Category: Justice

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14 Years

On March 16, a man in Panama City, Florida, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for putting his 6-year-old daughter into an empty swimming pool in the back of his pick-up truck and driving down the highway. The pool was blown off the truck with the little girl in it and into the path of oncoming traffic. The girl, Catriona, survived the initial fall, but was killed when she was struck by a following car.

Jeffrey Sakemiller had four previous drunk driving convictions, his license had been suspended, and he was legally drunk at the time of the incident. His wife, the mother of Catriona, said “I hope he rots in jail”. Her comment made me wonder if he had kidnapped the girl. I know that what Jeffrey did was incredibly stupid and destructive, but if I were Catriona’s mother and Jeffrey’s wife, I wouldn’t say what she said out loud. I’d say something like, “This is the saddest day of my life.”

Fourteen years is a long time. If I had been the judge, I don’t think I would have given him 14 years. He didn’t murder the girl deliberately in a drunken rage. He was certainly criminally negligent, but our society usually makes a distinction between stupidity and evil. The judge was rightly appalled. But 14 years?

Stupidity is causing a death through bad judgment. Like Bush invading Iraq. Evil is when you knowingly do something that causes death. Like fudging the intelligence on Iraq.

Victor Robichaud of Paris, Ontario, did something fairly similar. He tried to pass a car illegally on a hill one night in 1997, and ran head-on into a car driven by Caius Jupan of Kitchener. Jupan was killed and Robichaud was charged with dangerous driving causing death. He received an 18-month sentence. This was considered pretty stiff, by Canadian standards. Both Robichaud and Sakemiller did something very stupid that resulted in the death of an innocent person. Neither of them intended to hurt anyone.

The difference is, Robichaud still has a chance to live a meaningful life.

The cigarette companies have also been accused of causing the deaths of innocent people. But the cigarette companies are not persons: they are corporations. In the U.S., several states have taken them to court. The tobacco companies negotiated a settlement. They paid a big fine. But who, really, is “they”? Management? Don’t make me laugh. Shareholders? Are you kidding? “They” turns out to be you and me! As a corporation, Phillip Morris and R. J. Reynolds and the gang can simply pass their fines on to us in the form of higher cigarette prices. Nobody goes to jail. Nobody even pays a penalty. Just us corporations here. Oooo. Owww. That hurts.

The difference between Jeffrey Sakemiller and the corporations that produce cigarettes (and the corporations who produce herbicides and genetically re-engineered food and bovine growth hormone…) is that the corporations, in many cases, deliberately produced harmful products for the purpose of material gain.

Jeffrey should have incorporated himself and hired a lawyer. He could have claimed he was a manager for a company that produced thrill-rides for little children. He could have claimed that his own research showed that the pool was safe on the back of the truck and anybody who thought otherwise was a liar. He could have complained bitterly that without tort reform, bold entrepreneurs like himself are discouraged from growing the economy.

He would still have been sued. He would still have lost. But then, at least, he would not have gone to jail. You can’t put a corporation in jail. Even if the plaintiff had won millions and millions, Jeffrey could have just closed up shop, walked away, and started a new business somewhere else.

The judge wanted to send a serious message to society. The message is, “don’t be so stupid”. Is that a helpful message? I have a hard time imagining that anyone dumb enough to put a child into a swimming pool in the back of a pick-up truck and then drive down the highway would be smart enough to read the newspaper and get that message.

In New York City, a dumb social services worker allowed a child to return home to her mother even though she had been charged with abuse and reckless endangerment several times. The child was killed. I don’t think the social services worker was even fired.

In the same city, four cops, looking for a man suspected of carrying a weapon, fired about 40 bullets into an innocent stranger. Republican Governor Giuliani defended their honor.

I think I would have given Jeffrey Sakemiller about two years, and I would have taken his license away for fifteen years, and instructed the local child welfare office to see that he is never permitted to look after young children again. I would also have given a good tongue-lashing to somebody: what was someone with four drunk driving convictions doing on the road at all? How could he even own a pickup? Who entrusted an incorrigible drunk driver with the care of a six-year-old girl?

Did the child’s mother, Rebecca, know he was driving around drunk with Catriona? Was she so angry because she wanted a break from the demands of an active child and and insisted that Sakemiller take her with to the store?

The news reports don’t say how old Jeffrey is. Let’s say he’s about 25. He’ll have to serve at least 85% of his sentence under U.S. judicial rules, so he’s going to be in jail until he is 36 or 37, at least. If he is a young man with any potential for any good at all, that will surely be driven out of him by then.

Obviously, he didn’t have a very good lawyer. If you were rich and did something really stupid that resulted in someone’s death– like Ted Kennedy, for example– you wouldn’t serve any time at all. O. J. Simpson. William Calley. Klaus Von Bulow. Oliver North. There are different laws for the rich. The first law is that all of that constitutional business about equality before the law is pure hogwash.

