The essence of government is power, and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse. – James Madison
Every week has a large number of police brutality stories, but this week had an unusually large number of offenses which are especially odious both for their incredible savagery and the triviality of the excuses under which they were inflicted. For example, two Los Angeles cops handcuffed a 5’4″ (163 cm) nurse and slammed her head into the pavement for the heinous crime of talking on her cell phone, and five others in the same city left a morbidly obese woman to suffocate to death in the back seat of a police car after hobbling her and literally cramming her into the car with a kick to the genitals. In Alabama, another brave hero assaulted a 90# (41 kg) brain-damaged woman who walks with a cane for the monstrous offense of taking pictures at a high-school football game. And then there were the wanton murders of three dogs: a South Carolina cop trespassed in a yard he had no business in and shot a tethered dog who could not even reach him; Buffalo, New York thugs broke into a woman’s house with a false warrant and murdered her dog while she was away, leaving her to discover the carnage when she returned; and a Denver-area sadist just shot his victim at random while harassing a “drug suspect” in the street.
All three examples of what Radley Balko calls “puppycide” are from his Twitter feed; a depressingly-large number of similarly-nauseating cases can be found on his blog, The Agitator. He also provided the first two links after the first video, and the next two after that (plus the second video) are courtesy of Jesse Walker. But first: if you’re a “moon landing hoax” crackpot, it probably isn’t a good idea to trick Buzz Aldrin into an interview and then insult him.
- 11-year-old arrested, charged with “child pornography” for sexting.
- Man playing part of Bigfoot gets new role as roadkill.
- Missing woman searches for herself.
- “Many scientists don’t like to talk about shark sex.”
- A common skin condition is caused by microscopic, poop-filled, exploding spiders who like to have sex on your face. You’re welcome.
- Florida deputy uses Spidey-sense to establish probable cause.
- Glenn Greenwald on blind obedience to authority.
- Violet Blue on why you should worry about face-recognition technology.
- Heroic cops protect the public decency from bachelor-party style performance nobody complained about.
- I agree that this is horrible. But it’s not life-in-prison, $250,000 fine, harsher-sentence-than-most-murders horrible.
- This excellent William Anderson article explains how the “progressive” philosophy led inevitably to horrible prosecutorial abuses in the United States, such as federal prosecutors using an 88-year-old communist law from Mongolia as an excuse to steal a man’s property.
Speaking of relics from the 1920s, here’s a Dutch ethnographic film from that time, in Pathécolor.
- FBI gives free face-recognition software to all police departments while insisting it will only ever be used to search mugshots.
- Judge calls $675,000 fine for downloading 30 songs “fair”.
- So, is this “human trafficking” too?
- Well, you know, “family values” and “best interests of the child” and all.
- Inspector Javert would be proud: Government forces bank to fire man for trying to steal 10¢ in 1963.
- Ignoramuses describe reproductions of paintings by Magritte, Munch and Goya as “bizarre…sexual…violent [and] very disturbing“, and declare they “may not be suitable for all ages.”
(Thanks to Grace for the first two links after the video, Cthulhuchick for the third, Wendy Lyon for the fourth, Mike Siegel for the fifth and reader MTflyboy for the last.)
I love that Buzz Aldrin punch. I hope it didn’t get him in trouble. I’m pretty sure no jury would convict him.
A little research yields this, “The police determined that Aldrin was provoked and no charges were filed”.
Being provoked is enough? I’ve been punching far too few people!
It’s really too bad that I don’t believe in Hell. I think that nothing would better suit these cops than to sit on hot coals with their viscera roasting beneath them for the rest of eternity.
I don’t believe in Hell, but I do believe in karma. And it’s going to be a long, long time before these savages work their way up into the range of full humanity. The important thing in the meantime is for the rest of us to stop giving them opportunities to exercise their bestial impulses on everyone else.
Too bad about that, that is, believing in karma. Is that the only irrational domain of your beliefs? I have not noticed anything else. A few of my friends who are also readers also commented on this exact thing.
Luckily, karma beliefs are rather harmless by themselves, and seem to be an effect of the Just World bias. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
This was interesting, and my biggest concern is that people will engage in typical all-or-nothing thinking and forget that, in this real world we live in, actions do often have consequences. Evil deeds are often punished, sometimes by something as simple as people no longer wanting to associate with people who do such things.
That is, I’m afraid people will conclude, “Well, it turns out there is no justice in the world, ever,” and then of course will make this situation more just in their own minds by adding, “And that’s a good thing!” These people will actively argue against any attempts to make the world more just than it is, and will answer every proposal for reform of anything with, “Yeah? Well LIFE isn’t fair!” at which point I hope somebody smacks that person in the mouth because it’s a strawman I’m damnably sick of.
Sorry, got off on a bit of a rant.
The difference between me and atheists is that I admit that not all of my thought processes are rational, and know which ones are not. Most atheists, on the other hand, irrationally believe themselves to be wholly rational and are thus dangerously unaware of the (often severe) irrationality in their cognitive functions.
But if you know which part of your belief system is irrational, then you can change your mind. Indeed, it is contradictory or perhaps just incoherent (cf. coherentism) to continue having beliefs that oneself considers irrational.
I am not under any illusion that I am completely rational. What I am is very rational, and when I find some irrational location in my web of beliefs, I change my mind even if it requires me to change a lot of beliefs.
So, which route do you want to take? (1) Consider karma reincarnation and the like beliefs (if any others) to be irrational, and thus change them, or not change them (2), or (3) don’t consider them irrational at all?
I prefer for you to pick (1), (3) requires some work to convince you (if possible), and I’m not too sure about what to say to (2).
You are equating the word “irrational” with “incorrect”; it is not. It merely means “not rational”, i.e. arrived at by cognitive processes which do not involve logic. There is no need to “change” irrational beliefs which serve one quite well and cause no discomfort or problems.
Sharks …
as a Sailor, I don’t like ’em. Bastards used to follow my submarine in and out of the little harbor on San Clemente Island. Always had to post an M-14 watch to shoot the sharks in case one of the line handlers slipped off the boat and into the water. I used to surf over the top of them off Point Loma in San Diego – not a fun feeling and it’s the one time you don’t want to “wipe out”.
Personally – I’m fine with just declaring that the shark’s position on the food chain has been superseded by humans – so let’s just exterminate them all as an obsolete life form! 😛
The baby seals will thank us. 😀
On this Facebook thing …
Well, I am an unapologetic Americentrist (don’t worry, we’re dinosaurs and we’ll all soon be dead the same as the last of the “Save the British Empire” guys are). Anyway, it’s like a cold-steel stake in my heart to see Europeans actually doing the job that Americans should be doing in reclaiming privacy rights. It’s funny how the Information Revolution has just produced a flood of new technologies that look neat on the surface, yet are so devastatingly dangerous to privacy once you drill down into them.
It’s like the same with the drones. When they first came out and I was in Afghanistan, everyone LOVED them. We used to make jokes. “Who told you that?” … “A little DRONE told me!”. “Oh, you think the bad guys are there but you can’t see!” … “Oh I have a little DRONE with eyes!” LOL – Drones were neat, until we started thinking that maybe they could almost anything.
And the terrifying thing is – they can.
Very, very expensive laundry stunt.
There’s no way to fix this country. The entire place is run by demented bureaucrats.
I’m all for romantic gestures, but that guy needs to think outside the box!