January 13, 2012 2:35 pm

Tom Robbins and the NYTimes Lie About Judith Clark’s “Rehabilitation”

4 comments
by    in New York State,Parole,Pro-Criminal,Rehabilitation,war on cops

What a surprise: the New York Times is lying again.  It must be . . . well, it’s Friday.

The lie starts with a pun.  Because dead cops are always the right occasion for lighthearted humor:

Judith Clark’s Radical Transformation

Judith Clark: a “ray of sunshine” who made some mistakes as a youth

The “radical” in the title refers to participating in the Brinks robbery that left two police and security guard dead.  Wordplay: funny.  The “transformation” is more of the usual claptrap about radical chic criminals — their in-prison AIDS activism that is actually about attacking the government, not a disease, and all the faked MFA degrees handed out like candy by PEN and other cop-hating syndicates and universities to talentless scum, including Clark’s colleagues Marilyn Buck, Laura Whitehorn, Susan Rosenberg, and so on.

The “lie” is that this article is about Judith Clark’s alleged rehabilitation.  In reality, the Times published this sleazy mythopoesis to advance a very specific yet entirely unmentioned goal: to advance a rules change regarding parole for murderers and other offenders serving long sentences — in other words, to make all those knitting classes and fake poetry degrees grounds for release if you helped kill cops — like the sainted Ms. Clark — or raped and killed women, like several other “reformed” poets and knitter-activists eagerly awaiting the rules change.

Anyone care for another Kitty Genovese?

Tom Robbins should apologize for participating in an unusually ornate untruth.  He should apologize to everyone who might see their loved one’s killer released because of his participation in this lie.

He should wear comfortable shoes: it’s going to be a long and extremely angry line.

I wonder why Times readers put up with this sort of manipulation.  It doesn’t reflect well.

And then there’s the other lies within the lie.

An officer carrying a shotgun waved the U-Haul over. Clark drove past the ramp and stopped.

“I was in this terrified, frozen state,” she said. She considered just driving away. “I can’t do that,” she told herself. “I am not supposed to leave people.”

She heard gunfire behind her. Suddenly “two people jump into my car and scream at me to drive.” She quickly drove ahead, up a curving mountain road, no idea where she was headed. When a police car pursued them, she drove faster. “I am so out of my league,” she remembers thinking.

Clark claims she’s rehabilitated based on her ritual performance of several faux social justice causes, but she’s still lying about the gun, the strategy of using stupid white girls like her to lure police to their deaths that day, and everything else she knows and has done.  She’s lying in very specific ways because she needs to say certain things and deny other things in order to meet the guidelines for parole.  Now, that would make an interesting story.  Not nonfiction, though.

Clark’s shoulder popped out of its socket — a chronic ailment since childhood. She was squirming in pain, trying to bang it back into place, when she heard a policeman barking orders to come out. The shouts came from the South Nyack police chief, Alan Colsey, who had chased Clark’s car over the mountain. After Clark and her passengers were taken into custody, a pistol was found behind the front seat and a clip of bullets in Clark’s purse. Colsey thought she was reaching for the gun as she twisted in her seat. Clark said she never knew it was there. “I sort of rolled out,” she said. “I didn’t want to be shot. I was scared but also relieved it was over.”

Yes, we’re supposed to believe she didn’t know about the gun in her purse (that happens to me all the time) and that she was only “squirming” towards the gun because she hurt herself playing volleyball some time back before she became a weaponized hate-moppet trying to off an innocent cop, and we’re supposed to believe that she has achieved some cosmic level of rehabilitative bliss while we’re also supposed to believe that she knew nothing of the purpose of the Brinks robbery, which was to secure funds to buy lots of other guns that Clark apparently knew nothing about — while believing that she is some sort of unique saint among all the other utterly unique saints who coincidentally happened to converge on one little bloody armed robbery in upstate New York.

You’d have to be Eric Holder to believe all that.

Holder, after all, has made it his personal mission to get cop-killers and terrorists like Susan Rosenberg out of prison.  Judith Clark is the next in line for the Holder privilege: thus the Times clockwork encomium.  If Obama loses the election, the grey cloud within the silver lining will be the inevitable pardons of fistfuls of violent thugs like Clark who had the good sense to choose the right types of people to murder.

In jail, all she could think was that she had let down her friends and had to make up for it. “I was not a good freedom fighter,” she told herself, “but I can be a good captivefreedom fighter.” Her role models were Puerto Rican radicals, linked to a group responsible for a string of deadly bombings, who declared themselves prisoners of war after being arrested.

Why does the Times leave out the rest of the story of these hale and hearty freedom fighters — the part about who they killed, and the part about Eric Holder orchestrating their releases?  The part about the judge’s home firebombed while his children slept, about the prison guards tortured to death?  Why does Tom Robbins so carefully choose to focus on Judith Clark’s knitting of baby clothes, clenching and unclenching of fists, etc., while he cannot be bothered to so much as mention the part about an Attorney General who has repeatedly sided with terrorists who blew away cops and judges and prison guards?

Why not tell the story, if you are going to tell it, if you are an “investigative journalist” teaching, of course, journalism, and of course at CUNY?

Here’s a who, what, when, where, why for Journalist Robbins: how inhumanely elitist do you have to be to weigh Judith Clark’s hobbies against the lives she and her fellow revolutionaries gleefully snuffed out?  For this is precisely the goal of the not-reported campaign beneath this story: to make the hobbies trump the crime, to make a twenty-year pile of bad poetry and offensive radical chic win out over dead and buried men.

Inmate 83G0313, as Clark was known, was considered a major security risk, her every step carefully tracked. There was good cause for concern. Clark’s radical crew was known for plots like the 1979 prison breakout of Assata Shakur, a Black Liberation Army leader. At one point, the prison superintendent, Elaine Lord, was assigned a guard. Twice, Lord had to leave prison grounds as a precaution.

As a precaution against what?  If you have room to count the stitches in Clark’s remorseful sweater-weaving, surely you have the column inches to tell the truth about the real threat these people posed, and the real consequences of their long, in-prison campaigns of terror.  That’s part of the story, too.

In reality, people like Judith Clark become what they become because they are sociopaths, or just pure evil.  As Theodore Dalrymple recently observed in the New English Review, privileging your subjective feeling of mercy for murderers over the rule of law is really no different from privileging a mob who wants to bypass justice in the other direction.  The commenters praising Clark’s personality in the Times comment thread really should take a moment to look in that mirror.

How does the Times justify meddling in the justice system this way?

In December 2010, a few days before Governor Paterson’s term ended, he met with a small delegation of Clark’s supporters led by Bennett and Dennison. He told them that his staff advised against her release and that he was in agreement. Paterson wouldn’t talk to me about it, but he recently told Jim Dwyer, a Times columnist, that he feared being “tarred and feathered” if he released Clark.

Last June, I went to meet some of the people whose wrath the governor feared at a fund-raising breakfast in Nyack for a scholarship fund in memory of officers Brown and O’Grady. Most were still bitter over Boudin’s release and felt that Clark deserved to remain in prison. Did they believe such criminals could be rehabilitated? “I know, they’re all wonderful,” Bill Ryan, a former New York City Police lieutenant who lives nearby, responded sarcastically. “They’re teaching little children and working with the handicapped and unwed mothers.” His remarks brought knowing smiles around the table.

It’s a skepticism shared by many. When I first started visiting Clark, I also wondered whether her transformation was a calculated effort to get out of prison. Over time I’ve come to see her differently.

So Tom Robbins writes a long propaganda piece denying Judith Clark’s cruelty, while tarring her victims, who lost loved ones, with the term “wrath.”  That’s an ugly stunt.  Elsewhere, in places where people possess ordinary morals and judgment, it’s called prejudice.  But not in the universe of the Times, where the Judith Clarks of the world are just more human than their victims.

 

 

 

 

4 comments!
January 1, 2012 12:04 am

Police Murdered in 2011: How They Served

4 comments
by    in Crime and Justice Blog,policing,Uncategorized,war on cops

Hat Tip to Lou . . .

