I’m thankful that the police officer came out quickly, that we live in a city where we can depend on police to react quickly. – Chris Reeves
I’m mostly back to my normal schedule now, though only one week ahead so far; by the next Links column I should have a comfortable two-week buffer again. We’ve got the usual assortment of amusing, interesting and infuriating links this week, but a few words of explanation are in order for the videos. The first, “I Am Here”, is a project started by two Chilean university students, Violeta Pinda and Felipe Guzman, to call attention to stray dogs that people usually ignore. All they did was to attach balloons on which they wrote things like “scratch me”, “play with me” and “don’t leave me” to the dogs…but when creatures who were essentially invisible suddenly become visible, magic happens (and Maggie cries). The second video is an animation of XKCD’s unique comic strip “Time”, which changed every half hour for the first week and every hour thereafter, from March 25th to the end of July. Everything down to the first video was provided by Radley Balko, the second video by Mike Siegel and the links between the two by Jesse Walker (“Sahara Sea”), Popehat (“baby prize”), Luscious Lani (“graffiti”), Kevin Wilson (“weapons”), PWS (“Detroit”), Lenore Skenazy (“school cops”), Brooke Magnanti (“whistleblowers”), and Antonio Lorusso (“child porn”).
- State abducted little girl from parents because they smoked pot, then gave her to a woman who murdered her.
- Judge fires clerk for helping wrongly-convicted man prove his innocence.
- The US government “honors the memory” of human traffickers.
- Bootlicking homeowner thanks cop for murdering his dog.
- Cops murder random old man, blame poor light.
- You park like an asshole.
- Nightmare of the week.
- The Hum.
- The Sahara Sea.
- 18th-century hentai.
- Cops frame an 11-year-old boy.
- Welcome to our world, street vendors.
- Pakistani game show gives away babies as prizes.
- Government is just a word for things we choose to do together.
- Worker removes graffiti, later discovers image of himself in its place.
- Cops shoot teen 9 times, then tase corpse & blame it on the weapons.
- Detroit cops are now directly robbing people, i.e. not under color of law.
- A catalog of recent abuses of schoolkids by cops, culminating in murder.
- Government celebrates newly-declared “National Whistleblower Day” by preparing to bury a whistleblower alive.
- Person or persons unknown are trying to frame liberty activists by sending them disguised child porn files via email.
From the Archives
- UK cops send “extreme” porn to anti-cop politician, then bust him for it.
- Do you think there is a connection between intelligence and sexuality?
- Sick minds see sex where it isn’t, fear magic powers of taboo pictures.
- Canadian politicians are just as dishonest as their American brethren.
- Cops stage massive raids to charge people before CANS law repeal.
- Only other peoples’ kind of sex work is bad! Ours isn’t even sexual!
- Is it OK to stay the full time after climax, just to enjoy her company?
- Sri Lankan police stage evidence-free hotel raids, for the children.
- Condemned to the “sex offender” registry for euthanizing a dog.
- Anti-whore NGO gets big donation from convicted child molester.
- Have you ever had a prostitute “read” you as a former whore?
- Government use of laws always exceeds their stated purpose.
- I’m very glad I never had this kind of celebrity as a client.
- Two HIV+ men have been seemingly cleared of the virus.
- Cops raid strip club so they can strip-search the dancers.
- A short biography of the great Athenian hetaera Aspasia.
- Some Korean whores prefer suicide to “rescue” by cops.
- Indian high court order decriminalization of prostitution.
- The newest threat to public health: the over-50 crowd.
- Yet another gun to the internet’s head is turned aside.
- Tennessee cops blatantly invent “trafficking” numbers.
- Obama crony jokes about hookers being gang-raped.
- Is the wind starting to shift toward decriminalization?
- Do you think jealousy is due to nature or nurture?
- What should we do about underage hookers?
- What should be done about “sex trafficking”?
- The erosion of “innocent until proven guilty”.
- Danish journalists mock the Swedish model.
- Why do so many escorts like doggie style?
- Can whores and clients really be friends?
- Will your husband ever write a column?
- My two previous columns for Lammas.
- Canadian town buys a strip club.
- BBW escort turns comedienne.
- The craziness of Zimbabwe.
- Another early Links column.
- A picture book of vulvas.
- Legalizing Prostitution.
Whistleblowers …
Okay the error here is in the U.S. Government “pretending” that whisleblowers are always heros and … they will always be alright for doing the right thing.
My ethics class in the Navy always began with the sentence … “History is littered with the bodies of people who decided to do the “right thing”.
The one thing I wanted to get through to my students … is that I wanted to totally smash the notion (planted in their heads by “Big Navy”) – that, by doing the right thing – one would always come out alright in the end … or even ahead in the game. That is hogwash … ask Martin Luther King about that. Ask William Wallace.
The lesson I taught is … we are all men and women of honor and we do the right thing regardless of the consequences – in fact, we shall accept those consequences with stoic determination.