* * *

A New Jersey State Police officer who pulled over a 52-year-old black woman who was driving a Porsche, and spat at her and assaulted her, didn’t get punished at all, though the state government had to pay her $225,000. If you’re a taxpayer in New Jersey, you might want to ask why the government is paying out $225,000 if the police, as they claim, didn’t do anything wrong.

All the NRA members and Baptists and Republicans will accuse me of being soft on crime. I’ll be turfed at the next election. I’d say, “Fine. I’ll go live in France.”

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Thatcher Hatchet

See the nice picture? The happy, elegant man is Augusto Pinochet, dictator, murderer, torturer, and heart patient. The woman on the right, so solemn and supportive, is former British Prime Minister, Maggie Thatcher. About the time this picture was taken, the government of Spain was requesting that Britain extradite Mr. Pinochet so that he could be tried for the torture and murder of a Spanish student in Chile in 1973.

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Does Maggie Thatcher have any children? I don’t know. It’s hard to picture her reading “Winnie the Pooh” to a cuddly little child, and then going off to have dinner with a man who believes that no one has the right to tell him not to have students tortured and murdered.

Margaret Thatcher is the former prime-minister of Great Britain, a nation which tirelessly brags of itself as the birthplace of the Magna Carta, a document which ensured that the subsequent rulers of England could not govern without the consent of at least some of the governed. Thatcher is a good friend of Ronald Reagan.

Mr. Pinochet was a general in the Chilean national army in 1973 when, with the help of the CIA, he decided to put an end to Salvador Allende’s democratically-elected socialist government. Allende was murdered in the presidential palace and Pinochet took control of the government.

After seizing power, Mr. Pinochet decided to destroy any possible opposition to his new government by arresting anyone who was ever likely to have supported Mr. Allende and socialism, or democracy, or unions, or free speech, or human rights. Once they were arrested, the army tortured many of them to try to get the names of more people to arrest. They used electric shock, torches, rubber hoses, and lots of other devices. Then thousands of them were cold-bloodedly murdered. All of this was done at the direction of General Pinochet.

Mrs. Thatcher happens to like Mr. Pinochet and thinks it is an awful shame and a travesty that the British House of Lords has ruled that Mr. Pinochet can be extradited to Spain to face charges of murder and torture. Why, it’s as if he were just an ordinary man, like you and me! What is the world coming to when dictators are arrested and held accountable for all the people they murdered!

Chile was an object lesson in the real meaning of democracy in the Western hemisphere: people are free to elect any government they want, so long as it is the “right” government. The Americans like to portray Cuba as a dictatorship because they don’t have free and open elections and Castro likes to put dissidents in prison. Of course Nicaragua and the Honduras and El Salvador also had un-elected governments that were far more repressive than Castro during the 1970’s, but the U.S. didn’t call them “dictatorships”. The U.S. called them “democracies” and proceeded to introduce their leaders to our own banana and coffee growers.

So what they really mean when they say that Cuba is a dictatorship is that they have the “wrong” government, and that is why so many conservatives go crazy at the very mention of Fidel Castro.

What does it mean that Margaret Thatcher, the former prime-minister of Great Britain, poses for a picture with the former dictator of Chile? Doesn’t it bother you? Isn’t it strange that the leader of a “free” country considers herself a good friend of an enemy of freedom? How would you feel if you saw a similar picture of Reverend Billy Graham standing beside Gypsy Rose Lee? Would Billy Graham say something like, “Yes, in an ideal world, I prefer virtuous women, but sometimes you just have to have a slut around.”

So, for all the blather in the U.S. and the U.K. about freedom and democracy and rights, the truth is that those principles don’t seem to matter very much when it comes to foreign policy.

And that is why Kissinger and Nixon and the CIA went crazy when Chile elected socialist Salvador Allende. And that is why they helped Pinochet over-throw the government. And that is why Margaret Thatcher proudly poses for pictures with a torturer and murderer today.

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Arrested Development: The RCMP Get Their Gas

I am not making this up.

The RCMP got called in by the Alberta Energy Co. to try to put an end to sabotage of its gas and oil wells in Northern Alberta.

Now, first of all, you must be aware of the fact that these wells stink mightily and emit noxious fumes over a large area. People live in this area. But when the police were called in to put an end to the noxious fumes, they did nothing. You see, clean air doesn’t make a profit.

Then some of the citizens of this region, understandably frustrated, took matters into their own hands. They began to commit acts of vandalism, damaging the wells and drilling equipment owned by the Alberta Energy Co. The Alberta Energy Co. then called the police. They were there lickety-spit.

So, there you go. The Alberta Energy Co. damaged the environment and possibly the health of a large number of farmers, and the police shrugged and ignored the problem. The farmers damage some equipment, and before you can say “Dudley Dooright”, they are out there doing an investigation.

They tried and tried to find the culprits but they could not. However, they did happen to know that this farmer named Wiebo Ludwig (isn’t that a great name?) and his friend Richard Boonstra had been loudly complaining about the pollution from the wells for many years. So they arrested him. So not only did the police not enforce the law protecting the environment and people’s health, but they tried to punish the victims.