2011 began with the murder of Deputy Sheriff Suzanne Hopper in Ohio.  January 1, Deputy Hopper was shot while photographing a crime scene.  She left behind a husband and four children.  Another officer was shot but survived.

According to her boss, Sheriff Gene Kelly,

Hopper once went six straight years without calling in sick and often put on charity events for the Special Olympics and other causes . . . Her personnel file is filled with accolades and commendations and always service before self.

By the end of January, four police officers were murdered in Florida during a week in which at least fifteen officers were shot:

[1/24/2011] In just 24 hours, at least 11 officers were shot. The shootings included Sunday attacks at traffic stops in Indiana and Oregon, a Detroit police station shooting that wounded four officers, and a shootout at a Port Orchard, Wash., Wal-Mart that injured two deputies. On Monday morning, two officers were shot dead and a U.S. Marshal was wounded by a gunman in St. Petersburg, Fla.  On Thursday, two Miami-Dade, Fla., detectives were killed by a murder suspect they were trying to arrest.

Sgt. Thomas Batinger, St. Petersburg, Florida “just wanted to serve”

Two years ago, Sgt. Baitinger served as mentor for a student at Gibbs High School. Catherine Smith, the former family and community liaison at Gibbs, said he stood out among the 100 or so mentors who volunteer each year. ”Some police officers, you know, seem to have like a hard exterior,” Smith said. “This man was just so nice.”  When the sergeant showed up, usually carrying a McDonald’s bag, the student’s face just glowed. “He loved him,” she said. “When that young man came down and saw the sergeant, oh my goodness, it was like he saw his father.”  His hobbies were golf and poker.

Officer Jeffrey Yaslowitz, St. Petersburg, Florida “one of the best people I ever met”

He is survived by his wife, Lorraine, 40, and his children: Caleb, 12; Haylie, 8; and Calen, 5.  He was on his way home after his night shift with his police dog Ace when he responded to a call for backup . . . It was like him to go. Just flip through his personnel file down at the police station. . . The night before he died, Yaslowitz helped his neighbor haul new furniture inside.  ”He was a great guy, I’ll tell you,” said [Herbert] Kane, 77. “A great father, too, and a great husband. I never heard him even argue, ever. They were a great family and I’m just sick about it.”

Detective Roger Castillo, Miami-Dade, Florida “passionate about his job”

To the residents of his well-kept Davie street, fallen Miami-Dade police Detective Roger Castillo was the type of neighbor you wanted to have around. He was the dad you’d see on the front lawn, tossing around a football with his boys. The one who brightened up the cul-de-sac with Christmas lights and inflatables. A helping hand if you were struggling with a fix-it job. “If I’m fixing something, if he passes by, he will ask if I need help, do I need to borrow tools?” said Andre Jean-Louis, a real estate broker . . . On Thursday, as the tragedy unfolded in Liberty City, Castillo’s relatives and neighbors monitored the news and hoped he was safe. Slowly, through phone calls and text messages and hesitant knocks on the door, they learned that their friend was gone. “They stole him,” neighbor Lisa Tuffy said. “He made this world a better place.”

Detective Amanda Haworth, Miami-Dade, Florida “just a beautiful person”

Twenty-three years after she joined the Miami-Dade Police Department, Amanda Lynn Haworth, 44, was fatally wounded, along with another detective — both of them members of an elite team that served arrest warrants on violent suspects. Haworth, a single mother and police detective, loved her job, but was most devoted to her 13-year-old son, her stepmother said. “She took him everywhere she went,” said Diane Haworth, 66. She last spoke with her stepdaughter on Monday, she recalled. “She was just so sweet, so very sweet,” her stepmother said . . . she often played baseball with son, Austin, in their backyard, neighbors said. “Her son and her work were everything to her,” said neighbor Bernardo Gonazalez. She was a big fan of the Weston Red Hawks — the team her son played for — and attended all of his games. “She was just a beautiful, beautiful person,” Gonazalez said.

Why were Amanda Haworth and Roger Castillo killed?  Because the justice system failed them.  Not once, but a dozen times.  Because every previous time police risked their lives capturing the thug who murdered them, some lazy judge or overwhelmed prosecutor let him go:

[Johnny] Simms, 22, had been in trouble since he was a teen. Officers first arrested him at 14, for larceny. In all, Simms was arrested 11 times before he was an adult on charges including burglary and auto theft, state records show. He received house arrest in some cases, while others were dropped. His tattoos mirrored his lifestyle: a gun, flames, and the words “savage” and “10-20 Life.” In October 2005 and December 2005, Simms was arrested for separate armed robberies, one with a pistol and the second with a rifle. Prosecutors did not file charges in either case. In 2007, Simms — who also goes by “Sims” — went to state prison for a different 2005 armed robbery and auto theft. He was released in February 2009 on probation. Simms violated his probation when he was again arrested in June 2010, this time for robbery with a deadly weapon and selling cocaine. He pleaded guilty and Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Julio Jimenez sentenced him to one year in prison plus five years’ probation.But Simms served only one month because he had earned credit for time served earlier in a Miami-Dade jail. He was released in September 2010 on five years of court-mandated “administrative probation,” a low-level form of supervision that does not require regular check-ins with authorities. Simms hadn’t been out a month before he was again implicated in a violent act. According to Miami homicide detectives, Simms shot and killed Cornelious Larry, 27, on Oct. 16 in the parking lot of an Overtown apartment complex, 1535 NW First Pl. Miami police say Simms shot Larry to death after the man began yelling and cursing at Simms’ sister. Simms fled on a bicycle. Detectives searched for him for 12 days before Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Diane Ward signed an arrest warrant. The charges: first-degree murder and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Simms had been on the lam since.

Yadda, yadda, yadda.  Shoot, rob, burglar, shoot, beat: get off free.  Our highest law enforcement officials in the Department of Justice grandstand about “alternatives to incarceration” and “emptying the prisons.”  Our sensitive academics whine endlessly about America the police state as if thugs like Johnny Simms aren’t getting away with murder after murder, abetted by lousy criminal fetishists festering in courtrooms until good cops end up in caskets.

February

Detective John Falcone

Detective John Falcone, Poughkeepsie, New York.  Wrestled a three-year old from a man repeatedly charged with domestic violence who had hunted down her mother and killed her moments earlier.  Thanks to Detective Falcone’s sacrifice, the infant survived.

Detective Falcone is survived by his parents.

March

Alain Schaberger

Alain Schaberger’s life began in Vietnam and ended when Officer Schaberger responded to a domestic violence call in Brooklyn, where a repeat felon with 28 prior arrests, mostly for robbery and burglary, pushed the young man over a railing to his death.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg referred to Schaberger as a “quiet, gentle soul” who dedicated his life to service.  “Alain knew a lot about grief,” Bloomberg said of the former Naval officer who joined the NYPD in July 2001. “One of his first assignments as a police officer while he was still in the academy in the days after 9/11 was to go to checkpoints around Ground Zero and help the families who came there to cope with their horrific losses. He brought a lot of comfort to those people.”  Addressing Schaberger’s family, including fiancée Shoshone Peguese, Bloomberg said, “I think he would tell you to remember not the last tragic moment of his life, but the many wonderful moments that came before it.”

 

Schaberger was a 10-year NYPD veteran who was born in Vietnam. He came to the U.S. when he was 5 years old with his father – an Army vet who worked as a civilian guard at the U.S. Embassy when Saigon fell in 1975 – and Vietnamese mother.  Raised in East Islip, L.I., Schaberger grew up on tidy block of single-family homes and played basketball at the local public school. . . Schaberger often returned to East Islip to visit with his parents and sister, Tracey, a nurse with two kids, neighbors said.  ”It’s tragic. It’s unbelievable,” said neighbor Mitchell Greif. “He was a great guy from a good family. He was always pleasant and polite. His parents are devastated.” Schaberger’s mother – a hairdresser – and father were too distraught to speak with reporters.  ”It’s a shame,” said Bill Conley, 59, an electrician who has lived next-door to the Schaberger family for 25 years. “It’s always the good ones that die young.”

