as though the people telling the story were completely missing the most important message.

America is "mowing" the lawn!

For your consideration, my comment to the video and the video are shown below.
I thought the conversation was a bit superficial since in a very real sense, the US Government declared open combat against the citizens of the United States of America. This was not pushing and shoving, this was warfare by a militarized mercenary police force against unarmed citizens. When Israel does this in Palestine, it's called "mowing the lawn." Wake up America, your government is "mowing the grass" in North Dakota.

Thursday, November 24, 2016

Alt-Nazi

24 Nov 2016
Prague, CZ
I keep hearing how Trump has little or nothing to do with the rise of Neo-Nazism in America. And the speech by Richard Spencer cannot and should not be attributed in any way to Trump. I have no doubt that Trump was not asked to approve the speech nor participate in any way in its writing. However, after reading the whole speech I'm not so sure he wasn't the inspiration behind the speech. Which leaves us to ask, what do we make of a person who inspires Neo-Nazism?
An interesting fact I would like to add, is that Trump's name appears 25 times in the speech by Richard Spencer. In my opinion, that's quite often, for a non-inspirational figure. 

Long Live the Emperor!
Richard B. Spencer · November 21, 2016
Editor's Note: This is the text version of a speech recently given by National Policy Institute President and Radix editor Richard B. Spencer at NPI's Become Who We Are 2016 conference
I don’t think I’m alone in thinking how surreal this all is.
Of course, those of us on the Alt Right always took President-elect Donald J. Trump and his chances seriously. Unlike everyone else, we weren’t surprised, or at least not that surprised. We knew he could win. Many of us thought all along he would win. The mainstream media, or perhaps we should refer to them in the original German—Lugenpresse—never did.
This was the year when random shitlords on Twitter, anonymous podcast hosts, and dissidents working deep within the Beltway Right proved they objectively understood politics better than the “Republican strategists” and “political consultants” snarking at us every night on MSNBC. It’s not just that they are leftists or cucks. It’s not just that many are genuinely stupid. Indeed, one wonders if those people are people at all, or instead soulless Golems, animated by some dark power to repeat whatever talking points John Oliver said the night before.
But even though we always took Trump seriously, there was still a moment of unreality – or perhaps too painfully intense reality – when the state of Pennsylvania was called for Donald Trump, the moment when we knew Kek had smiled upon us, that meme magic was real. And though these terms are used half-jokingly, they represent something truly important--the victory of will. We willed Donald Trump into office, made this dream into reality. If you will it, it is no dream, a quote I’m sure our friends at the Anti-Defamation League know well. And this is only the beginning.
After all, what does it mean, to bring your dreams into reality? Dreams are chaotic and hard to understand. They can be self-contradictory and confusing. But at some level, they represent our deepest yearning, our desire to make the impossible real. As TE Lawrence wrote, we're aren't the dreamers of the Night, whose dreams are mere vanity. We are the “Dreamers of the Day,” those who do not want our visions or even our fantasies to be escapes from reality. We want them to be the reality.
In a culture which offers video games, endless entertainment, drugs, alcohol, porn, sports, and a thousand other distractions to convince us of another reality, we want to cut all of that away. We demand to live in the world we imagine.
Today, there is an effort by the humiliated mainstream, those commissars who are lashing out against us and who are whipping up the mobs outside this very building, to push back against us. Despite winning the election fairly, despite winning in the face of near unanimous opposition from the mainstream media, despite destroying both the Republican and Democratic establishments, there is a concerted push to deny the new president-elect legitimacy. It’s especially amusing considering the indignant whining we heard only two weeks ago about how unconscionable it was that Donald Trump was supposedly going to refuse to accept the election results and how he was going to unleash his supporters into the streets. Really, who can take these people seriously ever again?
In the later part of the campaign, Peter Thiel, one of the few people of wealth and status who endorsed Trump, talked about America as a “normal” country, a country with a functional government not constantly at war with the rest of the world. This was the promise of Trump to many of his supporters. And yet, for the cultural Left and its propagandists in the controlled media, then main argument we here today, if you can call it an argument, is that Trump should not be “normalized.” This of course begs the question--what is normal today?
In the Current Year, late-night comedians don’t tell jokes, but give us lectures on what we should not be allowed to laugh at. Worn-out celebrities like Madonna, who have based their entire lives into transforming themselves into clumsy symbols of sexuality and materialism, claim to be offended by the “indecency” of Donald Trump. Journalists don’t fight for free speech, but lead the charge to restrict it. In the Current Year, the state wars against the nation, rather than protecting it.
What is the state of the world? What is this status quo that our “normal” President, Barack Hussein Obama, the community organizer from Chicago, is now shilling for on his last foreign tour?
Let’s look at what our government does. The bulk of the threats we face, especially the Islamic State or Muslim terrorists operating within our own societies, have been enabled by our own government. Massive armies, huge navies, terrifying weapons which could destroy the whole world over and are subsidized at ruinous cost, are actually used to further policies which make all of us less safe.
In the Europe defended by American armies, refugees who commit horrific crimes are set free, but citizens who criticize them are arrested. Meanwhile, at home, the protection of the borders, the primary--and to some libertarians, the only national security responsibility of the government--is ignored.
Indeed, Western governments go out of their way to seek out the most dysfunctional immigrants possible and relocate them at taxpayer expense. The “non-government” organizations who support this colonization effort are given huge amounts of money to make their own communities worse. Is this “normal?” Would the Founding Fathers who created those “American ideals” we hear so much about think this is ok?

