All of the occupy movements start with the premise that we all owe them everything. The take over a public park they didn’t pay for; To go nearby to go to bathrooms they didn’t pay for; to beg for food from places they didn’t pay for; to instruct those who go to work to pay the taxes to sustain the bathrooms and to sustain the park, so they can self-righteously proclaim that they are the paragons of virtue for which we owe everything.
Now that is a pretty good symptom of how much the left has collapsed as a moral system in this country and why you need to assert something as simple as saying to them, “Go get a job right after you take a bath.”
I have to give the students at UC Davis a big round of applause. Not only did they show tremendous restraint and maturity in enduring that pepper spray assault, they skillfully organized the most effective possible response:
A pretty remarkable thing just happened. A press conference, scheduled for *4:00pm* between the UC Davis Chancellor and police with local press on campus, did not end in an hour, as planned. Instead, a mass of Occupy Davis students and sympathizers mobilized outside, demanding to have their voice heard. After some initial confusion, UC Chancellor Linda Katehi refused to leave the building, attempting to give the media the impression that the students were somehow holding her hostage.
A group of highly organized students formed a large gap for the chancellor to leave. They chanted “we are peaceful” and “just walk home,” but nothing changed for several hours. Eventually student representatives convinced the chancellor to leave after telling their fellow students to sit down and lock arms (around 7:00pm).
ME: Chancellor, do you still feel threatened by the students?
The Occupy Movement isn’t the only situation in which potentially troublesome individuals camp out in public or semi-public spaces overnight. In fact, it happens every year with increasingly dangerous consequences. The toll of Black Friday already includes several deaths by trampling of unruly mobs, shootings of crazed shoppers, multiple cases of paralysis, pregnancy complications including miscarriage, and a variety of other violence.
That is 100% more death, paralysis, miscarriage, shooting and violence than the entirety of the Occupy Movement is responsible for.
But something tells me that we won’t be about to see police officers standing in front of Black Friday protesters, using tear gas on the crowds while “fearing for their safety.”
That’s because free speech isn’t sacred in America. As George Bush proved shortly after the 9/11 attacks, consumerism is America’s religion. Peacefully speaking out against the financial sector will be met with police in riot gear and debilitating “compliance devices,” but violent mobs of shoppers are free to trample one another on the holy altar of profit.
The characteristic feature of action through political channels is that it tends to require or enforce substantial conformity. The great advantage of the market, on the other hand, is that it permits wide diversity. It is, in political terms, a system of proportional representation. Each man can vote, as it were, for the color of tie he wants and get it; he does not have to see what color-the majority wants and then, if he is in the minority, submit.
The non-conformity of Black Friday at WalMart is true diversity and democracy, even on pain of death. The conformist fascist protesters in New York and and elsewhere must be met with pepper spray and the full force of America-loving riot police, lest the nation itself be hurt by questioning the “free” market.
Dirty words and punky dads By Dennis Hartley %*@#!! : The Weird World of Blowfly Before you can begin to process the paradoxical nature of cult rapper Clarence “Blowfly” Reid, you have to understand that “he” (as, in the singular) is actually a duo. Do I mean that he has a split personality? Not necessarily; after all, in the music business, it’s not unusual for some artists to disappear behind an alter ego (Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Alice Cooper, Marilyn Manson) or to “reinvent” themselves on a semi-annual basis (David Bowie, Madonna, Prince), but there aren’t many whose careers can be divided into such mutually exclusive halves as Reid’s. First, there is Clarence Reid, the recording artist whose 1965 recording of “The Dirty Rap” is considered by some musicologists to be the first rap song. He made a few R&B albums through the late 60s; then wrote and produced hits for Betty Wright (“Clean-up Woman”), Gwen Macrae, KC & the Sunshine Band and others during his tenure with the Miami-based TK records through the mid-70s. Then, there is “Blowfly”, a nickname assigned to him as a teenager by his grandmother, who, chagrinned