I know that civilians don’t live by these codes of honor – but warriors do and honestly, truth be told – you WANT us to live by these codes or our boot would be in YOUR neck perpetually.
Bradley Manning, took an OATH. Doesn’t mean he can’t break it – but it DOES mean he should accept the consequences of breaking it like a man. In fact, I think his sentence was quite light – as it provides for the possibility that he could be freed at some point in the future. My own thoughts for people who commit espionage is … DEATH.
Brad Manning “leaked” millions of documents. How many good people have been killed as a result of this is impossible to say. The scope of the documents he leaked is so expansive it’s even hard to figure out what his idealistic agenda was – if he had one at all. And, I don’t believe he did have one. This was simply a case of a misfit sad-sack who was mad at the world. “Look here, I can do this” … “I can be somebody” … “I’m not important, I don’t have any skills, and the world hates me but look what I can do!”
That is Bradley Manning in a nutshell.
Well, now he has more time to be “mad” at the world and reflect on his sad-sack existence.
I have always stated that if one my family were murdered I would KILL the son of a bitch that did it. I would kill that bastard cold dead and then turn myself into the police, proudly plead guilty, state my reasons for breaking the law thusly an accept my punishment. “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time” … words of wisdom from the TV show “Baretta” …
Why the fuck did Bradley Manning do what he did? What was the damn reason? There’s no lofty goals buried in anything he’s said about his crimes.
Also … the tagline that the government is preparing to “bury a whistleblower alive” … is hyperbolic, since he didn’t receive the death sentence and, even if he had … “burying alive” would be considered cruel and unusual punishment under the Constitution.
By the way … everyone is all fired up for this Gay Marine … but to those who are angry about him I say … “What about the whistleblowers that are being silenced about Benghazi and the dead and wounded Americans associated with that?”
Those same people aren’t so “concerned” about THOSE whistleblowers.
Hypocrites.
Aren’t you saying something like “my country, right or wrong”?
At the Nuremburg War Trials a lot of the German soldiers tried the “I was only following orders” defence. But the court would have none of this, finding that they had a greater moral duty not to carry out such orders — generally relating to the implementation of the “Final Solution”.
So, if your country requires you to do certain things, which you as a member of the armed forces of that country are obliged by oath to do, and you find that the things are morally wrong, how do you respond, what do you do?
That was essentially the jist of my ethics class – to know when it was proper to disobey an order – but disobeying an order doesn’t mean you’re not going to face consequences.
No member of the armed services is obliged to carry out an unlawful order. If someone tells you … “Shoot these civilians” … then the proper response is to tell the person delivering that order to respectfully go fuck himself. This doesn’t protect you from HIM turning the rifle on you however – but you have a choice here don’t you? You can live with the fact that you murdered innocent civilians – or you can do the right thing and join them in death.
These are not games we are playing here – the stakes are high – those who are unwilling to play them – should not sign on the dotted line.
Lawful orders? Well every single member in uniform is OBLIGED to follow them. There was nothing UNLAWFUL about the order to Bradley Manning that he treat information in his possession according to it’s proper classification.
Let me reiterate that point … the order that Manning violated was NOT UNLAWFUL – therefore he was not authorized to violate it. There is no comparison between Manning and the Germans captured and tried for war crimes. The Germans pretty much got a sham trial and were subjected to laws ex post facto that they could rightly say they didn’t know about when they committed the offenses. Bradley Manning received a proper courts martial in accordance with the UCMJ and he was found guilty of charges that he knew, or should have known, he could be tried and sentenced under when he committed the offense.
The order may be lawful; but what if it requires you to do something you think is unlawful or immoral. Manning may well have violated a lawful order, though we may never know what his motivations were. He might have found evidence of unlawful or immoral activity such as the killing of Reuters reporters, and felt obliged to make this known.
Suppose he did find such evidence, and asked you what he should do; how would you advise him? Remember, the orders under which he was acting were perfectly lawful.
I do agree with you about the Nuremburg trials; a “we’ll give you a fair hearing before we hang you” set up.
I’m also reminded of what happened at Mai Lai, and what happened afterwards; how the perpetrators were treated is in marked distinction to how Manning has been treated.
Then you either follow the order … or disobey it, and accept the consequences of your decision. That’s my whole point.
If you read his Wiki article … Manning’s own statements about this are all over the place. One witness says he told him, concerning giving out secret information … “this is what I do for friends” – which indicates a purely selfish motive.
After his arrest, he seems to have come up with another reason … something about being told to find more detainees for Iraqi police when he didn’t want to.
Assuming he had some “moral” compulsion … then why release millions of documents on EVERYTHING the U.S. (and even many foreign countries) was involved in? Not only that – but the pure volume of the works he released make it self-evident he did not read the things he was releasing – and didn’t care if he was exposing people to danger.
