Category: Justice

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Microsoft’s Requirements

Microsoft: “(Required) We collect required diagnostic data to keep Office secure, up-to-date, and performing as expected on the devices its installed on.”

This is the message that popped up as I tried to open Word on a new installation of Office 365 on my HP laptop.  “Required”.  Sounds powerful, doesn’t it.  It’s “required”, like, you have no choice.  Microsoft has no choice: it just has to have access to your computer to browse around and take whatever it wants while you are online.  They can’t do anything about it: it’s required.

There is nothing “required” at all.  It is pure bullshit.  There is no law or regulation that “requires” Microsoft to collect your data.  It’s Microsoft telling you to bend over and spread your cheeks– it’s “required”.

And “performing as expected”?  Absolutely, like the fat, bulky, cluttered, disordered disaster that, yes, I do expect.

But seriously, Microsoft is telling you that, finally, they are not even going to pretend to give you a choice about allowing them to go onto your computer and ransack your personal data.  Your acceptance of these conditions

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The Highwaythugs

“The Highwaymen” is a retelling of the Bonnie and Clyde story from the point of view of the lawmen. I thought, that’s interesting– how are they going to show the ambush that brought down Bonnie and Clyde? It doesn’t fit the mythical honor code of Texas lawmen you know, courage and integrity, and honor and crack shots. Confronting the bad guy with your demur manliness and demanding surrender. Texas lawmen don’t hide in the bushes and open fire without warning on an unsuspecting target– especially a woman.

 So they had Frank Hamer, the “courageous” and “honorable” former Texas Ranger step out in front of the car and demand their surrender first. That never happened, not in any of the many accounts of that day. They hid in the bushes and fired– something like 139 shots– at Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, using guns they knew to be able to pierce metal. Everyone agreed that the first shot hit Barrow in the head, so they were mainly shooting at Bonnie Parker from then on.

Then the movie showed Frank Hamer turning down money for an interview as if he was above that sort of thing– which also was not true (he fought for a bigger share of the reward money for years). 
It is unfortunate that the police were never clever enough to even really attempt to arrest Clyde Barrow without getting into a gun battle.  That would have required planning and skill, and it would have been very risky.  Here’s why: Clyde Barrow had a terrible, terrible experience in the Texas prison system and he had firmly decided that he was never, ever going back.  So, yes, whenever anyone tried to arrest him, he would resist.  Given a choice, he’d rather die in a gunfight than return to prison. 
Was there a way the police could have arrested him without taking a lot of casualties?  It would have been extremely difficult.  If they had had intelligence about a planned robbery or rendezvous with family, perhaps they could have planted lawmen near enough to wrestle him down to the ground before he could pull a weapon. 
Frank Hamer was famous for having killed over 50 bad guys in his career as a Texas Ranger.  We are expected to believe that in over 50 interactions with bad guys– suspects, you understand (of course– none of them were convicted yet of the crimes for which he was trying to apprehend them), Frank Hamer, we are told, out-gunned them fair and square in the process of trying to arrest them.   Think about that.  Over 50 times. 
Could be they were really stupid criminals, trying to outgun a famous Texas Ranger. 
Could be Frank Hamer didn’t like to bother with due process.
Later in life, Frank Hamer worked as a union-buster for some oil companies.  
I don’t mind the film making the argument that any attempt to arrest Bonnie and Clyde would have resulted in a gun battle.   But we don’t tolerate an out and out ambush nowadays.  The police are expected to at least make an attempt to arrest a suspect before shooting him or her.  Well,– they are expected to at least make it look like they did.
I just mind the BS about Frank Hamer being more heroic or smarter or honorable than he really was.
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Solved a Crime Did We?

The headline of this story  brags that “a determined squad of detectives finally solved a notorious crime after 40 years”.  If you believe that Lloyd Lee Welch isn’t an idiot who loved to brag and hold the attention of the police by making up stories about his family’s involvement in the abduction and murder of the Lyon sisters, Sheila and  Katherine, in March 1975 in Maryland, then yes, those heroes, those police officers, should all get medals.

