Police Headquarters was a 5 story building built in the 70’s but rather along the familiar lines of high schools built in the cold war era. There was a heavy functionariness about it There was little glass on the first floor but quite enough on the floors above it. Police cars with their distinctive black and white colouring were parked about the base. A sort of human factory place. Lots of activity with no apparent purpose. Busy. Lots of people mulling about at the entrance. Quite a few sitting in the waiting room. Lots of open area desks, themselves made of steel, heavy. A faint human odor pervaded. The lighting was florescent. Unpleasant.
“I’ve looked up everything we have on killings and there’s no similarity. Not that there’s any pattern but I just thought I might check the records."
“Good try."
“I doubt we’ll get anything from the crime scene. Fairly cut and dry. "
“Interviews then."
“Yes. Might turn up a lead."
“Do you have the address?"
“Yes."
He took his jacket from the back of his chair. His police 38 was in his shoulder holster. The jacket concealed it well enough. She followed him to the car. It wasn’t much of a drive. They didn’t talk. There wasn’t anything to say. So much was a waiting game. Patience was critical in ambush and stalk.
The house they were looking for had an ornate metal fence around it.
“Must be worth a million in this neighbourhood."
“I’d say."
Two white Doric columns framed the door. He rang the bell. Shortly a flicker of movement appeared in the eye hole before the heavy door was opened a crack.
“Can I help you?"
“Are you Mrs. Jones-Whitaker?"
“Yes."
“We’re from the police."
“Yes”.
“Might we come in."
“Certainly."
She opened the big door and invited them into a large foyer where they all stood awkwardly for a bit. She was dressed in a white robe. No jewelry. She was beautiful in a fragile way. The thought of “porcelain looks” came to mind for the female detective. The male detective was looking beyond the foyer into a rather elegant sitting room of mostly white furnishings offset by a large reddish toned persian rug.
“Could we speak to your husband?"
“He’s not here. He didn’t come in last night. I was actually getting worried and considering calling you."
“I’m sorry to say there’s been a shooting."
“Yes”.
“We believe your husband was the man who was shot."
“Ooh."
She went quite pale which was itself extraordinary because she was already so pale to begin with. Walking away from them she moved into the waiting room and sat down on the settee.
“I know this is quite a shock and I really am sorry to bring this news but could you tell me when you last saw him.” he said
“He really is dead?” she asked.
“Yes."
“Last night I guess. He came home from work. We had dinner here. It wasn’t much. Just some left overs I cooked up. He said he had to return to work for a bit. Some sort of unfinished business. He left. I stayed. I fell asleep watching tv and awoke this morning. I was just getting dressed."
“Was he concerned about anything in particular.?"
“Not that I know of. He’d been a little distant. Distracted by his work. That’s not unusual. He had a lot of responsibilities."
“What was his work?"
“Guidance systems. He built missile guidance systems."
“Was there anyone you knew who might want to hurt him."
“No. This really is appalling. I must get dressed and call his father. HIs father is still alive if this doesn’t kill him. His mother died only last year. Will I be able to see him."
“Yes we could take you there now."
“I’ll just be a minute then. Please make yourself at home. I just made a pot of coffee in the kitchen. Help yourself."
She ran up the stairs, a faint sob, echoing down as she scurried up.
The detectives wandered into the kitchen deeper in the direction she’d waved.
“She took that well enough."
“She did. Nothing seemed awry though. She certainly showed surprise. "
“That sob just now was something."
“Grieving widow. Didn’t sound faked by any means."
“She tried to remain composed if anything. Breeding some might say.” He was pouring the coffee, 2 cups, opening the refrigerator to find the cream and pouring quite a dollop. She took hers black.
“They’ve got a child.” he said
“How do you know that.”
"The pictures on the fridge. And a photo of the three of them. A girl, must be early teens.”
“I’d guess she got herself off to school on her own today. Likely won’t be happy to hear her father died."
“Could she be a suspect."
“No. It’s not a teen crime by any means. Almost professional. Ear markings of a hit, if anything. Maybe to do with the missile business."
“Very good coffee."
“It is.”
A short while later the wife came down the stairs dressed in sensible shoes, nylons, a black skirt and blouse. She had tucked her blond hair into a scarf. Some make up had been dabbed about her eyes which were still red from what appeared a private cry she’d had upstairs, alone.
They drove back to the station.
She gasped when she saw the body at the morgue. Death does that to loved ones. Especially when they’re not the shooter. The detectives looked knowingly at each other when they heard that sound. It was like the earlier sob. Sounds of innocence.
Before leaving her back home at her front steps they acquired the names of his employer.
A NASA and Boeing collaboration. He’d looked them up on his iPhone while she drove.
“It was a very large building situated on an industrial complex at the south of the city. Everything was new and neither could remember hearing anything about the building or the major contracts that wickipedia said were being developed here.
Aliens watched their car as it pulled into the long driveway that lead to the first security check point. They had eyes in the trees. Humans would have taken them for nests. They were but in addition they were sensors that relayed visual auditory and sensual contents of the whole region back to the mother ship cloaked and orbiting the earth at that very moment. This complex was indeed one of their interests. A glutinous creature wasn’t very happy with the way the day was unfolding. The glutinous creatures looked oddly like a bowl of jelloThey’d had a minor interest in the man who had been shot. No one really thought it would change things except the bowl of jello. The bowl of jello was quivering and this caused its colours to change. Right now the orange was evidence of interest and maybe fear. Even the jello had difficulty with self reflection. Watching the sensors wasn’t a particularly appealing position. It would rather be in the meeting right now that was taking place down what otherwise might be called a hall. Odd sounds and flashes of light emanated from that region further on and if the truth be known the jello was trying to make sense of what was being communicated. It had something to do with this whole complex.
The police car had passed both check points and pulled into the parking lot.
“It’s quite impressive,”
“Yes, in that glass and steel sort of way."
They walked through the glass doorway across the reception floor to the information security station beside the elevators.
“We’re hear to see, Mr. Rogers,” she said showing her id.
“He’s on the 15th floor. You can take the elevator there, the smiling ex military sort replied. She wondered which service he’d served in. Likely marines she guessed as they headed for the elevator.
The main concern of the aliens was the progress the humans were making. They weren’t quite ready for earth to learn of what they were using her solar system for. Once they were in space their property would naturally become theirs. But in the meantime they really weren’t in a position to object to the pilfering of saturn’s rings or mining on Nepture. But once they established a presence in their space the rules simply were that they were to be left alone to make the next leap to the galaxy. All new races were left with just enough propellant to get to the nearest star. They’d be poor for a millennium or so but it wasn’t other races fault they’d not hurried up and got ahead with space travel when they first thought of it. The longer a new race took the more their resources were depleted. Intelligence sort of flashed about the galaxy and that attracted theives. Not that jello though of their expedition that way. They just knew that where intelligent life blossomed there were usually excessive deposits of the means of travel across space. Some called it intelligent design. Others called it coincidence. Jello didn’t speak. Quivering was its sole means of communication and such ideas didn’t seem to have a place in a glutinous body of desire and need with loosely linked purpose and telekinetic capabilities.
Showing posts with label police. Show all posts
Showing posts with label police. Show all posts
Friday, April 17, 2015
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Custer's Last Stand
We're all part of a family today. The world and everyone in it is interconnected. Once it wasn't like that. Everyone was a tribe and each tribe fought all strangers. My enemies' enemy is my friend was the by word of tribalism. Alliances only work so long as there is a threat. The history of western and eastern civilization has been the forming of alliances to defeat threats and expand one's hegemony.