April

Jonathan Schmidt

Officer Jonathan Schmidt

A policeman who died in the line of fire trying to save his sergeant’s life has been labelled a hero.  Officer Jonathan Schmidt, from Trumann, Arkansas, shoved his superior out of harms way when a gunman unexpectedly opened fire during a routine arrest.  He was able to return fire on Jerry Lard despite the fact he was shot in the neck and bleeding. The father-of-three then begged for his life. . . Schmidt worked as a night patrolman so he could spend days with his three children.  He had a 12-year-old daughter and sons aged ten and 18 months. Schmidt recently received a commendation for saving an infant’s life by giving the child mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.  Trumann School District Superintendent, Joe Waleszonia said: ‘He wanted to clean up this community. He wanted it to be as safe for the community as it could be.

May

Kenneth Gary Vann

Sergeant Vann was assassinated while stopped at a red light: his patrol car was struck multiple times.  A week later, the killer was caught by police.  He had randomly chosen to kill officer Vann.

Sergeant Kenneth Gary Vann

[During the investigation] Detective Louis Antu, a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office, said the mood was somber but dedicated at the command post Sunday. Many officers, including Antu and the sheriff, were out of town for the three-day Memorial Day weekend, when they were called back to Bexar County.  “We’re not robots; we’re all taking time to reflect,” said Antu, who joined the Sheriff’s Office with Vann. “But it was a terrible killing, and everybody wants answers. We’re working for the family, to bring them justice.”  Antu said the two men were “kids” when they joined the Sheriff’s Office. Vann was an excellent officer who loved his job and family, Antu said.  Vann was married to sheriff’s Sgt. Yvonne Vann and leaves behind two sons, ages 19 and 15, and a daughter, 25, from a previous marriage, officials said.  Ortiz was at his hunting lease in Rocksprings when he heard about Vann’s death.  “We’re real saddened by the randomness of this incident; there’s really no rhyme or reason,” Ortiz said. “It’s very difficult because we don’t have anything new, but we’re not going to rest until we find the guy who did it.”

June

Kurt Wyman, daughter born the day of his murder.

Deputy Sheriff Kurt Wyman

Whitestown, NY — Fresh out of high school in 2005, Kurt Wyman joined the Marine Corps Reserve. Activated in 2008, he served seven months in Iraq and won the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal.  Wyman also became an Oneida County sheriff’s deputy in 2007. He rejoined the sheriff’s office when he returned from overseas. In 2010, he was rookie of the year. He twice was awarded the Sheriff’s Grand Cordon Medal, which recognizes outstanding achievement by a detail of officers.  “His commitment not only to his country but to his county is second to none,” Sheriff Robert Maciol said.  Wyman demonstrated his commitment to the ultimate degree Tuesday. The deputy, 24, was hit by a shotgun blast as he and two other officers tried to take an armed man into custody after a six-hour standoff in the rural town of Augusta. He died after being rushed to St. Elizabeth Medical Center.

Wyman left behind his pregnant wife, Lauren, their 18-month-old son, his parents and a sister.

His wife gave birth after hearing of Wyman’s murder.  That’s June.

July

Officer Brent Long

Officer Long and his canine partner Shadow were shot while serving a felony warrant.

Shadow survived.

A fallen police officer’s K-9 partner is now being honored. Fallen Terre Haute Police Officer Brent Long’s family cut the ribbon on Shadow’s Trail in Terre Haute. Shadow served alongside Officer Long on the force. The trail is beside Brent Long Memorial Way. It’s part of the expansion of the city’s trails and a way to honor the police dog’s service. ”They did a good job for our department and to have Brent’s memorial way here and Shadow’s Trail right next to Brent, they’re partners even after Brent’s gone,” Terre Haute Police Chief John Plasse said.

August

Jeremy Henwood, San Diego

Jeremy Henwood, a captain in the Marine Corps Reserves and police officer for the San Diego Police Department, was shot and killed, Aug. 7. He had walked into a fast food restaurant to buy something to eat and also buy a meal for a 10-year-old boy who happened to cross his path. Moments later, while sitting in his patrol car, a man drove up beside him and fired the fatal shot. Henwood was 36.

Officer Henwood, moments before he was shot

Henwood served as an enlisted infantryman before going on to Officer Candidate School to receive his commission with the Marine reserves. The Canadian-born hero became a United States citizen in order to receive his commission with the Marines.  He deployed twice to Iraq, and after his third deployment – this time to Afghanistan as a company commander with Combat Logistics Battalion 2 – Henwood returned to the U.S. in February to continue serving as a police officer with the SDPD.  During the memorial ceremony, Henwood was posthumously promoted to the rank of major.

September

Lt. Joseph Sczcerba

18-year veteran New Castle, Delaware Lt. Joseph Sczcerba was stabbed to death while attempting to subdue a rampaging offender.  Lt. Sczcerba and his wife performed volunteer work at a variety of places.  His service to the community was memorialized by seventy local culinary school students who baked 10,000 cookies in his honor and delivered them to police officers.  6,000 people attended his funeral.

October

Derek Kotecki: His loyal canine wouldn’t leave his side after he was shot.  He wanted a “noisy” funeral.

Patrolman Kotecki and K9 Benny
Lower Burrell, PA, Patrolman Derek Kotecki was shot and killed while investigating reports of a wanted man at a local fast food restaurant. The man was wanted for a shooting ten days earlier and for threatening police officers during the previous week.  As Patrolman Kotecki and his canine, Benny, approached, the man suddenly opened fire. Patrolman Kotecki suffered a fatal wound. The subject then fled but was approached by other officers as he attempted to climb a fence behind the restaurant. He was killed during an exchange of shots with the responding officers.  K9 Benny was uninjured but had to be muzzled after refusing to leave Patrolman Kotecki’s side.
Patrolman Kotecki had served with the Lower Burrell Police Department for 18 years. He is survived by his wife and two children.

Officer Thomas Babinsack, one of five people to eulogize Kotecki, said they had talked about the aftermath of such a situation while driving to a memorial service in April 2009 for three Pittsburgh officers gunned down in a SWAT siege.  They discussed whether it was respectful to use their flashing lights and sirens in a funeral procession, and Babinsack said he’s since learned the protocol is to use lights but no sirens — which police vehicles observed on their way to Kotecki’s funeral. But Babinsack said Kotecki wanted something else.  ”Tom, I want you to promise me something: If something ever happens to me, I want everybody to know I was here,” Babinsack remembered Kotecki saying. “I want the fire trucks and police and ambulances going with lights on and sirens.”  ”He wanted a parade and he’s going to get one,” Babinsack said from the pulpit of the noisy funeral procession that was to follow.

 

November

James L. Capoot: a life lived very well.

Officer James Lowell Capoot, 45, of the Vallejo Police Department was killed in the line of duty on Nov. 17, 2011 in Vallejo, Calif. A loving and devoted father, husband, son, brother, uncle, officer, coach, neighbor and friend, Jim lived a full and extraordinary life.  Born Nov. 2, 1966 in Little Rock, Ark., Jim attended local schools in Little Rock and graduated from John L. McClellan High School in 1985, where he was a distance runner on the cross country and track teams. Jim enlisted in the United States Marine Corps at age 18 and was stationed at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, where he met the love of his life, Jennifer Eileen DeCarlo. The two were married at St. Basil’s Catholic Church in Vallejo on Aug. 29, 1987.  Jim left the Marines in 1989 but remained on Active Reserve through 1993. In 1990, he joined the California Highway Patrol and began his career as a peace officer. And, in 1993, he joined the Vallejo Police Department.  For 19 years, Jim distinguished himself as a Vallejo police officer while endearing himself to the Vallejo community. He served as a motorcycle officer, motorcycle instructor, driving instructor and SWAT officer. He received two Vallejo PD Medals of Courage, one Life-Saving Medal and many other department commendations. And, in 2000, Jim received the Officer of the Year Award.  Jim coached the Vallejo High School varsity girls basketball team and in his second year led the Apaches to a 25-7 record and a Sac-Joaquin Section Division II Championship. Jim left the Apache bench in March 2011 to bring into his home the two children of close friends who were killed in a motorcycle accident in January.

