Thugs, Race-Baiting and the Police State

The recent events in Ferguson Missouri are displaying all of the hallmarks of the race-baiting grievance industry. For background (and in case this is being read well after the fact), an unarmed (black) teenager was shot by a (white) cop. These are the bald facts and the races of the involved are in parentheses because I personally don't think they were the driving force of events. Details are trickling out, the most recent (autopsy) that all shots to the victim were in the front, the wound pattern contradicting the "eye-witness" account of Mr. Brown's friend who was with him at the time.

There is pervasive racism in the USA, like there is everywhere else. Naturally, given the afore-mentioned racism grievance industry, any shooting involving an unarmed black man by anyone other than another black man, the vultures will descend. What follows is what I think the facts will eventually bear out in this case.

Michael Brown may have been 18 years old, but he was a hulking 18-yr-old who was captured on video only minutes before the shooting roughing up a shopkeeper and stealing a box of cigarillos. Petty theft and standard assault so far; definitely not capital crimes. Problem is, the cop who shot him didn't even know about this at the time; the initial stop was apparently for walking in the middle of the road blocking traffic.

Last I checked that type of behavior constitutes Probable Cause for a police stop, being at least a misdemeanor. What happened next is speculative, but based on the limited sample of Brown's (anti-social) behavior available it is probable that he threatened the cop in some fashion, and at 6'4" & 290lbs and not alone, that is a clear and present danger to anyone. The friend (accomplice) claimed that the officer shot Brown in the back and that Brown's hands were up and he was running away, which is disproved by the autopsy results. What is consistent with the physical evidence is that Brown was charging at the officer.

At this point however, most of the damage has been done. Days of rioting and looting have resulted in the National Guard being called out and a curfew imposed. In the process leading up to this there have been many discussions of militarized police forces which is also a problem, albeit not the one which precipitated the violence.

The problem is thugs, specifically black ones. Treyvon Martin was a teenager too, but again a big one with an aggressive attitude. Big guys who are "unarmed" are still capable of deadly or crippling physical violence and I have no doubt that if Zimmerman hadn't shot him Zimmerman would be dead or brain-damaged today.  Big thugs of any other complexion are of course just as dangerous, only no-one would riot if Brown were white, even if a black cop shot him.

It comes down in situations like this to "Better tried by 12 than carried by 6", optics be damned. I will yell as loud as anyone about police abusing their power, and there is a lot of that, just not in this specific situation as far as I can tell. Cops in assaulter gear shooting dogs, SWAT teams hitting the wrong houses, reporters and the public being intimidated and arrested for filming police in public areas; these are real problems requiring a vigorous public response. Said response should constitute political action, possibly civil disobedience, but smashing burning and looting is merely opportunistic crime.

This will be investigated, and is being so already. As long as the Attorney General can be kept from interfering (it's happening again) something as close as we can get to the truth will eventually come out.

Working for the Clampdown

Being of a generally libertarian bent, I'm never keen on anything that gets in the way of people minding their own business. The corollary to that is of course that I am VERY much in favour of things which put a stick in the spokes of people who make life harder (or shorter) for people like me. This can mean anything from sclerotic bureaucracies and over-reaching police to professional victims who will grind things to a halt because they're not happy.

Enter the Great Mask Debate of 2012. Montreal, indeed much of Quebec, has been regularly disrupted by mobs of "students" bitching about their entitlements. There has also (finally!) been a lot of talk and maybe even some action about the masked idiots participating in these marches. There is still a lot of hand-wringing about what if anything to do about this, but as usual I have some ideas.

Concern #1: Civil liberties. No ban on hiding your face is an imposition on your right to free assembly for peaceable purposes. Things vary country to country, but in Canada we have rules for things that happen in public and there never was carte blanche to disturb the peace. There are laws (finally being enforced) that prevent you from camping in city parks etc. A whole lot of people have been breaking these laws, all of which are there to ensure that business and public life can carry on without undue imposition from mobs.

Concern #2: Enforcement. "You can't arrest everyone if they're all wearing a mask!" No, and it was impractical for a Roman Centurion to slaughter his entire command for cowardice, etc. too. The solution then, as now is Decimation. Taken literally it means "to take one in ten", e.g. kill every tenth man. There is no reason a less-lethal application couldn't set the example. I would apply this with a bit of "profiling" i.e. take preferentially the people who most looked like they were up to no good, but a smattering of "harmless" looking types should be collared as well so that people don't figure that bright colours or hippy, etc. clothes will give them a free pass.

Concern # 3: Violent reactions to #2 above. If you are concerned about the reactions of criminals to the enforcement of the law, you might as well disband the police and give the country over to violent anarchy. "Criminals?" you say? "Isn't that presumptive? These start as peaceful protests!" Well,  ignorance of the law is no excuse as they say, so here is some education for all those participating in a public assembly. This is from the Criminal Code of Canada, but wherever you live I pretty much guarantee you have something similar.

