Collateral Murder

The big story of the day is of course the Reuters employees who were massacred by the US Army back in 2007 having the video of their deaths come to light. I'm going to Glenn Greenwald for coverage, but you have to watch the video at collateralmurder.com itself.

here's a serious danger when incidents like this Iraq slaughter are exposed in a piecemeal and unusual fashion: namely, the tendency to talk about it as though it is an aberration. It isn't. It's the opposite: it's par for the course, standard operating procedure, what we do in wars, invasions, and occupation. The only thing that's rare about the Apache helicopter killings is that we know about it and are seeing what happened on video. And we're seeing it on video not because it's rare, but because it just so happened (a) to result in the deaths of two Reuters employees, and thus received more attention than the thousands of other similar incidents where nameless Iraqi civilians are killed, and (b) to end up in the hands of WikiLeaks, which then published it. But what is shown is completely common. That includes not only the initial killing of a group of men, the vast majority of whom are clearly unarmed, but also the plainly unjustified killing of a group of unarmed men (with their children) carrying away an unarmed, seriously wounded man to safety -- as though there's something nefarious about human beings in an urban area trying to take an unarmed, wounded photographer to a hospital.

A major reason there are hundreds of thousands of dead innocent civilians in Iraq, and thousands more in Afghanistan, is because this is what we do. This is why so many of those civilians are dead. What one sees on that video is how we conduct our wars. That's why it's repulsive to watch people -- including some "liberals" -- attack WikiLeaks for slandering The Troops, or complain that objections to these actions unfairly disparage the military because "our guys are the good guys" and they act differently "99.99999999% of the time." That is blatantly false. Just as was true of the deceitful attempt to depict the Abu Ghraib abusers as rogue "bad apples" once their conduct was exposed with photographs (when the reality was they were acting in complete consistency with authorized government policy), the claim that what was shown on that video is some sort of outrageous departure from U.S. policy is demonstrably false. In a perverse way, the typical morally depraved neocons who are justifying these killings are actually being more honest than those trying to pretend this is some sort of rare and unusual event: those who support having the U.S. invade and wage war on other countries are endorsing precisely this behavior.

As the video demonstrates, the soldiers in the Apache did not take a single step -- including killing those unarmed men who tried to rescue the wounded -- without first receiving formal permission from their superiors. Beyond that, the Pentagon yesterday -- once the video was released -- suddenly embraced the wisdom of transparency by posting online the reports of the so-called "investigations" it undertook into this incident (as a result of pressure from Reuters). Those formal investigations not only found that every action taken by those soldiers was completely justified -- including the firing on the unarmed civilian rescuers -- but also found that there's no need for any remedial steps to be taken to prevent future re-occurence. What we see on that video is what the U.S. does on a constant and regular basis in these countries, and it's what we've been doing for years. It's obviously consistent with our policies and practices for how we fight in these countries, which is exactly what those investigative reports concluded.

The WikiLeaks video is not an indictment of the individual soldiers involved -- at least not primarily. Of course those who aren't accustomed to such sentiments are shocked by the callous and sadistic satisfaction those soldiers seem to take in slaughtering those whom they perceive as The Enemy (even when unarmed and crawling on the ground with mortal wounds), but this is what they're taught and trained and told to do. If you take even well-intentioned, young soldiers and stick them in the middle of a dangerous war zone for years and train them to think and act this way, this will inevitably be the result. The video is an indictment of the U.S. government and the war policies it pursues.

All of this is usually kept from us. Unlike those in the Muslim world, who are shown these realities quite frequently by their free press, we don't usually see what is done by us. We stay blissfully insulated from it, so that in those rare instances when we're graphically exposed to it, we can tell ourselves that it's all very unusual and rare. That's how we collectively dismissed the Abu Ghraib photos, and it's why the Obama administration took such extraordinary steps to suppress all the rest of the torture photos: because further disclosure would have revealed that behavior to be standard and common, not at all unusual or extraordinary.