Unfortunately for the RCMP, the courts in Canada still do require evidence occasionally and they had none. Worse than that, they discovered that nobody would testify against the two men. So they had to release them. I must congratulate the police on their integrity here. Standard procedure, it sometimes seems, is to lock the suspect into the same cell as an informant serving a long sentence for something or another.

Then you offer the informant an early release if he happens to overhear the suspect confessing in full to his crime.

Well they adopted the next best solution. They would blow up one of the wells themselves. Then they would report that the saboteurs were more dangerous than they had originally thought. Won’t you fink on them now?

How surprised they must be at the uproar. They are so surprised that they pretty well ‘fessed up right away. We didn’t think you’d mind. At least we didn’t strip search anybody. And we didn’t actually charge the suspect with blowing up the well that we blew up.

Technicalities. Support your local constabulary. And all those people in Elmira complaining about the pollution from Uniroyal…. watch your step!

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Dutch Treat

Everybody knows that the Dutch are crazy. While we North Americans spend billions of dollars every year fighting marijuana use, the Dutch have virtually legalized it. What a crazy country! Amsterdam, with its numerous legal hash joints, is known as the “dope capital of Europe”. Here, we call that place “Washington DC”.

But, well, life is strange. According to a recent study by the Amsterdam University and Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics, only about 16% of the Dutch population, over the age of 12, have ever tried cannabis. The equivalent percentage for North America is 33%.

Zowie! That is really weird. Can anybody explain this?

Maybe it can be explained with the old “forbidden fruit” theory. Because it is illegal in the U.S. and Canada, our teenagers want to try it, to prove that they’re not sissies who listen to their mommies and daddies. In Holland, it’s the mommies and daddies (the politicians) that are saying, “Here, try it”, and the kids are saying, “What? Are you nuts?”

Maybe it’s like when your kid threatens to run away from home. One day, you hand her a suitcase and say, “Okay.” That usually stops them dead in their tracks. Maybe it’s the same with marijuana. Now that Dutch society says, “go ahead, use it if you like.” And the kids are going, “Why? Maybe I don’t want to.”

Well, I think we owe it to common sense to give it a try here. If it reduces drug use to legalize drugs, I’m all for it.

But why hasn’t it worked for guns?

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Those Wild and Crazy Lawyers

Quick– who made more money this year? Microsoft Corporation or a couple of lawyers in Texas?

Right. The lawyers. Well, almost. You see this group of lawyers represented the State of Texas in negotiating a settlement (read “sell-out”) with the tobacco companies. In exchange for lots of bucks, paid to the lawyers— ooops! Paid to the Plaintiffs! That’s you and me! —the tobacco companies get to continue marketing death and disease to American children. What a wonderful country!

So how much did the lawyers bill the State of Texas for their noble services, defending the innocent consumer against evil, ruthless, greedy corporations?

How much you say? Well, these are lawyers, after all. So the amount might be a little excessive. What d’ya think? Take a guess? How much should a lawyer be paid for a couple of years of work, doing research, bribing employees to turn over internal documents, and ordering health studies already paid for by the tax-payer through government funding of Universities and Research Organizations? How much?

$10 million?
$20 million?
$50 million?

Oh, come on now. These are REALLY SMART TALENTED LAWYERS. After all, the average lawyer would have tried to get tobacco companies out of the business altogether. But that would have made the tobacco companies very unhappy. So these superior lawyers actually found a way to make everybody happy. The government gets money. The tobacco companies get to stay in business. The taxpayer gets to continue smoking away.

$100 million?
$200 million?
$500 million?

Come on– don’t be shy! These the same intelligent, compassionate, competent professionals you see every day in the movies and on television, except that you never see the scene where they present their bills and take almost all of the settlement money they weaseled out of the greedy, amoral, unfeeling corporation. How can a lawyer live off of a measly $500 million dollars nowadays? Be reasonable! There are SO MANY expenses. Postage. Clerical work. Filing. Thinking. Reading. Subscriptions. Donuts. Get SERIOUS!

$1 billion?

A mere BILLION? When Michael Jackson makes almost a tenth of that? When Bill Gates makes ten times that much! And how much more important is a Texas lawyer than the owner of the greediest corporation on the face of the earth? Give me a break.

$5 billion?
$10 billion?

Now you’re getting reasonable! But not too reasonable.

$25 billion?

Right on! Yes, these Texas Lawyers are asking for $25 billion dollars for negotiating— GET THIS– a $17 billion dollar settlement. In other words, for recovering $17 billion dollars from the tobacco companies for the lucky tax payers of Texas, they ….. well, they want to keep all the money. Yes ALL of the money. YES, ALL OF THE MONEY. But that’s not all folks! The taxpayers of Texas, in compensation for all the medical costs of taking care of all of the victims of smoking addictions, get to PAY these Texas Lawyers an additional $8 BILLION! You lucky Texans! Not only do you get to have tail-gate parties at Huntsville State Prison where they execute completely worthless, disgusting, evil, unredeemable human beings almost every night— you also get to pay a bunch of lawyers $8 billion dollars for……. well….. for…..