by his tendency to amuse himself and his friends by singing his own “dirtied up” versions of Top 40 hits, allegedly proclaimed Clarence to be “nastier than a blowfly”. In 1970, an odd metamorphosis took place, beginning with an album called “The Weird World of Blowfly”. It was in fact so “weird” (and nasty) that Reid had to create his own independent label (Weird World), in order to release it in its unexpurgated glory (possibly inspired by Frank Zappa’s Bizarre Records label, which had been created a couple years before). Most of the songs were parodies; with titles like “Spermy Night in Georgia” and “Shittin’ on the Dock of the Bay”. Needless to say, this Weird Al Yankovic meets Rudy Ray Moore persona was the antithesis of the artist formerly known as Clarence Reid, who had been a bit more radio-friendly. The LP was a hit with the “party record” set, as were many subsequent releases throughout the 80s and 90s. Thus, “Blowfly” was born; lewd, crude, and bedecked like a Mexican wrestler. So (some may wonder)…where is he now? Inquiring minds may want to check out a new documentary called The Weird World of Blowfly (released simultaneously this week in theaters and on DVD), which brings you up to snuff. That is not to say that you will necessarily like everything you learn. Jonathan Furmanski’s film (a sometimes disconcerting cross between This Is Spinal TapandThe Elephant Man) doesn’t pull any punches, particularly concerning the less savory aspects of This Business We Call “Show”. Furmanski follows Blowfly and his backup band on a loosely organized “world tour” (for want of a better term) over a period of two years. Pushing 70 (at the time of filming) and suffering from a bum knee, the road-weary Reid is shuffled from gig to gig by his doughy drummer/manager, Tom Bowker. Bowker, a professed super-fan (and so-so drummer), appears to have Reid’s best interests at heart, but at times he emits a whiff of Eau de Colonel Parker. In one scene, Bowker harangues Reid in an uncomfortably disrespectful manner. Then again, Blowfly has several bizarre on-camera meltdowns himself. He throws a backstage hissy fit, going apoplectic after Bowker sets his boxed pizza on a chair (“…where people put their dirty asses?!”). And his racist diatribe about African-Americans is a definite eyebrow-raiser. Obvious freak show aspects of the film aside, there are a few genuine surprises. Reid pays a visit to his mother, where he pulls out a dog-eared Bible and talks about his devout Christian faith. Shooting down another stereotype about hard-partying musicians on the road, it also turns out that Reid has always eschewed drugs and alcohol. Whatever demons lurk in his soul are apparently purged whenever he puts on his mask and cape and takes to the stage (maybe there is a lesson somewhere in there for all of us, nu?). Reid does show himself to still be a solid trouper in performance, whether its playing to five people in a stateside dive bar (the film’s most Spinal Tap moment) or to a concert hall audience in Dresden, where he opens for Die Artze, one of Germany’s top punk bands (although most of the young audience seems stunned into silent bewilderment). One gathers the impression that Blowfly’s biggest fans these days are fellow musicians; his influence has eclipsed his actual popularity, as it were. A gushing Ice-T, Chuck D., Die Artze’s Farin Urlaub and Jello Biafra would seem to accentuate this point (Biafra joins Blowfly onstage for one of the performance highlights, an exquisitely tasteless cover of The Dead Kennedys’ “Holiday in Cambodia” re-entitled “R. Kelly in Cambodia”). Love Blowfly or hate him, there’s still something to be said for anyone who does his or her part to make the censors twitch. I picture Frank Zappa up there, with a guitar in one hand and a rolled-up copy of the First Amendment in the other, smiling. Dad, you’re totally embarrassing me:The Other F Word
I could easily go the rest of my life without having one more person say this to me: “Having a kid completely changes your life.” Yeah, yeah, whatever. Bully for you, you’ve reproduced. Happy for ya, Mazel Tov. Congrats. Love to stay and chat longer, but I simply must get back to the Arctic desolation of my studio apartment and resume brooding about a life tragically misspent (thanks for the reminder). Busy schedule, things to do. Check ya later. But enough about me. I’ve resigned to the fact that if I’m still a confirmed bachelor at 55, I’m obviously too narcissistic to have children. Or something. But you know what? Having a kid completely changes your life, even if you are a punk rocker. Just ask Flea, Tony Adolescent, Mark Hoppus, Rob Chaos or Jim Lindberg. Those are a few of the interviewees in an engagingly candid and unexpectedly