All Vehicles Look Alike. Daily Brickbats (2010-07-09):
JaDaimon Cole says he and his girlfriend were terrified when Dallas police ordered them out of their car at gunpoint. Sgt. Warren Mitchell described the stop as "an honest mistake." He says an officer typed in an "N" instead of an "M" into a computer terminal when checking the license...
Ninth Circuit Panel: Innocence, Schminnocence. We Have Rules, You Know. Radley Balko, Radley Balko: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2010-07-07). A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has rejected an Oregon man's petition for habeas corpus relief (PDF). This despite acknowledging that the man has established actual innocence for the crimes for which he's being imprisoned (sexual abuse and sodomy of a four-year-old). The...
(Linked Wednesday 2010-07-07.)
To serve, protect, and/or scare the hell out of. The Superfluous Man (2010-07-08). Be afraid. Be very afraid. (Linked Thursday 2010-07-08.)
With enemies like these, who needs friends? John Markley, The Superfluous Man (2010-06-23). Paul Craig Roberts has a nice article at Counterpunch on the Left and gun control. This is something that has had me shaking my head for years. I find myself baffled by the mentality of someone who believes that: 1. The government is controlled by a malevolent cabal of greedy...
(Linked Thursday 2010-07-08.)
History of Anarchism Presentation. DarianW, DarianWorden.com (2010-06-29). At this year’s Porcfest, I did a presentation at the AltExpo on the history of anarchism. I was overly ambitious with what I could fit into an hour, and really ran through some things that I would have liked to explain more. Particularly a lot of the post-WWII history was...
(Linked Thursday 2010-07-08.)
Almost Getting Away With Murder. Darian Worden, Center for a Stateless Society (2010-07-09). Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer Johannes Mehserle was given a slap on the wrist for his January 1, 2009 murder of Oscar Grant. A jury found Mehserle guilty of involuntary manslaughter, and not guilty of the second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter charges he faced. It is sad that the...
(Linked Friday 2010-07-09.)
Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer Johannes Mehserle was given a slap on the wrist for his January 1, 2009 murder of Oscar Grant. A jury found Mehserle guilty of involuntary manslaughter, and not guilty of the second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter charges he faced. It is sad that the lightest possible felony conviction for shooting a man pulled face down onto concrete while another officer held him down can be thought of as “at least something.”
Video and eyewitness testimony makes it apparent that Mehserle intended to shoot Grant. It has been said that Mehserle looked shocked after the shooting, but this is no sign of innocence. When the enormity of shooting a non-threatening individual in front of a crowd weighs down, it might be shocking to the shooter.
Mehserle’s defense claimed that the officer had intended to use his Taser but used his firearm instead. So the official story is that he meant to torture a man being held on the ground, but accidentally used a more lethal implement than the Taser — despite the fact that he had been trained on both the Taser and that the firearm and the two weapons are different sizes, weights, and carried on different sides of the body.
Not surprisingly, his fellow officers moved quickly to cover for him. They defended, rather than arrested, him, tried to confiscate videos of the homicide, and funded his defense. And they repeated whatever justification Mehserle made up for his actions.
Mehserle wasn’t even charged with murder until after major rioting took place in Oakland. Professional sycophants rushed to claim that the riots were the work of outside agitators, attempting to claim that business as usual would not be disrupted by ordinary people outraged at injustice.
Though Mehserle’s felony conviction is at least a small victory, the verdict shows that even having several videos of a police murder may not be enough to win in a government court. This is especially the case when the trial is moved out of the area in the name of “fairness” to an enforcer of the law. Supposedly the Bay Area saw too much media coverage and racial tension — as if media coverage is only influential when it is personal and race is only an issue when there are visible tensions.
A lot of thin blue whines have come from police and their supporters: The cops were in a scary situation; they were responding to a fight; bystanders were watching the cops and cursing at them; Grant had previous felonies for victimless crimes and has even been known to disobey police orders.
The slightest disobedience is enough to ruffle the feathers of these bullies. Police are tasked with enforcing laws written by professional politicians and bureaucrats, using whatever level of violence they deem necessary. And authoritarians expect them to be shown reverence and deference because the state’s enforcers are above other people.
And those expected to show deference the most are often those considered to be at the bottom of society, including people who appear to be in the poor minority demographic. Oscar Grant is cast as the urban minority youth who wouldn’t submissively accept his place — and the place the state assigned him was face down on concrete underneath several armed police officers inflicting whatever pain they felt like inflicting. Grant’s race will be cited to dismiss protests as a matter of “the blacks” being angry that one of “them” was killed.
