half a bubble off plumb

Moving to a New Home!

2008-01-16T22:38:00.000-06:00

Blogspot is a great place to start a blog. I've learned a lot. I finally found myself wanting to do a a little more with the site's appearance than I could do here, though, and now have a Wordpress blog called Half A Bubble at its very own domain, http://half-a-bubble.com . It's up and running and ready for guests. You'll recognize the micrometer and bubble logo when you get there. I hope you'll visit me at my new home and continue to keep your eye on the proliferation and abuse of Taser and other electroshock and even more exotic weapons worldwide.

Britain's Prisoners to be implanted with tracking chips. American cops envious.

2008-01-14T15:47:00.000-06:00

Viddy well, my droogies, this is how it begins. It's said that liberty is first lost in prisons and public schools. The Independent reports that Brits have taken that to heart and, in a scheme that would have Hitler's SS drooling with envy, plan to surgically implant RFID chips under the skin of thousands of offending citizens so they can be tracked like cattle. A Ministry of Justice official confirms that the department hopes to extend the range of the chips through satellite tracking similar to the system used to trace stolen vehicles. All options, and British civil liberties, are on the table.

"We have... worried about the practicalities and the ethics,” a senior minister said, “but when you look at the challenges facing the criminal justice system, it's time has come." They'll set ethics aside if it only affects their underclass. Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) wants to use chips and GPS technology to monitor and keep sex offenders from "forbidden" zones like primary schools. This is a ploy to gain approval by first implanting only the worst of the worst. Afterwards, wider use will be less likely to outrage the public.

There are objections. Shami Chakrabarti, director of the National Council for Civil Liberties, said: "If the Home Office doesn't understand why implanting a chip is worse than an ankle bracelet, they don't need a human-rights lawyer; they need a common-sense bypass. Degrading offenders in this way will do nothing for their rehabilitation and nothing for our safety, as some will inevitably find a way round this new technology." Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, said the proposal would not make his members' lives easier and would degrade their clients. "The system works well enough as it is. Knowing where offenders are does not mean you know what they are doing. This is the sort of daft idea that comes up from the department every now and then, but tagging people the way we tag pets cannot be the way ahead. Treating people like pieces of meat does not represent an improvement in the system."

Who will profit? The parent company of US market leader VeriChip Corporation has sold animal radio tags for more than a decade. It claims its chips are used at more than 5,000 healthcare, security, government and industrial locations, and has sold 2,000 chips for implantation in humans.

Where else is this making inroads? In the USA, the states of Wisconsin and North Dakota have banned human-implanted ID chips, and California may soon be the third to do so. An April 2005 post on the website Prison Planet points out that the global aspect of RFID chipping isn't well known but claims it's used in Russia, Switzerland, China, Ecuador, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Canada, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, Germany, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Africa, and South Korea. Not all of those societies are known for their stellar human rights records. Will British citizens be pleased to join their company?

Heidi Gill Followup: triggerman cop won't appear, charges dropped, officials backpedal madly.

2008-01-13T14:30:00.001-06:00

An earlier post describes Warren policeman Richard Kovach's unwarranted, prolonged, repeated tasering of Heidi Gill on September 2nd of last year. This week the Warren (Ohio) Tribune-Chronicle and the Coshocton Tribune reported that charges against Heidi were dropped because Kovach refused to testify, and a charge against her of felony assault on a police officer was dismissed because Kovach was the subject of an internal investigation and unavailable to testify.

Heidi was seated alone in a vehicle waiting for a ride home when attacked. For this she earned taser burns and a concussion, and was charged with falsification, resisting arrest, criminal damaging and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. This is the typical official response to police misbehavior- charge the victim with anything to muddy the water, delay proceedings, and drive up legal fees. Refuse to admit wrongdoing even when it's captured by your own cruiser dash cam and splattered all over TV and the internet- watch the video here.

Kovach is on a downhill roll: he was fired Dec. 6 by Warren Safety-Service Director Doug Franklin after appealing a 10-day suspension for wrongdoing during a traffic stop of another police officer’s son. Franklin fired Kovach, a 13-year veteran, for dishonesty, claiming he lied during the investigation into the Aug. 23 traffic stop of Timothy Brown II. Brown's filed a federal lawsuit naming the City of Warren, its Police Department, and Kovach both as an individual and in his official capacity, claiming his Fourth and 14th Amendment rights were violated.

Kovach's actions during Gill’s arrest are under investigation by the FBI. Gill’s attorney, Mark Hanni, said he has prepared a federal lawsuit against Kovach, the Warren Police Department and the city of Warren, and plans to file the $15 million action next week.

Officials are circling the wagons to protect Kovach and, failing that, to wash their hands of the incident. Warren Law Director Traci Timko Rose sought dismissal of the charges against Heidi without prejudice, meaning they can be refiled later. Ohio Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association attorney S. Randall Weltman advised that his client would not testify, and if subpoenaed, would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. OPBA lead defense attorney Dominic Vitantonio recommended Kovach not take the stand because the FBI probe is ongoing and Kovach’s firing is heading to arbitration.

This case is a good example of the problems tasers create. Handguns leave large, bleeding holes that can't be concealed or litigated away, so they're unlikely to be used unless the situation truly requires it. Tasers, originally touted as a less- lethal option one step below shooting, allow cops to attack anyone for any reason without producing a corpse. This encourages misuse and allows city and police officials to dissemble and play the litigation game they know so very well.

Who's Infringing Now? Sauce for the Goose is Sauce for the Gander.

2008-01-12T12:43:00.000-06:00

In a surprising turnabout, Tata Motors, manufacturers of the new Nano automobile, has been named as respondent in a case before the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) by Lucasfilm and interested parties connected with the 1970s hit sitcom Mork and Mindy.

The complaint alleges that the name of the recently introduced subcompact automobile “Tata Nano” was misappropriated from properties of interest to each party. Complainants contend that they are the lawful proprietors of certain trade and service marks (only slightly altered for use by the respondent) by priority of adoption and on the basis of continuous and extensive use, and request an immediate cease-and-desist order for use of the name.

The complaint points out that the automobile's first name (Tata) closely resembles a simple dehyphenated retrogradation of the acronym AT-AT applied to the elephantine troop carrier/gun platform appearing in the first Star Wars film, which predates the release of the smaller vehicle by more than thirty years. Unnamed co-complainants connected with the Mork and Mindy series charge that the vehicle's second name (Nano) is remarkably similar to the farewell salute uttered by the show's star at the close of virtually every episode, all of which were produced twenty to thirty years before the new car's introduction.

Attorneys for the complainants insist that their case is unaffected by the recent engagement of Mork and Mindy star Robin Williams as spokesmodel for the new vehicle's television marketing push in the United States. We would have called representatives of the respondents for their comment but that's a very long-distance call, they talk funny, and it's the weekend, and you know how that goes. Besides, this is a parody.

If I can't call those tatas, is this still called a bra?

2008-01-10T20:47:00.000-06:00

After publishing the last post I realized that I couldn't possibly have been the first guy to come up with that clever title, so I Googled the term “Bodacious Tatas”. Surprise! The first site on the page references the principal investment holding company of the Tata Group, the maker of the Tata Nano automobile. In 2000, Tata Sons complained to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) that someone had registered the domain name bodacious- tatas dot com, misappropriated the trademarked name Tata, and was using it in bad faith at some risk to Tata Sons.

From Wikipedia (a bit dated): WIPO is an agency of the United Nations. Unlike other branches of the United Nations, WIPO has significant financial resources independent of contributions from its Member States. In 2006, over 90% of its income was expected to be generated from the collection of fees under the intellectual property application and registration systems it administers. Deep pockets. Interesting and important work. I'm not sure how this august body was convinced to use its clout to hammer a porn site.

I don't know how much impact an internet domain belonging to a porn site can have on a monster international holding company. WIPO thought investors might believe that Tata Sons were somehow affiliated with, had given its blessing to, or licensed its trademark to the porn site promoter. It seems to me that very few significant investors are quite that stupid. Regardless, ICANN yanked the domain.

Interesting stuff. The company adopted the name “TATA” in 1917. I suppose it was impossible to determine whether hooters (no copyright infringement intended, there) were called tatas earlier than that. Even if they were I doubt anyone thought to copyright the name, and I really don't suppose anyone tattooed any trademarks anywhere. To avoid any association with boobies or porn sites, will they call that fabric thing you can put on the front of a Tata to avoid stone chips in the paint something other than a bra? Ah, it's still a cool little car.

Bodacious Tatas- Cheap, Cute, Perky. Oh, yeah.

2008-01-10T12:41:00.000-06:00

I couldn't resist. Motor Torque Magazine reports on the much awaited launch of India's Tata Nano automobile. Not having a history of ripping customers off with unnecessary options, Tata Motors chairman Raman Tata designed the car himself to fulfill a need instead of to create one. Detroit, pay attention. This thing will get its owners from point A to point B affordably and keep them dry and comfortable doing it.

The 33bhp 0.6-liter car will cost the equivalent of $2,500. It's been designed to make four-wheel automotive transport available to those in developing countries. Beats the ubiquitous mopeds and motorbikes hands-down. The twin-cylinder petrol engine drives the rear wheels through a four-speed manual gearbox. Standard models don't have air conditioning or power steering. Airbags are not included, belts are. There is no passenger-side mirror, and only one windscreen wiper. Wheels are pushed as far into the car´s corners as possible, to maximize interior space.

Remember when you could buy an automaker's base model- a stripper- brand new, for next to nothing? You got vinyl seats, but you got them cheap. You can't buy much of a used car here in the US for this kind of money now. US consumers, automakers and regulatory agencies take note- this thing is shiny enough, roomy enough, fast enough, and safe enough to serve as a first car for many. Though it's not enough car for the highway, it's a good city car, a grocery getter. It's not overtly sexy, it's not overhyped, it's just right. Let's hope the Nano has a good start, brisk sales, and a minimum of quality problems. If it does, I predict a cult following for this new people's car. It'd be nice to see automotive Form Follow Function for a change.

Taser Toys, Mp3s - and an Opportunity!

2008-01-09T21:06:00.000-06:00

Horace Smith, Daniel B. Wesson, or Samuel Colt would never have made pink revolvers. But then, sales were good, and they weren't in a slump driven by miserable press. Handguns are supposed to kill people- nobody whined that gunshot deaths were accidents.

Tasers are different. The law enforcement market is increasingly twitchy about the very public liabilities of electroshock weapons. They're easy to abuse, make awful news and videos, and the jury is still out on immediate and long-term medical and neurological effects, including death. In response Taser International is aggressively courting the civilian market. This is great news: police abuse of tasers makes such killer video, I can't wait to see YouTube flooded with home-made taser videos.

Taser is a regular exhibitor at CES- the Consumer Electronics Show. This year (the Globe and Mail reports), Playboy Playmates signed autographs at their booth- Miss June 2004 Hiromi Oshima, Miss October 2005 Amanda Paige, Miss October 2006 Jordan Monroe and Miss September 2007 Patrice Hollis, decked out in Taser t-shirts, signed autographs beside a sign that read: “If you love her, protect her.” No mention of the threat of privately owned tasers being turned against female victims- you know, like police tasers have been. Cheaper than roofies?

Don't Tase Me, Sis! Fox News reports that watered-down (weaker shock, shorter range) versions of the weapons are sold at parties where bored affluent white housewives fondle Lady Tasers smoothly molded in colors and sized for the petite hand. They look FABULOUS. You can carry the pink one to church and keep the leopard-print one in the nightstand. Rawrrrr, ladies.

The company also unveiled a new Taser holster equipped with a built-in 1 GB MP3 player. No. Really. I don't know if it's called the iShok, or the iShokU, or what.

I think they're missing some marketing bets, nonetheless. Here's a hint or two for free. Maybe the next version of the Grand Theft Auto video game can include tasers. Maybe Barbie and Bratz dolls can be accessorized with really cute holsters and lady tasers. Maybe Elmo needs a taser- Elmo got to stay strapped.

Here's an idea I haven't given away. Ringtones sell like hotcakes, right? Half A Bubble Off Plumb is in negotiations with several artists and music companies to market a mix tailored to the electroshock-savvy consumer who wants the hottest iShok sound, and plans to sell the mix online (as Mp3's) and at kiosks in malls across America. We'll be ready to roll out for Valentine's day. Check out our first playlist:

Hit Me With Your Best Shot- Pat Benetar

Janie's Got A Gun- Aerosmith

Earl's Got to Die- The Dixie Chicks

Shock the Monkey- Peter Gabriel

Shell Shock- Heart

Live Wire- Motley Crue

Great Balls of Fire- Jerry Lee Lewis (for those below-the-belt hits)

Electricity-Elton John- or Suede, for that matter

High Voltage- AC/DC

Take My Breath Away- Berlin

High Tension Wire- Dead Boys

Shockaholic- Kinky Machine

...and Anything by Son Volt, of course

We're looking for partners. If you have some hot favorites, or if you're a high-voltage DJ with his own mix, leave a comment. Our attorneys will contact you!

Tasered? Dead? Must be Excited Delirium- yeah, that's the ticket.

2008-01-07T21:11:00.001-06:00

News reports of post-tasering deaths sometimes claim that victims die not from the taser shot but from “Excited Delirium.” The term appears in today's article in the Columbus Dispatch describing the December, 2006 post-taser death of Briant Parks at the hands of three officers, one of whom tasered him twice. Another tasered him eight times for a period of 45 seconds. There were no drugs or alcohol in his system. He's dead.

Don't fret, the cops are OK- the police take care of their own. An investigation by the division's critical-incident response team, made up of veteran homicide detectives, found that the officers acted within division policy. Thank goodness for carefully written policies. Amazingly, a Franklin County grand jury cleared them of criminal wrongdoing.

Excited delirium is not a medical or psychological diagnosis. It's a catch-all invented by cops, coroners, and taser salesmen to refer to the state you're in when you've been terrified, chased, tackled, beat up, sat on, pepper-sprayed and/or electroshocked and die in police custody.

Both NPR and Wikipedia report this statement by Eric Balaban of the American Civil Liberties Union: "I know of no reputable medical organization — certainly not the AMA [American Medical Association] or the APA [American Psychological Association] — that recognizes excited delirium as a medical or mental-health condition." He's right. It's not recognized by professional medical associations, and you won't find it listed in the chief psychiatric reference book. Balaban charges that police use the diagnosis "as a means of white-washing what may be excessive use of force and inappropriate use of control techniques by officers during an arrest."

Excited delirium can't be found in an autopsy. It's solely an operational definition- it's the name for what you die from if you die after you've been electroshocked into submission. If there are no witnesses, only the police can describe what happened, and civil liberties groups fear the diagnosis is used to cover up police abuse and keep lawsuits from cutting into taser manufacturer's profits.

What's the moral of this story? Next time a gang of thug cops run you down and taser you over and over, remain calm. Take deep, slow breaths. Go to your Happy Place. Chant your mantra. Don't get excited, don't get delirious- you might kill yourself despite the peace officers' best efforts on your behalf.

Oh- and here's a link so I can check to see that Haloscan trackbacks work. Good site tho, LOL.

Will Ireland's Garda and PSNI tasers at least be molded in appropriate colors?

2008-01-06T17:01:00.000-06:00

Worldwide arms dealer Taser International has been busy exporting their lucrative brand of American craziness. Vampires haunt blood banks. TI pitches sales to troubled markets. They've scored bloody good hits in Ireland.

Today's Guardian Unlimited reports that the Police Service of Northern Ireland will be issued Tasers this week. They'll be available only to 'highly trained firearms officers' from the PSNI's Special Operations Branch during a pilot program the PSNI claims has been confirmed by the Human Rights Adviser to Northern Ireland's Policing Board as in compliance with the Human Rights Act.

The Policing Board insisted, however, that tasers should not be deployed until the completion of an Equality Impact Assessment, and the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) has claimed Tasers could potentially violate Articles 2 and 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The PSNI site lists the Use of Taser EQIA as Planned for 2007 / 2008. The assessment is not complete and the tasers are on the street. The Policing Board controls nothing, certainly not the PSNI Chief Constable Sir Hugh Ord. One wonders whether the planned statement will do anything but ensure that all citizens are equally likely to be tasered into submission at a cop's whim.

There's been discussion for some months, as you can see on the web.

In January 2007 Northern Ireland News (I'm guessing this is the “conservative” voice among news outlets there) seemed to be solidly in favor of electroshock weapons, as is evident in this aggressive paragraph:

“There will be a shock in store for those attempting to evade justice early next year as Northern Ireland gears up with controversial Taser stun guns - and there'll be no hiding place in London either.”

Weapons haven't brought justice to Northern Ireland historically, and there seems to have been too many weapons laying about there for some time. Justice doesn't come out of the barrel of a gun. Mao Tse-Tung thought Love did, but that hasn't worked out so well either.

