nostate.com

Václav Klaus vetoes anti-discrimination act

May 16th, 2008 by Mike Gogulski | Posted in politics | No Comments »

One of Europe’s very, very few not entirely bought-and-paid for politicians, smackin’ ‘em down again.

An excerpt from Klaus’s veto statement published on his own blog (in Czech), and translated by Luboš Motl:

I consider the bill to be a useless, counterproductive, and low-quality bill while its consequences seem to be problematic.

[...]

The Czech Republic is not discriminating against anyone, and it is thus unsurprising that this hypothetical discrimination is not the theme of the bill. Nevertheless, the bill gives the citizens the right to be treated equally in the relationships of the private and commercial sectors which is, by definition, impossible. In an essential way, it tries to interfere with matters that have been subjects to refinements by traditions and ethical standards for centuries. Using this legal construct, our government is trying to “codify a good behavior” and it tells us that the main driver behind our good behavior should be a bill, not the education in the family, generally accepted and unwritten formulae of behavior that are usual in our society, natural role models, traditions, etc. It is another attempt to regulate the human life by laws.

Victoria, BC citizenry to pay $60,000 to brutalized teen

May 16th, 2008 by Mike Gogulski | Posted in police, prison, surveillance | No Comments »

Willow Kinloch, then aged 15, got picked up three years ago by the Victoria police for the victimless crime of being drunk in public. For her own protection, or something.

Somehow unable to manage taking an intoxicated, frightened young woman back to her mother, the cops take her back to a jail cell. Things get really out of hand when Ms. Kinloch kicks a shoe at a poor defenseless jail matron. She’s pinned against a wall, thrown to the ground by two police officers, bound at the hands and ankles and left sitting against the cell door like that. For four hours. Without a toilet. With nothing to eat or drink.

Kinloch took the uniformed bullies to court, and won. The Victoria PD has been ordered to pay her $60,000 to settle the case.

The sanctimonious police chief was quoted by Canwest News Service:

B.C. teen who was tethered in jail cell wins lawsuit

Jury says police used excessive force

[...]

Victoria’s interim police Chief Bill Naughton said the police department will be reviewing the jury’s decision and assessing its next steps.

“While it was always our intention to keep Ms. Kinloch safe, I do regret the distress the incident has caused Ms. Kinloch and her family,” Naughton said.

He said as soon as he became aware of the incident, he advised the office of the Police Complaint Commissioner and initiated an external investigation now being conducted by the Vancouver Police Department. He has also ordered a review of policies regarding the restraint of people in custody.

Naughton said he was surprised at the verdict but would not elaborate.

Asked what would happen to the officers involved, he said he would be in a better position to comment after thoroughly reviewing the jury’s comments.

“I think it is critical to understand that while the jury has found fault on behalf of the officers, they did not find it necessary to punish them by awarding punitive damages, and I think that’s very significant,” Naughton said.

A local radio station reports:

VICTORIA POLICE REACT TO KINLOCH LAWSUIT VERDICT

[...]

IT’S THE DEPARTMENT WHO HAS BEEN ORDERED TO PAY THE $60-THOUSAND, NOT THE OFFICERS PERSONALLY.

And the burly jail matron whose ridiculous overreaction to being hit in the leg by a flying sneaker is having second thoughts about having been assaulted, according to the Vancouver Sun:

Guard backs off from claim teen assaulted her

Jail matron admits video doesn’t support story

Presented with video evidence in court Friday, a Victoria jail matron named in a civil suit backed away from a statement she signed three years earlier claiming a local teen assaulted her.

Victoria’s taxpayers, who will be forced to foot the bill for these thugs’ misdeeds, were not interviewed. They can rest easy, though, that the police are still out there “protecting” people, and that “protecting” their city from the nightmare horror of a drunken teenager cost them only $60,000. Plus legal fees. Plus court fees. Plus the salaries of everyone involved. Plus… oh never mind.

