Right near the beginning of the discussion, I asked group members to indicate if they were criminals, by raising their hands, and led off by sticking mine up first.

Eventually, and rather quickly, every hand went up.

There is honor among thieves, though the “thievery” in play here is of the legal kind, not the moral kind (think: mp3). This represents and opportunity for building community among libertarians, which is largely ignored by the mainstream libertarian movement.

Camp attendees who are following my blog are encouraged to read “The penalty is always death” (which I presented in abbreviated form in several sessions anyway), and the linked “Clown suit defense” articles.

David Gross of The Picket Line submits an exploration of ethical reductionism in the context of political theory: Does political philosophy reduce to ethical philosophy?

[This] is what makes the liberal political theories and their justifications difficult for me to swallow. They seem to have this backwards. According to them, some behavior at the ethical level switches from unethical to ethical based on the description it is given at the political level, rather than its description at the political level being based on an analysis of it at the ethical level. Whereas it seems to me that whether a particular action is ethical or not should not depend on what political system you’re operating under or what role the people involved play in that system; rather, whether the system is reasonable and coherent should depend on whether the individuals enacting their roles in that system behave ethically in so doing.

With his submission, he says: “Some anarchists and libertarians seem to believe that political philosophy reduces to ethical philosophy, the same way some scientists believe that chemistry ultimately reduces to physics. Is this part of the appeal of anarchism, and does it make sense?” I for one do believe that the political ought to reduce to the ethical, that this does make sense and that it is part of anarchism’s appeal. My own posting on the clown suit defense makes this point, though a bit obliquely.

Mike Billy of Reflections from a Rotting Nation writes of another incident in what seems to be a new trend driven by both advances in technology and some rather insane law in Teen Girl Charged With Sex Offense For Sending Nude Pictures of Herself.

The girl may receive a punishment of several years in a juvenile detention center and forced registration as a sex offender. This new status could prevent her from living within a specified radius of any school, church, or park for the rest of her life. It may also force her to inform all of her neighbors that she is a sex offender when she moves.

So now, not only does she have nude pictures of herself floating around, but she also has the stigma of being labeled a sex offender hanging over her head. But hey, that is the law and ignorance is no excuse.

The ABC News story linked to in the post has comments attached which present both many defenses of the girl’s action as well as a catalogue of what passes for sexual “morality” in America, especially as connected to children: “Satan on the loose”, “She doesn’t need jail, she needs therapy”, “What the hell are kids thinking these days!”

The blog post I never wrote reacting to this incident and to some of the ABC News commenters was going to bear the title, “Shocking news! Teen girls enjoy fucking”.

Mike also brings us The Financial Crisis is Not a Market Failure:

No, the financial crisis is not a failure of the free market, it is a failure of fascism. Allowing one unchecked overarching organization known as the Federal Reserve to control the money supply and thus the interest rates has caused the failure.

And how do they propose to fix it? By having that same organization create even more money to bail out these banks.

Like a fly repeatedly striking a glass window, more of the same will not solve our problems. It is time to end the Fed.

The economics lemurs at nostate.com agree wholeheartedly.

Commenting on a resurgence of the Taliban and the displacement of the anemic, imperialist-funded state in Afghanistan, Darian Worden, author of Bring a Gun to School Day (worth reading, and promoting!), says, “Revolutionaries, Take Note“:

When desired goods and services are provided in a revolutionary context, the consumers then join entrepreneurs in building revolution. A revolution based on libertarian principles ought to build liberty outside of the system. It is not enough simply to tell people that the free market can do things better. They must be shown that we will make it do things better. Agorism and other left libertarian philosophies provide ideas for such action.

Pity the Taliban aren’t agorists, or anarchists of any stripe.

Francois Tremblay of the Check Your Premises blog submits a controversial article entitled “Why hierarchies are immoral“. He writes:

Anarchy, as a position on social organization, forces us to rethink the purpose of society itself. What is the goal of social action? While mainstream political ideologies disagree on various issues, there is one thing they all agree on: they universally elevate economic and technological progress as an ultimate, unimpeachable goal, and that the only disagreement is how to effect it and how fast. But this goal is driven by hierarchies that concentrate power and seek to expand that power by all means necessary. Anarchists are the only people who pipe up and say “hey, maybe this whole idea of limitless progress at all costs isn’t so great- maybe the costs are greater than we’re ready to accept.”