In April 2007, across the border, Tanaiste and Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Michael McDowell, TD, authorized the use of tasers by the Garda Emergency Response Unit (ERU). There is some hope that they will, at least at first, be restricted by policy to the upper end of the use-of-force continuum and not allowed to slip to an option of first response as they have in the US:

“Circumstances under which less lethal weapons could legitimately be used are limited to circumstances where this is necessary to avoid the use of firearms. The use of firearms is permitted only to repel serious attacks on Gardai, members of the public or property, or in the arrest or re-arrest of persons involved in serious offences. Strict conditions are laid down, including a requirement in all cases that all other means of achieving the purpose in question have been exhausted, before firearms may be used. The test which currently applies to the use of less lethal weapons, that their use is necessary to avoid the use of firearms, is therefore a high one.”

Of course, that's how they were first presented here, too. Now American police routinely taser anyone they wish- unconscious, restrained, pregnant, underage, mentally unstable, non-threatening- even when they greatly outnumber the victim and have other options. Note that the "search" function of the An Garda Siochana website doesn't work, and I can't find any mention of tasers there.

In June 2007 the Irish Times (Ireland.com) reported that the North's Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde said he was considering deploying 12 tasers in a pilot scheme even though assessments were not complete. The Policing Board in Belfast accused him of ignoring its objections. Chairman Sir Des Rea said: "This Board has not reached a view on the use of Taser. It will do so as and when the Equality Impact Assessment is complete... the decision should be left until that is completed but the chief constable has made his decision in terms of his operational responsibility."

Sinn Fein Board member Martina Anderson said the PSNI had heard from a range of groups concerned about the impact of Taser. "Many of them are telling you that issuing Tasers is inappropriate, absolutely not acceptable until an equality impact assessment is complete and its conclusions are taken into account. You are totally ignoring... the views expressed by those organisations."

In October 2007 Patricia Lewsley, Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People (the organization is called NICCY) said Chief Constable Sir Hugh Ord's decision to introduce Tasers into Northern Ireland must be reversed, and that she believes he may be in breach of both advice from the Policing Board and the European Convention on Human Rights.

It's sad to see that police in Ireland behave no better than their American and Canadian counterparts, and that Irish politics responds to this threat to civil liberties no better than our own has. Having forgotten who their employers truly are, police do whatever they wish regardless of objections. Hugh Ord probably never intended to wait for or comply with the Equality Impact Assessment. Police officials North and South seem to fully understand that once tasers are issued, even on a limited basis, the foot is in the door and electroshock weapons are there to stay.

Good Press, Bad Press, and Post-Taser Deaths

2008-01-03T20:43:00.000-06:00

Try as I may I can't find the source of the aphorism “There's no such thing as bad publicity as long as they spell your name right”. If you know who said that, please tell me- it's making me crazy. The proverb popped into my head in connection with Taser International's recent legal shot across Daily Kos' bow over the phrase “Taser Death” that appeared in a post on that blog. I know the phrase is used widely all over the news and the web; I confirmed that with this Google search. Taser International just needs some relief from recent publicity, and Kos is a high profile blog. Who else are they going to bother for using that in a headline- Google? The Globe and Mail, for heaven's sake? They have huge legal departments and might fight. Maybe it worked. Kos seems to have pulled the post.

Good publicity or bad, the pictured tee shirt appeared in Time Magazine Online's '50 Top 10 Lists of 2007'. The featured phrase, uttered by an obtrusive heckler at a John Kerry appearance, promoted the (trademarked) proper noun Taser to a popular verb in the international lexicon. You can now conjugate TI's flagship product- tase, tased, will tase, has tased, had tased, etc. You can be tased in America, Canada, England, France, Germany, Japan- the word spans languages and cultures.

What kind of publicity does that generate? They're selling tons of Tasers to law enforcement and military outfits worldwide, for good or ill (Do mercenaries buy these? Unfriendly foreign military organizations? Will American troops be tased like American citizens are?) so maybe that's great publicity among potential customers. The same thing happened, after all, with the words guillotine, garotte, sap, and napalm- all nouns, names of infamous weapons promoted to verbs- and the manufacturers of those items turned a tidy profit in their day.

On the other hand, maybe that's bad publicity among us, the public, the people who end up being the targets, the people who now and again die, post-tasering. Maybe I'm thinking of the wrong quotation after all. Maybe enough protest can nick their profits, slow domestic taser proliferation, and restrict improper use. I know another proverb about publicity, attributed to the Irishman Brendan Behan: There's no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.

Taser International cranky about wording of blog headlines

2008-01-02T20:00:00.000-06:00

Two of the Canadian blogs listed in our Taser Blogroll in the right sidebar (Creative Revolution and Crimes and Corruption of the New World Order) have reported that the Editor in Chief of a third blog (Daily Kos) has received objections from Taser International regarding a November 14, 2007 post about the videotaped post-tasering death of Robert Dziekanski at the hands of the RCMP at Vancouver airport. See that post here. See my own post about it here. Intimidation doesn't work particularly well in the blogosphere. I am sure that Daily Kos' legal team will respond appropriately.

I understand that the manufacturer objects to the phrase “taser death” in the headline and considers it 'inaccurate, misleading, and... made with reckless disregard as to its truth'. They cite 'defamation, trade libel, and irreparable damage' to their company and its products.

Many reports of deaths following taser deployment claim contributing factors including drug use, pre-existing medical conditions, adrenaline rush, and the oft-cited, never explained, clinically resonant neologism “excited delirium”, which seems to me to have been invented for the occasion by taser apologists. That's why this blog always refers to such deaths as “post-tasering” events. Nothing about this implies post hoc, ergo propter hoc argument, it's merely a factual statement of timing. Temporal sequence does not imply causality. We'll leave statements of causality to medical professionals. If there haven't been enough of those to help you make up your mind, wait. The weapons are now common and we're hearing from more and more coroners and medical examiners about their effects on victims varying widely in age, sex, and reproductive and medical condition. It's not like the FDA tested and approved these things before they spread like enthusiastic bunnies. We the People are uncompensated guinea pigs for these medical trials and there'll be another post-tasering event soon enough. We'll let the data speak.

Taser International may also feel that their trademark name has been devalued by the widespread use of the word taser (lower case “t”), but success carries with it the benefit and stigma of name recognition. I don't know how many newsworthy incidents have involved other brands of electroshock weapons; certainly competitors may wish they had equally overwhelming national and international market share. You may eat gelatine, cover cuts with adhesive plasters, and use photocopies, but you almost certainly ask for Jello or a Band-Aid or make Xerox copies whether or not you are careful to check the brand. When you hear the phrase “Don't Tase Me, Bro!” you don't think of something called a stun gun or cattle prod or electric dog collar, you think of a Taser (tm), because, well, that's what it was, and the national media reported it as such.

Certainly print, television, and radio news outlets have deeper pockets than bloggers. They also have larger legal staffs; it's unlikely that CNN, CBS, or Reuters will receive letters of complaint. Nor will Mr. Dziekanski be writing letters to either the RCMP or Taser International because, you see, he died- not necessarily because of, but certainly after, he was tased.

Jesse Saenz' Raton, NM post-taser death- Different Henhouse, Same Foxes

2007-12-31T17:46:00.000-06:00

I get comments so infrequently here! I hate to be negative about any of them. This post is in response to a thoughtful comment to my earlier post about a flawed Wake Forest University taser injury study. The responder wrote:

“Say what you wish but I would much rather be shot with a Taser than with a 9mm. The reality is that the persons being shot have predominately caused a scenario to unfold wherein they have or are about to cause bodily or deadly harm to themselves or someone else. Again, stopping the threat is the main desire and I would preferred to be stopped by a 5 second Taser hit than a possible deadly hit from a 9mm or other weapon.”

Thanks for the comment- but this is is a false dichotomy. I'd rather be shot with a taser than with a 9mm myself, but I'd much rather not be shot at all.

Taser use often has nothing to do with threats to the victim, to bystanders, or to the officers. They're increasingly used not for defense or to avoid the use of deadly force but to terrify or simply force compliance with the officers' demands. Too many are not a low-voltage five-second jab in drive-stun mode (pressing the taser against the target) but sustained and repeated shocks administered through taser darts embedded in the victim's flesh and under full control of the attacker. Case in point...

This weekend the Las Cruces Sun-News ran an AP report describing how city police officers used two tasers to shock a Raton man 23 times. Jesse Saenz died before reaching the county detention center. A witness states that there was no struggle, and that the shocks continued over a period of five minutes. The AP report says that the exact cause of his death has not been determined. The officers using the Tasers said the devices malfunctioned, of course- they're unlikely to admit that they hosed Jesse unnecessarily for an extended period of time.

Watch the KOAT (7) Albequerque video here- the victim's sister claims that he was handcuffed at the time. Watch Captain Mike Galardi Of the Raton PD state that the taser was used to force compliance, not in response to a deadly threat. Hear police claim that they tasered the victim once, and hear a witness describe watching multiple extended taser flashes and hearing Jesse scream for five minutes.

The incident has been turned over to the New Mexico State Police for investigation. Will they investigate until the truth is revealed and then report it honestly, or will they protect their brothers in law enforcement? See my earlier post about Foxes guarding the Henhouse.

Fort Worth TRE Says- Throw Jesus from the Bus

2007-12-31T11:21:00.000-06:00

CBS 11 reports that a passenger was escorted off a Ft. Worth bus because she continued reading the bible aloud after the driver asked her to stop. She claims the TRE bus line discriminated against her religion. I disagree. TRE, like many transit companies, has a policy against loud or abusive behavior. The driver asked her politely to stop breaking their rules, and she refused. It's as simple as that. If TRE was discriminating against anything, they were discriminating against Stupidity. It's not a bit different than kicking a drunken mime off the bus before he pukes on your shoes.

If this bothers you, substitute the title of another book into the news report to clarify the issue. “Christine Lutz says she was reading her Bible (Koran, Torah, Book of Mormon, copy of Dianetics, Congressional Record, Necronomicon, Phone Directory, Zend-Avesta, Upanishads, Bhagavadgita) aloud... when the bus driver asked her to stop or get off the bus.” See the difference? If the first was OK with you, and the second isn't, you'd best examine your notion that annoying public transit riders with random phrases blurted from your favorite good book is OK. If you doubt that this twit was anything more than a self-righteous fool, watch the video.

Jamming your personal favorite version of The Ultimate Truth up other peoples' noses works in Islamic countries, not here. This is especially true in politics.

Sunday, Republican Mike Huckabee effectively sunk his candidacy when he stood by a comment he made at a 1998 Southern Baptist Convention, "I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ." Christ never owned America. We've spent a great deal of thought, sweat, and blood making sure no religion ever will. The American people are unlikely to hand their country over to Christ, Allah, or Frosty the Snowman anytime soon.

I hope the electorate is bored and disgusted with religious posturing by now, whether it's Dubya's convenient christianity, Hillary's chameleon christianity, Huckabee's Southern Baptist throwback version, or Obama's crypto islamo/jesus blend. None of them believe a word of it, except as it suits their needs. All they're managing to do is confirm the prejudices of my favorite religionists, the atheists. They can point to this rampant religious vote-whoring and argue that the candidates' continued existence proves there is no god, for no self-respecting deity would fail to smite the clowns taking His Name so egregiously in vain. Smite them, or at the very least, offer them the choice of shutting up or getting off the bus.

Huckabee stands firm; Giuliani agrees, more or less

2007-12-09T17:27:00.000-06:00

The AP (myway) reports that Mike Huckabee, in a display of constancy, courage, and leadership uncommon in this or any other presidential campaign, refuses to back down from his 1992 stance on AIDS. "I still believe this today," he said in a broadcast interview, that "we were acting more out of political correctness" in responding to the AIDS crisis. "I don't run from it, I don't recant it," he said of his position in 1992. Huckabee stated his positions then in an AP questionnaire in which he also called homosexuality "an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle," and this is one part of his remarks that's really stirring the pot now.

Giuliani, who appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday, said in response to a question that he did not believe homosexuality was aberrant. "The way somebody leads their life isn't sinful. It's the acts," said Giuliani, who supports gay rights and lived with an openly gay couple after separating from his second wife while mayor. "It's the various acts that people perform that are sinful, not the orientation that they have." That's a bit of careful hair-splitting. To Be or to Do? Are you homosexual, or do you “do homosexuality”?

The secular among us would stop short of the candidates' “sinful” label. Few would argue against describing homosexuality as abnormal in the statistical sense. Let's adopt Giuliani's spin and restrict this discussion to acts rather than orientation. Promiscuity, debatably more common in though not exclusive to certain homosexual lifestyles, is demonstrably more effective at spreading STDs than monogamy. If the acts involved in the expression of homosexual orientation involve using body parts for other than their intended purposes or (to avoid the pitfall of divining intent from configuration) for purposes other than those to which they are biologically and medically suited, they are contraindicated for health reasons.

Sinful? Immoral? Your call. Statistically aberrant, medically problematical, epidemiologically inadvisable? Indisputably so.

Hucka boo boo: Candidate Makes Sense, probably Ruins Chances

2007-12-08T18:32:00.000-06:00

Republican Mike Huckabee made a great showing in the Iowa polls. Immediately afterwards, in a howling coincidence, the AP reported his responses to questions about homosexuality and AIDS on their 1992 questionnaire. Mike Allen of POLITICO feels that this may harm his chances of a nomination. He says:

“The revelations could dampen the enthusiasm for the candidacy of Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, because the language clashes with his image as a compassionate, sunny leader... It also could cause Republican voters to reevaluate whether he would be effective at winning swing voters in a general election that looks trying for the GOP.”

He has a point. Huckabee is guilty of making sense in a race stuffed with choices like Billary (Socialist Ventriloquist and her dummy) Clinton and the O' Show team of Oprah and Obama, who either avoid the hard questions altogether or say what they think will buy your vote.

Huckabee also responded that AIDS research was receiving an unfair amount of federal money. Instead, he said celebrities should pay for the research themselves. “In light of the extraordinary funds already being given for AIDS research, it does not seem that additional federal spending can be justified... An alternative would be to request that multimillionaire celebrities, such as Elizabeth Taylor, Madonna and others who are pushing for more AIDS funding be encouraged to give out of their own personal treasuries increased amounts for AIDS research."

Put their money where their mouth is, in other words. AIDS is not a plague in the sense of anthrax, or flu, or bubonic plague, ebola or dengue fever. You don't catch it from the air, or the water, bad cold cuts, or a flea, or a sneeze. You catch it by doing something you have no business doing, or, in the sad cases of innocents, through intimate contact with someone who has. If fully-informed, potential AIDS patients won't stop putting themselves at risk through actions totally within their control, should we pay for their treatment when they don't beat the odds? According to AVERT, for data at the end of 2005:

88% of cases among men are due to avoidable behavior; sex with men, intravenous drug use, or a combination of the two. Don't want AIDS, guys? Stop doing those things.

33% of cases among women are due to avoidable behavior; intravenous drug use. 65% are exposed through heterosexual contact, and that means with men who have sex with men or are intravenous drug users. Ladies, don't want AIDS? Put down the needle.

Huckabee also spoke in favor of quarantine. "If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague.... It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents."

Making sense in America. Yep, he's done.

Sluts in Denial- not a taser post

2007-12-07T19:24:00.000-06:00

The New Zealand Herald carried the story “Women 'want No-Strings Sex' ” on 8 December. Maybe they carried it to boost flagging circulation. It reads like nothing so much as frustrated academics examining their own navels under tight deadlines, like a schoolboy who waited to write a book report until the night before it's due. One's a Kiwi, and one's Canadian, so there are some language problems- they speak a dialect of English known as Brit-Colonial Academic Estrogenese. I've translated these excerpts for my readers. No thanks are necessary.

Two young women researchers are calling for a new form of sexual ethics that would allow women to have casual sex without feeling that they're "sluts". They want to be sluts without feeling like they are sluts. This is a particularly pathetic version of the “perception is reality” argument as applied to self-deception.

Canadian sociologist Melanie Beres, a post-doctoral researcher at Auckland University, and Auckland doctoral student Pantea Farvid (we call this “devaluing the PhD”) told a sociology conference yesterday that rape prevention efforts should stop just giving women tips to avoid harm and promote an ethic of "self-care and care for the other". We call this kind of nonsense “Doctoral Feces”.

Dr. Beres interviewed young Canadians aged 19 to 25 about their casual sex experiences, while Ms Farvid interviewed New Zealanders in the same age bracket. Nice sample, representative of nothing. The New Zealand women were more likely to have actively initiated casual sex (here we call these “self-actualized sluts”) whereas the Canadians were more likely to say it "just happened" (we call these “sluts in denial”). Drink was used by some as an excuse for their choices. Really?

Studies have shown New Zealanders start sex younger than in many countries and have high rates of teen pregnancies and STDs (These are what we call “diseased sluts”). By the age of 25, 13 per cent of women have had more than 10 sexual partners (These are what we call “high mileage sluts” or “retreads”).