touching documentary about punk rock dads called The Other F Word, directed by Andrea Blaugrund Nevins. Nevins follows her subjects on the road, on stage and at home with their families, then does an admirably deft job of tying all the incongruities together. Jim Lindberg (lead singer of the venerable skatepunk outfit Pennywise) gets a lion’s share of the camera time. Astutely and entertainingly self-aware, Lindberg makes a good front man for the film, delivering the money quote that gets to the heart of Nevins’ study: “It’s tough to be a punk rock hero and still be an authority figure to my kids.” A case in point arises when Lindberg (who co-wrote the band’s anthem, “Fuck Authority”) is observed admonishing his young daughter for calling one of her siblings a “turdface”. Nevins also weaves in a little history of the punk scene, with a primary focus on the SoCal bands, which adds context and some meaty substance (which helped me forgive the somewhat cliché ADD visual style of the film). The director saves her biggest emotional guns for the final third, when some of her subjects open up about their relationships with their own fathers, which for most were less than ideal (cue the waterworks). This is where the rubber meets the road, and the true takeaway is revealed: I never sang for my father, but I will sing* for my kids (*parents advisory: explicit lyrics). .
In today’s Focus on the Theocrats presidential debate (led by an over-the-top lugubrious Frank Luntz) some fellow asked if, in the event that Roe vs Wade was overturned, would they propose a federal ban on abortion? Newt said that he agreed with Robert George’s proposal to apply the 14th Amendment to fetuses.(And would also insist that the courts have no jurisdiction to boot.)
Many believe that we need a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe v. Wade. However, Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment expressly empowers the Congress, by appropriate legislation, to enforce the guarantees of due process and equal protection contained in the Amendment’s first section. As someone who believes in the inherent and equal dignity of all members of the human family, including the child in the womb, would you propose to Congress appropriate legislation, pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment, to protect human life in all stages and conditions?
Newt, Bachman and Cain all said yes. Perry wasn’t in yet. Ron Paul said no at that time. Today he said that he was for it but that the states should enforce it, whatever that means. Romeny hedged, but basically said no. (He wasn’t at this debate today.)
Here’s the thing I find odd about all this. This has been a part of the GOP platform for a long time:
Maintaining The Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life
Faithful to the first guarantee of the Declaration of Independence, we assert the inherent dignity and sanctity of all human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.
Granted, George is saying they can skip that whole inconvenient amendment thing. But the essential question is the same.
Here’s the pertinent passage of the 14th amendment:
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
It’s “personhood” along the lines of that failed Mississippi initiative.Fetuses are to be given equal protection.
I don’t now why this has been kept so under wraps but there’s a GOP presidential debate happening today at 5est, 2pst. No C-SPAN, but you can watch online.
Chris Hayes had a blockbuster scoop this morning: a memo from a top DC lobbying firm that outlines a plan to discredit Occupy Wall Street and use it against Democrats in the upcoming elections. It’s quite clever. And it’s the type of tactic could prove to be very useful to Wall Street.
The hideous pepper spraying of college students at UC Davis yesterday reminds me of a similar case in the 90s, which I’ve written about several times before.
In 1997, environmentalists were staging a sit-in against the cutting of old forest in Humboldt county. The police sprayed pepper spray directly into the protesters eyes in similar fashion to what happened in UC yesterday and then used liquified pepper spray and applied it directly to the protesters eyes with q-tips. I’m not kidding. There’s video:
I was writing about the use of tasers when I wrote this piece back in 2009:
Why is it that the taser videos always show a bunch of cops sauntering around, three or four of them bent over a prone person in handcuffs, blithely administering the taser as if they are merely wiping a speck of dust off the suspects shirt? I think that’s the part I find so chilling — it’s so methodical, so cold, so completely inhuman — that it seems like something out of a dystopian sci-fi novel featuring robots or aliens.