This post provoked a great deal of response, in my view, some of which can be found here, here, here, here and here, as well as in the comments to all those posts. One needn’t agree with Tremblay’s definition of hierarchy or with what he derives from it in order to find valuable explorations of social theory here.

Francois continues to push boundaries in his second submission, “I know what’s best for people”:

The Anarchist view is that our institutions and rules must be grounded in the individual’s values: that social morality, like everything else in society, must be a bottom-up system. In contrast, the ruling class imposes the concept of “law” in order to justify its coercive control over society.

An extremely important point, and one which ought to be shouted constantly at those who would seize control of whatever illegitimate coercive apparatus is at hand in order to try to impose their own vision of a “shining city on a hill” upon the rest of us. Looking at this from an agorist perspective, we might say that there is a tendency where if the values forced upon people do not comport with those of the individuals subjected to them, then the power of black and gray markets will increase. Or, as Princess Leia told the Governor: “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

Hosting the carnival gives me a little bit of power, which of course begs to be abused. In that spirit, I present also two things that I wrote this past month: Agorism and ancap panarchy – a response to an Obama voter, and The Golden Rule is insufficient.

Enjoy, and thanks for visiting!

In the US, habeas generally means that a suspect arrested and jailed must be brought before a judge within 48 hours of the arrest to be arraigned, which is to have the charges against him formally read, and to enter a plea. If that doesn’t happen, a request can be made to a judge that the authorities holding the suspect free him immediately.

Habeas is a check on arbitrary State power. Detention is used primarily as a punitive measure, and is widely and rightly seen as a denial of liberty. The balance being struck under the doctrine is that it may require a bit of time for police or prosecutors to secure witnesses or evidence, and that during that time the suspect may evade capture, go on to commit other offenses, destroy evidence or compel or eliminate witnesses, and that in such cases the burden imposed on the suspect by detaining him is reasonable, either in the interests of the State or society. Habeas is a princple of law in all common-law countries, and similar legal doctrines apply in many other places.

Seven hundred years later, under threat by “modern” terrorism — that is, acts of mass violence committed by people not wearing clown suits — habeas is breaking down. The US Military Commissions Act of 2006 effectively suspends the writ of habeas corpus for anyone the President designates an “unlawful enemy combatant”, which is to say anyone he damned well pleases. It essentially grants the President to point at anyone, mumble something about “terrorists” and imprison that person — without charge or trial — forever.

In the UK, time limits for charges to be laid against terrorism suspects have been getting longer since 2000: seven days under the 2000 Terrorism Act, 14 days since 2003, 28 days since 2006. This week, the House of Commons passed a bill to extend the limit to 42 days, as the BBC reports:

Brown wins crunch vote on 42 days

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has narrowly won a House of Commons vote on extending the maximum time police can hold terror suspects to 42 days.

Thirty-six Labour MPs joined forces with Conservatives and Lib Dems to vote against the proposals.

But that was not enough to defeat them – although the government still faces a battle in the House of Lords.

Before the vote, Anthony Barnett wrote in “42 Days: An ‘abundance of caution’“:

In presenting their case to the nation for the extension of detention without charge to 42 days, the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and the Prime Minister emphasise how much time may be needed to gather all the evidence required to lay the necessary charges because of the immense complexity of such evidence in the age of information technology and international conspiracies. Much detail is offered about thousands of files and hundreds of computers. Their supporters say that we must not allow a terrorist to walk free just because there has not been ‘enough time’ to accumulate the necessary evidence to make good his arrest. The presumption is clear. It is important to highlight this. We are supposed to accept that the argument is over how long guilty people have to be held before they are charged.

This presumption is false. Over half those arrested under the Terrorism Act are “innocent members of the public”. This is officially regarded as acceptable due to the need for the police to exercise “an abundance of caution”. And of the small number held for nearly a month without charge, half of them are innocent too.

To jail someone who is innocent is a crime, one done in our name.

Don’t worry, Britain, it’s okay. They’re terrorists after all. If they weren’t guilty, they wouldn’t be suspects, right? And 42 days under State interrogation while locked in a cage isn’t really all that bad. I mean, sure, you might lose your job, have your mortgage foreclosed on for non-payment, your utilities shut off and all your personal property carted away for sale at auction, but that’s not really punishment, it’s just what a cautious society must do to protect itself from terrorism.