Let’s look at the culture.

In the Current Year, one’s career can be ruined and life destroyed if you express anything other than admiration for a man who wants to cut off his genitals and say he’s a woman.
In the Current Year, we are told the great threat to our democracy is “fake news” – and then hear breathless accounts, backed little no evidence, that Breitbart.com is “White Nationalist.”
In the Current Year, a white who takes pride in his ancestors’ accomplishments is evil, but a white who refuses to accept guilt for his ancestors’ sins is also evil.
In the Current Year, white families work their whole lives to send their children to universities where they will be told how despicable they are.
In the Current Year, the powerful lecture the powerless about how they don’t recognize their own “privilege.”
In the Current Year, a wealthy Jewish celebrity bragging about the “end of white men” is "speaking truth to power.'
In the Current Year, if you are physically strong, you are fragile. Black is beautiful, but whiteness is toxic. Government doesn’t stop crime, but subsidizes it. “White Privilege” is real but race and sex are just constructs. And if facts are too disturbing, you can always retreat into the 'safe space' of box juice, teddy bears, and endless empathy where realty doesn't matter anymore.
Today, neurotics and degenerates are presented to us as heroes. Beauty is openly denigrated as an offense against equality. And we are ruled by a government which, despite confiscating an outrageous amount of our wealth, can’t fulfill its basic responsibilities defending a people and territory.
This is a basic-bitch argument, but the pre-made signs of those leading the protests against Trump, probably some of those outside this building, come from some of the most extreme Communist groups in the country, the most murderous ideological force in history. It feels almost embarrassing to make this argument, because we know no one will take it seriously. Yet this very day breathless editorials screech that random Internet comments on websites the mainstream media don’t like mean Donald Trump shouldn’t appoint this or that person to his staff.
We need to remind ourselves of these things. None of this is natural. None of this is “normal.” This is a sick, disgusting, society, run by the corrupt, defended by hysterics, drunk on self-hatred and degeneracy. We invade the world and frantically invite entire populations who despise us. We subsidize people and institutions who make our lives worse just by the sheer fact of their existence. We run up deficits and pretend the laws of history simply don’t apply to us because of “American Exceptionalism.”
This cannot go on any longer. And it won’t.
At some level, we demand the impossible. Even those half-joking memes about Donald Trump as God-Emperor or as the progenitor of some glorious Imperium testify to the yearning for something more. Yes, we should insist on our dreams – on the conquest of space, on the development of revolutionary technology, for a humanity that is greater than we are today, for a race that travels forever on the upward path.
But at another level, what we want is something normal, something almost prosaic maybe even boring.
Why is something as simple as starting a family, owning a house, and leaving a legacy to your children seen as an almost impossible dream for so many Americans? Why must there be two incomes for a family simply to break even? Why is it impossible to build a real civic society because the whim of a federal bureaucrat or a Social Justice Warrior can impose Section 8 housing, refugee resettlement, or some other population transfer scheme deliberately designed to break apart functional white communities?
Why do institutions of higher learning turn out graduates who are personally and emotionally broken, as well as ignorant? Even those who can build something in this environment spend the money they earn to isolate themselves from all that vibrancy they feel the need to defend publicly.
It’s not just that this society makes it impossible for us collectively to accomplish great things. It’s that collectively, we can’t even accomplish small things anymore. We take for granted our culture is filth, that the mass transit won’t work, that the cities are rotted out from within, that the great art and architecture of the West has all essentially been made. We collectively know that our country’s best days are behind it.
That was the ur-myth that animated the Trump campaign. To say “Make America Great Again” is both radically pessimistic and boyishly optimistic at the same time. It is an admission America is not what it once was, that it is no longer that nation capable of achieving what it once did. Even liberals at some level know this, as they occasionally pay wistful tributes to the early 1960s America of the moon race and the middle class lifestyle, while conveniently forgetting that American society was 90% white at the time.
Yet MAGA is also forward looking. This idea that we can do this, that America can be what it was, that this idealized past can be restored. More than that, that it can reach new heights, be “greater than ever before,” as President-elect Trump put it. We’re going to win so much, we’re going to get tired of it. This is the new “normal” we are promised, an America of greatness, but also of functional communities and the possibility of a satisfying life for ordinary people.
Contrast MAGA with Marco Rubio's "For a New American Century," literally cribbed from the neocon think tank that planned the Iraq war. Contrast this with Hillary Clinton’s poll-tested “Stronger Together.” What does this even mean? Her coalition was made up of mutually hostile tribes, only united because of their hatred for what Peter Brimelow called the “historic American nation,” which is to say, us.
In the last week of the campaign, Trump was hosting several rallies a day, including one near here in Northern Virginia. A friend who was there told me he was several hours late but no one wanted to leave. But it became so late that small children – there were many families at these rallies – started falling asleep. Parents actually put coats on the ground to form a kind of bed for the children to sleep, and surrounded them to guard the sleeping youngsters. There was this kind of effortless high-trust environment you saw at these rallies, an entire people awakening to their own existence – and realizing not just that they exist and have an identity, but that they are strong.