Some would prefer not to address the roles of racism in establishing political hierarchies of whose life is more valuable and who will be the hero by default. They prefer the narrative that the solution for conflict is for everyone to shut up and do what the system tells them.
Nothing can replace the unique life of Oscar Grant, destroyed by the operation of government as usual. Hopefully Mehserle will give some kind of payment to Grant’s family, but most likely taxpayers will be forced by other state enforcers to foot the bill for any settlement.
Paramilitaries enforcing the laws of the state will act to secure state power. That is their job. When a superior comes into a situation it inherently causes conflict. A better solution would be conflict resolution among equals. In the meantime, Copwatching, Cop Blocking, and creating alternatives to government policing based on respect for individual liberty will have to pull society in the direction of freedom.
Meanwhile, as Glenn Greenwald writes in “Rules of America’s rule of law,” Bradley Manning faces 52 years for leaking documentation of U.S. war crimes. (By this standard, those who filmed the Oscar Grant shooting should probably feel lucky that they weren’t prosecuted.) More prominently, Lindsay Lohan faces 90 days in the slammer essentially for self-destruction and other victimless crimes, and the public laughs at her.
Yeah, I support gun control. Let’s start with taking them away from the police and the courts, who clearly have shown themselves unfit to play with such big toys, and then let’s talk about the Second Amendment.
Unbundling Government, by Arnold Kling. EconLog (2010-06-29). This week is Secession Week at Let a Thousand Nations Bloom. I have no problems with the S word, but I also use the economic expression "unbundling." For example, Ed Glaeser writes, In a sense, the gulf between the political attitudes of New York City and Montana can be understood...
(Linked Wednesday 2010-06-30.)
The Power to Tax is the Power to Destroy. Unqualified Offerings (2010-06-30). This is actually not primarily about taxes. Or about destroying. Or about Dave Weigel. But it is an interesting point from Jim Henley about what's new -- and what's not new -- in the ethos of journalistic bloggers, and why newspapers don't understand it. (Linked Wednesday 2010-06-30.)
apology not accepted. Dinosaur Comics (2010-06-30). "So hey did you guys hear about the G20 in Toronto last weekend? The event itself was kinda a non-event but the 1 billion dollars Canadians spent on security was kinda - insane? We built a big wall around the downtown core of the city, and the chief of police announced that there was a new secret law passed wherein anyone within 5 meters of this fence had to produce ID or be arrested. And then, after the event, he announced that he made the law up because it suited his purposes? HILARIOUS. Toronto police Chief Bill Blair, ladies and gentlemen." (Linked Wednesday 2010-06-30.)
eye of the storm 2010-06-30 11:05:51. Captain Capitulation, Anarchoblogs (2010-06-30). one thing that occurs watching the kagan hearings: i am very glad i have not lived her life. so when they ask her about memos she wrote in the clinton admin, strategizing on avoiding a ban on partial-birth abortion, she's all like 'i was working for a president who had...
(Linked Wednesday 2010-06-30.)
Parking Lots. Dorothy, Cat and Girl (2010-06-30). (Linked Wednesday 2010-06-30.)
Porkymandias. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-07-01). And on the pedestal these words appear: My name is Robert C. Byrd, Senator of Senators: look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains: round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.
(Linked Friday 2010-07-02.)
So, as you may have noticed, it’s June 27th; I don’t know if you know this, but it’s quite a day for radical birthday parties. To-day take some time to say:
Happy birthday to Emma Goldman, revolutionary Anarchist organizer, agitator, speaker, writer, and publisher — born June 27, 1869, in Kaunas, Lithuania (then occupied by the Russian Empire).
The STATE IDEA, the authoritarian principle, has been proven bankrupt by the experience of the Russian Revolution. If I were to sum up my whole argument in one sentence I should say: The inherent tendency of the State is to concentrate, to narrow, and monopolize all social activities; the nature of revolution is, on the contrary, to grow, to broaden, and disseminate itself in ever-wider circles. In other words, the State is institutional and static; revolution is fluent, dynamic. These two tendencies are incompatible and mutually destructive. The State idea killed the Russian Revolution and it must have the same result in all other revolutions, unless the libertarian idea prevail….
