WHY SHOW RESPECT FOR AUTHORITY?

WHY SHOW RESPECT FOR AUTHORITY?

 Why Show Respect For Authority?

You hear it over and over again, “You should show respect for authority!”

Why? What makes authority right? If we have any sense at all, we require a reason before respecting anything.

Hitler became an authority via democratic process. Did that make him worthy of obedience?

Authority is an abstract; a secondary, not a primary. We ought to respect things that are profitable to men.

But, while I am more or less condemning authority, I should add that there are times when sensible men do choose to follow authority. Military operations are a good example of this. The individual soldier is not in a position to see the whole, complex, difficult situation. Only a commander has enough information (hopefully) to direct the operation. So, in this case, the individual soldiers will obey orders and follow their chain of command.

But even in this case, the soldiers are not following mindlessly, but because they know there is no other way for the operation to work well.

What this means is that obedience to authority is not virtuous by itself, only that it can become a practical necessity to achieve some goal that is virtuous.

We should only resort to going on someone else’s word when we have insufficient information and insufficient time to gather it and decide upon it. And even in these cases, we really should consider the benevolence and honor of the person calling the shots.

Respect goes to individuals who earn it, not to positions.

Paul Rosenberg

ARE YOU A GORILLA OR A GOD?

ARE YOU A GORILLA OR A GOD?

Humanity stands about halfway between gorillas and gods. The great question that looms over us, is this: “Which will we incorporate into our lives? Gorilla things or God things?”

The choice is ours. Yes, various choices are thrust upon us all our lives, accompanied with various levels of intimidation and threat, but at some point, all of us find ourselves able to choose freely. And it is then that we go in one direction or the other. We are able to change directions of course, but every time we choose, we move a step in one direction or the other.

What We Are

Please understand that I am not endorsing any specific theories here – religious, scientific, or otherwise. I’m merely describing the situation in which humanity finds itself. We are halfway between gorillas and gods: The worst things we do are gorilla-like, and the best things we do are god-like. Either direction is open to us.

Strange as it may seem, we are a lot like apes. Our bodies are built in the same ways, our body chemistry is nearly identical, and the worst aspects of human nature are essentially the same as the worst aspects of primate behavior.

We are also a lot like gods. We transcend entropy; we create. We can touch the soul in others, and the best aspects of human nature are essentially the same as the best characteristics attributed to the gods.

This is not what we can be; this is what we are. What we become in the future depends on whether we choose gorilla things or god things, here and now.

What Are Gorilla and God Things?

Gorilla things are those which operate on a dominant/submissive model. Hierarchy (high-level individuals controlling lower-level individuals) is the blueprint of the gorilla world. Dominant gorillas seek status and the power to control others. The submissive apes seek to pass along their pain to the apes below them (females, juveniles, etc.) and to avoid punishment. They are servile toward the dominants and cruel toward those they are able to dominate. Females trade sex for favors.

God things operate on a creative model. Blessing is the blueprint of the god world: distributing love, honesty, courage, kindness, blessing, awe, gratitude, and respect into the world and to other humans.

Gorilla things are these:

The desire to rule.
The desire to show superiority and status.
Servility.
Avoidance of responsibility.
Reflexive criticism of anything new.
Abuse of the weak or the outsider (women, children, Gypsies, Jews, immigrants, homosexuals, etc.).
God things are these:

Producing things that preserve or enhance life.
Invention and creativity.
Expressing gratitude and appreciation.
Experiencing awe and transcendence.
Adaptability and openness.
Improving yourself and others.

The Two Wolves

You’ve probably heard the old story of the two wolves: A young boy becomes angry and violent, and then feels guilty about his violence. He goes to his grandfather for advice. The old man says, “You have two wolves inside you: one of them is nice, the other is dangerous, and they’re fighting inside of you.”

The boy then asks his grandfather, “Which one will win?” The old man replies, wisely, “Whichever one you feed.”

In the same way, humanity becomes like gorillas or gods depending on whether we put gorilla things or god things into our lives.

I’m not going to tell you this is always easy, but the difficulty hardly matters: Somehow, we’ve been given a choice between becoming gorillas or becoming gods. No other creatures in this world have been given such a choice.

Bring god things into your life, and reject gorilla things. It doesn’t matter if these things are hard – you are defining your own nature between two wildly different options, every day.

Leave gorilla stuff to the gorillas.

Building god stuff into your life is your job, my job, everyone’s job.

Paul Rosenberg

THE BEAUTY AND DIGNITY OF THE PRODUCTIVE CLASS

At one time I lived very close to the Field Museum of Chicago; I had a membership and spent a good deal of time there. One evening, about ten minutes before closing, I noticed that workmen had begun preparing the first floor for an evening event. I had a panoramic view from where I stood at the second floor balcony, and what I saw has stuck with me ever since.

What I saw was a lone man setting up tables and chairs – simple work, the kind that any teenager could do. But what I watched this man do was every bit as beautiful as dance. He moved with integrity, with precision, and with intent. He carefully spaced the tables in a precise geometry, he moved every chair with efficiency. This was more than just work; it was also art. This man knew that he was doing his job well, and, perhaps most importantly, heenjoyed doing it well.

I was transfixed by it all, and I stood there until the guards asked me to leave. And even then, I moved very slowly until I lost sight of him.

There is real beauty in doing a job well, even a simple job. It is our great loss that this form of beauty is never mentioned in public these days – double-sad, because at one time, such beautywas acknowledged.

This brings us to an obvious question: What happened? How did we lose the beauty and dignity of work? I’ll answer that in a moment, but first I want to explain what I mean by “the productive class.”

What Is The Productive Class?

The productive class includes all those people who are engaged in improving life upon Earth: The people who build and repair our cars, our houses, and our computers. The people who provide us with air conditioning, electricity, plumbing, and food. The people who make, clean, and repair our clothing. The people who treat our sicknesses and wounds.