December 20

John David Dryer, tended horses, his son.  Shot during a routine traffic stop.

John David Dryer found his calling as a teenager when he nursed to health a horse that had become entangled in barbed wire.  He turned his grades around, earned his veterinary science degree from Ohio State University, opened his own successful practice — and then became a police officer. . . . At home, Officer Dryer was a doting father to his autistic son, Benjamin. In an interview with the Post-Gazette in 2000 about training bloodhounds, he said his son gave him motivation.  ”My son Ben, who is 5, was very sick when he was born. In fact, a couple of times I thought I was going to lose him,” he said. “I think this is why I want to search for missing people, particularly children.”

December 21

Another Tampa Bay Cop in this bloody year: Arnulfo Crispin.

Since Crispin was shot the night of Dec. 18, [Carlos] Cortes and Officer Julio Ruiz have been by his family’s side, offering any assistance they could.  Both officers learned more about their friend and why he always had a big smile on his face.  “His family has been so humble and so giving,” Ruiz said. “They put people and family before themselves.” Cortes agreed.  “It’s a large family and they don’t have that much,” he said. “At one point, they asked my wife and I to come and eat with them. They didn’t have a lot of food, but they made sure we had something to eat. They don’t have much, but what they do have they will give to others.”  That mentality explained a lot about the officer they knew.

Crispin’s parents

Before leaving the family’s house Tuesday night, the officers gave the large family their phone numbers and promised to keep in touch.  Although Crispin can’t be replaced, Ruiz said, the Crispin family has “gained 235 brothers and sisters at the Lakeland Police Department.”

December 29  

Chicago Officer Clifton Lewis: “he took me in as his child”

The off-duty Chicago police officer slain in a West Side convenience store Thursday night had just gotten engaged on Christmas Day, family friends say.  Clifton Lewis, 41, an eight-year veteran assigned to the Austin District’s tactical team, was pronounced dead Thursday at Stroger Hospital, officials said. Two men had walked into the M & M Quick Foods about 8:30 p.m. at 1201 N. Austin Blvd. in the Austin neighborhood, shot the officer, and then grabbed his gun and star and fled, sources said. . . . Lewis . .  has received 81 commendations for his police work, had proposed to his girlfriend, Tamara Tucker, only after asking her 18-year-old son, Keyonta Thomas, for permission. On Christmas morning, Lewis pulled her son aside and asked for her “hand in marriage,” said Thomas, 18.  ”I am just at a loss for words,” said Thomas, who said he saw Lewis as a father.  ”He was just as a father (to me)… He took me in as his child.”

Addendum: Special Agent John Capano of the ATF was killed yesterday as I was writing this.  He was on his way to pick up prescriptions for his ill, 81-year old father when he encountered an armed robbery at the pharmacy.

James Capano had planned to celebrate New Year’s Eve at his son’s house.  The family is grieving the death of James Capano’s wife of 57 years, Helen Capano, mother of John Capano. She died of cancer on Dec. 18.  James Capano said his son had volunteered to share his explosives expertise with military personnel in Iraq.  “He knew what he was doing, and he was the best one they had,” James Capano proudly said.  A tearful Rep. Peter Kingconsoled the elder Capano on the blood-stained sidewalk outside the pharmacy New Year’s morning.  King’s wife was slain agent’s fourth grade teacher.  “I’ve known John Capano for years,” King said, recalling giving Capano an award for bravery during a four-month tour of Iraq and Afghanistan.  “He had a unique personality, a great personality,” King said. “Everybody loved him.”

James Capano, Agent Capano’s father.  His wife, Agent Capano’s mother, died two weeks ago

Capano was the last officer killed in the line of duty in 2011, bringing the total to 163, 66 of which were gun killings.  Thousands of other police were shot or attacked but survived.
Assassination-style killings — where assailants randomly shoot an officer or lie in wait for unsuspecting targets, are on the rise.  Is cultural anger directed at police — by idiotic Occupy protesters, among others — contributing to an atmosphere in which police are targets?  I think the vast majority of responsibility for the presence of dangerous offenders on our streets lies with the courts and civil rights activists who have succeeded in creating a consequence-free world for criminals.  But every little bit of scapegoating counts.  In 2012, it’s time to start speaking up for cops.

 

4 comments!
December 17, 2011 10:58 am

Teach Your Kids to Hate the Police? That’s Child Abuse, Mao Style

1 comment
by    in war on cops

Teaching your kids to hate the police is bad enough.

Forcing them to enact that hatred by painting their “feelings,” then intentionally vandalizing a public space with the children’s “hearts” so that someone will have to tear them down, then forcing the children to watch the removal of the “love hearts” is a demonstration of sickness only made more stark by the extremely un-economically oppressed appearance of the crowd.  Telling crying three-year olds that the police are taking down their “artwork” because police are bad, violent people — well, that’s just prejudiced hate mongering.  These poor guys probably spend at least part of their workdays protecting kids, and anyone who knows a cop knows that it breaks their real hearts whenever they have to witness kids subjected to violence and abuse.  What a repulsive thing to do to these policemen.

 

The sadists of Parents for Occupy Wall Street probably got the idea for the protest from this PBS “anti-bullying” exercise, which similarly forces small children to ritualistically “perform” the emotions of being harmed by others by making paper hearts that express their love, then ritually tearing the hearts to pieces to experience the suffering of victims of bullying.  Sick stuff, on the taxpayer’s dime, of course.

Take a good look at these pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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December 13, 2011 2:23 pm

Sarah M. Fennell: Denied Justice? ABA and Human Rights Activists: Who Cares?

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by    in Crime and Justice Blog

Tonya Segars has sent me information about the following potential miscarriage of justice in the death of Sarah M. Fennell.  Please visit their site and sign the petition for more investigation of Sarah’s death.

Sarah M. Fennell

Imagine a world where the ABA and the vast constellation of human and civil rights groups bothered to make noise about victims once in a while.  No, they’re too busy advocating for criminals.
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December 9, 2011 10:35 am

More on Mumia

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by    in Crime and Justice Blog,media coverage of crime,Philadelphia,war on cops

From Daniel Flynn:

Pacifica Radio aired Abu-Jamal’s commentaries after National Public Radio rethought an earlier decision to do so. Evergreen State College and Antioch College, among others, hosted the convicted murderer as a commencement speaker via audiotape. A Law & Order episode namedropped Abu-Jamal, with a character noting that the “Philadelphia journalist” was “framed for murder.” Rage Against the Machine played an infamous benefit concert for him.

And today, the Philadelphia Inquirer, which ought to know better, hijacked an editorial “remembering” Daniel Flynn to go off on a wildly inaccurate rant against the death penalty.  How offensive, on an anniversary.  When is enough enough?

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December 8, 2011 5:02 pm

Maureen Faulkner is Right: The Fight Against Mumia Will Never Be Over, as Amnesty International Proves with Their Holiday Catalogue

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by    in Activists,Appeals,Crime and Justice Blog,Death Penalty,Philadelphia,war on cops

Maureen Faulkner, widow of Daniel Faulkner, the officer killed by Mumia Abu Jamal 30 years ago tomorrow, has issued a statement about the decision to forego a re-sentencing hearing for Abu Jamal.  Her statement is reproduced below: contrary to some media coverage, she did not agree quietly to the decision to release her husband’s killer from his death sentence.  Instead, she has understandably lost all faith in the justice system, and she does not believe “Mumia” would ever really be executed.

 Maureen Faulkner, 30 years ago.  Still fighting Mumia Abu Jamal and his supporters today.