… There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another, This conception is a potent menace to social regeneration. All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. The means employed become, through individual habit and social practice, part and parcel of the final purpose; they influence it, modify it, and presently the aims and means become identical. —My Disillusionment in Russia (1923).
At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it.
I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal. —Living My Life (1931)
Happy birthday to FW Helen Keller, the Alabamian author, scholar, lecturer, and radical agitator — born June 27th, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Remembered today mainly for being blind and deaf and an inspirational example for the moral uplift of the young, what didn’t make it onto stage or screen was how, in her adult life, Keller won fame and infamy as a radical agitating for worker’ freedom, feminism, peace, anti-militarism, and the revolutionary unionism of the Industrial Workers of the World, which she joined in 1912.
I became an IWW because I found out that the Socialist party was too slow. It is sinking in the political bog. It is almost, if not quite, impossible for the party to keep its revolutionary character so long as it occupies a place under the government and seeks office under it. The government does not stand for interests the Socialist party is supposed to represent. … The true task is to unite and organize all workers on an economic basis, and it is the workers themselves who must secure freedom for themselves, who must grow strong. Nothing can be gained by political action. That is why I became an IWW.
—Helen Keller, interviewed by Barbara Bindley, Why I Became an IWW, New York Tribune (January 16, 1916)
[Bindley:]
What are you committed to—education or revolution?[Keller:]Revolution.She answered decisively.We can’t have education without revolution. We have tried peace education for 1,900 years and it has failed. Let us try revolution and see what it will do now.… Again the advisability of printing all this here set forth. And this finally from the patience-exhausted, gentle little woman:I don’t give a damn about semi-radicals!—Helen Keller, interviewed by Barbara Bindley, Why I Became an IWW, New York Tribune (January 16, 1916)
The future of the world rests in the hands of America. The future of America rests on the backs of 80,000,000 working men and women and their children. We are facing a grave crisis in our national life. The few who profit from the labor of the masses want to organize the workers into an army which will protect the interests of the capitalists. You are urged to add to the heavy burdens you already bear the burden of a larger army and many additional warships. It is in your power to refuse to carry the artillery and the dread-noughts and to shake off some of the burdens, too, such as limousines, steam yachts and country estates. You do not neet to make a great noise about it. With the silence and dignity of creators you can end wars and the system of selfishness and exploitation that causes wars. All you need to do to bring about this stupendous revolution is to straighten up and fold your arms.
… They know that if the government dresses them up in khaki and gives them a rifle and starts them off with a brass band and waving banners, they will go forth to fight valiantly for their own enemies. They are taught that brave men die for their country’s honor. What a price to pay for an abstraction—the lives of millions of young men; other millions crippled and blinded for life; existence made hideous for still more millions of human being; the achievement and inheritance of generations swept away in a moment—and nobody better off for all the misery! This terrible sacrifice would be comprehensible if the thing you die for and call country fed, clothed, housed and warmed you, educated and cherished your children. I think the workers are the most unselfish of the children of men; they toil and live and die for other people’s country, other people’s sentiments, other people’s liberties and other people’s happiness! The workers have no liberties of their own; they are not free when they are compelled to work twelve or ten or eight hours a day. they are not free when they are ill paid for their exhausting toil. They are not free when their children must labor in mines, mills and factories or starve, and when their women may be driven by poverty to lives of shame. They are not free when they are clubbed and imprisoned because they go on strike for a raise of wages and for the elemental justice that is their right as human beings.
… Strike against all ordinances and laws and institutions that continue the slaughter of peace and the butcheries of war. Srike against war, for without you no battles can be fought. Strike against manufacturing scrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder. Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human being. Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction.
And while we’re on the subject, let’s also wish happy birthday to the Industrial Workers of the World! The IWW’s founding convention began 105 years ago today in Chicago, on June 27, 1905.
If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop. The workers are more powerful with their hands in their pockets than all the property of the capitalists. As long as the workers keep their hands in their pockets, the capitalists cannot put theirs there. With passive resistance, with the workers absolutely refusing to move, lying absolutely silent, they are more powerful than all the weapons and instruments that the other side has for attack.