Mr. Welch is a perfect suspect: he already has a conviction for sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl.  He gave a crazy statement to the police a few days after the kidnapping that was so incoherent and inconsistent that they gave him a lie detector test (which means nothing anyway) which he failed.

It’s not hard to sell all that to the police as a terrific incentive to focus on this suspect.

What you really have is a poorly educated possibly senile and foolish older man being manipulated, bullied, and tricked by a few cynical police officers into making so many wildly inaccurate but incriminating statements that they were able to indict him for the kidnappings and then persuade him to take a plea by threatening him with the death penalty.

In none of the accounts, did I notice the mention of a lawyer representing Mr. Welch.  Where is the lawyer?  Did they allow him to represent himself?  Did a judge, seriously, accept all this?

A good lawyer could probably have cut this case to shreds, which is why– it is safe to presume– the police did everything they could to get a guilty plea.

Ah but the “blood” that showed up in the basement under the light!

The samples they removed were identified as potentially being blood, prosecutors would later write in court papers.   The Spec

Is this some kind of joke?  This passes for forensic science in the U.S. in 2014?  Potentially blood.  This is presented to the public and the Lyon family as evidence?  What exactly is the scientific description of “potential blood”?

Once investigators began to focus on Welch, more evidence began to emerge

Inevitably.  Because they didn’t begin to focus on Welch because they had evidence.  They had a suspect: that’s the hallmark of bad policing.  Suspect first, twist arms, then evidence.

Mr. Welch told the police that he saw other relatives actually commit the crime.  Nobody else has been charged or arrested.  If they believe that he has implicated himself, why was no one else arrested?

Detectives investigated the uncle who Welch had claimed was in the basement by spending months listening to phone taps, talking to people who knew him and probing his past before prosecutors determined there was not evidence to seek an indictment.

There is, essentially, the same evidence as there is against Welch: none.

One article on the affair stated that the police had found bones on the property where it was alleged the bodies were burned.  That tidbit disappears from other, later accounts.   Perhaps what they actually probably had were “potential bones”.  Obviously, that too proved to be less than useful and I would have loved to have seen a good defense lawyer take that on in court.

Please note: there was no trial.  There was no competent defense lawyer carefully developing arguments against the evidence.  There was no evidence.  There was a man threatened with the death penalty if he did not confess.  He “confessed” though he didn’t really confess (read the details: he implicated others but did not claim that he himself was directly involved).  His girlfriend was threatened with charges too, which, if you read about these cases a lot, you will immediately recognize as an attempt to recruit her as a witness against her boyfriend.  (Kenneth Starr famously used this strategy against Julie Hiatt Steele in relation to Kathleen Willey’s claims of sexual assault in his investigation of Bill Clinton.  Linda Tripp collaborated Steele’s claim that Willey was actually actively seeking a relationship with Bill Clinton, and bragging about it.  When Steele refused to change her story, Starr indicted her; the case was tossed out in the end, but not before wrecking havoc on Steele’s life.)

The only connection to the crime is a rambling, incoherent statement he apparently gave at the time of the girls’ disappearance.  The fact that the police then did not feel fit to charge him with anything tells you volumes: they didn’t believe him in the immediate aftermath of the crime– why would different police 40 years later have better judgement?  There is also a sketch of a suspicious male seen in the mall on the day of the disappearance.  Once again, police at the time did not regard Welch as a suspect, but the police today assert that he strongly resembles the sketch.

The police get to put a massive feather in their caps.  They hate it when they have to stand in front of the public and admit they couldn’t solve the disappearance and probable murder of any child.  Just hate it.  They have ample motivation to fudge this investigation, proclaim themselves victorious and award themselves medals.

The sad part is how tempting it must be for the Lyon family to believe them.

Even sadder: a recent book calls the police work “a masterpiece of interrogation”.  Well, that it is, having achieved the desire result.

[I haven’t read the book.  I just scanned through a dozen reviews and, as I surmised, not one of them alludes to any kind of physical evidence; Mark Bowden seems dazzled by the success of the police in befuddling Welch into making stupid admissions with which the police threaten to seek the death penalty.  I hope Welch acknowledged (it is suggested he did, obliquely) that without any corroborating physical evidence they really don’t have a case.  They have a psycho.]

