Vox Popoli

John sounds vaguely offended:

Vox, you’re painting in brushstrokes that are way too broad. Over the last three days, you’ve impugned the professionalism and integrity of every law enforcement agency in two countries.

Answer me this: The guy that responds to a domestic violence call or liquor store robbery is a part of some government plot to take your liberties and is merely looking to shoot you for the hell of it?

Absolutely I have and I do. Like many other people, I have some very serious doubts as to whose side the police and the federal criminal agencies are on these days. It is interesting to note that 15 years ago, “Fuck the Police” was the battle cry of a few black gangbangers in Los Angeles. Now, I hear those same sentiments from wealthy 50-something white suburbanites who wouldn’t listen to rap if you physically threatened them.

But professionalism is not the answer, indeed, it is part of the problem. The Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe were filled with precisely the sort of professional warriors that currently make up much of our armed forces and police. They were good men, family men, men who believed that they were doing the right thing by obeying the law and their government. Their problem was not that they were bad people, the problem was that they were good people acting in obedience to evil men.

The people of the United States are not serfs, they have no masters and they do not need protection, which, by the way, they are clearly not receiving anyhow. In any event, I will always favor taking the risks that exist on the side of freedom, mostly because the historical bodycount on that side is significantly smaller.

Lest you think I am avoiding your question, the policeman became a part of a government plot to eliminate American liberties the moment he accepted the notion that he had the right to act as judge, jury and executioner on the basis of his own feelings. Most policemen, being decent individuals, will not abuse that illegitimate power. The hundreds of annual killings by police indicate that too many, however, will, either intentionally or unintentionally.

The International Chiefs of Police, a police organization, tried in the 1980’s to collect such information, but “the figures were very embarrassing to a lot of police departments,” said James Fyfe, a professor of criminal justice at Temple University who is a former New York City police lieutenant. The results, he said, varied wildly. New Orleans had 10 times as many shootings per 100 officers as Newark. Long Beach had twice as many as neighboring Los Angeles, which in turn had three times more than New York….

On its cover, for example, the report refers to all the victims of police shootings as “felons justifiably killed by police,” a categorization that Samuel Walker, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, termed “deeply offensive and legally incorrect.” In fact, a Justice Department official said the bureau was so embarrassed by the term, and the lack of distinction between justifiable police shootings and murders, that it did not send out its usual promotional material announcing the report.

A compilation of movie lameness:

2. When paying for a taxi, don’t look at your wallet as you take out a note. Just grab one out at random and hand it over. It will always be the exact fare….

21. Cars will explode instantly when struck by a single bullet.

Remember, these are the same people that argue they have to be able to show humans being blown away in every other scene because they are “keeping it real”. When you combine the constant insults to their potential audience’s intelligence and the inability to find new and interesting stories to transform into the visual medium – there’s still no Dark is Rising film, but both The Bad News Bears and The Dukes of Hazzard have been remade already – it’s no wonder that box offices are declining.

The last movie I saw in the theatre was Return of the King. I don’t feel as if I’ve missed a thing.

This is a basic 25-question test that isn’t, in my opinion, a true intelligence test as it required familiarity with certain literature that I would consider to be more than a little obscure these days. It doesn’t take long, though, and it only had one of the IF THIS IS THIS AND THAT IS THAT THEN WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THIS AND THAT questions that I loathe.

How’d I do? Not quite as well as I’d expected, although still in the 141-159 range. Really low in that range, unfortunately, or 142, to be precise. Perhaps I should have had that second cappucino I was contemplating….

Don’t cheat!

Chuck writes: “Then I guess that embarrassing incident in Gibralter (6 Mar 88) never happened. The three IRA terrorists bent on bombing the British, at a major parade there, were never gunned down in the street.”

I don’t know how to break this to Chuck, but Gibralter is not, in fact, London. Furthermore, the three individuals involved weren’t random individuals walking down the street, but known terrorist operatives engaged in an operation. And as Chuck himself admits, once in 1988 does not qualify as “regularly”.

Craigp writes: “who would benefit from portraying the situation giving as much benefit as possible to the British Police.”

Um, Craig, that would be the British Police. On a secondary note, the British government.

Chuck also wrote of Waco: “based on what I understand, the feds deliberately went in to kill everyone in the compound and that military personnel were involved in the final assault. Too many big explosions and muzzle flashes of fully automatic fire from outside the buildings.”

[credulous citizen] But the official investigation has determined that those weren’t muzzle flashes picked up on IR camera, they were the reflections of sunlight off pieces of glass strewn about the location. Take off your tin foil hat! Everyone knows no cop or government official would ever intentionally kill a law-abiding civilian, they just occasionally make tragic mistakes. [/credulous citizen]

Peter King is in for a surprise:

I think I’m entering the world of blogdom this week. I’m going to blog my way through NFL camps on SI.com, with an entry (or two, hopefully) a day describing my travels around the pro football world. I’ll even make my photography debut with my new digital camera. I’ll try to take you with me through camps, training tables, sidelines … and, most of all, airports and interstate highways. Never been to Mankato? You’ll get there now. Should be interesting. Or tremendously boring. Not sure which.

I imagine the Scribe of Sports Illustrated will have his eyes opened rather wide once he gets to the home of the Robin’s Egg Blue and Gentle Yellow.

Oh yes, that’s right, it’s nearly FANTASY FOOTBALL time!

John Major hints that the Brits are on the verge of getting serious:

“There seem to be many people who, for reasons that are irrational, dislike the Anglo-Saxon way of life,” he said.