Dr. Beres said some women deliberately challenged society's "double standard" that said casual sex was okay for men. It's not OK for guys either. This is a blatant attempt to ennoble sluttish behavior. It's a logical fallacy, known formally as The Noble Slut. One woman in her study took the initiative in sexual encounters (we call this “loose”) and another had decided that a serious relationship would hinder her career, so she sought casual sex to meet her physical needs. We call this “assisted wanking”.

Ms. Farvid said a more open approach to sex would move away from the legal idea that the only issue in sexual morality was consent. Shevek says that a more moral approach to life would move away from the idea that the only issue in sexual morality is libido.

Wake Forests' highly suspect taser injury study; Foxes Guarding the Henhouse.

2007-12-05T19:55:00.000-06:00

The Winston-Salem Journal reported on 10/8 of this year that a study led by researchers at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine suggests that Tasers are safe. The study, funded by the National Institute of Justice, is said to be the first large, independent study to measure the risk of Taser injuries in real-world situations. Doctors at six jurisdictions across the country reviewed medical and police reports of everyone police used a Taser on, noting injuries ranging from mild (cuts and bruises) to serious, such as bruising to the brain caused by a fall after a man was shocked. These were, of course, police reports and initial contact medical reports without follow-up patient examinations. This is not science. This is propaganda. This is sales.

Study director Dr. William Bozeman, associate professor of emergency medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, commented that despite the conclusions of the study “You cannot treat it as a magical thing that can’t hurt. You have to understand that it is a weapon. It’s very important to recognize that these devices are not 100 percent safe.” This disclaimer aside, Steve Tuttle, a spokesman for Taser International, said he was “thrilled” with the results. Of course he was.

Raj Jayadev of Indybay offered a less enthusiastic view on 10/18, pointing out that examination of the study leaves more questions than answers. Nationally recognized Taser expert Aram James of the Coalition for Justice and Accountability (CJA) says, “The study concludes, without supporting data, that Tasers reduce injuries to both police and the individuals tasered. But the authors offer no systematic data to support this conclusion.” The abstract reported 23% of 597 subjects received some sort of injury. “...hardly support for the proposition that Tasers are safe -- and when coupled with 293 taser related deaths, a statistic conveniently ignored by the authors, the conclusion that Tasers are safe is not only not true but in fact a lie of deadly proportions.”

Richard Konda, Executive Director of the Asian Law Alliance and CJA co-founder, says the study ignores the reality that some populations are at higher risk when Tased. “The study fails to mention the effect of Tasers on vulnerable populations, such as pregnant women, the elderly, the mentally ill, and those under the influence of drugs, who are far more likely to suffer serious injuries and even death as a result of being Tasered... medical remedies to prevent death are being developed because Tasers kill. In Miami emergency medical technicians are spraying a sedative in the noses of Tasers victims or inject them with iced saline solutions. These protocols lead us to only one conclusion – that Tasers are deadly weapons and must be banned.”

The study was essentially a law enforcement report, and James points to several red flags. “First, it was conducted at six law enforcement agencies across the country, interestingly enough not disclosed. Why the secrecy? Secondly, underlying police reports and any accompanying medical records were reviewed by ‘tactical physicians' closely connected to a law enforcement agenda. Finally, not mentioned anywhere in the press release is the companion piece put out by the Wake Forest Physicians Group. In a study dated September 4, 2007, the same doctors credited with the above study reported on a police officer who, after volunteering to receive a 5 second Taser exposure under very controlled circumstances... suffered a very serious and apparently permanently debilitating thoracic compression fracture. Why was this piece buried? So much for Tasers being a low risk of injury weapon. If they're unsafe for the cops they're unsafe for us.”

Academics don't work for free. To evaluate any university study, follow the money. The funding agency, the National Institute of Justice, is an arm of the U.S. Department of Justice. Their website lists grant awards, though the most recent data available is for 2006. These are a few of them:

Wake Forest University Health Sciences received a grant of more than $149,000 in the category of Less-Lethal Incapacitation to study injuries produced by Law Enforcement's use of less-lethal weapons.

The Police Executive Research Forum received more than $400,000 to evaluate the effects of less-lethal technologies on police use-of-force outcomes. PERF is a national membership organization of police executives from the largest city, county and state law enforcement agencies.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police was awarded more than $250,000 for a study of Electronic Control Weapons and Deaths in Custody.

Blackhawk Industries Products Group, a large manufacturer of tactical law enforcement gear, received $174,000.

Politics and grant monies make strange bedfellows. Given the company of the members of this list, is there any reason whatever to suspect that the Wake Forest study is independent of the influence of police agencies and weapons manufacturers? This looks to me less like rigorous peer-reviewed research than whoring science out to support foregone conclusions in the service of sales, marketing, and the casual use of excessive force.

Idiot cops taser deaf man

2007-12-04T19:27:00.000-06:00

Eyewitness News 12 in Wichita, Kansas reports that multiple police officers responding to an anonymous call about a shooting broke into the wrong house and tasered a naked deaf man. Donnell Williams had just gotten out of the bath tub, wearing only a towel around his waist, when he turned the corner to see guns pointing right at him.

"I ain't never been so scared," says Williams. Without his hearing aid he is basically deaf. "I kept going to my ear yelling that I was scared. I can't hear! I can't hear!" The cops, apparently deaf, blind, and stupid themselves, feared for their own safety because it appeared Williams was refusing to obey their commands to show his hands. I suppose he was holding up the towel with one hand and pointing at his ear with the other. So they tasered him.

The case is being reviewed by the Wichita Police Department. This is a lot like relying on the fox to review security measures at the henhouse. Nothing to see here, folks... move along, move along. Deputy Chief Robert Lee said, "The first few minutes getting control of the scene are very, very important. Do I wish there would have been some way they were notified in advance this gentleman was hearing impaired? I certainly do. No one is happy with the way it worked out." I imagine the tas-ee is just a little more distraught than the tas-ers. Officers repeatedly apologized, no doubt hoping to ignore a huge lawsuit.

Eyewitness News, shilling for the cops, actually published this sentence: “Police wish it never happened, but with the information they had at the time, their choices were limited.” Limited to shooting first and asking questions later?

The whole incident is one long string of mistakes for which no one will be held accountable. Eyewitness news will drop the story and never follow it up. Dispatch reported the wrong address for an untraceable shooting call. Inept cops failed to correctly evaluate the threat level of a dripping wet, naked, empty-handed man fresh out of the bathtub and decided their best option was to tase him. The excuse machine kicked into high gear and spewed twisted logic to justify the screwup; for example, I'm very sure the department has no written policy that explicitly forbids tasering naked unarmed deaf people, so the cops violated no procedures.

If this is handled like most unwarranted tasering incidents, the shooters are probably still working or on administrative leave with pay, waiting to be returned to active duty once the news storm blows over. With fresh cartridges in their tasers.

Tasering is not the same as an insulin injection.

2007-11-30T21:35:00.000-06:00

The Dothan (Alabama) Eagle reported on Nov. 9 that Police in Ozark tasered a sober man who was having a diabetic seizure. Three police cruisers investigated a truck and trailer pulled over on the side of the road. James Bludsworth, 54, with no criminal record, was was slumped over behind the wheel. He was not responsive to police commands.

Did these Officer Friendlies help the sick man? Did they realize that this inert, possibly unconscious man was no threat to anyone? Did they call paramedics? No, this brave crew summoned their courage, overcame their terror, and tasered him three times. One now says that he smelled alcohol on Bludsworth, who blew 0.00 (stone cold sober) on a breathalyzer. Ozark Police Chief Myron Williams also claims the sick man was "combative." Maybe he was snoring too loud.

Did they take him to a hospital? No, he was booked at Dale County Jail and charged with resisting arrest (by using the force of gravity?) and driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI). Bludsworth has no recollection of the incident and is free on $1000 bond pending a December court date.

There must be something in the gene pool other than stagnant pond scum in Ozark, Alabama.

Ohio Sheriff sells your Fourth Amendment rights for Cash

2007-11-30T20:04:00.000-06:00

Christmas is coming, and office parties along with it. Be very careful in Ohio. You can buy anything there for the right sum, and the citizens of Summit County, Ohio have had their Fourth Amendment rights sold out from under them for a paltry $175,000. The Akron Beacon-Journal reports that Summit County Sheriff Drew Alexander agrees that sobriety checkpoints violate the spirit of the Fourth Amendment but sold out to that state for grants of that amount. The cash is earmarked to fight drunk driving, and requires the use of sobriety checkpoints, your rights be damned.

Checkpoints are a scam. The sheriff himself considers them less effective than roving patrols. The Beacon-Journal cited Ohio statistics that show traditional patrols catch drunk drivers five times more effectively than roadblocks. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court found that 99.3 percent of drivers stopped at roadblocks were completely innocent and that it took 53 percent more manpower to effect an arrest at a roadblock than with roaming patrols.

Who, then, likes these checkpoints? Ohio State Government loves them for a few reasons. MADD loves them, for one thing, and they're a huge, self-perpetuating fund raising and media machine. Lawmakers love them because they're motherhood and apple pie, safe to champion without requiring any thought or actual work, and citizens never question their effectiveness. Most of all, the cops themselves love them. It's cushy busywork and so much easier than roving patrols. The grant money goes primarily to off-duty cops from dozens of Summit County agencies who are paid time-and-a-half for their voluntary overtime. Cops, Ohio lawmakers, and MADD don't mind selling your right to be protected from illegal, warrantless search and seizure as long as they make out on the deal. They also know that getting citizen sheep used to having their Fourth Amendment rights whittled away bit by bit for a putative good cause sets good precedent. You know-for farther down the road.

Taser it before it grows- cops electroshock pregnant women. Three cases...

2007-11-29T19:50:00.000-06:00

Cops aren't shy about tasering old folks, kids, or women, even pregnant ones. A quick Google search using the term “taser pregnant” turned up three. Oldest first:

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported in October of 2005 (no, taser brutality isn't a recent phenomenon) that officer Donald Jones tasered Malaika Brooks for refusing to sign a traffic ticket. Three cops couldn't handle her without using electroshock multiple times but eventually managed to get her cuffed and into a squad car. King County sheriff's Sgt. Donald Davis, who worked on the county's Taser policy and also, apparently, its lame excuses, blamed taser use on the victim. "I know the Taser is controversial," he said. "Why use a Taser in a simple traffic stop? Well, the citizen has made it more of a problem. It's no longer a traffic stop. This is now a confrontation." Malaika's healthy baby girl was delivered without incident next January.

Fast forward to the fall of 2007, when an Alachua County (think Gainesville) Florida Sheriff's Lieutenant tasered pregnant Leslie Donaldson on her baby bump and elsewhere while she was trying to help break up a fight between neighborhood kids. The cop claims he didn't realize she was eight months pregnant at the time and felt threatened. This is ridiculous; the woman looks like she swallowed a pumpkin whole. She was arrested for battery after being checked out at a hospital. You check out the video. But it's OK: the department has no policy prohibiting tasering hugely pregnant women.

Finally we have today's attack in Trotwood, Ohio (near Dayton), where Breitbart reports that a cop tasered visibly pregnant single mother Valreca Redden. USA Today also says that Officer Michael Wilmer tackled and tasered her for being uncooperative when she appeared at the police station, seeking help, at the recommendation of Child Services. Michael Etter, Trotwood's Public Safety Director, blamed the incident on the victim, saying "I don't think any of this would have happened had she cooperated with us." Etter said he began an internal investigation after a man complained about Redden's treatment. Michael Brooks, an FBI spokesman, said the agency has opened a preliminary civil rights investigation based on information supplied by Trotwood police. He declined to comment further. Gunslinger Wilmer remains on duty.

Bob Marley wrote:

Sheriff John Brown always hated me;
For what I don't know.
Every time that I plant a seed
He said, "Kill it before it grows."

A pattern emerges; Clueless cop, no credible threat, no crime, visibly pregnant woman, blame the victim, no policy prohibiting egregious, unjustified taser use, no departmental oversight, energetic excuse machine, cop remains on duty with pay. In these three cases, there's another even more disturbing pattern: white cop, black target.

I'll be Tased for Christmas

2007-11-26T20:19:00.000-06:00

Consumer Sheep everywhere rejoice: Calls from Amnesty International for a moratorium on taser use and United Nations condemnation of taser use as torture have spawned a “news” article that attempts to minimize the effect of taser electroshock and cuddly ads on Taser's website marketing Tasers for Christmas.

Breitbart features a Nov. 24 article from Antoine di Zazzo, who claims to have been tasered more than 50 times and never felt worse for the ordeal. "You cannot call it real pain," he said. "I just found that time was infinitely long." Biased testimonial? Noooo. He's chief of Taser France, who's also developing a miniature flying-saucer-like drone which could fire Taser stun rounds on criminal suspects or rioting crowds (no mention of drunk waitresses, your grandmother, disoriented Polish nationals, or folks who refuse to sign traffic tickets). He expects it to be launched next year and to be sold internationally by Taser. In other words, he has a huge financial interest in convincing you that tasers are wonderful things. I'm calling BS on his 50-plus hits- no documentation. I'd like to see some fact-checking from Breitbart.

Three frames of a rotating ad banner on Taser's site sell the warm fuzzies of electroshock. One features a glowering Santa Claus studying his “Naughty” list and asks “What does Santa bring you when YOU have been GOOD but the WORLD is getting BAD?” Another, designed to tug your familial heartstrings, lays simulated polaroids of a happy dad giving his son a piggyback ride and a blindingly white blond woman nuzzling her newborn on a background image of a lonely airport waiting area. Both are ads for the Taser ® C2, the low-power consumer version of the weapon, molded in a selection of smooth metallic pastels to fit a smaller hand. A third announces a charity poker tournament, complete with Playboy Playmates, to raise funds for the families of fallen law enforcement officers.

I'm not sold yet. I'm waiting until Taser runs seasonal specials like Google decorates their title banner for each holiday. I want to see baby Jesus in the manger packing Taser heat he got from the Three Wise Arms Dealers to protect himself and his mom from Herod's minions. I want to see white, yellow, and orange candy corn tasers for halloween. I want a taser with Miami-style flamingo and teal colored handle that smells like cocoa butter tanning lotion for spring break. I want a pink and white Hello Kitty ® taser with rhinestones and the logo on the handle. Hell, I want a taser cell phone with camera, GPS, and 20 gigs of storage for my favorite tunes. How stupid does Taser think we are?

Even a broken clock is right twice every day. Tasers are Torture.

2007-11-25T10:25:00.000-06:00

I am no fan of the United Nations, but their recent comments about tasers are on the mark. Agence France-Press reports that the UN's Committee Against Torture has declared stun guns a form of torture. "The use of these weapons causes acute pain, constituting a form of torture. In certain cases, they can even cause death, as has been shown by reliable studies and recent real-life events,'' the committee of 10 experts said in recommendations to Portugal, which has bought the newest taser for use by police. Portugal "should consider giving up the use of the taser,'' as its use can have a grave physical and mental impact on those targeted, which violates the UN's Convention against Torture.

It's clear that taser use has been extended from enforcement to torture. Videos of taser deployment repeatedly show officers continuing to discharge the weapon after the victim is under control. Police and military worldwide, along with the manufacturer, believe this sort of sadism is just fine. They aggressively sell the notion that taser electroshock is not a last resort but a first option on a continuum of force, appropriate for use against any citizen in any situation even after the victim is under complete physical control. Sorry, no: if it's wrong at Abu Ghraib, it's wrong in Alabama.

It's long been my impression that Canada is in some ways more civilized than the US- certainly Canadians believe so- but the rise in taser deaths has followed unwarranted taser deployment northward. The Ottawa Citizen ran a fact-packed article this Saturday. On Sunday, Nov. 18, in a sad echo of Ohio's Heidi Gill episode, police in Ottawa tasered Marlena Sarazin after she had been torn from her vehicle, handcuffed, and pinned face-down on the pavement under an officer's knee. This followed the recent post-tasering death, caught on video, of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver airport last month. RCMP was seen kneeling on his neck in that video.

Earlier this week, Paul Kennedy, assigned to review the RCMP's use of Tasers in the wake of Mr. Dziekanski's death, said police use the devices "inappropriately at too early a level of intervention." Amnesty International said last June that Tasers "are used too readily by law-enforcement officers, too low down the use-of-force scale, and not as a weapon of last resort." Amnesty wants police forces to suspend use of the devices pending a "thorough, impartial and independent" investigation into their medical and other effects. Long term effects need further study; days after Ms. Sarazin was attacked, her hands were still tingling, though she's been told those effects will gradually subside.