I’ll never forget the horror of seeing the video of those environmental protesters having their eyes calmly swabbed with Q tips soaked in liquid pepper spray, by the Humboldt County sheriffs dept. In searching for the video I came across this San Francisco Examiner editorial from 1997, that could be written today about tasers:
Justifying Torture
Law enforcement arguments in a federal lawsuit are malarkey – pepper spray used senselessly hurts cops as much as protesters
San Francisco Examiner Monday, Nov. 17, 1997 Page A 18
It’s almost farcical for law enforcement officials to continue defending pepper spray as a weapon to get protesters to follow orders. A videotape of officers applying pepper spray in liquid form to demonstrators’ eyes shows the technique to be a form of torture.
Yet, attorneys for the Humboldt County Sheriff and the Eureka Police Department argue in federal court that this use of pepper spray is legitimate and unobjectionable. In court papers filed in a protesters’ suit against the cops, police training expert Joseph J. Callahan Jr. says, implausibly, that the videotape could be used as a training film “illustrating modern police practices delivered in a calm, deliberate manner.” (Remind us not to volunteer as guinea pigs for Mr. Callahan.)
The videotape was shot by Humboldt sheriff’s deputies at an Oct. 16 demonstration, against logging in the Headwaters Forest, that took place in the Eureka office of Rep. Frank Riggs, R-Windsor. Four women who had chained themselves together with heavy metal “black bears” got liquid pepper spray rubbed into their eyes with cotton swabs, and one woman who refused even then to move had the pepper mist sprayed into her face.
This hurts, as the videotaped reactions make clear. But it broke up the demonstration pronto, and that’s what counted for the law enforcers.
“At stake,” attorneys for the cops argue, “is whether professionally trained police officers are to be deprived of the use of pepper spray, a substance carried by millions of private citizens in this country.”
But this is really not the issue. Most people don’t object to police using pepper spray the way it’s designed to be used: To subdue a suspect who threatens officers or threatens to flee. Neither occurred in the case of the Eureka protesters.
Police shouldn’t use pepper spray, or any other weapon, to dish out punishment to suspects. Just because cops are in a hurry doesn’t make it OK for them to take shortcuts, or inflict pain to get things done.
The argument doesn’t wash that no lasting damage was done by the pepper spray. By the same logic, police could use branding irons, sharp knives or psychological abuse on recalcitrant protesters as long as “no lasting damage was done.”
Other police legal arguments are similarly shallow. An attorney for the cops said the use of heavy metal sleeves linked with chains that made protesters virtually immovable amounted to “active resistance,” justifying the use of pepper spray.
In the past, police used metal grinders to cut through the heavy metal in order to oust demonstrators. That takes longer and is inconvenient, but it doesn’t violate anyone’s civil rights or threaten their physical well-being.
No one wants to live in a society where police are free to do whatever they wish in order to punish suspected law breakers. Cruel and unusual punishment is outlawed by the Constitution. And anyway, punishment is up to the courts to determine and the penal system to administer.
What cops risk through indiscriminate use of pepper spray, and its indiscriminate defense in court, is losing it altogether. If police are too dense to distinguish between legitimate use and torture, the Legislature should eliminate any confusion and outlaw pepper spray, period.
That holds true for all weapons that can be used for torture.
It took three tries and eight years, but the protesters finally won their case against the police in federal court. They were awarded a dollar.
An eight-person federal jury has returned a unanimous verdict for the Q-Tip Pepper Spray Eight activists/plaintiffs, finding the County of Humboldt and City of Eureka liable for excessive force in violation of the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The excessive force was used by Humboldt County Sheriff’s Deputies and Eureka Police Officers when they applied pepper spray with Q-tips directly to the eyes of the eight nonviolent forest defense protesters in three incidents in 1997. Three of the activists were also sprayed directly in the eyes from inches away. Two of the young women were juveniles.
Former Sheriff Dennis Lewis and current Sheriff Gary Philp also were found liable for causing the use of excessive force by setting policies allowing the unprecedented use of pepper spray on the passive demonstrators, who had locked their arms together inside metal pipes.
The plaintiffs laughed and hugged in the courthouse hallways after the verdicts were read and applauded when jurors left their chambers. “They did the right thing,” said plaintiff Terri “Compost” Slanetz, a 42-year-old naturalist from Oakland. “We’ve been trying all along to get a statement that this was illegal. It’s a positive step toward people treating each other decently.”
