Why Are There So Many Sheep?

Prague, CZ
31 July 2013
Thomas Secrest

Why Are There So Many Sheep?

Today Edward Snowden provided more information about NSA activities. As before the corporate media spooned the story, prechewed and predigested, into the gaping, waiting mouths of the American citizens; all they had to do was swallow.

When Snowden released the first bit of information, those that speak for those with no names, quickly announced that PRISM was not used against American citizens. Then they announced that we shouldn't worry, the information was just a bunch of 1s and 0s. Then they said that there were safeguards and special courts that oversaw the whole process to keep it honest and protect citizens. Then they called it meaningless metadata.

Perhaps Snowden is a really clever. Maybe he figured that he could wait for the mouthpieces to lie about his previous information, before releasing more information that exposed their lies. I want to think he is that clever. I want to believe he give them enough rope to hang themselves.

The only problem with his plan is an American public that just doesn't care.

Once again Snowden has released new information that demonstrates that government told lie after lie after lie about the NSA and PRISM programs. However, no one cares. No one insists that those who stood before the nation, with the sole purpose of deceiving the American public, be held accountable for those lies. No reporters ask the likes of Obama, Carney, Clapper, Graham, Holder, Feinstein or Inglis why they lied to the public. No one bothered to ask, "if you will lie to our faces about this, what else will you lie about; what else have you lied about?"

America has become a nation of sheep.

I think it is worth reminding every American, that the destiny of sheep, in a land of wolves, is to be killed for dinner.

To Protect and Serve

Prague, CZ
30 July 2013
Thomas Secrest

To Protect and Serve

I was digging around on the internet today and ran across an article about how the police used a taser and then a bean bag gun to subdue a 95 year old man, who was resisting being taken to the hospital, apparently without his consent.

To defend himself, from what sounds like a medical kidnapping, he used his cane and a shoehorn. After the police were called, he further armed himself with a kitchen knife.

After the taser failed to produce the level of compliance the police wanted, they shot him with a bean bag gun. A bean bag sounds like a child's toy, however, it is fired from a 12 gauge shotgun at 300 ft/sec. The round has a surface area of 1 square inch and weighs about 1.5 oz.

These rounds kill on average 1 person per year and the dangers of their use are widely know. This section is taken from Wikipedia.

A bean bag round can severely injure or kill in a wide variety of ways. They have caused around a death a year since their introduction in the U.S. A round can hit the chest, break the ribs and send the broken ribs into the heart. A shot to the head can break the nose, crush the larynx or even break the neck or skull of the subject. This is why many officers are taught to aim for the extremities when using a bean bag round. A strike in the abdominal area can cause internal bleeding or strike the solar plexus which can disrupt breathing or heartbeat, but such a hit is generally safer than most other areas as well as presenting a larger target than an extremity.

 In this case, the old man was hit in the abdomen and died of internal bleeding. After surviving for 95 years, I can't help but wonder, if in all his imagination it ever crossed his mind that he would die after being gunned down by the police.

All of this made me curious; I wanted to find out how many other people the police kill each year. I also wanted to compare the US to Canada. In a 15 year period (1995 - 2010) there were 33 deaths caused by Canadian police. In that same 15 year period, there were 1,200 people killed by US police.

If you are saying that the populations are different you are, of course, correct. When we adjust for population differences, the Canadians killed one person per 1,000,000 of population, while the US police killed 4 people per 1,000,000 of population.

It means that US police kill 4 times as many people per year as the Canadian police. All that's left to ask now is -- why?

Whatever Became of Democracy in America

Whatever Became of Democracy in America
Prague, CZ
24 July 2013
Thomas Secrest

I was reading this morning that Weiner, admittedly an unfortunate name considering his tendencies, has once again revealed his inner nature through electronic messaging.

Like the revelations about the NSA, Weiner did not place his transgressions on the public alter and ask forgiveness, he tried to hide them. It took the expert reporting, choke, of the "Dirty" gossip site to bring this matter to light.

This proves that in politics, if no one knows, it's the same thing as if it never happened.

Undaunted by, what now appears to be a compulsive need to photograph and text his own junk, Weiner announced that his candidacy for mayor of New York city will continue, unabated.

Weiner told the Daily News of New York in May that at one point, he checked into a Houston psychiatric clinic to have his behavior evaluated, but "it wasn't an addiction thing." If it's not an addiction thing, maybe it's just a pervert thing.

However, I digress. The fact that Weiner tends to text his junk is less of a concern to me than the fact that he is the best person in New York city for the job of mayor; or the second or third or .... If this news hadn't come out, Weiner would likely have won, and may still win,  the democratic party primary.

I don't think you can really call it democracy if you are routinely given choices, over which you have no control, and are ask to simply endorse one with your vote. In a city the size and importance of New York, a person cannot rise to the level of a serious candidate for mayor without the backing of the rich, powerful and influential people who call New York home.

For the New York plutocracy it doesn't really matter who is mayor as long as they have a significant measure of control over the person. I suggest that Weiner may have risen to the top of the democratic primary race because, until today, the plutocracy knew something about Weiner that we didn't. That something gave them control, lots of control, which is why they gave him their support and why he may have been their preferred candidate.

Of course what we don't know is what form of control they have over the other candidates that New Yorkers will be asked to select from. It may be voting, but it's not democracy.