—FW Joe Ettor, in the
Bread and Rosestextile strike of 1912
And happy birthday to the radical gay and trans liberation movements! Late at night, 41 years ago today, on June 27th, 1969, and early in the morning on June 28th, the Public Morals Squad
[sic] of the New York City government’s police force infiltrated and then assaulted the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, believing that they would use violence, prison, and social shaming yet again in their ongoing campaign on behalf of the Basher State. But something happened that night that they didn’t expect — when the poorest and most marginalized in the queer and trans community said no more, began to resist, and then fought back against the cops. When people dressed as women refused to be taken back to the bathroom to have police verify
their sex, men began to refuse to show their IDs, and cops started bullying and groping lesbians during frisks,
the police shoved the people in the bar outside. Those who hadn’t been singled out for arrest refused to leave, and stayed to witness in solidarity. People began to shout Gay Power!
and sing We Shall Overcome.
When a cop smashed a stone butch
over the head with a billy-club for complaining that her handcuffs were too tight, the crowd finally erupted, turned on the police, and freed the prisoners from the police wagon. The police, humiliated and massively outnumbered, barricaded themselves inside the bar until the NYPD’s Tactical Police Force arrived to pull them out and beat a hasty retreat. Running battles with police in Greenwich Village streets continued the next night. Witnessing the example of street kids, gay men, lesbians, drag queens and trans folks rise up, fight back, and win against the government violence of the Morals Police brought about a new urgency, a new daring, and effectively a new movement. Within a few months, the Gay Liberation Front, Gay Activists Alliance, and Gay Pride organizing committee had sprung up in New York, with the first Gay Pride march in New York City’s history being held on June 28, 1970, in honor of Christopher Street Liberation Day.
As Frank Kameny, a longtime organizer for the Mattachine Society put it, By the time of Stonewall, we had fifty to sixty gay groups in the country. A year later there was at least fifteen hundred. By two years later, to the extent that a count could be made, it was twenty-five hundred.
We all had a collective feeling like we’d had enough of this kind of shit. It wasn’t anything tangible anybody said to anyone else, it was just kind of like everything over the years had come to a head on that one particular night in the one particular place, and it was not an organized demonstration. It was spontaneous. That was the part that was wonderful.
Everyone in the crowd felt that we were never going to go back. It was like the last straw. It was time to reclaim something that had always been taken from us…. All kinds of people, all different reasons, but mostly it was total outrage, anger, sorrow, everything combined, and everything just kind of ran its course. It was the police who were doing most of the destruction. We were really trying to get back in and break free. And we felt that we had freedom at last, or freedom to at least show that we demanded freedom. We didn’t really have the freedom totally, but we weren’t going to be walking meekly in the night and letting them shove us around—it’s like standing your ground for the first time and in a really strong way, and that’s what caught the police by surprise. There was something in the air, freedom a long time overdue, and we’re going to fight for it. It took different forms, but the bottom line was, we weren’t going to go away. And we didn’t.
—Michael Fader, quoted in David Carter (2004), Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution, p. 160.
Here’s to many happy returns.
The Right usually argues for limited government. They fear unaccountably state agents abusing their power. It’s a justified fear. All power tends to be abused unless you have strong checks on it. Both Left and Right can usually agree on the need to keep an eye on those who are trusted with power.
But the Right seems to have a blind spot when it comes to the Police. They tend to just heap powers on the Police and trust that nothing will go wrong, despite the Police being renowned for abusing their powers. That’s what’s happening with the new DNA power. No Right Turn sums it up:
In New Zealand, they’ve recently gained the power to forcibly take DNA from anyone arrested, even if they are subsequently acquitted. But even that isn’t enough – and so our police have gone fishing. A few years ago they were harassing teenagers in routine traffic stops, demanding DNA swabs in exchange for letting them go. Now they’re intimidating Maori kids, using fear and lies to extract samples:
“I’ve heard of a few cases where young Maori have been conned by police into giving DNA samples even when they haven’t committed a crime. One young Maori told me the police wanted the sample because one of their relatives might be known to police. “Another told me the police wanted the sample in case the rangatahi got killed and the police needed to identify them.”
Harawira argues that approaching children to give DNA without their parent’s consent is outside police guidelines. its worse than that – it’s flat-out illegal. The law is very clear on this: section 30 of the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act 1995 says that
Nothing in section 30 of this Act [which specifies the administrative procedure for gaining samples by consent - I/S] applies in respect of a person who is under the age of 17 years, and no such person shall be capable of consenting to the taking of a bodily sample in response to a request made under that section.
If Harawira is correct, the police have been systematically breaking the law. And every officer who has taken such a sample is guilty of contravention of statute and liable for imprisonment for one year.