Precisely the same dynamic applies to the Pentagon's admission yesterday that its original claims about the brutal February killing of five civilians in Eastern Afghanistan were totally false. What happened there -- the slaughter of unthreatening civilians, official lies told about the incident, the dissemination of those lies by an uncritical U.S. media -- is what happens constantly (the same deceitful cover-up behavior took place with the Iraq video). The lies about the Afghan killings were exposed in this instance not because they're rare, but because one very intrepid, relentless reporter happened to be able to travel to the remote province and speak to witnesses and investigate the event, forcing the Pentagon to acknowledge the truth.

The value of the Wikileaks/Iraq video and the Afghanistan revelation is not that they exposed unusually horrific events. The value is in realizing that these event are anything but unusual.

The cops from "Don't Tase Me Bro" have stepped it up

http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20100316225651588

On Tuesday March 2nd, when an international graduate student, Kofi Adu-Brempong was having a "nervous breakdown" in his apartment, a concerned neighbor phoned 9-1-1. The University of Florida Police Department responded not by bringing in mental health workers to stabilize the situation, but by breaking down his door, shooting him twice with a taser, three times with bean-bag shotgun shells, and once in the face with an M-4 (a combat-grade automatic rifle) - all reportedly in 30 seconds. Kofi Adu-Brempong is now in the hospital in critical condition, and due to the assumption that anyone having a mental breakdown is a threat, he is facing criminal charges for possessing a weapon (his cane that he uses to walk due to his polio).

Quotas in NYC

NEW YORK (WABC) -- An Eyewitness News investigation talks to a police officer who reveals the pressure they are under to make quotas.

When Officer Adil Polanco dreamed of becoming a cop, it was out of a desire to help people not, he says, to harass them.

"I'm not going to keep arresting innocent people, I'm not going to keep searching people for no reason, I'm not going to keep writing people for no reason, I'm tired of this," said Adil Polanco, an NYPD Officer.

Officer Polanco says One Police Plaza's obsession with keeping crime stats down has gotten out of control. He claims Precinct Commanders relentlessly pressure cops on the street to make more arrests, and give out more summonses, all to show headquarters they have a tight grip on their neighborhoods.

"Our primary job is not to help anybody, our primary job is not to assist anybody, our primary job is to get those numbers and come back with them?" said Officer Polanco.

Eyewitness News asked, "Why do it?"

"They have to meet a quota. One arrest and twenty summonses," said Officer Polanco.

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/investigators&id=7305356

From Fox we got:

Irman Jones claims in 2008, two Aurora officers stopped him and during that stop he claims he was yanked from his car, beaten with a flash light, and then tazed three times which left him unconscious (February 21, 2010)

A 30-year old Denver man is seeking court protection from an Aurora police officer who he says may be harassing him because of a federal civil rights violation lawsuit filed against the City.

Irman Jones claims in 2008, two Aurora officers stopped him and during that stop he claims he was yanked from his car, beaten with a flash light, and then tazed three times which left him unconscious, and beaten and bloodied as well. When Jones went to court on charges that were filed by police, a judge threw the case against him out.

That prompted Jones to 'lawyer-up' and in turn file a federal suit against the City and the cops. Now, he says as a result of the law suit officers named are following and harassing him.

"I was eating lunch a couple weeks ago, when Officer Matt Milligan came in and made threatening gestures toward me," said Irman Jones. "If he did what he did to me for no reason, what would he do to me now that I have filed a law suit against him and his partner."

(I highly recommend the racist comments section too. Stay classy Colorado.)

Tourist beat up and arrested after reporting police brutality on another man

As Officers Frankly Forte and Elliot Hazzi approached witness Harold Strickland, they didn't know he was on his cellphone reporting the beating to a Miami Beach 911 dispatcher, said Robert F. Rosenwald Jr., director of the ACLU Florida's Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender Advocacy Project.

...

Forte and Hazzi both were hired by Beach police as new officers in February 2007. They were still on duty Wednesday, Juan Sanchez said.

The incident began about 1 a.m. March 13 as Strickland, a former Beach resident now living in Los Angeles, walked past Flamingo Park near 14th Street and Michigan Avenue.