This is not even to mention the hardship imposed on a person and his family and social relations by being kidnapped and imprisoned, locked away in the UK’s overflowing dungeons and subject to rape, beating and the random stab wound by actual criminals. But that’s not punishment, it’s caution.

But hey, you know, it’s the modern age. Things are so complicated now, what with computers and emails and the lack of perfect surveillance. This will only be applied to terrorism suspects, of course. The same rationale for denying habeas for longer and longer periods will never be applied, say, to cases of suspected money laundering, drug trafficking, distribution of “obscene” materials or P2P file sharing. Of course the government will restrain itself, recognizing proper limits to its own power. Of course the cops and the courts are there to protect you.

And, of course, the age of worrying about “terrorism” will come to a rapid close as State policies to combat it by progressively destroying civil liberties and claiming greater and greater governmental powers culminates in the perfection of the panopticon, what Alex Jones refers to as a “prison planet”.

Repeat after me:

• Public school is about learning, not indoctrination or obedience training
• Children are property
• Initiating violence against someone is OK when the law says so
• Children are slaves
• Offending the State is a true crime
• Torture is OK
• The theory that people beaten as children go on to beat children and commit grander crimes is ridiculous

From KGBT-TV, Texas:

Lawsuit: Los Fresnos JP ordered spankings

5 June 2008

Texas: It's like a whole 'nother country

BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS (AP) — A Los Fresnos family is going to court to prevent a Cameron County justice of the peace from ordering spankings in his courtroom.

A lawsuit filed today alleges Justice of the Peace Gustavo “Gus” Garza told a 14-year-old girl’s stepfather to strike her repeatedly on the buttocks in open court.

If he didn’t, the judge said the girl would be found guilty and fined $500 for truancy.

The lawsuit by Mary Vasquez and her husband, Daniel Zurita, described the paddle provided by Garza as large and heavy and fashioned from a thick piece of lumber.

In a story for The Brownsville Herald, Garza declined to comment on whether he has people spanked in his courtroom. He also said he had not seen the lawsuit.

Zurita says he didn’t feel as if he had a choice but to follow the order.

In an affidavit, Zurita says that when he was through, the judge told him he had not struck the girl hard enough.

Selected, choice comments to the article:

A student who is truant is violating the law and causing the school to lose funding. The kid’s step father couldn’t control the kid (Is he a wimp?). Far too many judges refuse to enforce the law. Judge garza should be recognized for enforcing the law. The parent had three choices: Make thge kid go to school, pay a fine, or paddle the kid–and he is now crying about his choice. Again, I ask if he is a wimp?

— Terry Oberg, Mcallen

Spank Her Good

The judge should have had a police officer spank that brat. Getting a strong, muscle-head cop to do the spanking would have been ideal. Then I would have paddled the hell out of the parents too. They know when their child is not attending school. I bet you she will be pregnant and on public assistance before she is 18 years old. Thats all we need another dumb teenaged parent with an attitude. Sorry if it seems harsh but thats what it is. Just a thought!

— l deleon, harlingen

Ordered Spankings

Go Judge Garza! It’s about time someone taught kids now a days about discipline. This lawsuit is a joke. If we as parents don’t want to be at this point where we are at court having to spank our kids in front of a group of people, we need to start doing it at home. We as parents need to pay more attention to our kids and instill in them the importance of education and teach them discipline. Besides its the parents spanking the kids in court not anyone else. You as parents have a right to do that if you love your child and want him or her to grow up and become a good citizen. Believe me it will only take one good spanking for your child to know that you are serious about what’s good for them. Hey you’re even saving yourself $500 that you probably don’t have!

— N R, Los Fresnos

Good for Judge Garza

Lack of discipline is what is breaking down our society. Children will not learn, pay attention in class, or even attend class, as in this case, without proper discipline. The judge ordering the parents to “paddle” not beat the child is a clear indication that at least one judge realizes that a lot more parents need to take responsibility for their children’s discipline and not rely on the courts or the state for raising their children. Isn’t it interesting that these people can afford a lawyer to sue for tax payer dollars but they couldn’t afford to pay the $500 fine for their child’s truancy and instead oppted for the corporal punishment and are now crying foul. This is just another attempt to make a fast buck by milking the system. If we had more judges like Garza maybe some actual learning will take place in schools and the community would be a lot better off because this would raise the quality of life for everyone.

— Juan Ochoa, Hidalgo County

Aw heck, why don’t we just bring back the whip and the stocks while we’re at it? Nothing’s too good for our kids here in Texas!