Well, fortunately, the lawyers and the tobacco companies got together and decided that it wouldn’t be fair to hit the citizens of Texas with such a large bill. They said, “What? Are you crazy?” Well… And they decided that those Texas Lawyers should ONLY receive $3.3 billion.

Whew! Here I was all upset over nothing! A mere $3.3 billion! How many lawyers were involved? The New York Times doesn’t say, but several other states had teams of three or four leading lawyers and their staffs. But– get this– some lawyers represented as many as 30 states. Do they get paid once? Are you an idiot? Does Michael Jordan get paid once even though he plays in 30 different stadiums?

Well, yes he does. But that’s Michael Jordan. He’s not a lawyer.

One of the lawyers for Florida, Steven Yerid, said the costs are justified. Why? Because that’s how much lawyers should make? Because their work is so terrible, so risky, so dangerous, that even a $14.95 an hour coal miner wouldn’t take it on? Because they are so smart that they scare Stephen Hawkings?

No. He said the fees were justified because “the costs come from the industry”. In other words, we’re justified in taking any money we can lay our grubby hands on because we are lawyers. We just ARE.

Furthermore, he says, the lawyers might have ended up with nothing if they had lost the case. So, because these lawyers might not have won the case, they are entitled to demand as much money as they please.

Remember, this line of reasoning is coming from a lawyer, someone you might need to depend on for your life if you’re ever charged with a serious crime in Texas.

Pity me. I thought this case was about public health and liability. Instead, it is clearly some new kind of industry, in which clever entrepreneur can sue somebody out of the blue on the off chance they might collect a few billions. Who do they sue next?

What does the public have to do with it? Go suck a camel.

The industry will pay it? Ha ha ha. The industry?!!! Where does this idiot think the “industry” gets its money? From the smokers! So, not only will very little of this money from the tobacco companies actually find it’s way into the medical facilities of Texas (aren’t most of their medical facilities used to gas convicts anyway?), but the smokers will pay more for cigarettes in order to pay the lawyers who negotiated a deal in which tobacco companies can now market their disease- causing product with impunity.

Now, who was this lawsuit supposed to benefit?  Who were the victims of the corporation’s malfeasance?  Who was harmed by the evil practices of these public entities who profited from their misery?  That’s right: the smokers.  The same people who are paying for the settlement!

There are some scandals that shock you. There are scandals that boggle the mind. There are scandals that baffle you, because the scale of the moral atrocity is so far beyond normal human experience that you can’t even begin to comprehend it. The Savings and Loan Scandal. The loans to 3rd World Dictatorships at usurious interest rates. Windows 95.

And then there is the king of all scandals, the mind-blowing, baffling, stunning, incomprehensible, MOTHER of all scandals. And this is it.

So while you’re sitting there eating your chips and watching the sanctimonious republicans try to impeach the president for consensual groping in the Oval Office— consider where your hard-earned tax dollars are really going.

And weep, wail, gnash your teeth, bash your head against the wall….. what else are you going to do?

Get yourself a lawyer?

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The Feminist Critique of Pure Immanuel Kant

There is an ad in the latest New York Times Review of Books (November 20, 1997) that really shook me up. It is for a book called “The Feminist Interpretation of Immanuel Kant”. It is edited by Robin May Schott, in case you want to order it.

Now, hey, I’d be the first person to say that it’s about time someone over-hauled the old transcendental critique of pure reason, I mean, after all, it’s only been out of date since about fifteen minutes after it was printed, but even I would never have guessed that the feminists would be the ones to put the last nail in the coffin. I’m not sure Immanuel would be pleased. I think he said something like “feminism is destroying our society” or something like that at one point in his career, probably just after his wife left him.

But you know, the next time some dark-minded pundit goes on and on about how our society is just falling apart and things have never been so bad and our youth have really lousy manners, and Hollywood sucks, and so on, I’m going to think about those feminists out there reinterpreting Immanuel Kant and breathe a quiet little sigh of relief. If there is one thing more amazing than any other about our society, its our ability to chew up and regurgitate almost any idea, any image, any concept, and spit it out again as lively and ripe as if it were new.

Like Immanuel Kant. It would have been audacious enough if the feminists had taken on Wittgenstein or Popper, but Kant? So what do the feminists have to say? I don’t know. I haven’t read the book yet. But I’ll bet they accuse Kant of building his entire rigid, rational system of thought on some misdirected patriarchal impulse to rule reality with an iron fist. And I’ll bet the feminists believe that a view of reality more harmonious with natural, empathetic impulses would have worked better. If I remember my college philosophy correctly, Kant was trying to rescue Reason with a capital “R” from Descartes’ radical critique, which consisted of declaring that the only thing you could know for sure was that you existed. Both of them sound a little anal retentive to me. The women probably point out that doing the laundry, cooking, and cleaning, require some pretty fundamental ontological conclusions about cause and effect that can’t be justified by going for a walk every day trying to think up new categories of existence.