Today the principal tribes are Christian American, Aetheist Chinese, Ecumencal European, and Moslem Meccan. The rest are subsets and being incorporated as once USSR and US took over regions as colonies or serf states. There have always been secular and religious ideologies for these formations. No one is 'necessarily' right. Might is right to some. Technological and scientific struggles have resulted in advances giving one side greater advantage over another. Hence, Leonardo da Vinci's day job, was with the Arms Industry of the day, as Einstein was funded by the military industrial complex later.
A fascinating history is the study of military medicine. At Custer's last stand, civilians and medics died. Individually Custer and Sitting Bull were outliers. A fascinating recent book of that title looks at the odd ones who by their very contrariness and difference often have speckled careers. Public figures are 'in or out' depending upon their usefulness to the powers behind the powers. General Patton and General McCarthur despite their military genius were shamed and humiliated by the political and financial forces of the day. In Rome, the fear of the Emperor and Senators was that a general's success would make him popular and a threat to those who lived off the work of others. It's always been such.
So in my genetic background, Scottish and Irish, the English, attacked our "tribes" at Culloden and many times and for many years we 'beat them' at their game. Lowlanders fighting us Highlanders. But eventually with only a Culloden and no 'Custer's Last Stand' but rather a Robert Bruce and a Wallace we became 'vassal states' of the empire of the day. The highlands were 'reserves' by a different name. In Ireland they wanted the potatoes and sheep and forced us all off 'our lands' to be 'relocated' in America. Compared to the Irish and Scottish, the Indians got it pretty easy. Some of us were even forced to go to that horrid place called Australia. We'd all have been glad to stay home rather than be shipped across an ocean. Ask the blacks of Africa who were exiled by their own tribe leaders, sold to Arabians who sold their slaves to the white folk who subsequently lost the American Civil War to the northerners who preferred mechanical labour to human labour.
If the wee state of America didn't take the West, Spain, England, Russia would have. There is always a tendency to think in either/or terms with 'win/or lose, 'my way or the highway' alternatives. Reality offers more tangible solutions. The Russians like the Chinese were more brutal in their dealing with minorities than even the Romans who routinely killed everyone when there was an uprising by a few. The history of Israel under the Empires of the day isn't about even letting them have their lands. After a final act of resistance these earlier empires 'dispersed' the Jews in what is called the 'diaspora'. Modern Day Israelis are finally having a little land back with self autonomy under the protectorate of the West and it's guidance and cooperation because Meccan Moslem threat is huge.
Russian Communism killed 80 million in a few years while Chinese Communism killed 120 million in record time. The Dalai Lama is still complaining about the Chinese solution to the Tibetan 'problem'. The Chinese machine guns decimated the Buddhist monks returning fire with WWI English rifles. To date Communist countries build walls, either Iron or Bamboo, to keep people in.
Of course Sitting Bull and everyone else in those days,( even before health care and Troudeau encouraging everyone to be stoned on government marijuana cake) wanted to come to Canada. But after 5 years even Sitting Bull had enough of the bad weather and maudlin politics. The American Draft dodgers were delighted to return to the States, sometimes to prison, with only a few remaining in Canada. Even now Gay couples, finally allowed to marry in the US are returning, having only tolerated tolerable Canada so long as their own country was intolerant. Even now United States is the principle country in the world desired for relocation and immigration. America has to have walls to keep people out and despite this they have millions of illegal aliens living there. Indians don't want to leave America.
The Indians of their day wanted things to remain the same. Nobody likes change. My Scottish forefathers would have gladly continued to hunt and fish in the highlands but the dastardly English wanted to use our lands for mining, fishing and farming hundreds of years ago. The Israelis had the same problem with the Romans thousands of years ago. The Spanish were enslaving their Indians as gold mining work force with an attitude not dissimilar to the Germans in WWII who used forced labour of Jews, Poles, Ukranians, effeminate gays and anyone else who wasn't of the German tribal consciousness.
I don't want the tax man to bother me in Canada today. I'd like people to leave me alone and let me do my thing on my land. The land is always 'my' to the person sitting on it at that moment. "Ownership" of "property' has always existed and even the Potlach ceremony was a gamble to gain more property in the form of material or personal. A poor leader may have the capacity to 'command' a million strong army while living in a cottage while a 'rich' leader may have a castle but only the popularity to 'command" a thousand troops.
The Indians today and then talked about a "way of life". It was essentially 'tribal' and no different from the Israeli or Mongol or Kurdish or Scottish MacDonald or Frazer way of life. These tribal 'ways of life' were predominantly 'patriarchal' , war and competition based, pre 'nation state' and loosely allied along kinship traditions with the women predominantly involved in child making raising and sexual satisfaction of the male. The Taliban are an attractive tribal group to 50's brylcream sliced back muscle car driving sorts of guys not known for saying "i'm sorry'".
These are decidedly 'pre feminist' times though in Scotland there was a matriarchy at times with female leaders and warriors whereas in the Plains Indian traditions despite Hollywood and rewriting of history to serve ideology, the fact is women were too busy making babies and cleaning up the camps and doing all the work after the kill of the animals. Indeed pre refrigeration, pre advanced agricultural techniques, herding, farming advances, the tribes indians were primitive and unhealthy. Today life expectancy is in the 70's and 80's for many whereas Sitting Bull was considered an old man of 45 who didn't actually fight Custer because 45 was too old for more than talk. The life expectancy for the normal folk was in the 50's. Life was harsh. In the Old Testament men lived long lives but they had many wives who fought among themselves and tried to serve and be the best for their man. Men didn't do a lot of work if they survived the younger years of slaughtering and had enough children to command.
War is a young man's game fought by old men usually wanting to win yesterdays lost battles. Women leaders are as quick to kill off young men as old men are so it's the lot of young men to die. In China today girls are merely aborted.
So Custer, a good soldier is sent off to subdue the Sieux in the Black Hills because there's an economic crisis, gold has been found and the government, as is the history of Governments all over ,has reneged on it's promises. Income tax was only a war measure and was to be stopped with the war over. Taxes have grown like promises and all leaders have broken their promises. Indian leaders break their promises as well as white leaders. Today in Canada Indian Leaders are millionaires and their people are still poor just like there are White Billionaires in Canada and white people, yellow people, black people, and brown people living poorer than red people. Corporate world is a world of 'individualism', post 'family' and 'post tribe' and individuals form alliances of wealth to keep other corporate individuals in check. Nations and tribes and individuals are probably all serving the new competitors called 'corporations'.
Historically families trumped individuals, tribes trumped families, nations trumped tribes, and now corporations are trumping nations.
Naturally we think there was a better time in the past. That's called being a Luddite. Also we think theres' a better future. That's called fantasy or science fiction. Those who can go inward and that's called spirituality. The best laugh.
In any case Custer rode out to 'police' the local 'gangs' who were not following the law of the land which was broken treaties and all the stuff we all take for granted with our own Tax Department. Americans today fear the IRA more than they fear the government. Custer was probably sent by the IRA.
Soldiers succeed by following their commands. Think too much in soldiering and you become a poet. or better, a dead poet. Alive you may become a politician. But the minute you lose track of the immediate problem you aren't soldiering well. Custer wasn't interested in policy. He was interested in getting the Indians back to the reserve. They'd gone antelope hunting on mass. They probably had pony bumper stickers that said a 'day hunting is better than any day working on the reserve." Bob Dylan didn't want to work on Maggie's Farm.
Now the Cheyenne were also fought by the Crow. The Crow didn't want the Cheyene on their land so they sent scouts to help Custer get the Sieux Indians back in their reservations. The Crow wanted the antelope too. And everyone wanted the buffalo. The trouble with the buffalo was they were over hunted by Indians and white alike. Once everyone had rifles the buffalo was toast.