This is not even an arguable point. He used a “shotgun”, “slash and burn” strategy of getting back at the United States – and he didn’t care who it individually harmed.
When I was in Afghanistan, I met many Afghan soldiers who dreamed of freedom from the Taliban. Whatever you think of the US involvement there – certainly – UNLESS YOU ARE PRO-TALIBAN, you have respect for and hope for the best for these Afghan freedom fighters. They risk, not only their lives, but the lives of their families. Afghan Army, back then anyway, was organized that so soldiers from one province fought in another province in order to keep the chances of the whereabouts of their families low. It was not uncommon for many to use false names so they couldn’t be connected with with their families back home – but certainly the CIA knew their names.
What if some of THOSE names had been in the documents that Manning released? I don’t know if they were but I ONE HUNDRED AND TEN PERCENT POSITIVE OF ONE THING …
HE DID’T CHECK BECAUSE HE DIDN’T CARE.
Moral high-ground? Nope he never had it.
A good article – written by a liberal – on why Manning is a traitor …
http://www.forwardprogressives.com/theres-a-big-difference-between-the-actions-of-bradley-manning-and-edward-snowden/
The only thing I’m going to say on the subject: “A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.” – Edward Abbey
His motivations are immaterial; he helped set in motion a process that will eventually destroy one of the greatest evils of the 21st century, and history will reward him for it even if that evil slowly tortures him to death.
Which particular evil are you referring to? It seems like he attacked a lot of them.
Read the article. The professor’s probably correct, though he does sound patronising.
Go a little further; just how far can politicians be trusted with such information? Just how pure are the motives of the intelligence and defence services? Or, just how far does “corruption” extend? (Corruption in quotes because I don’t mean to imply a financial motive.)
Embarrassing the government should be a capital crime? Really?
There is no charge for “embarrassing the government”. This guy was convicted of espionage under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice – a code he voluntarily subjected himself to.
Additionally … “espionage” under the UCMJ IS punishable by death if …
the Detroit cops thing must have been really bad for it to make the news with no ambiguity or “allegedlies.”
I just came across this from a blog by a former Canadian upon her approval for American citizenship.
Oh, those dogs in the video would have been instantly adopted by me. I’m fairly certain that the final line in my obituary will read, “She is survived by her 15 dogs and a turtle named Michelangelo.”
How about charging the CPS supervisors as an accessory to murder before the fact given that they obviously weren’t doing their due diligence? And let’s take the differential between pot smoking sentence and a murder sentence and let the cops’ supervisor serve that time in prison. Maybe that will get these a**####s attention.
And they fired the wrong person in Kansas. The judge should go, stripped of pension and expelled from the bar because he obviously thinks that justice doesn’t matter but having the right magic words does. Such an evil person should not be allowed any power in the state and by all rights should be subjected to a little bit of that himself. How about he serve the time in prison remaining on this man’s sentence given that he did his level best to keep him there.
Many, many years ago a group of Cambridge undergraduates were hauled up before the local magistrate because of their unruly behaviour. They were given a stern talking to, and fined £5, a considerable sum then.
The magistrate was also the Master of the undergraduates’ college, and they were duly summoned to meet him. Uncertain if they were to be rusticated, they were naturally anxious. The Master gave them a lecture about the behaviour expected of undergraduates, bemoaning how standards had fallen from his time; and as they were leaving, still uncertain of their fate, he gave them each an envelope.
The envelope contained two pieces of paper. On one he had written, “In my day we were fined 10/6 for this”. The other piece of paper was a £5 note.
I’d heard of rustications from the British elite schools but I hadn’t heard before that they fined them as well. Interesting story.
Next up for DOJ honors – the snitch who betrayed Anne Frank’s hiding place.
I know we went to the wrong house and shot you in your garage but it’s your fault because you don’t have enough lighting to suit us – sincerely your friendly neighborhood popos
I wish cop-block would have given more particulars on Jose Cuevas case. While I’m sure that Philly cops could sink so low, I’m unconvinced given the paucity of evidence or even narrative. And maybe by Google-fu isn’t up to snuff, but I can’t find anything further on the case. Count me a skeptic on this one.
On Toronto – wow that’s so passive it’s almost inert. Kinda like a fat police desk sergeant.
On the child porn frames, don’t anyone tell chuck schumer or eric holder. That will their next “Federally Sanctioned” sting, one that you can bet they’d pursue fast and furiously. Maybe they can get the IRS to join the DEA and BATFE on this one. Or perhaps the TSA as they appear to have no end of experts when it comes to acquiring child porn.
http://www.weartv.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/sheriff-family-members-speak-out-deputies-shooting-unarmed-man-34377.shtml
Well, the deputies could cite insufficient illumination for this shooting of a man in his own garage so they pulled out that well worn canard that they “were in fear for their lives.”
Meow! Hiss! Hiss!
Easy, Links, nice kitt… OW!