Canadian cops are coming to have more in common with American cops than with Canadian citizens. Kingston Police Chief Bill Closs says tasers are here to stay. He thinks politicians and police governing bodies have misled the public by selling them as an alternative to lethal force and created a false expectation that police will use them only when they might otherwise have to shoot someone. In fact, he says, the rules permit their use whenever police are dealing with someone who is actively resisting, engaging in "assaultive behaviour" or posing a threat to the safety of the officer or the public. Because the officers themselves have written The Rules, and the threat determination will be made by an officer on the scene without witnesses or oversight, this means they'll use it whenever they want to, public opinion be damned. Unless citizen response reins in this relentless escalation, they'll rewrite rules to suit their needs. In five years we'll see LRADS (acoustic) and ADS (microwave) crowd control weapons deployed as freely as tasers are today. They're already in use here in the USA.

Gunslinger cops in Frederick, MD non-lethally taser another target. He's dead.

2007-11-19T12:41:00.000-06:00

Do police departments get Most Frequent User awards from Taser International? The Frederick County Sheriff's Department must be up there in the standings. CNN reports that a 20-year-old man died Sunday after being tasered by a sheriff's deputy. Cpl. Jennifer Bailey of the Frederick County Sheriff's Office said deputies responding to a fight tasered one of four people, who then fell unconscious and was pronounced dead at Frederick Memorial Hospital. The shooter is on administrative leave with pay pending completion of an investigation.

This is the same Jennifer Bailey who insists that Cpl. Jody Maybush acted with “necessary and reasonable” force when he tasered a Tuscarora High School student November 8 after threatening another with the same the day before. She said, "There's no information that indicates he did anything inappropriate at all." She's a busy lady. No word yet on whether FOP attorney Patrick J. McAndrew considers today's tasering as “heroic” as he did the Maybush incident. Stay tuned.

The manufacturer of the electroshock weapons claims that post-tasering deaths are not caused by the taser itself, but by related police action or the victim's excited delirium. Video of the Vancouver airport taser death of a Polish man that showed the victim continuing to struggle after being shot with the device "is proof that the Taser device was not the cause of his death," the company said on its website. Despite that, deaths are increasing as tasers become more common. Which of the following statements makes any sense?

“The man continued to struggle after being tasered. This proves the taser didn't kill him.”

“The catfish flopped around on the bank after I landed him. This proves the fishhook didn't kill him.”

“The buck ran a hundred yards after I shot him. This proves the shotgun didn't kill him.”

Amnesty International reported that since June 2001, more than 150 people have died in the US after being subdued with a stun gun and has called for police to suspend use of the devices pending study of their risks. Back-to-back electroshocks, one resulting in death, are reason enough for an immediate moratorium on their use in Frederick, MD.

School taser violence in Frederick, MD

2007-11-18T13:54:00.000-06:00

I can't recall the source of a quote I remember from the 1960's. “The first places in a free society that civil liberties are violated are prisons and public schools”. Tuscarora High School in Frederick, Maryland is proving that quotation true. The Frederick News- Post for today reports the following.

During a class change Nov. 8, student Dereck Holland saw his sister escorted to the school office by a cop. He didn't know she'd been in a fight and was headed to the office for discipline. He was worried and approached her, putting his arm around her. He never intended to prevent Cpl. Jody Maybush and a school administrator from taking her to the office, he said in an interview.

According to police reports he physically prevented the cop from escorting her to the office. Maybush threatened to tase him. Holland stopped hugging his sister and told the officer, "Do it." He did. The cop must have been itching to try the electroshock weapon out; he'd threatened to taser another Tuscarora student the day before he zapped Holland.

Once the weapon was discharged the law enforcement spin machine kicked into high gear to generate enough paperwork and official ruckus to cover the cop's behind. Maybush arrested Holland and hit him with a real grocery list of charges: disorderly conduct, failing to obey a reasonable and lawful order, disturbing orderly school conduct and obstructing the performance/duties of an officer. Paperwork is Truth. Trumped- up charges help create the impression that the force used was “necessary and reasonable” instead of “twitchy and ill-considered.” Where's there's smoke, there's fire, right?

Maybush is still on duty. The department is defensive and unapologetic. "There's no information that indicates he did anything inappropriate," a sheriff's office spokeswoman said. An FOP attorney called Maybush's actions “heroic," saying "the subject took an aggressive stance...(He) was in a posture to strike the deputy." Shooting an unarmed student who has done nothing violent is appropriate and heroic in Frederick, MD.

Holland's mother wants Frederick County Public Schools to develop a policy to dictate when officers in schools should be able to use force. Marita Loose, spokeswoman for FCPS , said she doesn't know that the school system or Frederick County Board of Education can create such policies. How can this be? They've already created a policy that allows tasering kids, and she think that's just fine.

The PTA thinks tasering kids in school is fine, too. Janice Spiegel, president of the PTA Council of Frederick County, Inc., said she hasn't heard much parental rumbling about excessive police force in schools. "When it comes to this specific incident, we haven't talked about it; we haven't met because we haven't heard anything," Parents seemed content with a letter sent home from the school detailing the taser incident, she said.

Maybe that's the problem. Maybe parents in Frederick just don't care.

Taser Willie, will yeh, yeh cheesehead sherrrriff!

2007-11-16T13:19:00.000-06:00

The Green Bay (WI) Press-Gazette reports that on November 6, a Brown County Sheriff's Department resource officer “inadvertently and accidentally discharged” a taser, striking the janitor at Bay View Middle School. The officer was removed from the post at the school, given “remedial” training, and disciplined. Not canned outright.

How does this happen unless the taser unholstered and the cop is displaying it or playing with it? Cops nationwide have driven taser use to such a casual level that this department considers it appropriate for show-and-tell. This kind of liaison kids don't need- a poorly trained cop wandering around a middle school armed with a 50,000 volt electroshock weapon that law enforcement officials everywhere desperately wish to believe is universally non-lethal and without lasting effects. And she can't control it.

I hope the janitor has a good lawyer. There's no reason to believe that the neural and neuromuscular effects of taser electroshock won't manifest themselves later in his life. He should be able to retire comfortably on a judgment or settlement in this case. I hope the parents get a good lawyer to protect themselves from a sheriff and school district willing to expose their kids to the same poorly understood systemic damage.

A cop has an itch he wants to scratch? Out comes the taser. A sudden itch, a spastic twitch, you're on the ground. Gee, sorry.

Brit Docs Nix Snatch Patch

2007-11-15T13:15:00.001-06:00

London's Evening Standard reports that the National Health Service pays for surgery to repair hymens, and increasing numbers of woman are paying for the fix in private clinics. The trend is condemned as a sign of social regression driven by Islamic fundamentalists. Some countries have made hymen reconstruction operations illegal.

The operation can involve suturing of a tear in the hymen, such as can be caused by sexual or normal activity. A membrane is constructed, sometimes including a capsule of an artificial blood-like substance. How utterly medieval. A gynecologist at the London's Regency Clinic who started hymen reconstruction more than 18 years ago in the Middle East, said: "In some cultures they like to see that the women will bleed on the wedding night. If the bride is not a virgin, it is a big shame on the family."

Labor MP Ann Cryer said she was "absolutely horrified" to learn of the practice. "We should be trying to protect girls from this. It is a form of abuse... and it may be that the woman who is asking for the operation to be done does not recognize the abuse that is taking place against her, but in later life she certainly will. We have to also ask whether our National Health Service should be providing this... I don't think it should be available on the NHS."

Isabelle Levy, who studied the issue for her book Religion in the Hospital, said young Muslim girls “have adventures like other Europeans - which never happened in the past. But... fundamentalism is spreading and these girls are getting sent back to their countries of origin to marry. And they will be rejected if it is found out that they are not virgins."

This idiocy may have made sense to somebody in a seventh century tribal existence where virginity was important because women were regarded as property, people screwed like bunnies and establishing parentage was an issue. Today this kind of fossilized gender apartheid is important only to insecure male culture. Perhaps they fear comparison.

In other Islamic gender news, Breitbart reports that a court in Saudi Arabia is punishing a female victim of gang rape with 200 lashes and six months in jail. The sentence was originally for 90 lashes, but in a verdict issued after Saudi Arabia's Higher Judicial Council ordered a retrial, the court more than doubled the count, punishing the victim further for "her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media." The court banned her lawyer from handling the case and withdrew his license to practice law because he challenged the initial verdict.

Her crime? "Being in the car of an unrelated male at the time of the rape," the Arab News reported. The six men who raped her received between two and nine years in prison. The case has angered members of Saudi Arabia's Shiite community. Are they angry that she was raped? Who knows? The woman was Shiite. The convicted men are Sunni Muslims, the dominant community in the oil-rich Gulf state. Their honor was violated.

What's wrong with these people?

Officer, it's Black and White- You Serve Us

2007-11-12T19:28:00.000-06:00

In elementary school I learned that Officer Friendly served the community. I was impressed that squad cars carried the motto “To Serve and Protect.” That made the fine point that police were authority empowered by and serving the people. When I grew older I noticed that the motto had been inverted to “To Protect and Serve.” I don't think this was an accident.

Keegan Hamilton reported last Saturday on RFT Blogs that a man was tasered at a concert at Washington University in St. Louis, MO after resisting arrest and taking his clothes off. He refused a Concert Security request to leave. Security called the cops, who asked him to put his shirt back on. Instead, he took off his pants; that's not even sort of the same thing. Police tried to handcuff him. He resisted. “He was tased in the ass for a prolonged period of time,” one female witness stated. “It was terrible.”

Concertgoers headed for the exits and a large crowd gathered just outside the door. Several people yelled at the police officers standing near the exits, “Don’t taze me bro,” and “You serve us.”

RFT blogs promises details and the police report when it becomes available. That's worth waiting for. By initial reports this fool was out of control. The case could be made that he was dangerous. Whether he deserved a 50KV kick in the ass, whether the taser was the right tool, and whether it was used excessively (as is becoming common) remains to be seen. What caught my eye was the crowd response, “You Serve Us.”

Do they still? Do they enforce the laws enacted by a government that answers to the people, or do they believe that they ARE the law? Read a few cop blogs and you'll be surprised. At best, we're referred to as “civilians”. This is an improper distinction. Police, in a very legal sense, are civilians themselves, not a militia. The wordplay is their means of creating a satisfying Us vs. Them division. So is the wordplay on the side of the squad car. Service first must have rankled. Some cop, somewhere, was irked by the notion of service.

Cops need to hear that concert chant from time to time. You Serve Us. It reminds me of another chant that, whether you agreed with it or not, had an effect; “The Whole World is Watching.” Dash cams, security cams, and cell phone and video cams are everywhere in the hands of citizens. YouTube and other sites are full of video examples of police who have forgotten their mandate. From Myanmar to Minneapolis, the whole world is watching. You Serve Us.

Veterans' Day, 2007 – Rock On, America

2007-11-11T15:28:00.000-06:00

This photo comes to you courtesy of the forum at The Mountain. It was taken at the Veterans' Day parade in Washington, DC. The Westboro Baptist Cult attended to protest, knee deep in kool-aid and carrying signs that mocked veterans. I've posted about these fools before: they're the group that just lost a huge judgement in a suit brought by the father of a downed vet whose funeral they chose to desecrate. The signs are all shown shown in the pic on the linked forum (I won't post it), and the signs read:

Soldiers Die, God Laughs

God Hates America

God is Your Enemy

USA = Fag Nation

Thank God for Maimed Soldiers

America is Doomed

Thank God for Dead Soldiers

Don't Worship the Dead

They are Not Heroes

Because this is America, their signs are protected speech. Because this is America, nobody stomped their sorry asses to a bloody pulp. Because this is America, Rolling Thunder Vets, members of Gathering of Eagles, and Protest Warriors were there to honor vets and offer peaceful counterpoint. Because this is America, vets marching in the parade offered a bit of their own protected speech in response. Excellent! Rock on, Vets Everywhere.

Visit the forum and Alabama Mountain Man's blog.

Thug cop gets off on tasing, brags about it online

2007-11-10T18:32:00.000-06:00

It's pretty clear from You Tube videos what tasering feels like. From victim accounts we know the immediate effects can include loss of muscle control, nausea, convulsions, fainting, and involuntary defecation and urination. Lasting effects reported include muscle stiffness, long-term damage to teeth and hair, post-traumatic stress disorder and severe depression. I'd add helplessness, humiliation, and risk of secondary injury due to impeded respiration or falling or being beaten. Have you ever wondered what it feels like to be the shooter instead of the target? No need to wonder. One corrections officer was nice enough to boast about it online.

Eve Tushnet writes in Reason Online about a story broken by the Portland Tribune in Oregon on September 7 of this year. “The post suggests that the guy gets off on violence and he enjoys tasering people,” said Tribune reporter Nick Budnick.

Multnomah County Corrections Officer David B. Thompson bragged in a chat room of the City of Heroes MMORPG, an online game he played while on the county clock. Here's what he said: "Seeing someone get tasered is second only to pulling the trigger. That is money- puts a smile on your face."

Now, because of another post in the same chat room, authorities at the Justice Center Jail are investigating whether the same deputy also filed a false police report to cover up the beating of an inmate. Lieutenant Jason Gates, apparently not as big a fan of illicit taser fun as officer Thompson, regrets the incident. “All we have is public trust. What does that do to our public trust? It destroys it,” he said. Good, I say. It should be destroyed when this happens.

Arming your police with more weapons you can't have.

2007-11-08T19:16:00.000-06:00

The company that makes Tasers is field testing and plans to sell in 2008 a wireless electroshock round that can be fired from any 12-gauge shotgun. It delivers the same electrical effect as the handheld Taser at distances up to 100 feet, and adds blunt impact to that knockdown electrical power.

The round leaves the barrel live and already discharging, and continues to discharge for 20 seconds. Four barbed electrodes embed themselves in the flesh at impact. The projectile then breaks apart to release six additional electrodes to further distribute electroshock. Its outer shell carries more electrodes to enhance shock when the victim reflexively grasps it and completes a circuit through the hand and arm. The round carries a miniature microprocessor to identify the best- working electrodes and reroute electroshock for best effect. Unlike the tasers we are all becoming familiar with, it carries all its charge onboard the round and needs no wires connecting it to the gun.

I can find no estimate of the cost of these rounds, nor any discussion of them being made available for private purchase. Weapons technology has always run ahead of the law. Police departments have a habit of lusting after arms that the citizen can't afford and the law has the distressing habit of making police weapons unavailable to the average citizen. We can hope that this round opens the gap wide enough to require the attention of watchdog agencies and the courts.

This abomination will be released for use against American citizens with absolutely no independent testing or government oversight, no doubt with the same claims of non-lethality made for handheld tasers. Protestors, students, women, children, and other members of the public will provide their services as guinea pigs free of charge. TASER international has done detailed technical and social engineering to make this round everything a police state enforcer could want.

Traceability is gone. Police versions of the hand-held taser have a datalogger in the handset to record the date and time of each firing and the number of times the trigger is pulled to deliver a shock. Privately available versions discharge miniature confetti, each piece imprinted with a unique number linked to the gun. The XREP projectile is completely unrelated to the weapon; it can be used in any 12-gauge shotgun, and carries no datalogger or tattletale confetti. The shooter has no fear of being held to account for the shot.

The stigma of electroshock weapons has been sidestepped. Police will carry only substitute rounds for their existing firearms, not strange-looking plastic weapons stowed in a second holster on their hip.

The marketing point of reduced lethality has been preserved. These rounds will be presented as a humane alternative to buckshot.

The element of enforcer personal risk has been removed. Once these are available, police will no longer approach their intended victim closely enough to put themselves at risk. They can taser trick-or-treaters from across the street. They can taser homeowners filming police activities on their own property from across the yard and never put down their doughnut.

The one-shot limitation has been overcome. One aggressor cop can paralyze mobs of protestors as fast as he can pump his shotgun. The shells probably also work in a 12-round capacity Striker or Protecta street- sweeper style weapon.

There's absolutely no reason to believe this round won't be abused as freely as hand-held tasers are now.

How little is Too little to Taser in Gwinnett, GA?

2007-11-07T18:27:00.000-06:00

The Atlanta Journal Constitution (ajc) reports that police in Gwinnet, GA tasered a 14 year old female trick-or-treater last week. It's OK, though, because the department has a Policy that exempts nobody but pregnant women from taser shots. That exemption will stand right up until some testosterone-deficient cop feels threatened by a woman about to pop one out on the sidewalk.

Apparently the taserable offense was cursing. Loudly. Officer W.A. Bohn heard that, called for backup, and together these two studs managed to cuff the girl. She was tased when she continued to struggle. That took balls, W. A. Two on one, handcuffs, and a taser. Fun date. No roofies? Did you swipe her candy?

But they have a Policy. A WRITTEN Policy. "People who are handcuffed are still a threat no matter what age," said Cpl. Illana Spellman, a Gwinnett County Police Department spokeswoman and custodian of the department's lone pair of cojones. What about a 5- or 6- year old? That's OK according to the policy. Gwinnett police Maj. Keybo Taylor is reviewing the incident. "We are still reviewing it to see if any policies were violated, and so far we do not see any policies violated," Taylor said. Thank goodness.