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Janet Jackson Gets Her “Due”

According to the New York Times, Janet Jackson has been unjustly deprived of accolades and esteem because of the scandalous event known as “nipplegate” in which a piece of her wardrobe fell away from her breast while Justin Timberlake was trying to put it back during a performance at the Superbowl in 2004.

No– the act was Justin Timberlake pulling the wardrobe away from her breast.  But what was supposed to happen– after the audience got their titillation out of the way– was that the pulled away fabric would just reveal more fabric.

The Superbowl is already a triviality, a monument to nothingness, a mammoth orgy of absurdly boring sport and vulgarity.   The half-time performances are already obscene: most artists lip-sync and gyrate to inane pop inanities while tanned boobie commentators ravish them with praise.

The song Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake was performing was about getting somebody naked.  Why was that acceptable but the real thing was not?  Because there is nothing in the world more appealing to hypocrites than titillation– literally!  The enjoyment of things they believe to be taboo without the actual thing.  Janet Jackson’s sin was that for a brief moment she dispelled the illusion that millions of viewers thinking deeply about tits would be exposed as actually thinking deeply about tits.  The secret about “nipplegate” is that the real offense was exposing just how dirty America’s minds really are.  Someone will have to be crucified in order to expunge this dirty secret and restore middle-America’s sense of respect and decency!  I will not tolerate a naked breast on tv!  I am a moral person!  But, go ahead and dance and wiggle your clothed hips and sing about getting naked– I love it– but I am a decent, moral person who will only vote for non-outed political candidates.

Was there “blame”?  What are you talking about?  They were doing exactly what the audience wanted.  The costumes, the lyrics, the gyrations, the rhythm– all were aimed at creating the largest sense of arousal possible while pretending to be enjoying the music and the artistry– and the sport– instead.

Shunned because of “nipplegate”?  I am astonished that anyone really cares about the wardrobe malfunction, for many reasons:

  • it was trivial– there is nothing horrifying about the human body, to children or adults;
  • Janet Jackson is trivial: there is not, among her products, not a single performance of anything, that matters in any sense: she is merely a pop artist of no particular originality or insight;
  • attributing indifference to an artist who is a woman and black can’t always be blamed on the fact that she is a woman and black: for heaven’s sake, she never was or is anything other than a pop artist of mediocre achievements;
  • how did she get to be an artist in the first place?  Did someone in the music industry notice this very talented singer somewhere and decide she should be a star?  Or, could she have had some privileged connections?  Do you need to ask?
  • Even Janet Jackson, or mediocre artistic achievement, deserves better than to be treated like that for a trivial indiscretion, even if it was intentional or her fault.

The Bush Administration tried to punish CBS for not preventing the mishap.  Last I heard, the courts had thrown out the case.

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So Then You Shoot…

In his decision, Judge Norman determined that the officer “cannot be expected to coolly engage in a protracted analysis of all the information known to him in a rapidly changing circumstance, putting the officer in the position of having to make an immediate choice.”  NY Times

This is the fascinating rationale– part of it– offered by Mickey J. Norman of Baltimore County Circuit Court– to justify rescinding a $38 million award to the family of Korryn Gaines who, while being served with a summons for a traffic offense, and in the company of her 5-year-old son, was shot to death by Officer Royce Ruby (who has since been promoted).

This is about the source of the judge’s rationale: a Supreme Court judgement.  And here again we have an interesting interpretation of facts and law which clearly implies that the police have the right to shoot any person who approaches them, period.  Think about it.  That is all the woman did.  She didn’t have a gun or a weapon of any sort.  She called the police asking for help.  She went to meet the police she called.  They shot her dead.  The courts say– with impunity.  The article notes that many police forces now actually train their officers to act with impunity– in essence.  The law will be interpreted to mean that anybody approaching any officer at any time under any circumstance can be shot because you can’t expect the officer to exercise any kind of judgement in a situation that could be interpreted to consist of a “rapidly changing circumstance”.  The woman approached the car.  She got closer.  That was a “rapidly changing circumstance”.