Justice, truth and accountability for Robert Dziekański

May 16th, 2008 by Mike Gogulski | Posted in police | No Comments »

Robert Dziekański was killed seven months ago at Vancouver International Airport.

After waiting around in immigration and customs hell for some ten hours, unable to speak or understand English and clearly disturbed, Dziekański was tasered to death within a minute of police arriving on the scene.

Yesterday, Dziekański’s mother, Zofia Cisowski, appeared at the public inquiry into taser use across Canada and specifically into the death of her son.

From the Toronto Star:

Tearful mom urges end to police Taser use

“Mr. Commissioner, my confidence and faith in the RCMP and Canadian authorities are shattered,” she said, dabbing at tears with a handkerchief.

“I was shocked and distressed to learn how my son died after the tape held by police was released to the public, and the story was very different than I was told by the authorities.”

She said her son would still be alive had he not been hit twice with an RCMP Taser, when, appearing confused and agitated after spending many hours at the airport, he was confronted by four officers.

“I know that he did not deserve the treatment he encountered at the Vancouver airport,” Cisowski said.

The current phase of the inquiry is looking into Taser use by law enforcement in general. Later, the commission will look specifically into Dziekanski’s death.

Cisowski said she is eagerly awaiting that second phase.

“I want justice, truth and accountability,” she said in a halting voice in the crowded hearing room.

In her final plea to the inquiry before her tears returned, Cisowski said she hoped the recommendations that emerge from the inquiry are such “that another mother will not experience so much suffering like I do.”

She’s not likely to get justice, truth, or accountability, though at least the latter pair should be fairly simple.

One need only watch the video to see the truth of how Mr. Dziekański died: he was killed by four uniformed thugs armed with electroshock weapons.

If the inquiry leads to criminal charges against the four officers involved, which seems highly unlikely, we might discover which of the uniformed thugs actually pulled the taser triggers, making them directly responsible for this crime. It won’t matter, though, since they’ll have the clown suit defense on their side.

Justice is another matter entirely, and no amount of it is going to bring a grieving mother’s dead son back to life.

$95.6 million for a beer, the price of central banking in Zimbabwe

May 15th, 2008 by Mike Gogulski | Posted in economics | No Comments »

From the Independent Institute blog:

Ah, good old hyperinflation. Reminds me of a couple of old banknotes I keep lying around for fun:

One hundred million billion pengő, Hungary, 1946

One hundred million marks, Germany, 1923

Hypocritical toward Iran nuclear issue: how shocking!

May 15th, 2008 by Mike Gogulski | Posted in war | 1 Comment »

From Press TV:

Blix: West approach to Iran ‘hypocritical’
Wed, 14 May 2008 17:53:20

Former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix hammers world powers for their ‘hypocritical’ approach to the Islamic Republic’s nuclear issue.

In a recent interview with Channel Four News, Blix said the West’s approach to Tehran’s nuclear standoff is in marked contrast to that of North Korea.

“The North Koreans have been offered guarantees against any attacks from outside, the Iranians have not been offered this as far as we know, nor have they been offered diplomatic relations which the North Koreans have been,” said the former IAEA chief.

“When you see talks now with the North Korean and the Iranian, they sit there and are told by the US and other, who retain all these weapons, you should not have all these nuclear weapons, that it is a danger for you, it is not a danger for us, it is for the safety of the world that is very hypocritical,” Blix affirmed.

Well, duh, Hans. Iran is in a critical strategic position, unlike North Korea. Iran controls substantial oil and natural gas reserves, unlike North Korea. Iran is surrounded on all sides by American military assets, unlike North Korea. And perhaps most importantly, Iran doesn’t share borders with China or Russia, as North Korea does.

Besides, Kim Jong-Il has SHARKS, Hans, or don’t you remember?