The completely unconcerned attitude of the Police hierarchy to these allegations is worrying but, unfortunately, typical. The Police should never have been given the power to take DNA off people at such a low threshold. It should be handled by an independent group and only on conviction. Letting the Police take DNA off anyone they arrest gives them too much incentive to bend the rules, and that seems to be happening.
In Savannah, Georgia, Corporal Keil Joseph Cronauer and Lance Corporal Christopher Charles Stanzel, two government soldiers working for the United States Marine Corps, sucker-punched a gay man from behind as he was walking away, and then beat him unconscious, for allegedly winking at them. (The Marines, in their defense, claim that they beat him half to death because he might have been coming onto them.) Their victim, Kieran Daly, is recovering in the hospital from bruising to his brain.
A gay man was attacked by two Marines in Savannah, Georgia, reportedly because the soldiers thought that he was “winking” at them.
Kieran Daly was struck in the back of the head shortly before 4:00 a.m. on June 12, following an altercation with the two Marines, reported the local newspaper the Savannah Morning News that same day. A police officer saw the Marines running, then received word of the incident, the article said. The officer investigated the scene where Daly lay on the ground being given CPR by his friends, and then chased after and arrested the Marines, identified as Keil Cronauer, 22, and Christopher Stanzel, 23.
The Marines said that Daly had come on to them, saying sexually suggestive things and following close behind them; but their story was contradicted by witnesses who said that the Marines accused Daly of winking at them.
Daly suffered bruising to the brain, but was talking to the media from the hospital later that day.
The guy thought I was winking at him,Daly recounted.I told him,Daly added that,I was squinting, man… I’m tired.the last thing I remember is walking away. I remember the feeling of getting hit, but I only kind of remember it.According to witnesses, one of the Marines punched the back of Daly’s head as he was walking away.
Here is how the government police responded to this hyperviolent gay-bashing by a couple of government soldiers (their colleagues in the trade of unhinged government violence):
Although there were multiple eye-witnesses who confirmed that the attack was unprovoked, local police authorities charged the men with a misdemeanor and released them into the custody of military police.
(Care to take bets on whether two gay men would be charged with misdemeanor battery right now if they had singled out a young Marine for harassment on the street, attacked him from behind and then beat him unconscious and put him in the hospital with head trauma?)
But, never to fear. The military has them in custody and is assuring us that the Incident will be Internally Investigated. Hear the reassuring words of Colonel David Robinson, Commanding Officer, MAG-31, and know that the guilty will be held accountable. Or, at least, some reports will damn well be made consistent.
Although this certainly does not justify the actions of the Marine who punched the individual, it is important for us to consider both sides of the story,said Col David Robinson, Commanding Officer, MAG-31.As with most incidents there are multiple perspectives, accounts and recollections. The facts of this isolated incident will come out through investigations by civilian and military authorities.
Although the initial reports from the arresting officer and the media coverage of the incident are widely disparate, we are committed to resolving the inconsistencies between the reports,added Robinson.
Boldface mine.
Ah yes; Consider Both Sides; and remember, above all, that this is Yet Another Isolated Incident. Isolated, just like all the others (trigger warning).
What we’re actually dealing with here is an entrenched and institutionalized culture of violent masculinity, in which young men are taken away and set apart, to bond with each other around killing and through over-the-top violent hypermasculinity; where, like many other spaces where over-the-top violent hypermasculinity is encouraged, it’s often expressed through homophobic hostility and celebrations of torture and sexualized violence; where these men trained to see themselves as becoming stand-up men through their dutiful practice of violence on command from other men; where they are constantly told that they can do no wrong and that Their Country will Honor Them for their unrelenting brutality; and after which they are constantly treated as a special class apart, with an entirely separate system of policing and law, deserving special honors, special protection, and also special consideration and kid-glove handling by fellow soldiers and government police, when they turn around inflict that violence on innocent people.
When men in uniform are encouraged to see their manhood in violence, and violence as essential to their manhood, and when government insulates its trained killers, over and over again, from accountability for their violence, you are going to see that violence acted out on the people that masculinity targets: on women, on lesbians, on gay men. The problem here isn’t the apples. It’s the damn barrel.