It is curious that the court did not do any math.  How many times a day does an officer face a “rapidly changing circumstances”?  How many every week, month, year?  The court says you could shoot anyone in range at any of those times, with impunity.  What if the court had said, as they should have, you may never shoot unless you are reasonably certain that a real imminent threat to life and limb exists?  If you are uncertain, you don’t shoot.  That simple.  If you don’t like that rule, don’t apply to be a police officer.

The court imposes no obligation upon a police officer to exercise good judgment.  It is enough that the circumstances changed–  “rapidly” — in the estimation of the police officer who was so weak and frightened and incompetent that his only choice was to draw a revolver and shoot.  Frank Hamer would be proud.

I suspect that the judge had decided to rescind the award before he even heard any details about the case.  I suspect that, because, when you read the rationale, above, you realize that you could invent such a rationale to justify a police officer entering your home without a warrant and shooting you to death in your bed.  Because you might have a handgun under your pillow and an officer “cannot be expected to coolly engage in a protracted analysis of all the information known to him in a rapidly changing circumstance”.

Amazingly, the judge did not conclude that the police should avoid “rapidly changing circumstances” or withdraw from them, to prevent a potentially fatal conflict.  No, if a police officer encounters a “rapidly changing circumstance” he can go ahead and shoot somebody and then count on judges like Mickey J. Norman to exempt them from any responsibility.

Remember that Ms. Gaines lost her life over a traffic ticket.  Without the overdue traffic fines, there would have been no police invasion, and no shooting.  No “rapidly changing circumstances”.

There is a certain constituency out there who will argue that if she would have just obeyed the police, she would be alive today.   It was her own fault.  This argument assumes that our freedoms do not belong to us, but are granted only at the discretion of the police and the authorities.   That is the definition of a police state, of a dictatorship.   Furthermore, it assumes that no matter how trivial the offense for which the police are attempting to apprehend someone, the police in that situation are justified in using lethal force.

If I had been the judge in that case, for that reason alone– the relatively trivial nature of the offense– I would have wanted to make a very clear statement to the public and the police that the justice system will not tolerate rogue police officers killing people over traffic tickets.

The defense argues that it was not the traffic ticket.  It was the fact that she resisted arrest.  And I would say that it is a monstrous exchange here.  If our society had to make a choice between collecting overdue traffic fines and the life of a young mother, rationality would prevail and we would find some other more proportionate way to encourage people to obey the rules of the road.

Progress

Devolution

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Free Enterprise is For Suckers

I guess I need some basic economic lessons again. Not sure I understand “free enterprise”. When a single mother with five children gets a small amount of money from the government, it’s a handout and builds an unhealthy dependency. When a extremely profitable multi-billion dollar corporation gets $1.2 billion in government handouts, it’s an “investment”.  Bombardier and Chrysler accepted billions in government “investment”, money that went to wealthy shareholders and top executives.  Most, if not all, of that money will never be repaid.  In fact, Bombardier just completely torpedoed the one semi-legitimate argument for that investment by laying off 5,000 workers.

Amazon and Foxconn have received even more lavish deals from the U.S. government, as does every major sports franchise in America.   As does every major defense contractor– these are for-profit companies, you know– not state-owned enterprises.   They don’t just sell their weapons to the United States.

So that single mom should just incorporate herself and ask for an “investment”.  She just needs better pr. She should maybe hold a competition among cities: who wants to get my “headquarters”.

As Charlie Chaplin said in “Monsieur Verdoux”– truly one of the most non-conformist films ever made– , about serial killers vs. generals: “numbers sanctify”.

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Why we go on Failing

This Sad Story

Prostitution is illegal.  It is a sex act between two consenting adults for which one of them is paid a sum of money by the other.

Why is it illegal?  Because our society decided long ago that there was a moral– and physical– harm caused by the activity.  As opposed to, say, polluting drinking water, spewing carbon emissions into the air, or being Mitch McConnell.