It was the same with the Cod off Newfoundland. The Newfies of Canada for centuries fished cod and sang Newfie songs and told jokes about Toronto and Boston folk then the Japanese came along with the Norwegians with better and bigger nets and took all the cod for their people. The Canadian government in Ottawa didn't give a dam about the Newfies and offered them jobs in the Albertan oil fields instead, relocating tens of thousands of clean fisherman to become dirty oil men.
Custer was a policeman. Acting on the advice of the informants he found the Cheyenne but what he didn't know was that there were ten to one odds.
In all war and police actions 'information' is critical. Ruling the skies allows America today to have the greatest intelligence. When I was in Europe I was fascinated by the European wars of the 15th to 20th century because no one knew who they were up against. Wars were all about 'information.' It's only this last week that a British gay man who cracked the computer code for the Enigma that allowed British to know what Germans and Japanese were saying to each other, was absolved of being a condemned pervert , for his saving the British people. Having consensual sex with another man had got this fellow who saved the Western world pilloried. In absentia he's been exonerated despite being a dirty boy like Lawrence of Arabia who may not have been gay but did like being spanked liked the greatest historian of our day "Spanker" Johnson.
Looking at the battle site of Little Big Horn today you can tell Custer would have done a whole lot better if he'd had Satellite Imaging. Even better he'd have probably won hands down if his job was just 'war' but he was trying to stop the women and children from escaping, capturing them and holding them hostage, to force the Indian warriors to accept terms and return to the reserves.
This was not Sand Creek. If Custer had been simply interested in war and killing Indians he could have easily done a 'Sand Creek" and keeping his men together charged right into the camp and slaughtered the unsuspecting Indians en mass. Instead he divided his command to create a pincer attack , to capture the fleeing non combatants as hostages, with the hope of 'surrender'. He wanted 'prisoners'. His whole aim was to minimize the death toll and get it over fast. He'd been court martial led for being too harsh and reinstated on the understanding that he'd be a 'gentle' 'beaurocratically' acceptable warrior. This is indeed what he was doing when he got whacked. If anyone deserves to have been shamed for 'failure' it was the beurocrats who told him to be a 'nice boy' because he was being 'nice' when the Indians whacked him. He'd done far bette when he'd been a simple soldier.
Not Sitting Bull. He wasn't there. Crazy Horse was and he was as mean and weird as his name. But ironically 'Lame White Man" seems to have been the principle force behind the defeat as his attack was so strategically significant. Here he was the Judas. The significance of 'betrayal" is its never done by an enemy.
The Hell's Angels are a modern day tribe and their principle problem like the east coast Mafia was the 'witness protection program' and the 'betrayal' of members. Even Peter denied Christ three times before the Cock crowed. It's a weakness of humans. You threaten to hurt my mother, my sister, my penis, my testicle, my face, my dog and I'll quite possibly tell you what you want to know. The evidence of war is that everyone 'cracks' under torture except if one truly believes that giving up the information will bring about their death and they have a reason to live. The studies of Auschwitz by Logotherapy giant are particularly informative about human behaviour. Communism lives on 'betrayal' and children are taught in school to 'betray' their parents just as the Nazi Youth Movement attempted to instill 'gossip as a virtue, like 'crimestopper' anonymous phone lines today.
So Custer was trying to be a good boy and here he was all my life skewered as 'arrogant' and 'glory seeking'. He was no more 'arrogant' than Obama or Bush or Donald Trump , Gandhi or Bob Dylan when I look at his life. He was just a guy doing a job with a really cute wife, Libbie. He was a great success in the Civil War and then he was sent off to at the territories and it's pretty clear this was like a bad posting in the foreign services. This was like getting posted to Afghanistan when you really wanted London England and had hoped to go to the opera but instead were left dodging terrorist attacks.
Libbie and Custer were kind of nice folk. There's a book I read part of in the Custer Museum by Libbie in her own words and she seems like a grand gal and Custer like the amiable guy at a barbecue.
Indeed there are also books that describe Sitting Bull as a bit whacked as a medicine man, kind of like Jerry Farwell in religious circles , not at all a Dalai Lama or Bishop Tootoo kind of guy but a real loud, heavy weight , trancing out , trouble making, bad mouthing kind of Hockey Player for the Canucks enforcer sort. Lame White Guy comes across like Castros favourite Chez. Crazy Horse is a regular horse riding Mohammed. No one comes across in this dispute like Churchill when he rode a horse into battle except maybe Reno. He's definitely Conservative in his style. Gall is really by far the most fascinating Indian.
The whole battle only lasted less than a day. It carried on over a few miles with obviously a lot of galloping and crazy making all round. The battle ended in an hour and a half with the "last stand' looking like it was a horribly grizzly affair of minutes with horses shot for barricades and the Indians with their own rifles probably a hundred to one in the last effort. The archeological evidence and the stories and reports are amazing with the recreation of the battlefield now showing , with the greatest accuracy possible due to the genius of science mostly, where the deaths occurred. All the white guys would have been wounded early and the Indians were killed at a ratio of 1 in 5 or so of the white guys because not only superior numbers but it looked like the white guys were going 'oh shit," and trying to escape. In routs there's a lot of dead from back shooting and no doubt a lot of white were shot in the face begging for their lives ,their guns emptied. It was a mess like war is supposed to be.
The battle field is one of the most remarkable and informative places I've ever visited. Frankly I prefer churches and holy grounds but the history and archeology and all the mythology around this battle make it a fascinating experience. I loved the guide books, and the guides and the first nations and white folk working together to tell a story with all it's permutations and digressions. (Custer's Last Battle, Little Bighorn Battlefied -self guided Auto Tour (or Harley Davidson Motorcycle) with Archeologist Richard Fox, Fireside Productions, Livingson was great.)
America, which now included all the Indian, Jewish, Christian, Catholic, Irish, Italian, English, Chinese etc tribes got pissed off just like the Romans did when the Jews stood up to them a couple of thousand years ago when they crucified Jesus to 'send a message'. They whopped Indian ass for the next decades, took away the Black Hills from the Lakota and gave them a few little privy land areas not fit for pig farms.
Today I pay a fortune to 'play' at having the life my grandfather had when he was 'relocated' from Scotland , to uninhabitable northern Canada where he could hunt and fish like a Lord though the work or ranching and farming was near impossible. He went on to be a huge success, a leader among men, generous, sober, high minded, careful in his ways, elected REEVE. A lawyer stole all his land and fortune and years later I'd meet the German son of my grandfather's rich relocated neighbours whose fortune was also stolen by the same lawyer who took the money and ran off to hide in the legal wasteland of America. Dad went on to serve in the Royal Canadian Air Force that saved the world from Nazism and freed the Jews and Poles from German work camps. No one to date has taken credit for freeing the homosexuals from Auschwitz. Lincolns northern army freed the blacks from slavery.
It was a banking crisis that lead to the breaking of the Treaty with the Lakota and the miners flooding the black hills. After the banking crisis the new governments felt the old governments had been too generous with the money. Today in Canada every Canadian is getting 'less health care' , 'less old age pension', and less of most things because of a banking crisis. Indeed there are those conspiracy theorist who think Elvis was behind 9/11 having secretly converted to radical islam's "Peace Train'. That consider the Lakota Indians were the 'first' 'test case'. Now our government is promoting marijuana for the masses and euthanasia to add to it's abortion policy.
I couldn't help but think that it would have been fun to ride around on horse and have a 'love in' antelope barbecue with the girls doing all the chores then fighting the police and singing and drumming about it like Woodstock in leathers.