Apparently Georgia cops statewide fear handcuffed teen girls. Frank Rotondo, director of the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police, said his organization believes age should not be the deciding factor in use. "You have to look at the behavior of the individual rather than the age. And in the Gwinnett case, the Taser was able to stop the behavior." The young lady is lucky those cops had tasers, because that stop-the-behavior reasoning works for shotguns, too.

When is tasering justified? Georgia cops have answered the question: Any time they feel like it and have their blue asses covered with a nice, broad policy not subject to citizen review. And want some candy.

Chicago Granny channels M.C. Hammer- It's Taser Time!

2007-11-06T20:15:00.001-06:00

CBS2 reports that a Chicago police sergeant tasered 82 year old, 5'-1”, 160 lb. granny Lillian Fletcher last week. Workers with the city's Department on Aging saw her through the window of her apartment with a hammer in her hand, swinging it back and forth. The social workers called police. A landlord opened the door with a key and when police stepped inside, Lillian was seen swinging the hammer. Officers immediately wet themselves and, fearing for their lives, tased Granny Fletcher in self defense.

Fletcher's granddaughter told the Chicago Sun-Times that Fletcher suffers from schizophrenia and dementia. "She can be belligerent," Traci Taylor told the newspaper. "I just don't think they should be tasing 82-year-old women."

Amnesty International USA agrees, and voices concerns that police use tasers routinely rather than in cases of serious danger. In 2005, the Chicago Police department suspended the distribution of stun guns following the deaths of two people police shot with tasers. They've reconsidered that cautionary step in response to the surge in grannies with easy access to hand tools. About 200 cops have tasers and 150 more will be issued to field training officers.

Police stress the need for additional training and seek citizen volunteer taser targets to “help teach officers how to use tasers effectively when faced with physically intimidating perpetrators in life-threatening situations,” said department liaison patrolman Suzy Bluesuit. “Candidates should be at least as fierce as drunken blond waitresses or infants. Catatonic paraplegics, the blind, triple amputees, and patients confined to iron lungs” are encouraged to apply.

Faith vs. Reason 2: Jehovah's Witness mom bleeds out after giving birth.

2007-11-05T20:01:00.000-06:00

The earlier post about the tragic burning deaths of Muslim schoolgirls and today's news have spawned a Category here at HABOP. Faith vs. Reason posts will highlight occasions when stupid people put faith before reason.

Britain's Daily Mail reports today that a young mother died hours after giving birth to twins because she refused a life-saving blood transfusion. A Jehovah's Witness, Emma Gough signed a form before the birth barring transfusion. Hospital staff begged her husband, also a Jehovah's Witness, and other relatives to allow it. Believing that blood transfusions are prohibited by the Bible, the family would not sanction the treatment.

Imagine the conversation a few years from now when the twins want to know why they don't have a mommy. What will dad say- mommy bled to death when you were born because God, daddy, and auntie wanted her to die rather than allow her body to be sullied by proven medical technology available to the most indigent of patients? If that chat takes place before they're fully brainwashed the cult has lost the kids for sure. That may be the only good thing to come of this. There's nothing good about blood doctrine nonsense. It's all bad.

It's Bad Science. In a 1961 Watchtower, a doctor and surgeon was quoted as saying "Moral insanity, sexual perversions, repression, inferiority complexes, petty crimes often follow blood transfusion." Another is quoted: “The blood in any person is in reality the person himself. It contains all the peculiarities of the individual.... The poisons that produce the impulse to commit suicide, murder, or steal are in the blood.” This is bad vampire fiction. Cross-matching, screening for infection, anticoagulant preservatives, and control systems all but guarantee safety from less supernatural risks.

It's Bad Religion. Blood transfusions are mentioned in the bible as often as CAT scans, tennis shoes and popsicles; never. The prohibition is generated by parsing and extrapolating scripture beyond its original meaning. Blood doctrine evolved from recommendations for abstinence in 1909 to prohibition by 1945, to a disfellowshipping offense in 1961, and ad absurdum to forbidding transfusions for pets and use of blood-based fertilizer in 1964. It's a classic example of the Making Shit Up school of theology. All faiths do it. Yours does. It's funny or sad depending on the consequences. Furthermore, it's far from universally accepted within their own church. Witnesses, like Muslims, Catholics, and Jews, exhibit a refreshingly human lack of uniformity in acceptance of official dogma.

It's Bad Morals. It's nothing more than assisted suicide. Jack Kevorkian did hard time for that but at least had the decency to provide the feel- good drugs. In the case of denying proper 21^st century post- partum care, it's gender apartheid on a par with enforced marriages and genital mutilation.

I'm a huge believer in the right to be stupid at your own expense. Unfortunately the victims of stupid people's mental and moral lapses are often not themselves but innocents caught under the wheels of their crazy train. By the act of procreation, parents lose the right to flush their own lives down the toilet. A proper god would consign this woman's soul straight to hell.

Oregon Cop plays fast and loose with the Truth, his DUII arrest record soars

2007-11-04T18:50:00.000-06:00

This week the Corvallis Gazette-Times reports that city is being sued over a DUII arrest of a completely sober citizen earlier this year. Officer David Cox is widely recognized for the number of DUII arrests he's made- 27 of the total of 35 for the entire Corvallis police force in May of this year, for example. Now he's become recognized for the lousy quality of those arrests. Six of the 27 he arrested had BAC's under the legal limit and were not found to have been using drugs. About a quarter of those he arrested were either not prosecuted by the DA's office or had charges dismissed by the court.

The police department and the courts failed to rein in this cowboy and he finally busted someone who decided to sue. Cox could not smell intoxicants on the driver's breath but insinuated that he'd been drinking and smoking marijuana. The man passed a field sobriety test, blew 0.00 on a breathalyzer, and submitted urine for a drug test that found nothing but a trace amount of codeine from cold medication. He was stone cold sober.

Undeterred by lack of factual evidence, Cox wrote a highly embellished description of the man's appearance and behavior in a police report. 22 of his 27 May police reports repeated the same creative writing almost word for word. Four of the remaining five spun the language a little differently to support Cox's suspicions that drugs were involved instead of alcohol.

This incompetence would be pathetically funny if those people didn't still have DUII arrests on their records. Oregon law does not allow arrests for motor vehicle violations to be removed from a driver’s record, even if the driver was never charged or convicted. Arrest records are accessed every time a law enforcement officer stops someone, for any reason. Employers see the records when screening prospective employees, and a DUII arrest, justified or not, can have a negative effect.

“An arrest for traffic is not expungeable,” said Corvallis defense attorney Jennifer Nash. So when innocent people are arrested, “There is actual damage.”

Courts give greater weight to the testimony of an officer than to the arrested party. There are too many Coxes in uniform to tolerate this bias. In Livingston County, Illinois, where I live, similar official sleight-of-hand is common. When juveniles are stopped for suspicion of possession of marijuana and released for lack of evidence, the police report records a “street resolution” of the incident; that is, the juvenile was released at the officer's discretion. No record is made of what has not been found. The wording is deliberately chosen to avoid this and create an impression useful to the court. The report remains in the record and is considered damning by the court when the juvenile's record is reviewed. This allows the justice system to dance around the letter of the law. You will find that this is common and occurs to some degree where you live.

Let's hope Corvallis listens to its citizens. Read their comments to the article cited above on the bottom of the paper's webpage. Cox should lose his job, as should his immediate supervisor; his department should be censured, and the DA's and judges who became aware of police malfeasance when these junk arrests came before the court should be punished.

Westboro Baptist Church loses big: It's a win for the separation of Church and Stupid

2007-10-31T18:34:00.000-05:00

God wouldn't smite these world class attention whores so a federal jury in Baltimore did the job and awarded nearly $11 million dollars to the family of Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder, whose funeral was desecrated by their shameful antics.

The weeklong trial pitted the moral and ethical rights of the family to a quiet funeral against the first amendment rights of the misbegotten spawn of Fred Phelps, founder of Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, whose 71-member congregation is largely made up of his relatives. The suit named the church, Phelps, and his two daughters as defendants. The Phelps family did not apologize for their conduct.

This is, of course, a free speech case. Partly in response to WBC protests, at least 22 states enacted or proposed laws to limit the rights of protesters at funerals. Church members stretch first amendment protection to the breaking point, exercising tactics of calculated brinksmanship while hiding behind the constitution of what they refer to as The United States of Sodom. They've paraded with inflammatory messages on garish signs at reportedly more than 30,000 protests, including hundreds of military funerals. Check out the upside-down flag that appears in the address line of your browser next to their URL. The site spews classic hate.

If an appeals court reverses the judgement on grounds of protected speech these losers will, after checking to be sure the cameras are rolling, offer extravagant thanks to God for justifying their stand. This is no different than the homicide bomber who shouts to Allah as he blows a cafe full of innocents to hamburger; both varieties of idiot look outside reality for validation without fear of contradiction. God's characteristically mum. This was Baltimore's week to take the garbage to the curb.
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No headscarves? Get Back In There and Burn to Death

2007-10-28T18:29:00.000-05:00

Faith is fine until it replaces reason; this is what happens when believers substitute religion for reality.

BBC News reports that Saudi Arabia's powerful “mutaween” religious police, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, prevented fifteen schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress, headscarves and black robes, according to Saudi newspapers. The girls died in the fire.

The girls were locked in the school at the time of the fire, a common practice intended to ensure segregation of the sexes. The watchman refused to open the gates to let the girls out. Firefighters confronted the police and may have prevented even greater tragedy. The mutaween stopped men who tried to help the girls and warned "it is a sinful to approach them". Saudi parents and news media are incensed. Apparently it's OK to segregate them, stifle them, and treat them like second class citizens, but they draw the line at burning them to death.

It's difficult for the rest of the world to take Islam seriously when this kind of foolishness is a matter of official policy. The kingdom uses Islam to keep its rulers in power and its people under control. The mutaween are widely feared as a kind of religious stormtrooper. They roam the streets enforcing dress codes and sex segregation and ensuring prayers are performed on time. Those who refuse to obey their orders are often beaten and sometimes put in jail.

We in the West seldom see a dramatic clash between common sense and religion. Here the mainstream religions have been tamed and have learned to stay safely, irrefutably unreal. Preachers leave their predictions of religious manifestation- miracles, the end of the world- comfortably far in the future. They won't tell you the second coming will happen next Tuesday at 11:30 AM EST because those who've tried that have been disappointed. The rest of them caught on and dummied up quickly, not wanting to blow a cushy gig. Our remaining examples of sheer dogmatic idiocy are the occasional Jonestown or Heaven's Gate tragedy, Scientology, or the Westboro Baptist Church, wolves who have found some of the sheep that are always with us. Islam is state-sanctioned; none of the western sideshows are. This is why we separate church and state.

Hillary Turns her Back

2007-10-23T18:55:00.000-05:00

Today's Guardian interview of Hillary Clinton illuminates her stance on terrorism. This is a flattering interview. Guardian America's editor Michael Tomasky seems to have one foot in Hillary's pocket. Even so, this excerpt is terribly telling. Clinton's tuning her rhetoric to suit her political needs- to distance herself from the stance of the current administration- at the expense of speaking clearly against terror. As the interviewer says, the president and current administration officials have said repeatedly that terrorists hate us for our freedoms. Clinton clearly takes a different view:

"Well, I believe that terrorism is a tool that has been utilised throughout history to achieve certain objectives. Some have been ideological, others territorial... And I think we've got to do a much better job of clarifying what are the motivations, the raisons d'etre of terrorists."

"I think one of our mistakes has been painting with such a broad brush, which has not been particularly helpful in understanding what it is we were up against when it comes to those who pursue terrorism for whichever ends they're seeking."

So it's not, I asked, helpful to America's fight to say they hate us for our freedoms? "Well, some do," Clinton said. "But is that a diagnosis? I don't think it's proven to be an effective one."

Ms. Clinton, that brush is indeed broad. It has had to be, to paint the USS Cole, three airliners, embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, the Khobar Towers, the Pentagon, and the World Trade Center, twice. Those terrorists' masterpieces hang in our own national gallery. The brush is wider now, world-wide, well loaded and dripping with the terrorists' favorite shade of crimson, and ready to paint again.

T here's adequate proof that Islamofascist terrorists hate and fear our freedoms. We know how they feel about freedom of speech in film, print, and even cartoons. Ask Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or Theo Van Gogh- well, you can't ask him, they killed him, you see- if you have doubts. We know how they feel about freedom of religion- ask apostates who want nothing more than to leave Islam and can only do so under a death threat. Worldwide Islam is more about denying freedoms than ensuring them. Women suffer virtual enslavement under their ideals, according to female authors. It's odd that you, one of the few females in a bully pulpit, are unmoved by this and feel no responsibility to speak out.

Ms. Clinton had nothing to say about a strong response to terror. What does she think might be a more effective diagnosis? She's clear about that.

"One of the lessons that I think we all should take out of the last six-and-a-half years is that ideologically driven foreign policy that is not rooted in a realistic assessment of the world as we find it today is not likely to result in any positive outcome."

The terrorists' policies, foreign and domestic, are driven by ideology. Apologists for terror and even those who merely turn away are helping to make the terrorists' assessment of the world a realistic and rewarding one. The outcome will not be positive.

No electricity. Not yours.

2007-10-21T13:49:00.000-05:00

Jayhawks and Downeasters linked arms in energy solidarity this month, rejecting proposals for two wildly different generating plants; wind turbines five miles offshore from Cape Cod and a coal-fired plant in Holcomb, Kansas.

"It's irresponsible to ignore the contribution of greenhouse gases to climate change and the potential harm to our environment and health," said Rod Bremby, secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, the organization that rejected Sunflower Electric Power's planned expansion of their existing generating plant.

"It's a watershed moment," said Bruce Niles, head of the Sierra Club's effort to cripple national electrical capacity. "Kansas joins Florida and California and other states to stake out a clean energy future based on renewable resources and rejects coal."

Dorothy Galesky, founder of the Kansas Statewide neo-Luddites and Gaians (SLaGs), attributes the KDHE's reaction to their awareness of a burgeoning environmental consciousness. “We've come to realize that we are the root cause of pollution. Utility companies wouldn't build these plants if consumers didn't expect to have electricity available whenever we plug in. Profiteers have conditioned us to think power should always be available, like tap water. It's time to rethink that paradigm. We're not in Kansas anymore. Just look.”

She waved her hand at the mall parking lot behind her, where, in the gathering darkness, a mob of enthusiastic locals hurled appliances and consumer electronics from the backs of SUVs onto a growing pile. Torches lit the scene with a lurid gleam.

“Electricity is overrated. They're discarding CD players in favor of making their own music- with flutes, guitars- acoustic guitars- , banjos, dulcimers and zithers. Look at all the TV's in that heap! Who needs television when we have community theater? Forget electric leaf blowers. Leaf rakes are selling like hotcakes at the hardware store. And this,” she held up an old Forgecraft chef's knife, “can do anything that food processor can do. I've been using mine for a month and just look at these guns!” she said, flexing her right forearm into a bulbous knot that would make Popeye proud.

Across the country, The Cape Cod Commission denied Cape Wind's application to bury electric cables to connect its proposed 420-megawatt offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound to the state power grid. Cape residents might see some of the proposed 130 wind turbines on a clear day if they squinted or used binoculars. They, and environmental groups concerned about disrupting the patterns of migratory birds, oppose the project.

Maria Kopeck, Cape resident, spoke at a protest in Boston. “Let's not call wind a renewable resource without recognizing its tragic costs. I heard that somebody near a wind farm somewhere in California saw a seagull so confused by a turbine he dropped a rotten taco he was carrying and flew away hungry. That's just sad. We don't want that happening here.” She blotted tears of anticipatory hypothetical remorse from her ruddy cheeks with an organic hemp pocket handkerchief. “We know we've created the runaway power market by using more and more electricity. We've vowed to live in the dark from now on to atone for our profligate energy use.”

Residents of her Cape community do their best. “We go to bed when the sun goes down now, unless we have whale oil lamps, even though that makes for short days in the winter. It's so romantic, and good for the optometrists, too! We've removed streetlights and yard lights, and the increase in crime hasn't been that bad. We find stores at night just fine using our headlights. And don't get me started on traffic signals! We don't miss that monotonous red, green, and amber tyranny! The best thing of all is that we're free of the glare from the Chatham, Nauset and Highland lighthouses. We've been able to discard our windowshades entirely!”

The two activists plan to meet halfway, in Columbus, Ohio, next month to share power-free lifestyle hints and plan future protests against their latest casus belli, the washing of hands. “Contributions to public health aside, PETA has pointed out that some hand soaps are made from animal products,” Mary and Dorothy agreed. “This has been keeping us up at night.”

Jackson, Sharpton, and now Farrakhan. Sigh.

2007-10-17T18:44:00.000-05:00

The third peg leg of a classic American comedy tripod, Brother Louis, joins Cousin Jesse and Uncle Al for a new taste of the limelight. Black Separatist Louis Farrakhan spoke in Atlanta Tuesday night. Jesse and Al thump bibles. Louis thumps a Koran. Lou says...