From The Mississippi Press:

Taser incident being probed

23 May 2008

Otis Ashford in his hospital bed

MOSS POINT — The Moss Point Police Department is investigating an incident in which a Moss Point police officer allegedly subdued Otis Ashford in the home of his sister last month with volts of electricity from a Taser gun, Interim Police Chief Frederick Gaston confirmed Thursday.

[...]

Ashford was arrested for interfering with police duties and resisting arrest on April 18. He said his court date has been set for June 10.

[...]

Curley Clark, president of the Jackson County chapter of the NAACP, said the organization is conducting its own investigation.

[...]

According to Ashford, he was watching television with his sister Dell Jones at her house on Westpine Street when they heard a disturbance in the front yard.

“We went out to see what was going on and this man started yelling to get back in the house,” Ashford explained. “At that point, I was just on the screened-in porch. So, we were really still in the house.”

Ashford said he and his sister were concerned their younger brother was being attacked and started calling his name.

“The man on top of the other man never said he was a police officer,” Jones said. “We didn’t know that until he picked the other guy up and took him away. When he stepped into the light, we could see he was an officer. He then started screaming he was coming back to get us.”

Ashford said as the officer disappeared into the night and they thought the incident was over.

“Then he came back, he busted through the screen door and just came at us,” Ashford said. “He was like a mad man. We never even left the porch. He kept saying he was getting me for interfering, but I never got off the porch. How could we interfere?”

Ashford said the officer, who he identified as Johnny Vaughn, pushed him against the wall and doused him and Jones with pepper spray.

“It was everywhere,” Jones said “All over us and all in the house. There was no sense in it.”

According to Ashford, another Moss Point officer arrived and Vaughn ordered him to use the Taser gun.

“He hit me with it probably eight times,” Ashford said as he raised his shirt and showed scars from the Taser’s barbs.

“And that right there,” Jones said as she pointed to a large white scar about the size of a half-dollar on her brother’s back, “that was where they held it on him.”

Ashford and Jones claimed the officer took a barb that wasn’t attached to Ashford and held it in one spot for several seconds, shocking him until he was unconscious.

“I don’t remember nothing after that,” Ashford said.

Jones said she called the police to come and direct the “out-of-control officers.”

“They were killing him,” Jones said, “and they would not stop.”

Their mother, Lillie Ashford, entered the house and watched her son being subdued by police and her daughter passing out.

Lillie Ashford said her son was dragged out of the house by the officers and thrown into a patrol car.

“There was an ambulance right there,” she said. “I begged them to take him to the hospital. I thought they had killed him.”

Lillie Ashford said the officers refused and took her son to jail.

Otis Ashford’s wife, Rosa, said it was at least three hours before her husband received medical treatment.

“When they finally let me see him, he was on a stretcher in the police station,” she said. “They said his heart rate was 179 and his pupils were dilated. They kept asking me what he was on and I told them he doesn’t do drugs.”

Otis Ashford said that when he awoke hospital technicians performed a drug screen test on him and it came back clean. He said he bonded out from the hospital after being kept for two days.

Otis Ashford said FBI Agent Robert Lambert told him the FBI has launched an investigation, but Gaston could not confirm his comments.

See also the SunHerald story.

Hat tip: The Spook at The Brown Watch

“Oppose the war; support the troops.”

The idea had a certain strategic logic to it. Our opinion was a minority one, and offending the millions with military members in their families or otherwise close to them didn’t seem like a terribly bright way of getting the peace message across. We also somewhat accepted the logic that the people in the military had signed up to defend America; that they were being sent to a criminal war for profit on the other side of the globe wasn’t really their fault, they’d been hoodwinked.

So, all of those well thought out banner ideas like “US Military: Millions of Murderers in Uniform” were left aside so that we might more effectively get the peace message across and avoid offending anyone’s precious sensibilities. We stuck instead to our peace signs and our rainbows and our doves and our “No blood for oil” lines. We endured the taunts from the counter-protests: “My country, right or wrong!” “America, love it or leave it!” “Traitors!” and so on. And we gingerly protested in our carefully cordoned-off free speech zones or under city permit permission, got ourselves in the papers and all cried together and lit candles as the radio reports started coming in of the missiles and bombs striking Baghdad. And, of course, none of it made a damned bit of difference.