I had just been to the Motorcycle Rally in Sturges so I'd seen a whole lot of the modern wild men and women and the tribal society with it's patches and Harley "hoss'. I was a good time listening to Kid Rock from Detroit on his Rebel Tour and enjoying ZZ sing 'Sunglasses'. All that was needed was antelope burgers . I had Angus steak instead at the Saloon.
It's all not so different. It's blurry at the edges. In the Custer Museum I bought a Union Calvary sword but the first two I looked at were 'made in China'. I thought that was priceless. There's probably an American Indian chef making chop suet at the finest Chinese restaurant in Bejing where tourists go for 'authentic' Chinese experience.
We're a global society and we have to think locally. Still I loved Buffalo Springfield's song not because of the Buffalo but because of the line, "People carrying signs, mostly say, hooray for outside."
I rode away on my motorcycle as usual wondering whose side I'm on. I'm a citizen and for law and order today so I'd have to side with Custer doing his job for the Government which supposedly I've elected but then I'm Scottish Irish Canadian with a lot of tribal roots and the Government didn't help my grand dad when the lawyer stole the family farms and fortunes. Even today I wonder about who really killed Kennedy and was Marilyn Munroe just a pretty face.
I'm riding alone on my motorcycle across thousands of miles of US soil and thinking this is the greatest nation in the world. They're definitely #1. I've travelled around the world a bit and I'm still impressed with how well they treat everyone especially those who complain. Elsewhere everyone gets shot or banned or ostracized and the amount of freedom even in Europe compared to the US is marginal. Sturges was definitely tribal but so was the spiritual medical conference I attended earlier in Colorado.
I was just sad looking at all the graves of all the young soldiers of the Indians and the United States. Glory is a good word. It's been tarnished. There's been a lot of reductionism in the last hundreds of years. Corporations are ultimately primitive and tribal. There's a sense that advances are always made with two steps forward one step back. The Indians of Alberta are rich oil men. They were put on reserves which had oil on them. They are making the decision today in the major board rooms of the world. The Indians who were fighting Custer wouldn't have known he was just doing a 'police action'. They were probably thinking like the folks at Waco. I have trouble trusting men in uniforms with weapons but that goes back to my first bad childhood experience with a dentist. There weren't any counsellors or prozac in those days and women didn't have bras to burn or tampons. Sanitation was a problem. There wasn't even work for plumbers because everyone 'gathered at the river' even before the Christian song encouraged them to do what they already were doing of necessity.
The Little Bighorn River is a very pretty river today with the shady forest along it's sides and all around hot baked grassland. I think the ponies I saw there were probably descendants of the ones that survived the battle. At least the ponies were peaceful. People who know horses know they can be gnarly.
I really liked the plaques that laid out the first skirmish and retreat by Reno. I wondered if the great gambling city was named after him. You can see the battle at the Last Stand but it's more like a brawl where as the Remo fight actually moved.
The woman in the gift shop said, "Were it not for Custer dying, we'd not have jobs here in tourism". She was a white woman. The Indian woman who took my money for the tour was native. I was thankful I had money to give them. For a few hours out of my Harley Davidson Journey to and from the Sturges Motorcycle Rally I was able to take time out and learn about another 'war to end all wars'.
I liked driving away having a sword strapped across the pack on my Harley. I would have preferred a Glock 9 mm but Americans don't like Canadians bringing arms into their country. Despite all the best efforts of the Freedom Fighters for the National Riflearms Associations they won't sell a Canadian a firearm without an American government permit. While I mostly feel like I'm following Custer or Calhoun or Remi and don't know which, some folks think I'm too much like Lame White Man. The Indian chief who reall kicked ass was Gall. You had to have Gall to do what he did.
Soldiers describe various 'thirsts' in battle. This would have been a particularly thirsty battle, regardless of the glory.
Today the principal tribes are Christian American, Aetheist Chinese, Ecumencal European, and Moslem Meccan. The rest are subsets and being incorporated as once USSR and US took over regions as colonies or serf states. There have always been secular and religious ideologies for these formations. No one is 'necessarily' right. Might is right to some. Technological and scientific struggles have resulted in advances giving one side greater advantage over another. Hence, Leonardo da Vinci's day job, was with the Arms Industry of the day, as Einstein was funded by the military industrial complex later.
A fascinating history is the study of military medicine. At Custer's last stand, civilians and medics died. Individually Custer and Sitting Bull were outliers. A fascinating recent book of that title looks at the odd ones who by their very contrariness and difference often have speckled careers. Public figures are 'in or out' depending upon their usefulness to the powers behind the powers. General Patton and General McCarthur despite their military genius were shamed and humiliated by the political and financial forces of the day. In Rome, the fear of the Emperor and Senators was that a general's success would make him popular and a threat to those who lived off the work of others. It's always been such.
So in my genetic background, Scottish and Irish, the English, attacked our "tribes" at Culloden and many times and for many years we 'beat them' at their game. Lowlanders fighting us Highlanders. But eventually with only a Culloden and no 'Custer's Last Stand' but rather a Robert Bruce and a Wallace we became 'vassal states' of the empire of the day. The highlands were 'reserves' by a different name. In Ireland they wanted the potatoes and sheep and forced us all off 'our lands' to be 'relocated' in America. Compared to the Irish and Scottish, the Indians got it pretty easy. Some of us were even forced to go to that horrid place called Australia. We'd all have been glad to stay home rather than be shipped across an ocean. Ask the blacks of Africa who were exiled by their own tribe leaders, sold to Arabians who sold their slaves to the white folk who subsequently lost the American Civil War to the northerners who preferred mechanical labour to human labour.
If the wee state of America didn't take the West, Spain, England, Russia would have. There is always a tendency to think in either/or terms with 'win/or lose, 'my way or the highway' alternatives. Reality offers more tangible solutions. The Russians like the Chinese were more brutal in their dealing with minorities than even the Romans who routinely killed everyone when there was an uprising by a few. The history of Israel under the Empires of the day isn't about even letting them have their lands. After a final act of resistance these earlier empires 'dispersed' the Jews in what is called the 'diaspora'. Modern Day Israelis are finally having a little land back with self autonomy under the protectorate of the West and it's guidance and cooperation because Meccan Moslem threat is huge.
Russian Communism killed 80 million in a few years while Chinese Communism killed 120 million in record time. The Dalai Lama is still complaining about the Chinese solution to the Tibetan 'problem'. The Chinese machine guns decimated the Buddhist monks returning fire with WWI English rifles. To date Communist countries build walls, either Iron or Bamboo, to keep people in.
Of course Sitting Bull and everyone else in those days,( even before health care and Troudeau encouraging everyone to be stoned on government marijuana cake) wanted to come to Canada. But after 5 years even Sitting Bull had enough of the bad weather and maudlin politics. The American Draft dodgers were delighted to return to the States, sometimes to prison, with only a few remaining in Canada. Even now Gay couples, finally allowed to marry in the US are returning, having only tolerated tolerable Canada so long as their own country was intolerant. Even now United States is the principle country in the world desired for relocation and immigration. America has to have walls to keep people out and despite this they have millions of illegal aliens living there. Indians don't want to leave America.
The Indians of their day wanted things to remain the same. Nobody likes change. My Scottish forefathers would have gladly continued to hunt and fish in the highlands but the dastardly English wanted to use our lands for mining, fishing and farming hundreds of years ago. The Israelis had the same problem with the Romans thousands of years ago. The Spanish were enslaving their Indians as gold mining work force with an attitude not dissimilar to the Germans in WWII who used forced labour of Jews, Poles, Ukranians, effeminate gays and anyone else who wasn't of the German tribal consciousness.