"...the Koran says that those who live easy lives have to be careful, because a life of ease sometimes make you forget struggle.” He's chronically out of touch- his grasp on reality has always been loose- but Islam doesn't sell well in the US. Not even fake Islam.

Farrakhan is as “muslim” as I am Irish; that is, as much as it suits him to be. Muslims reject his Nation of Islam because several of the NOI's teachings conflict with the Koran. One key point is that Islam asserts the existence of one God who has never appeared in physical form; Farrakhan's bunch teaches that God appeared in 1930 in the human form of its founder, W. Fard Muhammad. No, really. W. Fard made a very comfortable living off this scam. So did Elijah Muhammed and so does Louis Farrakhan- excuse me, Louis Eugene Wolcott. Fake religion; fake name. It's a marketing thing.

Though he lives very well, he's inclined to take shots at other prominent blacks who've made a excellent living at honest work instead of as a con artist and who, by the way, don't buy into his fantasies. He's a separatist, so anyone black who's a success in the US under current conditions must be guilty of something.

He pointed out Tuesday that although Oprah Winfrey is one of the richest women in the world, 37 million people live in poverty and a third of them are black. He claimed that although Barack Obama is a presidential front-runner, blacks still lose their right to vote because of voter identification laws. "Diddy might have his own clothing line and a Manhattan address, but blacks are moving into prison at four times the rate of blacks in South Africa during the apartheid era. Tiger Woods' face might be on every billboard, but 340,000 blacks are homeless in America on any given night." It's not like the first half of each of those statements has anything to do with the second half, you're just supposed to be deeply moved by their juxtaposition. Feel moved? No, neither did I. Oprah, Obama, Diddy, and Tiger each made something of themselves, didn't they. I don't think anyone handed them anything, I think they earned it. Clarence Thomas did. Thomas Sowell did. Clarence Page did.

Louis needs enemies and goes out of his way to manufacture them. In his words (hit this link for truly amazing quotations and sources), whites are blue-eyed devils, the anti-Christ; Jews are leeches; theocracy is preferable to democracy; and "A decree of death has been passed on America. The judgment of God has been rendered and she must be destroyed..."

No more inclined to miss a desperate swipe at relevance than Jesse or Al, Louis said the anemic rally in Jena last month was a wake-up call. "We should let the world know that we're tired," he said. I'm tired too. Tired of your dated hate speech.

Five Cops, one dog, citizen with vid cam- Taser Time!

2007-10-17T06:30:00.000-05:00

The more Tasers there are, the more unjustified tasings there will be. Have we built enough momentum to keep the Taser News pace at one per day? Portland cops have done their best to keep the streak going. From The Oregonian Monday:

Frank Waterhouse is suing for unlawful seizure with excessive force, alleging that police fired a Taser and bean bag rounds at him on May 27, 2006 because he was videotaping their search of a friend's property. Police followed their dog onto the property during a search for a fleeing suspect. The dog keyed on a car and officers broke out a window. Frank videotaped the search.

Police yelled at him to "put it (the camera) down." Officers report that (he) ran off, they chased and then bean-bagged and Tasered him. One officer wrote, "He... refused to drop the camera which could be used as a weapon." Waterhouse was arrested and accused of criminal trespass and disorderly conduct. A jury acquitted him of all charges.

So, police run onto private property, smash the window of a car, discover they're being filmed, chase the cameraman down, and force him to stop filming. One unarmed guy, four or five thug cops and a dog. Nice odds! The camera wasn't being used as a weapon, but it could have been. You know, like a loaf of bread could have been. The cops responded to this huge threat with a beanbag gun and a Taser. If they have them, they'll use them.

The jury didn't agree that this guy had an NFL- class passing game and could nail a cop with a camera while running away, so the “weapon” claim is nonsense. It's just cops protecting their technological turf. One example is radar speed measurement (and jamming), another is videotape, and the cops' argument comes down to this.

We can use radar to measure your speed, but you can't try to fool our radar. We can film you, but you can't film us. We can use technology against you, but you can't use it to protect yourself.

Their reaction is predictable. Cops have enough trouble with their own dash cams catching them in acts of brutality. They like it even less when citizens hold the camera.

TwoFer Taser Newsday- Zap the baby! Zap the foreign traveler!

2007-10-15T18:19:00.000-05:00

I've posted before about Taser abuse- see the post about Heidi Gill in Warren, Ohio. Cops are the usual shooters; now bounty hunters and the RCMP want in on the headlines.

In Oklahoma City last Friday night a bounty hunter fired a Taser into a vehicle, missing his intended target and striking an infant. Only one of the darts pierced the baby's skin, so the gun delivered no electric shock. Emergency responders were called to remove the dart from the baby's flesh.

Police think this is all just fine, because the bounty hunter thought it was necessary, and claim the woman used the child as a shield. Maybe so, the only witnesses were the bounty hunter himself and his quarry. Who do you suppose the law will believe? Bounty Hunters are widely known for their excellent judgment and immunity to adrenaline rush. Ask Domino Harvey. Ask Duane “Dog” Chapman. Pillars of the community. Paragons of restraint and reason. Valued Taser Customers!

I wonder whether the Taser's manufacturer is disappointed that the second dart didn't find its target. They insist the guns are not lethal. I don't suppose they have any data on the way an infant's nervous system reacts to a fifty thousand volt shock. Yet.

Bounty Hunters may be suspect but certainly Mounties are good guys. In Richmond, British Columbia, a 40 year old man died after being tased by the RCMP shortly after arrival on an international flight at 1:30 AM Sunday morning. He was pounding on windows and throwing chairs and computer equipment for unknown reasons. He was not speaking English; a flight from Poland had landed about an hour before the incident. The RCMP was unable to calm him using gestures, so tased him and handcuffed him. He appeared to go into cardiac arrest and was soon pronounced dead. Would he be alive now if he'd been able to speak English?

Airport security is fine with this. International arrivals were rerouted but there were no delays in flight schedules. Thank goodness, Eh? More Taser fun to come, count on it.

Rabid Dogma, Christian and Muslim

2007-10-14T15:39:00.001-05:00

This billboard has appeared in Madison, Wisconsin. It's a timely warning, and quite ecumenical. It doesn't say Christian dogma. It's tuned, or rather YOU are- you resonate in tune with your beliefs when plucked by a sign like this. It's a nice contrast to billboards for the opposing point of view, brought to us by the nation's largest group of atheists and agnostics, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, who are unfortunately silent about current NON- Christian religious transgressions.

Since 1988 we've seen Christian-themed billboards along the road (We need to talk. Don't make Me come down there. You think it's hot here? One nation under Me.) “signed” by God. The billboards' sponsors believe strongly enough that they're speaking for god to sign his name without power of attorney.

The anonymous donor who paid for the original three-month run did, anyway. Then the Outdoor Advertising Association of America used the sayings in a national public service campaign. Catchy one-liners appeared on ten thousand billboards. The OAAA valued donated space at $15 million, and no doubt took tax deductions for this... “gift to the community. It is a positive way to get people thinking about spirituality and increase the numbers of those who are going to church. It makes you believe in divine intervention.”

The cynical are more inclined to believe in the intervention of marketing execs and accountants chasing write-offs. Let's give them a pass on their estimates of effectiveness. We don't know whether more people attended church as a result. We don't even know if those who began thinking spiritually outnumbered those who were merely annoyed.

Let's say simply that the FFRF is more correct than the OAAA, or at least not as driven by advertising revenues. Dogma IS bad for you, simply because it's a seductive substitute for reason. Bertrand Russel said:

...the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so-called ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with all its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burned as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.

...every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

Bertrand Russell lived and died in an overwhelmingly Christian world and never knew the barbarian chaos that is Islamic dogma. We have a new and unfortunate familiarity with the youngest of the three middle-eastern monotheistic religions. This is partly because its dogmatic insistence on jihad found believers with the cash to follow through, and partly because articulate critics of that religion who have experienced its dogma as believers have survived to tell the tale. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has this to say in a recent interview with Reason magazine:

Reason: But do you feel at all uncomfortable with that heavy emphasis on religion in American public life?

Hirsi Ali: Yes. And the good thing is—and that’s what I’ve tried to tell all my European friends—I’m allowed to say so.

I think that it’s a great mistake for this country to reject a very good atheist. I mean, when you have two candidates, and one is an atheist and the other is a religious person and the atheist would make the better public official, it’s a great loss not to elect him. Anyway, atheists here can forward their agenda and fight back safely without risking violence.

I accept that there are multitudes seeking God, seeking meaning, and so on... where I come from, in Islam, the only concept of God is you submit to Him and you obey His commands, no quarreling allowed. Quarreling or even asking questions means you raise yourself to the same level as Him, and in Islam that’s the worst sin you can commit.

The FFRF needs to re-tune their instrument to more than one pitch. I couldn't find a reference to any religion but Christianity on their website. I believe that sponsoring any religion, not just the one to which FRFF reacts, threatens our secular freedoms. I agree that monuments to the ten commandments in a county courthouse, Christian ministries in public schools, and subsidies for religious schools all deserve challenge. Why not challenge similar trespasses on the part of Islam?

The adhan, five-times-daily calls to prayer, are broadcast over loudspeakers from mosques in the United States, formerly if not currently in Dearborn, MI, Hamtramck, MI, and Michigan City, IN. This isn't the same as ringing church bells. It praises one god as the only god - I bear witness there is no deity but Allah - and can only do so with the approval of local city councils. Does their sanction of this declaration of faith violate the separation of church and state? Does FFRF know, or care? Do they consider the encroachment of Islam into American public life a threat? Hirsi Ali does:

In a tribal mind-set, if I’m allowed to take something and get away with it, I’ll come back and take some more. In fact, I’ll come and take the whole place, especially since it’s my holy obligation to spread Islam to the outskirts of the earth and I know I’ll be rewarded in heaven.

That's some pit-bull-class dogma. Beware of the Dogma, indeed, especially if he bites, has bitten, and states his intention to bite again.

There's another Book Lover reading this Blog!

2007-10-12T20:40:00.000-05:00

To my surprise, a websurfer from Montreal, Quebec found my blog by searching Google for the term Great Migration, Guillet- one of the books I list on my bookshelf. Great to see!

I have a copy in apologetic condition of The Great Migration – The Atlantic crossing by Sailing-ship Since 1770 by Edwin C. Guillet, published by Thomas Nelson and Sons in 1937. Here's the first paragraph of the preface:

“History records three great migrations: the Barbarians who swept over Europe and captured Rome; the Mongols under Genghis Khan; and the Atlantic Migration to the new world. Anglo-Saxon colonization made its most spectacular growth between 1770 and 1890, when eleven million people came from the British Isles to North America, and this book tells the story of the transition.”

The period covers the immigration of my own ancestors, some to Canada, from Gloucester, Glasgow, and Bedfordshire. The book is illustrated with contemporary prints like the one included here.

It's a wonderful read. I found mine at a library discard sale in Ohio over twenty years ago. Copies can still be found in used bookstores, and online. Abe Books lists 16 copies today, from the 1963 second edition at $14.77, to a very good condition copy of the 1937 edition at $80.00, to a copy of a 1962 edition signed by the author, inscribed by his grandchildren, and including two new diaries- a steal and a great gift at $300.00. I've bought online from Abe Books several times and have always been very pleased with my purchases.

Radical Islam and the West: No Common Ground

2007-10-11T18:22:00.000-05:00

There's news today that 138 prominent Muslim scholars have written an open letter of invitation to Christian leaders “to unite with Muslims over the most essential aspects of their respective faiths - the principles of love of one God and love of the neighbour.”

The letter from the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, a non-governmental organization based in Jordan, says in part, "It is hoped that the recognition of common ground will provide the followers of both faiths with a shared understanding that will serve to defuse tensions around the world."

Well, that will be difficult. We believe that you are lying through your teeth. We haven't come to this belief by listening to the propaganda of warmongers. We know you by your works, and we are appalled.

We have read the Koran verses that adjure Muslims to seek world domination by the sword. We have read your hadith.

We have heard your Imams call your faithful to jihad and violence. We have heard your fatwas.

We have seen your faithful worldwide take strength from your writings and proclamations and stone women to death, destroy religious shrines, murder skyscrapers and airplanes full of innocents, publicly behead helpless captives, murder filmmakers, issue death threats against apostates and intellectuals, and blow children to bloody tatters in the street. We've watched them dance in glee and celebrate these atrocities.

We also know many Muslims who don't approve of radical Islam. Some of them have been our countrymen and good neighbors for years. The problem is that they have been too quiet for too long. Here's what your grand muftis must do if you want your letter to be taken seriously:

Repudiate all teachings in the Koran and hadith- anywhere- that justify violence and barbarity. The era of conquest by the sword is over.

Renounce coercion in faith. Let seekers choose to come and go as they please. Your faith must survive in a global marketplace of ideas, or die a natural death. Your religion will be stronger for it.

Rebuke your most violent members. Call for an immediate end to all violence. Punish those who persist. Declare invalid all historical grievances.

Rein in your most disruptive imams. We know that Islam isn't uniform. We know that some mosques preach a far more radical brand of Islam than others. Strive for an orthodoxy that will wither noxious weeds before they take root.

Reform your religion. Christianity did. The world is a better place for it. Listen to your own faithful who seek reform, instead of killing them. Reformers are often the most devout, the most faithful of all.

Separate your religion and your politics. Conjoined temporal and spiritual power has never worked well. It's failing for you, and miserably.

Resign yourself to coexistence and the fact that Islam will never homogenize the world. You're welcome to your faith. We don't want it.

Until these things happen, we're simply heading in opposite directions. There is no common ground wide enough to stand upon. The best the West can do is return your letter, postage due.

Empire State Building Plans Massive Ramadan Insult

2007-10-10T19:21:00.001-05:00

Breitbart reports that in deliberate insult to the memory of those slaughtered in the 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center by teams of Muslim hijackers, the proprietors of the Empire State Building will light that icon in green from this Friday until Sunday to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan. The light show may be timed to begin, like the holiday, when the new moon is sighted.

This is more than just a building. It's sacred- a monument to capitalism and the American spirit. Celebrating this holiday like this is blasphemy. Do you think they'd light up the Kaaba for us a mere six years after - if our beliefs ran as strongly to barbarism as theirs, thank God they don't - we flattened the Al-Aqsa mosque?

This act of dhimmitude will offset nicely the twin columns of light seen in so many touching photos after three thousand unarmed civilian New Yorkers died in the cowardly attack. The Empire State Building has its own website, of course, and an easy way to contact the owners by email.

One presumes that high-profile New Yorkers Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Mayor Bloomberg, former mayor and presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, and the entire NYPD and NYFD are in support of this outrage. If they're not, maybe they'll have something to say. Does anyone care to bet on that? Here is the link to send email to the Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

GM and OnStar- Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Spying

2007-10-09T18:32:00.000-05:00

The AP reports that GM will equip nearly two million of their 2009 OnStar equipped vehicles to be remotely disabled on the request of law enforcement. They claim that this will not be done without the owner's permission, for example, in the case of vehicle theft. Will OnStar resist a police request or a court order? I suppose we're all confident that the police would never abuse this capability- you know, the guys with the tasers, Heidi Gill's best friends. Guess again, sheeple, the law has already abused the system, and OnStar helped. Visit TonyRogers.com for details.

An OnStar system can listen to you without your permission or knowledge. The FBI has already used one to eavesdrop on vehicle occupants in a simple criminal case- not a national security case, nothing needed to thwart terrorism, just a criminal case. OnStar helped, and then filed a protest lawsuit. It took nearly two years to work its way through the courts and didn't stop the spying. The 9^th Circuit eventually ruled in favor of OnStar, but only because the passive listening feature disables the emergency signal. The Court didn't care that the FBI was spying, and as soon as the passive listening feature can be used without disabling the emergency features, it's open season on OnStar customers. Note that this ruling applies only within the jurisdiction of the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals. Outside of Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands, the ruling doesn't protect you- but all you Cadillac drivers in the Northern Mariana Islands can continue your seditious conversations.

Now you have a reason to shun Cadillacs besides their inflated price and gas-sucking habits. If you're happy with being spied on by your own government and paying for the privilege, go buy a GM vehicle equipped with OnStar.

Obama completely off the rails

2007-10-07T20:27:00.000-05:00

Apparently impressed with just how well theocracy works in the cesspool of the middle east, Barack Hussein Obama's looking for an alignment with his own personal Jebus. Speaking outside an evangelical church in Greenville, South Carolina, where he attended services this weekend, he said:

“I just want all of you to pray that I can be an instrument of God... I am confident that we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth."

Wonderful. The democrats have crypto-socialist Hillary on one hand and this religious nutbar on the other. We had too many years of the Moral Majority, a belly full of Jerry Falwells, the Oral Roberts scandal is gathering like thunderclouds on the horizon, and now, whether you are serious or simply vote-whoring in one of the early-voting states, you've joined that parade.