Then along comes Sartre who believed we don’t exist in a static sense at all. We are constantly in the state of becoming, and that’s why we are free, unless, of course, your wife expects you home for supper. I’ll bet Simone De Beauvoir had a few precious thoughts about this herself.

Wittgenstein thought we basically constructed a reality in our language, and so our society is really nothing more than a construct of the words we imagine to describe it with. I think the feminists might find a home there. You know how they love to get together and talk. Then there was Martin Heidegger. He believed that mankind had forgotten something very, very important about existence, but what it was we had forgotten he couldn’t seem to remember either, so he joined the Nazi party and continued to teach at a university in Germany throughout World War II. Nothing like a philosophy that stimulates you into positive action! I think the feminists wouldn’t like him. They would think that it’s not that hard to remember the important things, as long as you care about people.

Microsoft Philosophy 1.01

You can tell what philosophy Bill Gates believes in by running a spell check on little known recent philosophers in Microsoft Word and then analyzing the results. Watch:

Philosopher Result Meaning
(Martin) Heidegger headgear groovy
(Imre) Lakatos lactose milk for the mind
(Paul) Feyerabend no suggestions vacant
(Albert) Camus cameos we only see reality in hazy profile
(Dan) Quayle quarrel don’t go into politics
(Hannah) Arendt aren’t we don’t exist, unless we’re banal and evil

Hannah Arendt is the only woman on the list, and I don’t think most philosophers would place her next to Heidegger or even Imre Lakatos in terms of importance, but she did come up with one great idea. While in Jerusalem covering the Eichmann trial (Jewish agents had kidnapped Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal, from Argentina and spirited him away to Jerusalem for a show trial), she found herself at a loss for words to describe the utter mediocrity of this minor functionary who was partly responsible for the deaths of six million Jews, so she coined the phrase “banality of evil”*. Later on, she was sorry that she became so well known for that phrase alone. I have to admit, that’s about the only thing I know about Hannah Arendt myself, but I like the phrase, because it captures the idea that incredibly evil things can result from the actions or inactions of people who perceive themselves as being only minor cogs in a big machine. Raul Wallenberg was a minor functionary, but he saved hundreds of lives. Eichmann claimed that he was only following orders. The crew of the Enola Gay were only following orders when they dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima (victors get to write history so we don’t seem to regard them as villains the way we regard the Germans, Italians, or Japanese). The crew of the Titanic sent lifeboats away half-filled because their orders were “women and children first” and the third-class women and children were still below decks, and the only other people present were men.

That’s the way most people behave– just following orders–and that may be the tragedy of the human race.

So if the feminists find a new way of thinking about reality that can convince most people that they should always do the right thing, even when it goes against orders or policy or whatever, then, hey, I’m all in favour of it.

* It appears that Hannah Arendt was wrong.  The discover of more information about Adolf Eichmann revealed that he was, in fact, virulently anti-Semitic, and fully on board with the plans to exterminate the Jews.

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Pinochet Ricochet

Baltasar Garzon is my hero. If I get a picture, I’m going to put it up on my web page.

Baltasar Garzon is a Spanish judge. He found out that some Spanish citizens had been kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in Chile in the 1970’s. He found out that the murderers were never apprehended. He was outraged. Then he found out that the leader of this gang of criminals was in England getting some heart surgery. Like any conscientious magistrate, he immediately issued a warrant for this man’s arrest.

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The man is Augusto Pinochet.

In 1973, Chile held a democratic election. The people chose a socialist, Salvador Allende, as their new President. The Americans didn’t like that. Mr. Kissinger was heard to remark something like, “Why should we stand back and let an irresponsible people elect the wrong party?” So first, with the aid of reactionary forces within Chile, a crisis was created. Then, fig leaf in place, with the help from the CIA, General Pinochet led a bloody coup d’etat, during which Salvador Allende was cold-bloodedly murdered (Pinochet’s cronies claim he committed suicide). (There is a good film, Missing, on this story). Pinochet’s army then rounded up as many dissidents and potential dissidents as it could find, held them in the Santiago soccer stadium, tortured as many as he could to get more names to arrest, then murdered thousands of them.

A few years ago, Pinochet did what all ugly, maggoty, disgusting despots do when faced with a powerful reform movement: he agreed to step down only in exchange for a full amnesty. I don’t understand how any government can even pretend to be part of this farce. A man walks into a bank . He shoots five people and locks another twenty in the vault. He takes all the money. He runs off with five hostages. He kills four of them. Then he says, “I didn’t do anything wrong, but I will turn over this last hostage to you unharmed if you agree to not prosecute me for anything I might or might not have done before this.” The people say, “if you didn’t do anything wrong, then what do you have to worry about?” Maybe the police are smart. Maybe they say yes. He turns over the hostage. Then he is arrested and tried and convicted and executed.