I don't want the tax man to bother me in Canada today. I'd like people to leave me alone and let me do my thing on my land. The land is always 'my' to the person sitting on it at that moment. "Ownership" of "property' has always existed and even the Potlach ceremony was a gamble to gain more property in the form of material or personal. A poor leader may have the capacity to 'command' a million strong army while living in a cottage while a 'rich' leader may have a castle but only the popularity to 'command" a thousand troops.
The Indians today and then talked about a "way of life". It was essentially 'tribal' and no different from the Israeli or Mongol or Kurdish or Scottish MacDonald or Frazer way of life. These tribal 'ways of life' were predominantly 'patriarchal' , war and competition based, pre 'nation state' and loosely allied along kinship traditions with the women predominantly involved in child making raising and sexual satisfaction of the male. The Taliban are an attractive tribal group to 50's brylcream sliced back muscle car driving sorts of guys not known for saying "i'm sorry'".
These are decidedly 'pre feminist' times though in Scotland there was a matriarchy at times with female leaders and warriors whereas in the Plains Indian traditions despite Hollywood and rewriting of history to serve ideology, the fact is women were too busy making babies and cleaning up the camps and doing all the work after the kill of the animals. Indeed pre refrigeration, pre advanced agricultural techniques, herding, farming advances, the tribes indians were primitive and unhealthy. Today life expectancy is in the 70's and 80's for many whereas Sitting Bull was considered an old man of 45 who didn't actually fight Custer because 45 was too old for more than talk. The life expectancy for the normal folk was in the 50's. Life was harsh. In the Old Testament men lived long lives but they had many wives who fought among themselves and tried to serve and be the best for their man. Men didn't do a lot of work if they survived the younger years of slaughtering and had enough children to command.
War is a young man's game fought by old men usually wanting to win yesterdays lost battles. Women leaders are as quick to kill off young men as old men are so it's the lot of young men to die. In China today girls are merely aborted.
So Custer, a good soldier is sent off to subdue the Sieux in the Black Hills because there's an economic crisis, gold has been found and the government, as is the history of Governments all over ,has reneged on it's promises. Income tax was only a war measure and was to be stopped with the war over. Taxes have grown like promises and all leaders have broken their promises. Indian leaders break their promises as well as white leaders. Today in Canada Indian Leaders are millionaires and their people are still poor just like there are White Billionaires in Canada and white people, yellow people, black people, and brown people living poorer than red people. Corporate world is a world of 'individualism', post 'family' and 'post tribe' and individuals form alliances of wealth to keep other corporate individuals in check. Nations and tribes and individuals are probably all serving the new competitors called 'corporations'.
Historically families trumped individuals, tribes trumped families, nations trumped tribes, and now corporations are trumping nations.
Naturally we think there was a better time in the past. That's called being a Luddite. Also we think theres' a better future. That's called fantasy or science fiction. Those who can go inward and that's called spirituality. The best laugh.
In any case Custer rode out to 'police' the local 'gangs' who were not following the law of the land which was broken treaties and all the stuff we all take for granted with our own Tax Department. Americans today fear the IRA more than they fear the government. Custer was probably sent by the IRA.
Soldiers succeed by following their commands. Think too much in soldiering and you become a poet. or better, a dead poet. Alive you may become a politician. But the minute you lose track of the immediate problem you aren't soldiering well. Custer wasn't interested in policy. He was interested in getting the Indians back to the reserve. They'd gone antelope hunting on mass. They probably had pony bumper stickers that said a 'day hunting is better than any day working on the reserve." Bob Dylan didn't want to work on Maggie's Farm.
Now the Cheyenne were also fought by the Crow. The Crow didn't want the Cheyene on their land so they sent scouts to help Custer get the Sieux Indians back in their reservations. The Crow wanted the antelope too. And everyone wanted the buffalo. The trouble with the buffalo was they were over hunted by Indians and white alike. Once everyone had rifles the buffalo was toast.
It was the same with the Cod off Newfoundland. The Newfies of Canada for centuries fished cod and sang Newfie songs and told jokes about Toronto and Boston folk then the Japanese came along with the Norwegians with better and bigger nets and took all the cod for their people. The Canadian government in Ottawa didn't give a dam about the Newfies and offered them jobs in the Albertan oil fields instead, relocating tens of thousands of clean fisherman to become dirty oil men.
Custer was a policeman. Acting on the advice of the informants he found the Cheyenne but what he didn't know was that there were ten to one odds.
In all war and police actions 'information' is critical. Ruling the skies allows America today to have the greatest intelligence. When I was in Europe I was fascinated by the European wars of the 15th to 20th century because no one knew who they were up against. Wars were all about 'information.' It's only this last week that a British gay man who cracked the computer code for the Enigma that allowed British to know what Germans and Japanese were saying to each other, was absolved of being a condemned pervert , for his saving the British people. Having consensual sex with another man had got this fellow who saved the Western world pilloried. In absentia he's been exonerated despite being a dirty boy like Lawrence of Arabia who may not have been gay but did like being spanked liked the greatest historian of our day "Spanker" Johnson.
Looking at the battle site of Little Big Horn today you can tell Custer would have done a whole lot better if he'd had Satellite Imaging. Even better he'd have probably won hands down if his job was just 'war' but he was trying to stop the women and children from escaping, capturing them and holding them hostage, to force the Indian warriors to accept terms and return to the reserves.
This was not Sand Creek. If Custer had been simply interested in war and killing Indians he could have easily done a 'Sand Creek" and keeping his men together charged right into the camp and slaughtered the unsuspecting Indians en mass. Instead he divided his command to create a pincer attack , to capture the fleeing non combatants as hostages, with the hope of 'surrender'. He wanted 'prisoners'. His whole aim was to minimize the death toll and get it over fast. He'd been court martial led for being too harsh and reinstated on the understanding that he'd be a 'gentle' 'beaurocratically' acceptable warrior. This is indeed what he was doing when he got whacked. If anyone deserves to have been shamed for 'failure' it was the beurocrats who told him to be a 'nice boy' because he was being 'nice' when the Indians whacked him. He'd done far bette when he'd been a simple soldier.
Not Sitting Bull. He wasn't there. Crazy Horse was and he was as mean and weird as his name. But ironically 'Lame White Man" seems to have been the principle force behind the defeat as his attack was so strategically significant. Here he was the Judas. The significance of 'betrayal" is its never done by an enemy.
The Hell's Angels are a modern day tribe and their principle problem like the east coast Mafia was the 'witness protection program' and the 'betrayal' of members. Even Peter denied Christ three times before the Cock crowed. It's a weakness of humans. You threaten to hurt my mother, my sister, my penis, my testicle, my face, my dog and I'll quite possibly tell you what you want to know. The evidence of war is that everyone 'cracks' under torture except if one truly believes that giving up the information will bring about their death and they have a reason to live. The studies of Auschwitz by Logotherapy giant are particularly informative about human behaviour. Communism lives on 'betrayal' and children are taught in school to 'betray' their parents just as the Nazi Youth Movement attempted to instill 'gossip as a virtue, like 'crimestopper' anonymous phone lines today.
So Custer was trying to be a good boy and here he was all my life skewered as 'arrogant' and 'glory seeking'. He was no more 'arrogant' than Obama or Bush or Donald Trump , Gandhi or Bob Dylan when I look at his life. He was just a guy doing a job with a really cute wife, Libbie. He was a great success in the Civil War and then he was sent off to at the territories and it's pretty clear this was like a bad posting in the foreign services. This was like getting posted to Afghanistan when you really wanted London England and had hoped to go to the opera but instead were left dodging terrorist attacks.