Contrast that to the Hillary constituency. The black political machines and the guilt ridden liberal suburbanites who work their entire lives to move away from them. The left wing activists who think they are fighting the System by working for the federal government. The multinational CEO’s and the Latinos they’ve imported to clean their houses and cut their lawns. “Stronger together?” There are no two parts of this coalition who could even be in the same room together for any length of time.
And this contradiction goes to the heart of the Left. The Left couldn’t decide this year whether America was already great or whether it was never great. Is America some noble multiracial experiment that belongs to everyone and to no one, or is it the product of conquest and settlement by mean ol' racist Europeans?
Is it a beacon of hope to the rest of the world or an enemy to be destroyed? Because, as the outgoing President would say, let’s be “clear” – despite these supposedly egalitarian “values,” America was, until this past generation, a White country, designed for ourselves and our posterity.
It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.
The Alt Right is not just an alternative to the moribund “conservative movement,” that Beltway Right of direct mail scam artists and shills whose eternal “values” constantly trail the Left’s vanguard by a dozen years. It’s an alternative to a whole system of lies.
What are we fighting for is a “new normal,” a moral consensus we insist upon.
Donald Trump is a step towards this new normal. But even he is deeply compromised by the perversions that define this decadent society. Donald Trump warred against segregated establishments. He supports affirmative action, or put more bluntly, state-sponsored discrimination against whites. He will be perhaps the most pro-Zionist president ever put into office, turning a blind eye to continued Jewish settlement in the Palestinian territories. He opposes the Iran nuclear deal, which, we should admit, isn't exactly that bad. He has, let us remember, left the door open for some kind of amnesty at some future date, talking about keeping “the good ones” in the country.
The hysteria surrounding his election doesn’t show that he is extreme, but it shows how unhinged the press and the chattering classes have become. We are told of a massive rush of hate crimes against nonwhites by evil racists emboldened by Trump’s victory. Amazingly, these crimes never seen to be captured on video. That violence which does exist seems to consist of direct physical attacks against Trump supporters. And even when this is captured on video, CNN political commentator and former press secretary for Bernie Sanders can smirk, “oh my goodness, poor white people.”
What we see is that the liberal hegemony which governs this society will not permit any reform, even the kinds of moderate reforms which could salvage the whole System. The undercurrent of almost all press coverage in the days since Trump’s ascendency is that white people should not be permitted to vote. What’s more, the news should be censored to ensure that people are only given the “correct” viewpoints.
Far from reflecting on why they lost or extending even a modicum of empathy towards European-Americans, the press has clearly decided to double down and wage war against both the legitimacy of Trump and the continued existence of White America.
But they are really opening the door for us.
You can imagine, hypothetically, some situation where a President Trump or whoever slaps some ramshackle America together and it limps along for a few more decades . . . where the boot is lifted off the neck of white America just long enough to keep the whole thing going. Yet the Left can’t permit that. Environmentalism, workers’ rights, income inequality, mass transit, whatever stated values it supposedly has are thrown out in order to pursue a remarkably crude and simplistic anti-white hatred that is driving it all.
And even more than during the election itself, the mask has been ripped off since Trump’s election. SJW’s always project and the American Left is driven by anti-white hatred – full stop. It has no other goals, no aspirations, nothing to look to. It is a nullity. And we have nothing in common with these people.
It is different for us. Race is real ... but in some sense, whiteness really is a social construct. Think of the concepts that are now designated “problematic” and associated with whiteness -- power, strength, beauty, agency, accomplishment. Whites do and other groups don’t. In the banality of normal life and in our most outlandish dreams, in both our Narrative and theirs, to be white is to be a striver, a crusader, an explorer and a conqueror. We build, we produce, we go upward.
And we recognize the central lie of American race relations. We don’t exploit other groups. We don’t gain anything from their presence. They need us, and not the other way around.
Whiteness, or, rather, identity, is being forced on the deracinated, consumerist Last Man that was the European-American. No one is going to be permitted to escape this process. Great historical changes are imminent when people are forced into a binary choice – fight or flee, join or die, resist … or cuck.
That is the position of white people. Two weeks ago, I might the have said the election of Donald Trump would actually lessen the pressure on white Americans. But today it’s clear his election is only intensifying the storm of hatred and hysteria being directed against us.
As Europeans, we are, uniquely, at the center of history. We are, as Hegel recognized, the concept of world history. No one will honor us for losing gracefully. No one mourns the great crimes committed against us. For us, it is conquer or die. This is a unique burden for the white man, that our fate is entirely in our hands. And it is appropriate because within us, within the very blood in our veins as children of the sun lies the potential for greatness.
That is the great struggle we are called to. We were not meant to live in shame and weakness and disgrace. We were not meant to beg for moral validation from some of the most despicable creatures to pollute the soil of this planet. We were meant to overcome--overcome all of it. Because that’s natural for us.
Because for us, as Europeans, it’s only normal again, when we are great again.
Hail Trump. Hail our people. Hail victory.