If you can drive around town and point out places where you repaired things, or delivered things, or fed people, or made human life better in any of a thousand ways, you are a producer.

If you survive and persist at the expense of others, on the other hand, you are not a producer.

But if you are a producer, there is an inherent dignity in what you do. You are actively making the world better. You are directly creating benefit for yourself and for other human beings. What you do every day is morally virtuous and worthy of respect. And you should never let anyone tell you otherwise.

And, it’s worth pointing out: Money is not a measure of your worth. In a perfect world, that might be true, but this isn’t a perfect world. In our time, morality and money don’t always travel together.

Money is certainly useful, and getting it should matter to you, but merely having money is no measure of your dignity or your value as a producer. Actively improving the world, however – producing – is a proper measure of dignity.

What Happened?

So, how were the beauty and dignity of work ruined?

The short answer: They were killed by hierarchy and status. I’ll explain briefly:

Humans have been carefully taught to accept, respect, and respond to hierarchy for thousands of years. As a result, we respond emotionally to images of kings, ‘great leaders,’ and so on. But it was the industrial era that finally did in the respect for work. After all, this was a time when millions of people accepted deathly boring jobs simply for better pay. The meaning of their work became a paycheck and nothing more.

And in the industrial setting, there was one clear marker of status: the position of ordering other people around.

The bosses got status and the workers got checks, and both lost meaning and satisfaction from their work. The assumption that was planted in us over the industrial era was this:

Only people who order others around matter. Everyone else should feel shame in their presence.

This, of course, played perfectly into the hands of politicians. This can be seen in the plague of “great leaders” and world wars that erupted at the height of the industrial era, in the first half of the 20th century.

In any event, status is gorilla-level garbage; what matters is what you are, not which position you hold within some kind of hierarchy. By believing in hierarchy and status, we lost the satisfaction of work.

What, Really, Is Work?

It’s important to look at things directly; to focus and see them for what they really are, not just by what other people say about them.

This is what I see when I focus on work itself:

Productive work is the insertion of creativity into the world. It is the birthing of benefit into the world. People who do this should be deeply satisfied by what they do.

Compared to productive work, status is merely ornamental puffery, a shiny coat with the word “Important” emblazoned upon it, and worn by a sad little man.

If you are a member of the productive class, you should re-arrange your mind and stop responding to the demands of hierarchy and status. Instead, pay attention to things that reallyimprove human life in the world.

Creating things, improving things, or making it possible for other people to create… these are noble, beautiful, and important things. We should gain a deep and enduring satisfaction from doing them.

And, indeed, when we put our minds and efforts to it, that’s exactly what we will gain.

Paul Rosenberg

STATUS, EVOLUTION, AND HUMAN NATURE

STATUS, EVOLUTION, AND HUMAN NATURE

As we move into a new year, I’d like to post something that I feel has fundamental importance. I hope you can take the time to read it carefully.

Status

Status is generally defined as a person’s condition, position, or standing relative to that of others.

Please read that definition again and consider this:

Status automatically creates division and conflict.

Status forces us to think in terms of position, hierarchy, and dominance, and can’t possibly do otherwise; it is built solely upon our standing relative to others.

In other words, status is a poison. It causes us to think of others as adversaries and to compulsively compare positions.

To be very blunt about it, status is a primate model of seeing other beings. But it’s even worse than that: Not only does status poison our inter-relationships, it poisons our self-image. After all, it requires us to think of ourselves as above or below every other person.
http://www.freemansperspective.com/dignity/

Here are the two central problems with status:

Status is plainly irrational. We are massively complex beings, at the same time better and worse than the next person in a dozen ways.
Status forces us to see each other as adversarial. Status seeds hate, malice, and war.

Evolution

Status stands before us as an evolutionary hurdle. If humanity is to rise as a species, it absolutely must transcend status. Until we do, humans will continue to think primate thoughts, and human history will remain centered on conflict.

Status is a continuous, pervasive, and internalized culture of man versus man. And most human minds do hold this as a central concept. How many people like to see themselves as richer, prettier, taller, or more powerful than others? By so thinking, they build the foundations of envy, abuse, and violence.

Our present world is dominated by status-based structures. Whether kingdom, democracy, theocracy, or whatever, status-based structures set one man or group of men above all others. These people of a “higher” position-relative-to-others collect the production of the “lower” people, issue edicts they are forced to obey, and punish those who do not.

In other words, the ruling systems of the present world are incarnations of status… they are “status made flesh,” to paraphrase a famous scripture. This is a primary reason why the world is perpetually at war. The very model on which our society is built sets man against man and group against group, automatically and unavoidably.

Human Nature

Status is not “us.” It may be something we’ve been trained in for dozens of generations; it may be something that has influenced us all our lives; but it is not “us.” It is, rather, a dirty and old habit.

Individual humans tend to transcend status fairly well when they exert effort on it. They usually learn, for example, to drop the concept among people they love. And therein lies the proof that it is not truly “us.” We are better than status.

The truth is that humans can and do demonstrate non-oppositional thinking and living. And in this we see that human nature has been sold short.

Humans, even while immersed in the poisonous and persistent mindscape of status, still demonstrate love and charity.

That fact speaks extremely well of us. Human nature is better than we thought it was.
http://www.freemansperspective.com/are-you-a-god-or-gorilla/

It’s time to start stripping status from our minds and lives.

Paul Rosenberg

What's the Matter with 'All Lives Matter'

George Zimmerman, a white male neighborhood watchman, shot and killed Trayvon Martin, a black male youth. Zimmerman was charged, tried, and acquitted in July 2013. In the aftermath, a grassroots movement began titled Black Lives Matter.

Black Lives Matter is working to "broaden the conversation" around race from the legal system and black poverty to the burdens on black women, children, black queer and trans folks, and blacks with disabilities.

In response, some white folks have countered with the phrase, "All Lives Matter." While this is seemingly a more empowering as well as a diversity affirming response, it is neither.