Libbie and Custer were kind of nice folk. There's a book I read part of in the Custer Museum by Libbie in her own words and she seems like a grand gal and Custer like the amiable guy at a barbecue.
Indeed there are also books that describe Sitting Bull as a bit whacked as a medicine man, kind of like Jerry Farwell in religious circles , not at all a Dalai Lama or Bishop Tootoo kind of guy but a real loud, heavy weight , trancing out , trouble making, bad mouthing kind of Hockey Player for the Canucks enforcer sort. Lame White Guy comes across like Castros favourite Chez. Crazy Horse is a regular horse riding Mohammed. No one comes across in this dispute like Churchill when he rode a horse into battle except maybe Reno. He's definitely Conservative in his style. Gall is really by far the most fascinating Indian.
The whole battle only lasted less than a day. It carried on over a few miles with obviously a lot of galloping and crazy making all round. The battle ended in an hour and a half with the "last stand' looking like it was a horribly grizzly affair of minutes with horses shot for barricades and the Indians with their own rifles probably a hundred to one in the last effort. The archeological evidence and the stories and reports are amazing with the recreation of the battlefield now showing , with the greatest accuracy possible due to the genius of science mostly, where the deaths occurred. All the white guys would have been wounded early and the Indians were killed at a ratio of 1 in 5 or so of the white guys because not only superior numbers but it looked like the white guys were going 'oh shit," and trying to escape. In routs there's a lot of dead from back shooting and no doubt a lot of white were shot in the face begging for their lives ,their guns emptied. It was a mess like war is supposed to be.
The battle field is one of the most remarkable and informative places I've ever visited. Frankly I prefer churches and holy grounds but the history and archeology and all the mythology around this battle make it a fascinating experience. I loved the guide books, and the guides and the first nations and white folk working together to tell a story with all it's permutations and digressions. (Custer's Last Battle, Little Bighorn Battlefied -self guided Auto Tour (or Harley Davidson Motorcycle) with Archeologist Richard Fox, Fireside Productions, Livingson was great.)
America, which now included all the Indian, Jewish, Christian, Catholic, Irish, Italian, English, Chinese etc tribes got pissed off just like the Romans did when the Jews stood up to them a couple of thousand years ago when they crucified Jesus to 'send a message'. They whopped Indian ass for the next decades, took away the Black Hills from the Lakota and gave them a few little privy land areas not fit for pig farms.
Today I pay a fortune to 'play' at having the life my grandfather had when he was 'relocated' from Scotland , to uninhabitable northern Canada where he could hunt and fish like a Lord though the work or ranching and farming was near impossible. He went on to be a huge success, a leader among men, generous, sober, high minded, careful in his ways, elected REEVE. A lawyer stole all his land and fortune and years later I'd meet the German son of my grandfather's rich relocated neighbours whose fortune was also stolen by the same lawyer who took the money and ran off to hide in the legal wasteland of America. Dad went on to serve in the Royal Canadian Air Force that saved the world from Nazism and freed the Jews and Poles from German work camps. No one to date has taken credit for freeing the homosexuals from Auschwitz. Lincolns northern army freed the blacks from slavery.
It was a banking crisis that lead to the breaking of the Treaty with the Lakota and the miners flooding the black hills. After the banking crisis the new governments felt the old governments had been too generous with the money. Today in Canada every Canadian is getting 'less health care' , 'less old age pension', and less of most things because of a banking crisis. Indeed there are those conspiracy theorist who think Elvis was behind 9/11 having secretly converted to radical islam's "Peace Train'. That consider the Lakota Indians were the 'first' 'test case'. Now our government is promoting marijuana for the masses and euthanasia to add to it's abortion policy.
I couldn't help but think that it would have been fun to ride around on horse and have a 'love in' antelope barbecue with the girls doing all the chores then fighting the police and singing and drumming about it like Woodstock in leathers.
I had just been to the Motorcycle Rally in Sturges so I'd seen a whole lot of the modern wild men and women and the tribal society with it's patches and Harley "hoss'. I was a good time listening to Kid Rock from Detroit on his Rebel Tour and enjoying ZZ sing 'Sunglasses'. All that was needed was antelope burgers . I had Angus steak instead at the Saloon.
It's all not so different. It's blurry at the edges. In the Custer Museum I bought a Union Calvary sword but the first two I looked at were 'made in China'. I thought that was priceless. There's probably an American Indian chef making chop suet at the finest Chinese restaurant in Bejing where tourists go for 'authentic' Chinese experience.
We're a global society and we have to think locally. Still I loved Buffalo Springfield's song not because of the Buffalo but because of the line, "People carrying signs, mostly say, hooray for outside."
I rode away on my motorcycle as usual wondering whose side I'm on. I'm a citizen and for law and order today so I'd have to side with Custer doing his job for the Government which supposedly I've elected but then I'm Scottish Irish Canadian with a lot of tribal roots and the Government didn't help my grand dad when the lawyer stole the family farms and fortunes. Even today I wonder about who really killed Kennedy and was Marilyn Munroe just a pretty face.
I'm riding alone on my motorcycle across thousands of miles of US soil and thinking this is the greatest nation in the world. They're definitely #1. I've travelled around the world a bit and I'm still impressed with how well they treat everyone especially those who complain. Elsewhere everyone gets shot or banned or ostracized and the amount of freedom even in Europe compared to the US is marginal. Sturges was definitely tribal but so was the spiritual medical conference I attended earlier in Colorado.
I was just sad looking at all the graves of all the young soldiers of the Indians and the United States. Glory is a good word. It's been tarnished. There's been a lot of reductionism in the last hundreds of years. Corporations are ultimately primitive and tribal. There's a sense that advances are always made with two steps forward one step back. The Indians of Alberta are rich oil men. They were put on reserves which had oil on them. They are making the decision today in the major board rooms of the world. The Indians who were fighting Custer wouldn't have known he was just doing a 'police action'. They were probably thinking like the folks at Waco. I have trouble trusting men in uniforms with weapons but that goes back to my first bad childhood experience with a dentist. There weren't any counsellors or prozac in those days and women didn't have bras to burn or tampons. Sanitation was a problem. There wasn't even work for plumbers because everyone 'gathered at the river' even before the Christian song encouraged them to do what they already were doing of necessity.
The Little Bighorn River is a very pretty river today with the shady forest along it's sides and all around hot baked grassland. I think the ponies I saw there were probably descendants of the ones that survived the battle. At least the ponies were peaceful. People who know horses know they can be gnarly.
I really liked the plaques that laid out the first skirmish and retreat by Reno. I wondered if the great gambling city was named after him. You can see the battle at the Last Stand but it's more like a brawl where as the Remo fight actually moved.
The woman in the gift shop said, "Were it not for Custer dying, we'd not have jobs here in tourism". She was a white woman. The Indian woman who took my money for the tour was native. I was thankful I had money to give them. For a few hours out of my Harley Davidson Journey to and from the Sturges Motorcycle Rally I was able to take time out and learn about another 'war to end all wars'.
I liked driving away having a sword strapped across the pack on my Harley. I would have preferred a Glock 9 mm but Americans don't like Canadians bringing arms into their country. Despite all the best efforts of the Freedom Fighters for the National Riflearms Associations they won't sell a Canadian a firearm without an American government permit. While I mostly feel like I'm following Custer or Calhoun or Remi and don't know which, some folks think I'm too much like Lame White Man. The Indian chief who reall kicked ass was Gall. You had to have Gall to do what he did.