Saturday, November 19, 2016

Progressives Need to Embrace the Word Psychopath

Nov 19, 2016
Prague, CZ

As always I feel the need to start with a short summary of terms. William Hirstein Ph.D. put togehter a short list of features that linked those with moral depravity or moral insanity with associated terms like antisocial personality disorder or dissocial personality disorder with the term psychopath. You can read his full article, What is a Pyschopath here.

The points of overlap included the following:
  1. Uncaring
  2. Shallow emotions
  3. Irresponsibility
  4. Insincere speech
  5. Overconfidence
  6. Narrowing of attention
  7. Selfishness
  8. Inability to plan for the future, and 
  9. Violence

In this last round of US elections, Americans have, legally or otherwise, installed a psychopath into the position of the President of the United States of America. And  it comes as little surprise that Trump is now busy surrounding himself with those that will be his advisers, both officially and unofficially. It is also not surprising that these individuals are also psychopaths.

When it comes to Trump and the people he is surrounding himself with, progressives need to, and must learn to embrace the word psychopath. Both Bolten and Pompeo are great examples, as is Trump.
Some feel that the word is too strong, that they have not burned Jews in ovens, therefore, we should moderate our language. If you look at the list above the "Final Solution" is not part of the definition of a psychopath, which is why we have no problem calling Charles Manson a psychopath.
Now people will say, Bolten, Pompeo, and Trump are not Charles Manson, since they were never part of a murderous cult, to which I say, look at the list again, "murderous cult leader" is also not part of the definition of a psychopath.

These are people who are smart enough to function in modern society, but suffer from a deranged psychology that qualifies them as psychopaths. It is time progressives identify them for what and who they are. Regardless of their power, influence, or wealth, they are now and will likely go to their graves are psychopaths and every word they utter and every action they suggest, must be viewed as having been birthed from a deeply and horribly demented mind and resisted accordingly.


Psychopaths are not  cookie cut outs, that are as diverse and complex as any human. They are capable of all the charm of Hannibal Lecter or the becoming smile of Anders Breivik. However, charm and becoming smiles aside, psychopaths shouldn't be president and they should be advising the president.
"Well, Clarice, have the lambs stopped screaming?" HL

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Rudy Giuliani: An American Deplorable

Rudy Giuliani is likely to have heard the quote, shown to the right, many times before, however, it seems clear that he does not understand what it means.

In a recent appearance (11 Sept. 2016) on ABS's "This Week" Giuliani flippantly stated, in response to a questions about the legality of plundering an invaded and occupied country's resources, that "... of course it is legal, it's a war (laughing), until the war is over, anything is legal." This statement is, in my opinion (IMO), exactly what Sinclair was talking about. There is no more fitting picture to go with the quote than a picture of Giuliani wrapped in an American Flag and carrying a cross.


In his current capacity as a Trump shill, Giuliani represents extreme American nationalism, which is nothing more than the dark shade of American fascism. The blind faith in American exceptionalism has led to this widespread belief that America, by definition, is always right, no matter what its actions. Trump has clearly indicated that he believes this without much reservation, which led him to make the following comments:
Trump, Feb. 17, 2016: "Torture works. OK, folks? You know, I have these guys—”Torture doesn’t work!”—believe me, it works. And waterboarding is your minor form. Some people say it’s not actually torture. Let’s assume it is. But they asked me the question: What do you think of waterboarding? Absolutely fine. But we should go much stronger than waterboarding" 
Trump, Dec. 3, 2015: The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families," 
My Point Is: Trump / Giuliani and, IMO the GOP in general, are willing to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity, which includes genocides, to achieve their Machiavellian goal of world dominance. This idea that all is fair in war and nothing is illegal, which can be accurately construed to also mean, nothing is immoral or inhuman, is the exact thinking that led to the holocaust and the genocide in the former Yugoslavia. 

The Germans of the 1930s did not vote for a genocide or a Holocaust, however, they nonetheless voted for and (more or less) democratically elected a person who was capable of carrying out a genocide. Trump is also such a man. He is not the first in America who has been capable of creating another Holocaust, but he is the first to be in a position to actually have the power to do so.