credit: wardolino @ flickr.com

It always bothered me, though, this “support the troops” idea. Sure, it was a smart strategic play, but in stark conflict to the rest of what we thought we were doing. We were here to bring the truth to an ignorant, deluded or sleeping public, and the whole truth, nothing but. That truth must have necessarily included the realization that these amorphous “troops” we were enjoined to support were actually individual, thinking, morally responsible men and women. It must have included the knowledge that each and every “troop” currently engaged in mass murder in our names had volunteered. And we knew, as they should have, that the murderous, destructive, obscene organization they volunteered to serve, hadn’t conducted a legitimate “defense of America” since at least WWII, and maybe as far back as the War of 1812, depending on whose Pearl Harbor narrative you believe.

They weren’t conscripted, they weren’t shanghaied, they weren’t tricked into signing up and donning the uniform and picking up the gun. They sought out the role, they agreed to follow orders, they signed the papers, and nowhere along the way did they somehow become transformed from individual human beings, morally responsible for their individual acts of violence and destruction into those collectively romanticized “troops”. Some small number said, “I didn’t sign up for this,” and did the only moral thing possible, which was to desert. The rest marched freely onto the planes and ships and deployed, the willing agents of empire. Certainly in many, the thought was there afterward: “We didn’t sign up for that,” but still they went, perhaps finding their own moral cover in the notion they’d been tricked. Likely, most found no moral problem with going at all.

Even today, the “support the troops” mentality is embedded in the tactics and rhetoric of the organized anti-war movement, implicitly or explicitly. It’s considered bad form to condemn the American armed services en masse for their self-subjugation to the American empire’s war machine.

another victim of empire

Unlike Gulf War I, though, Gulf War II, freshly turned five years old, is an occupation. It is an obviously immoral war launched on the flimsiest of concocted excuses and conducted with the most sinister of aims. The history of Gulf War I, the suffering inflicted on Iraq by a decade of sanctions, the horror of depleted uranium weapons residues and unexploded landmines and other ordnance from the first attack should have made it obvious to anyone that a crime had been committed there. A massive, inexcusable, inhuman, monstrous, treasonous crime.

And yet, most of the military personnel that have served in the current conflict up to the present weren’t in the military for the first. They signed up, willingly. If they didn’t know the history of what the US military actually did for the prior fifty years, flag-waving nonsense and Cold War turned War on Terror hysteria aside, their foolishness should not excuse them. If they learned nothing from the lessons of Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon or other places that the empire had been sticking its nose and its guns into, well, we should let neither ignorance nor willful blindness be an excuse. Unjust, illegal wars do not just happen by themselves. They are the sum total of millions of individual decisions by millions of individually responsible people to obey, topped by whatever dark cabal is giving the orders for the week.

Further, probably close to half or more of those still in Iraq today signed up after the war’s justifications had evaporated, after the stories of casual murder, collective punishment and institutionalized torture were already splashed on television screens and across newspaper headlines worldwide. They, especially, should have known better.

So, I will not support the troops. In fact, fuck the troops! Each and every US serviceperson today who is not deserting, refusing to follow orders or turning their weapons on their commanders is, in fact, a criminal, and one for whom we should feel neither sympathy nor pity, let alone the specious solidarity of “support the troops” when it’s those same “troops” who are carrying out slaughter, destruction and torture in our name.

credit: wardolino @ flickr.com

At the same time, fuck all those who support the troops! If history, recent or ancient, hasn’t been sufficient to educate you on the true nature of war and the true nature of the predatory, inhuman power you seem so eager to serve, then damn you for your stupidity, damn you for your ignorance, damn you for your blindness, damn you for your fallacious morality. And this goes not only for every family member or friend of someone serving in the US military today who is NOT insistently urging their child or husband or wife or friend to desert or disobey, it goes also for every federal employee and for every shareholder and employee from janitor to CEO of the military-industrial-terrorism complex and the companies that comprise it: Blackwater, Halliburton, Boeing, General Dynamics, Allied-Signal, Unisys, Westinghouse, DynCorp, Exxon, Hewlett-Packard, EDS, Computer Sciences Corporation, IBM, Hughes, KBR, Kearfott, Lockheed-Martin, McDonnell Douglas, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Shell, AT&T, Sikorsky, United Technologies and all the rest. There is blood on your hands, real human blood — lives taken, families shattered, homes destroyed, crops ruined, populations displaced, tortures committed, atrocities sanctioned, all facilitated by your unthinking, odious, ignorant, unconscionable support.