The truth is, there was never a great reason to make prostitution illegal, at least, not insofar as it is an act between two consenting adults in which money changes hands.  Who is unwillingly harmed?  If you argue that society is, that it is debased by the existence of this transaction, that families are undermined and morality declines, you are making a religious argument.  It shouldn’t stand up in court.  We know that.  Yet almost no politician in North America has the guts to say the obvious:  prostitution will always be with us and we should legalize it and develop the infrastructure needed to keep sex-workers safe from violence and abuse and exploitation, and their customers safe from disease.

There has been progress.  We seem to be leaning more towards treating the prostitutes as social cases rather than criminals, but we still arrest them, like Sisi, and haul them off into court and force them into the dark shadows of dangerous streets and alley-ways, and tiny apartments that charge excessive rents managed by people with no legal or discernible relationship to the real owners.

We took two steps forward with the more recent tendency to not publicly identify johns so we could enjoy destroying their family lives and careers.  But the feminist and #metoo movements are threatening to go backwards on this issue and some police forces make noises about going after the customers rather than the girls.  But then they go after the girls anyway.

In the meantime, young women like Sisi are abused and ruthlessly exploited at least partly because they forced to keep their positions secret from the very people who could protect them.

[whohit]Why we go on Failing[/whohit]

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Khe Sanh

The battle of Khe Sanh is memorialized generously by U.S. military fanboys as an example of courage, determination, military acuity, and patriotism.  These were marines!  These were real men!  They were heroes!

In it’s simplest form, a large group of American boys equipped with every piece of deadly military hardware available at the time flew over to a foreign country half-way around the world, landed in the jungle in the middle of nowhere, set up a base, and then courageously stopped the people who lived there from driving them out.  They fought on behalf of a corrupt, intolerant, dictatorial South Vietnamese government that was unwilling and unable to fight for themselves.

Let us salute the flag and sing the national anthem in respect of the wonders of foreign policy and the wit and wisdom of President Lyndon Johnson!

These were draftees, by the way, not volunteers.  They had no choice.  At the age of 18, these young men became eligible for the draft.  If drafted, they had to go or they would be sent to prison.  They were trained and then flown over to this undeveloped nation half-way around the world and told to fight off the young men who lived there.  Kill them.  Bomb them.  Blow up and burn their villages if necessary.  When you come back, we’ll hold a parade in honor of what you did (it turned out, there were no parades as American journalists didn’t understand the necessity of this war either and told the people).

This video talks about payback for the casualties inflicted on the marines by the Viet Cong and the NVA.  Payback!  As if the NVA had invaded Iowa.  As if the battle of Khe Sanh had had an actual strategic value in the war against communist tyranny.

It ends with some of the marines who fought there revisiting the scene in 2000.

There is a bit of a tone of “fuck the politicians” who sent us, but let’s have great reverence for the soldiers who fought there.  I always feel ambivalent about that.   Yes, they had no choice, really, but without willing combatants and parents and veterans who keep talking about the glories of military service, none of these stupid wars could happen.  They urge us to be proud of our fighting men but it is that pride that lines them up to be slaughtered as a result of idiotic and corrupt politics.

And how brave are you, really, when you are dropped into the circumstances these men were dropped into?  They were fighting to protect their friends and themselves from those unreasonable people who didn’t want them there.

President Lyndon Johnson admitted that he knew the war was lost but couldn’t pull out because the Republicans would have called him yellow.  That’s why your son, your brother, your husband, your father died at Khe Sanh.

 

[whohit]Khe Sanh[/whohit]

 

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Kavanaugh’s Witchcraft

One of the more obscure rulings made by Judge Kavanaugh earlier in his career is that the Department of Defense should be allowed to keep secret it’s own studies on the efficacy of lie detector tests.  Kavanaugh ruled that because keeping this information secret could be useful to prosecutors, it should be kept secret.

Presumably, if prosecutors could convince a suspect that the ghost of the alleged victim had fingered him, Kavanaugh is on-board with keeping the fact that ghosts don’t exist a secret from the suspect.