Don't believe it can't happen. History has a nasty way of repeating itself.

Click to Enlarge

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Police Rape

The motivation for this essay was a YouTube post by the Real News in which the host and her guest were discussing how the war on drugs interferes with real police reform. All was going well until the host described the following event which I have quoted verbatim from the DOJ report on the Baltimore Police Department.
In one of these incidents— memorialised in a complaint that the Department sustained—officers in BPD’s Eastern District publicly strip-searched a woman following a routine traffic stop for a missing headlight.  Officers ordered the woman to exit her vehicle, remove her clothes, and stand on the sidewalk to be searched.  The woman asked the male officer in charge “I really gotta take all my clothes off?”  The male officer replied “yeah” and ordered a female officer to strip search the woman.  The female officer then put on purple latex gloves, pulled up the woman’s shirt and searched around her bra.  Finding no weapons or contraband around the woman’s chest, the officer then pulled down the woman’s underwear and searched her anal cavity.  This search again found no evidence of wrongdoing and the officers released the woman without charges.  Indeed, the woman received only a repair order for her headlight.  The search occurred in full view of the street, although the supervising male officer claimed he “turned away” and did not watch the woman disrobe.  After the woman filed a complaint, BPD investigators corroborated the woman’s story with testimony from several witnesses and by recovering the female officer’s latex gloves from the search location.  Officers conducted this highly invasive search despite lacking any indication that the woman had committed a criminal offense or possessed concealed contraband.
As part of the discussion, the host described what happened to the woman as "mistreatment" and "disrespectful." At which point I started to write. I have included the entire section on Unconstitutional Strip Searches from the DOJ report at the bottom of this post.

In the title I used the word "rape" which is problematic since the word doesn't not a have a uniform definition that all would agree upon. I have taken a brief section from Wikipedia so that we might establish some common ground.
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration perpetrated against a person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercionabuse of authority or against a person who is incapable of giving valid consent, such as one who is unconscious, incapacitated, has an intellectual disability or is below the legal age of consent.[1][2][3] The term rape is sometimes used interchangeably with the term sexual assault.[4]
The key concept for my purposes is "consent." In the case of the woman mentioned in the DOJ report, consent was not given, because she was under coercion by a person who had substantial authority over her. In addition to the authority, the officers involved also had the implicit threat of violence, up to and including lethal violence.

Under these circumstances this woman was raped. It was not a case of mistreatment or disrespect. It was RAPE. She was raped by officers of the Baltimore Police Department and nothing was done.

This shows the extend to which the police, at the local, state and federal levels have become a corrupt force capable of brutal acts of physical and psychological violence against citizens. The police do not act without protection. Governments at all levels have a long history of protecting and even profiting from the criminal conduct of police forces (See DOJ report on the Ferguson Police Department).

The speed at which this DOJ report was brushed aside, plus the shear magnitude of the problem tells us that government (at all levels) have no plans to address this issue seriously. It would seem that American citizens are going to have to learn to live with fascist, authoritarian police forces that are rapidly becoming more like the Stasi and the SAVAK than a police force one would associate with a great democracy.

What the above says about the state of democracy in America, I will leave to you to determine.