This essay is in part a response to the writings of Arthur Silber, in a piece entitled “The Honor of Being Human: Why Do You Support?“

credit: vredevanutrecht @ flickr

In concluding, he states:

The Bush administration has announced to the world, and to all Americans, that this is what the United States now stands for: a vicious determination to dominate the world, criminal, genocidal wars of aggression, torture, and an increasingly brutal and brutalizing authoritarian state at home. That is what we stand for.

I repeat once more: these horrors are now what the United States stands for. Thus, for every adult American, the question is not, “Why do you obey?” but:

Why do you support?

Or will you refuse to give your support? Will you say, “No”? These are the paramount questions at this moment in history, and in the life of the United States. We all must answer them. Our honor, our humanity, and our souls lie in the balance.

No, Arthur, I will not support.

From The Guardian:

Demolished by the Pakistan army: the frontier village punished for harbouring the Taliban

A fading photo tossed on an empty bed is all that remains of the interrupted lives in Spinkai, a desolate Pakistani village that has endured the wrath of the army’s “collective punishment”.

[...]

An estimated 200,000 villagers have been displaced since the Pakistani army attacked the mountain redoubt of Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban and a suspect in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto four months ago.

[...]

Four months later the villagers are forbidden from returning home. Their wheat is rotting in the fields. But Pakistani commanders insist they have been merciful in their application of “collective punishment” – a practice invented by the British who demarcated the tribal areas over a century ago.

[...]

In March the CIA director, Michael Hayden, warned that the lawless area presented a “clear and present danger” to the west, and was the likely source of any future attack on America. On Sunday the new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, met President George Bush on the fringes of a conference in Egypt to discuss the situation.

The US is bankrolling the operations in North and South Waziristan, giving at least $5.5bn (about £2.8bn) in military assistance since 2002.

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.”

What about Iran? You told me over a year ago that tolerating a nuclear weapon was not possible.
Yes, Israel will not tolerate a nuclear weapon in the hands of people who say openly, explicitly and publicly that they want to wipe Israel off the map. Why should we?

If you’re not prepared to live with it, is Israel capable [of striking Iran's nuclear facilities]?
I don’t want to go into this issue every time I’m asked, ‘Do you have plans?’ The United States is the leader of the international effort to stop the Iranians from becoming nuclear. The European countries, the Russians, the Chinese, the Japanese—all the most powerful nations of the world are joined together in an effort to stop the nuclearization of Iran. I hope they will be successful.

But didn’t Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad just say that he has added 6,000 more centrifuges to his program . . . got them up and running?
We have to listen to him, but that doesn’t mean that we have to believe everything he says.

It’s widely believed in the U.S. that after the latest National Intelligence Estimate [on Iran, which concluded with 'high confidence' that Iran had shelved its nuclear weapons program in 2003], the U.S. will not act.
We have a different opinion about [the Iranian nuclear program] from the NIE, and we haven’t changed our attitude. The Israeli information is available for our friends to examine and to come to other conclusions.

You mean that you think [Iran's nuclear program] is closer to being usable?
The main point of the NIE, the estimate, was that there is no evidence that the Iranians restarted their [covert] military program since it was closed in 2003. . . . Based on the information we have, the military program continues and has never been stopped. If this program continues, at some point they will be in possession of a nuclear weapon.

So let’s see. Amid all the prevarication and “keep all options on the table” bluster here, the key statement is: “Israel will not tolerate a nuclear weapon in the hands of people who say openly, explicitly and publicly that they want to wipe Israel off the map. Why should we?”

Pretty rich, coming from a power that’s estimated to be in possession of between 75 and 200 apocalypse weapons of its own. Pretty rich, coming from a state that pioneered the practice of collective punishment in the form of bulldozing the homes of suicide bombers, and even managed to kill a 23-year-old woman, Rachel Corrie, acting as a human shield. Pretty rich, from one of the most heavily militarized states in the world, and one which still practices the slavery of conscription. Pretty rich, coming from a country that imprisons some 1.4 million people in that cage known as the Gaza Strip. Pretty rich, coming from a state known for massive overkill retaliation against attacks by those it has oppressed for more than half a century, which has been reported to torture detainees, indiscriminately kill civilians in war zones, carry out assassinations, and which Amnesty International claims is guilty of war crimes.