Juror Athene Aquino, a 35-year-old Citibank employee, said she was convinced the force was excessive by watching a video showing the deputies swapping pepper spray in the protesters’ eyes. When she viewed the tape, Aquino said she “started crying. It was just very emotional.”
The jury awarded nominal damages of only $1 to each of the plaintiffs, who made it clear all along that they weren’t suing for the money, but to bring about a change of policy, to prevent the future use of pepper spray in Humboldt in the way it was used on them. They hope and expect that the verdict will reverberate far beyond rural Humboldt County to make it clear that police can not use the extremely painful pepper spray on non-violent people to coerce them to follow orders.
Lawyer Tony Serra called the verdict a “mixed metaphor.” He said, “The verdict establishes now and forever that pepper spray applied in this fashion in these circumstances is excessive force. That will deter law enforcement officials throughout the country in the use of pepper spay and that’s very good.” But Serra said, “These young people suffered grievous mental anguish and should have been given a substantial amount of money to recompense them.”
The defendants may be required to pay the reasonable attorney fees and costs of the plaintiffs, which will no doubt exceed $1 million for litigating the case through three trials and multiple appeals as high as the U.S. Supreme Court.
I don’t know if the great civil liberties lawyer who won that one, Tony Serra, is still practicing, but if he is I’ll bet he’d take the UC Davis case.
This article called “Pepper Spray, Pain and Justice” from the Civil Liberties Monitoring Project in northern California on the use of pepper stray as a torture device gives all the details of this famous case. It has informed my thinking about tasers and other uses of “pain compliance” and its implications for a free society. It’s not long and I urge you to read it all if this situation alarms you.
It tells the harrowing story that you see in that video up top, including the chilling statement by the police after they were done pepper spraying one of the girls directly in the face: “We’re not torturing you anymore.”
It asks the question:
Are these valid tactics for the DA’s office to use? May the Sheriff and the DA single out forest activists for “special treatment” when they are arrested and charged? The argument for this would be that the protests are costly to the county, and in an effort to contain those costs by reducing the number of protesters, or to prevent nonviolent civil disobedience which is expensive to the government, the government may use its discretionary powers to make the experience these activists have with the criminal justice system as unpleasant and costly as possible. The use of pepper spray to torment activists who are nonviolently sitting-in can be seen as the latest and most extreme step in this campaign.
The difficulty with this approach is that it puts the Sheriff and the DA into the position of the judge. It metes out punishment — pain, days in jail, costly trips to court, disruption of normal life — without the bother of proving guilt. Did the Queen in Alice in Wonderland say, “First the sentence, then the trial”? Even children can see that this is backwards.
One would think so. At the time this was written, they assumed the case would be decided in 1998. As I wrote, it was finally decided in 2009. But a jury found for the activists.
Of course it’s torture. It couldn’t be more obvious. The question we have to ask ourselves if our society believes torturing of political dissidents is acceptable.
To put it bluntly, many on Wall Street still see the events leading up to the financial crisis as a case of banks having legitimately sold something – whether it be mortgages or securities backed by those loans – that someone wanted to buy.
Thomas Atteberry, a partner and portfolio manager with Los Angeles-based First Pacific Advisors, a $16 billion money management firm, says his success “wasn’t a gift” and he had to work hard to get where he is. Atteberry says he understands the frustration many feel about income inequality. But he said the problem isn’t with those who are successful, but rather our “tax codes and regulations.”
There are many products and services in addition to spiking ARM mortgages, naked credit default swaps and BBB tranches of collateralized debt obligations that people want to buy. Also in demand are:
Professional hitmen
Professional sex services including underage prostitution
Animal crush videos
High grade heroin
Weapons grade plutonium
Fire insurance on our rude neighbor’s home
Currency counterfeiting machines
Why does Big Government insist on restricting the flow of goods and services people want to buy with pesky tax codes and regulations? It’s so unfair to the successful pimps, drug kingpins, arms dealers, mafia dons and human traffickers who have worked hard to get where they are.