Police to Pursue Pricing

May 14th, 2008 by Mike Gogulski | Posted in economics | 1 Comment »

Last week, Slovakia received its anticipated green light from the European Commission to adopt the euro. Speculation has been widespread in the country that joining the common currency will lead to increases in real consumer prices, as it has in other nations.

Slovak daily SME reports today that left-wing Prime Minister Robert Fico is proposing to make “speculative” pricing around euro adoption a crime (my translation from Slovak):

Police to Pursue Pricing

BRATISLAVA. Speculation with the prices of goods and services upon converting to the euro should be a crime. According to Justice Minister Štefan Harabin, the Ministry of Justice has responded to statements from Prime Minister Robert Fico and begun working on an amendment to the Criminal Code.

The amendment should set so-called “machinations” around the euro transition outside the law. It would concern unjustified speculation around transition to the euro currency which harms consumers. According to the Ministry, prison or fines should befall all who would wish to “enrich themselves or harm others in determining pricing for goods or services in euros.”

The Ministry did not make clear, however, what precisely is meant by machinations around the euro transition.

[...]

Socialist economics

“This is in conflict with a market economy; it is a principle of socialist economics,” said [lawyer] Gazareková at length. In her view, it is interference in the functioning of the market.

Juraj Karpiš, an analyst with the institute INESS, cautions that such regulatory activity from the government could lead to early price increases even before euro adoption. Businesses will be particularly afraid that after the euro transition they won’t be legally able to change prices so as to provide for a new situation in the market. Thus, they’ll prefer to do so in advance.

“Pricing is purely a matter for businesses, and it’s up to them alone how much they will sell their property for,” Karpiš said.

But let’s not allow reality intrude to now, Messrs. Fico and Harabin. And let’s not call out the hypocrisy of using the law as a tool to benefit the “little guy” consumers here as opposed to the “big bad” businesses when the Slovak central bank has been sticking it to importers (meaning anyone buying anything from outside the country: food, clothing, medicine, etc.) to the benefit of (a comparatively few) exporters through its own “machinations” under the ERM II exchange rate criteria in the face of a continuously strengthening local currency for years. No no, that wouldn’t do at all.

Related, and in English: Fico: Government Ready to Regulate Prices against Chisellers

The clown suit defense, and the excuses of symbols

May 14th, 2008 by Mike Gogulski | Posted in police | 2 Comments »

Many years ago, when I was an activist campaigner for drug policy reform in the United States, there was an occasional but extremely cogent contributor to the quasi-underground listservs that bound the community together. Sadly, I can’t even remember his name, and it appears through some digging that his writings are no longer available, but I will summarize.

If I were to break down the door to my neighbor’s home, push a gun in the face of the family that lives there, announce that they had offended me, or my masters, for some behavior of theirs which was proscribed by the scrawlings of blind yet dutiful scribes in some mysterious set of holy books that they had neither read nor subscribed to, and then demand that they comply with my instantaneous orders or be subject to the instantaneous power of death which issues from the barrel of my gun — would they or would they not be justified in defending themselves? Would they or would they not be justified in attempting to escape? Would they or would they not act morally by exerting every possible influence, by applying every possible force, to stop me enforcing whatever arbitrary proscription I found in my holy book?

Of course they would. Be it that my presumably holy book contained a proscription against eating rabbit, that it spake ill of cooking and eating meat on the bone, that it condemned the growing and ingestion of cannabis sativa or salvia divinorum or cooking up a bit of methamphetamine in the bathtub, you should rightly denounce me thus:

Of course! You have no right to come into their home, to disturb them, to push weapons into their faces, to threaten them with death, torture, imprisonment, sanction, condemnation or to demand anything! Your act is a crime, and when the rest of us in the neighborhood get together and hear about it, we’re going to throw you OUT of our community at the very least, and if you resist, use every power and force to be rid of you, so that we may protect ourselves and our children and our families and our loved ones and our comrades and our friends and our colleagues and our neighbors and our acquaintances and the bitchy middle-aged spinster who works as a cashier at the shop on the corner from YOU and your insane, arbitrary, needless, senseless, highfaltutin proscriptions.