The Faulkner family has been under continuous attack for three decades by an astonishing cabal of the malicious and the misinformed.  Most in the media are assuming, wrongly, that Mumia’s followers will now drift off to other causes.  There’s no chance of that happening.  Amnesty International announced that appeals were continuing for Mumia.  When Amnesty mentions “international fair trial standards” below, what they mean is that they will continue to try to impose United Nations laws on our country to aid cop-killers.  From the AP:

Amnesty International, which maintains that Abu-Jamal’s trial was “manifestly unfair and failed to meet international fair trial standards,” said the district attorney’s decision [to remove Abu Jamal from death row] does not go far enough. Abu-Jamal still has an appeal pending before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court over the validity of ballistics evidence.

“Amnesty International continues to believe that justice would best be served by granting Mumia Abu-Jamal a new trial,” said Laura Moye, director of the human rights group’s Campaign to Abolish the Death Penalty.

It’s not really about the death penalty.  Once that is abolished, not a single activist will go home.  What do you think they’re going to do: announce that America is now a fair place and quit their jobs?  No, they’ll continue to bleed our justice system dry until they overturn life-without-parole, and then move on every other sentencing rule that keeps killers and rapists off the streets.  We’re in an arms race, and the anti-incarceration activists are winning, not least because we have to subsidize their activism in addition to defending against it.

Meanwhile, the Mumia cultists at Amnesty International issued a press release that calls law enforcement’s support for their fallen colleague “unseemly.”  You’d think they could have been a bit more sensitive on the 30th anniversary of Daniel Faulkner’s murder.  For the holidays, Amnesty’s also selling baby onesies, in case you want to turn your toddler into an advertisement for people who murder police:

 ”All Rights for All People.”  How cute.  Except cops, of course.

Here’s a whimsical poster from their gift catalog depicting a police officer clubbing a kid, $8:

And in case your adolescents are feeling too much pride over being American, here’s a tee-shirt for them, and a map that “turns the world upside down to challenge North-South perceptions”:

 Don’t you feel less better now?
~~~

To get a taste of what Maureen Faulkner has gone through, there is a 1999 article written by her posted on the very interesting website, Pro-Death Penalty.  Today, Faulkner posted the following statement on her own website.  It’s damning.  Too bad the media wasn’t interested in giving her space to say it, considering all the space they lavish on Abu Jamal’s claims:

Statement from Maureen Faulkner

After enduring 30 years of emotional and physical hell as I’ve suffered through the appeals process, I am now convinced that when a death sentence is at issue, the judges of the Federal District Courts and the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals simply do as they want, not as the law dictates. Judges Yohn, Scirica, Cowen and Ambro oppose the death penalty, so they shape the law to suit their personal needs. This isn’t just me venting. It’s a fact that’s supported by the numbers. The dirty little secret about the death penalty in Pennsylvania that nobody wants to come to grips with is that since the death penalty was re-instated by the U. S. Supreme Court in 1976, there have been hundreds of death sentences imposed by Pennsylvania juries. Yet, after three decades of trying, not a single one of them– including my husband’s case — has managed to successfully make it through the Federal appeals gauntlet. How is it possible that over the course of three decades all District Attorneys combined have gone 0 for several hundred on their appeals?

The disgusting reality with the death penalty in Pennsylvania is that the fix is in before the hearings even begin, and federal judges, including the 4 dishonest cowards who presided over my husband’s case, are the fixers.

My family and I have endured a three-decade ordeal at the hands of Mumia Abu-Jamal, his attorneys and his supporters; who in many cases never even took the time to educate themselves about the case before lending their names, giving their support and advocating for his freedom. All of this has taken an unimaginable physical, emotional and financial toll on each of us. Over the past few months, we have anguished over the two terrible options we are presented with. Should we choose a new sentencing hearing, it would undoubtedly take months to complete and come at an extreme cost to the citizens of Philadelphia. It will undoubtedly be a venue for every fringe group imaginable. Droves of sleazy Human Rights lawyers will want to weigh in with amicus briefs. The list of character witnesses for Abu-Jamal would be a rouges gallery of the Hate America First crowd, and unlike he did at the 1982 sentencing hearing, this time around he will undoubtedly keep his vile mouth shut and portray the image of “a man filled with soulful humanity” as his former attorney once described him and not the seething animal he was at the 1982 hearing. The damning testimony of several key eyewitness who are now deceased will have to be read to the jury without emotion and the District Attorney will have the unenviable challenge of seating an impartial jury without being duped by even a single person who intends to nullify the death sentence. Should the jury decide on a death sentence again as they should, we would then start the whole decades-long appeals process over again, and we will be forced to repeat the past 30 years as if they never happened.

Given that we would be forced back into the same foul legal system that has failed us for so long and the morally dishonest judges we would undoubtedly be confronted with if there were a new sentencing hearing, we have asked Seth Williams to deny such a hearing and agree to have Mumia Abu-Jamal’s sentence be reduced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

This decision certainly does not mark the end of my journey, nor will I stop fighting to see justice done for my husband. Rest assured I will now fight with every ounce of energy I have to see that Mumia Abu-Jamal receives absolutely no special treatment when he is removed from death row. I will not stand by and see him coddled — as he has been in the past — and I am heartened by the thought that he will finally be taken from the protected cloister he has been living in all these years and begin living among his own kind; the thugs and common criminals that infest our prisons. I will hold any official who attempts to help Abu-Jamal improve his situation publicly and legally accountable for as long as I live.

In closing, I’d like to say that I believe the lowest dimension of hell has been reserved for child molesters and unrepentant murderers like Mumia Abu-Jamal. After 30 years of waiting, the time remaining before Abu-Jamal stands before his ultimate judge doesn’t seem quite so far off as it once did when I was younger. I look forward to that day, so I can finally close the book on this chapter of my life and live with the gratification and assurance that Mumia Abu-Jamal has finally received the punishment he deserves for all eternity.

Thank you.

Maureen Faulkner

4 comments!
December 6, 2011 3:01 pm

John Jay College’s Crime Report: Getting Less and Less Objective By the Day

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by    in Academicians on Crime,war on cops

Once upon a time, strange as this may seem, a public college existed that was considered a proud resource for young people aspiring to enter law enforcement.  In 1966, that college was (re)named John Jay.

  John Jay, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

45 years later, there are strong indications that John Jay is abandoning its original mission.  It now harbors programs hostile to police, making it . . . well, like every other college and university, rather than a rare and needed exception to that rule.

The school’s influential Center on Media, Crime, and Justice once published a largely objective-seeming resource for criminal justice journalists: Crime and Justice News.  But then, the inevitable happened: they got a big wad of cash from George Soros and jumped straight off the non-partisan cliff . . .

. . . into the warm, balmy waters of anti-policing biases with their new, Soros and Ford Foundation funded publication, The Crime Report.  Everyone in the pool, now:

More than Half of Arrest-Related Deaths are Homicides by Law Enforcement: Report

The country saw a reported 4,813 arrest-related deaths between 2003 and 2009, according to new data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).

Over 60 percent of all the deaths were classified as homicides committed by law enforcement personnel, BJS found.

About 98 million arrests took place in the U.S. during those years. While men accounted for about 76 percent of all arrests, they made up 95 percent of the deaths.

The study is part of a long-term project by BJS called the Arrest-Related Deaths program, which released its first report in 2007.

Read the full report here.

Actually, do read the full report, because what you will find there is dry, statistical analysis of deaths that occurred during engagements with police, written by the BJS’s Arrest-Related Deaths program, rather than this misleading nonsense histrionically illustrated with a highly suggestive, staged photograph of two officers kneeling on some poor college kid wearing a backpack.

Not to mention no “scholarly” explanation of why police shootings are classified as “homicides.”

Nor explanation of why this article is tagged “murder,” when murder is definitionally different from homicide, which is the thing the DOJ analysis is actually addressing.  This is far from an isolated example of anti-police bias in the allegedly scholarly Crime Report.

To summarize: Soros buys a few academics at John Jay, and they start their own “newspaper,” which disseminates misinformation in the name of a college that used to be a refuge from the usual cop-bashing fantasy-land of academia.  I suppose that’s where I’d spend my money, too, if I wanted to scorch the earth and could afford to do so.

And people holler endlessly about the Koch brothers funding one little economics chair in Florida. Meanwhile, the Soros and Ford Foundations — which are institutionally hostile towards policing and law enforcement — they buy entire academic departments, and the departments abandon whatever scholarly objectivity they still clung to — and nobody so much as whispers.

 

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December 1, 2011 6:50 pm

Cliff Kincaid on the Real Story of the UC Davis Pepperspray Incident . . . and UC Davis Prof. Nathan Brown on “Teaching” Revolution

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by    in Academicians on Crime,California,war on cops

Cliff Kincaid interviewed UC Davis Professor Nathan Brown regarding Brown’s call for the campus to become a no-go zone for police.  This is a new strategy being used by many Occupy groups and other protestors, who look to be beginning to migrate to college campuses now that cold’s setting in.

Universities and colleges tend to be more hospitable than city parks, because they are much more nursery-like: nice places to crash; built-in constituencies of the verbosely idle; anorectic girls willing to share their cafeteria cards; PR-allergic administrators . . . and protection from the more deranged homeless and/or criminal hoi polloi who harshed many a city-park-Occupy vibe by hogging the tofu loaf, among less amusing ironies.

Besides, universities are already occupied by herds of tenured professors dreaming nostalgically of their own big moments occupying the lunchroom at Columbia.  And tenured professors have a superpower in the form of double-secret-protected speech, which they like to call “academic freedom,” a highly unusual title if you think about it, because, unlike other things labelled “free,” “academic freedom” is guarded very, very jealously by the very tiny subset of faculty who claim it for themselves.

 Professor Nathan Brown, exercising his special superpower academic freedom of speech

So it would seem that college campuses are ideal places for the weary Occupiers to winter, except, ironically, if the faculty succeed in this throw-out-the-police thing.  For, if excited gaggles of tenured professors like the ones occupying the English Department of UC Davis do get their way, then all the other perks of protesting on campus — warm dorm showers, landscaping for pupping tents, safety for females and other living things — well, all of that is going to go poof the moment every pickpocket, sex offender, and crazy homeless person learns that the post-structuralists over at U.C.D. have booted the campus cops to the curb.

The following is an actual statement by the entire UC Davis English Department demanding the disbanding of the school’s police force.  It sure is going to be a highly stimulated crowd at the Department Holiday Party this year:

 The faculty of the UC Davis English Department supports the Board of the Davis Faculty Association in calling for Chancellor Katehi’s immediate resignation and for “a policy that will end the practice of forcibly removing non-violent student, faculty, staff, and community protesters by police on the UC Davis campus.” Further, given the demonstrable threat posed by the University of California Police Department and other law enforcement agencies to the safety of students, faculty, staff, and community members on our campus and others in the UC system, we propose that such a policy include the disbanding of the UCPD and the institution of an ordinance against the presence of police forces on the UC Davis campus, unless their presence is specifically requested by a member of the campus community. This will initiate a genuinely collective effort to determine how best to ensure the health and safety of the campus community at UC Davis.

Hmmm, except, as Cliff Kincaid observes, UC Davis has an actual crime problem:

According to the most recent crime statistics, while crime on campus in general showed little change from 2009-2010, some serious crimes were on the rise. There were 88 burglaries on campus in 2010, compared with 84 in 2009, and 21 forcible sex offenses compared with 18 the previous year. There were 11 aggravated assaults compared with nine in 2009.

How much worse will that get, once the coppers get replaced with composition teachers or, God forbid, roving militias conscripted from Philosophy or Classics?  Forget Occupy for a moment, and consider preoccupation, which ranks high among things that make campuses desirable for predators, along with stuff like:

      • keeping odd hours
      • living away from home for the first time
      • spatial un-vigilance due to music devices wedged in ears
      • public lugging of expensive consumer electronics on expensive bicycles
      • distractions brought upon by big ideas and/or hormones
      • beer

And that’s just the professors.  Think of the students.