63. (1) An unlawful assembly is an assembly of three or more persons who, with intent to carry out any common purpose, assemble in such a manner or so conduct themselves when they are assembled as to cause persons in the neighbourhood of the assembly to fear, on reasonable grounds, that they

(a) will disturb the peace tumultuously; or
(b) will by that assembly needlessly and without reasonable cause provoke other persons to disturb the peace tumultuously.

Marginal note: Lawful assembly becoming unlawful
(2) Persons who are lawfully assembled may become an unlawful assembly if they conduct themselves with a common purpose in a manner that would have made the assembly unlawful if they had assembled in that manner for that purpose.

64. A riot is an unlawful assembly that has begun to disturb the peacetumultuously.

Pretty neat eh? Check this next bit, this is the part you really need
to know.

65. Every one who takes part in a riot is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.
R.S., c. C-34, s. 66.

Marginal note: Punishment for unlawful assembly 
66. Every one who is a member of an unlawful assembly is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.


Consequences, people, consequences; these students are supposedly bright types and may in fact know the above already. Likely they (or at least some of them) do, hence the desire to avoid said consequences by say, hiding their identity? Anyway in for a penny, in for a pound; I like these parts too so I'll keep rolling with the CCOC.

Reading proclamation
67. A person who is
(a) a justice, mayor or sheriff, or the lawful deputy of a mayor
or sheriff,
(b) a warden or deputy warden of a prison, or
(c) the institutional head of a penitentiary, as those
expressions are defined in subsection 2(1) of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, or that person's deputy,who receives notice that, at any place within the jurisdiction of the person, twelve or more persons are unlawfully and riotously assembled together shall go to that place and, after approaching as near as is safe, if the person is satisfied that a riot is in progress, shall command silence and thereupon make or cause to be made in a loud voice a proclamation in the following words or to the like effect:
Her Majesty the Queen charges and commands all persons being assembled
immediately to disperse and peaceably to depart to their habitations or
to their lawful business on the pain of being guilty of an offence for
which, on conviction, they may be sentenced to imprisonment for life.
GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.

[This would be lots of fun in this exact form in Quebec right now...]

R.S., 1985, c. C-46, s. 67;
1994, c. 44, s. 5.
Marginal note: Offences related to proclamation
68. Every one is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to
imprisonment for life who
(a) opposes, hinders or assaults, wilfully and with force, a person who begins to make or is about to begin to make or is making the proclamation referred to in section 67 so that it is not made;
(b) does not peaceably disperse and depart from a place where the proclamation referred to in section 67 is made within thirty minutes after it is made; or
(c) does not depart from a place within thirty minutes when he has reasonable grounds to believe that the proclamation referred to in section 67 would have been made in that place if some person had not
opposed, hindered or assaulted, wilfully and with force, a person who would have made it.
R.S., c. C-34, s. 69.

"...liable for imprisonment for life..."! I don't see that happening but if you want to go out and "smash the state", capitalism, globalization, what-have-you, be very aware of the ice you're walking on. One final bit of the section worth noting for the authorities:

Neglect by peace officer
69. A peace officer who receives notice that there is a riot within his jurisdiction and, without reasonable excuse, fails to take all reasonable steps to suppress the riot is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.

Peace, Order and Good Government. That's what Canada is all about. We make no pretense in our Constitution of any "pursuit of happiness"; keeping the wheels on is what this country is all about from its' founding to present. This means that our public officials have a DUTY to do their jobs and keep the yobs off the streets even if that means making them (the yobs) unhappy. I suspect that once you slap fines on your average protestor for wearing a mask, only the hard core (who were going to be a problem anyway) will keep at it. Then comes the richly deserved head-cracking and  tear-gassing.

Making this work is in two parts: enforcement and moderation. The students in Quebec are losing what public support they may have had, so the time is ripe for a crackdown. I've used the phrase "pour encourager les autres" before, and taking enough of these protesters into custody (to be punished as appropriate) will gut the movement and restore order sooner rather than later.

It's possible to go too far (the "kettling" etc. in Toronto two years ago ) but despite the propaganda, another Tiananmen Square is simply not going to happen if a few dozen idiots get picked up and fined for wearing a mask. Random civilians will not be swept up for minding their own business, and that's one of my tests for a tolerable restriction on our behaviour.

Demobcracy

Democracy is rather famously the worst form of government except for all of the others, and it's certainly a shibboleth these days that it is the best, full-stop.  As is my wont I am here to Devil's Advocate that assumption, and current events are certainly pointing out the instabilities inherent in the concept of free-for-all democracy.

