police state

And the cops cheered. Trump gave a talk to a gathering of police out on Long Island, earlier today. It went horribly. There are cops that are going to take Trump’s lead, take what he said seriously, and because of that, they are going to harm or kill Americans and end their own careers, destroying their own families and parts of their communities along the way. The President of the United States egged the police on to disdain their civilian bosses, and they cheered him. The President of the United States told the police that they should not avoid harming suspects, and they clapped. The…

This is a piece I wrote in 2011, on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. (Originally posted here.) I believe that the sauntering I refer to has diminished. But instead of sauntering, our local and county police departments seem to have taken up a different hobby: Shooting unarmed people of color. I think the problems underscored in this essay are mostly worse now than they were five years ago, and the argument I make here for what happened since 9/11/2001 is stronger, more clearly demonstrated by event. Also, the link between 9/11 and the Donald Trump candidacy is as clear as a brand…

Police had cornered a murder suspect. There were negotiations and there was exchange of gunfire. Normally this stand off would have been maintained as long as possible. The way these things end, usually, is that the suspect gives up, the suspect kills themselves, there is what the police would call a "fair" exchange of gunfire* and the suspect is wounded or killed, etc. But the police had a new tool they could use to shorten the time span for such standoffs. They blew the suspect up with a bomb delivered specifically for that purpose. A robot drove over to the suspect, got the bomb near…

Philando Castile told his mother that he was reluctant to carry his legal, permitted, firearm because he was afraid that if he had a run in with the police, they would simply kill him. Later that day, a Saint Anthony Village police officer pulled Castile over for a broken tail light, and then, at the first opportunity, fired several bullets into his arm and torso. A few moments later, Castile fell into unconsciousness, apparently dead. The police then apprehended Castile's companion, who was in the passenger seat, and, treating her like a criminal, handcuffed her and stuffed her in the back…

______________________ UPDATE: BLM and the St Paul authorities have come to a compromise. ... the Mayor announced that Turner and the St. Paul Black Lives Matter chapter have agreed to refrain from interfering with runners trying to complete the course, as had previously been threatened. Instead, BLM, will demonstrate near the finish line, raising their voices about the issues that have boiled on the front burner since the death of Ferguson, Missouri resident Michael Brown at the hands of a white police officer. "The Mayor took the time to listen, he heard our concerns," Turner shared. "We…

The terrorists have defeated the railroads, and by extension, the people. Well, not totally defeated, but they won a small but important battle. We have a problem with the wholesale removal of petroleum from the Bakken oil fields, and the shipping of that relatively dangerous liquid mainly to the east coast on trains, with hundreds of tanker cars rolling down a small selection of tracks every day. I see them all the time as they go through my neighborhood. These trains derail now and then, and sometimes those derailments are pretty messy, life threatening, and even fatal. There has been…

You all heard that gangs in Baltimore had banded together to go after cops. But if you did hear that, you heard wrong. Gangs are universally vilified, and the term "gang" is also used by law enforcement and their other as a euphemism. (For people it is OK to shoot, apparently.) The reality of gangs is far more complex than usually understood. Anyway, I thought you might like to see this: Originally posted by WBALTV 11: Members of the Black Guerrilla Family, the Bloods and the Crips talk to 11 News, saying they did not make a truce to harm police officers.

I have a few partly formed, preliminary thoughts about some people's reaction to Baltimore (originally posted on my friend Miles Kurland's page as a comment, then on my facebook page, edited.) What I'm mainly reacting to is the constant drone of people saying that rioting and anti-state violence in Baltimore is fully 100% wrong and will have 0% positive effect. That may or may not be true, but I have the impression that most of these reactions (mainly seen by me on Twitter, which does tend to lack nuance and detail) are of the knee-jerk sort and not well thought out. More importantly,…

People, usually people of color, more often than not Native Americans and African Americans (according the the available statistics) suffer regular repression by the police. Day to day, the most common form of repression is about the small stuff. Jay walking, being out after curfew, walking around in a shopping mall, driving while black, and similar imagined (or at worst, very minor) offenses bring the police into contact with individuals, making day to day existence harder and for many building up a list of arrests, charges, and convictions that form an ever-growing albatross around those…

I was going to put this on my facebook page, but it seemed worthy of a higher status. As it were. We live in a police state, here in America, in the same way one gives oneself a particular religion or non-religious label. Unless you are a priest, a habitually repentant sinner, or like me, a habitually annoyed atheist, you usually aren't anything. Someone can't look at you and pick out your belief system. It is in the background lurking around doing nothing, ignored and all but forgotten most of the time. But when needed out comes the book (The Bible, The Origin, whatever). Our police…

Above: Ferguson police spent the evening dropping tear gas containers on reporters to keep news of police repression from getting out. They are unaware of the deadly truthful combination of cell phones, citizens, and twitter. My fellow American: You live in Ferguson, you just don't know it yet. NOTE: BREAKING: Rep. Clay Says St. Louis County Police to be Relieved of Duty #Ferguson — Derek Wallbank (@dwallbank) August 14, 2014 ___________________________ Some petitions about #Furgeson "Ferguson police just executed my unarmed son!" Stop the police abuse. Send the National Guard to…

Trigger warning: Explicit video of a homeless man being executed by the cops. I strongly recommend that you don't call the police. If you do, because for some reason you have to, get the hell out of there before they arrive. Why? Because our Post-9/11 first responder philosophy is not the first responder philosophy you grew up with. First responders have one primary directive: Protect themselves, at all costs. Your safety is the cost. For firefighters and the like this means running the other way when there is danger, because of 9/11. Recently, a New York City fire chief was quoted as…

A young woman was driving along the road, at night, and needed to focus her attention on a cell phone call, so she pulled into an open parking lot of a closed restaurant along side the road and visible to passing motorists. She pulled her car into a parking space, switched it off, and made the call. A passing police officer noticed the young woman alone in her car talking on the cell phone. He pulled into the parking lot and switched on his emergency lights, got out of his police cruiser and approached her. He started asking her questions about what she was doing, who she was talking to,…

Apparently either Jo-anne or I share a name with, or similar to, someone on the U.S. government's secret terrorist watch list.  I can't say which of us it is; no one at the airport is authorized to tell us that. All I know is we were prevented from checking in at the Tucson airport on Thursday without additional identification. We can no longer check-in online or use the electronic kiosks until we go through a months-long process to try to clear whichever one of our names causes the problem.  During which time we're advised not to travel.  This latter bit is unfortunate, since both of us…