If you would like to watch a video discussion of widespread police corruption and potential solutions, I would like to recommend two videos by Tim Black -- Democracy is Dead and Why there is violence in Milwaukee
2. BPD Conducts Unconstitutional Strip Searches   
In addition to impermissible Terry frisks, our investigation found many instances in which BPD officers strip-searched individuals without justification—often in public areas— subjecting them to humiliation and violating the Constitution.  Strip searches are “fairly understood” as “degrading” and, under the Fourth Amendment, are reasonable only in narrow circumstances.  Safford Unified Sch. Dist. #1 v. Redding, 557 U.S. 364, 375 (2009).  Strip searches are never permissible as part of a pre-arrest weapons frisk.  See Holmes, 376 F.3d at 275 (weapons frisks must be limited to the outer layers of a suspect’s clothing).  Following a lawful arrest, the reasonableness of a strip search turns on “the scope of the particular intrusion, the manner in which it is conducted, the justification for initiating it, and the place in which it is conducted.”  Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 559 (1979).  Absent specific facts indicating that an arrestee is concealing a weapon or contraband, officers may not strip search a person incident to arrest for an offense that is not “commonly associated by its very nature with the possession of weapons or contraband.”  Logan v. Shealy, 660 F.2d 1007, 1013 (4th Cir. 1981).  Moreover, courts have “repeatedly emphasized the necessity of conducting a strip search in private.”  Amaechi v. West, 237 F.3d 356, 364 (4th Cir. 2001) (finding strip search unreasonable where it was conducted in public view).  BPD policy likewise recognizes that strip searches should be conducted only “under very limited and controlled circumstances” and that “strip searching . . . [] suspects in public view or on a public thoroughfare is forbidden.”    
 Nevertheless, our investigation found that BPD officers frequently ignore these requirements and strip-search individuals prior to arrest, in public view, or both.  Numerous Baltimore residents interviewed by the Justice Department recounted stories of BPD officers “jumping out” of police vehicles and strip-searching individuals on public streets.  BPD has long been on notice of such allegations:  in the last five years BPD has faced multiple lawsuits and more than 60 complaints alleging unlawful strip searches.  In one of these incidents— memorialized in a complaint that the Department sustained—officers in BPD’s Eastern District publicly strip-searched a woman following a routine traffic stop for a missing headlight.  Officers ordered the woman to exit her vehicle, remove her clothes, and stand on the sidewalk to be searched.  The woman asked the male officer in charge “I really gotta take all my clothes off?”  The male officer replied “yeah” and ordered a female officer to strip search the woman.  The female officer then put on purple latex gloves, pulled up the woman’s shirt and searched around her bra.  Finding no weapons or contraband around the woman’s chest, the officer then pulled down the woman’s underwear and searched her anal cavity.  This search again found no evidence of wrongdoing and the officers released the woman without charges.  Indeed, the woman received only a repair order for her headlight.  The search occurred in full view of the street, although the supervising male officer claimed he “turned away” and did not watch the woman disrobe.  After the woman filed a complaint, BPD investigators corroborated the woman’s story with testimony from several witnesses and by recovering the female officer’s latex gloves from the search location.  Officers conducted this highly invasive search despite lacking any indication that the woman had committed a criminal offense or possessed concealed contraband.  The male officer who ordered the search received only a “simple reprimand” and an instruction that he could not serve as an officer in charge until he was “properly trained.” An African-American teenager recounted a similar story to Justice Department investigators that involved two public strip searches in the winter of 2016 by the same officer.  According to the teenager, he was stopped in January 2016 while walking on a street near his home by two officers who were looking for the teenager’s older brother, whom the officers suspected of dealing narcotics.  One of the officers pushed the teenager up against a wall and frisked him.  This search did not yield contraband.  The officer then stripped off the teenager’s jacket and sweatshirt and frisked him again in front of his teenage girlfriend.  When this search likewise found no contraband, the officer ordered the teenager to “give your girl your phone, I'm checking you right now.”  The officer then pulled down the teenager’s pants and boxer shorts and strip-searched him in full view of the street and his girlfriend.  The officers’ report of the incident disputes this account, claiming that they did not conduct a strip search and instead recovered narcotics from the teenager during a consensual pat down.  No narcotics were ever produced to the teenager’s public defender, however, and the State’s Attorney’s Office dismissed the drug charges for lack of evidence.  The teenager filed a lengthy complaint with BPD describing the incident and identifying multiple witnesses.  The teenager recounted to us that, shortly after filing the complaint, the same officer approached him near a McDonald’s restaurant in his neighborhood, pushed the teenager against a wall, pulled down his pants, and grabbed his genitals.  The officer filed no charges against the teenager in the second incident, which the teenager believes was done in retaliation for filing a complaint about the first strip search. 
 Other complaints describe similar incidents in which BPD officers conduct public strip searches of individuals who have not been arrested.  For example, in September 2014, a man filed a complaint stating that an officer in the Central District searched him several days in a row, including “undoing his pants” and searching his “hindquarters” on a public street.  When the strip search did not find contraband, the officer told the man to leave the area and warned that the officer would search him again every time he returned.  The man then filed a complaint with Internal Affairs and identified the officer who conducted the strip search by name.  When Internal Affairs investigators pressed the man to provide a detailed description of the officer, the man recalled that the officer “had red patches with sergeant stripes” on his uniform.  The investigator recognized this description as patches worn by the officer in charge of a shift and confirmed that the officer named by the man was working as an officer in charge in the Central District on the dates the man alleged he was strip-searched.  Internal Affairs nonetheless deemed the complaint “not sustained” without further explanation.  
 Deficient oversight and accountability has helped perpetuate BPD’s use of unlawful strip searches.  Although the Department’s policy limits strip searches to specific, narrow circumstances following an arrest, BPD supervisors have failed to ensure that officers comply with this policy and internal affairs officials have not adequately investigated frequent complaints that officers violate it. BPD does not separately categorize or track complaints alleging unlawful strip searches.  But our manual review of BPD’s Internal Affairs database revealed more than 60 such complaints in the last six years—only one of which was sustained.  In response to dozens of other strip search complaints, IA has deemed them “administratively closed,” classified them solely for “administrative tracking,” or found them not sustained – after minimal, if any, investigation.  For example, in 2015 an African American man filed a complaint stating that he was strip-searched by an officer whom BPD eventually fired in 2016 after numerous allegations of misconduct.  The man stated that the officer ordered him out of his vehicle during a traffic stop and searched the vehicle without the man’s consent.  When the stop of the vehicle did not uncover contraband, the officer pulled down the man’s pants and underwear, exposing his genitals on the side of a public street, and then strip-searched him.  The officer seized marijuana and cash during the strip search and allegedly told the man that the officer would return his money and drugs if the man provided information about more serious crimes.  The complaint stated that when the man did not provide this information, the officer arrested him and turned over only part of the confiscated money, keeping more than $500.  Despite the serious charges in this complaint and the officer’s lengthy record of alleged misconduct, IA deemed it “administratively closed” without interviewing the complainant.  This type of inadequate oversight has allowed BPD’s unlawful strip search practice to continue. 