In Savannah, Georgia, Corporal Keil Joseph Cronauer and Lance Corporal Christopher Charles Stanzel, two government soldiers working for the United States Marine Corps, sucker-punched a gay man from behind as he was walking away, and then beat him unconscious, for allegedly winking at them. (The Marines, in their defense, claim that they beat him half to death because he might have been coming onto them.) Their victim, Kieran Daly, is recovering in the hospital from bruising to his brain.
A gay man was attacked by two Marines in Savannah, Georgia, reportedly because the soldiers thought that he was “winking” at them.
Kieran Daly was struck in the back of the head shortly before 4:00 a.m. on June 12, following an altercation with the two Marines, reported the local newspaper the Savannah Morning News that same day. A police officer saw the Marines running, then received word of the incident, the article said. The officer investigated the scene where Daly lay on the ground being given CPR by his friends, and then chased after and arrested the Marines, identified as Keil Cronauer, 22, and Christopher Stanzel, 23.
The Marines said that Daly had come on to them, saying sexually suggestive things and following close behind them; but their story was contradicted by witnesses who said that the Marines accused Daly of winking at them.
Daly suffered bruising to the brain, but was talking to the media from the hospital later that day.
The guy thought I was winking at him,Daly recounted.I told him,Daly added that,I was squinting, man… I’m tired.the last thing I remember is walking away. I remember the feeling of getting hit, but I only kind of remember it.According to witnesses, one of the Marines punched the back of Daly’s head as he was walking away.
Here is how the government police responded to this hyperviolent gay-bashing by a couple of government soldiers (their colleagues in the trade of unhinged government violence):
Although there were multiple eye-witnesses who confirmed that the attack was unprovoked, local police authorities charged the men with a misdemeanor and released them into the custody of military police.
(Care to take bets on whether two gay men would be charged with misdemeanor battery right now if they had singled out a young Marine for harassment on the street, attacked him from behind and then beat him unconscious and put him in the hospital with head trauma?)
But, never to fear. The military has them in custody and is assuring us that the Incident will be Internally Investigated. Hear the reassuring words of Colonel David Robinson, Commanding Officer, MAG-31, and know that the guilty will be held accountable. Or, at least, some reports will damn well be made consistent.
Although this certainly does not justify the actions of the Marine who punched the individual, it is important for us to consider both sides of the story,said Col David Robinson, Commanding Officer, MAG-31.As with most incidents there are multiple perspectives, accounts and recollections. The facts of this isolated incident will come out through investigations by civilian and military authorities.
Although the initial reports from the arresting officer and the media coverage of the incident are widely disparate, we are committed to resolving the inconsistencies between the reports,added Robinson.
Boldface mine.
Ah yes; Consider Both Sides; and remember, above all, that this is Yet Another Isolated Incident. Isolated, just like all the others (trigger warning).
What we’re actually dealing with here is an entrenched and institutionalized culture of violent masculinity, in which young men are taken away and set apart, to bond with each other around killing and through over-the-top violent hypermasculinity; where, like many other spaces where over-the-top violent hypermasculinity is encouraged, it’s often expressed through homophobic hostility and celebrations of torture and sexualized violence; where these men trained to see themselves as becoming stand-up men through their dutiful practice of violence on command from other men; where they are constantly told that they can do no wrong and that Their Country will Honor Them for their unrelenting brutality; and after which they are constantly treated as a special class apart, with an entirely separate system of policing and law, deserving special honors, special protection, and also special consideration and kid-glove handling by fellow soldiers and government police, when they turn around inflict that violence on innocent people.
When men in uniform are encouraged to see their manhood in violence, and violence as essential to their manhood, and when government insulates its trained killers, over and over again, from accountability for their violence, you are going to see that violence acted out on the people that masculinity targets: on women, on lesbians, on gay men. The problem here isn’t the apples. It’s the damn barrel.
Here’s a sidebar from a recent story by Dave Winer about why he wants ports on his computers, and why freedom is more important to him than Apple style:
Reminds me of a story a Jamaican cab driver told as he was driving me from Montego Bay to Negril. This was a long time ago, when my Jamaican uncle was still alive and I was still a smoker. As we drove through a village, he pointed out the new cottages, and said they had been built by the Cubans. They have all the modern conveniences, running water, indoor plumbing, even electricity. But the people don’t want to live in them because Cuban-built houses don’t have back doors.
I asked why do they need back doors?
He laughed and said, when the police knock on the front door, it’s nice to have a back door.
—Dave Winer, Scripting News (2010-05-28): I don’t like wires but I do like ports