Most recently and closest to home, students in Quebec are protesting (more or less violently) the decision to raise their tuition rates.  This is no "Arab Spring" but the idea is similar; they don't like what's happening and they vote against it with sit-ins, and some arson and smashing of things.  Leaving out the details of that protest (except to say I have no sympathy since everyone else in the country already pays far more than they do), this is an ancient problem getting a modern treatment.

First, the ground rules in a standard liberal democracy: they are Representative Democracies.  This means we have a system used to elect representatives for our local interests, and it's an understatement to say that this has limitations.  Regardless, it's the system we have, and it's a "model" of democracy which works adequately as long as people work within it.  "Model" in this case means something which represents the actual thing, and of course anything which isn't the thing itself can't display all characteristics of it.  Details are lost, values are approximated.

A REAL democracy would have everyone voting individually for everything.  Of course technology brings this closer all the time, but ask yourself if you'd really like to see that.  It is pretty obvious that you can (in fairly homogeneous societies) put peoples' political leanings on a curve with distinct Left and Right tails.  Each of these tails overlaps into the Centre, and it is my belief (not tested) that the Right is bigger than the Left.

So what?  The polarization of the electorate in Canada and the USA is very evident in voting patterns indicating a "core" of people who feel certain ways about certain things.  This is of course a model, not the real thing, but it's serviceable.  Of the two tails the Right is bigger, as this encompasses the conservative/leave me alone strains of the population.  We'll say this is 35% of the population.  The other end, the entitlement/nanny state I'll put at a hard 20%.  In between there are a lot of people who don't feel terribly strongly about very much, and that 45% or so will either form a default plurality bloc or bleed off in either direction as circumstances warrant. 

With the map (a.k.a. model) laid out, back to my point.  The above groups display certain basic characteristics, some of them common.  Both tails think they know better than everyone else, and the Right and the Centre will overwhelmingly go with "the Devil they know" than smash everything in pursuit of "Revolution".

Enter the sore losers.  Election didn't come out the way you wanted? Scream "cheating", "recall" or whatever is likely to get you what you want.  Sit-in, smash and burn things, distort peoples' statements, act outraged at everything you don't agree with, lie, and resort to ad hominem attacks on the opposition.  It is to be noted (neatly backing up my numbers) that 2/3 of Quebec students are quietly completing their semesters.  I think this excerpt says it all:
At McGill University, classes and exams have been largely unaffected by the student unrest. Only four departments -- Gender, Sexuality and Women's studies; Graduate Art History; Social Work; and French Literature -- are on strike. (emphasis mine).

This is not to say that any one group has a monopoly on dirty tricks.  Much mud is slung in all directions, but the TEA Party vs "Occupy" comparison is educational as it directly compares both ends of the political curve.  TEA Party groups came out for the day, then went home sans rampage.  Occupy groups squatted somewhere and formed impromptu communes and mini-Woodstocks.  In Oakland Ca there were labour and trade disruptions as well as the usual vandalism and not-always-civil disobedience.

The latter are not the people who keep the lights on in our civilization, the former are.  The evil baby-raping Right Wingers protest within the law of the land and go home, voting their preferences and conscience at all opportunities.  The "you're too stupid to know what's good for you" Left cries "foul" and tries to physically change the terms of the discussion.

There are a lot of different brands of ideas and the farther you go in either direction the less common ground they have.  With this in mind, the dangers of unbridled democracy should become evident.  Here is the reductio ad absurdum of "Democracy is always good":

Last year, the White House began peddling the line that the uprisings in the Middle East were a repudiation of the al Qaeda model of seeking change through terrorism. The argument was that while America opposed violent extremism, the rise of nonviolent radical movements was just fine, and even commendable. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri quickly dismissed this claim, saying that from the terrorists’ point of view, it didn’t matter whether an Islamist victory came through violence or not. The means were unimportant except as they related to the end state: the imposition of hard-line Shariah-based laws and policies. (emphasis mine again)

Of course we've been down this road many times, recently and obviously with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.  The thing that people seem to forget is that any political system is a tool, a means to an end.  If the end is the means, anything done within the means is legitimate. 

When you think "Democracy" do you think "one man, one vote, once"?  Theocracy? Democracy can be used to achieve these end-states as easily (more easily, really) than it can produce a stable liberal democratic system.  Hitler was legally elected too...

Life is a struggle (ultimately futile) against Entropy, and anything we do in life requires maintenance.  If you want to live in a society which allows free speech and freedom of association, that cannot be maintained by burning everything down each time you have a grievance.  I started this post yesterday (30 April) but as I wrap it up today it is May Day and further Anarchist/nihilist stupidity can be expected over the Western world.  As the Gender Studies students and loutish vandals co-mingle at various "protests" the former will not recognize themselves as the vectors of the latter "Black Bloc" assholes.

