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Consequences
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Remarks on the first anniversary of the Alliance for Progress, 13 March 1962
“Karma is a word meaning actions have consequences.” Joseph Ray Sundarsson, 2006
Two police officers have lost their lives in New York and one off-duty cop was shot multiple times in St. Louis, recently. The killer in New York made it clear that he viewed his action as retaliation for the complete injustice of the grand jury choosing not to indict anyone in the killing of Eric Garner by pigs on Staten Island back in July.
Now, the police and some politicians are calling for protesters to shut up and not protest until they have had a chance to bury their dead. I disagree, of course.
The police should expect that, by making it nearly impossible to expect any change at all through peaceful protest, they are making violent revolution inevitable. There is no reason for people who engage in militaristic occupation of territory to be treated as though they are innocent, are doing their jobs, are “only following orders,” nor should they expect to be ignored by the people they are abusing, subjugating, and forcing to obey.
Police departments are an early-19th Century concept that was not contemplated at the time the USA constitution was framed. The rights of the people to keep and bear arms were, of course, taken away in Southern states during the military occupation of the Reconstruction era following the American civil war, and in major cities beginning in New York in 1917 with the Sullivan Act. Obviously, where the police demand to be the only armed parties in any confrontation, they are demanding obedience, insisting upon inequality of force, and they are an occupying force.
The consequences of the USA military deploying troops throughout Saudi Arabia, including Mecca, in the years following Operation Desert Storm are many and varied. Clearly, the writings of Osama bin Laden in the period after 1991 makes it clear why he was in favour of war against the government in Algeria and war nearly everywhere else. In his February 1998 fatwa he declared the killing of North Americans and their allies an “individual duty for every Muslim” to “liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem) and the holy mosque (in Mecca) from their grip.”
The military occupation of Afghanistan which followed the attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon in 2001 has not ended. Although there has been a nonsensical and idiotic claim that combat operations have ended in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the continuing presence of USA troops in both countries, and the continuing combat activities in both countries, makes it clear that these claims are lies.
Similarly, the CIA has lied, repeatedly and criminally, to both the American people and to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, about torturing people it was indefinitely detaining. The constitution for the United States makes it clear that indefinite detention is not permitted, that any person in the custody of any agent of the USA government is entitled to know the charges against them, to have reasonable conditions for bail, to never be compelled through torture to testify against themselves, and to be free from cruel and unusual punishments. The actions of the CIA make it clear that the entire United States government is no longer operating in compliance with the constitution. Given that the president and attorney general are not rounding up CIA agents and executive officers for imprisonment on charges of treason, it is clear that the CIA personnel involved in persistently torturing dozens of persons known, and perhaps thousands of other persons unknown, will never be brought to justice.
There is to be no justice for Eric Garner. There is to be no justice for Michael Brown. There is to be no justice for the victims of the USA military in Guantanamo. There is to be no justice for the victims of the USA military in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and other countries.
As a result of the treaty agreement with Japan, the pursuit by the OSS and CIA of Japanese and German experts, and the lack of diligence in prosecuting war crimes, there isn’t going to be any justice for millions of prisoners of war and victims of death camps operated around the world by the Germans and Japanese during World War Two.
At the end of his presidency, Dwight Eisenhower gave an address to the nation in which he warned against the unwarranted influence of the military industrial complex. Eisenhower knew exactly how devious and hateful the CIA had become, on his watch. In a comment to an aide, he said that he feared he was leaving a legacy of ashes to his successor.
Indeed, there is extensive evidence that the CIA assassinated the rulers of various national governments, tortured people all over the world, worked for the overthrow of democratically elected governments, and did numerous other things to create injustice anywhere and everywhere. It should be no surprise to Americans that their own country is subject to the same sort of injustice.
Do I favour the killing of police officers? No, of course not. I favour a system of private peace and justice, a system of distributed control of the use of force, a system of creative anarchy. I’m against killing police officers, just as I’m against police officers killing unarmed civilians. I’m so much against killing police officers: I don’t want there to be any police officers to be killed.
But I’m realistic, too. I believe in peace, but I don’t anticipate any peace without justice. I don’t anticipate any justice without freedom. I don’t anticipate any freedom without individuals owning and carrying weapons. The system that imposes authoritarian control, that arrests without charging anyone, that tortures to get testimony from those detained, that imprisons without any hope of release, cannot expect that people are going to sit idly by and take it.
People won’t. Actions have consequences. All actions. Wearing a police uniform does not get you a free pass.
You should think about removing your trade and commerce from the system that controls and abuses you. You should think about contributing less to those who would be your masters and who would deploy police officers to be your overseers.
Take no part in a slave society. Do what you think is the right thing to do. If you have other obligations, carry them out. But never forget that whatever you choose to do is an action that will have consequences.
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Scott MG December 23, 2014 , 5:00 am Vote0
I agree with almost all of what you said. There are sometimes things however when the police do carry out justice in individual circumstances. Eric Gardner should not have been killed, whether the Jury followed the law or not. If it was considered ok within the law it is still not ok. With Michael Brown on the other hand I thought the verdict was fair given the evidence. I think there are plenty of other circumstances where police abuse is obvious. I do not think it helps to bring up cases that are at best not clear.
Tyrone Johnson December 23, 2014 , 8:00 pm Vote0
I’m not entirely clear why it matters to the protesters who object to the long history of police brutality in St. Louis whether you think that the process of having a white racist prosecutor (whose father was a police officer killed by a black man when the prosecutor was age 12) lead a grand jury around a whitewash of evidence after giving plenty of time for Darren Wilson to connive a story that fit the prosecutor’s theory was “fair given the evidence.” I myself cannot agree. I’ve looked at the evidence, and at the absence of an adversarial process. Grand juries are tools of the prosecution, and since the prosecutor in the Eric Garner case didn’t want an indictment, and since the prosecutor in the Michael Brown case didn’t want an indictment, there were no indictments.
If you don’t think it is a good idea to bring up the Michael Brown case, please don’t write an essay bringing up the Michael Brown case. But don’t imagine that you are in any position to tell me what to do. I’ll write what I believe is the right thing to write. You aren’t in any position to evaluate the fairness of the grand jury process in St. Louis or Staten Island, you aren’t in any better position to evaluate the evidence in either case than I am, and I’m quite content that justice was not served in either case. So I’ll go on writing what I choose. Perhaps you’d be happier not reading the things I write. Or perhaps you’d be happier admiring the police and prosecutors and their police state excesses.
You, and everyone who looked at the evidence in the Michael Brown case, including the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, all agree that Brown was unarmed. You probably agree with the St. Louis police chief who felt that the rioters who burned much of Ferguson did not act with restraint. Have you considered whether Darren Wilson acted with restraint when he emptied his gun in the general direction of Michael Brown? Did Wilson act with restraint when he refused to carry a taser so he had non-lethal force available to use? Did Wilson act with restraint when he shot Brown, not in a leg, but in the head? Did Wilson act with restraint when he did not await back-up, but shot Brown repeatedly? Do you even care?
Cases which are not clear are extremely important. Anyone can look at an obvious case and choose what to do. It is the edge cases that have the most to teach us about ethics. It seems clear to me that, given the occupying military nature of police in the major cities, it is vital that officer involved shootings go to indictment automatically and not to any kind of prosecutor-controlled process. Prosecutors are too close to the police, even when they aren’t related to them.