Strickland called 911 when he saw a man being beaten by two men just outside the park.

“I saw a guy running and then I saw two, what looked like undercover cops running. And they pushed this guy down on the ground, the one cop did, and the other cop came up as if he was kicking a football … and kicked the guy in the head,'' Strickland, 45, told a dispatcher during a recorded phone call to 911.

For nearly five minutes, he talked to the dispatcher, who encouraged him to get closer for more detail “if it doesn't put you in any danger.''

A few seconds later, Strickland told the dispatcher: “Now they're coming after me!''

The two men, later identified as officers Forte and Hazzi, approached Strickland and could be heard saying, “What are you doing here? Where do you live? Let's see some ID.'' A few seconds later the line went dead.

Strickland later told the ACLU that Forte and Hazzi grabbed his cellphone and disconnected the call.

“The officers then told Strickland: ‘We know what you're doing here. We're sick of all the f---ing fags in the neighborhood.' The officers pushed Strickland to the ground and tied his hands behind his back,'' Rosenwald wrote in an ACLU letter delivered Wednesday to Miami Beach Mayor Matti Herrera Bower.

“While Strickland was on the ground, the officers continued to spew anti-gay epithets. They called him a ‘f---ing fag' and told him he was going to ‘get it good in jail.'''

Bower and City Manager Jorge Gonzalez also declined to comment.

Strickland called 911 at 1:06 a.m., according to dispatch records.

Forte wrote in an arrest report that 30 minutes later – at 1:36 a.m. – he saw Strickland trying to break into six cars at 14th Street and Michigan Avenue near Flamingo Park.

From the Miami Herald.

Student Detained over English-Arabic Flashcards

A variety of places to get this story:

Yesterday, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of Nick George, a Pomona College student who was detained and aggressively interrogated by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) authorities, by the FBI and by Pennsylvania police when he tried to board a plane carrying Arabic language flash cards.

You heard right: Not liquids, not matches, not a bomb. Flash cards.

George, a physics major who's studying Arabic, was pulled aside for secondary screening at the Philadelphia International Airport as he tried to go through security. When he emptied his pockets, the inspector saw his flash cards and he was arrested, handcuffed, locked in a cell for hours and aggressively questioned. Because of some flash cards.

The following exchange took place between George and a TSA supervisor who questioned him:

TSA Supervisor: You know who did 9/11?
George: Osama bin Laden.
TSA Supervisor: Do you know what language he spoke?
George: Arabic.

At that point, the TSA supervisor held up George’s flash cards—which had words such as "to smile" and "funny" and on them—and said: "Do you see why these cards are suspicious?"

The lawsuit goes on to further say that George was never read his rights by either a police officer or eventually the FBI.

Man in camo saying he'll "blow your fucking head off", just a routine traffic stop

I admit, its last week's news.

Lawsuit: Deputies threatened husband as sheriff fondled wife

A sheriff in rural Tennessee has been accused of threatening a husband and wife by "blowing their f---ing heads off" and "inappropriately" touching the wife during an unwarranted traffic stop.

In a lawsuit filed in a federal court in Chattanooga, Shawn and Michelle Graham allege that a group of police deputies, wearing camouflage and not identifying themselves as law enforcement officers, stopped the Grahams' car in January, 2009, pushed a gun through the window of the Grahams' Nissan and pointed it at the husband, "sometimes tapping his head with the barrel."

The officers ordered the couple out of the car, and frisked them while yelling "death threats and angry curses at the Grahams."

The Grahams say Sheriff Ronnie Hitchock of the Sequatchie County Sheriff Department personally carried out a pat-down of Michelle Graham, during which he "reached inside the pockets of her clothing, making inappropriate contact with her breasts and groin areas. Handcuffed in the back of Sheriff Hitchcock's cruiser, Mr. Graham was forced to watch this unconstitutional spectacle."

The lawsuit states that, even though the officers' search turned up "no weapons, no drugs and no contraband," the couple were taken to a police station and strip-searched. The couple were never charged with any crime.

We'll see if the lawsuit goes anywhere.