Coming back to the freedoms (speech and association) I mentioned earlier, there can be no absolute freedom in anything.  Although poorly understood, the Universe has rules which are necessary to keep things turning and every other sub-system needs some definable structure too.  Nature abhors a vacuum, and if you squeeze the trigger on your "revolucion" don't be surprised when your Robespierre pops up, Reign of Terror and all.

Pusillanimity and the Oakland Soviet

A recent conversation with my father-in-law resulted in him saying that all of these "Occupy" people are "communists". This is fundamentally accurate, and not a surprising reaction from a retired businessman; if the "Death to Capitalism" banners weren't enough to give the game away I don't know what is.

People are starting to get fed up and again hardly surprising given the hijinks in Oakland in the last few days. I don't know if there has been a sifting out of participants so that the most radical are the ones who are sticking it out, but the novelty has definitely worn off even when they're not destroying property and trying to kill public servants. The whole thing is devolving rapidly, the worst example being Oakland. The others (especially in Canada) are varying degrees of useless and just plain squatting, but they are certainly now doing more harm than any possible good.

This means that the continued presence of these communes in business areas is killing small businesses in the vicinity through intimidation, deliberate vandalism, and effective blockade of customers. These people are not fans of the crony capitalism that got the U.S. in the mess it's in, and are certainly NOT in the much maligned (with some cause, some of the time) "1%". One problem (there are many) with not having a set "aim" is the inability to see when things are going badly off-track, as they obviously have done now.

The lefties and fellow travellers pooh-pooh the conservative/capitalist concept of having some idea what the hell you're doing and trying to accomplish, but most of us aren't nihilist anarchists and we like Order. Civilization requires some structure and certainly some common ideas about how things should work, and certainly requires enforcement of basic concepts. The occupiers are discovering, like it or probably not, that when you get more than three people anywhere you start needing organization if you are sticking around.

Supplies and security come right after shelter (often before) and they don't just happen. They require organization and leadership, and you won't have the former without some version of the latter. Now as is my wont, I circle back to the original point.

Oakland's civic reaction to this, specifically that of the Mayor and City Council, has been and to the time of writing continues to be inconsistent, and therefore a guaranteed and de facto disaster. The police have been whipsawed by contradictory orders, and one of the predictable results of this is certain Black Bloc elements in the protest will exploit the resulting chaos, as happened last night (main link). Another is a drop in morale of the police as they realize that their bosses don't have their backs, and no good can come of that.

So, the Oakland Soviet has blockaded the third-busiest port in the U.S. and to "press time" it is shut down. It has been pointed out that this hurts all of the workers who depend on the port for their livelihood; this is where the true colours of the Occupy clowns is shown. It's not about "the 99%", it's about their vague concept that things should be "different". Different how, exactly? I've asked this class of person that question before, and as much as they don't like what's happening the only coherent answer you'll likely get is some variation of "revolution".

So far it's a polyglot of signs about all things except making money and paying taxes, but the black flag has already been flown; how long until we see the red?

Down with the evil everythings, or something.

There is more to say about the trend of these events, but this is a good start:



These "Occupy Wall St" things are dragging out and starting to propagate, but it eludes me, and any thoughtful commentators I've seen, what precisely these people want.

Some visitors here get the superficial impression that I'm a big booster of capitalism, corporations etc. This is superficially true, as I am a fan of progress, and innovation is best fostered in a competitive environment. Profits are a good and necessary part of doing business, and making money makes your life better, or at least you have less pressing things to worry about than if you'll eat this week or how to replace your or your children's worn out clothes.

Greed however is still greed, and I must concur that it should be classed as a sin, or in a secular world, a character flaw. I have a serious problem with companies which are "Too Big to Fail", and avoiding that sort of thing is why monopoly and anti-trust laws were created and enforced.

So, if this was some sort of grassroots campaign to restore some balance in banking and corporate law I could get behind that. However, it seems to be an incoherent hodge-podge of disaffected "progressives" and anarchists out to disrupt and occupy other peoples' property. This sort of disregard for private property I have a serious problem with, especially when it seems to be for no useful reason.

Action without purpose is chaos, and there is enough of that in the universe with out us adding to it. Civilization, especially technological civilization, is about resisting entropy, not encouraging it. The TEA Party had an agenda: too much government means too many taxes, therefore they want less bureaucracy and smaller government. This is coherent, and despite the obsession of lefty media and individuals of accentuating the kooks at the margins of this inherently conservative movement it has had political success.

The same lefties are falling over themselves to praise the "Occupation" (at least when Israel's not doing it) but I can't see this going anywhere, except geographically. The Democrats in the US are now looking to see if they can do some sort of TEA Party thing with these rallies, but they already got their dream candidate in office for four disappointing years. I don't know what they could mould out of this to replace that bid for Hope and Change, but if it's even possible it would be a political Frankenstein.

That makes me think about the whole Keystone XL pipeline imbroglio, so perhaps (no promises) I'll look at that next time.