In the Shadow of 'All Lives Matter'

1. In the shadow of 'All Lives Matter' is a form of willful colorblindness -- the erasure of the issue of race.

When people say "All Lives Matter" in response to "Black Lives Matter," they are not simply opening their arms to the greater diversity of humanity. Instead, they are taking race out of the conversation. While the statement masquerades as a bright and inclusive light, in the shadow of this statement hides a willful ignorance of America's racist past and present.

There is not doubt that racism exists today. The research evidence is vast, clear and widely available from differential stop and frisk rates, sentencing levels and job hiring.

A most telling statistic about the difference in the lack of valuation of a black life comes from a study conducted by Allan Collard-Wexler, an NYU Stern School economist: "[T]he cost of adopting a black baby needs to be $38,000 lower than the cost of a white baby, in order to make parents indifferent to race."

Adding insult to injury, asserting that all lives matter in response to black folks declaring that black lives matter, turns our eyes away from acknowledging America's racist past, functioning as a form of dismissal or denial.

Through the constitution, slavery and Jim Crow laws, America stood for the belief that some lives were more human, more worthy -- that some live mattered more. How can we forget that America codified in its constitution (the same constitution that some insist must be strictly and literally interpreted in its original form) the notion that a black life was only considered to be 3/5ths of a white life?

If we stop highlighting and focusing on black lives, but instead focus more globally and generally on all lives, then we become complicit in not seeing color as a factor in American life. Putting it simply, if we erase race, we won't see racism.

2. In the shadow of 'All Lives Matter' lurks the privilege white folks have to not experience their own lives in racial terms.

Let's face it, most white people don't regularly think about themselves as white. We are not made to think about our race, because we are not living in a pervasive systemic atmosphere that injures us because of our skin color. As such, we easily think of ourselves as a "just a person," as a human being belonging to the human family.

But when a person is regularly injured because of a quality, it is veritably impossible to enjoy the luxury of ignoring that quality. As a Jewish man, my Eastern European brothers and sisters could not ignore the fact that they were Jewish. If they "forgot," they were quickly reminded! Women in boardrooms, disabled people getting on a bus, gay teens at a high school dance, and black youth in a school cafeteria are all aware of their social identity; straight white able bodied males ignore their social identity.

They enjoy the privilege of being free from that concern. (See also Beverly Daniel Tatum's masterwork, Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?)

When a white person responds to the statement "Black Lives Matter" by countering with "All Lives Matter" they exhibit a blindness to the privilege of living outside of a painful and marginalizing lens that highlights their race; a privilege not enjoyed by black and brown people.

In the words of Jarune Uwujaren, "[I]f you have trouble seeing race or are tired of people making things about race, realize that if they could, most people of color would ignore race too."

3. In the shadow of 'All Lives Matter' is an aggressive resistance to focusing on the value of black lives.

The statement, "All Lives Matter" did not arise in a vacuum. It was not born of a passion for the value of all life; it is not a world-wide social movement for justice. It was a response, a retort, a counter-point to the statement "Black Lives Matter." While not everyone utters these words with this intent, the phrase nonetheless functions as a dismissal.

As such, we cannot only evaluate it purely in terms of its accuracy (i.e, "Isn't it true that all lives matter? Wouldn't it be good to live in a world where all lives mattered?") or as a general statement of care for all beings, including black beings. It is not simply said as a matter of truth or a statement of values. Instead, it's a rebuttal to the statement "Black Lives Matter."

Instead of communicating a love for all beings, "All Lives Matter" are words of negation, repudiation, and refutation. They are words of debate; they are fighting words. What are the users of these words fighting? Simple: That Black lives matter!

On a personal note, beyond all logical argument, I confess to having my tears flow and my heart melt when I first went to the Black Lives Matter website and found recorded black voices completing the phrase "In a world where black lives matter, I imagine...." One particular recording was made by Satchel, a four year old black boy, whose sweet giggling joy erupted when he said, "In a world where black lives matter, I imagine there's a lot of tickling."

In a world that would resist or belittle the declaration that Black Lives Matter, that would censor those who speak out for the beauty, power, intelligence and moral authority of black people, I fear there would be far too many black children doing a lot less smiling, laughing and giggling and a lot more hungering for food, safety, and a sense of self worth.

Follow David Bedrick on Twitter: www.twitter.com/lovebasedpsych

Once When We Were Free

Once When We Were Free

We’re so much more sensible now. We don’t live our lives as much as we arrange them and organize them. B follows A. D follows C. We take our medicine and our shots because the doctor says so.

We’re careful, because accidents happen.

We don’t say what’s on our minds a lot of the time, because other people might pass that on, and who knows? We might get into trouble.

But once upon a time, when we were young, we were free. We didn’t take any shots, and when we got sick we recovered. We were stronger than kids are now. We didn’t ask for much protection and we weren’t given much, and we survived.

There was no talk about the needs of the group. When we went to school, we weren’t told about ways we could help others. That was something we learned at home. We weren’t taught about The Planet. Instead, we learned to mind our own business, and it wasn’t considered a crime.

When we played games, adults weren’t hovering or coaching every move we made. We found places to play on our own, and we figured it all out. There were winners and losers. There were no plastic trophies. We played one game, then another. We lost, we won. We competed. Losing wasn’t a tragedy.

There were no childhood “conditions” like ADHD or Bipolar, and we certainly didn’t take any brain drugs. The idea of a kid going to a psychiatrist would have been absurd.

People were who they were. They had lives. They had personalities. They had eccentricities, and we lived with that.

There was far less whispering and gossip. There were fewer cliques. Kids didn’t display their possessions like signs of their identity. A kid who did was ignored, even shunned.

Kids never acted like little adults. They didn’t dress like adults. They didn’t want to be fake adults.

Our parents didn’t consult us about what we wanted. We weren’t part of the decision-making process. They didn’t need us for that.