~~~

Professor Brown, who earns a nice salary teaching classes on incoherencies such as the poetics of nanotechnology, has become something of a celebrity, thanks to an open-letter-blog-post currently mounted beneath an image of a fist on the website Bicycle Barricade (Get it?  French Revolution plus expensive bicycles), in which he fumed, scolded, and grandstanded; used the word “outrage” a lot; issued accusations about severe physical injuries that have not been confirmed by anyone; referred to himself as a special asset to the school, and then told the school’s chancellor that she, in contrast to him, was not an asset.  The latter seems awfully materialistic, coming from someone advocating for the overthrowing of rapacious consumerism, but, whatever.

Brown j’accuses:

[T]he administration of UC campuses systematically uses police brutality to terrorize students and faculty, to crush political dissent on our campuses, and to suppress free speech and peaceful assembly. . . I am writing to hold you responsible and to demand your immediate resignation on these grounds. . . I am writing to tell you in no uncertain terms [emphasis inserted, to emphasize the hysterical tone] that there must be space for protest on our campus. There must be space for political dissent on our campus. There must be space for civil disobedience on our campus. [Why?  He does not explain.] There must be space for students to assert their right to decide on the form of their protest, their dissent, and their civil disobedience—including the simple act of setting up tents in solidarity with other students who have done so. [Let me see if I've got this right: they need space to assert their right to decide on the form of protest, and then they need other space to do the protesting . . . wait, I'm getting confused, perhaps you could say more about that]  There must be space for protest and dissent, especially, when the object of protest and dissent is police brutality itself. You may not order police to forcefully disperse student protesters peacefully protesting police brutality. You may not do so. It is not an option available to you as the Chancellor of a UC campus. That is why I am calling for your immediate resignation.

[Here comes the deconstruction part, so hang tight]Your words express concern for the safety of our students. Your actions express no concern whatsoever for the safety of our students. I deduce from this discrepancy that you are not, in fact, concerned about the safety of our students. Your actions directly threaten the safety of our students. And I want you to know that this is clear. It is clear to anyone who reads your campus emails concerning our “Principles of Community” and who also takes the time to inform themselves about your actions. You should bear in mind that when you send emails to the UC Davis community, you address a body of faculty and students who are well trained to see through rhetoric that evinces care for students while implicitly threatening them. I see through your rhetoric very clearly. You also write to a campus community that knows how to speak truth to power. That is what I am doing.

I call for your resignation because you are unfit to do your job. You are unfit to ensure the safety of students at UC Davis. In fact: you are the primary threat to the safety of students at UC Davis. As such, I call upon you to resign immediately. . .

And so on.