I would be a criminal. Perhaps misguided, perhaps insane, perhaps deluded or perhaps only following orders, I would still be a criminal, a violator, a trespasser and completely out of my right.

Oh, but… the objection is raised, as was done by that listserv contributor and fellow human being whose name I have long forgotten, “What if I’m wearing a clown suit when I do this?”

“Oh! A clown suit!” all proclaim, prostrating themselves and genuflecting before the one true God. “Why, if he’s wearing a clown suit, it must be all right! We know that clowns want only the best things for our children, and of course clowns must go through rigorous training and certification in order to be granted, by the powers that be, that most sacred privilege of wearing the clown suit! Surely, if he’s wearing a clown suit, he is in the right, and they are the evil doers, they are the ones who have transgressed, and, indeed, they must be punished.”

Ridiculous, isn’t it?

Per Bylund, whose writings are far more incisive than mine, describes it thus in an article which goes far beyond the issue of drug prohibition:

What is it with a uniform that makes a vice a virtue? Let me tell you a secret: there is nothing with a uniform that gives you the right to kill, pillage, destroy, and attack. The villain here is not only the person committing the crime - i.e., carrying out the attack - but to a great degree you. You are the problem with this world, for as long as you react not to the crime but what the perpetrator is wearing there is no hope for this world.

But, when you ask yourself, deeply, honestly, in that still place that is the center of your universe, whether or not the clown suit makes any difference, what is your answer?

Endgame Iowa: Live drill for mass internment in America

May 13th, 2008 by Mike Gogulski | Posted in police | 1 Comment »

From Cryptogon.com, which you should be reading. Strange they had to use the fairgrounds, though, maybe Cedar Rapids doesn’t have one of them fancy new Kellogg, Brown and Root detention camps yet…:

ENDGAME: HUNDREDS ARRESTED IN IOWA IMMIGRATION RAID; FAIRGROUNDS USED AS FEDERAL “HOLDING FACILITY”

May 13th, 2008

This is almost certainly a Department of Homeland Security ENDGAME operation.

I hosted the document on Cryptogon:

U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement
ENDGAME
Office of Detention and Removal Strategic Plan, 2003 - 2012
Detention and Removal Strategy for a Secure Homeland

Via: The Gazette:

More than 300 people here have already been arrested in what is being called the largest operation of its kind in Iowa, federal officials said this afternoon.

Disturbing Stirrings - Ratcheting Up For War on Iran

May 13th, 2008 by Mike Gogulski | Posted in war | No Comments »

Very long, but worth a read.

From the Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel:

Disturbing Stirrings - Ratcheting Up For War on Iran

by Stephen Lendman

Led by Dick Cheney, Bush administration neocons want war on Iran. So does the Israeli Lobby, but it doesn’t mean they’ll get it. Powerful forces in Washington and the Pentagon are opposed and so far have prevailed. Nonetheless, worrisome recent events increase the possibility and must be closely watched.

[...]

With Iraq still raging and hawkishness over Iran heating up, it’s disquieting to think what’s coming, and it’s got Middle East leaders uneasy. Not about Iran, about a rogue administration with over eight months left to incinerate the region in a mushroom-shaped cloud and no hesitation about doing it.

Electroshock torture new penalty for expired tag?

May 13th, 2008 by Mike Gogulski | Posted in police, torture | No Comments »

Ah it’s great how a victimless status crime such as driving with an expired license plate can lead to electroshock torture these days. Didn’t pay your tax on time? Ride the taser. Sure, the officer wasn’t “adequately trained in the use of the taser”… they know what it does. They get zapped as part of their training.

Of course we’ll wait for all the “facts” to come out in court, where the deck will be stacked heavily in favor of the trigger-happy uniformed thugs, as usual.