Except that here, no one arrested or tried or convicted Pinochet, because they were afraid of the army. The army supports Pinochet because, after all, they are the bloody arms and hands of this evil man. They are complicit.

But Garzon had the guts to say, this man is a murderer and a torturer plain and simple. And he had the audacity to serve the warrant. (The French and Swiss governments have since done likewise.) And Blair’s government seized Pinochet and are holding him pending the outcome of the legal wrangling.

Think what a bizarre, crazy, mixed up message this is going to send to the world. That we are all equal before the law? That torture and murder are criminal acts? That justice awaits even the most powerful? Idi Amin, the happy guest of the Saudi Arabian government for twenty-years, since, presumably, his last meal of fresh humans, must be quaking in his boots!

* * *

Someone says to me, in defense of Pinochet, how would you feel if Castro, on his way to the United Nations, was arrested by the FBI and held for murder and torture? You see? We must have separate rules for dictators.

Well, first of all, if seeing Castro arrested was the price to pay for having assholes like Pinochet and Amin and Hussein, and Karadzic arrested, I think I’d go along with it. Let’s arrest him and have a fair trial and see what we come up with. I doubt you’d find nearly as many serious offenses for Castro as you find for Pinochet, or the others, but if you do, then, yeah, he should be charged. The witnesses should be brought forward, and let’s try him. Yes, it would be worth it, even though I like Castro, and his beard.

There is one other complicating factor. Pinochet was not an invited guest of the British government. He came as a private citizen seeking medical treatment (using the money, undoubtedly, that he pilfered from the state treasury).

If he had been an invited guest of the British Government, they would not have had a legitimate right to arrest him. If they did, the whole system of international diplomacy and the conditions under which negotiations can take place would begin to break down. Fair enough.

When Castro speaks at the U.N., as an invited guest, he has the same protection.

But hey, if goes for a walk in Central Park: arrest him! He and Pinochet can share a cell.

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That Darned Subversive Cat

Remember all the stuff you heard about democracy and freedom and so on when you were kid? And how the Russians were supposed to be so evil because their government spied on their own people and arrested and imprisoned them just for daring to criticize Communism? And how the United States and Canada were so great, because here we were free to vote for whoever we wanted and think whatever we wanted?

Well, let’s keep things in perspective. What follows is not meant to suggest that the West was as bad as Russia was then (and China is today). It’s just meant to balance out a fairly idiotic image of who and what we were during the cold war. The truth is, our own governments were spying on us, and arresting people who spoke out in dissent and attempting to control the free flow of information, just like the commies did.

Actually, none of this is news. We already know about McCarthyism and the excesses of J. Edgar Hoover. I merely want to add a little tidbit here to help put the extent of government control into perspective.

It seems that in 1965 Walt Disney wanted to make a movie based on a book by former FBI agent Gordon Gordon and his wife, Mildred, about a cat who belongs to a kidnap victim. When the cat turns up one night wearing the victim’s wrist watch, the FBI puts the cat under surveillance. Hayley Mills, Dean Jones, and Frank Gorshin starred. Hilarious concept!

Anyway, the FBI heard about this movie, and, when informed about it, J. Edgar Hoover immediately turned to his faithful sidekick, Pedro De Loach, and told him, “Hey, it’s a free country. People can make movies about whatever they please.”

No, he did not.  As a matter of fact,  Mr. De Loach dispatched an FBI agent to investigate this movie to ensure that the Bureau’s “interests” were protected.  I’m not making this up.

Think about this. The FBI, using your hard-earned tax dollars, dispatches a highly-paid agent to Hollywood to investigate the possibility that a Disney movie about a cat might be dangerous to civil order and the justice system.

Did they have time? Well, Groucho Marx might have been retired by then, so I guess that freed up a few agents. Maybe Lucille Ball had let her communist party membership lapse. Perhaps Ring Lardner hadn’t ordered any explosives recently. Maybe Dalton Trumbo had started hanging out with Ronald Reagan. Who knows?

It is tempting to laugh at this bizarre episode and just shrug it off. When you were a kid and you recited the pledge of allegiance to the flag of America and the liberty for which it stands, did you think for a moment that your own government had it’s own little department of thought control?

Did you watch the television drama called “The FBI” on TV in the 1960’s? Did you know that the FBI virtually controlled the program? They could veto any line of dialogue, any shot, if they didn’t like it. And do you even have to think for a minute to realize that their first priority was not “accuracy”, as they claimed, but depicting the agency in a favourable light?

Ever see that episode where the FBI tapped Martin Luther King’s phones? Yeah, me neither. Or where they collected information about President Kennedy’s mistresses?

Even today, with all the so-called sophistication we now have, TV is still inundated with police-approved TV shows that labour mightily to convince you that the police never make mistakes. I watched one episode of “REAL TV”, which showed tapes from a police helicopter chasing a “suspect”. What was the man suspected of? We never find out, for the only thing he is ever charged with is resisting arrest– a chilling echo of Soviet Russia’s “enemy of the state”. All during the chase, the voice-over narration laboured to assure us that these reckless and insane pursuits were necessary because the felon might very well have done something unspeakably evil, if the police had not damaged five cruisers chasing him at speeds of 100 mph through populated suburbs and snarled highways.