You can find the entire “manifesto” here; yes, there is much, much more of it.  Technically, repetition is a rhetorical device, as I am sure Professor Brown will demonstrate repeatedly in coming days.  The tone of all of this is terribly childish, but, to me, not nearly so disturbing as the contents of the following video, which I need to preface by saying that it resembles nothing so much as one of those totalitarian mind-control dystopias hippy professors used to attempt to inoculate us against by assigning books by Orwell, back when I used to take English classes, or rather, back when I used to take English classes where the professors actually assigned novels, instead of assigning political manifestos instead of novels in English classes:
[you-tube video here.]
~~~
Despite all the cop-hating and protest-leading he’s been doing lately, Dr. Brown still seems to find it curious that anyone would question his course syllabus on past and present protest movements, titled: The Real Movement of History – Left Communism and the Communization Current.  Indeed, it is true, as he asserts, that his syllabus covers the seminal Marxist texts, a reasonable academic subject, if taught reasonably, by which I mean objectively.
Though I know the word “objective” is objectionable, I’m just going to put it out there.
Curiously, though, the syllabus ends with The Coming Insurrection, a manifesto with extremely detailed descriptions of the very scenario unfolding largely under Dr. Brown’s direction on the U.C. Davis campus as I write this, a scenario beginning with creating and then escalating conflicts with police, then demanding the removal of police from public spaces, then “occupying” those spaces, then fomenting total, violent revolution in which no one group takes responsibility for the violence being perpetrated by their leaderless, horizontal, mass-chanting compadres once the police have gone home — to protect their threatened families, is the way it goes in Dr. Brown’s reading list.

That’s not quite the same pedagogical coincidence as looking up at the sky whilst reading Wordsworth and suddenly thinking that you might consider “wandering lonely as a cloud.”

I quote The Coming Insurrection at length here because I think it’s important to see the point at which it is impossible for Dr. Brown to continue coyly insisting that he is merely teaching historical texts of revolution, as opposed to performing them step-by-step on the taxpayer’s dime while pretending to teach English:

In the subway, there’s no longer any trace of the screen of embarrassment that normally impedes the gestures of the passengers. Strangers make conversation without making passes. A band of comrades conferring on a street corner. Much larger assemblies on the boulevards, absorbed in discussions. Surprise attacks mounted in city after city, day after day. A new military barracks has been sacked and burned to the ground. The evicted residents of a building have stopped negotiating with the mayor’s office; they settle in. A company manager is inspired to blow away a handful of his colleagues in the middle of a meeting. There’s been a leak of files containing the personal addresses of all the cops, together with those of prison officials, causing an unprecedented wave of sudden relocations [emphasis added throughout]. We carry our surplus goods into the old village bar and grocery store, and take what we lack. Some of us stay long enough to discuss the general situation and figure out the hardware we need for the machine shop. The radio keeps the insurgents informed of the retreat of the government forces. A rocket has just breached a wall of the Clairvaux prison. Impossible to say if it has been months or years since the “events” began. And the prime minister seems very alone in his appeals for calm. . .

Liberate territory from police occupation. If possible, avoid direct confrontation.

“This business shows that we are not dealing with young people making social demands, but with individuals who are declaring war on the Republic,” noted a lucid cop about recent clashes. The push to liberate territory from police occupation is already underway, and can count on the endless reserves of resentment that the forces of order have marshaled against it.  Even the “social movements” are gradually being seduced by the riots, just like the festive crowds in Rennes who fought the cops every Thursday night in 2005, or those in Barcelona who destroyed a shopping district during a botellion. The movement against the CPE witnessed the recurrent return of the Molotov cocktail. But on this front certain banlieues remain unsurpassed. Specifically, when it comes to the technique they’ve been perfecting for some time now: the surprise attack. Like the one on October 13, 2006 in Epinay. A private-security team headed out after getting a report of something stolen from a car. When they arrived, one of the security guards “found himself blocked by two vehicles parked diagonally across the street and by more than thirty people carrying metal bars and pistols . . .

There’s no ideal form of action. What’s essential is that action assume a certain form, that it give rise to a form instead of having one imposed on it. This presupposes a shared political and geographical position – like the sections of the Paris Commune during the French Revolution – as well as the circulation of a shared knowledge. As for deciding on actions, the principle could be as follows: each person should do their own reconnaissance, the information would then be put together, and the decision will occur to us rather than being made by us. The circulation of knowledge cancels hierarchy; it equalizes by raising up. Proliferating horizontal communication is also the best form of coordination among different communes, the best way to put an end to hegemony.

Sound familiar?  Watch the whole creepy Dr. Brown repeato-video, and read his entire manifesto, and then as much of The Coming Insurrection as you can take without needing a nice long walk, and then let me know if you believe this guy has a snowball’s chance in hell of calling himself a mere scholar and not tactician of Marxist revolutionary tactics . . . anywhere but in academia, of course, where wishes are horses being ridden by beggars.

Furthermore, mustering all the authority of a former graduate student who involuntarily took a snootful of Marxist theory courses myself while expecting them to be about stuff like poetry or literature, I sincerely doubt Dr. Brown even grasps at feigning academic objectivity in his classroom.

I doubt it precisely because of the way he stood ranting in public about the relationship between his scholarship and the protests in which he was engaging.

I, too, have been schooled to interpret texts and see through rhetoric, and my take on Nathan Brown is that he stood in his own public square quivering precisely at the frisson of un-objectively teaching while doing — all the while feeling the ghost of the soapbox in Hyde Park’s Speaker’s Corner creaking beneath his Birkenstocks.

Or perhaps, his expensive Italian shoes.

But the main point here is not the class politics of footwear, and I apologize for presumptuousness on my part.  The point is whether Dr. Brown is being truthful when he says that his scholarship is one thing and his activism another, or whether the actual content of the former might not raise some troubling questions regarding both his academic professionalism and his current ascendence to spokesperson for the entire U.C. Davis English Faculty on the subject of overthrowing the police.

Let’s set aside, for a moment, the fact that Dr. Brown fails to include in his fascinating survey courses any viewpoint contrary to the assertion that communism is the inevitable and right endpoint of all history, shades of Fukuyama certainly withstanding.  Such is the minutiae of crabbed minds.  Or, the discipline of teaching history as once practiced (not performed) by modest intellectual giants in short-sleeved button-collared shirts humanly striving above all else to preserve the protocols demanded of them by the creed of professional objectivity.

Let’s set all this . . . traditionalism . . . aside, this outré neutrality, cast it into the depths of extreme relativism from which Harold Bloom, who is responsible for so much of it, somehow rises every morning inexplicably smelling as if he has just washed both his hands, as we instead contemplate one detail — the detail of how Dr. Brown’s oddly-named survey course on communism ends precisely where his public persona begins — with cries for bloody, absolute revolution in the streets, and not-too-veiled threats towards any and all “authority figures” but especially the police.

To borrow an ugly from the current argot, I’m just trying to problematize these things.

~~~

And now, to this — the true story of what happened on the UC Davis campus in the hours leading up to the use of pepper-spray on a few systematically threatening, definitely not passively-resisting students and non-student professional agitators.  Here is the video you won’t see on the evening news, although it ought to be the one that is being seen, because it shows precisely what these protestors intended for the police they surrounded, and jeered at, and threatened.  Put yourself in the police’s shoes.

The video also shows a great deal about Professor Nathan Brown, although he is not in it.  It shows that despite papering his accusations with overwrought claims about his own special rhetorical perspicacity, he is just an average, even sophomoric, dissembler.  He wildly exaggerated what the police did; he threw a tantrum at his bosses, and he lied about the behavior of the protestors.  Even the best excuse that could be made for him is a particularly pedagogically unfortunate one: he just didn’t do a close enough reading of the text.

And now he is encouraging others to similarly misapprehend, and this makes for a demoralizing spectacle — an entire department of people claiming to be specially trained and insightful readers-of-texts, eagerly signing up without bothering to fact-check an inaccurate, premature, and presumptuous manifesto.

And these are the people getting paid to teach the art of reading.  Reading.  Remember that?

 

 

 

 

 

3 comments!
November 26, 2011 11:18 pm

Anarchy, Socialism, Freedom, and Running At Night

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by    in Crime and Justice Blog,Florida,war on cops

Last night, around 8, I went running in my neighborhood.

I had my dog with me.  A cattle dog, well-trained, loping like a wolf, loving the weirdness of being outside after dark.  She’s a night girl like me.  I’d been feeling deeply awful for days — flu, bronchitis, but suddenly the softness of the Florida air, and the warmth of November on the West Coast, and the dark brightness of lights rippling off water stirred some reserve in me and I was off like my lungs hadn’t been hacking up fluids for days, running like a bullet.

If only I had been a bullet.

I hadn’t gone a mile before some s***head in a truck pulled up and asked if I wanted a ride.  What, me and my dog wanted a ride?  Jogging on a sidewalk, we wanted a ride?

I have a hard time explaining this to some people.  I don’t want to whine about men, or the state of the world, but it’s been years since I’ve felt safe enough to run before or after sunrise, which is the only time you can run outside much of the year where I live, and it’s been years since I’ve had a dog who could run at all, and I was being careful by going from house to house to house of people I knew, intentionally — from the folks who own the restaurant, to Yolanda’s, to Nancy’s, past the cop on the corner, to Conrad’s, to Bobby Nell’s, to James and Janelle’s, carefully so I felt some little sense that the night could belong to me and that I wasn’t taking anything that even resembled a risk, but there are crappy people everywhere, and often evidence of prostitution at the end of the road in the morning, and more than once a man pulled up by the waterfront down the street from my house in broad daylight even (how could it matter that much?), and then last night I was just feeling the night air and there he was: stupidity, threat, and unknown quantity pulling up out of the darkness.