Thursday, August 11, 2016

DOJ Report on the Baltimore Police -- What is missed.

UPDATED: 12-Aug-2016: Updated information has been added to the bottom.

Recently the Department of Justice (DOJ) released an extensive report examining the police practices in Baltimore, Maryland. In particular, it examined police practices relative to black citizens in Baltimore. In my opinion, it was an accurate and damning report that revealed systematic and systemic over-policing to the point of tyranny. While refusing to use harsh language, remember it was at its core a product of our political system, he did paint a picture of the police acting as an army of occupation in black neighbourhoods.

The PDF of the "Investigation of the Baltimore Police Department" can be found here. Most media outlets devoted time best measured in seconds to covering the most important points of the report and in most of the cases I observed, white-washed it (I use the term intentionally) to avoid being seen as being overly critical of the police. The Young Turks did a more thorough job in analysing the report and were willing to be more critical. If you are so inclined their report can be found here.

Most reporting touched on 3 issues that I would like to briefly address before getting to my main point.

  1. Civilian oversight: Many outlets praised the idea of civilian oversight as a potential solution for holding police more accountable for their failures and transgressions in the line of duty. I would remind you that, in theory, civilian oversight already exists and has existed to little effect for decades. Civilian oversight takes the form of mayors and city counsels. As an example, Baltimore has been under the leadership of a black, female mayor for the past 9 years (Rawlings-Blake [2010 - present], Dixon [2007 - 2010]). Furthermore it has been under a democratic mayor since 1967. It very clear that civilian oversight is problematic at best. I will also remind you that one of the key instruments of police abuse and abuse, in general, within the American justice system is the Grand Jury. The Grand Jury is a panel of civilians who consistently protect police officers and departments from accountability. These civilian oversight groups have appeared again and again in the news by virtue of their refusal to indict police offices for wrongful death, manslaughter, and even murder. Civilian oversight will always be political and those selected will never be autonomous and they will certainly never have more power than currently resides with city mayors and city counsels.
  2. Police training: The
    DOJ report mentions the quality of police training, or lack there of. Many are drawn to this as a simplistic solution for a complex problem. The problems that currently infest American policing are the result of decades of selection. Promotions go to those who play the game, bend the rules, and protect their own. Those who join the police and are unwilling to become part of the brutal, authoritarian police culture often leave in search of more honourable work, leaving behind a higher and higher density of behaviourally challenged police officers. The behavioural disabilities that now plague American police departments cannot be trained away. Not to mention the formidable resistance that will come in the form of police unions. Plus, it would only take one or two outbreaks of the Blue-flu to scare Americans back into their dysfunctional relationship, the same way that a battered spouse returns to the 'safety' of their abuser.
  3. Data analysis: This is perhaps the most superficial of the solutions. It suggests that if only we understood the situation better, everything would be fine. More data is all that is needed. The silliness of this position is beyond remark. There is no shortage of information concerning what the police are doing, both correctly and incorrectly. There is no shortage of studies that have objectively evaluated the effectiveness of every police program. Cities spend millions of dollars commissioning reports that are then tossed in the trash because they conflict with a political objective or objectives. More data is not a solution, not until we have already put into practice what we already know.
The Core of Police Intolerance of Citizens

Every analysis of the DOJ report I observed failed to ultimately identify the core problem. In part this failure is because it is perhaps a painful admission and in part they just don't understand what lies beneath it all. Police have many functions in society and most people are aware and give thought to only the most obvious, which turn out to mainly be the secondary functions. Of course, this is the part that the police use in their propaganda. "To Serve and Protect" -- these are the words that Americans most often associate with the role of police in American society. The catch criminals and bring them to justice. These are the actions that are depicted on American TV. Dragnet, Columbo, Ironsides, NYPD Blue, Dirty Harry, Cagney and Lacey, and Starsky and Hutch. With the possible exception of Dirty Harry, these Hollywood police represented the best of American sacrifice for society. However, the image of the clean-cut friendly, smiling officers on CHIPs has now been replaced by skinheads clad in helmets, face masks, and body armour.

If serving and protecting is not the primary role of police in society, what is? Let's be very clear, the primary objective of every police department around the world is to protect the rights, property, and influence of the establishment. Protect them from what, is of course, the next logical question. From the labour class. The police are the coercive arm of establishment or state power (if you prefer). They are used to force compliance with state dictates, edicts, laws, and policies. Don't for one second think that a "state" is an autonomous entity. Those dictates, edicts, laws, and polices are written by people for the benefit of the establishment. It is those same laws, etc., that have laid the foundation for the various inequalities that exist throughout society today. The police are the enforcers of these laws and polices, and therefore are the enforcers of the unequal distribution of wealth, liberty, and prosperity that confronts America.