We weren’t “extra-special.” We weren’t delicate.

No one asked us about our feelings. If they had, we would have been confused. Feelings? What’s that? We were alive. We knew it. We didn’t need anything else.

We could spot liars a mile away. We could spot phonies from across town. We knew who the really crazy adults were, and we stayed away from them.

We didn’t need gadgets and machines to be happy. We only needed a place to play. If you wanted a spot to be alone, you found one, and you read a book.

There was no compulsion to “share.”

School wasn’t some kind of social laboratory or baby-sitting service. We were there to learn, and if we worked hard, we did. Teachers knew how to teach. The textbooks were adequate. Whether the books were new or old didn’t matter.

Kids weren’t taught how to be little victims.

Sex was a private issue. You were taught about that at home or not at all. You certainly didn’t learn about it in school. That would have been ridiculous.

Some of us remember being young, and now, we still have that North Star. We still don’t take our shots and medicines. We still don’t take every word a doctor says as coming from God. We still know losing isn’t a crime or an occasion for tragic theater.

We still know how to be alone. We still think gossip and cliques are for morons. We still feel free. We still want to live, and we do.

We still resent intrusion on our freedom, and we speak up and draw the line. We still like winning and competing. We still like achieving on our own.

We can spot self-styled messiahs at a hundred yards.

As kids, we lived in our imaginations, and we haven’t forgotten how. It’s part of who and what we are.

We aren’t bored every twelve seconds. We can find things to do.

We don’t need reassurances every day. We don’t need people hovering over us. We don’t need to whine and complain to get attention. We don’t need endless amounts of “support.”

We don’t need politicians who lie to us constantly, who pretend we’re stupid. We don’t need ideology shoved down our throats. Our ideology is freedom. We know what it is and what it feels like, and we know no one gives it to us. It’s ours to begin with. We can throw it away, but then that’s on us.

If two candidates are running for office, and we don’t like either one, we don’t vote. We don’t need to think about that very hard. It’s obvious. Two idiots, two criminals? Forget it. Walk away.

We don’t fawn, we don’t get in other people’s way. We don’t think “children are the future.” Every generation is a new generation. It always has been. We don’t need to inject some special doctrine to pump up children. We remember what being a child is. That’s enough.

When we were kids, there was no exaggerated sense of loyalty. We were independent. Now, we see what can be accomplished in the name of obligation, group-cohesion, and loyalty: crimes; imperial wars; destruction of natural rights.

It didn’t take a village to raise a kid when we were young, and it doesn’t take one now. That’s all propaganda. It panders to people who are afraid to be what they are, who are afraid to stand up for themselves.

We don’t feel it’s our duty to cure every ill in the world. But it goes a lot further than that. We can see what that kind of indoctrination creates. It creates the perception of endless numbers of helpless victims. And once that’s firmly entrenched, then magically, the endless parade of victims appears, ready-made. When some needs have been met, that’s never enough, so other needs are born. The lowest form of hustlers sell those needs from here to the sky and beyond. They make no distinction between people who really can use help and those who are just on the make.

We didn’t grow up that way. We don’t fall for the con now.

When we were kids, the number of friends we had didn’t matter. We didn’t keep score. Nobody kept track of the count. That would have been recognized in a second as a form of insanity.

As kids, we didn’t admire people simply because other people admired them. That was an unknown standard.

We were alive. That was enough. We were free. That was enough.

It still is.



When we were young, we had incredible dreams. We imagined the dreams and imagined accomplishing them. Some of us still do. Some of us still work in that direction. We haven’t given up the ghost just because the world is mad.

The world needs to learn what we know. We don’t need to learn what the world has been brainwashed into believing.

Jon Rappoport

What Can Be Done About Prosecutorial Misconduct?

Above Photo: From PopularResistance.org.

Note: In addition to seeing police abuse more clearly in recent years thanks to easy access to video cameras and a political movement that wants to expose police abuse, we have also seen prosecutorial misconduct. Most recently it was evident in the Tamir Rice grand jury, but it was also evident in the Michael Brown, Eric Gardner, Sandra Bland and other recent cases. Here is 14 times that police killed someone this year, mostly unarmed, and walked free. Sometimes, as in the prosecution of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trevon Martin that the prosecutor is so inept that it raises questions about whether they were really seeking a conviction. In the essay below, Barbara R. Arnwine, President of the Transformative Justice Coalition, clearly states the problem and lays out steps that need to be taken to solve it.

Dear Friends:

I am sure that you were as stunned and disappointed as so many of us were by the grand jury’s non-indictment of the officers involved in the death of Tamir Rice.  However, this story is actually one of gross prosecutorial misconduct and pro-police bias.  My statement below addresses this all too common problem and makes some policy and action step recommendations to address this national crisis of police officers not being held accountable for slayings of African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans. With your support the Transformative Justice Coalition can work in the years to come to make these vital reforms a reality.

“The Disgraceful Prosecutorial Misconduct of Timothy McGinty and Needed Reforms.”

Statement of Barbara R. Arnwine, President, Transformative Justice Coalition.  

The time is now for dramatic change to staunch the national crisis in policing and the slaying of people of color!

Our nation is confronting an horrific epidemic of senseless and inexcusable police killings of African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans.  And profoundly the criminal justice system has  insulated many culpable officers from being held accountable for their use of excessive force, racial profiling and killings. Thus we come to the issue of prosecutorial bias and misconduct and specifically the non-indictment in the Tamir Rice Slaying.

The prosecutorial misconduct by Prosecutor Timothy McGinty in the Tamir Rice grand jury proceedings should be the impetus for widespread systemic reform of the grand jury process.