So I leaned towards his rolled-down window and said to him in my calmest, most matter-of-fact voice:

“I’m going to cut you with broken glass.”

And he uttered objectionable sexist pejoratives and sped away.  Under the circumstances, what else would he, or I, do?

I’ve always wanted to think that men like that would pause for a moment and just apologize for ruining the black soft asphalt smell, and the exuberance of sensing the stingrays and sharks and dolphins and manatees hovering in the rimming black water, and the ospreys and owls and squirrels hovering in the palmettos — that he might apologize for ruining all that hovering and quivering presence, which is what is really extraordinary about Florida.

But life isn’t like that.  There just isn’t enough of Robert Herrick, seeing:

how amber through the streams
More gently strokes the sight
With some conceal’d delight

And so on.

Screw it.  I’m tired of being afraid.  Last night when I wrote this, this is the part where I expressed anger, and I took the section out, because as someone very wise once told me, someone who was nearly prosecuted for shooting a thug who was pistol-whipping him during an armed robbery as he tried to save his co-worker’s life . . . well, in the spirit of the comment itself I won’t say exactly what he said to me, but it’s true that one should never make a point of literally documenting one’s hand in writing.

Because I want to enjoy the soft beauty of the coastal Florida night.  And I don’t want to upset my dog or frighten the neighbors, nor the manatees, who subsist on nothing harsher than lettuce and young mangrove shoots.

Ecosystems ought to be preserved.  Women ought to be able to run at night.

I’ve had ecosystems on the mind lately, because so many people are trying to tear them down in the name of “rescuing” them.  I’ve been thinking about how ironic it is that the protestors, whether on college campuses or city parks, are all so extremely naive about the ways they are being used by professional protestors — capital-A Anarchists, in every sense of the word — who are hell-bent on tearing down everything around them.  They say they want to tear down “capitalism” but thanks to the Anarchists they’re really starting with attacking laws that are the only thing that stand between us and chaos.

They say they want “freedom of thought” and “freedom to go where they want,” but the very first thing the Occupy Anarchist puppet masters (as distinct from the ubiquitous Occupy puppeteers) did was silence and repress women by demanding that women do nothing about being raped at Occupy sites: thus the very first accomplishment of the Occupy movement has been to make it less possible for women to go where they want to go and experience the very freedom that is supposed to be the movement’s goal.

This is hardly accidental.  I spent enough time on the Left to realize that the world’s worst most sexist creeps gravitate to extreme Leftist politics, and I spent enough time researching social movements of the past to realize that this condition is central to all revolutionary activism, not some aberration merely concurrent with the rise of bell bottoms.

Socialist creeps in the 19th century demanded that women practice free love to demonstrate their commitment to the cause of spreading socialism, just as Bill Ayers demanded the same of some girlfriend in an apartment in the 1960′s to prove her commitment to racial equality.  19th century anarchists like Charles L. Govan insisted that families and familial relations must be destroyed in favor of mutual philandering, the only true freedom to Govan and one given the predictably creepy name of “Voluntary Cooperation.”

Govan (on the left), practicing Voluntary Cooperation at Home Colony in Pierce County, Washington?

Look back to the late 19th Century and what you find there is a bunch of Anarchists saying things about sex and marriage that wouldn’t be out of place in the infamous “campus sex codes” established by feminists today, while simultaneously insinuating themselves in the larger American socialist movement with the explicit aim of using socialism’s tools to tear down capitalism’s house, then socialism’s house, then their own houses just to be consistent, until everyone would just wander around having Voluntary Cooperation with each other while the cows milked themselves.

You know, like the Occupy protestors.

I realized a long time ago that the utopia imagined by Leftists would not be the type of place where I could go running in the moonlight, whereas places created by the types of people who don’t feel the compulsion to make up disturbingly bloodless titles for stuff like “sex” are the ones who can be trusted to create the types of places where women can walk alone when they feel like it.

Behind all the infantile posturing and useful idiocy about to be unleashed on the United States over the next several months is one very ugly truth: these people want to create a world that is very much worse than this one.  And despite the silliness of their visible facade, for the first time in my life I think the activists on the far Left are powerful enough to actually create real destruction.  They have the institutions, having insinuated themselves in NGOs and government bureaucracies and especially throughout academia.  They have the money, much of it from George Soros, which is why I think it’s so important to look at the ways he is trying to dismantle the American legal system by targeting policing, and courts, and elections.

The streets where I run used to be named after socialist heroes because the town I live in was founded as a socialist colony in 1911.  But those people harbored a very real and healthy suspicion of itinerant anarchists who had managed to destroy other small socialist collectives in other states.  So they survived, and evolved, through hard work, vigilance, religious faith, family values, and real voluntary cooperation, not the type that needs to be dictated to you by some bearded, wild-eyed ideologue.  That’s why I can even think about running at night here, now.

It’s a lesson we had all soon better revisit.

In a nutshell: cows don’t milk themselves.

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November 22, 2011 9:11 am

Recent Publications in Dissident Prof, The Soros Files, and the Pittsburgh Tribune [and Real Clear Politics]

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I’m posting regularly now at Dissident Prof, a site run by the fabulous Mary Grabar.  Here’s my first post:

Occupy Wall Street — For College Credit

I published a guest editorial in the Pittsburgh Tribune on Sunday:

Occupiers War on Police

 

Real Clear Politics picked up the piece and has a good list of others, here.

And I’m continuing to write for the Soros Files, a project of America’s Survival (here’s the link: http://sorosfiles.com/soros/)

~~~

Occupiers everywhere. When I was up in Washington recently, I was walking through one of the Occupy sites and accidentally stepped on a rotting apple tied to a string, which was attached to a bamboo pole.  ”Oh no,” said the pole’s possessor, “you’ve crushed the goddess.”  He seemed serious, though very polite given that I had just gotten most of his belief system stuck to the bottom of my shoe.  He gathered up the remaining pieces of his crumbling yet sweetly-autumn-redolent metaphysics in a paper cup and cradled it while cheerfully and patiently explaining to me that only Ron Paul can preserve a truly originalist interpretation of the Constitution.

I couldn’t help but to like the young man.  I hope he’s OK.

Next, two unlikable, anorectic-looking people wearing urban motley and ominously bearing a flipboard and magic markers (not magic like the apple, just regular magic) made everyone gather in an ampitheatre-ish shape.  The meeting was supposed to be non-hierarchical but ended up being much more hierarchical than any real meeting because we were all forced to endure a long and repetitive lecture from Thing One and Thing Two about how they weren’t acting as “leaders” but as “leaderless facilitators” before proceeding to run the meeting with their iron (actually, hennaed and grubby) fists.

That, my friends, is the pure essence of thought-control: being forced to participate in the illusion that someone isn’t doing precisely what they are doing to you as they keep doing it while demanding that you repeatedly agree that they are not.

And this is what the future will really look like, if, by some colossal societal fail, the Occupiers ever get their way.  The future will look like a giant human resources meeting where the usual petty cubicle fascists control the whiteboard and waste your time while telling you they are doing so for your self-improvement.

Sort of like real human resource meetings.  Only, at these future Occupy human resources meetings, nobody will be allowed to zone out into the deep inviting pool of their Starbucks, contemplating the work piling up on their desks, or that hot guy in accounting whose mid-morning shadow makes your spine-crushing control-top pantyhose entirely worth the pain — there will be none of that, because boredom and whimsy are just two of humorless collectivism’s many enemies.

Instead, at dystopian future Occupy human resources meetings, everyone will be forced to participate continuously in the expression of their views, so long, that is, as their expressions are the same expressions expressed by the whiteboard-wielding, iron-fisted, anti-hierarchical movement non-leaders.

Also, after the Occupy human resources meetings, nobody will be getting back to work because there will be no more jobs, only more human resource meetings.

And that’s what I saw at the Occupy Movement.

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