He called for heavier penalties for those who incited violence at this “particularly sensitive time”.

“Always difficult to balance this against freedom of speech but I think, at the moment, it is justifiable to protect the public,” he argued.

Mr Major added: “As far as those who literally spit hate at our country and there are some of them – they spit hate at our country and they incite – I personally would be prepared to deport those where it is clear that what they are doing is causing civil unrest and may cost other people, as a result of that, their lives.”

His assertion of the killing of the Brazilian man being a result of a “shoot to protect” policy is both Orwellian and absurd, of course, but I’ve never been a fan of John Major or his squishy wing of the Tory party.

Still, Muslim deportations could easily become the lightning-rod issue that will sink Labor and bring the Conservative Party back into power. I find it interesting to note that after a series of attacks which are much smaller than either New York or Madrid, the British have reached this point.

I suspect it is a result of their past experience with IRA terrorism. Unlike the US and the Spanish, the Brits have tried pointless mucking around for decades and learned that it got them nowhere. I also suspect that one reason that Paris hasn’t been seriously attacked is that the police there are liable to accidentally drown dozens of handcuffed Muslims given the slightest provocation.

And as for the Germans, well, historically speaking, they don’t need much of an excuse to round up and eliminate semitic people.

A note for Euro-ignorant Americans: European laws regarding residency and citizenship are very different, and usually much more strict, than the USA’s. I strongly suggest that one look up the immigration law of a European country before embarrassing oneself by making ludicrous assertions based on one’s knowledge of US law.

The Bodysnatcher writes on NRO:

John Roberts is, it appears, a genuinely witty man — as documents unearthed at the Reagan Library dating from his time in the White House counsel’s office reveal. In one, dated 1983, he takes on the idea that Supreme Court justices just work so very, very hard: “While some of the tales of woe emanating from the court are enough to bring tears to one’s eyes, it is true that only Supreme Court justices and schoolchildren are expected to and do take the entire summer off.”

Another quip: “The generally accepted notion that the court can only hear roughly 150 cases each term gives the same sense of reassurance as the adjournment of the court in July, when we know the Constitution is safe for the summer.”

We’ll see… but in the meantime, I’m highly down with that general sense of skepticism and contempt.

From the Financial Times:

On Sunday, ministers and senior police officers defended a policy of shooting dead individuals suspected of being suicide bombers, in spite of calls from British Muslim groups, human rights bodies and politicians for a public inquiry.

Since the shooting, police have confirmed that two years ago they secretly changed operational guidelines allowing officers chasing suspect suicide bombers to shoot them in the head.

In other words, the Brazilian that some have called an idiot for failing to realize that he’d be shot in the head for the dual crimes of wearing inappropriate clothing and turnstile jumping not only had no way of knowing that London police officers considered him to be a suspect suicide bomber, but could not possibly have known about the secret policy with regards to the recommended guidelines for dealing with them.

Police heads should be rolling over this decision to enact lethal force in public without bothering to warn the citizenry of the potential consequences of their actions.

I am not, as some might claim, soft on Islamic terrorists or the sea of moderate Muslims in which they swim. The problem is that shooting innocent Brazilians in the head is not going to stop, or even slow, the spread of Islamic terror.

There are two primary goals of terrorism. One is to achieve a specific end, usually a withdrawal from occupied territory. The second, usually on the part of domestic terrorists, is to provoke a self-defeating response from the target that will swell the pool of terrorist sympathizers. Both the United States and the United Kingdom have foolishly fallen into the latter trap by appearing weak and indecisive, more prone to sacrifice the civil liberties of their own citizens and traditions of their own culture than to reduce the danger posed by the alien invaders.

As today column makes clear, this country ain’t for everybody, just the sexy people. And yet, my proposal makes about as much sense as anything the Bush administration has done to win the War on Method.

Arguably more, in fact. I doubt even the most motivated Islamikaze would be able to bring himself to spend weeks cavorting naked around America; they do seem to be a rather modest lot.

On a tangential note, must one be naked to cavort?

Cedarford equates two scenarios:

If the killing of a Brazilian who by every objective measure and standing rules of engaging a dangerous subject refusing obey public safety commands to freeze was murder…So too, I guess, every US soldier is a murderer because they will waste any car that fails to obey commands to stop at a checkpoint. I am not ready to label American troops doing their duty murderers, VD. Are you?

And MikeT agrees:

Seriously Vox, since you think that the London PD was simply not justified at all here, do you consider the American soldiers who destroy Iraqi vehicles that speed at check points murderers? If you don’t, then there is simply no logical reason that you can argue that the London PD committed murder of any kind here.

However, the two situations are completely different:

1. Iraq is an occupied war zone. London is not.
2. A Tube turnstile is not a military checkpoint.
3. Firing from a distance at a car that is ignoring clearly posted directions and might contain a car bomb coming towards you is very different than firing five shots at very close range at a man who ignored shouted orders and is running away from you.
4. Police in plain clothes are not uniformed military servicemen. The Geneva Conventions make it clear that soldiers are not expected to recognize combatants out of uniform, much less foreign civilians.
5. Shooting a helpless and unarmed man is considered murder even in wartime.
6. The lethal act of the London policeman could easily have made things worse had his victim been a suicide bomber. The policeman had no way of knowing if the bomber was rigged with a dead-man switch, in which case killing him would have set it off in the middle of a bunch of a crowd.

It is remotely possible that the London killing might have been justified. But this is unlikely, and in any event, any such justification cannot reasonably be made with the information available to most of us here on this blog.