We are a secular nation. That is our strength. If you don't understand that you don't belong in our government. We are Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Mormon, Pagan, Agnostic, Atheist, and too many others to name, and we don't want your religious kingdom.

Consider this verse from Kipling's MacDonough's Song:

Whether The People be led by the Lord, or lured by the loudest throat:

If it be quicker to die by the sword, or cheaper to die by vote

These are the things we have dealt with once, (and they will not rise from their grave)

For Holy People, however it runs, endeth in wholly Slave.

Like tasers? Wait until cops have microwave weapons.

2007-10-07T19:28:00.001-05:00

Casual use of tasers by domestic police forces may be a sign of worse to come. When nonlethal military weapons become commonplace- think of tear gas- they are adapted for domestic use against civilian targets. Law enforcement shows a trend toward weapons designed for indiscriminate use by relatively untrained personnel. Recent taser abuse reminded me of something I read long ago. Once I recalled a phrase- "Victor Pirolo and his leetle lights”- I was able to track it down.

It's from a story by Rudyard Kipling. Unfortunately he's known to most only as the author of The Jungle Book upon which the Disney movie of the same name is based. He was a prolific writer. In 1905 he wrote With the Night Mail and followed it in 1912 with As Easy as A.B.C., tales as prophetic and imaginative as any modern science fiction.

The latter story describes the suppression of an insurrection in Illinois in the year 2065. World government forces use nonlethal weapons of light and sound to crush the resurgence of democracy in an apathetic society. The weapons resemble enormous airborne versions of the directed sound, light, and microwave weapons in use today.

The LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device) projects sound at volumes loud enough to cause excruciating pain. It was deployed for use against American citizens corralled in the Superdome after hurricane Katrina in 2005 and used by New York City police during protests at the 2004 Republican National Convention. The Israeli army has used a similar weapon nicknamed Tze'aka (The Scream) that uses directed sound at frequencies and intensities that disrupt the inner ear, creating dizziness and nausea.

The ADS (Active Denial System) uses directed microwaves to heat the top layer of skin, causing intolerable pain in under 5 seconds. As of this summer, the Pentagon was delaying deployment of this weapon in Iraq, apparently fearing public opinion. Development hasn't stopped. Tests are underway on a system for use from an airborne platform like the C-130. Raytheon has developed a civilian version of ADS and is marketing it as the “Silent Guardian” to law enforcement agencies and security providers.

I predict we'll see directed energy weapons abused by domestic law enforcement like tasers are today within 5 years. I don't have a crystal ball. Kipling didn't have one either. He lived when men were first awakening to the possible uses and abuses of technology and was an unflinching witness of the depredations of empire.

Muslim prisoner sues Missouri jail over Ramadan PBJ

2007-10-06T18:30:00.000-05:00

A Muslim prisoner is suing a Missouri jail, claiming administrators fed him food products containing pork. It sounds like he's mistaken- he thought jelly was thickened with an animal product, gelatin, instead of pectin, a vegetable product.

I'll bet he isn't getting a lot of sympathy from the local mosque. Odell M. Edwards is probably as Muslim as Charles Colson is Christian. His non-middle-eastern name makes me suspect a jailhouse conversion. I wonder if this is the same person caught bringing forty gallons of PCP and twelve keys of coke into Missouri in 2006.

Despite the lawsuit, it seems that the jail tries to accomodate Muslims. The linked article says that for years, the jail has catered to those who wish to participate in the Ramadan fast. Administrators consult with a Muslim spiritual advisor, offer approved foods, and arrange for jail personnel to prepare after-hours meals. The special meals — requested by 10 inmates this year — are usually the jail's only deviation in food service due to religion, but the jail compromises with inmates on other religious matters. For instance, Muslims are provided towels to use as prayer mats.

"We try to use the least- restrictive means," the jail director said, noting that some requests can't be granted. "It all goes back to the safety and security of the facility."

The Sheriff says inmates would have a great deal more choice if they didn't run afoul of the law. He's less diplomatic than the director. "If they want to eat what they want to eat, they should stay out of jail."

Musicians fishing in Jena come home hungry

2007-10-06T11:06:00.000-05:00

To put the incident in Jena in the same league as those who were murdered in the 1960s cheapens their sacrifice and insults their memory.... Jena Mayor Murphy R. McMillin
Itinerant preachers Jesse and Al aren't the only ones trying to cash in on events in Jena. Musicians want some love, too. Hit-hungry John Mellencamp released a song and video about Jena so deliriously devoid of facts that the mayor calls it “...inflammatory, so defamatory, that a line has been crossed and enough is enough." The video attempts- unsuccessfully- with old news footage to somehow put today's issues on a par with the civil rights movement of the 1960's.

You Tube carries CNN video of mumbling, inarticulate rapper Mos Def rambling on live in Jena. This guy later called for an enormously ignored October 1 nationwide walkout in public schools in support of the thugs who stomped a fellow student unconscious. Speaking of the prosecutor, Mos Def said:

If someone in a position of public trust like that cannot see that the responsible thing for them to do, is the fair thing to do and the right thing to do as opposed to the legal thing to do, then that person doesn't need to hold that position. These are positions of public trust, they're not positions where people can use them as their own personal platform to push their own ideas and sentiments... it has to be dealt with in the right and humane way, not just in terms of what is legally acceptable...

Presumably he'd prefer that the prosecutor push a personal platform which involves rewriting the law on the fly to suit the ideas and sentiments hip-hop musicians want to impose on the community.

Meanwhile Jena plugs along just fine on its own, working quietly toward a solution. The Town Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to create an interracial committee to study racial relations and suggest solutions to any problems.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali should move to Oak Lawn, Illinois

2007-10-05T12:59:00.000-05:00

Spiegel Online comments on the return of Dutch citizen and former MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali to the Netherlands after a prolonged stay in the US. While here, the Dutch government provided extraordinary protection because as a foreign national she's not entitled to that from our own government. This arrangement expired October first. She returned home because, in the words of Der Spiegel, without protection she doesn't have a day left to live. The author asks a spokesman in favor of canceling her Dutch protection:

How many days will he give Ayaan? Another week to live? A month? And then it would be time for the butchers of fundamentalist Islam to move in?

Ayaan is one of six people granted protection by the Dutch government. She has reason to be fearful; she grew up female in an Islamic environment. After her escape to the west she began receiving threats when, as a Dutch citizen and member of the parliament, she spoke out critically against political Islam. Muslims posted her home address on the Internet accompanied by calls for her death. Her friend, filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, was murdered by a Muslim after they co-produced the ten minute film Submission to liberate the minds of Muslim men and women conditioned to obedience.

Islam responds with cowardice because it fears freedom of thought and speech. It fears comparison of its values to those of the west. It fears most of all the loss of power that must result when people can choose to throw off its chains because it knows they are and they will, and in droves. Islamic leaders desire most of all submission, not to the will of Allah, but to their morally bankrupt seventh century political ideal.

In Oak Lawn, Illinois, Christian and Muslim parents are learning to cooperate about things as basic as holiday celebrations in their children's elementary schools- See the post below. In an open society where radical Islamists have free movement, a noted author, parliamentarian, and fighter for freedom of faith, speech, and thought must fear for her life. Radical Islam fears the freedoms of Oak Lawn.

Multi-Culti Grinch rampage in Chicagoland

2007-10-02T20:15:00.000-05:00

CBS reports that a southwest suburban Chicago school district will discard traditional holidays in response to the wishes of a single Muslim parent. Ridgeland School District 122 will celebrate fall festival instead of Halloween and winter festival instead of Christmas. The decision affects four elementary schools in Oak Lawn and one junior high school in Bridgeview.

The district population is 30 percent Arab-American. Some of them practice Islam. Superintendent Tom Smyth says the change in tradition comes after one parent wanted Ramadan decorations put up inside Columbus Manor Elementary. They were taken down.

The article quotes parents without clarifying which are Muslim and which are not, but let's guess, based on last names.

One Muslim parent said, "To take away Halloween and Christmas from little kids is very wrong." Another said, "That does not represent all Muslims, all Arabs at that school. We celebrate the holidays and traditions here, but we do have the right to be Muslims as well." Muslim children are allowed to pray at lunch time during Ramadan. Seems fair to me.

Many non-Muslim parents are upset. One said, "It's not fair to our kids. This is America and that's an American tradition." Another said, "They get to pray in our schools. That is religion in a public school." In my opinion, any prayer at lunchtime is OK unless it involves animal sacrifice. That might confuse cafeteria workers.

The Superintendent's response? "I go back to our policy which says that public schools are to remain neutral in this respect." This isn't neutral. This promotes one viewpoint at the expense of another, long established. Let traditional holidays remain.

The odd thing is that this seems to be a step backward for Ridgeland. The calendar on the district's own website lists the following holidays: Yom Kippur, Eid al-Fitr, Halloween, Veterans' Day, Hanukkah, Eid al-Adha, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Muharram, Martin Luther King Day, Lincoln's Birthday, Valentine's Day, Casimir Pulaski Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, and Memorial Day. That looks pretty inclusive to me, especially if a little time is spent in class explaining each one. Shame on them for forgetting paczki day.

The district's families have a better grip on the reality of life in multicultural neighborhoods than the superintendent does. Judging from the cash-strapped condition of the district after a failed referendum last April, he should worry less about which holidays to promote and more about winning the confidence of the taxpayers on whom his job depends. Oh, and thanks to Chuck Jones and Warner Brothers for the Grinch- another enduring American tradition.

Jena- fodder for child abuse

2007-10-01T19:48:00.000-05:00

“The history of almost 400 years of racist violence... is alive today in Jena, Louisiana”. Well, at least it is down the road a bit in Grambling.

While townspeople in Jena sort things out together, teachers at an elementary school at Grambling State University indoctrinate kindergarteners in hate. Children provided with chains and shackles were led in a march around the schoolground and a little girl was hoisted into the air so that a noose fastened to a tree could be strung around her neck- by her grandmother. Photos and an article about the event were published on the university's website, The Gramblinite, claiming it was staged to teach the children about racism and events surrounding arrests in Jena. You have to wonder how honest the lesson was. University President Horace Judson immediately ordered the photos removed from the site and is starting a full investigation. Read the press release here.

I guess he can be proud that his teachers are on the cutting edge of liberal doctrine. The Teacher Activist Group has published a resource guide, Revealing Racist Roots: the 3 R’s for Addressing the Jena 6 in the Classroom, to help pump this sludge into more little brains. The group, which includes the intellectual beacons New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE), Chicago based Teachers for Social Justice (TSJ), and the San Francisco based Teachers 4 Social Justice (T4SJ) desperately wants events in Jena to be seen as equivalent to Jim Crow law and “crystalliz(ation of) the pervasive racist police violence, everyday discrimination, and criminalization faced by African American and other youth of color – on the streets and in their schools.”

What better way to prepare youth for a bright future than to portray them as perpetual victims? What better way to prepare a gullible electorate? Kindergarteners can't understand the struggles this country still has, sadly, with racism, but they won't forget the day their playmate was strung up. You can be confident that they'll never see this anywhere but in a history book again- until grandma or the teacher's union needs another photo op.

Jena not quite as it seemed

2007-09-30T16:14:00.000-05:00

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools... Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sober fact checking after the circus left town found that the whole Jena incident was, in the words of one black citizen, no downright, racial affair, despite remaining questions. The AP report- read it, it's good work- includes these facts:

The “white” tree at Jena High wasn't. All races congregated under it at one time or another.

Two nooses were found in the tree and cut down because black and white students “were playing with them... swinging... and putting their heads through them,” according to a black teacher.

There was no connection between the September noose incident and the December attack, according a U.S. Justice Department attorney who investigated claims that the events might be race-related hate crimes.

Youths accused of hanging the nooses were not just suspended for three days; they were isolated at an alternative school for about a month, and then given in-school suspension for two weeks.

The six-member jury that convicted Bell was, indeed, all white. However, only one in 10 people in LaSalle Parish is African American, and though black residents were selected randomly by computer and summoned for jury selection, none showed up.

Agreement can be found among black and white townsfolk that young troublemakers of both races got out of hand. Authorities didn't respond as wisely as they might have but are muddling through. Hanging the nooses was wrong, the beating was dangerously wrong, and those responsible for any outrage like these should be punished severely regardless of race. Jena is no Eden, but people there are communicating a little more frankly than they were before this all happened and are on the way toward solving their problems.

Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other race-baiting carpetbaggers seeking to profit from the tribulations of others should leave the good folks of Jena alone to continue learning to live together, as we all are. Let them seek elsewhere for sensationalism to jumpstart their dead careers.

What's the count, gents? The Tawana Brawley affair was strike one. It's a swing and a miss in Jena. The folks in the bleachers are keeping score.

More Police Taser Brutality

2007-09-29T15:58:00.000-05:00

CBS carries shocking videos of Hannah Storm's solid interview of a Taser© victim on the Early Show last week. Heidi Gill was tased until unconscious by a power drunk uniformed thug who must outweigh her by 100 pounds. Heidi, celebrating after a wedding with friends, left a bar when asked to do so after a verbal confrontation with a bar employee. She was seated in a vehicle waiting for a ride home when jumped by taser - wielding Warren, Ohio, police officer Richard Kovachs. Police cruiser video shows him repeatedly tasing his terrified, uncomprehending, and unresisting victim. Interview video shows twenty to thirty marks from taser discharge burned into the white slacks she wore that evening.

A taser is a gas-powered handgun. It fires barbed darts with enough force to penetrate an inch of clothing and embed themselves in your flesh like fishhooks. A pull on the trigger sends a 50,000 volt shock through wires and into the darts for five seconds- or until the battery is drained, if the aggressor holds the trigger down. The shock interrupts muscular control, and you fall. It's incredibly painful.

Police agencies discuss the use of physical tactics along a Force Continuum graduated from mild (the mere presence of police) to severe. When introduced, tasers were considered one step below shooting someone. In six years they've slipped toward the bottom of that scale and displaced much milder forms of control. If you doubt this, search YouTube using the term taser, and prepare to be disgusted. Leaving decisions about the use of force to street cops has allowed tasing to creep from a rare to an almost everyday event.

Department policy in Warren, Ohio states that a taser may be used when someone physically assaults or threatens to assault an officer, physically tries to defeat an officer trying to gain control, or tells the officer of intent to resist. Heidi did none of those things. In another Hannah Storm interview on CBS you can watch Gregory Hicks, Warren's Law Director and Chief Prosecutor squirm as he tries to distance the city and its police department from this incident. Officer Kovachs remains on administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation.

Tasers are now used by 11,000 agencies in 44 countries. According to the manufacturer's own press kit, tasers are used about 100,000 times each year. The risk is not from death in a single use, but from the growing unwarranted use against citizens by police across the country. We never hear about most taser use because it doesn't involve premium newscast material like attractive, white, blond, articulate 38-year-old single mother Heidi Gill.

My Christ, His Christ... Awww, Christ. Stop it.

2007-09-27T20:12:00.000-05:00

An estimated 20,000 protesters marched in Jena, Lousiana last week in a scene that evoked the early years of the civil rights movement among those who either are too young to remember it or bought into the Uncle Jesse and Cousin Al show. Despite the hype, the legal system there functioned well today as a key participant in the group beating of a high school student went free on bail after a misbegotten attempt to try him as an adult. Reed Walters, the District Attorney prosecuting the case, claimed divine guidance for the townspeople, beating a local pastor to the punch.

"The only way that I believe that me or this community has been able to endure the trauma that has been thrust upon us is through the prayers of the Christian people who have sent them up in this community. I firmly believe and am confident of the fact that had it not been for the direct intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ last Thursday, a disaster would have happened.”

The Reverend Donald Sibley, a Jena pastor late out of the gate in the Jesus race, was outraged that Walters credited divine intervention for the community's responsible behavior. Sibley told CNN that Walters had insulted the protesters by making a false separation between "his Christ and our Christ."

"I can't diminish Christ at all. But for him to use it in the sense that because his Christ, his Jesus, because he prayed, because of his police, that everything was peaceful and was decent and in order — that's not the truth."

Noted Diety Jesus H. Christ, reached for comment at home, spoke with some passion about the unsanctioned use of his name. “I've been ignoring this freak show as hard as I can. Neither one of these clowns speaks for me, no more than those other two do - you know who I'm talking about. Those white kids and black kids are completely off the rails. I pity the parents, they have their hands full. These folks claiming to speak for me will have their own hands full when I catch up with them, trust me.”

Jena isn't Selma

2007-09-23T12:16:00.000-05:00

The news is full of the sad result of misbehavior among white and black punks in Jena, Lousiana. Mychal Bell, a black high school kid, faces prison for being one of a group of six who beat up a white classmate in a town torn by racial tensions. Accusers protest that other fights following a schoolyard turf dispute didn't result in arrests and prosecutions because white punks beat up black punks instead. Bell's conviction for aggravated second-degree battery was thrown out because he was wrongly tried as an adult. That, and a poor job by his public defender, raise legitimate concern that justice will not be served.