More reasonably, if the prosecutor in a case asserted that fibres found on the body of the victim matched fibres found in the suspect’s closet, the defense should not have the right to ask the prosecutor how they know that the fibres don’t match fibres from anyone else’s closet.   It is possible that you could find those same fibres anywhere you cared to look– there is no science behind it.  Kavanaugh is on-board with keeping this a secret because it would help the prosecutors to keep it a secret.

We know what the secret is: lie detector tests are unreliable.  In short, they lie.  And we know how the police and prosecutors use them.  They have, in the past, and probably still today, lie to suspects about the results of their lie-detector tests.  You lied.  We know it.  You might as well confess.  This, it supposed, will be shattering to the self-confidence of hardened criminals.  The trouble is, it really will be shattering to the self-confidence of innocent but gullible suspects.

It also helps when they ask a suspect to take a lie detector test and the suspect, wisely, refuses.   Why?  What are you hiding?  No innocent man would refuse.

Yes he would, if he was smart.  Because if he passes the test it will not alter the beliefs of the police or the prosecutor, but if he fails the test they will flog him with the results until he confesses.  They will threaten to charge him with the most serious crimes that could be linked in any way to the actual crime, unless he agrees to plead guilty to a lessor offense, providing the police and prosecutors with their scalp.  How many court cases are actually settled outside of the courtroom, with plea-deals like that?  Over 90%.

I was surprised– well, not totally– when Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey-Ford, announced that she had taken a lie-detector test on the subject of her attempted rape when she was 15 and Kavanaugh was 17, and passed.  Kavanaugh himself should salute her: smart girl.  There are a lot of suckers out there who will believe that this fact is determinant.  I don’t.

It’s an interesting ruling that indicates just how far Mr. Kavanaugh is willing to go to protect the power and privileges of the nation’s police.  That’s the real reason he should not be confirmed.

 

[whohit]Kavanaugh’s Witchcraft[/whohit]

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Kavanaugh

I have an odd feeling on this day, Sunday, September 23, 9:40 p.m., that Brett Kavanaugh may well withdraw from the nomination by the end of this week.

It’s a hunch, yes.  I’m guessing that there must be other allegations out there, someone else with collaborative knowledge, perhaps an acquaintance or friend is just about fed up with the self-righteous bluster.  I’m guess that is true because I’m guessing that Kavanaugh is a liar, particularly after his comment that he did not attend the party that Christine Blasey Ford did not identify.

The correct answer, Mr. Kavanaugh, was “I did attend parties around that time but I never did what Ms. Blasey says I did” or “I never attended any parties that time in my life” or “I don’t remember ever meeting Ms. Blasey Ford at any party I attended”.  The first seems plausible, the second ridiculous, and third makes the most sense, if the accusations are false.

But he said, “I didn’t attend that party”.  It’s not a slam dunk, but it’s damaging, to me.  It’s like a burglar responding to an accusation that he is a burglar saying, “I did not break into that house on Maple Street on Friday.”    Nobody said Maple Street.  Nobody said Friday.

So I suspect the allegation is true, and if it is, I suspect there will be some form of collaboration.  And if there is, there will be a lot of cold political calculations going on in Mitch McConnell’s office.  Do they really want to go into the November elections with this dragging behind them?  Just how pissed off will educated white women be at the Republicans desperate attempts to whitewash the issue?  When McConnell says Kavanaugh will be confirmed (to a gathering of evangelical leaders), he has basically said that Ms. Blasey Ford is a liar.  All while vowing to investigate the charges fully.

And if no collaboration shows up, I’ll concede that Ms. Blasey-Ford’s allegations may well be false.  Nobody who remembers them both being at the same party.  Nobody who remembers similar behavior by Kavanaugh at other parties.  Nobody how heard about the incident at the time.  It may be a false memory, or a blended memory, or a recovered memory– who knows– but false.

I just read this:

After six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney, Ramirez said that she felt confident enough of her recollections to say that she remembers Kavanaugh had exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party, thrust his penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away.  New Yorker

Well, that’s sort of what I imagined but it sounds a lot like Ms. Ramirez is “recovering” memories, which I think are worthless.  And it comes from an article by Ronan Farrow who is not a reliable source for this kind of story.

 

[whohit]Will Kavanaugh Withdraw?[/whohit]