Prosecutor McGinty first resisted the urgent pleas of the Cleveland community to convene a grand jury and only did so after months of foot-dragging.  He publicly made statements attacking Tamir Rice’s family.  During the grand jury proceedings there were repeated public leaks of grand jury information including some leaks by McGinty himself.  He hired “experts” to construct reports to serve as justifications for the officer’s shooting. His conduct of the Grand Jury proceeding was wrought with bias in favor of the police officers allowing them to read statements to the grand jury with no cross examination allowed.  His misconduct and bias culminated in his admitted recommendation to the Grand Jury that they not indict the officers!  Not surprising, the grand jury followed his recommendation and did not indict.

This non-indictment was rendered despite the known evidence in this case.  Tamir Rice was a 12 year boy who was playing with a toy gun in a public playground.  A neighbor called the police to report Tamir’s actions but noted it could be a toy gun which was not communicated to the officers alerted to respond to the call. Officer Timothy Loehman shot Tamir Rice within 2 seconds of arriving on the scene while the police car was still in motion and without time for Tamir to hear or comply with any orders.  In his immediate previous employment, Officer Loehman had been found incompetent in the performance of his police duties due to emotional issues and the improper use of a firearm. In his file, the Independence Police Official stated, “I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct the deficiencies.”  Officers Frank Garmack and Loehman placed their own selves in jeopardy by driving within feet of Tamir Rice while firing upon him.  The officers made no attempt to independently assess the situation or communicate with Tamir Rice before shooting.  Four minutes passed after the shooting before any medical aid was provided to Tamir Rice.

Less than a week before, the grand jury in the Sandra Bland Death also failed to indict anyone for her death while in jail custody.  Again at least one of the “independent” prosecutors stated that he was opposed to any indictments and hadn’t expected the grand jury to indict.

Over and over again, we hear the same refrain of senseless death by police and prosecutorial pro-police bias and misconduct.

How do we change this dynamic?  What can be done differently?

Here are my thoughts:

1.   Establish Well Funded and Resourced Independent, Representative and Diverse Panels of Citizens and Legal Experts to Deliberate in Police Shooting Cases;

2.   Use Independent investigators to prepare the reports on police shootings;

3.   Follow the lead of the State of California and make all police shooting proceedings public thereby ending the secret grand jury process;

4.    Establish National Standards for Prosecutorial Misconduct which if violated can result in loss of position;

5.    Officers involved in shootings should be required to file a full incident report that day and undergo immediate drug and alcohol testing;

6.    Voters must prioritize the election of district attorney, state attorney, prosecutor and attorney general;

7.    Voters should vote for candidates who run on a platform of strict police accountability;

8.    Revise federal and state civil rights statutes to eliminate “intent” requirement and only require preponderance of the evidence to bring a lawsuit against law enforcement for the use of excessive force, brutality, racial profiling or misconduct thus providing greater latitude for the Department of Justice to intervene in these matters;

Making these urgent reforms is an imperative that must not be denied!  Only by doing so do we return the word “Justice” into these deliberations of police shootings.

I will be working hard to actualize these policy and action recommendations.  Support the Work of the Transformative Justice Coalition to bring about these needed reforms.
Thank You!

What’s in Store for Our Freedoms in 2016? More of Everything We Don’t Want

What’s in Store for Our Freedoms in 2016? More of Everything We Don’t Want

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”—George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Vol. 1

In Harold Ramis’ classic 1993 comedy Groundhog Day, TV weatherman Phil Connors (played by Bill Murray) is forced to live the same day over and over again until he not only gains some insight into his life but changes his priorities. Similarly, as I illustrate in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we in the emerging American police state find ourselves reliving the same set of circumstances over and over again—egregious surveillance, strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, government spying, the criminalization of lawful activities, warmongering, etc.—although with far fewer moments of comic hilarity.

What remains to be seen is whether 2016 will bring more of the same or whether “we the people” will wake up from our somnambulant states. Indeed, when it comes to civil liberties and freedom, 2015 was far from a banner year.

The following is just a sampling of what we can look forward to repeating if we don’t find some way to push back against the menace of an overreaching, aggressive, invasive, militarized surveillance state.

More surveillance. The surveillance state is alive and well and kicking privacy to shreds in America. Whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, will still be listening in and tracking your behavior. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere. We are now in a state of transition with the police state shifting into high-gear under the auspices of the surveillance state. In such an environment, we are all suspects to be spied on, searched, scanned, frisked, monitored, tracked and treated as if we’re potentially guilty of some wrongdoing or other. Even our homes provide little protection against government intrusions. Police agencies, already empowered to crash through your door if they suspect you’re up to no good, now have radars that allow them to “see” through the walls of your home.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/11/edward-snowden-nsa-reform-113073.html#.VL7C8mTF_38

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/01/19/police-radar-see-through-walls/22007615/

More militarized police. Americans will continue to be rendered powerless in the face of militarized police. In early America, government agents were not permitted to enter one’s home without permission or in a deceitful manner. And citizens could resist arrest when a police officer tried to restrain them without proper justification or a warrant. Daring to dispute a warrant with a police official today who is armed with high-tech military weapons would be nothing short of suicidal. Moreover, as police forces across the country continue to be transformed into extensions of the military, Americans are finding their once-peaceful communities transformed into military outposts, complete with tanks, weaponry, and other equipment designed for the battlefield. Having already transformed local police into extensions of the military, now the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the FBI are preparing to turn the nation’s police officers into techno-warriors, complete with iris scanners, body scanners, thermal imaging Doppler radar devices, facial recognition programs, license plate readers, cell phone Stingray devices and so much more.http://www.newsweek.com/how-americas-police-became-army-1033-program-264537

More police shootings of unarmed citizens. Owing in large part to the militarization of local law enforcement agencies, not a week goes by without more reports of hair-raising incidents by police imbued with a take-no-prisoners attitude and a battlefield approach to the communities in which they serve.