Is there a single TV police show that does not show police officers assaulting suspects and violating their civil rights with approval. The program is careful to let you “know” the one thing that, in real life, the police almost never know with any degree of certainty: that the suspect is guilty.

Back to the FBI: I’m sure if you asked the FBI today, their official spokesman would chuckle and say something like, “Oh, well, yes, J. Edgar did get a little carried away back in the 1960’s, but I can assure you that the FBI today is too busy tracking down militant survivalists and murderers to waste time on Hollywood movies.”

Like the Branch Davidians, in Waco, Texas?

To see a copy of the FBI report on “That Darn Cat”:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/darncat1.html

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The Naked Truth About Police Chases

A 46-year-old woman in Indiana decided to go for a drive. Naked. A policeman spotted her.

Okay, let’s say you’re a cop. You see this woman drive by, and she appears to be naked. You immediately realize that this naked woman is a serious threat to public safety and security and MUST BE STOPPED. On go the lights. On goes the siren. Maybe you even make little “woo-woo” sounds with your mouth as you wheel your muscular Chevy Malibu 360 degrees and step on the gas. Maybe your trigger finger starts twitching: what if she’s got a concealed weapon? Well, all right. What if she has a gun on her lap? You think back to police school– what did they teach you about handling naked women drivers? Should you call out the SWAT team? You get on the radio, anyway, and call for assistance. From the looks of things, could be trouble. “Naked woman in a car. Am proceeding to apprehend.”

Five different police departments respond to your call.

This naked woman doesn’t want to stop for you. She steps on the gas. Soon, she is driving 160 kilometers per hour (110 mph).

Well, now you have a threat to public safety.

At least five other police cars get involved in the chase. Let’s say it takes them about 30 minutes to join the race, catch up with the woman, pull her over, sort out who gets to lay charges, and then get back to other duties. That’s probably about $1000.00 for the officers alone, benefits included. Then there’s the cars (fuel and maintenance) the paper work, the processing time for the charges, the court appearances, the District Attorney and his assistants, and so on. I’ll bet by the time you’re done, it’s going to cost the taxpayer over $5,000.00 to deal with this naked woman. What if one or more of the police cars had been damaged in the chase? What if a child had been hit by one of the speeding cars?

Sometimes I think privatization might be a good thing. Suppose I was an ambitious businessman and I owned my own police force and I contracted my services out to the State of Indiana. Suppose one of my employees radioed in that a naked woman just drove by and he wanted to pursue her.

Come on. Are you nuts? I’d tell him to go check to see if a bank is being robbed somewhere. I’d tell him to go to a pool hall and cover a few games for a bunch of teenagers. I’d tell him to park his car downtown and take a walk and chat with at least five merchants. I’d tell him to find a school basketball court, take off his tie and gun, and play three-on-three with whoever’s hanging out there. I’d tell him to go to a liquor store and get himself onto a first-name basis with the proprietor. I’d tell him to go find a milk carton and see if he can memorize the faces of the missing children.

If I was really conscientious, I’d have one of the receptionists from the office get into her Toyota and see if she can find the naked woman, follow her around, and see if she’s in some kind of trouble. I pay her $15.00 an hour and cover her mileage. Net cost: $25.00. No lives lost. No cars damaged. No big deal.

* * *

Just read today that the police in Mildmay, Ontario, found out that a local Radio Shack dealer had purchased some parts from a cruise missile at a flea market in Ohio. Oooo! SWAT team for sure. On May 13, 1997, they invaded his store with 15 flak-jacketed camouflaged armed commandos (I am not making this up), terrifying the law-abiding owner, an electronics hobbyist with plans to take over the world but who was not charged with anything for four months. I’ll bet this operation cost more than $5,000. I’ll bet the Ontario Provincial Police ask for–and receive–more money next year, to handle this epidemic of terrorism: naked ladies and Radio Shack managers.

I would have sent that same secretary in her Toyota. Let’s have a chat. I’ll give you a thousand bucks. (According to the owner, he would have accepted less than that, if they had only offered.) Maybe we can work this out.

But the, what would the police do with all those flak jackets and commando gear? Paintball?

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The “Heroic” Captain Smith

Almost every movie version of the Titanic renders Captain Smith the same way. Grey-bearded and reserved, dignified, and ineffably tragic. Pictures of the real guy, in uniform, seem to confirm the impression. He had a sparkling career until the Titanic disaster.  He ran his ship into an ice berg in the dead of night in calm seas. A small blemish, to be sure.