I guess since Israel doesn’t say that it wants to do horrible things, it gets a pass. It just does goes off and does them, and somehow that’s okay. But let them mad dog Persians get a hold of an a-bomb and, boy, there’s gonna be hell to pay. I guess a nuclear-armed Israel is somehow more acceptable than a nuclear armed Iran would be, well, since the Israelis are so much more responsible in their wielding of the tools of death and oppression.

Of course, we’re not allowed to say this. Surely we all know by now that condemnation of the criminal State of Israel is exactly equivalent to condemnation of all Jewish people everywhere, and that we might as well stop hiding our swastika tattoos and just admit that we’re Nazis. Indeed, propaganda takes many forms.

S.F. settles excessive force suit for $235,000

Sunday, May 11, 2008
Kelly Medora, a petite preschool teacher who weighed about 118 pounds, went out with a friend in North Beach one Saturday night in 2005 for some fun.

Instead, San Francisco police officer Christopher Damonte, who weighed about 250 pounds, arrested her for jaywalking, twisted her arm behind her back and broke it with an audible crack.

Although Damonte and the city denied wrongdoing, the city recently mailed Medora a check for $235,000, the largest amount ever to settle a lawsuit claiming San Francisco police used excessive force not involving a weapon.

The Office of Citizen Complaints, meanwhile, has found that Damonte used excessive force in the incident and that another officer failed to investigate Medora’s complaint. Damonte faces a disciplinary hearing at the Police Commission and potential punishment including dismissal.

Damonte, 41, a six-year veteran of the department, has been the subject of other misconduct complaints, according to city sources. He was admonished in 2003 for inappropriately threatening to arrest a woman without authority, and he is among more than 18 officers disciplined for their role in the controversial 2005 Bayview Police Station videos, which Mayor Gavin Newsom denounced as racist, sexist and homophobic.

Good for Ms. Medora for getting something approximating justice out of the situation.

There’s just so much wrong with this situation though.

• SF taxpayers forced to pay put this uniformed gangster out on the street, for their “protection”, of course
• Uniformed gangster, despite a solid career of citizen abuse, is out on the prowl
• Uniformed gangster decides to pick on young woman for victimless crime (jaywalking)
• Uniformed gangster assaults young woman
• Uniformed gangster breaks young woman’s arm as retribution for not being sufficiently submissive
• SF taxpayers forced to pay for court and prosecutor in the case
• SF taxpayers forced to pay compensation to young woman for uniformed gangster’s crime
• SF taxpayers forced to pay plaintiff’s legal fees in the case
• Uniformed gangster faces, at worst, loss of uniform and pension, and a not-so-glamorous career as an even more surly uniformed gangster working for mall security

But let’s read on:

According to Medora’s account, Damonte seemed “irate” and “angry” from the start.

“I was fearful just of his demeanor,” she testified. “He was definitely very threatening with the questions he was asking and his body language and his facial expression, the tone of voice he was using.”

Damonte grabbed her friend’s arm, held it up by her face and demanded she tell him her age, Medora said. Damonte said he would cite her, but didn’t say why.

Medora saw the name “R. Fitzpatrick” on Damonte’s jacket – he had borrowed it from another officer – and asked if that was his name. This seemed to set him off, she said. He said yes and demanded why she wanted to know.

“I don’t believe you’re treating my friend appropriately,” she replied, court records show. “You haven’t told us what we’re being cited for. Please let go of her arm.”

Medora said Damonte started to scream at her. Fearful, she said she turned and walked up to another officer and complained about Damonte.

By her account, Damonte then demanded Medora’s driver’s license. Medora said she’d give him her license if he told her what she did.

Instead, Damonte said “detain her,” by this account, and he and two other officers surrounded her. She said she did not resist them, but merely clutched her purse. Then Damonte grabbed her right arm.

“It all happened very quick,” she testified. “Like he physically took my arm and twisted it up back by my neck to a point where I was completely immobilized. And I said ‘ow, ow.’ And he pulled even harder, and he snapped it.”

There was an audible “pop,” according to a police report.

The city’s lawyer said in court papers that Damonte used an approved method of holding her arm, but she struggled. Then “in an effort to escape,” she squatted down and “broke her own arm.”

Ah yes, they do so often break their own arms…

Besides the insult and injury to Ms. Medora and everything mentioned above, the real injustice here is that the people, not this uniformed gangster, are getting saddled with the bill for his misdeeds.