More so-called “terrorist” attacks. Despite the government’s endless propaganda about the threat of terrorism and even in the wake of the shootings in San Bernardino and Paris, statistics show that you are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack. You are 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane. You are 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack. You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack. And you are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist.http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fear-terror-makes-people-stupid

More costly wars. The military industrial complex that has advocated that the U.S. remain at war, year after year, is the very entity that will continue to profit the most from America’s expanding military empire. The U.S. Department of Defense is the world’s largest employer, with more than 3.2 million employees. Thus far, the U.S. taxpayer has been made to shell out more than $1.6 trillion to wage wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. When you add in our military efforts in Pakistan, as well as the lifetime price of health care for disabled veterans and interest on the national debt, that cost rises to $4.4 trillion.
http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2012/03/27/worlds-largest-employer-youll-never-guess/

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/12/crs-report-war-spending-trillion

More attempts by the government to identify, target and punish so-called domestic “extremists.” In much the same way that the USA Patriot Act was used as a front to advance the surveillance state, the government’s anti-extremism program will, in many cases, be utilized to render otherwise lawful, nonviolent activities as potentially extremist. To this end, police will identify, monitor and deter individuals who exhibit, express or engage in anything that could be construed as extremist before they can become actual threats. This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming. Moreover, under the guise of fighting violent extremism “in all of its forms and manifestations” in cities and communities across the world, the Obama administration has agreed to partner with the United Nations to take part in its Strong Cities Network program and hire a domestic extremism czar.http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/launch-strong-cities-network-strengthen-community-resilience-against-violent-extremism

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/strong_cities_network_will_foster_collaboration_to_fight_violent_extremism

More SWAT team raids. More than 80% of American communities have their own SWAT teams, with more than 80,000 of these paramilitary raids are carried out every year. That translates to more than 200 SWAT team raids every day in which police crash through doors, damage private property, kill citizens, terrorize adults and children alike, kill family pets, assault or shoot anyone that is perceived as threatening—and all in the pursuit of someone merely suspected of a crime, usually some small amount of drugs.http://www.salon.com/2014/08/14/one_nation_under_swat_how_americas_police_became_an_occupying_force_partner/

More erosions of private property. Private property means little at a time when SWAT teams and other government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, wound or kill you, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family. Likewise, if government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with friends in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, you’re no longer the owner of your property.

More debt. Currently, the national debt is somewhere in the vicinity of a whopping $18.1 trillion and rising that our government owes to foreign countries, private corporations and its retirement programs. Not only is the U.S. the largest debtor nation in the world, but according to Forbes, “the amount of interest on the national debt is estimated to be accumulating at a rate of over one million dollars per minute.”http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/2015/10/27/debt-ceiling-looms-as-national-debt-continues-to-rise/

http://www.businessinsider.com/who-we-owe-federal-debt-to-2013-10

http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/2015/10/27/debt-ceiling-looms-as-national-debt-continues-to-rise/

More government contractors. Despite all the talk about big and small government, what we have been saddled with is a government that is outsourcing much of its work to high-paid contractors at great expense to the taxpayer and with no competition, little transparency and dubious savings. According to the Washington Post, “By some estimates, there are twice as many people doing government work under contract than there are government workers.” These open-ended contracts, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, “now account for anywhere between one quarter and one half of all federal service contracting.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-federal-outsourcing-boom-and-why-its-failing-americans/2014/01/31/21d03c40-8914-11e3-833c-33098f9e5267_story.html

More overcriminalization. The government’s tendency towards militarization and overcriminalization, in which routine, everyday behaviors become targets of regulation and prohibition, have resulted in Americans getting arrested for making and selling unpasteurized goat cheese, cultivating certain types of orchids, feeding a whale, holding Bible studies in their homes, and picking their kids up from school.http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/dad-arrested-pick-kids-school-article-1.1523389

More strip searches and the denigration of bodily integrity. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was intended to protect the citizenry from being subjected to “unreasonable searches and seizures” by government agents. While the literal purpose of the amendment is to protect our property and our bodies from unwarranted government intrusion, the moral intention behind it is to protect our human dignity. Unfortunately, court rulings undermining the Fourth Amendment and justifying invasive strip searches have left us powerless against police empowered to forcefully draw our blood, forcibly take our DNA, strip search us, and probe us intimately. Accounts are on the rise of individuals—men and women alike—being subjected to what is essentially government-sanctioned rape by police in the course of “routine” traffic stops.
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/02/149866209/high-court-supports-strip-searches-for-minor-offenders

More injustice. Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice. The courts were established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. Yet the courts increasingly march in lockstep with the police state, while concerned themselves primarily with advancing the government’s agenda, no matter how unjust or illegal. As a result, Americans have no protection against police abuse. It is no longer unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later. What is increasingly common, however, is the news that the officers involved in these incidents get off with little more than a slap on the hands.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2010/07/when-police-shoot-unarmed-man-oscar-grant-verdict-Mehserle

More political spectacles. Americans continue to naively buy into the idea that politics matter, as if there really were a difference between the Republicans and Democrats (there’s not). As if Barack Obama proved to be any different from George W. Bush (he has not). As if Hillary Clinton’s values are any different from Donald Trump’s (with both of them, money talks). As if when we elect a president, we’re getting someone who truly represents “we the people” rather than the corporate state (in fact, in the oligarchy that is the American police state, an elite group of wealthy donors is calling the shots). Politics in America is a game, a joke, a hustle, a con, a distraction, a spectacle, a sport, and for many devout Americans, a religion. In other words, it’s a sophisticated ruse aimed at keeping us divided and fighting over two parties whose priorities are exactly the same.http://www.npr.org/sections/theprotojournalist/2014/08/12/339560577/the-bush-obama-quiz-whats-the-difference

http://rare.us/story/7-ways-republicans-and-democrats-are-exactly-the-same/

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/donald-trump-donations-democrats-hillary-clinton-119071.html

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/is-america-an-oligarchy

http://rare.us/story/7-ways-republicans-and-democrats-are-exactly-the-same/

More drones. As corporations and government agencies alike prepare for their part in the coming drone invasion—it is expected that at least 30,000 drones will occupy U.S. airspace by 2020, ushering in a $30 billion per year industry—it won’t be long before American citizens who will be the target of these devices discover first-hand that drones—unmanned aerial vehicles—come in all shapes and sizes, from nano-sized drones as small as a grain of sand that can do everything from conducting surveillance to detonating explosive charges, to middle-sized copter drones that can deliver pizzas to massive “hunter/killer” Predator warships that unleash firepower from on high.