Soldiers describe various 'thirsts' in battle. This would have been a particularly thirsty battle, regardless of the glory.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Vancouver Riot 2011 - Smoking BC Bud and Smoking Police Cars
The Canucks Bruins Hockey game is not the cause. To the criminals this was an 'opportunity'. Whether the Canucks won or lost, the criminals were there to loot. What made matters worse was the alcohol, drugs and gawkers. What was the saddest to watch was not psychopaths and sociopaths targetting stores for violence and ganging up violently on individuals for gang violence and stabbing, it was the gawkers and photographers. These people equally presented as above the law and not obligated to respond to police demands to clear the area. Fire fighters seeking to put out the fires were attacked.
The sophisticated criminals used these crowds as shields for their pillage and destruction. While it is great that there will be extensive photographic evidence of the principal ringleaders, who likely have long rap sheets already, it is an appalling matter when citizens disobey the direct rule of the police wanting to restore order in an obvious riot.
It's the gawkers that frightened me becuase those that 'hung around' to watch and play with their iphones are the very people who necessitate communities institute 'martial law', restrict civil liberties and increase police powers in times of crisis. It's these 'bystanders' that allow the state to justify offensive behaviour when people gather for 'political action'. This was nothing to so with Gandhi, Thoreau or citizens rights to congregate in face of tyranny. Egypt has Freedom Square. China has Tieneman Square. Canada now has Robson and Geogia and nothing could be more shameful and ludicrous. If the rest of the world sees us as fat, fatuous and silly, we thoroughly deserve it.
A sports event used as cover for terrorist violence puts the families and children at risk who came with reasonable expectation of safety. Because the crowds would not disperse the police could not target the criminal element and their leaders. I would think that there is need for education of the 'masses' in this regard and the best education would be fines.
To my mind, the riot was 'Bachanailan" and the crowd's 'zombie' like behaviour was Cheech and Chong. It all made me want to make the hilarious but true Canadian "Spider's on Drugs" youtube clip required viewing for all students starting in elementary school and yearly thereafter. I would hope that all those caught would be drug tested so that the exemplary modern BC Drug Court could have more grist for it's excellent rehabilitative mill.
There are millions of dollars of damage. Mayor Gregor Robertson called this "despicable' and labelled the cause 'hooligans'. He promised that they would be held 'accountable.' While looters were breaking the store windows of the Bay and making away with furs and coats, Shirley Bond, solictor general, admitting to watching CTV as we were, described these people as behaving 'like criminals'. Shirley Bond should be held accountable for her inability to distinguish criminal behaviour from 'pseudo criminal behaviour' because clearly part of the Vancouver problem is the Shirley Bonds who would say murderers are behaving "like murderers". In contrast Mayor Gregor Robertson praising the Vancouver Police and calling for citizens to disperse to allow ambulances and fire departments to do their jobs was a shining light compared to her "despicable" dullness.
The smell of BC Bud filled the air before the smell of burning police cars. Liquor store sales were stopped that day but it was argued they should have been stopped 2 days ahead. I would simply argue that there is history of those who 'sold firewarter to the Indians during the Indian wars' being punished for contributing to the destruction that followed. I argue that liquor stores and alcohol companies be accountable for damages. Simply collect the broken bottles and cans of retailers and hold them responsible for paying for damages. Present Budweiser a bill of say $100 for every can found at such scenes of mass violence to force these retailers to take responsbile action in discouraging alcohol abuse since they claim they only promote responsible alcohol use. I would think that overnight we'd see a whole different line of advertising from beer producers.
Further drug dealers should be targetted before and after such public debacles and held accountable financially. Take their assets. Have a crackdown with confiscation and sale of assets of marijuana users. As Robert Graves long ago showed even mushrooms can be used as a drug of violence since any drug that impairs judgement will contribute to violence. In Africa marijuana is a principal drug of violence. BC Bud has become that here. In the past marijuana was considered a drug of peace because it was used by jazz smokers. That's 30 years ago. Marijuana is the drug found at ghetto violence today. It's second only to alcohol in association with crime and violence.
The only fault I would have with the organization of city events is that we know it's the drunks and druggies that become the herd the psychopaths hide behind. It would have helped, I believe, if the laws against public consumption of alcohol and against public drug abuse including smoking marijuana were enforced at the outset. It's no different from a high school dance. Don't let drugs or alcohol into the stadium and arrest those who have the means. Of course there is violence and drugs and alcohol at school dances but it occurs in the parking lots . I accept that a city has a whole lot of parking lots limitting immensely the 'prevention' powers of police. However if there was a $5000 fine for consumption of drugs or alcohol at such city wide events and all that was required was pictures or witness, it would go along way to paying for the subsequent damages and discouraging and stopping .those who would show off drinking a bud or lighting up a spliff.
I hope that those who rolled the BMW and set the Humber on fire go to jail. If I were to do that to my neighbours car this morning that would occur to me, if I wasn't first put in an insane asylum. Our laws and law makers should not 'excuse' those who would use 'mass hysteria' as an excuse. If they don't go to jail then at least require they have a forensic psychiatric assessment and mandatory counselling.
This was not a G10 or G20 political rally. This was criminal terrorism. Further there is clear evidence that it was premeditated and planned with sociopaths preying on the peaceful citizenry and planning on harming police and property. This wasn't about hockey. These are not sportsman or Canucks fans. It was exemplary that a facebook site opened immediately Canucks Fans against Vancouver Riots. The principle purpose of the site was to direct those who had pictures of the criminals looters and gang members to post their pictures for the police to arrest. No one wants this happening again.
The Vancouver Police and RCMP did a splendid job though I certainly appreciated the fellow on CTV who said that the 'army should have been brought in'. All I hope for is that the rioters, looters, hooligans, bullies are held accountable. I want their pictures and their crimes pasted on every street corner. To me these people are alot worse than Johns and should deserve no better. The Conservative Party of Canada prophetically called for new jails. Perhaps we need stockades as well. I hope at very least that their incomes are 'garnisheed'. Canadians don't want more taxation like the HST to wetnurse criminals.
Finally, these Vancouver rioters, looters, criminals, gangsters and bullies should be required to do community hours for a year in addition scrubbing the Vancouver city buildings to get rid of the smell of BC Bud, piss vomit, crack smoke and burning police cars. Thank goodness Mayor Gregor Robertson and the Vancouver Police were there to limit the destruction.
The sophisticated criminals used these crowds as shields for their pillage and destruction. While it is great that there will be extensive photographic evidence of the principal ringleaders, who likely have long rap sheets already, it is an appalling matter when citizens disobey the direct rule of the police wanting to restore order in an obvious riot.
It's the gawkers that frightened me becuase those that 'hung around' to watch and play with their iphones are the very people who necessitate communities institute 'martial law', restrict civil liberties and increase police powers in times of crisis. It's these 'bystanders' that allow the state to justify offensive behaviour when people gather for 'political action'. This was nothing to so with Gandhi, Thoreau or citizens rights to congregate in face of tyranny. Egypt has Freedom Square. China has Tieneman Square. Canada now has Robson and Geogia and nothing could be more shameful and ludicrous. If the rest of the world sees us as fat, fatuous and silly, we thoroughly deserve it.
A sports event used as cover for terrorist violence puts the families and children at risk who came with reasonable expectation of safety. Because the crowds would not disperse the police could not target the criminal element and their leaders. I would think that there is need for education of the 'masses' in this regard and the best education would be fines.