The Enforcers of Poverty

While the DOJ report did not put a fine point on it, they did recognize that the Baltimore Police aggressively targeted protesters engage in fully protected speech under the 1st Amendment to the US constitution. The following excerpts are taken from CNN.



Retaliation for activities protected by the First Amendment

DOJ investigators found that officers "routinely infringe" upon First Amendment rights in the following ways:
• Unlawfully stopping and arresting people for cursing at officers, even though it's not illegal to use vulgar or offensive language as long as they are not "fighting words"• Retaliating with excessive force against people in cases of protected speech• Interfering with people who record police activity, including a time in which officers seized the phone of a man who recorded his friend being arrested and deleted all the videos on his phone, even personal videos of his son
Let's not forget that the word "force" in Police Force, is not an accidental usage.

Use of constitutionally excessive force

After reviewing all deadly force cases from January 2010 to May 1, and a random sample of more than 800 than nondeadly force cases, the DOJ concluded that BPD engages in a pattern or practice of excessive force. Insufficient training and lack of oversight of those incidents perpetuate the pattern, leading to several recurring issues:
• Use of overly aggressive tactics that escalate encounters and increase tensions and failure to de-escalate encounters when appropriate to do so
• Frequently resorting to physical force when a person does not immediately respond to verbal commands, even if the subject poses no imminent threat to the officer or others
• Due to a lack of training and improper tactics, BPD officers end up in needlessly violent confrontations with people with mental health disabilities
• Failure to use widely accepted tactics for dealing with juveniles, treating them the same way as adults, leading to unnecessary conflict
• Use of excessive force against people already restrained and under officers' control

What this shows is that the police, and not just the Baltimore Police, view citizens as a threat. They are a threat to the power of the establishment. In particular they are most threatened by those who have the most to gain by equalizing the power and wealth distribution in America. This gives them the license to be overtly racist in their dealings with minorities.

Discrimination against African-Americans

BPD stops African-American drivers and pedestrians at disproportionate rates, subjecting them to greater rates of searches than whites, the report said, creating racial disparities at every stage of law enforcement actions, from stop to arrest.
"These racial disparities, along with evidence suggesting intentional discrimination, erode the community trust that is critical to effective policing," the report said.
Among the investigation's findings:
• African-Americans accounted for 95% of 410 individuals stopped at least 10 times from 2010 to 2016
• One African-American man in his 50s was stopped 30 times in less than four years; none of the stops resulted in a citation or criminal charge
• African-Americans accounted for 82% of all BPD vehicle stops though they make up 60% of the driving age population in the city and 27% percent of the driving age population in the greater metropolitan area
• BPD officers found contraband twice as often when searching white individuals compared to African-Americans during vehicle stops and 50% more often during pedestrian stops
The three passages above should be considered some of the most damning things you could say about a democratic society. Yet, no such harsh interpretation is applied. If these descriptions were about the governments of Saudi Arabia, North Korea, China, Turkey, Yemen, Iraq or Iran, we would simply shrug our shoulders and say "what do you expect." However, these descriptions are from the Department of Justice of the United States of America and they are directed at a major metropolitan police department. The outrage that America has fallen to this level under a democratic president, or any president, should be palpable. Instead, there is silence.

Poverty will put more and more citizens in conflict with the police.

Politicians brag about the falling poverty rate and cite the current value of 15.7%. However, a quick look at the chart reveals the lies that can be hidden by using averages. More and more Americans struggle to stay out of poverty and a liveable wage has, for many, become only a dream. Ultimately the number of citizens demanding their fare share of the wealth will put more and more Americans in conflict with the enforcers of inequality. Only then will Americans begin to regret their silence.

As long as the police are the internal military of the establishment, they will continue to be in conflict with democratic principles and continue to be a threat to citizens seeking justice and equality under the law. Regrettably, the DOJ report does absolutely nothing to address the Blue cancer that is eating away at the fabric of American society.

America's existing criminal justice system, police, and prison industrial complex are incompatible with the ideals of freedom, liberty, and justice for all.

UPDATE (12/8/2016)

Obama, certainly one of the most Law-and-Order presidents in American history, was a leader in militarising local police. His policies flew under the radar until the Ferguson police couldn't resist the temptation roll their armoured vehicles into black neighbourhoods. As might be expected, US citizens were revolted by the grotesque show of power. In response, Obama reduced the supply of military weapons slightly. That appears to be coming to an end and Obama considers reopening the supply gates to local police forces. A militarized police force has a single purpose, and it has nothing to do with shoplifters, car-jackers, or buglers; and everything to do with putting down protests, stifling free speech, and protecting the establishment.

The Real News Network did a nice piece on this topic.