More dumbed down, locked down public schools. Our schools have become training grounds for compliant citizens. Despite the fact that we spend more than most of the world on education ($115,000 per student), we rank 36th in the world when it comes to math, reading and science, far below most of our Asian counterparts. Even so, we continue to insist on standardized programs such as Common Core, which teach students to be test-takers rather than thinkers. Making matters worse is the heavy police presence in schools, which have become little more than quasi-prisons in which classrooms are locked down and kids as young as age 4 are being handcuffed for “acting up,” subjected to body searches, and suspended for childish behavior.
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/american-schools-vs-the-world-expensive-unequal-bad-at-math/281983/

http://www.cnycentral.com/news/story.aspx?id=978874#.VL6peWTF_38

http://dailycaller.com/2015/01/19/abandon-ship-common-core-is-rapidly-sinking-across-the-country/

http://wvtf.org/post/child-handcuffed-and-school-policies-questioned

More ignorance about our rights. Americans know little to nothing about their rights or how the government is supposed to operate. This includes educators and politicians. For example, 27 percent of elected officials cannot name even one right or freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment, while 54 percent do not know the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war.http://www.ijreview.com/2014/01/107324-smarter-educator-civic-literacy-test-will-show-know-u-s-politics/

More prisons. Our prisons, housing the largest number of inmates in the world and still growing, have become money-making enterprises for private corporations that manage the prisons in exchange for the states agreeing to maintain a 90% occupancy rate for at least 20 years. And how do you keep the prisons full? By passing laws aimed at increasing the prison population, including the imposition of life sentences on people who commit minor or nonviolent crimes such as siphoning gasoline. Little surprise, then, that the United States has 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prisoners.
http://www.newsweek.com/americas-correctional-system-numbers-293583

http://mic.com/articles/86519/19-actual-statistics-about-america-s-prison-system#.MwyGW8fYJ

More corruption. If there is any absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off. This is true, whether you’re talking about taxpayers being forced to fund high-priced weaponry that will be used against us, endless wars that do little for our safety or our freedoms, or bloated government agencies such as the National Security Agency with its secret budgets, covert agendas and clandestine activities. Rubbing salt in the wound, even monetary awards in lawsuits against government officials who are found guilty of wrongdoing are paid by the taxpayer.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-biggest-tax-scam-ever-20140827

http://www.newsweek.com/how-americas-police-became-army-1033-program-264537

http://www.costsofwar.org/article/economic-cost-summary

http://www.wired.com/2014/07/the-big-costs-of-nsa-surveillance-that-no-ones-talking-about/

More censorship. First Amendment activities are being pummeled, punched, kicked, choked, chained and generally gagged all across the country. The reasons for such censorship vary widely from political correctness, safety concerns and bullying to national security and hate crimes but the end result remains the same: the complete eradication of what Benjamin Franklin referred to as the “principal pillar of a free government.” Free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws and a host of other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors have conspired to corrode our core freedoms. As a result, we are no longer a nation of constitutional purists for whom the Bill of Rights serves as the ultimate authority. We have litigated and legislated our way into a new governmental framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2015/01/16/history/great-american-thinkers-free-speech.html

More fascism. As a Princeton University survey indicates, our elected officials, especially those in the nation’s capital, represent the interests of the rich and powerful rather than the average citizen. We are no longer a representative republic. With Big Business and Big Government having fused into a corporate state, the president and his state counterparts—the governors, have become little more than CEOs of the Corporate State, which day by day is assuming more government control over our lives. Never before have average Americans had so little say in the workings of their government and even less access to their so-called representatives.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10769041/The-US-is-an-oligarchy-study-concludes.html

More fear. We’re being fed a constant diet of fear, which has resulted in Americans adopting an “us” against “them” mindset that keeps us divided into factions, unable to reach consensus about anything and too distracted to notice the police state closing in on us.

James Madison, the father of the Constitution, put it best: “Take alarm,” he warned, “at the first experiment with liberties.” Anyone with even a casual knowledge about current events knows that the first experiment on our freedoms happened long ago. Worse, we have not heeded the warnings of Madison and those like him who understood that if you give the government an inch, they will take a mile. Unfortunately, the government has not only taken a mile, they have taken mile after mile after mile after mile with seemingly no end in sight for their power grabs.

If you’re in the business of making New Year’s resolutions, why not resolve that 2016 will be the year we break the cycle of tyranny and get back on the road to freedom? No matter what the politicians say about the dire state of our nation, you can rest assured that none of the problems that continue to plague our lives and undermine our freedoms will be resolved by our so-called elected representatives in any credible, helpful way in the new year.

“We the people”—the citizenry, not the politicians—are the only ones who have ever been able to enact effective change, and there is a lot that needs to change.

All of the signs point to something nasty up ahead.

Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber
John W. Whitehead

Russia Vindicated by Terrorist Surrenders in Syria

Russia Vindicated by Terrorist Surrenders in Syria

As Syrians gather in their capital Damascus to celebrate, there is a sense that the New Year will bring a measure of peace – the first time such hope has been felt over the past five years of war in the country.

Russia’s military intervention to help its Arab ally at the end of September has been the seminal event of the year. After three months of sustained Russian aerial operations in support of the Syrian Arab Army against an array of foreign-backed mercenaries, there is an unmistakable sense that the «terrorist backbone has been broken», as Russian President Vladimir Putin recently put it.