That being said, this isn't Selma. This isn't Little Rock. This is punk rock, white punks and black punks doing what they do best. A whole collection of idiots of all ages and all shades of grey deserve a major beat-down.

The ACLU and the NAACP, veterans of honest fights and recognizing a Bad Idea when they see it, haven't become involved in any substantive way and probably won't. Both are marginally involved through passive participation, filing information requests, presenting petitions, and organizing marches and prayer vigils.

Civil rights footnotes and media whores Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, desperate for face time, jumped in with both feet. Both are milking the incident for another shot at relevance. Jena was Jesse's chance to link arms with marchers and link his name with Barack Obama's in the press by accusing him of not being “black enough” for ignoring the march. Sharpton didn't miss the chance to invoke the patron saint of civil rights:

”This is the beginning of the 21st century civil rights movement... Martin Luther King Jr. faced Jim Crow. We've come to Jena to face James Crow Jr., Esq."

Don't be taken in by the rhetoric. Don't mistake morons for icons. Leaders are shaped by their cause. Jena is about punks misbehaving, not a nationwide struggle against Jim Crow laws. The “Jena Six” are no more the Little Rock Nine than Tawana Brawley is Harriet Tubman or Sojourner Truth.

Finally, Useful Research

2007-09-22T23:38:00.000-05:00

A major advance is signaled today as doctors unveil details of a technique that will allow breakfast to be grown in the laboratory from human tissue samples. It will allow career women, or those waiting to meet the right partner, to delay learning to prepare meals for years.

The first stage of the technique involves removing slivers of ovarian tissue through keyhole surgery. Though just millimeters wide, each sample contains thousands of immature eggs. In the second stage, slabs, or “rashers”, of heavily marbled tissue are removed from the thighs or buttocks of the donor. The tissue is then frozen until ready to fry breakfast. At that time, it will be stimulated with hormones to grow the immature eggs and bacon slices into mature ones ready for use.

Researchers said the technique would be of "huge benefit" because women could avoid the process of injecting themselves daily with hormones to stimulate their interest in marketing, having to endure an uncomfortable trip to harvest the eggs in the ordinary manner.

Doctors working on the new method at the Tunnel Fertility and Breakfast Centre in London say different elements of the technique are already in use but it will take some time before the whole process is pieced together and perfected. Sadly, though the human reproductive system is well known as a source of yeast, bread for toast and English muffins must still be purchased at the grocery for the forseeable future.

Hillary's socialist beachhead

2007-09-18T18:53:00.000-05:00

Socialist democracy is not a luxury but an absolute, essential necessity for overthrowing capitalism and building socialism. Ernest Mandel

Yesterday in Iowa, America's crypto-socialist Hillary Clinton announced that she plans to force you to purchase health insurance before you can get a job. "You (will) have to show proof to your employer that you're insured as a part of the job interview...” She doesn't plan punitive measures other than the prospect of unemployment to force you to do comply. Yet. "At this point, we don't have anything punitive that we have proposed," she said in an interview with The A.P.

In a bold move to extend the federal government's control of your life, she plans to force every American to buy health insurance, bribing those who can't afford it with credits and subsidies funded by taxing money away from those who can.

I've built a career that enables me to require my employer to provide health care as part of my compensation. I don't need her plan. I don't deserve to be punished with taxation for planning ahead; nor does any professional; nor does any union member. She claims she wants to “build on the current employer-based system” but this scheme is planned to supplant it entirely. All this will build is American socialism.

America - compatible Islam?

2007-09-17T19:50:00.000-05:00

In a post below I wonder at the apparent silence of American Muslims concerning the possibility of reform in their faith. The web being what it is I don't know quite what to make of the Free Muslim Coalition site. I advise you to follow the link and investigate for yourself. Taken at face value, it seems to want to be the voice of some Muslims in America. This statement appears on its home page:

We believe in the re-interpretation of Islam for the 21st century where terrorism is not justified under any circumstances.
We believe in the separation of religion and state.
We believe that democracy is the best form of government.
We believe in the promotion of secularism in all forms of political activity.
We believe that equality for women is an inalienable right.
We believe that religion is a personal relationship between the individual and his or her God and is not to be forced on anyone.

They seem to profess quite another version of Islam than we read about in the news. The site cautiously repudiates many practices and beliefs that make Islam incompatible with western civilization. I would love to see any American Muslim's reaction to these ideas and sentiments.

Brave Muslim Apostates call for Reform

2007-09-16T11:42:00.000-05:00

Last week the Times carried an exciting article about brave Muslims' campaign to make it safe to leave their religion. This news comes from the Netherlands:

A group of young Muslim apostates launches a campaign today... to make it easier to renounce Islam... The provocative move reflects a growing rift between traditionalists and a younger generation raised on a diet of Dutch tolerance... Similar organisations campaigning for reform of the religion have sprung up across Europe and representatives from Britain and Germany will join the launch in The Hague today.

This may not seem like a big deal to you. Members of traditional churches in the U.S. may suffer if they commit a grave offense against or renounce their faith, but repercussions are generally limited to the religious life. Excommunicated, you're free to go on with some emotional bruises and your principles intact to find a church that suits you- or no church at all, if you please. That's not the case with Islam.

The Koran teaches that believers must kill anyone who turns from Islam. Read this for yourself. Search the online Koran provided by the University of Michigan for the word “kill”- you'll find that Sura 4:89 reads as described in the Times article. The hadith, a collection of tradition and legend about Muhammad and his followers, is just as harsh. It tells of a special reward in paradise for killers of apostates.

The founder of the Committee for Ex-Muslims , Ehsan Jami, says in the article:

“Sharia schools say that they will kill the ones who leave Islam... In Islam you are born Muslim. You do not even choose to be Muslim. We want that to change, so that people are free to choose who they want to be and what they want to believe in.”

The freedom to choose terrifies the European Muslim community and its authorities, who fear the competition among ideas that flourishes in a free state. This can't be stopped by any power short of totalitarianism. Islam will reform or it will die after a long, disappointing and increasingly irrelevant senescence.

Major questions remain. When will enlightened NON-apostate Muslims be brave enough to stand up for this important freedom? Secondly, the article and references linked cite participants from Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands. When will American Muslims stand up and add their voices to this call for reform?

It's night time, Blinky, it's supposed to be dark

2007-09-14T19:37:00.000-05:00

"The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible." Ralph Waldo Emerson

I live in on a quiet street in a rural town. My bedroom window overlooks the back yard from the second floor. The view is charming after dark, especially under a full moon- I can't see that the grass needs mowing and the acorns fallen from the oak have taken root and crowd the hostas in the rock garden. I'll pull blankets from the cedar chest up to my chin so I can keep the sash up. Even on cold winter nights it's worth a shiver to hear the old pine sigh in the wind and watch cats move in the blue shadows.

Since midsummer I need to be careful which way I look to keep that spell intact. My neighbor has installed unshielded garden lights along his rear fence and the glare is awful until a timer shuts them off at eleven. This kind of trespass isn't new for him. Since spring I haven't been able to step out on my back porch without triggering the clear glass bulb over his side door. Since last summer I can't set up my telescope in the middle of my back yard without tripping the sensor that turns on the floodlights on the back of his garage. The year before that he installed a post light with a milk glass globe on his front lawn that stays lit all night long.

I don't know what his problem is, exactly, but I just learned from a great article in the New Yorker that there's a name for this rudeness: light trespass. Light doesn't respect property lines any more than loud music does. Many communities have laws to prohibit objectionably loud music or mufflers, especially after dark. An anonymous phone call will bring cops to your door with a noise complaint.

Few small towns treat light pollution the same way. Larger cities have larger problems. Some limit street, mall, and building lighting and require fixture design to direct light onto the ground or road while shielding the eyes from glare. You can find model lighting ordinances online. Even so, I've flown over the country at night and have been astonished by how few and far between are the lovely dark islands among blazes of light.

Illegal immigrant child abuse

2007-09-13T12:37:00.000-05:00

Today's article headlined “Boy leads protest over deported mother” is another brass-balled example of biased reporting by the Associated Press. Yahoo's carrying it and the Drudge Report links it using the headline provided by the AP. Let's desconstruct this...

An 8-year old boy... led a chanting crowd of about 150 pro-immigration activists through the halls of Congress on Wednesday.

The boy didn't lead anything. The conscience-free protestors shamelessly shoved a banner into his hands and herded him along in front of them, an unwilling poster child for their cause. Note that this isn't about promoting LEGAL immigration, it's about letting illegal immigration proceed unabated.

Asked by a demonstrator whether he wanted to speak, he shook his head no... looking distracted, (he) then joined other children at the front of an unruly procession through the halls and basements of two House office buildings.

He was leading this protest the same way a bug splattered on a windshield leads a car speeding down an interstate highway.

In Tijuana, Mexico, across the border from San Diego, (his mother) Elvira Arellano spoke about her son to several dozen demonstrators. “He is a boy who has been suffering because the U.S. Government told his mother she couldn't stay in their country anymore because she was undocumented,” she said.

No, he's suffering because mommy (intone that blessed word with hand on heart and eyes raised to heaven), deported once before his birth as an illegal immigrant, returned for a repeat engagement, got pregnant but not married, and stayed undocumented for several years before getting caught using a false social security number to illegally hold a job. She was ordered to report for deportation but instead stayed for another year in the sanctuary provided by a well-meaning church group near Chicago. She was finally arrested and deported only after thumbing her nose at La Migra by traveling to Los Angeles to lead immigration protests.

So, si se puede. Yes, you can. You can lie. You can use your kid as media bait. You can't, however, play the Mommy Card in this round. That card's been trumped by the truth. Leave that poor kid out of your protests.

9/11 thoughts on the Reform of Islam

2007-09-11T21:51:00.000-05:00

Though Muslims seem to have cornered the market on crazy for the last few years, Islam isn't the only strange faith out there. All religions teach some very odd things. Honest believers admit that they swallow whole beliefs that make no sense to anyone but their coreligionists. They're unprovable; that's why it's called faith, and to be fair, all religions have exactly the same degree of proof that their beliefs are true.

This is the reason for fellowship. People who think like you reinforce your beliefs instead of rolling their eyes and making little circles in the air next to their ear with their index finger. It feels good to belong to a group that has exclusive rights to The Truth. Generally nobody else cares that you believe this unless you are obnoxious about it. Evangelists, take note.

The poisonous mix of culture and religion that is Islam today takes this a step too far and teaches that it's OK to commit mayhem upon those who believe differently. This unforgivable idea makes Islam intolerable to civilized people. It's not the first religion to feature this error. Remember crusades and pogroms? Other religions have, at one time or another, entertained this perverse notion. Those that have survived have outgrown it. Islam hasn't, yet. It hasn't had the time and recently hasn't been exposed to competing ideas.

Judaism and Christianity are far older than Islam. They no longer exist in their pristine forms in any significant way. They've adapted over centuries of urban coexistence; their sharper corners rounded by bumping up against diverse ideas at large in the western world. Heterogeneous society is good for civilization. Homogeneity and isolation allow pathological belief systems to fester unchallenged. Dissenting voices are brutally silenced.

Muslims in the west are free to discuss their beliefs in an open market of ideas and are asking the hard questions, trying to reconcile their beliefs with the reality of life in their new homes. See if you don't recognize the questions they ask about their faith as the ones you ask about your own. From the ranks of writers and thinkers like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji, Salman Rushdie, and Taslima Nasrin may come the first reformers of Islam.

Exploding Mexican Trucks- coming soon to a highway near You

2007-09-10T18:03:00.000-05:00

Today a truck hauling dynamite collided with another vehicle on a busy highway in Mexico, leaving a crater in the concrete 40 feet long and 10 feet wide, killing at least 34 people, and injuring more than 150. The explosion was powerful enough to blow the windows out of a bus a quarter mile away.

Last weekend, Mexico sent its first tractor-trailers into the U.S. as permitted under a long-delayed, NAFTA-mandated program. They used to be restricted to a zone 25 miles wide near the border. Supposedly trucks hauling hazardous materials aren't included in the new program. Yet.

Imagine the effect this explosion would have in your hometown. Picture it happening along I-94 between Detroit and Chicago, on I-80 across the top of northwest Indiana, or on I-70 between Columbus and Indianapolis. Imagine the effect during rush hour where homes crowd the margins of the highway.

Are Mexican trucks subject to the same safety regulations as American trucks? Are they as well serviced? Do they have the same weight limitations? Do they pay the same tolls and fuel and highway taxes? Are they subject to the same traffic enforcement and the same DOT regulations? Do they have the same exhaust pollution restrictions?

Do Mexican drivers have the same time-behind-the-wheel safety limitations as American drivers? Do they have the same training? How many American driving jobs will be lost to Mexican truckers?

Never mind that plunging Mexican trucking into the heartland provides a toehold for the NAFTA Superhighway. Trucks must be inspected by customs officials before they enter U.S. Territory, not at some terminal in Kansas City. Expect customs officials to rack up a lot of overtime. Expect the cost of street drugs to plummet. Expect terrorists to have a far easier means of entry than they do now. If we let the border become this porous we raise the specter of tons of explosives, even a dirty bomb, deliberately trucked to within striking distance of an American city in the name of Free Trade.

Immigrate Legally

2007-09-09T16:23:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago the Chicago Tribune carried the story of Elvira Arellano, a criminal fugitive who was deported once and returned for a repeat engagement. She was caught again. Rather than report for deportation, she sought sanctuary in a Humboldt Park church and reimagined herself as an activist and a national symbol for illegal immigrant parents . There she was left alone for months until she traveled to Los Angeles to speak at an immigration rally and was arrested afterwards. She had this to say:

''They were in a hurry to deport me because they saw that I was threatening to mobilize and organize the people to fight for legalization,'' Arellano said in Spanish outside the Tijuana apartment building where she was staying. ''I have a fighting spirit and I'm going to continue fighting.''

Something was lost in translation unless "fighting" means "sitting on my butt in a church for a year and doing nothing much" in Spanish. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wasn't threatened by her efforts. They weren't in much of a hurry, either. They deported her because after months of very vocal attention whoring she left the sanctuary provided by the goodhearted but misguided congregation of the Adalberto United Methodist Church. ICE just avoided the hysterical press that would have followed a raid on a midwestern church.

The saddest note in her story is that she had to choose either to leave her US-born son in the land of his birthright or take him to Mexico with her. Her decision to leave him with his godmother in Chicago is somehow seen as a great tragedy rather than simple common sense and the easily foreseen direct result of Elvira's own choices.

The September print edition of The Progressive magazine tells of two more indocumentados in similar straits. One of them, a young woman with infant in tow, has taken refuge in yet another church acting as part of what's called the New Sanctuary Movement. Supporters of this movement apparently see no difference between Central American political refugees of the 80's and opportunist scofflaws of the 00's. Hidden behind the pain and disrupted lives of all three families are stories with this simple pattern:

I'm not a political refugee fleeing for my life from an oppressive regime. I came to the US to work at a better paying job. I forged documents (birth certificate, social security number) to legitimize myself. I lived under the radar for years, not paying taxes, and got away with it because immigration laws are as weakly enforced as I had hoped. I married a naturalized citizen and we have a US- born child. During all my years in the States I did not avail myself of existing means to work toward citizenship. Now the law has caught up with me and I will be separated from my family and deported. I've been a model citizen with the exception of my illegal status. Isn't this sad? Won't you let me slide?

No. Send us the tired, the poor, the homeless, the tempest-tossed. Many Americans still like those sentiments even though they're not and never were policy. We will insist on citizenship, however. This worked for the Irish, the Italian, the German, the Pole, the Jew, the Muslim, and the Hindu, for refugees and immigrants from too many lands to mention, and we think it should work for you too. Don't drag little Saulito or Pablito out as Poster Child for the Fabricated Cause when rules you knew about and dodged are finally enforced after years of grace.

Some things are true

2007-09-07T23:24:00.000-05:00

See, I knew this was true- Guinness really IS good for you. Like I need a reason to enjoy a pint. At home, of course, for there's no decent pub within forty miles of here. Bars and pubs are endangered species thanks to the sad fantasy that a drop of alcohol in your blood is a major threat to society. This does generate easy gigs for cops who'd rather strut through sobriety checkpoints than do any actual work.
Twenty years ago you could stop after work for a social pint or four and a game of darts at the millgate inn or the corner local without worrying about lurking malcontents with badges. No more. What progress.

Welcome!

2007-09-07T18:56:00.000-05:00

Welcome to a new blog. Do comment, do explore the links, and do stop in as the blog develops. I have no idea how the road will turn. I'll stick with the layout provided by Blogspot, for a start, and tweak as I go. I still want to add some features and discard others I won't be using. As for content- we'll see.