To my mind, the riot was 'Bachanailan" and the crowd's 'zombie' like behaviour was Cheech and Chong. It all made me want to make the hilarious but true Canadian "Spider's on Drugs" youtube clip required viewing for all students starting in elementary school and yearly thereafter. I would hope that all those caught would be drug tested so that the exemplary modern BC Drug Court could have more grist for it's excellent rehabilitative mill.
There are millions of dollars of damage. Mayor Gregor Robertson called this "despicable' and labelled the cause 'hooligans'. He promised that they would be held 'accountable.' While looters were breaking the store windows of the Bay and making away with furs and coats, Shirley Bond, solictor general, admitting to watching CTV as we were, described these people as behaving 'like criminals'. Shirley Bond should be held accountable for her inability to distinguish criminal behaviour from 'pseudo criminal behaviour' because clearly part of the Vancouver problem is the Shirley Bonds who would say murderers are behaving "like murderers". In contrast Mayor Gregor Robertson praising the Vancouver Police and calling for citizens to disperse to allow ambulances and fire departments to do their jobs was a shining light compared to her "despicable" dullness.
The smell of BC Bud filled the air before the smell of burning police cars. Liquor store sales were stopped that day but it was argued they should have been stopped 2 days ahead. I would simply argue that there is history of those who 'sold firewarter to the Indians during the Indian wars' being punished for contributing to the destruction that followed. I argue that liquor stores and alcohol companies be accountable for damages. Simply collect the broken bottles and cans of retailers and hold them responsible for paying for damages. Present Budweiser a bill of say $100 for every can found at such scenes of mass violence to force these retailers to take responsbile action in discouraging alcohol abuse since they claim they only promote responsible alcohol use. I would think that overnight we'd see a whole different line of advertising from beer producers.
Further drug dealers should be targetted before and after such public debacles and held accountable financially. Take their assets. Have a crackdown with confiscation and sale of assets of marijuana users. As Robert Graves long ago showed even mushrooms can be used as a drug of violence since any drug that impairs judgement will contribute to violence. In Africa marijuana is a principal drug of violence. BC Bud has become that here. In the past marijuana was considered a drug of peace because it was used by jazz smokers. That's 30 years ago. Marijuana is the drug found at ghetto violence today. It's second only to alcohol in association with crime and violence.
The only fault I would have with the organization of city events is that we know it's the drunks and druggies that become the herd the psychopaths hide behind. It would have helped, I believe, if the laws against public consumption of alcohol and against public drug abuse including smoking marijuana were enforced at the outset. It's no different from a high school dance. Don't let drugs or alcohol into the stadium and arrest those who have the means. Of course there is violence and drugs and alcohol at school dances but it occurs in the parking lots . I accept that a city has a whole lot of parking lots limitting immensely the 'prevention' powers of police. However if there was a $5000 fine for consumption of drugs or alcohol at such city wide events and all that was required was pictures or witness, it would go along way to paying for the subsequent damages and discouraging and stopping .those who would show off drinking a bud or lighting up a spliff.
I hope that those who rolled the BMW and set the Humber on fire go to jail. If I were to do that to my neighbours car this morning that would occur to me, if I wasn't first put in an insane asylum. Our laws and law makers should not 'excuse' those who would use 'mass hysteria' as an excuse. If they don't go to jail then at least require they have a forensic psychiatric assessment and mandatory counselling.
This was not a G10 or G20 political rally. This was criminal terrorism. Further there is clear evidence that it was premeditated and planned with sociopaths preying on the peaceful citizenry and planning on harming police and property. This wasn't about hockey. These are not sportsman or Canucks fans. It was exemplary that a facebook site opened immediately Canucks Fans against Vancouver Riots. The principle purpose of the site was to direct those who had pictures of the criminals looters and gang members to post their pictures for the police to arrest. No one wants this happening again.
The Vancouver Police and RCMP did a splendid job though I certainly appreciated the fellow on CTV who said that the 'army should have been brought in'. All I hope for is that the rioters, looters, hooligans, bullies are held accountable. I want their pictures and their crimes pasted on every street corner. To me these people are alot worse than Johns and should deserve no better. The Conservative Party of Canada prophetically called for new jails. Perhaps we need stockades as well. I hope at very least that their incomes are 'garnisheed'. Canadians don't want more taxation like the HST to wetnurse criminals.
Finally, these Vancouver rioters, looters, criminals, gangsters and bullies should be required to do community hours for a year in addition scrubbing the Vancouver city buildings to get rid of the smell of BC Bud, piss vomit, crack smoke and burning police cars. Thank goodness Mayor Gregor Robertson and the Vancouver Police were there to limit the destruction.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
WEB Griffin
I just finished WEB Griffin's Vigillantes. This was one of his Badge of Honor series about Philadelphia cops. The writing is fast and naked. A lot of WEB Griffin is characterization. I've read a half dozen of these Badge of Honor books over the years so have come to enjoy Payne the bright young cop "who could have been lawyer but stayed with the force" and Law the doctor who loves him. They're a bit of a soap opera with some action and a lot of intrigue. Good detective novels. What makes them most interesting is that WEB Griffin is truly a favorite writer of police forces. I appreciate this. This is either how cops see themselves or ideally how they see themselves. There's a real 'truthfulness' in these accounts that is so clearly at variance with the way police are so commonly misrepresented. I can't help but come away from WEB Griffin Badge of Honor novel without thinking these guys are trying despite the system. It's a tough job but normal guys are doing their best in difficult times. They're dealing with the corruption and drugs. It's a jungle out there but thanks to the police mostly its safe for society to get on with more than just defending themselves.
In contrast WEB Griffin's other series Brotherhood of War has been for me a mixed bag. The truth is I've read a half dozen of those too so obviously keep coming back to them as a kind of guys beach book. WEB Griffin is a fast raw writer in the popular Tom Clancy form. It's hard to criticize such a giant and such a true success story. The trouble is that the last Brotherhood of War series I read just had too much drinking and men playing war with 50's upper class girls to be that entertaining. Perhaps I've talked to too many vets and am a bit too jaded on the continual wars of our times to be able to remove myself from the suffering to appreciate these novels which army recruiters must truly love.
They are historical fiction and probably reflect the archetypes that were dominant at the time and explain to some degree a similar Hollywood take post WWII on the types of characters and the very thinking that won the war. Maybe it's the American take too. John Wayne half cut. Maybe war is mostly about drinking and girls, at least the only parts one wants to remember other than the camaraderie.
I prefer the Badge of Honor series. Policing is a whole lot different with greater complexity and depth and everyday people going to work and wanting friends and family. There's also big questions and ideas in Vigillantes. What is wrong with the justice system and what needs to be done before it's too late.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
In contrast WEB Griffin's other series Brotherhood of War has been for me a mixed bag. The truth is I've read a half dozen of those too so obviously keep coming back to them as a kind of guys beach book. WEB Griffin is a fast raw writer in the popular Tom Clancy form. It's hard to criticize such a giant and such a true success story. The trouble is that the last Brotherhood of War series I read just had too much drinking and men playing war with 50's upper class girls to be that entertaining. Perhaps I've talked to too many vets and am a bit too jaded on the continual wars of our times to be able to remove myself from the suffering to appreciate these novels which army recruiters must truly love.
They are historical fiction and probably reflect the archetypes that were dominant at the time and explain to some degree a similar Hollywood take post WWII on the types of characters and the very thinking that won the war. Maybe it's the American take too. John Wayne half cut. Maybe war is mostly about drinking and girls, at least the only parts one wants to remember other than the camaraderie.
I prefer the Badge of Honor series. Policing is a whole lot different with greater complexity and depth and everyday people going to work and wanting friends and family. There's also big questions and ideas in Vigillantes. What is wrong with the justice system and what needs to be done before it's too late.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
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