This past week sees several local truces being implemented across Syria with evacuation of militants from towns which they have held under armed siege. The civilian populations in these locations have been effectively held hostage as human shields by the militants, thus preventing Syrian army advances up to now. The Western media, such as US government-owned Voice of America, invert reality by claiming that it is the mercenaries themselves who have been under siege from the Syrian army instead of the fact that the mercenaries have been holding civilians in their midst as hostages, as was the case earlier in the siege of Homs, which was eventually also broken.

What has changed dramatically is the advent of Russian air power – over 5,000 sorties in three months – which has enabled the Syrian army to wipe out militant bases, oil smuggling and weapons supply routes in northern Syria along the Turkish border. This has left militants further inland to wither from the severance of supply lifelines. Hence the readiness now to accept truces and evacuation deals – under the auspices of the United Nations and International Committee for the Red Cross.

Thousands of anti-government insurgents are being bussed out of locations around Damascus, including Zabadani, al Qadam, Hajar al Aswad and Yarmouk.

An air strike reportedly by Russia forces killing the commander of the Jaish al-Islam militant group, Zahran Alloush, in the Damascus suburb of East Ghouta, dealt a devastating blow to morale among the self-styled jihadists. Alloush was reportedly killed along with several other commanders. That strike translates into «the game is up».

What is interesting is how the Western news media are reporting all this. Their reportage of the truces and evacuations are straining to minimize the context of these developments. This BBC report is typical, headlined: «Syria fighters’ evacuation from Zabadani ‘under way’».

The British state-owned broadcaster tells of hundreds of «fighters» being relocated from the town of Zabadani as if the development just magically materialized like a present donated by Santa Claus. What the BBC fails to inform is that that truce, as with several others around Damascus, has come about because of Russia’s strategic military intervention in Syria dealing crushing blows against the militant networks. The Western media have preoccupied themselves instead with claims from the US State Department that Russia’s military operations have either been propping up the «Assad regime» or allegedly targeting «moderate rebels» and civilians.

The disingenuous Western narrative, or more prosaically «propaganda», then, in turn, creates a conundrum when widespread truces and evacuations are being implemented. That obviously positive development signaling an end to conflict thanks to Russia’s military intervention has to be left unexplained or unacknowledged by the Western media because it negates all their previous pejorative narrative towards Russia and the Assad government.

Furthermore, the Western media are obliged to be coy about the exact identity of the «fighters» being evacuated. As noted already, the militants are variously described by the Western media in sanitized terms as «fighters» or «rebels». But more informative regional and local sources, such as Lebanon’s Al Manar, identify the brigades as belonging to the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State group and al-Nusra Front. These are terror groups, as even defined by Washington and the European Union. So, the Western media has to, by necessity, censor itself from telling the truth by peddling half-truths and sly omissions.

The Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam), whose commander was killed, is also integrated with the al-Qaeda terror network. Jaish al-Islam is funded and armed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and serves as a conduit for American CIA weapons to the more known terrorist outlets. Notably, Voice of America referred to the terror commander Zahran Alloush with the euphemistic cleansing term as a «rebel leader».

What the Russian-precipitated truces and termination of sieges is demonstrating is that the western side of Syria, from Daraa in the south, through Damascus and up to the northern Mediterranean Sea coast around Aleppo and Latakia, are infested with the terror brigades of IS and Al-Nusra and their myriad offshoots.

Western media have repeatedly accused Russia of conducting air strikes against «moderate rebels» and not the IS brigades, which they claim, were concentrated in the east of Syria. It is true that the IS is strongly based in eastern cities of Raqqa and Deir Ezzor, from where its oil smuggling operations are mounted.

Russia has stepped up its air strikes on IS smuggling routes in eastern Syria with devastating results. But also integral to the air operations is the cutting off of weapons routes in the northwest to fuel the insurgents along the entire western flank, including around Damascus.

The surrender of the various mercenary brigades and the breaking of sieges around Damascus is vindication of Russia’s military tactics; and also its narrative about the nature of the whole conflict in Syria.

The Western notion of «moderate rebels» and «extremists» is being exposed as the nonsense that it is. And so Western media are compelled to evacuate any meaningful context from their coverage of recent events in Syria.

Riad Haddad, Syria’s ambassador to Russia, spoke the plain truth in recent days when he said: «We are at a turning point in the Syrian army operations against terrorists – namely the transition from defense to attack… [because of] the effective work of the Russian air force in Syria». But the ambassador’s comments were scarcely, if at all, reported in the Western media. Simply because those words vindicate Russia’s military intervention and its general policy towards Syria.

Also missing or downplayed in the Western media coverage of the truces across Syria is the question of where the surrendering mercenaries are being evacuated to. They are not being bussed to other places inside Syria. That shows that there is no popular support for these insurgents. Despite copious Western media coverage contriving that the Syrian conflict is some kind of «civil war» between a despotic regime and a popular pro-democracy uprising, the fact that surrendering militants have no where to go inside Syria patently shows that these insurgents have no popular base.

In other words, this is a foreign-backed war on Syria; a covert war of aggression on a sovereign country utilizing terrorist proxy armies.

So where are the terrorist remnants being shipped to? According to several reports, the extremists are being given safe passage into Turkey, where they will receive repair and sanctuary from the President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – and no doubt subsidized by the European Union with its $3.5 billion in aid to Ankara to «take care of refugees».

Again, this is another indictment of the state-terrorist links of NATO-member Turkey, which the EU is recently giving special attention to for accession to the bloc.

Russia is not only vindicated in Syria. The Western governments, their media and their regional client regimes are being flushed out like the bandits on the ground in Syria.

If the UN-sponsored peace process due to start in the New Year succeeds to end the conflict in Syria, it will be largely down to Russia’s military campaign that has wiped out the terrorist proxies working on behalf of the Western criminal enterprise for regime change in that country.

Finian Cunningham

Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis

Joseph F Barber