Just remember here, it could have been worse for Mr. Fields. The ultimate penalty, after all, for insufficient obeisance to the State, is death.

UPDATE: New at AlterNet: Why the Police Wouldn’t Tase Me When I Asked Them to

From the Mansfield News Journal, Ohio:

May 12, 2008

Mansfield man’s lawsuit alleges excessive police force

BY LINDA MARTZ
News Journal

MANSFIELD — A West Third Street man has sued Mansfield, claiming police used excessive force in a traffic stop after he suffered head wounds and a collapsed lung. The suit says the injuries required surgery to his ankle, and he spent several days on life support.

Phillip Fields Jr., 36, of 191 West Third St., contends the police department failed to properly train officers on the use of the taser and failed to use good faith investigating his complaint about the incident.

Defendants in the lawsuit, filed May 6 in Richland County Common Pleas Court, are the City of Mansfield, Officers Richard Dittrich, Terry Rogers, Philip Messer Jr., and up to 10 unnamed employees of the police department.

Fields was arrested July 6, 2007, when he pulled into his driveway at 334 West Longview Avenue.

“He was supposedly pulled over because he had an expired license tag. He exited his vehicle and gave his ID, and the officer said he was under arrest,” attorney Daniel R. Mordarski said. “When Mr. Fields tried to find out why, the police officer threatened him with a taser, then actually used the taser on him. He shot him anywhere between 5 and 10 times.”

The lawsuit contends Fields immediately fell to the ground after the taser was first used, and got tangled in the long wires attached to his body via the taser darts. Fields contends he had difficulties complying with Dittrich’s order to place his hands behind his back because of the wires and the electrical current traveling through his body.

Court filings maintain the suspect’s brother Jimmy called the police department asking for additional officers to respond to the scene to stop Dittrich from using the taser again. He tried to remove the wires from his brother, and was arrested.

“Phillip went inside the house with his mom and sat at the kitchen table and had a cigarette and waited for police to come for him,” Mordarski said.

According to the lawsuit, a team of officers entered the house and tackled Fields after he held his arms out and told police he would come with them. Fields claims he was kicked and punched by Officers Rogers, Dittrich and Messer Jr. He contends he received a serious ankle injury, a serious head injury, burns from electricity, a collapsed lung and other injuries that required him to be on a medical life support system at the hospital.

The lawsuit alleges the city tried to cover up the use of excessive force and minimize the extent of Phillips’ injuries — with only three officers filling out a Response to Resistance/Aggression Report, listing Fields only injury was a minor cut to the head or forehead.

The lawsuit said Fields was taken to the hospital and remained in intensive care and on a ventilator for several days, with severe injuries.

“It does appear that he had some memory loss and some pretty difficult emotional distress,” Mordarski said.

According to Mordarski, an internal affairs investigation conducted by the city “attempted to justify the actions of the officers, rather than actually investigate the details of the brutal attack.”

The lawsuit contends the city took no action to discipline any of the officers, and tacitly authorized their conduct.

“I don’t know anything about it,” Mansfield Service-Safety Director Ron Kreuter said. “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

Kreuter said he wasn’t sure if the citizens police review board has looked into the incident.

“I imagine if there was a use of force case, it went through the review board, because we take everything through them, where a use of force is involved.”

Field’s attorney said the 36-year-old’s past history of arrest should not have made a difference in how officers treated him.

“The Constitution says that a police department can only use a reasonable amount of force. Mr. Fields was being arrested for a non-violent traffic violation,” Mordarski said. “They cannot use a taser to simply get a defendant to comply with the order of a police officer.”

Mordarski said Monday a jury trial will be sought, along with payment of Fields’ medical costs, as well as some changes in police department procedures.

“Just based upon what we’ve learned so far, we believe he (Dittrich) either was not adequately trained in the use of the taser, or that he disregarded what he learned. It’s a tragic situation for Phillip Fields, being abused and beaten and put in the hospital for an expired license violation.”