Edward J. Smith.jpg

We prefer J. Bruce Ismay, President of the White Star Line, as the villain of this story. Writers and movie-makers have moved heaven and earth to make it appear as though he was responsible for the disaster, by urging the Captain to go faster. The Cameron movie version blithely sidesteps one precious little detail: the Titanic was not capable of going faster than the “crack” Cunard ships. The Titanic was built for luxury, not speed. There was no chance of it setting any records. Cameron knows that, so he merely leaves Ismay to impress upon Captain Smith that it would be nice if they could arrive a day early. At least some movie-goers, however, are easily confused, and I’ve heard people say, after seeing the movie, that it was Ismay’s fault, for trying to break “the record”.

So, we can put that to rest. Ismay may have urged speed, but the Titanic had no dreams of breaking the record.

That leaves Captain Smith. On the high seas, the Captain has absolute authority. Ismay or no Ismay, it was Smith’s decision to proceed into an area known to be inhabited by large ice bergs at the Titanic’s top speed of about 22 knots. The Titanic had received numerous warnings during the preceding days, from other other ships in the area. Smith’s precautions consisted of posting two look-outs, usual practice on White Star ships. The look-outs did not have binoculars– they had been lost before the ship even reached Cherbourg– but then, binoculars were considered an accessory, not a necessity, at the time. A good look-out was simply supposed to have good eyes.

Nobody will ever know whether the look-outs should have seen the ice berg sooner. The ocean was extremely calm, the sky was very bright. Under those conditions, ironically, ice bergs are a greater hazard, because there is almost no wash at their edges, to make them more visible. Anyway, no one knows if Frederick Fleet was really paying attention or not. We do know that he eventually saw the ice berg, signaled the bridge, and the bridge immediately ordered the engines reversed and the helm brought about. Fleet’s testimony (he survived the disaster) about how far the berg was from the ship when he first spotted it is inconsistent.

He didn’t have a happy life, by the way, after the disaster, and he committed suicide in the 1960’s.

The Titanic was poorly designed. It was a long, cigar-shaped ship, with an undersized rudder. It didn’t respond very quickly to sharp turns. It responded enough to avoid a head-on crash, but then it grazed the ice berg under the water line. The first five compartments of the ship were breeched. Within minutes, Mr. Thomas Andrews, the ship’s designer, knew that it was doomed. The rest is history.

It is here, however, that we are able to take the true measure of Captain Smith. But before we assess Captain Smith’s performance, it is worth, for comparison’s sake, taking a quick look at the actions of Captain Arthur Rostron, of the Carpathia, the ship that picked up the survivors of the Titanic disaster.

Captain Rostron received word of the Titanic disaster around midnight, long before the Titanic sunk. He immediately issued numerous orders. First, to the engine room, to stoke up the boilers and get under way immediately in the direction of the Titanic. Secondly, to the stewards, to roust blankets and supplies. Thirdly, to his officers, to ensure space for the survivors, and calm aboard his own ship, and to prepare for receiving the lifeboats. Fourth, to the wireless operator, to signal Titanic that they were under way. He followed up on his orders to see that they were carried out efficiently. The Carpathia steamed towards the disaster site at full speed, well-prepared to deal with whatever awaited it.

Onboard the Titanic, it was a different story. Smith seemed bewildered, lost, inadequate. His officers came up to him one at a time and asked permission to send flares, prepare the life boats, roust the passengers. He seemed to have no particular views on what should be done. According to testimony at both the British and American inquiries, he generally seemed to nod his head and go, “yes, yes, good idea.”

What should he have done? He should have immediately summoned all of his officers and staff. He should have emphatically specified that each life-boat was to be filled to capacity. He should have dispatched stewards to the third class compartments to arrange for the women and children to reach the boat deck. He should have instructed the officers to ensure that at least four men with some ability or experience were dispatched to each life boat. He should have declared the bar open with free drinks for all the men. Well, just kidding. Maybe. You see, at least one drunk survived a few hours in the sea, probably because the alcohol had thinned his blood.

If he had taken decisive steps, at least 500 more people could have survived the disaster. As it was, only 705 survived out of 2200. The official capacity of the 16 lifeboats was 65 each, or 1040 total. In addition, there were four “collapsible” boats, with a capacity of 24 each, making 96, or 1136 total. With calm seas– and the seas were calm–  and a some ingenuity, they could easily have squeezed in an additional 100 above that.

So why do directors and writers continue to portray him as something of a hero? One reason and one reason alone: he went down with his ship, like all good captains do. Going down with the ship is the Captain’s way of saying “Ooops. I made a mistake. I’m really very sorry.” A captain who survives is basically saying, like Ismay, “What? I suppose you’re going to blame me for this?”

We are always willing to forgive those who say I’m sorry.  But we also have this blather, from passenger Roger Williams Daniel:

“I saw Captain Smith on the bridge. My eyes seemingly clung to him. The deck from which I had leapt was immersed. The water had risen slowly, and was now to the floor of the bridge. Then it was to Captain Smith’s waist. I saw him no more. He died a hero.”

He died a what?

I think what Daniel is actually saying is, “having contributed nothing in a moment of great crisis, he made up for it by at least not taking up space in a half-filled lifeboat that wasn’t lowered until it was almost too late.”